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.
Average (mean) values are not particularly meaningful when applied to data that skew. We all know that a few high values (e.g. CEO salaries, NY penthouse prices) can distort a mean.
Here's a table of mean internet speeds that also shows percentage…
No fund site in the 70s, but perhaps starting in the late 80s ( I'm a little weak on the timeline) was misc.invest.funds (later named misc.invest.mutual-funds).
Not a "site" exactly, more of a feed. But definitely internet (i.e. uucp gateway'd to …
I thought it might be worthwhile to link to a couple of objective family rankings. Use them as you will - as evidence that families are worse (or better) than their reputations, or as a source for those reputations.
MFO: "How Good Is Your Fund Fa…
Calamos - great selection. A boutique firm that built its reputation on a niche product (convertibles).
TEMWX - NTF at Fidelity (to address a concern with FT loads).
Another overrated family - Dimensional (DFA). Excellent for small cap valu…
ISTM that these "overratings" come from people's high expectations of new funds (sometimes that works out, like Seafarer) or looking in the rear view mirror over selected periods. I suspect people will come up largely with boutique families, both …
"When I posted initially I believed that the strongly positive markets occurred in the President's first year in office. That is wrong. The very positive equity returns are delivered in the election year itself."
"Krugman is letting his political b…
A good suggestion. Since I've been pointing out risks, some of the risks in individual bonds include:
- issue selection - lack of diversification. The most aggressive rules of thumb I've read are that one should have at least $50K (muni) or $1…
IMHO, there's no way to get a 4% yield without a good amount of risk. Not that that isn't okay, just that one should be aware of the risks assumed. There are the most obvious ones - interest rate risk (loss of value due to increasing rates) and …
Note the blurring of hedge funds and mutual funds. The word "funds" is used indiscriminately. Hedge funds are the ones that charge a percent (typically 20%) of the gain and give back nothing for a loss, with a high water mark.
In contrast, mut…
All Indexes are Not Created Equal - a three paragraph article showing how large a difference index selection can make. Two small cap value index funds, two different indexes, large recent divergence.
I've included below the 1 year graph from the …
That's what I was trying to address. Index funds differ in many ways - how they define the "total" market (i.e. which index they follow), how they sample, how they use their portfolios to turn a profit (lending), how they execute trades. Is the i…
I also looked. Rainer hasn't even posted its 2015 dividends. See, e.g.
http://rainierfunds.com/Strategies/SmallMidCapPortfolio/Pages/DistributionHistoryOriginal.aspx
They'll know at closing today because they distribute on or about the 15th. A…
Of course Vanguard plays games. They all do, the question is which games and how well they play them. For example, Vanguard lends securities. A few, not all. And I believe that Vanguard plows all the earnings from that practice back into the f…
Interesting observation about "Total". Seems to be correct, though there are only four EM funds with "Total" in their name.
Of the 85 non-index funds of any type with "Total" in their name, only 15 are in a broad sense balanced (at least 10% …
Thanks David. I'll have to cross check with Lipper. It's interesting to see what does and doesn't show up depending on who's doing the classifying and how "value" is defined.
That's what makes playing with screeners fun. You get a better feel f…
I used the premium screener to find EM equity funds with the lowest p/e ratios and ended up with 8 funds with a p/e below 15 and a p/b below 1.5.
...
David
Voila! Didn't think of using P/E ratio for fund to discover "value". Problem is even with Pre…
Why waste column inches? Regarding a sibling PRIMECAP-run fund, they'd already written:
"Capital Opportunity is closed to new investors, but you’re in luck if the fund is offered in your employer-sponsored retirement-savings plan—that rule doesn’…
That does seem to be a fundamental distinction between the current nominees and former cabinet members. Often, incoming members disagree with the way their departments had been run, what objectives were emphasized. But they don't seem to oppose t…
We aim to please. Here's Google's cached copy.
You can click on the "view as one page" at the bottom of the text, it seems to work fine - fetching more cached content - even with an ad blocker engaged.
As to the content, that's another matter. …
VF has a point, supported (perhaps inadvertently?) by kevindow - at best this celebrity gossip belongs in OT, not fund discussions.
While I agree that JUCIX's performance has been less than stellar, it has also been better than average. Of course…
The sentiment seems okay, but I'll quibble with the terminology. Technology is engineering, not science. While medical research is science, doctoring seems more like engineering.
Along that vein, ISTM that investing and calming patients (bedsid…
With apologies to Ike and Charles Wilson, what's good for Exxon is good for Russia, and vice versa.
To put it another way, you say Petro, I say Putin, let's call the whole thing off.
Not that estimates are ever accurate, but inconsistent dates raise additional questions about the JPMorgan Funds.
The cap gains estimates (posted above by shadow):
https://am.jpmorgan.com/blob-gim/1383381886694/83456/2016 JPM Funds Capital Gains Es…
There's also the terse paraphrase of H.L. Mencken: Nobody ever went broke underestimating the intelligence of the American public.
A surely copyrighted phrase from Saleno Zita (The Atlantic): "The press takes him literally, but not seriously; his s…
That's the problem with fake news - once you make up a series of fake stories like the space program (there never was a lunar landing), you're liable to slip up on small details like what problems happened when.
But Area 51 and UFOs - they're real …
"Drug makers will simply renegotiate ..."
Does this mean that they didn't negotiate the best deals already, that they left money on the table? Maybe that's true for third world country deals (good PR and little profit lost), but in Canada?
WSJ,…
The bill changes (strictly by broadening) the definition of accredited investor, not sophisticated investor.
The former had been a purely objective standard (e.g. $1M in assets), and is generally required for someone to invest in unregistered se…
Reimportation seems like a tailor-made proposal that hits the checkboxes for a Republican Congress:
- Reduce regulations (remove a regulatory ban) - check
- Support free trade - check
- Support American manufacturers (reimport American-made product…
"AHIP, the leading lobby group for the insurance industry ..."
I know it's "mere puffery", but when a company or organization starts out by identifying itself as the leader in a field, one has to take what follows with a grain of salt.
The NYTimes…
This is not good news.
Many years ago I went to talk where one of the MWTIX managers (don't remember who) spoke. An audience member asked him to compare MetWest's fund with PTTRX. The response was that PTTRX was an excellent fund, but given its…
I was being a bit flippant, and I suspect Edmond was as well. At the same time, one often finds incomplete reasoning or random factoids used to reach what may or may not be correct conclusions (albeit for other reasons).
VF suggests that women ar…
Aren't you leaping to conclusions?
- That money managers are married, and
- Their spouses are female.
Not easy to get this sort of data. I did run across these bit of trivia, since you broached the subject:
"We find that single CEOs, who are mor…
Jaffe seems to be setting up a straw man again. He talks about 40+ page index fund prospectuses as though fund companies were required to send these to investors (whether via paper mail or, if the investor elects, electronically). False.
Rule 49…
"Getting the SARs and ARs from TGBAX. ... [On the fund's website] I see the following items/updates, which were NOT distributed to shareholders ... I don't appreciate such methods of under-the-radar shareholder updates."
From the AR dated August…
The first column is starting from a false premise (it was written pre-election):
Donald Trump wants to build a 40ft high concrete wall along the border between the US and Mexico. If elected as US President later this year, and if Trump follows thro…
"Nepotism, I should think, is in play, here"
Nah, nepotism entails favor by a relative or friend. No such second person here - Hussman himself is the president and primary shareholder of the management company (according to M*). In theory, fund…
I thought about posting a comment about this in the Wells Fargo thread, where catch22 asked, is this something that would make you recommend the company?
Here, PIMCo said that it was just relying upon third party pricing to compute its portfolio's …
Not to sound like I'm putting up a straw man, but yes, this requires legislation, because it is limiting Wells Fargo's (and all other banks') freedom of contract.
Hey, WF disclosed the arbitration clause. What more do you want? Caveat emptor and …
AF has had F-2 shares with no 12b-1 fees since 2008. You're referring to F-3 shares.
http://mutualfundobserver.com/discuss/discussion/29858/american-funds-files-for-new-share-class-to-cut-fund-expense-ratios-f-3-shares
Great marketing (agree 100%…
