Here's a statement of the obvious: The opinions expressed here are those of the participants, not those of the Mutual Fund Observer. We cannot vouch for the accuracy or appropriateness of any of it, though we do encourage civility and good humor.
I'm not quite sure I understand why you need 1700 employees when the investment approach he's famous for, the All Weather Portfolio, shouldn't exactly require lots of analysts. Even if you assume many clients' assets are managed according to their …
I'd pick Wasatch but I'm not sure how they're generally thought about so maybe they're overrated for me but no one else. I think they have a pretty serious cultural problem when Robert Gardiner was able to basically walk out with a complete firm a …
OK, that's pretty cool! I collected baseball cards mostly but also some football, basketball and hockey cards when I was a kid and they've all been sitting in boxes for decades. As with your coins I know I have some valuable cards but I've always …
Hi @Old_Skeet,
I've never been a coin collector but it seems like buying actual coins would be more of a hobby/personal interest rather than a way to invest. It seems like the quantity of coins you'd need to buy for even a small investment would b…
Hi @VintageFreak,
As msf mentioned you can choose category=international equity [diversified emerging mkts] in M*'s Premium screener but you can then also choose equity style box=value. I added in limiting the results to Distinct Portfolios only a…
Let's start a website tracking each of our funds managers to see if their spouses are possibly going to divorce them. Potentially it could result in the spouse getting half of shares owned by fund manager and resulting in sell - off. We can call it …
C'mon, this could affect all those people holding his Janus fund because doesn't he own a huge proportion of the shares? If she takes half of everything then it could impact the rest of the fund's shareholders negatively. If nothing else, it's a d…
As you know, I'm bearish on health care......been for a while.
Puddnhead, you got health care right really early so I hesitate to second guess your take on things....but, Trump's comment last week that he was going to cut prices caused a stir. If, …
@openice, thanks again! I missed the discussion about her experience at Wasatch so thanks for filling in those blanks.
Isn't it a bit strange though. I know she was investing in some of the smaller emerging markets but the entire frontier markets…
@openice, thanks for the summary but did they have multiple calls this morning? I don't recall some of the details you mentioned on the call I participated in, but maybe I wasn't as effective at multi-tasking as I'd like. They certainly didn't con…
I guess this is a bit of succession planning or at least giving the guys they think are really good an incentive to stay. But really, do you need 4 guys managing a fund with 20 equal weighted positions that in theory should be Herro and Nygren's be…
I think I read a Matthews Asia commentary recently that said dividends are more common for small Asian companies and GPMCX has half their investments in Asia.
For all intents and purposes the fund was hard closed before it opened. You had to 'appl…
I don't think it matters whether they have a lot of AUM or a little, the percent of AUM is more relevant. One-third of the distribution is income and they apparently took net gains equal to roughly 1% of AUM this year for a total distribution of ro…
@Derf, unfortunately I don't follow it in enough detail to draw great conclusions either but I do have a couple of general takeaways. Some of the biggest contributors in Q3 were her picks but the fund has also been hurt by her choices in Africa. H…
I found it a little strange that the "most exciting" announcement is a joint venture with a previous colleague where GP is going to provide back-office and trading support. Huh? They just announced their CEO is changing, as is their Director of Re…
On Yahoo Finance you can look up the historical prices for funds and there's an option to choose to see just the dividends. As far as I've ever been aware that will give you a complete history of dividends for the fund.
Here's a link to the page w…
I own 2 T. Rowe Price funds and I can't remember the last time I read one of their commentaries. At the same time I have other funds that I look forward to reading every quarter and even a few funds that I don't own but make a point of downloading …
I'm continuing my regular monthly contributions to SFGIX, GPEOX, GPMCX, QUSOX, ARTGX and I'll soon add OAKWX to the list. My penny stock is FCUUF, which I bought today because I think the long-term upside for uranium is big. I'm pondering a few he…
Just a quick update on the Instant X-ray tool FWIW. I was still having difficulty but I read a post on M*'s discussion board suggesting that the tool is "broken" and M* isn't communicating about when it will be fixed- just that there are other more…
I wouldn't be surprised to hear about an American Funds promotion soon- 1 chance to win an F3 for every F-3 share you buy.
From Wikipedia-
"The BYD F3 is a compact car (4 doors sedan, 5 passengers) produced in China by BYD Auto"
"In March 2011,…
@VintageFreak, I didn't mean anything related to shares. I was talking about a request to grandfather the commissions you're paying at Scottrade, or other fees that the brokerage decides for themselves, since they should be lower than the ones TDA …
@VintageFreak, I would give them a bit of time to get organized but eventually I'd call customer service and ask them to grandfather Scottrade's pricing for you or whatever you'd like to keep. I did that successfully many years ago during another c…
I am a premium member but I haven't been able to use instant xray for a while now. I can get an xray of my portfolios, not always but most of the time and today I can, but the instant xray hasn't worked for a while. I've even tried other browsers …
@msf, you're right, it's complicated but I'm pretty sure it's fairly one-sided, not totally one-sided. If you get full credit for the wrap fee you pay then there's a much better chance that case 1 could come out better. Ultimately the result depen…
@msf, you're partly correct about the 30th percentile. I did adjust all funds based on M*'s load adjusted returns but I rounded a little. The actual ranking is between the 29th and 30th percentile and I just used 30 as a round number.
In your exa…
@Old_Joe, I agree it's complicated and I'm not sure there's any single right answer. M* provides the opportunity in their premium fund screener to see load-adjusted returns but they could just footnote category rankings and all the other return dat…
@msf, sorry, I'm not sure how I got stuck on the R1 shares but that negates much of what I was saying. Sorry for wasting your time and everyone else's.
I completely agree that certain expenses exist regardless of how they're packaged. Nonetheless…
As with most load funds, it looks like the no load R1 version charges higher expenses, mostly in the form of a giant 12b-1 fee, so long-term investors are still better off paying the load if they plan to stick around for a long time.
But what does …
I appreciate that both formats are available because while I enjoy reading everything in the old format I also go back and read or reference things I found interesting over and over again. At first glance the new format makes that easier for me. T…
I have most of my accounts at E*TRADE as a legacy BrownCo customer and have been pretty happy with the collection of NTF funds they have. Customer service seems to be the main issue. For years I dealt with a guy who was great. He got things done,…
I'm not sure the interview is so exclusive. He did a 30 minute CNBC interview roughly a week ago. It'll be interesting to see how much of the same topics get covered and whether his answers are the same (assuming, that is, that I can remember all …
When you call Seafarer aren't you really calling ALPS, who does all the back office work for them and many others?
I've had mixed experiences with ALPS although they're usually very nice. In some cases they are well-informed and even responsive wh…
Hasn't TD Ameritrade been in the dark about a few things recently. Weren't they the ones who were offering the Driehaus Frontier Emerging Markets fund with a low minimum or was it something else?
Wow, I don't remember any of the specs or even the precise timing, but I think it was mid '80s and my first computer was an Apple. Around the same time my Mom wanted to buy the stock but my Dad refused and it was probably the biggest mistake they e…
