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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.
  • RSIVX - yield
    The yield is strongly affected by asset growth. A few months ago the fund was small. It invested cash into securities. Those securities may be generating a large income stream, but that stream is now being divided among many more shareholders. Morty argues that means that you see more low-tax capital gains than high tax income gains, so long as the investor base continues to grow.
    If you haven't done so, you might listen to his explanation of yield in the conference call.
    For what that's worth,
    David
  • For Investors, A 'Lazy Portfolio' May Be A Tonic For Uncertain 2014
    These one tonic for all investors is too simplistic because it doesn't customize for individual goals and risk profiles. One can do a better job than this.
    For example, if you are passive type of investor (not to be confused with passive funds) that just want to rebalance once in a while:
    In the accumulation phase with 25+ years of horizon and small portfolio, up to 80% in equities, high beta bonds most in indexed funds with a. Allocation customized to your risk profile (via wealthfront. betterment, competent advisor who is not a fund pusher etc).
    In the growth phase with 15-20 years horizon and a non-trivial portfolio ($200k+), up to 60% in indexed equities, 20% in low beta indexed bonds, 20% in specialty funds such as allocation funds and sector funds with funds chosen for high beta exposure NOT minimum volatility but with a proven record of consistent performance.
    In the preservation/drawdown phase with little or no new money coming in relative to the portfio size, up to 20% in indexed equities, 20% in indexed bonds, 40% in specialty funds with funds chosen amongst actively managed for low volatity/drawdowns/preservation, 20% for income producing instruments actively managed capital preservation.
    The above are just milestones with some transition plan between them.
    If you have the aptitude for active investing (not to be confused with actively managed funds and fundaholics who just depend on internet suggestions) and the time to actively monitor the portfolio
    If you only have time for changes 3 or 4 times a year since each change requires some research, split the indexed equities above with a mix of high beta (more concentrated) actively managed funds and non-cyclical sector index funds - health sector, tech, utilities, industrials, etc. Have a buy and sell plan for these if any of them were to head down from normal.
    If you have time and aptitude for learning quantitative stuff and can monitor and buy/sell at any time (not to be confused with frequent trading), read up all you can on some basis TA such as momentum and trends and use the concentrated funds allocation above to buy/sell with sector rotation.
    Obviously, everyone is different and falls in between so interpolate between them. If you are an outlier that marches to your own drumbeat, devise your own portfolio strategy.
  • our February 2014 issue is up
    OK, Charles, I think I give up. I tried to review my monthly reports from TDA on-line and found my original investment in 2012 of $7.5K. My "gain/loss" report on TDA is negative a few cents a share, which I thought represented my historical investment. As far as I can tell, my cost basis has been increased with each yearly dividend/cap gains distribution. While I thought I had added a $500 contribution sometime along the line, I can't find it; and my total holdings are a bit over $8K, so I made some small amount of money, even if TDA says I am currently negative. Guess I'd better learn to construct my own spreadsheets, but I really don't have the time to go back up to 10 years and enter data..
  • best low risk portfolio
    If your goal for a certain % of your portfolio was absolute returns with almost zero probability of loss, how would you construct that portfolio?
    Treasuries held to maturity is about the only asset class that can provide a return without capitol loss assuming political stability of the US.
    What is the goal of such a portfolio? Capital preservation? Lower volatility? There are extremely few goals where such a portfolio or part of makes sense. And then there is the issue of how much to allocate. If you allocate just a tiny bit, it makes no difference relative to cash but OK for indulging in fund collection as a hobby. If you allocate a lot then the portfolio returns would be severely affected. Just trying to understand the goals.
  • Hey, about that balancing act; err; Balanced Fund.....
    Reply to @Crash: M* World Allocation Fund definition:
    "World Allocation: World-allocation portfolios seek to provide both capital appreciation and income by investing in three major areas: stocks, bonds, and cash. While these portfolios do explore the whole world, most of them focus on the U.S., Canada, Japan, and the larger markets in Europe. It is rare for such portfolios to invest more than 10% of their assets in emerging markets. These portfolios typically have at least 10% of assets in bonds, less than 70% of assets in stocks, and at least 40% of assets in non-U.S. stocks or bonds." (emphasis added)
    Though they don't say what the cutoff is, there is usually a percentage boundary between similar categories, and it's apparently above 20% for non-U.S. stocks to differentiate between world and moderate allocation. Best to remember that any categorization is at least somewhat arbitrary, and the trick is to use the category ratings only as the first point of analysis and dig into the details from there.
    There's a pretty thorough description of categories on M* under the glossary entry "Morningstar Category."
  • Open Thread: What Are You Buying/Selling/Pondering (HFIB Edition)
    If you already have a position in FBIOX and have significant gains and you are convinced of longer term fundamentals, it might be worth holding with a stop limit.
    Assets sometimes go up and down on fundamentals and sometimes on technicals. Biotech is purely trading on technicals at the moment because of all the momentum trading and performance chasing.
    If you are a trading, strongly recommend putting a stop limit a bit below 200 as people trading on technicals will run at that point expecting a retracement to 185. This is the likely scenario if the markets continue their correction.
    For people buying on "dips", for something this volatile, 3-5% dips arent really dips. Consider the 5% upside potential vs 15%+ downside potential in the short term. If the market keeps heading down, don't chase it down at every dip. Better to wait for the market to stabilize or the resistance to hold around 185 for this fund.
    There is no way to accurately predict what might happen but when an asset is this stretched, the risk/reward ratio becomes lopsided. Just some suggestions to do with it as you wish.
    FBIOX is a good fund in a promising sector for active investors, not for passive buy and hold investors given its volatility and concentration. I agree with the suggestions above of holding broader funds in health care sector as a satellite fund to your core portfolio.
  • (Should we) Give PAUIX Third Pillar strategy more time?
    Why does everything we hold have to produce great returns all the time? There are reasons to own funds like PAUIX, if for nothing else than to have a contrarian position to reduce losses in selloffs. As I look at its YTD numbers, the S&P 500 is down about 4%. PAUIX is down 0.5%. Yes, holding it over the last 5 years would have been a drag on gains. But most investors I know have found that downside protection is a heck of a lot more important than matching or beating the market in good times. And the last 5 years, PAUIX has averaged better than 8.6%. I do not see that as bad for a fund that is run to beat the CPI by 6.5% over a market cycle. Manager Rob Arnott has been successful, but unfortunately some people do not read fund prospectuses, and then become disillusioned when it does not beat some crazy asset class in which M* has decided (wrongly) it belongs. Read the prospectus! Read the annual reports! The fund is not supposed to look like VWELX or any other so-called balanced fund. Ted, I respect you a lot. But I disagree with your take on this one.
    Am I thrilled with 2013 returns for PAUIX? Of course not, but I also understand what the fund is trying to do. Look at 2008 and understand how this fund would have reduced volatility and loss in a portfolio. THAT is why I would own this fund. Yeah, 2013 was a stinker of a year for it, but given the crazy bull market for domestic stocks, it was also not totally surprising. We expect the manager to do what he says the fund will do, nothing more, nothing less. So far, it has done just that. Diversification works, sometimes whether we like it or not.
    Just MHO.
  • Artisan Global Value Fund closing to new investors
    http://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/935015/000119312514024568/d665373d497.htm
    497 1 d665373d497.htm ARTISAN PARTNERS FUNDS, INC.
    ARTISAN PARTNERS FUNDS, INC.
    SUPPLEMENT DATED FEBRUARY 1, 2014
    TO THE PROSPECTUS OF ARTISAN PARTNERS FUNDS, INC.
    DATED FEBRUARY 1, 2014
    Artisan Global Value Fund is closing to most new investors effective as of the close of business on February 14, 2014. Until that time, the fund will remain open. The following replaces the text under the heading “Who Is Eligible to Invest in a Closed Artisan Fund?” on pages 61 – 62 in Artisan Funds’ prospectus in its entirety through February 14, 2014:
    Artisan International Small Cap Fund, Artisan International Value Fund, Artisan Mid Cap Fund, Artisan Mid Cap Value Fund, Artisan Small Cap Fund and Artisan Small Cap Value Fund are closed to most new investors. The Funds do not permit investors to pool their investments in order to meet the eligibility requirements, except as otherwise noted below. Unless specified below, each individual in a pooled vehicle must meet one of the eligibility requirements set forth below.
    If you have been a shareholder in a Fund continuously since it closed, you may make additional investments in that Fund and reinvest your dividends and capital gain distributions in that Fund, even though the Fund has closed, unless Artisan Partners considers such additional purchases to be not in the best interests of the Fund and its other shareholders. An employee benefit plan that is a Fund shareholder may continue to buy shares in the ordinary course of the plan’s operations, even for new plan participants.
    You may open a new account in a closed Fund only if that account meets the Fund’s other criteria (for example, minimum initial investment) and:
    • you are already a shareholder in the closed Fund (in your own name or as beneficial owner of shares held in someone else’s name) (for example, a nominee, custodian or omnibus account holding shares for the benefit of an investor would not be eligible to open a new account for its own benefit or for the benefit of another customer, but the investor would be eligible to open a new account in that Fund);
    • you are a shareholder with combined balances of $100,000 in any of the Artisan Funds (in your own name or as beneficial owner of shares held in someone else’s name);
    • you receive shares of the closed Fund as a gift from an existing shareholder of the Fund (additional investments generally are not permitted unless you are otherwise eligible to open an account under one of the other criteria listed);
    • you are transferring or “rolling over” into a Fund IRA account from an employee benefit plan through which you held shares of the Fund (if your plan doesn’t qualify for rollovers you may still open a new account with all or part of the proceeds of a distribution from the plan);
    • you are purchasing Fund shares through a sponsored fee-based program and shares of the Fund are made available to that program pursuant to an agreement with Artisan Funds or Artisan Partners Distributors LLC and Artisan Funds or Artisan Partners Distributors LLC has notified the sponsor of that program, in writing, that shares may be offered through such program and has not withdrawn that notification;
    • you are an employee benefit plan or other type of corporate or charitable account sponsored by or affiliated with an organization that also sponsors or is affiliated with (or is related to an organization that sponsors or is affiliated with) another employee benefit plan or corporate or charitable account that is a shareholder of the Fund;
    • you are a client (other than an employee benefit plan) of an institutional consultant and Artisan Funds or Artisan Partners Distributors LLC has notified that consultant in writing that you may invest in the Fund;
    • you are an employee benefit plan that is a client of an institutional consultant that has an existing business relationship with Artisan Partners or Artisan Funds and Artisan Funds or Artisan Partners Distributors LLC has notified that consultant in writing that the plan may invest in the Fund (only available for investments in Artisan Mid Cap Fund, Artisan Mid Cap Value Fund, Artisan Small Cap Fund and Artisan Small Cap Value Fund);
    • you are a client (other than an employee benefit plan) of a financial advisor or a financial planner, or an affiliate of a financial advisor or financial planner, who has at least $500,000 of client assets invested with the Fund or at least $1,000,000 of client assets invested with Artisan Funds at the time of your application;
    • you are a client of Artisan Partners or you have an existing business relationship with Artisan Partners and, in the judgment of Artisan Partners, your investment in a closed Fund would not adversely affect Artisan Partners’ ability to manage the Fund effectively; or
    • you are a director or officer of Artisan Funds, or a partner or employee of Artisan Partners or its affiliates, or a member of the immediate family of any of those persons.
    --------------------------------------------------------------------------------
    A Fund may ask you to verify that you meet one of the guidelines above prior to permitting you to open a new account in a closed Fund. A Fund may permit you to open a new account if the Fund reasonably believes that you are eligible. A Fund also may decline to permit you to open a new account if the Fund believes that doing so would be in the best interests of the Fund and its shareholders, even if you would be eligible to open a new account under these guidelines.
    The Funds’ ability to impose the guidelines above with respect to accounts held by financial intermediaries may vary depending on the systems capabilities of those intermediaries, applicable contractual and legal restrictions and cooperation of those intermediaries.
    Call us at 800.344.1770 if you have questions about your ability to invest in a closed Fund.
    Please Retain This Supplement for Future Reference
  • World Allocation Fund With Low Risk
    Reply to @willmatt72: With risk / reward as a consideration I would tilt my Roth towards your riskiest / rewardiest (is this a word cman?) investments. If you are lucky enough to reap the reward of the risk it will also be on a tax free basis (a 10-45% bonus based on your tax rate).
    Of course, potential losses (risk) are best managed in a taxable account where you can harvest tax losses and I haven't figured out a way to move my Roth losses back into my taxable accounts other than during the Roth conversion period by recharacterizing Roth conversion accounts that produce losses rather than gains.
  • World Allocation Fund With Low Risk
    Dear willmatt72 What World Allocation means. Is this what your looking for.
    World Allocation
    World-allocation portfolios seek to provide both capital appreciation and income by investing in three major areas: stocks, bonds, and cash. While these portfolios do explore the whole world, most of them focus on the U.S., Canada, Japan, and the larger markets in Europe. It is rare for such portfolios to invest more than 10% of their assets in emerging markets. These portfolios typically have at least 10% of assets in bonds, less than 70% of assets in stocks, and at least 40% of assets in non-U.S. stocks or bonds. Morningstar
    Regards,
    Ted
    List Of World Allocation Funds:
    http://money.usnews.com/funds/mutual-funds/rankings/world-allocation?int=af9256
  • World Allocation Fund With Low Risk
    I recently sold MAPIX because I did not want to give up all my gains from the past year. In addition, I haven't been happy with the fund's performance since Madsen left in 2012. Anyway, I'm looking for something less volatile/lower risk that is more of a World Allocation fund with some exposure to Asia/Japan. Any suggestions?
  • MSMLX Asia Small Co's or MEASX Emerging Asia
    Reply to @clemg64: I would hold onto MAPIX as long as you can unless something happens to Matthews which I sincerely doubt.
    As far as I can see, Asia is still going to be a big engine of the worlds economy. The volatility you see in EM is actually normal. Big gains come with big risks. With that said, having a small percentage in a fund like MSMLX will ensure you are participating in that growth.
  • Suggestions for investing
    In regards to DCAing a lump sum or not, ordinarily @Ted is correct: studies have shown that given a certain amount, lump sum investing that whole amount beats DCAing it about 70+% of the time, if memory serves.
    You have to decide your own comfort level though, given two variables: 1) market valuations seemed stretched currently and we may be going through a correction; and 2) this money is for long term investing. If 1) makes you queasy, DCA. If you conclude from 2) that short term valuations matter little given a 30+ year horizon, lump sum it.
    You can also split the difference. FWIW, I lost some gains last year by DCAing some inherited monies between March and September.
  • Best Performing Funds On A Down Day (Friday)
    Reply to @bnath001: Stress testing, shortfall and VaR are three of the techniques for risk assessment/management in finance. In the retail investment context, stress testing is only recently becoming popular with companies like hiddenlevers providing the technology to advisors. Some stress testing tools have also been included in the software used by advisors for portfolio management. It is simulating for very specific scenarios regardless of the probability of such an event. It helps better understand the risks of their investment.
    The shortfall assessment is what is typically determined by the Monte Carlo simulations often mentioned here. They are designed to measure the probability of falling short of a financial goal such as sufficient money to last until death. But they don't say what the implications are in specific scenarios even if low probability. And the scenario models especially in public tools are not usually as sophisticated as those used in stress testing tools to conserve computational effort - breadth over depth.
    Value at Risk or VaR Measures the risk of a specific loss in a portfolio. What is the probability that a portfolio will lose $X in T time? T is usually short. This is more useful in financial institutions where a sudden deep loss might create systemic risks so used for minimum capital requirements, etc. For retail investing, it may be useful if you are trading on margins or options trading where thresholds trigger events not much otherwise.
  • Best Performing Funds On A Down Day (Friday)
    The Hussmann funds all posted nice gains and are all up YTD. Forward Credit Analysis Long/Short, under its new PIMCO team, also made a solid gain - up nearly 0.7% on the day.
    David
  • Portfolio construction for tp2006
    Starting this as a separate thread for the portfolio construction exercise for tp2006 starting from his model portfolio that captures his circumstances and risk tolerance.
    US Stocks Vanguard VTI ETF 21%
    Foreign Stocks Vanguard VEA ETF 18%
    Emerging Markets Vanguard VWO ETF 22%
    Dividend Stocks Vanguard VIG ETF 13%
    Real Estate Vanguard VNQ ETF 16%
    Corporate Bonds iShares LQD ETF 5%
    Emerging Market Bonds iShares EMB ETF 5%
    Notes to @tp2006
    1. This corresponds to a 50% domestic, 40% international and 10% bonds selected for your age, income profile and risk tolerance, etc. You are just starting out with a small amount in a retirement account and hence the not so conservative portfolio.
    2. It answers part of your questions on how to divide the allocation. This tool splits it between asset classes that have the lowest correlation possible for your profile on a risk adjusted performance basis. Hence the domestic stocks split between total market, real estate and dividend stocks. The total market divides it for size according to market weighting within the US total market.
    3. Now create this portfolio on M* as if you invested your entire portfolio on Jan 1. Get the composite statistics provided by M* for the portfio in the Xray, volatility numbers and post them here.
    4. The exercise will be to either just keep this portfolio or tweak it maintaining the risk/volatility profile. Some small deviations won't matter much. For example, you can try to solicit find suggestions to replace VTI. Or you can ask people to create an equivalent or better portfolio and compare its characteristics. You can also try to map your existing portfolio to this and create a transition plan.
    5. If you are feeling adventurous you can go to hiddenlevers.com and create a dummy free account. The information you provide including email address can be fake. You can only add 5 funds for the dummy portfolio, so just use the equity etfs. It is a.very painful site to use but allows you to stress test your portfolio for various scenarios from commodity crash, end of QE, demographics change, etc. What you are looking for is how the portfolio behaves in those scenarios so you can withstand it. So, for example, it might say that your equity part may go down by 50% in the last financial meltdown scenario. Can you stand it without panicking? If not, go back to wealth front dashboard and turn down the risk tolerance to get new allocations and repeat.
    6. At the end of this exercise, you will have a portfolio that you can buy and monitor perhaps once a year at most and go through the same exercise again or beter just rebalance it.
    7. For the amount of money you have you should be aiming for 3-8 funds total. You can get to this in many ways including a single allocation fund for two or more of those model portfolio funds or splitting another. But every fund you add should be justified in the context of the whole portfolio.
    8. With a larger portfolio, you can create another pot for funds with alternate strategies, other asset classes, etc. But this is not worth it for the capital you have available at the moment.
    The above is what a competent investment advisor might do if you paid money. If you don't want to do the above, then find an advisor or try to stick as close to the model portfolio as possible without getting tempted by the blue and red marbles being suggested, however intriguing the fund might seem and just throwing it in to create a kitchen sink portfolio.
    Good luck.
  • Best Performing Funds On A Down Day (Friday)
    EEV 5%
    FXP 4.31%
    Not that those gains did much to help the whole portfolio. At least, they kept the play money leveraged portfolio neutral.
  • Open Thread: Lousy Week Edition (What Are You Buying/Selling?)
    Watching OAK 58.88 -1.43 (-2.37%) and OZM 14.90 -0.59 (-3.81%) and the others mentioned for further price erosion.Looks like the smart money is buying up distressed Chinese debt,which may weigh on world markets as it becomes more exposed.
    Friday, Jan 24
    10:40 AM Seeking Alpha....
    Several bidding for stake in China Huarong
    A manager of bad debts, Huarong is expected to get plenty of business as waves of loans turn sour in China. The largest of the country's four bad loan managers, the company oversees assets of about $66B.The stock offering - previously reported as a stake of 15-20% - will allow Huarong to acquire more bad loans and forfeited assets. The profit comes as the company repackages the loans/assets and moves them to other buyers.Among a large number of those trying to get a piece are KKR, BlackRock (BLK), and Blackstone (BX), reports Reuters. First-round offers are due by mid-February.
    From Reuters...
    CINDA APPEAL
    Huarong's fund-raising plans come on the heels of China Cinda Asset Management Co Ltd's (1359.HK) $2.9 billion Hong Kong I P O in December. Cinda's stock has risen 43 percent above the offer price.
    Cinda's I P O attracted some of the biggest names in global investing as cornerstone investors to provide a solid structure for its I P O. They included Oaktree Capital Management Ltd (OAK), the world's biggest distressed debt trader, and Och-Ziff Capital Management Group LLC (OZM), who were among the 10 cornerstone investors to jointly plough $1.1 billion into the offer.
    http://www.reuters.com/article/2014/01/24/us-huarong-investors-idUSBREA0N0HF20140124
  • Open Thread: Lousy Week Edition (What Are You Buying/Selling?)
    Nothing in core portfolio. YCS and SSO got stopped out in play money portfolio to preserve small gains.
  • Still A Textbook Start To 2014
    Reply to @scott: Unlike you, when I was your age I was close to dead broke/penniless and with a negative net worth. Thus I didn't have the luxury of sitting tight with dog funds like ARIVX. In fact, my only option with $2200 (primarily from maxing out my credit cards) was daytrading stock index futures to get enough capital to venture into equity funds and then it was only the ones with momentum.