I've owned Matthews funds (MAPIX, MAPTX) previously and believed Matthews was an estimable firm.
Lydia So and Rahul Gupta left the firm in April 2020.
Tiffany Hsiao, YuanYuan Ji, and Beini Zhou left August 31, 2020.
These PM departures occurred within a short timeframe which really concerned me.
I no longer have a high regard for Matthews because of this and mediocre overall performance in recent years.
@ProtonAnalyst33,
I was not aware that a private equity firm has an ownership stake in Matthews.
Do you know when this PE firm initiated its stake?

Your list of names made me go dig up my notepad! There were other key PM departures: Raymond Deng who was a brilliant up and coming PM on Pacific Tiger and China left for Genesis in 2021. Robert Harvey, lead PM of their frontier asia fund also left in 2021. I recall the first major PM departure that shocked me was Kenichi Amaki, who was lead PM of the Japan fund (left for capital group in 2019). Brilliant investor and had basically been with the firm his entire investment career up until that point. how could they let him go? That was the begining of the exodus it seems and I stopped investing in the matthews funds and started asking more questions. In total, I recall them losing over 10 next gen PMs in the span of 2 years. Scary for an investment team of less than 40!
There was also that bizarre hiring then resignation of their President and CIO, Yu Ming Wang. The loss of PMs couldn't be attributable to him b/c many occured before he was even brought in. Truly odd and something I've never seen before in my 40 years in the business. https://citywireselector.com/news/matthews-asia-global-cio-exits-after-less-than-a-year-in-role/a1404581
I believe their new COO also left in less than 2 years, but the PM departures and their profiles (and where they left to) really spooked me.
Re the PE firm, I googled and found this. I think its Lovell Minnik. This article says they first invested in Matthews in 2011. That's over 10 years of being invested, which is a bit long in the tooth for a PE fund. Seems that supports the "sales mode" the firm has undertaken. I am guessing that fund life is coming to an end, so PE firm must sell sell sell!
https://www.themiddlemarket.com/news/lovell-minnick-backs-asia-focused-asset-manager
Something is going on at Matthews and it doesn't seem great for investors. I'd urge everyone to do your diligence.

Watching this market try to get its footing is like watching the town wino attempt to ride a skateboard.

Yes - An utter waste of time unless you’re seriously considering an imminent buy or sell.
Re Mr. Market - Went from green early (when @Derf posted) … to red … to green … and back to red. I think what’s been happening for quite some days now is that investors are trying to cut recent losses by selling winners when they jump a bit. They’re taking small gains whenever and wherever they can. That tends to put a cap on how far the market can advance and leads to late day downturns.
My perspective is that a good company … is a good company is …. So, unless you grossly overpaid for a company (either directly or thru a fund) you’ll come out just fine. If the heat bothers you, it’s time to vacate the kitchen and move into cash / cash proxies. Most of the posters here, however, appear to be long-term investors and have their heads screwed on straight.

For anyone who might be interested:
TCHP - T. Rowe Price Blue Chip Growth ETF.
Net Assets 237.02M
YTD Daily Total Return -26.93%
Beta (5Y Monthly) 0.00
Expense Ratio (net) 0.57%
Inception Date 2020-08-04

@BaluBalu,
You may already know this - T. Rowe Price launched Blue Chip Growth ETF in 2020.
The ETF has an expense ratio of 0.57% while the mutual fund charges 0.69%.

I've owned Matthews funds (MAPIX, MAPTX) previously and believed Matthews was an estimable firm.
Lydia So and Rahul Gupta left the firm in April 2020.
Tiffany Hsiao, YuanYuan Ji, and Beini Zhou left August 31, 2020.
These PM departures occurred within a short timeframe which really concerned me.
I no longer have a high regard for Matthews because of this and mediocre overall performance in recent years.
@ProtonAnalyst33,
I was not aware that a private equity firm has an ownership stake in Matthews.
Do you know when this PE firm initiated its stake?

TRBCX (TPLGX) are mentioned at MOFO as a potential buy. M* fund analysis says that the fund's long term manager retired and a new manager took over in October 2021, and that the new manager previously managed only $7B (compared to the asset base in this strategy $160B).
The fund has lost 35% in total return since its recent high on November 16, 2021. M* charts show $10K invested 3 years ago in QQQ and TRBCX would result in a balance of $17K and $12K, respectively. TRBCX balance is the same as it was pre-Covid (February 19-20, 2020) (i.e., gave up all the gains since beginning of Covid).
Is the PM change a concern, as in, does he need more time to prove himself?
Is the large asset base a concern?
Edit: the fund’s P/E ratio is 31 as of 3/31/2022. At a time when the market seems to have low tolerance for high P/Es, is the high P/E ratio of its constituents ( and thus of the fund) a concern?
P.S.: the fund is open to new investors.

Then there's this...
https://www.cnbc.com/2022/05/09/what-is-terrausd-ust-and-how-does-it-affect-bitcoin.html
https://www.fastcompany.com/90750443/as-crypto-crashes-terra-usd-wobbles-shaking-the-foundations-of-algorithmic-stablecoins?partner=rss
NB: 'algorthmic' stablecoins like this are worse than playing with fire, imho -- and should NEVER become a 'reserve' currency considered a 'stablecoin'. At least the stablecoin I hold, GUSD, is backed 1:1 with (monthly) audited dollars held at banks like State Street, isn't 'algorithmic' funny money. and the exchange (Gemini) is transparently regulated by NYS and others.
Edit: Tonight I closed out a mid-5-figures position in GUSD that was being lent out to institutions at 6.9%. Reason? Not sure if Genesis (the lender that Gemini works with for its Earn program) is lending to any of the institutions involved w/the TerraUSD fiasco, which could snowball rapidly. Once things settle, I'll move the $$ back into Earn, but ... better safe than sorry. Return OF capital is more important right now than return OF capital, especially when it's being loaned out.
"If you're the first one out the door, that's not panic."
- Dick Tuld, from 'Margin Call'

***Open to thoughts…***
Hello
Nobody knnow for sure, look at 2008-2009 ( downtrends for 7 8 months) and 2020 flash covid crash (stocks continue downtrend 6 -7 wks). We may have another 10 15% haircuts, very difficult to tell. I am holding pattern have not add much past few weeks. When you see trends reverse you have plenty opportunities to add more uptrends maybe in 3- 6 weeks
Friends say watch sp500 @ 3900-3970 major resistance levels, if break more pains ahead next few weeks to 3600.
I understand your points exactly, SMALLCAPS so cheap now and we want to be jumpy...if you have a long term (can stomach -stand the pressure) horizon maybe just pour small amounts in testing waters slowly....our 401k still 90/10 every 2 weeks no changes since 2006 and we did very well. 4 5 months downtrends nasdaq very hard to stand

For years Buffet was criticized for holding lots of cash.
Did he really come out ahead by keeping his "powder dry" for years? I think the numbers show that the opportunity cost of holding onto that power exceeded the benefit of waiting. While Buffett is often used as a model of patient investing, patience has its price.
He purchased about $51B worth of equity in Q1 2022 (plus repurchasing $3.2B of Berkshire Hathaway stock).
$11.6B of that was to acquire Alleghany Insurance at a 25% control premium. That's BH's primary MO - to buy control, not equity for income/gain. So IMHO we can discount this as not a "regular" investment.
Of the remaining $40B, at least $14B (35%) went into Chevron stock. You can infer this by noting that the $4.5B owned at the beginning of the year was worth 40% more at end of quarter. Subtracting that $6.B from the $25.9B owned at the end of the quarter means that BH bought shares worth $19.6B at end of quarter. The cheapest those shares could have been purchased in the quarter was $14B (at beginning of quarter).
So it is fair to focus on CVX.

• Had the same shares been purchased at the beginning of 2017 instead of the beginning of 2022, he would have made 24.6% cumulative, 4.5% annualized instead of whatever cash was paying over those five years.
• Had he purchased the shares at the beginning of 2018, he'd still have beaten cash, though not by much, with an annualized 3.02% return.
• Investing three years ago (beginning of 2019) would have yielded 7.68% annualized. Now were talking real opportunity costs.
• Two years ago? 4.07% annualized return.
• And had he invested at the beginning of 2021 instead of the beginning of 2022 or later, he would have come out a whopping 46.32% (or more) above where he wound up.

Certainly he benefited from waiting with some stocks, such as OXY. Though if we're going to look at other acquisitions, we should also look at AAPL (even though he bought "only" $600M during the quarter). Using the same links I gave above for Portfolio Visualizer analyses, one sees the opportunity costs of waiting to buy AAPL. A purchase 5 years ago (beginning of 2017) would have returned 45% annualized; 4 years ago, 45% annualized; 3 years ago, 67% annualized (!), 2 years ago, 57%; and the return he could have had by deploying that cash at the beginning of 2021 was 35%.
Even though BH didn't add much to its AAPL holdings, its worth a mention because Buffett made a big deal about buying more on a three day dip. After a multi-year meteoric rise.
FWIW, here's BH's cash and cash equivalent holdings over the past five years (always over $100B):
https://www.wsj.com/market-data/quotes/BRK.A/financials/annual/balance-sheet

I'm keeping just a toehold in PRIDX. Down bigly YTD. I've taken chunks out of it, in steps, this year. My own profit, TRP tells me, since I bought it--- is still north of 7%. With the hunk I'm removing from it on Monday, I'll buy PRISX. (Financials.) I would buy some PRWCX, but I'm at my limit with it: it's still more than one-third of my total.
*Isn't this place supposed to be "Paradise?" Gloomy, wet Spring, so far.

“Elon Musk has assembled a group of investors including a Saudi prince, Larry Ellison and a bitcoin exchange to pony up more than $7 billion to back his bid to buy Twitter Inc. Tesla Inc.’s chief executive has lined up about $7.14 billion from 19 investors, a roster of big-money backers whose investment effectively reduces the personal risk Mr. Musk has to take to close the $44 billion deal for the social-media company. The new money will cut in half the amount Mr. Musk needs to borrow against his Tesla stake, according to a regulatory filing, and will slightly reduce the balance of cash he needs to put up personally, to just under $20 billion. The biggest contribution comes from Prince al-Waleed bin Talal of Saudi Arabia, who agreed to retain a stake in Twitter valued at $1.9 billion following Mr. Musk’s takeover, the disclosure said …..
“Mr. Ellison, a co-founder of Oracle Corp., agreed to put in $1 billion. Cryptocurrency exchange Binance.com, controlled by billionaire developer Changpeng Zhao, promised $500 million. Venture-capital firms Sequoia Capital and Andreessen Horowitz are contributing $800 million and $400 million, respectively. Arms of asset managers Fidelity Investments and Brookfield Asset Management Inc. also will take part.”
Excerpted from The Wall Street Journal - May 6, 2022

If you have a stock with a 20 P/E or a 5% earnings yield and 10-year bonds instead of yielding 2% are now yielding 6%, you have to seriously ask why one would buy the 20 P/E stock? So the higher rates go, the worse all stocks, but high valuation ones look especially. The other question is leveraged stocks versus unleveraged ones. Those with high costs of capital and a lot of leverage will really suffer if they have to refinance at higher rates.

The way I look at it, you’ll get at least 75% of the current inflation rate investing in I-Bonds, assuming you cash out before holding five years. I bought bonds when the rate was 7.1%, and it will go up to 9.6% for the next six months. So I’m guaranteed at least 6% return, even if inflation plummets later this year. If inflation stays high, I’ll stay invested and appreciate the gains. If it drops, I’ll lose three months interest but still gain more than currently possible with any guaranteed investment.

I have fair amount cash/stable value, and in no hurry to deploy them. I share similar view with @sma3 that rising the interest rate will not lower the inflation as it did in the past. Supply chain constraint and geopolitical conflicts are difficult to solve, in addition to the pandemic. Now China is severely impacted again as it did back in late 2019 and 2020.
YTD we are doing by several % and that is good enough for us. Certainly cash is NOT trash. Moving out of most bond funds and risky asset/funds was helpful late last year. Now we are well positioned in commodities, energy and utility. The other concern is recession, if and when it arrives.

S&P is copying the iShare trick with older ETFs and newer "core" series ETFs, e.g. EEM and IEMG. At the time of introduction of IEMG, EEM was the higher ER giant and iShare said that IEMG was for small investors with lower ER but not so good liquidity. This has reversed now and IEMG is much bigger than EEM.
S&P is doing something similar with SPY and SPLG. Additional factor is that although higher ER giant SPY is called ETF, it really has UIT structure and that impacts its tracking a bit. The lower ER smaller SPLG has regular ETF structure.
For retail investors, choice is clear - lower ER IEMG (really, anything in iShare "core" series), SPLG, etc.
Edit/Add: More history for SPLG from M*, https://www.morningstar.com/etfs/arcx/splg/quote
"In November 2017, the fund switched its benchmark to the SSGA Large Cap Index from the Russell 1000 Index. It began tracking the S&P 500 in January 2020. The most recent change is part of SSGA’s effort to standardize the benchmarks underpinning its SPDR Portfolio lineup. As these three indexes are all broad, market-cap-weighted benchmarks that capture large-cap stocks, their performance has been similar."

I ask because I’m at a loss. Hopefully some of you have a firmer grip on where we are than I do. I generally look at return on funds I’ve either owned at one time or follow regularly to try to get a bearing. A few I’ve used as reliable benchmarks in years past are bleeding now - normally a signal that it’s a good time to buy.
TRRIX -8.7% YTD
PRSIX -9.4% YTD
TRBCX -25% YTD
The above have lagged far behind their historical performance, Other than for the aberrant 2007-2009 severe market turmoil / destruction, I can’t remember anything close to those numbers. (Maybe briefly in March 2020?)
I also monitor the Dow & the S&P thinking that:
- a 10% near term drop looks interesting
- a 20% drop looks inviting
- a 30% drop seems compelling
Currently, the Dow is off 9.25% this year and the S&P down 13.3%.
However, this time it may be different. The conundrum of higher inflation, Fed tightening, war in Europe may have tilted the tables so that past indicators are no longer reliable.
Here’s an old thread from last October about Buying the Dip recovered from the trash bin. In it I commented: “I’ll bet you a nickel the Dow closes below 34,000 again at some future point this year.” I was wrong. The Dow stayed above that level thru December 31. However, we all know where it’s gone this year. The Dow closed at 32,977 Friday.

Edited excerpts from the Wall Street Journal Article:

Fidelity Investments said it plans to hire another 12,000 people by September. The Boston financial firm expects to end the year with as many as 68,000 employees, up about 19% from the start of 2022, building on a hiring spree that began in late 2020. Fidelity hired 7,200 associates that year and another 16,600 in 2021. The bulk of the new hires will be in client-facing and technology roles.
Fidelity, a private company controlled by the Johnson family, reported an operating profit of $8.1 billion in 2021. Revenue rose 15%.
Fidelity said it ended the first quarter with 33.4 million brokerage accounts, up 3% since December and more than 40% since the end of 2019, when individual accounts numbered 22.5 million.

☞ Free link to WSJ Article

Ms. So's Rondure stay was rather short - she arrived October 2020.

Probably found a better gig.

Ms. So's Rondure stay was rather short - she arrived October 2020.

Geode Capital was launched by Fido as an internal unit but was spun off. It is the index advisor/manager for Fido index funds. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Geode_Capital_Management
M* has a better picture for holders of AMZN by "Funds" and "Institutions".
https://www.morningstar.com/stocks/xnas/amzn/ownership