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.
The PIMCO stock funds invest in derivatives that track stock performance without being directly invested in the stocks themselves. (Same with the commodity funds.) That is why the Morningstar portfolio descriptions can be confusing. Some more discu…
You should look at the Bogleheads Wiki and in particular the Lazy Portfolios suggestions. There is a lot of support for the idea that a low-cost, balanced portfolio is as good or better than other alternatives.
Another good benchmark is the Perma…
Expenses are definitely an important factor for me. When buying a fund, you are buying it for its future performance, not past performance. It can be very difficult to predict the future performance of a fund... but expenses are one thing you can …
I second most of thoughts already posted above:
- Dissatisfied with Royce as a fund family. You might see Dreifus as being different because he only manages two funds ... or you might look at it as part of Royce's trend of opening more funds withou…
For those that missed it, RWGFX was profiled here on MFO late last year: http://www.mutualfundobserver.com/2012/01/riverparkwedgewood-rwgfx-september-2011/
I moved into this fund a few months ago to give my portfolio some growth exposure. Besides …
Reply to @Archaic: Marketfield MFLDX is often mentioned as a good long-short fund. (Note their impending transfer to New York Life / Mainstay.) There were also several other long-short funds that were profiled by MFO during the last few months. L…
Reply to @NickF: My personal take: This year, AIG, Bank of America and St Joe are all up around 50%. Sears is up 100% YTD. What has Berkowitz done since then? These stocks are still the top holdings. His cash position is still well under 10% (I …
Re: 4% yield that is "very low risk", at the risk of talking this fund to death, RPHYX has been and still is yielding ~3.7%. It's risk is somewhat hard to characterize, with 2011 the only example of a "downturn" during the life of the fund. My tak…
David posted a link to the recording (and wrote a summary of the call) so you should listen to that if you haven't already. Overall, I thought the call was very helpful and gave me a lot of confidence in the manager and his strategy.
One thing t…
Reply to @David_Snowball: Do you have a link to the Dow Jones article? I googled for it and found some references to a profile this week, but couldn't find the actual article itself. Thanks.
Just thought of two more questions:
I've noticed some recent news reports about new bond trading platforms from Goldman, Blackrock, etc. (see here, here and here). What is David's view of these new platforms? Does Cohanzick use (or plan to use) the…
I would like to hear both David and Morty's thoughts on how they view the role of RPHYX in a typical retail investor's portfolio (as previously discussed in this thread). Specifically, in the context of a 60/40 stock/bond portfolio, do they think t…
Interesting find. But given that Oaktree is generally not accessible to the retail investor, is there any data to show that they are actually good at managing high yield bonds? VCVSX is a convertible securities fund rather than a HY fund. (I am al…
I used to hold PCRIX and I always viewed it as a commodities index fund. I suppose the advertising about inflation hedge might be a little excessive, but the fund is pretty clearly tracking the DJUBS commodities index and nothing more.
I also thou…
Not just that, but PTTRX is doing better than its Doubleline rival DBLFX this year. Last year PTTRX did significantly worse than DBLFX, which led to a lot of media coverage and PTTRX seeing actual outflows. So this year might be just some of the p…
Should note that this closure is related to BobC's post "Artio Funds struggling mightily, ending domestic equity efforts", which was also covered in MFO's September commentary.
I don't understand the concern about 12b-1 fees in the past couple of posts. When I look at a fund, I look at its total expense ratio. I care about how much I will pay in expenses, not whether those payments go to management, marketing, or alimony…
I am surprised by the reopening. I thought it closed a little early (I think it was around $500 million) but its assets haven't decreased since that time. Let's hope the soft close really was to "facilitate management" and they aren't just making …
As the MFO commentaries have noted, there are more and more long/short funds available to the retail investor. ARLSX profiled this August looks like it has done pretty well, and both Aston and River Road seem to be quality managers in general. For…
Reply to @BobC: This depends on your brokerage, but at Vanguard, MFLDX is available NTF but the MainStay funds are not. I don't know what will happen after MFLDX makes the transition, but there's at least a good chance that it will not be NTF anymo…
Is there a reason to prefer WBMAX over WBMRX or vice versa? Normally I would expect the "Advisor" class to have lower expenses vs. the regular investor class, but in this case both have the same expense ratio and both are available NTF through Vang…
Reply to @STB65: While I agree with the spirit of your post, investing is not charity and nobody should be basing their decisions on their desire to "support a new fund." Folks need to consider both the unique advantages that a new fund offers vs. …
The article discusses the Pimco Commodity Real Return Strategy Fund, but I thought both PIMCO commodities funds are index funds. They shouldn't be buying any more gold than is mandated by their respective indexes. Unless something has changed?
Just some random thoughts and not directed toward any comments in particular.
I am of the opinion that annuities should be thought of as insurance, not investment, and should be evaluated accordingly. Of course the annuity's yield is lower than wh…
These changes are slowly being rolled out. I have seen reports of it on Bogleheads for a few weeks, but the changes haven't hit my accounts yet. (One of my accounts did get notified that changes are "coming soon.") Anyway, just pointing this out …
Thanks for the update. I had seen some posts recommending HAFLX as a lower-cost version of MFCFX and was giving it serious consideration. Then held off because of Marsico's manager departures (before Rao left even).
I don't see any mention of a m…
Reply to @msf: Given current bond yields, if you are willing to forgo the safety of bank/money market accounts, I have a hard time recommending any short-term funds other than RPHYX, which is yielding 3.64% or so, with stable NAV. Even on an after-t…
Reply to @msf: Regarding VMLUX: Morningstar gives a yield of 2.06%, but Vanguard's site gives the SEC yield as 0.69%: https://personal.vanguard.com/us/funds/snapshot?FundId=0531&FundIntExt=INT
Quite a difference, and I'm not really sure which o…
Reply to @00BY: I can't remember where, but I recall that the managers mentioned the limited capacity ($1 billion) in this space would deter larger fund managers. For example, I imagine PIMCO might not have much use for this strategy because there …
Regarding RPHYX vs. junk, take a look at this chart. In particular the period from May to June this year where the S&P and Vanguard's high yield fund (just to take an example) both had declines, but RPHYX stayed stable. Of course this might no…
Maybe I'm alone in this, but I check Facebook (and Zynga) quotes every day even though I have no interest in buying (or shorting) either. It's like a train wreck where you just can't look away. In that sense, I am very much looking forward to the …
Reply to @fundalarm: The manager previously estimated the capacity to be about $1 billion, both in the MFO profile (from July 2011) and the commentary on the RiverPark website: http://www.riverparkfunds.com/downloads/News/RiverPark_Short-Term-High-Y…
I don't think there is a problem moving money in and out of the fund. I note that the fund keeps quite a bit of cash on hand (17.10% according to Morningstar), which minimizes the impact of redemptions.
Do keep in mind that if you buy your fund …
Got this link from another poster here: http://socialize.morningstar.com/NewSocialize/forums/p/287732/3092742.aspx#3092742
Does not directly answer your question, but provides a convenient overview of the various DoubleLine offerings.
I like actively managed, very focused ("best ideas") funds. However I am having trouble understanding how this fund makes sense.
- Almost 1/3 of the fund is cash.
- The rest of the fund is in only 8 stocks.
- The managers barely trade (25% turnover…
I find the Bogleheads Wiki to be a very helpful resource and I use their site all the time. Even if you don't buy into their indexing "religion", there is still a lot of useful information regarding asset allocation, tax management, bond categories…
Reply to @Dan: I also hold RNDLX (retail shares) but I am not entirely convinced about what RiverNorth has brought to the table.
Here is a chart comparing RNSIX to ADLIX. I use ADLIX for comparison because I recall DoubleLine's Gundlach explaini…
