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.
Ariel Discovery (ARDFX).
"Gem."
Uhhh ... you know, I'm driving this used white 2010 Corolla these days. Really a nice little car. Economical (my style), reliable (ditto), comfortable. Will's willing to be seen riding it, though that might chang…
The argument seems to be that Mark and Brian have been co-managing the Strategy (i.e., the private money) and now deserve recognition for co-managing the fund as well.
I've got time set aside to talk with the FPA folks at Morningstar and I'll ask a…
Hi, Bobpa!
The ony portion that we've released so far is the list in my cover essay. Because Charles has generated such a remarkable richness of information, I was concerned that a full release would swamp more people than it would help. So the p…
Reply to @3yards: Hi, 3!
For now, the only chart is in my cover essay as part of the lead story. In it, Charles highlights the lowest risk-category funds from among those with at least a 20 year record. We'll share more in July, we hope. The key…
Reply to @VintageFreak: Nah. My bad. I'm in the midst of my monthly writingfest and I only intermittently connect with reality from here.
Off I go!
David
Reply to @VintageFreak: Help me with this. I can't find any record of such a fund. I do have Asia Focus and Emerging Asia just launched, but can't for the life of me find a Strategic Dividend.
Where'd you track it down?
David
Hi, Max.
I saw your original post last night but, after the call and a meeting about the future of Will's Little League team (not good, not good at all), I was too tuckered to write.
My impression, in my sleep-depraved state (trust me on that one)…
Reply to @VintageFreak: Yep - Jerry is dad. One almost had a sense of a sort of relief in being out of the nest and out of Jerry's shadow.
It seems to me that these owner-operated funds are rather more tenacious than other small ones. A "family" …
Reply to @VintageFreak: Dude, his mother and mother-in-law are both heavily invested in the fund. There's a ... uhh, delightful thought. Thanksgiving dinner with your investors. At one point, he and his family represented 75% of assets. He's wel…
I'll be curious to hear Charles's take on the question, given his fine and extensive analysis of the All-Asset strategy which appeared in our May issue.
Personally I tend to look a bit more than All Asset than at All Asset All Authority, just becau…
I could never generate any enthusiasm for this fund: Mr. Tilson seems to be very good at self-promotion but not demonstrably talented at management. Happily, Tilson Dividend (TILDX) which we did profile and which is run by a different manager, cont…
Reply to @Ralph: Hi, Ralph.
Old Joe's right: both chip and I have investments in the fund and have added to them regularly. They're part of my and her "cash management" portfolios.
As I've talked with David S. about managing the fund, it seems to…
Too, the function of going public was, in part, to give Artisan more flexibility (they were paying off some external debt and generating cash to buy out some of the founders' stake) so they'd be able to retain their best young talent.
David
Oh, it's not nearly so sensible as all that.
The e.r. is compared to the universe of all "C" class shares of all alternative funds. And so the putative peer group, for expense purposes, includes long/short equity, market neutral, managed futures, …
Old story: decent fund, no assets. It produced average results with below-average risk but gathered only $10 million in assets. It was preceded in death by Scout Stock, which liquidated in March after losing about two-thirds of its assets.
There are, I suspect, a trio of contributors to his absence. He and I have had, since launch, a respectful disagreement about my approach to the site; his strong and principled preference is for fewer "bells and whistles," less off-topic discussio…
Final exams this week.
Here's the story of QRACX's below-average expenses. The Oppenheimer fund is a "broad-basket commodity" fund but its expenses are not benchmarked against that group. If it were, it would be one of the 10 most expensive fund…
from John Park, half of Jackson Park Capital LLC, the advisors:
Hi David,
Thanks for the email. Our first holdings report, as of March 31, 2013, should be filed toward the end of this month. We plan on having a fact sheet up shortly thereafter tha…
When we spoke, they were very careful not to speak about their portfolio except in very general terms ("mostly larger cap names," that sort of thing) because they're anxious not to get in dutch with the SEC over what might be disclosed as a private …
Right. I actually wrote a longish reply to it. I'll be at the college tomorrow a.m. There's a tiny chance that the reply is sitting, unpublished, in an open browser there. If not, I'll share a few thoughts anew.
Hope your weekend has been wonde…
Oh, nuts. I wonder what I did wrong. Hmmmm ... the short answers are: the latter, I should have and I will, in that order. I'll look at my work PC to see if the original (longish) note was somehow saved there. If not I'll get an updated, non-cr…
Reply to @Investor: No, oddly enough, we didn't. I experienced the same graininess that you noticed after chip first posted the logo, and I've experienced the same sharpness now. The file remained unchanged.
My suspicion is that the graininess mi…
Reply to @Old_Joe: I long ago created the design you're referring to. It's called a Wordle. There are lots of examples online. In an incredibly long process, I copied the entire text of the FA discussion board and peeled away everything except fo…
Weitz Partners Value (WPLVX). 28 stocks, almost all domestic, 25% cash in 2013 but an average cash position around 22% from 2009-present. Top 2% of LCV funds over that period. They had a long period of weak performance from 2003 - 2009, fell soon…
Hi, Mona.
Sorry, no. "Public domain" is a legal designation for work whose intellectual property rights (their copyright, in our context) has either expired or been forfeited. Almost no recently-published work available at a public library is leg…
Hi, JimJ.
BPIRX is an interesting fund and I'm hopeful of talking with the folks behind it at the Morningstar conference. The preliminary description I got was that it's run by the BPLEX analysts and you're certainly right in observing that BPLEX …
Reply to @MJG: Good golly, Miss Molly.
Not to borrow another song title, but I have a mental category called "Things that Make Me Go Hmmm." Automotive engineers have returned to the old practice of designing car doors to make a resonant sound when…
Reply to @NickF: Hi, Nick!
The "Featured Fund" tab will lead you to a special page for every fund on which we've hosted a conference call. Those pages include an mp3 version of the conference call, an audio-profile (also mp3) of the fund, an updat…
Reply to @Soupkitchen: This might be an artifact of a Firefox update. Check your settings under "View" -> "Zoom." There's an option called "Zoom text only." Uncheck that, then try to zoom to 120% or more. When I had ZTO checked, my text also …
Hi, scott.
They've also got two rather less-vanilla funds in registration this month. Long/short and managed futures. If a fund family wants to hold assets for the long term, they like have a the core covered (large, small, international, income,…
I'm not, as you might have noted, particularly adept at embedding charts in these posts so I'll merely suggest that you might be interested in a chart of PRPFX against PERM, the GlobalX Permanent ETF. I did a side-by-side of PRPFX, PERM and the Mid…
Hi, guys.
Total Choice Hosting was the subject of a sustained denial-of-service attack on Thursday afternoon, which substantially slowed everything they do (including the load of their own home- and problem-report pages). Chip has been tracking ro…
Hi, Archaic.
You might want to find the dates of the portfolios that correspond to those stats. The Morningstar portfolio page is 2/28/13 for the "Style Details" and 1/30/13 for everything else.
It could be that the portfolio you saw on 3/9/13 …
Reply to @Investor: Quick thoughts in the midst of mid-term grading.
Augie's buildings: at a state-supported school, construction funds do get added to the state budget. Here, the new construction is paid for by gifts (or gift commitments) and not…
