I hold it too, I am going to give it time, considering its record prior to this year. I was in WAGTX and it had become inconsistent, primarily on the fact that so many managing the fund had abandoned ship in 2012 to go over to Grandeur Park and I felt its best days were behind them. That is when I switched to IWIRX. One bad year does not make me run, especially since the year isn't over yet, as any fan of Yogi knows :)

I bought IWIRX because of some comments I saw on MutualFundObserver, and liked what I learned about the fund. However I too am dissatisfied and thinking of selling. The fund seems to hold a concentration of old line US large caps to a large extent, not particularly exciting innovators in my opinion, and the returns are lagging a simple index.

I am particularly chagrined at IWIRX's bad one-year performance (barely above water), especially given that most world growth stock funds have done pretty well over the same period. Assets are not great, but the fund grew quickly in relative size in 2014 when it got noticed. A glance at the holdings does not reveal a group of companies that strike me as overly innovative. Healthcare holdings are minuscule compared to the benchmark, probably a brake on performance. Cash is reported as practically nil. Anyone else in this fund?

I would add IWIRX to the mix. 30 holdings, 14% turnover, a very small asset base for a large blend fund and a great record. Maybe even better, M* doesn't cover it!

Global: IWIRX, ARTGX
Intl: OAKIX
Intl small/mid: OSMYX
EM: HIEMX, ODVYX

@BenWP
Thanks for the thought.
Indeed IWIRX is an interesting fund. World stock funds that I currently hold within the growth area, global sleeve, within my portfolio are PGROX, ANWPX and THOAX plus AJVAX in my small/mid cap sleeve along with TOLLX held within the specialty sleeve where I also hold CCMAX.
Right now, I am a happy camper with all of them; but, I'll study IWIRX in more depth and perhaps place it on my watch list so if one of my current ones falter I'll have a go to fund.
So you know CCMAX is held in a taxable account and even with all the repositioning the fund mangers have done I would still be left with a large tax bill if sold. Think I'll continue to keep it as I am now retired and I am limited on how much income I can make each year without having to pay increased medicare premiums.
Old_Skeet

I held MFCFX and made good money when Doug Rao managed the fund. I sold soon after he left. The fund was never a "flexible capital" fund at all as the bond and alternative holdings to stocks have never made up a significant portion of the fund. It's a global growth fund. It would appear that the new managers at MFCFX did a lot of selling in 2013 and 2014 and shareholders received large distributions. If you have the fund in a taxable account, you may already have been socked with taxes. I think it's hard to know what success the new managers will have. The Marsico brand does not inspire confidence in me, FWIIW. You could look at IWIRX.

Dear friends,
Rather more than 50 folks dialed in and participated on our call with Matthew and Ian today. I'm suffering from some combination of a major head cold, the side effects of the OTC meds I'm taking for it and the gallon or so of green tea with honey and lemon that I've chugged this morning, so I'm only guessing when I nominate these as highlights of the call.
The guys run two strategies for US investors. The older one, Global Innovators, is a growth strategy that Guinness has been pursuing for 15 years. The newer one, Dividend Builder, is a value strategy that the managers propounded on their own in response to a challenge from founder Tim Guinness. These strategies are manifested in "mirror funds" open to European investors. Curiously, American investors seem taken by the growth strategy ($180M in the US, $30M in the Euro version) while European investors are prone to value ($6M in the US, $120M in the Euro). Both managers have an ownership stake in Guinness Atkinson and hope to work there for 30 years, neither is legally permitted to invest in the US version of the strategy, both intend - following some paperwork - to invest their pensions in the Dublin-based version. The paperwork hang up seems to affect, primarily, the newer Dividend Builder (in Europe, "Global Equity Income") strategy and I failed to ask directly about personal investment in the older strategy.
The growth strategy, Global Innovators IWIRX, starts by looking for firms "doing something smarter than the average company in their industry. Being smarter translates, over time, to higher return on capital, which is the key to all we do." They then buy those companies when they're underpriced. The fund hold 30 equally-weighted positions.
Innovators come in two flavors: disruptors - early stage growth companies, perhaps with recent IPOs, that have everyone excited and continuous improvers - firms with a long history of using innovation to maintain consistently high ROC. In general, the guys prefer the latter because the former tend to be wildly overpriced and haven't proven their ability to translate excitement into growth.
The example they pointed to was the IPO market. Last year they looked at 180 IPOs. Only 60 of those were profitable firms and only 6 or 7 of the stocks were reasonably priced (p/e under 20). Of those six, exactly one had a good ROC profile but its debt/equity ration was greater than 300%. So none of them ended up in the portfolio. Matthew observes that their portfolio is "not pure disruptors. Though those can make you look extremely clever when they go right, they also make you look extremely stupid when they go wrong. We would prefer to avoid that outcome."
This also means that they are not looking for a portfolio of "the most innovative companies in the world." A commitment to innovation provides a prism or lens through which to identify excellent growth companies. That's illustrated in the separate paths into the portfolio taken by disruptors and continuous improvers. With early stage disruptors, the managers begin by looking for evidence that a firm is truly innovative (for example, by looking at industry coverage in Fast Company or MIT's Technology Review) and then look at the prospect that innovation will produce consistent, affordable growth. For the established firms, the team starts with their quantitative screen that finds firms with top 25% return on capital scores in every one of the past ten years, then they pursue a "very subjective qualitative assessment of whether they're innovative, how they might be and how those innovations drive growth."
In both cases, they have a "watch list" of about 200-250 companies but their discipline tends to keep many of the disruptors out because of concerns about sustainability and price. Currently there might be one early stage firm in the portfolio and lots of Boeing, Intel, and Cisco.
They sell when price appreciates (they sold Shire pharmaceuticals after eight months because of an 80% share-price rise), fundamentals deteriorate (fairly rare - of the firms that pass the 10 year ROC screen, 80% will continue passing the screen for each of the subsequent five years) or the firm seems to have lost its way (shifting, for example, from organic growth to growth-through-acquisition).
The value strategy, Dividend Builder GAINX is a permutation of the growth strategy's approach to well-established firms. The value strategy looks only at dividend-paying companies that have provided an inflation-adjusted cash flow return on investment of at least 10% in each of the last 10 years. The secondary screens require at least a moderate dividend yield, a history of rising dividends, low levels of debt and a low payout ratio. In general, they found a high dividend strategy to be a loser and a dividend growth one to be a winner.
In general, the guys are "keen to avoid getting sucked into exciting stories or areas of great media interest. We’re physicists, and we quite like numbers rather than stories." They believe that's a competitive advantage, in part because listening to the numbers rather than the stories and maintaining a compact, equal-weight portfolio both tends to distance them from the herd. The growth strategy's active share, for instance, is 94. That's extraordinarily high for a strategy with a de facto large cap emphasis.
For those interested but unable to join us, here's a link to the mp3.
I'd be delighted to hear others' reactions to the call.
David

My question concerns tax efficiency. According to Morningstar, IWIRX is very tax efficient particularly when one considers a portfolio turnover of 30%. Yet the prospectus does not mention tax efficiency. Is tax efficiency a consideration in the management of the fund? Will it continue? Is IWIRX suitable for non-tax deferred accounts?

And for IWIRX...

What a coincidence, just bought this fund today after my FA showed me the fund, as a replacement for WAGTX, which used to be run by all the people now at Grandeur Peaks. I surmise its best days may be behind them , since so many of the people responsible for its great record are now gone. I was sure surprised to find IWIRX had such a strong short and long term record and never heard of it.
Good work David on landing an interview, look forward to it.

We’d be delighted if you’d join us on Monday, February 9th, from noon to 1:00 p.m. Eastern, for a conversation with Matthew Page and Ian Mortimer, managers of Guinness Atkinson Global Innovators (IWIRX) and Guinness Atkinson Dividend Builder (GAINX).
Register
These are both small, concentrated, distinctive, disciplined funds with top-tier performance. Guinness reports:

Guinness Atkinson Global Innovators is the #1 Global Multi-Cap Growth Fund across all time periods (1,3,5,& 10 years) this quarter ending 12/31/14 based on fund total returns. They are ranked 1 of 500 for 1 year, 1 of 466 for 3 years, 1 of 399 for 5 years and 1 of 278 for 10 years in the Lipper category Global Multi-Cap Growth.

Why? Good academic research, stretching back more than a decade, shows that firms with a strong commitment to ongoing innovation outperform the market. Firms with a minimal commitment to innovation trail the market, at least over longer periods.
The challenge is finding such firms and resisting the temptation to overpay for them. The fund initially (1998-2003) tracked an index of 40 stocks chosen by the editors of Wired magazine “to mirror the arc of the new economy as it emerges from the heart of the late industrial age.” In 2003, Guinness concluded that a more focused portfolio and more active selection process would do better, and they were right. In 2010, the new team inherited the fund. They maintained its historic philosophy and construction but broadened its investable universe. Ten years ago there were only about 80 stocks that qualified for consideration; today it’s closer to 350 than their “slightly more robust identification process” has them track.
This is not a collection of “story stocks.” The managers note that whenever they travel to meet potential US investors, the first thing they hear is “Oh, you’re going to buy Facebook and Twitter.” (That would be “no” to both.) They look for firms that are continually reinventing themselves and looking for better ways to address the opportunities and challenges in their industry.
Matt volunteered the following plan for their slice of the call:

I think we would like to address some of the following points in our soliloquy.

• Why are innovative companies an interesting investment opportunity?
  
• How do we define an innovative company?
  
• Aren’t innovative companies just expensive?
  
• Are the most innovative companies the best investments?

I suppose you could sum all this up in the phrase: Why Innovation Matters.

In deference to the fact that Matt and Ian are based in London, we have moved our call to noon Eastern. While they were willing to hang around the office until midnight, asking them to do it struck me as both rude and unproductive (how much would you really get from talking to two severely sleep-deprived Brits?).
HOW CAN YOU JOIN IN?
Register
If you can't join but have questions for the guys, share them here. In general, either the managers will read them or folks from the adviser follow these discussions then brief them.
Hope you're all safe and warm,
David

Hi David.
I love you man.
I agree.
15 years is about the most we can hope for with single manager.
But I do not know for sure...our database does not account for category drift...or, manager drift, sad to say...past performance, numbers only.
Here are some of the 10 year funds with top-quintile risk-adjusted performance across the past 10, 5, 3, and even 1 year evaluation periods through Dec 2014. (I left off most of the sector funds and munis.)
Access Capital Community Investment I (ACCSX)
American Century Mid Cap Value Inv (ACMVX)
AMG Chicago Equity Partners Bal Instl (MBEYX)
Artisan International Value Investor (ARTKX)
Buffalo Discovery (BUFTX)
First Trust Value Line Dividend ETF (FVD)
GE Instl Premier Growth Equity Inv (GEIPX)
Guinness Atkinson Global Innovators (IWIRX)
Hennessy Equity and Income Institutional (HEIIX)
Homestead Small Company Stock (HSCSX)
iShares Morningstar Large-Cap (JKD)
iShares S&P 500 Growth (IVW)
JPMorgan Mid Cap Value Instl (FLMVX)
Metropolitan West Total Return Bond M (MWTRX)
PIMCO Intl StksPLUS AR Strat (USD-Hg) A (PIPAX)
PIMCO StocksPLUS Absolute Return Instl (PSPTX)
Pinnacle Value (PVFIX)
Principal MidCap R2 (PMBNX)
RidgeWorth Conservative Allc Strat I (SCCTX)
SEI Moderate Strategy Allc A (SAAT) (SXMAX)
SEI US Managed Volatility A (SIMT) (SVOAX)
Shelton Nasdaq-100 Index Direct (NASDX)
T. Rowe Price Diversified Sm Cap Growth (PRDSX)
T. Rowe Price Global Technology (PRGTX)
T. Rowe Price Instl Mid-Cap Equity Gr (PMEGX)
T. Rowe Price Instl Small-Cap Stock (TRSSX)
Vanguard Target Retirement 2015 Inv (VTXVX)
Vanguard Target Retirement 2045 Inv (VTIVX)

Chip's updated Search Tools with ratings data through December 2014.
The update shows 470 Great Owl funds, or about 6 percent of all evaluated. Of these, about 100 are also Honor Roll funds, meaning they are top quintile performers for both risk adjusted and absolute returns.
Some notables:
Akre Focus Instl (AKRIX)
AMG Managers Intermediate Duration Govt (MGIDX)
Artisan International Value Investor (ARTKX)
Guinness Atkinson Global Innovators (IWIRX)
Hennessy Focus Investor (HFCSX)
Janus Triton D (JANIX)
Pear Tree Polaris Fgn Val Sm Cap Instl (QUSIX)
PIMCO Foreign Bond (USD-Hedged) I (PFORX)
PIMCO Intl StksPLUS AR Strat (UsD-Hg) A (PIPAX)
PIMCO StocksPLUS Absolute Return Instl (PSPTX)
PIMCO StocksPLUS Long Duration Instl (PSLDX)
PRIMECAP Odyssey Aggressive Growth (POAGX)
RiverPark Structural Alpha Institutional (RSAIX)
Smead Value Investor (SMVLX)
T. Rowe Price Capital Appreciation (PRWCX)
T. Rowe Price Diversified Sm Cap Growth (PRDSX)
T. Rowe Price Global Technology (PRGTX)
T. Rowe Price Instl Mid-Cap Equity Gr (PMEGX)
T. Rowe Price Instl Small-Cap Stock (TRSSX)
T. Rowe Price New Horizons (PRNHX)
T. Rowe Price Small-Cap Stock (OTCFX)
Tweedy Browne Global Value (TBGVX)
Vanguard Strategic Small-Cap Equity Inv (VSTCX)
Vanguard Struct Large-Cap Eq InstlPlus (VSLPX)
Vanguard Wellesley Income Inv (VWINX)
Vanguard Wellington Inv (VWELX)
Vulcan Value Partners (VVPLX)
Of the 1800 or so surviving funds that have been around 20 years, only about 30 are top quintile across all five evaluation periods (20, 10, 5, 3, and 1 year), yes even in 2014.
Some of them are:
American Century Equity Income Inv (TWEIX)
AMG Managers Intermediate Duration Govt (MGIDX)
Elfun Trusts (ELFNX)
Franklin Mutual Global Discovery Z (MDISX)
Meridian Growth Legacy (MERDX)
PIMCO Foreign Bond (UsD-Hedged) I (PFORX)
T. Rowe Price Capital Appreciation (PRWCX)
T. Rowe Price Small-Cap Stock (OTCFX)
TCW Total Return Bond I (TGLMX)
Tweedy Browne Global Value (TBGVX)
Vanguard Wellesley Income Inv (VWINX)
Vanguard Wellington Inv (VWELX)
A few notable funds on our latest Three Alarm list...Calamos and Royce spending some time in the barrel:
Aegis Value (AVALX)
AMG Managers Brandywine Advs Mid Cap Gr (BWAFX)
Artisan Small Cap Value Investor (ARTVX)
Calamos Focus Growth A (CBCAX)
Calamos Growth A (CVGRX)
Calamos Opportunistic Value A (CVAAX)
Calamos Total Return Bond A (CTRAX)
Davis NY Venture A (NYVTX)
Delafield Fund (DEFIX)
Evermore Global Value A (EVGBX)
FpA Capital (FPPTX)
Greenspring (GRSPX)
Hussman Strategic Growth (HSGFX)
Janus Aspen Overseas Instl (JAIGX)
LKCM Fixed-Income (LKFIX)
Loomis Sayles International Bond A (LSIAX)
MainStay Cornerstone Growth A (KLGAX)
MainStay Growth Allocation A (MGXAX)
Muhlenkamp (MUHLX)
Old Westbury Fixed Income (OWFIX)
Royce Global Value Svc (RIVFX)
Royce Low Priced Stock Svc (RYLPX)
Royce Micro-Cap Invmt (RYOTX)
Royce Premier Invmt (RYPRX)
Royce SMid-Cap Value Svc (RMVSX)
Third Avenue International Value Instl (TAVIX)
Thornburg International Value A (TGVAX)
Valley Forge (VAFGX)
Couple other interesting observations...
Bretton Fund (BRTNX), which David last profiled in June 2013, is a Great Owl.
As are three RiverPark funds, as seen below, all also profiled by David:

David Sherman's RiverPark Short Term High Yield Fund (RPHIX) actually holds distinction of having highest 3-year risk adjusted return of more than 8000 funds evaluated...twice the Sharpe and seven times higher Sortino and Martin than closest competitor. In a league all its own. A GO since eligible, but M* still only gives it one star for reasons discussed in last February's commentary, "Impact of Category On Fund Ratings".
Good progress continues on our MFO Premium Search Tools site, currently in so-called beta or check-out phase. If you are interested in being a beta tester, please drop David a note. Still trying to figure out how we want to roll-out.
If you see anything amiss in latest ratings update, will work to correct soonest. And, feedback always welcome.
Enjoy.
c

@Old_Skeet, thank you for sharing your insights and your approach, not just on a regular basis but also in specific responses to questions I've asked you previously. I very much appreciate your insights and wisdom as well as several others who post and discuss here, even when our investment styles differ. FWIW and based on your comment earlier in this thread, here's my approach for everyone's information and critique.
In your terms I have 4 sleeves: stocks, mutual funds, futures and private equity.
For stocks, I follow the Sound Advice newsletter and I invest based on M* screens I created focused mostly on wide or narrow moats and low price/fair value. I won't buy a stock unless its 5* and I don't hold most stocks above 90% of fair value. Both are value oriented approaches and following the newsletter is highly mechanical, although I exercise some discretion in an attempt to improve on his returns.
For mutual funds, which is the largest portion of my portfolio, I take a top down view and together with stocks I want my M* X-ray to achieve certain objectives based on the global market capitalization. Right now those objectives are significantly overweight frontier markets and small/mid-caps, overweight healthcare and emerging markets, equal weight US and significantly underweight developed international markets and large-cap stocks. At this point I have no fixed income investments as I'm far more concerned about eventually rising interest rates than I am about geo-political risks or a global slowdown. In picking funds, I'm looking for managers with outstanding records (sometimes with different funds or companies) and/or investment approaches that make very good sense to me. I have a preference for low AUM, focused portfolios, turnover that's not too high and reasonable expenses, but there are very few rules, just guidelines and preferences.
My targeted year-end collection of funds, from largest investment to smallest, includes POAGX, GPIOX, GPEOX, WAFMX, WAAEX, FSCRX, PRNHX, KGGAX, IWIRX, MEASX, OAKWX, PTSGX, OBIOX, MAPIX, DGS, GEGCX and PRHSX. I say targeted because I have a couple funds I'm rotating out of to build investments in some of these I've listed, specifically MEASX and IWIRX which I became aware of here on MFO and KGGAX which I read an article about on M*. I tend to start with smaller positions in new investments and build bigger positions as I get more comfortable with the manager, although Grandeur Peak was a big exception because of the hard closes. I tend to be a long-term investor but I will rotate when I find opportunities that better achieve my objectives. As an example, I'm funding part of my investment in MEASX by reducing GEGCX because I like the smaller-cap nature of the fund as well as greater frontier market exposure.
Futures are a very small portion of my portfolio and its my play money. Most of the time I make bets based on a combination of fundamental and technical aspects of whatever I trade. Right now I'm long Canadian $ and short Euro and keeping my eyes open for opportunities to short Yen and 30 Year Treasury Bonds.
Finally, I have a few investments in private equity that have become a much larger percentage of my portfolio than they should be but it shouldn't be too much longer before I find out whether my thought process was right or not.

I'm a big fan of the concentrated go-anywhere fund as well and I also prefer low AUM so there's no problem with flexibility. As has been said, though, I think its a bigger bet on the manager than in more diversified funds, and I like that because then I feel like I'm really getting something for my expense ratio. The more of his/her own money the manager has invested the better.
At the same time, @JohnChisum, I think there are any number of cases where funds hold more positions and do just as well or better than focused funds. Berkowitz has done very well over the long run but others haven't which to me is an indication of the relative value the manager is adding.
@Amir, I think there are other focused funds throughout the various categories, maybe not as focused as Berkowitz is at the moment, but here's a few:
PTSGX: Large growth, 30 positions, currently closed
OAKWX: Large blend, world stock, 22 positions
IWIRX: Large Growth, I consider it world stock but M* doesn't, 29 positions
MSCFX: Small blend, 46 positions
ICMAX: Small value, 19 positions
BCSIX: Small growth, 41 positions, currently closed
SCMFX: Mid blend, 35 positions
HFCSX: Mid growth, 27 positions
OAKEX: Mid blend international, 61 positions
AKREX: Mid growth, 44 positions
I'd caution my number of positions is from work I did more than a month ago so some might be slightly out of date. You could also screen on M* for funds with a high percentage of assets in their top 10 holdings. I got 267 distinct domestic or international equity portfolios with more than 50% of assets in the top 10. I also got 772 distinct domestic or international equity portfolios with fewer than 50 holdings.

Dear Lord, what bunk. I suggest anyone looking at these graph how they did as far back as they go (many are young), and for sure doublecheck manager tenure (many are recent starts). Incredible this gets published by MW with that hed.
/// There are 10 five-star funds that rank in the top 10% on both active share and returns within their subgroup — smaller companies, large-capitalization value and so on. The list was compiled this way because active share tends to vary across categories, as does performance.
/// Five of the funds specialize in larger companies: Guinness Atkinson Global Innovators (IWIRX) (MFD:IWIRX) ; Johnson Enhanced Return (MFD:JENHX) ; Marsico Flexible Capital (MFD:MFCFX) ; Pimco Fundamental IndexPlus (MFD:PIXAX) and Pimco StocksPlus Absolute Return (MFD:PSPTX) .
Compare with PRBLX and any Yackt. And against one another. Note 08-09 dip severity. Check management dates. Etc. The usual.
Did not have the energy to do the same with the SCs, but since most are not so known, I fear similar finding.

However, they have other funds that have done well
http://quote.morningstar.com/fund/chart.aspx?t=IWIRX&region=USA
Janus INTECH Global Dividend is another fund searching for global dividends.
http://quotes.morningstar.com/fund/jdgtx/f?t=JDGTX
Many fund companies have funds that have not performed very well. In fact, Manning & Napier has this small cap fund that flat out stinks. Does this one fund take away from their other funds ? After all, it's the same group of managers...