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.
Hi, Mona.
Because risk moderation is generally tax-inefficient and for some of the asset classes that interest me (Asia income, for example) there aren't any tax-efficient vehicles. You could try to invest in low-beta stocks and a low-turnover fun…
I agree with the folks: there aren't many better options than Seafarer. You might imagine Mr. Foster's mantra as "safe and sane." If you wanted more of the same, you might consider DRESX, which offers hedged exposure to EM small caps, or FTEMX, whic…
The prospectus text, which is unusually clear on the subject:
Payment of Redemption Requests
Unless otherwise prohibited by law, the Fund may pay the redemption price to you in cash or in portfolio securities, or partly in cash and partly in portf…
One might note that John's argument - "it's all management by committee these days" - describes the small subset of large funds that Morningstar notices rather more than it describes the entire universe of funds.
David
"a low tolerance for risk"
Ummm ... you might reflect on that conclusion in light of the positioning of my portfolio, which I publish annually. In the non-retirement portfolio, about 50% of my money is in equities and 50% in income-producing securi…
Hi, Ted.
You can get a sense of how close the call is when you visit Morningstar. The retail share class (RPHYX) now appears as three stars on its Morningstar profile page which the institutional share class (RPHIX) remains at four.
David
Right, the change simply reflects the fact that the average high-yield bond fund made 2.5% in the first quarter while RPHYX made 1%. As it turns out, this fund has virtually nothing in common with the average high-yield fund (the correlation between…
On the question of Crescent's benchmark: their objective is to produce "equity-like" returns with reduced volatility over the course of a full market cycle, so it does make some sense to hold their FMC performance to some all-equity benchmark. In th…
For what interest it holds, Mr. Horn came across as one of the most deeply thoughtful guys we've interviewed. The audio of our 2015 conference call with him is on our Featured Fund page for Polaris.
David
Hi, msf.
I've been sort of grouchy with TIAA(-CREF) for a decade. I had a spat with their head P.R. guy about their justification for steadily rising e.r.'s and was not pleased when when of their board members explained some of their maneuvering as…
You might consider Pioneer Fundamental Growth (PIGFX), the only domestic or global large-growth with a higher Sharpe ratio than the NASDAQ over the current full market cycle. Its advantage is driven by much better performance in the market crisis an…
The Lipper benchmark is Global Small- to Mid-cap, if that wasn't clear from the discussion above.
GPROX has the highest 3-year Sharpe ratio of any fund in the group; it's outpacing its peers by 6% annually since inception with below-average volatil…
I appear the only person incapable of posting an image to the discussion board. I keep trying and keep getting the broken-image icon. The best I can do is a link to a composite valuation graph. Grantham argues that the two standard deviation line is…
For what distraction it offers, here's an interactive global current valuation widget. Terms ("RS") are defined in tiny type below the bottom chart. In general, red = warning.
Hey, 3yards.
Sorry, not trying to snub anybody.
Here's my fundamental problem: I'm concerned that the market is currently forked up. Really. Zero and negative interest rate policies fundamentally distort investors' allocations. Why are interest ra…
Apparently he didn't share with Andy Acker, the manager of Janus Global Life Sciences:
On a subsector basis, pharmaceuticals were the largest detractor from relative performance. Much of the underperformance was due to one holding, Valeant Pharmaceu…
Hmm. I'm surprised, given the apparent energy you put into your post, that you didn't simply look at the prospectus - or, heck, the profiles posted here - in order to answer your own question. Both sets of documents strike me as reasonably clear. Th…
Hi, Bud.
Here's the problem with distinctive funds: they're impossible to benchmark. RPHYX is sometimes a one-star fund, sometimes a four-star fund based not on its virtue but on the fate of its largely-irrelevant peer group. It's benchmarked again…
"disaster"
Hmmm ... it had an 8% drawdown from mid-2015 to mid-February, 2016. That's better than the average high yield fund (-11%), worse than the average multi-sector bond fund (-6.5%). Neither's a particularly great benchmark. Not good and mod…
Valeant appeared, at one point, to be printing money. I suspect that "Mike" told a really good story about how beautifully all the pieces of his strategy were coming together, which was true until it wasn't. I suspect that Sequoia's tradition of "a …
As of February 29, the fund's holdings accounted for just over 90% of its assets. That implies a cash position just under 10%. With its focus on called bonds and other ultra-short duration securities, it generates a lot of reinvestable cash every we…
@districtwanderer: Greetings! I added a couple additional thoughts on the matter of little and late reviews in a new thread, for what interest that holds. David
Yuh, I was struck by the plethora of "Income Builders" on the list. It turns out that there are a dozen funds bearing that designation. One is designated "global," one is designated "U.S." and the rest promise, generically, to build income
It feel…
Hi, Mark.
I'm not arguing for or against of the funds listed. Other than Crescent, I know next to nothing about them. I just try to remind folks that our conclusions are no better than our premises. GIGO might be Gold In - Gold Out as much as Garba…
The short version: a former Morningstar analyst ranked "balanced" funds with more than a billion in assets by their 15-year Sortino ratio. Sortino is an offshoot of the well-known Sharpe ratio, but it's more sensitive to a fund's downside deviation.…
Don't know much about the author's record. Matthew Sauer. He reports having spent nine years with Fidelity Independent Advisor (F I A). In 2014, he started a small investment advisory firm in Williamstown, Massachusetts, still home for Don Dion's F …
As an aside, I talked Friday with Steve Romick, the lead manager of FPACX, about why the fund remains open. One of his arguments is that managing a closed fund is harder than you'd think. All funds are subject to regular redemptions. In an open fund…
The article also notes that this fund (ticker: SHE) is one of a series of investment products concerned with issues of gender equity: WIL (an exchange-traded note), EQLT (an ETF) and PXWEX (a repurposed index fund) among them. Many other SRI funds s…
Some background to the advisor, for what interest it holds: http://www.businessinsider.com/vest-startup-protects-you-from-losing-all-your-money-in-the-stock-market-2015-8. At base, they're using options to dampen volatility.
Or at least chill out.
Last day of Spring Break. I'm imagining a new assignment in my Propaganda in the 20th Century class. It's called "You are them." Making sense of propaganda from 1914 requires being able to think like a person from 1913. I'm …
Hi, Kevin.
I know. The problem is that small caps (well, stocks) are volatile and I'm rotten at timing the market or making other tactical allocation moves. Mostly I've got too much else going on to spend a lot of time with assessing the Russell 2…
Ooooo! Bought an electric snow blower today. Hurt me elbow shoveling out after the last storm and can't afford to aggravate it. Found a highly-rated model for about 40% off at my local home center. I'm about half-wishing that tonight's threatened sn…
Hi, OJ.
Sorry about the piecemeal response. I'm the chair of my academic department and needed to deal with two grade complaints against faculty today, so I had little time for finesse. Once home, I was able to tidy up the original thread.
In ad…
@NumbersGal, hi!
Thanks for the question. By happenstance, Eric C dropped me a note shortly after we published (in reality, while I was in the produce section of my local Hy-Vee grocery, foraging). We profiled ARIVX shortly after launch and again…
@Shostakovich, I had a good conversation with Steve Lipper, whose family launched Lipper Analytics then sold it to Thomson Reuters. I've never had any great affection for Royce for all the predictable reasons: a swarm of undistinguished and virtuall…
A few highlights:
Expect the S&P 500 to bottom somewhere between 1600-1700. It's about 1950 now.
Given the length of this bear (going on 11 months) and the length of a normal bear, the bottom might occur this summer.
The worst of overvaluatio…
