how much do you know about important trends under the admin?
https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2020/10/05/opinion/trump-record-quiz.html

Headline: "The stock market appears to be coiling for a tension release" https://cnbc.com/2020/10/04/the-stock-market-appears-to-be-coiling-for-a-tension-release-.html
This weird fetishization of stocks in the U.S. has reached the creepy stage. Another Freudian slip in the article: "The stock market has been vibrating within a tight range for a month...."

Economic growth can come in many ways. From more workers (and requisite capital to sustain productivity/worker). From longer hours, e.g. converting part time jobs to full time jobs. From increased worker productivity, e.g. from better training, reduced turnover, better tools, or simply improved working conditions/worker satisfaction. From replacing workers with machines.
Farming illustrates the potential for increased output from improvements in technology and increased automation even as labor decreases sharply:

https://www.ers.usda.gov/data-products/ag-and-food-statistics-charting-the-essentials/farming-and-farm-income/
Regarding the employed/population ratio (56.6%). One calculates this by multiplying together:
employment rate, i.e. 1 - unemployment rate, and
"participation rate", i.e. percentage of people employed or actively looking for jobs.
(1 - 7.9%) x 61.4% = 56.6%
This is one reason why the official unemployment figure can be misleading. If a lot of people get discouraged and drop out of the workforce, then they are not counted as unemployed. This shows up as a lower participation rate rather than a higher unemployment rate.
The participation rate, 61.4% is almost two percent lower than it was a year ago (63.2%). However, that participation rate from a year ago was itself lower than it was "at any point in the Great Recession." So at least some of the decline in the percentage of the population working likely has little to do with the pandemic, but rather reflects a generally declining participation rate. It's difficult to disentangle multiple causes.
(Seasonally adjusted, from the end of 2007 to the end of 2010, the participation rate dropped around 1½% , continuing to decline slowly for another 3-4 years. It stabilized and began rising slightly only in the second half of 2019.)
Please consider providing links to sources, especially ones quoted. Statistics also.
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/10/02/upshot/2020-terrible-job-market.html (quoted text)
https://www.bls.gov/news.release/empsit.nr0.htm (Current BLS employment report, generally released first Friday of each month)
https://www.bls.gov/news.release/empsit.a.htm (BLS total employment, unemployment data)
https://www.bls.gov/webapps/legacy/cpsatab1.htm (Employment, unemployment historical data)
https://www.bls.gov/news.release/empsit.t17.htm (BLS nonfarm data, incl. mfg detail)
https://www.bls.gov/webapps/legacy/cesbtab1.htm (Nonfarm historical data)

https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/810893/000119312520263401/d96445d497.htm
(see link above for other changes)
497 1 d96445d497.htm 497
PIMCO Funds
Supplement dated October 5, 2020 to the International Bond Funds Prospectus
dated July 31, 2020, as supplemented from time to time; and to the Statement of Additional Information dated July 31, 2020, as supplemented from time to time
Disclosure Related to the PIMCO Emerging Markets Currency and Short-Term Investments Fund (the “Fund)
This supplement supersedes and replaces the supplement filed for the Fund on August 21, 2020.
Pursuant to a recommendation by the Fund’s investment adviser, Pacific Investment Management Company LLC (“PIMCO”), the Board of Trustees (the “Board”) of PIMCO Funds (the “Trust”) previously approved a Plan of Liquidation for the Fund pursuant to which the Fund was scheduled to suspend sales on November 20, 2020 and to be liquidated on or about January 7, 2021. PIMCO subsequently reconsidered its recommendation, particularly in light of its desire to offer a diverse range of funds for different possible market scenarios given unique market conditions, and determined that it would recommend that the Fund continue its operations. Accordingly, PIMCO proposed that the Board withdraw the Plan of Liquidation. Following a determination that withdrawing the Plan of Liquidation is advisable and in the best interests of the Fund and its shareholders, the Board approved PIMCO’s proposal to withdraw the Plan of Liquidation.
Accordingly, the Fund will continue operations past January 7, 2021 and will not be liquidated. The Fund will continue to offer shares to new investors and existing shareholders, including exchanges into the Fund from other funds of the Trust or funds of PIMCO Equity Series. In addition, effective November 20, 2020, purchases of Class A shares of the Fund will be subject to initial sales charges, as applicable, and redemptions of Class A shares of the Fund purchased on or after November 20, 2020 will be subject to contingent deferred sales charges, as applicable, as if the Fund had not previously announced the prior approval of the Plan of Liquidation.
If you have any questions regarding this supplement, please contact the Trust at 1-888-877-4626.
Investors Should Retain This Supplement For Future Reference...

M* calibrates the outflows on a fund family basis. In 2017 Matthews managed $29.6B and in 2020 assets are down to $20.5B while the number of funds during that time period did not change. The people leaving may not constitute an “exodus,” but the AUM decline is enough to shake my confidence. Investors who remain in funds that are losing assets often get stuck with a nasty tax bill year end.

All fund risk and return metrics, ratings, and analytics were uploaded to MFO Premium on this past Sunday, 4 October, reflecting performance through September 2020 or 3rd Quarter.

 

The MFO Fund Family Scorecard reveals 31 families (like Winning Points, Huber, Saratoga) where every fund has underperformed since launch by an average of -3.2% per year. Combined they represent $15B in assets under management (AUM), carrying an annual expense of $173M per year nominally for the privilege of owning them. Can you believe that?

 

Fortunately, most assets gravitate to best performing families. Let's break the families down by AUM: first, the largest families with greater than $1T; second, next tier with AUM greater than $500B, and finally those greater than $100B.
Read more here.

The record and distribution dates and the $ amount per share are announced on the fund company's website. Year-end distrtribution are even larger when capital gains, short- and long-term, are included. My fixed income funds have modest dividend distribution. Certainly nothing comparing to the past where 4 or 5% SEC yields were common in quality bond funds.

One description: interest rates declined steadily for 150 years as the US economy matured and we weren't universally seen as an issuer of junk bonds, soared for 40 years during the "rise to global hegemony" phase and have now fallen for 40 years.
It's never safe to read too much into history, but an appreciation of how long "the long-term" can last might provide a useful frame for other discussions.
Just pondering, David

The article discusses why the time it takes for the economy to fully recover from the pandemic may well be measured in years.

....what makes a recession a recession is that the initial economic pain, whatever its source, transmits broadly to affect nearly every industry and drive millions of people not into newer and fast-growing sectors but onto the rolls of the unemployed.
The origins of the recession of 2020 may be different from those of the previous two downturns. But so far, the way it is spreading from company to company, and industry to industry, looks awfully similar.

https://nytimes.com/2020/10/03/upshot/pandemic-economy-recession.html

Casualties mounting.
https://www.usnews.com/news/politics/articles/2020-10-02/the-latest-wh-doctor-says-trump-will-continue-with-duties
https://thehill.com/homenews/campaign/519321-rnc-chair-tests-positive-for-coronavirus
https://thehill.com/homenews/news/519448-kellyanne-conway-tests-positive-for-covid-19

Yes, I was intrigued at the inception of MEGMX about Matthews’ chances with a diversified EM fund with new management. I decided to take a position in it and at the same time commit to ARTYX, in hopes that EMs would recover. Both positions made great moves up, with the Artisan fund doing better. The turmoil at Matthews and the apparent success of Artisan in attracting new talent led me to sell MEGMX but keep my EM allocation by increasing my position in ARTYX. I’m impressed that Artisan poached Lewis Kaufman (2015) and Reno Kanovich (2018) and got people from Matthews to come back. David Snowball’s commentary this month suggests that Artisan has concrete plans for future expansion.
Asset managers as businesses may face rocky roads ahead. In fact, from its IPO in 2013 until the present, Artisan Partners stock hasn’t seen any appreciation. While it’s hard to draw conclusions from the last 12 months or so, Schwab’s stock has disappointed at a time when the company has expanded its asset base. Personally, I am drawn to small MF firms for my actively managed holdings. Therefore, I own funds at Artisan, DF Dent, Brown Capital, Brown Advisory, and Grandeur Peak. With the exception of GP, I use Schwab for our Roths and taxable MF accounts. I just recently decided to part ways with the Bruce Fund, in part for the purpose of consolidating accounts. The redemption check arrived quickly enough via the USPS, but BOA has placed a 10-day hold on my deposit. Shades of “Hotel California.” Needless to say, investing in a boutique MF company that has no presence in the fund supermarkets has its drawbacks.

@Derf,
My initial (2020) purchase of PRLAX occurred on 2 successive days, April 2 and April 3. Was off close to 50% YTD at that time. Sold a couple small chunks (about 20%) late April / early June as it had risen quite a bit. As of yesterday, fund was still off 31% YTD. My 6-month gain’s probably going to be close to 15%. Beats 0.07% in a T-Bond money market fund. Been eying DODFX for a couple months. Should be a smoother ride. But doesn’t have the same upside potential.
Otherwise, you might be referring to roughly 4-5 years ago when I also played PRLAX for a quick gain. If that’s it, you have a damned good memory! They had an exit fee back than if the fund was held for fewer than 90 days. Actually sold it and paid the fee, since it had done so well.
“A bird in the hand is worth two in the bush.” - B/F

Sold all PRLAX (locking in gains since late March). Purchased identical amount of DODFX (new position). Added to mining fund OPGSX on slight weakness. A 3 positions are in my speculative sleeve. Gold’s wicked. But I think over the next year it will be higher. Brace.

Today I received a note that Maryland's ORP (403b) program is changing some of its TIAA-CREF lineup. Of particular note is that although TIAA CREF is one of the 2 plan providers, they're dumping CREF Stock, Growth, and Global Equity VAs for actively managed funds. To my amazement, the 3 replacement funds all have noticeably higher ERs:
Old ...
CREF Stock Account Ticker Symbol: QCSTIX Net Expense Ratio: 0.30%
CREF Growth Account Ticker Symbol: QCGRIX Net Expense Ratio: 0.23%
CREF Global Equities Account Ticker Symbol: QCGRIX Net Expense Ratio: 0.27%
New ...
Hartford Core Equity Fund Ticker Symbol: HAITX Net Expense Ratio: 0.39%
T. Rowe Price Instl Large Cap Growth Fund Ticker Symbol: TRLGX Net Expense Ratio: 0.56%
Victory RS Global Fund Ticker Symbol: RGGRX Net Expense Ratio: 0.55%
They did swap VINIX (.04) with lower-priced VIIIX (.02) for a passive index, which was nice to see.
Granted, I am all-in with the LCV AF RWMGX (.29) in my 403B and would be glad to start regularly putting some money into TRLGX now that I have access to a solid TRP fund there. That said, while none of these fund fees are especially egregious in my view, I still find a retirement plans' move toward funds with *higher* ERs to be rather odd, especially in 2020 ... and articularly for a state university system that normally qualifies for the lowest-cost class in funds.
(Yes I'm making enquiries.)
.... which reminds me again why I don't like or trust state investment boards or advisors.

Inception Date Apr 30, 2020 as / Yahoo
Stay Safe, Derf

Dear friends,
We posted our early autumn issue of the MFO monthly this morning. I tried to focus a bit more on individual funds that might be worthy of attention.
Seven Canyons World Innovators (WAGTX) started life as Wasatch Global Tech, morphed into Wasatch World Innovators, and following founder Sam Stewart to his new firm and became Seven Canyons World Innovators. The manager commentaries are unusually lucid and thoughtful. I'm struck, in particular, by their discussion of whether the entire (developed) world has become Japan: slow growth, aging population, vast debt, no room for more monetary stimulus and at risk of stagnation. Their argument is "true enough, but some Japanese firms did fabulously well. Let's learn from them." Both raw and risk-adjusted performance is consistently top tier.
Harbor Global Leaders (HGGIX) sort of caught Ed's eye about a month ago, and I promised to write a bit about them. The short story is that this used to be a Marsico-led fund and, three years ago, became of somewhat different Sands-led one. The Sands team has had top tier returns but ... their Lipper peer group is a bit squishy since it's a "global" group that includes domestic funds and their shareholder communications are pretty bad. Like Fidelity, Harbor uses a template for their reports which limits the manager to about 100 words of useful content and they don't push any material that's not required. As a result, my read on them is a bit thin.
Evolutionary Tree Innovators just launched with the leadership of a guy who used to be a bigwig at Sands Capital. The strategy seems to be an ... uh, evolution of the domestic large-growth strategy he helped pursue at Sands. Two problems. (1) A near-institutional minimum and (2) limited access to role in the non-public version of the investment vehicles.
The Matthews folks have moved to Artisan, but it looks like they'll be working with private rather than public vehicles.
Lynn Bolin does another rich job of reasoning through his shopping list. Lynn is skeptical of the state of markets and the economy over the next five years and was looking for funds that (a) have flexibility in their mandate and (b) use it well. There's ground for lively discussion there.
Speaking of "lively discussion," the off-topic board is less closed than it was. With any luck at all, I've succeeded in modifying the settings so that folks can post there but O-T posts don't appear on the "recent discussions" view that is the default landing page for the discussion board. That way, if folks want to participate in off-topic discussions they can but the landing page highlights on-topic discussions instead. Thanks, especially, to O.J. for helping me think about this.
And thanks, especially, to The Shadow. Usually Briefly Noted is the product of parallel investigations: Shadow tracks filings and I track filings, with his work helping me be sure that I haven't screwed up and missed important stuff. This month was vaguely a disaster for me and I was about 95% dependent on his finds. Fortunately, Shadow does amazing work, which saved me. So, thanks!
David

To ram through his 11th-hour Supreme Court nominee El Gran Jefe introduced Barrett to many senators who were maskless like him: https://politico.com/news/2020/10/02/trump-coronavirus-lawmakers-exposed-425026

Numbers as of 9/30/2020.

Observations for one month as of 9/30/2020:
Multi- Flat for the month but securitized shined with 1-2.9%/
HY Munis – Flat for the month but Nuveen (NHMAX,NVHAX) did better.
Inter term – (-0.1%) for the month. TGLMX (mostly securitized) did 0.4%.
Bank loans – up 0.3-4% for the month.
Uncontrain/Nontrad -0.2 for the month. Securitized(JASVX,DFLEX)
HY+EM – HY -0.9 and EM=-1.7% for the month with correlation to stocks.
Corp – down month. PIGIX -0.4%.
SP500(VFIAX)-Down monthth at -3.8, YTD=5.55%.
PCI-CEF huge upside at 7.1%. YTD still at -13.7%
My own portfolio
I started the month with IOFIX+DFLEX and replaced DFLEX with JASVX+NHMAX. It’s pretty obvious that funds loaded with securitized bonds are doing well. HY Munis don’t have a momentum yet but I bought NHMAX because it’s in my taxable and it showed a better momentum than others but the last 2 days are down, I was too early but now I’m watching closely. It was another good month for me.

FD, what is the source for the chart you posted? Many thanks.

Always masterful ...
https://am.jpmorgan.com/blob-gim/1383407651970/83456/MI-GTM-4Q20.pdf?segment=AMERICAS_US_ADV&locale=en_US

inclusion is not the only thing, of course
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/10/01/opinion/trump-biden-economic-policy.html