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As I mentioned, I looked at their quarterly schedule of investments for December and they've used the swaps to get equity exposure with no cash outlay. Almost 80% of the NAV was invested in bonds of one sort or another, 13+% was what I would call c…
@openice- thanks for making the effort. Too bad they weren't willing to talk just to spite the competition.
@hank- to answer your question I would just consider the fund as one of the options to get large blend/value exposure and potentially get a…
Sorry for a bit of a tangent but it would be interesting if you could, or someone has, tried to correlate high CEO pay or high C suite pay to stock performance. In some ways the CEO and his group of executives are like fund managers in that they ha…
I think PRHSX, VGHCX and FSPHX are all good diversified healthcare options. Which one does best in the future is anyone's best guess so I would choose based on what's available to you NTF or whatever you have a prefer for one reason or another. I …
To the point, does anyone delay filing their taxes to avoid needing to file amended returns? How long? I do a handful of relatively simple returns for other family members and it would be easy to file as soon as they receive the initial paperwork …
Old_Joe, I agree with a lot of what you and a few others have said. Things do get out of hand sometimes, they get personal and that's really the problem more than politics per se. A great example is how you seem to sarcastically and personally att…
I'm not a tax accountant so I'd be happy for corrections if I get something wrong, but as an interesting tangent... if the 1/5 buy was instead a sale and at a loss, then it would be a wash sale with the 1/11 purchase. When everything is sold on 1/1…
Sorry if you think my comments were a sales pitch because they weren't intended to be and I have no vested interest in convincing anyone to invest in anything or any way that doesn't work for them. I think there are a lot of people here who prefer …
It's not just an effective strategy for managing volatility, it can significantly beat the market in cases of significant downturns, although it would tend to trail in cases where an investor gets whipsawed. From late 2000 until the beginning of 20…
From what I can tell Fidelity doesn't distinguish between market orders and limit or other types of orders, such as market on close or trailing stop-loss orders, but is anyone aware that that isn't true? At this point I only use my Fidelity account…
It appears from what I was able to read, like his blog, that Mr. Cinnamond is not working for Aston/River Road anymore. Aston was integrated into AMG last fall and it may be that he wasn't interested in doing other things once his fund was closed. …
Even though I already knew about them I gained a lot of knowledge and confidence about Grandeur Peak from Dr. Snowball's commentaries. MSCFX has been a big positive and @Ted mentioned SBIO, which I've traded successfully but it would have been toug…
@MikeM2, what I noticed is that EM is also in last place 7 times and bottom 2 an additional time. Each of those times the return was outright negative. It seems to be feast or famine and the long term record isn't looking very good right now. In …
Depending on how much of a chance you want to take you might consider AOFAX, Alger Small Cap Focus. Amy Zhang came to the fund from BCSIX just over a year ago and she's built a portfolio very similar to the Brown fund so far. Whether or not she ha…
absolutely, but like so many truer words ever spoken, pretty inactionable advice.
Funny enough, it might be the "best" actionable advice we can get. Putting too much reliance on the past, especially the recent past, seems to drive a big portion of …
The most recent data on activeshare.info was a year old but I also thought it was nice that you could look at quarterly data and see how a fund's active share was changing, at least over a short period of 4 or 5 quarters. I think they also said, bu…
Almost $6 billion in this small cap fund, which stopped me from adding to it years ago, but this is a good opportunity to see how connected the assets are to the manager. I might be willing to leave a little money in the fund and give the new guy a…
Definitely not mostly US at this point but rather he'll go wherever he thinks the biggest values are. David Iben isn't for the faint of heart but he's done pretty well in his various funds. The current one is KGGAX, Kopernik Global All Cap, and it…
I've checked some of these numbers, at least in rough terms, so I'm not questioning the results, but isn't it amazing that energy services does well from Feb-May during internet bubbles (ok, that makes some sense), credit crises and even crude oil p…
Hi @jstr, the returns on energy services certainly look nice but do you have any information about the returns and/or risk-adjusted returns of an index like the S&P 500 during the same times?
You have a number of different approaches that all s…
Just one additional thought... If you exchange one share class for another share class of the same fund then there may be no tax implications. For instance, I exchanged the retail class of 2 Grandeur Peak funds I own for the institutional class whe…
It's too bad because I've owned this fund for more than 5 years and this will make me find an alternative. I wish the Vulcan Value guys would open their small cap fund for a short time so I could make that trade.
You'd kind of have to assume this would happen eventually. It's too bad because it seems like he's done really well at GP but hopefully they really are as prepared as they suggest. There's a lot of stuff going on between GP, Wasatch, Rondure and e…
I have to say they've confused the heck out of me with their use of terms like "soft close" and "direct shareholders". In any event after listening to the quarterly conference call this afternoon I believe they mean anyone who owns shares at the en…
Neither CENTX nor CETAX appears to be available for purchase at E*Trade.
I found CETAX available load waived with $100 minimum both taxable and IRA accounts at E*TRADE.
@openice, thanks for your insights. The article in the monthly commentary and your comments provide perspectives that aren't common anywhere I've found other than here on MFO. They are very helpful and much appreciated.
Late last spring or earl…
I own MEASX and WAFMX and I've been very happy with the Matthews funds and not so happy with the Wasatch fund but that's certainly influenced by performance. Harding Loevner has a fund, HLMOX, that's done pretty well and may be more accessible than…
@BobC, thank you for your thoughts. I tend to agree with you about growth vs. value even though it seems like academia suggests value does better in the long-term, but I have other foreign small cap holdings like GPIOX that give me the growth side …
Thanks for the suggestions!! I know FISMX has been a revolving door and I stopped adding to it years ago partly because of that and partly because I found other funds I liked more, but I've always kept what I had and been pretty happy with the long…
QUSIX or ICMIX
If you were going to make a choice between the two, which would you choose and why?
I was impressed with the information in Dennis' write-up of ICMIX this month but Dr. Snowball called QUSIX one of the 3, and only 3, great small cap …
I find that highly unlikely for the foreseeable future... Fund could at least double before Mr. Foster would hard close and to get there would take a great deal of inflows, not likely to come from additions - would need substantial subscriptions.
O…
Considering its closed, highly regarded and has done really well amongst EM funds, I certainly wouldn't eliminate it. I add to both SFGIX and GPEOX monthly and I would consider stopping if I was worried about EM longer term but its not very likely …
I'm not quite sure he actually has an "attraction" to a strong dollar. During the campaign he accused China of devaluing their currency, which is false, but if he wanted a strong dollar then it doesn't seem like he'd be picking on China. I tend to…
