FYI: Sovereign wealth funds pulled $18.4 billion from global stock and bond markets in the first quarter of 2017, notwithstanding robust equity gains in this period, data from research firm eVestment showed on Thursday,
Oil-backed sovereign wealth funds (SWFs) have been under pressure since oil prices LCOc1 tumbled from their mid-2014 highs of $115 to around $52 a barrel, with governments tapping state funds to close budget gaps
Regards,
Ted
http://www.reuters.com/article/us-global-swf-flows-idUSKCN18E14U

FYI: The S&P 500 had its biggest one-day tumble since September and shares extended losses through the day after reports of a memo by former FBI chief James Comey suggested that President Donald Trump tried to interfere with a federal investigation, setting off alarm bells on Wall Street.
Regards,
Ted
Bloomberg:
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2017-05-16/yen-climb-to-weigh-on-japan-stocks-gold-gains-markets-wrap
Reuters:
http://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-stocks-idUSKCN18D1E0
MarketWatch:
http://www.marketwatch.com/story/us-stock-futures-slide-as-concerns-over-trump-grow-2017-05-17/print
IBD:
http://www.investors.com/market-trend/stock-market-today/dow-falls-hard-on-weakness-in-financials-fang-stocks-apple-sell-off/
CNBC:
http://www.cnbc.com/2017/05/17/us-markets.html
AP:
http://hosted.ap.org/dynamic/stories/F/FINANCIAL_MARKETS?SITE=AP
WSJ: Markets At A Glance:
http://markets.wsj.com/us
SPDR's Sector Tracker:
http://www.sectorspdr.com/sectorspdr/tools/sector-tracker
SPDR's Bloomberg Sector Performance Pie chart:
https://www.bloomberg.com/markets/sectors
Current Futures: Ugly !
http://finviz.com/futures.ashx

FYI: The scion of one of the mutual fund industry's most prominent
but publicity shy families just granted an interview with an
international paper. The resulting article gives insights into his
market views, but not his personal life or the industry.
Regards,
Ted
http://www.mfwire.com/common/artprint2007.asp?storyID=56280&wireid=2
FT Article: (Click On Article title At Top Of Google Search) "Capital Group Fund Manager Warns Of Crowded Eurozone Trades"
https://www.google.com/#q=Capital+Group+fund+manager+warns+of+crowded+eurozone+trades

@Davidmoran. I recently left ML where I had a managed account and went back to Fidelity after 4 years with ML. Oddly, the way Merrill did it is much more accurate. If you go into history of purchases, they show cap gains and dividends as having a zero cost so the return is accurate. When my accounts were transferred last week, Fido showed reinvested cost on some of my holdings total return cut in half in some cases. I will be working with the account manager at Fido to do the corrections since I have all the data. Like you, I use total return to see if I should shave profits or how much profit I have from my original investment. One of the reasons I left ML is when I had my advisor try and sell specific lots that had the most profit, ML used FIFO regardless of instructions. They did this numerous times. Fidelity let's you choose the lots and they execute as instructed.

If you're interested in performance (as opposed to capital appreciation, i.e. unrealized gain), Fidelity provides a performance tab on the portfolio positions page. That gives you your rate of return based on how much you put in. At least I assume so, based on the fact that my CMA account there shows a positive (albeit minuscule) return that wouldn't be there if it were counting all the interest reinvestments as costs.
I'm with VF on keeping one's own records (a spreadsheet works fine for me). When I want to sell on a day that something drops down to my cost, I can look at the cost for each share and pick out the ones (highest cost) that I want to dump.
Pedantic note: "cash account" often means non-margin account. I think the term you're looking for here is "taxable account" as opposed to a "tax advantaged" or "tax sheltered" account, such as an IRA.

What Fidelity and apparently other brokerages report is cost basis as in that used for figuring capital gains, for tax purposes. The distributions are taxed themselves, separately, as income or cap gains as appropriate, so the "re"investment of them is essentially a new investment that adds to cost for tax purposes.
I keep a spreadsheet that includes just the non-reinvested amounts to see what my total return is, separate from the tax-related calculation.
I did ask Fido some time back to stop adding reinvested distributions into cost for my IRA investments, and the CSR sounded very surprised that someone would ask that, but they did it.

Fidelity does the same for cash accounts, that probably makes sense for tax purposes. But for tax sheltered accounts cost basis is zero for reinvested dividends and cap gains. TDA shows everything as for cash accounts.

When this fund opened in 2015, I said I didn't see how Brown Capital could succeed with an international small cap fund, especially given the same managers' tepid performance in the Brown large cap international (BCIIX) fund. However, BCSVX has really taken off in the past year. Maybe they will be a contender. Those MFOers who've loved BCSIX, myself included, might be tempted.

Typical of Zacks - describing the bullet fund concept as unique to Guggenheim. There have been American Century (Treasury zeros) target maturity funds since 1985, when they were Benham funds. There are only two remaining maturities, BTTTX (2020) and BTTRX (2025).
Old 1995 prospectus for Benham Target Maturity Funds:
https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/757928/0000757928-95-000005.txt
Guggenheim wasn't even first with a target maturity ETF. iShares got there in 2008.
http://www.investmentnews.com/article/20140902/FREE/140909991/blackrocks-ishares-steps-back-from-target-date-etfs-it-helped-pioneer
Deutsche Asset & Wealth Management got there in 2007.
http://www.barrons.com/articles/deutsche-to-shutter-5-target-date-etfs-1430167372

FYI: (Click On Article Title At Top Of Google Search)
In a settlement with the Securities and Exchange Commission, Barclays Capital has agreed to refund more than $97 million in advisory and mutual fund fees to clients who were overcharged.
Regards,
Ted
https://www.google.com/#q=Barclays+will+refund+$97+million+to+advisory,+brokerage+clients

FYI: For years, U.S. stocks have been a primary driver of global equity market gains, posting far stronger results than the rest of the world. That may be about to change.
Regards,
Ted
http://www.marketwatch.com/story/miss-the-bull-market-investors-say-the-next-one-will-be-overseas-2017-05-09/print

Quite so, Ted. But I was asking about tendencies, not certainties. I did not loose very much in the stock portion of my portfolio after the big market downturns of the past few decades because for the most part I had avoided investing in the high flyers that fell so far. A fund manager can do the equivalent. For instance a portion (say 15% ) of assets may be kept in cash at such times as a downturn seems inevitable. I know Rondure is bottom up style in its stock picking but sometimes you don't need to be a meteorologist to see a storm coming. Also although past positive performance is no predicator of future gains, past losses may possibly tell a bit more. (Or not). Anyway, thank you for responding, I appreciate it.

POAGX, though presently - limited access.
BCSIX, Sml/Mid Cap Growth - also limited access.
Maybe others have idea on getting into one or both. Possibly directly through Fund company.
Primecap Odyssey Funds:
odysseyfunds.com/index.html
Brown Capital Management:
browncapital.com/products/small-company-fund

Thanks for the praise, though rather overstated. Thanks also for the reminder that the biggest problem (at least for me) with the BofA cards has been their simultaneous paranoia on card use (e.g. refusing a $500 car repair charge 15 miles from home) and frequent issuing of new numbers (due to security breaches on their end).
To protect against problems abroad, I try to always carry cards from two different issuers. Capital One is an excellent card for that, with 1.5% and no foreign transaction fee.
Rather surprisingly, Discover Card is also becoming a reasonable alternative (1% and no foreign transaction fee), since it's been working hard at expanding its overseas presence in the last couple of years.. The current Fidelity VISA card's also reasonable (2% rewards reduced by a 1% foreign transaction fee).

@msf: Thanks for reminding me why I am no longer a BoA credit card customer. Never have we had a card that was compromised more often, requiring issuance of a new card. Worst experience was the day we arrived in Vienna to find the card refused; believe me, you don't want to have to contact customer service from overseas on a hotel line charging you big Euros.
Pretty happy with Jennifer Garner and Capital One, 1.5% reward in $50 increments. I'm too dumb to figure out cards with airline miles; or maybe I just don't trust the b€|£¥s.
We could not do without your knowledge, msf. Back in the days when "Car Talk" was live, Tom and Ray used to say that Ray Suarez (PBS) knew everything. They didn't know our guru.

Mind game...
Everyone moves into all index funds, presumably spread out over the whole market. Funds that hold all of the components of an index would skyrocket with their valuations dependent only on how much money was allocated to that index. But the relative value of each stock to the other would remain the same forever, until the SP500 for example delisted a company. Then it's price would drop to close to zero unless it was immediately added to another index
Indexes that rely on a "random" sample of larger universes would jockey to pick the best sampling process because if their returns were better they would get more money. If were truly random then we would really have a "random walk".
But if a company's value was only determined by what index it was in, then there would be no incentive for mangers to improve the bottom line as the stock price would only be determined by popularity of it's index. Large companies wold have access to almost unlimited amounts of capital small companies almost none. More of the smaller ones would go private further exacerbating the situation.
MFO would go dark.

FYI: The U.S. dollar has been and will likely continue to be on a gentle weakening pattern, Jeffrey Gundlach, chief executive at DoubleLine Capital, said on an investor webcast late on Tuesday.
Regards,
Ted
http://www.reuters.com/article/us-funds-doubleline-idUSKBN17Y2IN

I can't understand how the author gets to $3,245 in this example:
"Say you gain 30% a year in three years and lose 20% in the other two... your $10,000 would be worth only $3,245..." Multiplying the corresponding factors together, 1.3x1.3x1.3x.8x.8 = 1.4061, so your $10,000 would be worth $14,061, not $3,245.
Also, "... because losses after good years would be bigger dollar amounts than average, and gains after bad years would be smaller dollar amounts." is not an explanation. The order of the gains and losses in the example doesn't matter; for example, 2x4 is the same as 4x2.

I guess there's no official position and very limited inquiry. That said, I'm not sure what would draw you to it. It's got a high correlation to its index (96-97 against the Russell 2000 Growth index over the past 3-, 5- and 10-year periods) despite a high active share. Over the past decade, its trailed its peers by 1.7% annually while offering very, very marginal gains in downside protection. Standard deviation, downside deviation, Ulcer Index, and bear market deviation are all within a point of its peers. All of the risk-adjusted metrics (Sharpe, Sortino, Martin) are lowered than its peers. The adviser receives relatively rich compensation (95 bps) for its services, which leads to a noticeably high e.r.
On whole, why bother?

Here's another quote from the Markets Insider interview that I found interesting:
"I can't help think that there may be a period when folks who are putting their money into index products are going to regret it a few years from now. This is not a prediction, but just an observation that indexing has had its waves of popularity before. It hasn't been proven wise to deploy your capital there."