By David Snowball

Dear friends,

Welcome to summer, a time of year when heat records are rather more common than market records.  

What’s in your long/short fund?

Everybody’s talking about long/short funds.  Google chronicles 273,000 pages that use the phrase.  Bloomberg promises “a comprehensive list of long/short funds worldwide.”  Morningstar, Lipper and U.S. News plunk nearly a hundred funds into a box with that label.  (Not the same hundred funds, by the way.  Not nearly.)  Seeking Alpha offers up the “best and less long/short funds 2013.”

Here’s the Observer’s position: Talking about “long/short funds” is dangerous and delusional because it leads you to believe that there are such things.  Using the phrase validates the existence of a category, that is, a group of things where we perceive shared characteristics.  As soon as we announce a category, we start judging things in the category based on how well they conform to our expectations of the category.  If we assign a piece of fruit (or a hard-boiled egg) to the category “upscale dessert,” we start judging it based on how upscale-dessert-y it seems.  The fact that the assignment is random, silly and unfair doesn’t stop us from making judgments anyway.  The renowned linguist George Lakoff writes, “there is nothing more basic than categorization to our thought, perception, action and speech.”

Do categories automatically make sense?  Try this one out: Dyirbal, an Australian aboriginal language, has a category balan which contains women, fire, dangerous things, non-threatening birds and platypuses.

When Morningstar groups 83 funds together in the category “long/short equity,” they’re telling us “hey, all of these things have essential similarities.  Feel free to judge them against each other.”  We sympathize with the analysts’ need to organize funds.  Nonetheless, this particular category is seriously misleading.   It contains funds that have only superficial – not essential – similarities with each other.  In extended conversations with managers and executives representing a half dozen long/short funds, it’s become clear that investors need to give up entirely on this simple category if they want to make meaningful comparisons and choices.

Each of the folks we spoke to have their own preferred way of organizing these sorts of “alternative investment” funds.   After two weeks of conversation, though, useful commonalities began to emerge.  Here’s a manager-inspired schema:

1. Start with the role of the short portfolio.  What are the managers attempting to do with their short book and how are they doing it? The RiverNorth folks, and most of the others, agree that this should be “the first and perhaps most important” criterion. Alan Salzbank of the Gargoyle Group warns that “the character of the short positions varies from fund to fund, and is not necessarily designed to hedge market exposure as the category title would suggest.”  Based on our discussions, we think there are three distinct roles that short books play and three ways those strategies get reflected in the fund.
   

   Role	Portfolio tool	Translation
   Add alpha	Individual stock shorts	These funds want to increase returns by identifying the market’s least attractive stocks and betting against them
   Reduce beta	Shorting indexes or sectors, generally by using ETFs	These funds want to tamp market volatility by placing larger or smaller bets against the entire market, or large subsets of it, with no concern for the value of individual issues
   Structural	Various option strategies such as selling calls	These funds believe they can generate considerable income – as much as 1.5-2% per month – by selling options.  Those options become more valuable as the market becomes more volatile, so they serve as a cushion for the portfolio; they are “by their very nature negatively correlated to the market” (AS).

2. Determine the degree of market exposure.   Net exposure (% long minus % short) varies dramatically, from 100% (from what ARLSX manager Matt Moran laments as “the faddish 130/30 funds from a few years ago”) to under 25%.  An analysis by the Gargoyle Group showed three-year betas for funds in Morningstar’s long/short category ranging from 1.40 to (-0.43), which gives you an idea of how dramatically market exposure varies.  For some funds the net market exposure is held in a tight band (40-60% with a target of 50% is pretty common).   Some of the more aggressive funds will shift exposure dramatically, based on their market experience and projections.  It doesn’t make sense to compare a fund that’s consistently 60% exposure to the market with one that swings from 25% – 100%.

   Ideally, that information should be prominently displayed on a fund’s fact sheet, especially if the manager has the freedom to move by more than a few percent.  A nice example comes from Aberdeen Equity Long/Short Fund’s (GLSRX) factsheet:

   

   Greg Parcella of Long/Short Advisors  maintains an internal database of all of long/short funds and expressed some considerable frustration in discovering that many don’t make that information available or require investors to do their own portfolio analyses to discover it.  Even with the help of Morningstar, such self-generated calculations can be a bit daunting.  Here, for example, is how Morningstar reports the portfolio of Robeco Boston Partners Long/Short Equity BPLEX in comparison to its (entirely-irrelevant) long-short benchmark and (wildly incomparable) long/short equity peers:

   

   So, look for managers who offer this information in a clear way and who keep it current. Morty Schaja, president of RiverPark Advisors which offers two very distinctive long/short funds (RiverPark Long/Short Opportunity RLSFX and RiverPark/Gargoyle Hedged Value RGHVX) suggest that such a lack of transparency would immediately raise concerns for him as an investor; he did not offer a flat “avoid them” but was surely leaning in that direction.

3. Look at the risk/return metrics for the fund over time.  Once you’ve completed the first two steps, you’ve stopped comparing apples to rutabagas and mopeds (step one) or even cooking apples to snacking apples (step two).  Now that you’ve got a stack of closely comparable funds, many of the managers call for you to look at specific risk measures.  Matt Moran suggests that “the best measure to employ are … the Sharpe, the Sortino and the Ulcer Index [which help you determine] how much return an investor is getting for the risk that they are taking.”

As part of the Observer’s new risk profiles of 7600 funds, we’ve pulled all of the funds that Morningstar categorizes as “long/short equity” into a single table for you.  It will measure both returns and seven different flavors of risk.  If you’re unfamiliar with the varied risk metrics, check our definitions page.  Remember that each bit of data must be read carefully since the fund’s longevity can dramatically affect their profile.  Funds that were around in the 2008 will have much greater maximum drawdowns than funds launched since then.  Those numbers do not immediately make a fund “bad,” it means that something happened that you want to understand before trusting these folks with your money.

As a preview, we’d like to share the profiles for five of the six funds whose advisors have been helping us understand these issues.  The sixth, RiverNorth Dynamic Buy-Write (RNBWX), is too new to appear.  These are all funds that we’ve profiled as among their categories’ best and that we’ll be profiling in August.

Long/short managers aren’t the only folks concerned with managing risk.  For the sake of perspective, we calculated the returns on a bunch of the risk-conscious funds that we’ve profiled.  We looked, in particular, at the recent turmoil since it affected both global and domestic, equity and bond markets.

Downside protection in one ugly stretch, 05/28/2013 – 06/24/2013

Strategy	Represented by	Returned
Traditional balanced	Vanguard Balanced Index Fund (VBINX)	(3.97)
Global equity	Vanguard Total World Stock Index (VTWSX)	(6.99)
Absolute value equity a/k/a cash-heavy funds	ASTON/River Road Independent Value (ARIVX) Bretton (BRTNX) Cook and Bynum (COBYX) FPA International Value (FPIVX) Pinnacle Value (PVFIX)	(1.71) (2.51) (3.20) (3.30) (1.75)
Pure long-short	ASTON/River Road Long-Short (ARLSX) Long/Short Opportunity (LSOFX) RiverPark Long Short Opportunity (RLSFX) Wasatch Long/Short (FMLSX)	(3.34) (4.93) (5.08) (3.84)
Long with covered calls	Bridgeway Managed Volatility (BRBPX) RiverNorth Dynamic Buy-Write (RNBWX) RiverPark Gargoyle Hedged Value (RGHVX)	(1.18) (2.64) (4.39)
Market neutral	Whitebox Long/Short Equity (WBLSX)	(1.75)
Multi-alternative	MainStay Marketfield (MFLDX)	(1.11)

Charles, widely-read and occasionally whimsical, thought it useful to share two stories and a bit of data that lead him to suspect that successful long/short investments are, like Babe Ruth’s “called home run,” more legend than history.

Notes from the Morningstar Conference

If you ever wonder what we do with contributions to the Observer or with income from our Amazon partnership, the short answer is, we try to get better.  Three ongoing projects reflect those efforts.  One is our ongoing visual upgrade, the results of which will be evident online during July.  More than window-dressing, we think of a more graphically sophisticated image as a tool for getting more folks to notice and benefit from our content.  A second our own risk profiles for more than 7500 funds.  We’ll discuss those more below.  The third was our recent presence at the Morningstar Investment Conference.  None of them would be possible without your support, and so thanks!

I spent about 48 hours at Morningstar and was listening to folks for about 30 hours.  I posted my impressions to our discussion board and several stirred vigorous discussions.  For your benefit, here’s a sort of Top Ten list of things I learned at Morningstar and links to the ensuing debates on our discussion board.

Day One: Northern Trust on emerging and frontier investing

Attended a small lunch with Northern managers.  Northern primarily caters to the rich but has retail share class funds, FlexShare ETFs and multi-manager funds for the rest of us. They are the world’s 5th largest investor in frontier markets. Frontier markets are currently 1% of global market cap, emerging markets are 12% and both have GDP growth 350% greater than the developed world’s. EM/F stocks sell at a 20% discount to developed stocks. Northern’s research shows that the same factors that increase equity returns in the developed world (small, value, wide moat, dividend paying) also predict excess returns in emerging and frontier markets. In September 2012 they launched the FlexShares Emerging Markets Factor Tilt Index Fund (TLTE) that tilts toward Fama-French factors, which is to say it holds more small and more value than a standard e.m. index.

Day One: Smead Value (SMVLX)

Interviewed Bill Smead, an interesting guy, who positions himself against the “brilliant pessimists” like Grantham and Hussman.  Smead argues their clients have now missed four years of phenomenal gains. Their thesis is correct (as were most of the tech investor theses in 1999) but optimism has been in such short supply that it became valuable.  He launched Smead Value in 2007 with a simple strategy: buy and hold (for 10 to, say, 100 years) excellent companies.  Pretty radical, eh?  He argues that the fund universe is 35% passive, 5% active and 60% overly active. Turns out that he’s managed it to top 1-2% returns over most trailing periods.  Much the top performing LCB fund around.  There’s a complete profile of the fund below.

Day One: Morningstar’s expert recommendations on emerging managers

Consuelo Mack ran a panel discussion with Russ Kinnel, Laura Lallos, Scott Burns and John Rekenthaler. One question: “What are your recommendations for boutique firms that investors should know about, but don’t? Who are the smaller, emerging managers who are really standing out?”

Dead silence. Glances back and forth. After a long silence: FPA, Primecap and TFS.

There are two possible explanations: (1) Morningstar really has lost touch with anyone other than the top 20 (or 40 or whatever) fund complexes or (2) Morningstar charged dozens of smaller fund companies to be exhibitors at their conference and was afraid to offend any of them by naming someone else.

Since we notice small funds and fund boutiques, we’d like to offer the following answers that folks could have given:

Well, Consuelo, a number of advisors are searching for management teams that have outstanding records with private accounts and/or hedge funds, and are making those teams and their strategies available to the retail fund world. First rate examples include ASTON, RiverNorth and RiverPark.

Or

That’s a great question, Consuelo.  Individual investors aren’t the only folks tired of dealing with oversized, underperforming funds.  A number of first-tier investors have walked away from large fund complexes to launch their own boutiques and to pursue a focused investing vision. Some great places to start would be with the funds from Grandeur Peak, Oakseed, and Seafarer.

Mr. Mansueto did mention, in his opening remarks, an upcoming Morningstar initiative to identify and track “emerging managers.”  If so, that’s a really good sign for all involved.

Day One: Michael Mauboussin on luck and skill in investing

Mauboussin works for Credit Suisse, Legg Mason before that and has written The Success Equation: Untangling Skill and Luck in Business, Sports, and Investing (2012). Here’s his Paradox of Skill: as the aggregate level of skill rises, luck becomes a more important factor in separating average from way above average. Since you can’t count on luck, it becomes harder for anyone to remain way above average. Ted Williams hit .406 in 1941. No one has been over .400 since. Why? Because everyone has gotten better: pitchers, fielders and hitters. In 1941, Williams’ average was four standard deviations above the norm. In 2012, a hitter up by four s.d. would be hitting “just” .380. The same thing in investing: the dispersion of returns (the gap between 50th percentile funds and 90th percentile funds) has been falling for 50 years. Any outsized performance is now likely luck and unlikely to persist.

This spurred a particularly rich discussion on the board.

Day Two: Matt Eagan on where to run now

Day Two started with a 7:00 a.m. breakfast sponsored by Litman Gregory. (I’ll spare you the culinary commentary.) Litman runs the Masters series funds and bills itself as “a manager of managers.” The presenters were two of the guys who subadvise for them, Matt Eagan of Loomis Sayles and David Herro of Oakmark. Eagan helps manage the strategic income, strategic alpha, multi-sector bond, corporate bond and high-yield funds for LS. He’s part of a team named as Morningstar’s Fixed-Income Managers of the Year in 2009.

Eagan argues that fixed income is influenced by multiple cyclical risks, including market, interest rate and reinvestment risk. He’s concerned with a rising need to protect principal, which leads him to a neutral duration, selective shorting and some currency hedges (about 8% of his portfolios).

He’s concerned that the Fed has underwritten a hot-money move into the emerging markets. The fundamentals there “are very, very good and we see their currencies strengthening” but he’s made a tactical withdrawal because of some technical reasons (I have “because of a fund-out window” but have no idea of what that means) which might foretell a drop “which might be violent; when those come, you’ve just got to get out of the way.”

He finds Mexico to be “compelling long-term story.” It’s near the US, it’s capturing market share from China because of the “inshoring” phenomenon and, if they manage to break up Pemex, “you’re going to see a lot of growth there.”

Europe, contrarily, “is moribund at best. Our big hope is that it’s less bad than most people expect.” He suspects that the Europeans have more reason to stay together than to disappear, so they likely will, and an investor’s challenge is “to find good corporations in bad Zip codes.”

In the end:

• avoid indexing – almost all of the fixed income indexes are configured to produce “negative real yields for the foreseeable future” and most passive products are useful mostly as “just liquidity vehicles.”
• you can make money in the face of rising rates, something like a 3-4% yield with no correlation to the markets.
• avoid Treasuries and agencies
• build a yield advantage by broadening your opportunity set
• look at convertible securities and be willing to move within a firm’s capital structure
• invest overseas, in particular try to get away from the three reserve currencies.

Eagan manages a sleeve of Litman Gregory Masters Alternative Strategies (MASNX), which we’ve profiled and which has had pretty solid performance.

Day Two: David Herro on emerging markets and systemic risk

The other breakfast speaker was David Herro of Oakmark International.  He was celebrated in our May 2013 essay, “Of Oaks and Acorns,” that looked at the success of Oakmark international analysts as fund managers.

Herro was asked about frothy markets and high valuations. He argues that “the #1 risk to protect against is the inability of companies to generate profits – macro-level events impact price but rarely impact long-term value. These macro-disturbances allow long-term investors to take advantage of the market’s short-termism.” The ’08-early ’09 events were “dismal but temporary.”

Herro notes that he had 20% of his flagship in the emerging markets in the late 90s, then backed down to zero as those markets were hit by “a wave of indiscriminate inflows.” He agrees that emerging markets will “be the propellant of global economic growth for the next 20 years” but, being a bright guy, warns that you still need to find “good businesses at good prices.” He hasn’t seen any in several years but, at this rate, “maybe in a year we’ll be back in.”

His current stance is that a stock needs to have 40-50% upside to get into his portfolio today and “some of the better quality e.m. firms are within 10-15% of getting in.”  (Since then the e.m. indexes briefly dropped 7% but had regained most of that decline by June 30.) He seemed impressed, in particular, with the quality of management teams in Latin America (“those guys are really experienced with handling adversity”) but skeptical of the Chinese newbies (“they’re still a little dodgy”).

He also announced a bias “against reserve currencies.” That is, he thinks you’re better off buying earnings which are not denominated in dollars, Euros or … perhaps, yen. His co-presenter, Matt Eagan of Loomis Sayles, has the same bias. He’s been short the yen but long the Nikkei.

In terms of asset allocation, he thinks that global stocks, especially blue chips “are pretty attractively priced” since values have been rising faster than prices have. Global equities, he says, “haven’t come out of their funk.” There’s not much of a valuation difference between the US and the rest of the developed world (the US “is a little richer” but might deserve it), so he doesn’t see overweighting one over the other.

Day Two: Jack Bogle ‘s inconvenient truths

Don Phillips had a conversation with Bogle in a huge auditorium that, frankly, should dang well have had more people in it.  I think the general excuse is, “we know what Bogle’s going to say, so why listen?”  Uhhh … because Bogle’s still thinking clearly, which distinguishes him from a fair number of his industry brethren?  He weighed in on why money market funds cost more than indexed stock funds (the cost of check cashing) and argued that our retirement system is facing three train wrecks: (1) underfunding of the Social Security system – which is manageable if politicians chose to manage it, (2) “grotesquely underfunded” defined benefit plans (a/k/a pension plans) whose managers still plan to earn 8% with a balanced portfolio – Bogle thinks they’ll be lucky to get 5% before expenses – and who are planning “to bring in some hedge fund guys” to magically solve their problem, and (3) defined contribution plans (401k’s and such) which allow folks to wreck their long-term prospects by cashing out for very little cause.

Bogle thinks that most target-date funds are ill-designed because they ignore Social Security, described by Bogle as “the best fixed-income position you’ll ever have.”  The average lifetime SS benefit is something like $300,000.  If your 401(k) contains $300,000 in stocks, you’ll have a 50/50 hybrid at retirement.  If your 401(k) target-date fund is 40% in bonds, you’ll retire with a portfolio that’s 70% bonds (SS + target date fund) and 30% stocks.  He’s skeptical of the bond market to begin with (he recommends that you look for a serious part of your income stream from dividend growth) and more skeptical of a product that buries you in bonds.

Finally, he has a strained relationship with his successors at Vanguard.  On the one hand he exults that Vanguard’s structural advantage on expenses is so great “that nobody can match us – too bad for them, good for us.”  And the other, he disagrees with most industry executives, including Vanguard’s, on regulations of the money market industry and the fund industry’s unwillingness – as owners of 35% of all stock – to stand up to cultures in which corporations have become “the private fiefdom of their chief executives.”  (An issue addressed by The New York Times on June 29, “The Unstoppable Climb in CEO Pay.”)  At base, “I don’t disagree with Vanguard.  They disagree with me.”

Day Three: Sextant Global High Income

This is an interesting one and we’ll have a full profile of the fund in August. The managers target a portfolio yield of 8% (currently they manage 6.5% – the lower reported trailing 12 month yield reflects the fact that the fund launched 12 months ago and took six months to become fully invested). There are six other “global high income” funds – Aberdeen, DWS, Fidelity, JohnHancock, Mainstay, Western Asset. Here’s the key distinction: Sextant pursues high income through a combination of high dividend stocks (European utilities among them), preferred shares and high yield bonds. Right now about 50% of the portfolio is in stocks, 30% bonds, 10% preferreds and 10% cash. No other “high income” fund seems to hold more than 3% equities. That gives them both the potential for capital appreciation and interest rate insulation. They could imagine 8% from income and 2% from cap app. They made about 9.5% over the trailing twelve months through 5/31. 

Day Three: Off-the-record worries

I’ve had the pleasure of speaking with some managers frequently over months or years, and occasionally we have conversations where I’m unsure that statements were made for attribution.  Here are four sets of comments attributable to “managers” who I think are bright enough to be worth listening to.

More than one manager is worried about “a credit event” in China this year. That is, the central government might precipitate a crisis in the financial system (a bond default or a bank run) in order to begin cleansing a nearly insolvent banking system. (Umm … I think we’ve been having it and I’m not sure whether to be impressed or spooked that folks know this stuff.) The central government is concerned about disarray in the provinces and a propensity for banks and industries to accept unsecured IOUs. They are acting to pursue gradual institutional reforms (e.g., stricter capital requirements) but might conclude that a sharp correction now would be useful. One manager thought such an event might be 30% likely. Another was closer to “near inevitable.”

More than one manager suspects that there might be a commodity price implosion, gold included. A 200 year chart of commodity prices shows four spikes – each followed by a retracement of more than 100% – and a fifth spike that we’ve been in recently.

More than one manager offered some version of the following statement: “there’s hardly a bond out there worth buying. They’re essentially all priced for a negative real return.”

More than one manager suggested that the term “emerging markets” was essentially a linguistic fiction. About 25% of the emerging markets index (Korea and Taiwan) could be declared “developed markets” (though, on June 11, they were not) while Saudi Arabia could become an emerging market by virtue of a decision to make shares available to non-Middle Eastern investors. “It’s not meaningful except to the marketers,” quoth one.

Day Three: Reflecting on tchotchkes

Dozens of fund companies paid for exhibits at Morningstar – little booths inside the McCormick Convention Center where fund reps could chat with passing advisors (and the occasional Observer guy).  One time honored conversation starter is the tchotchke: the neat little giveaway with your name on it.  Firms embraced a stunning array of stuff: barbeque sauce (Scout Funds, from Kansas City), church-cooked peanuts (Queens Road), golf tees, hand sanitizers (inexplicably popular), InvestMints (Wasatch), micro-fiber cloths (Payden), flashlights, pens, multi-color pens, pens with styluses, pens that signal Bernanke to resume tossing money from a circling helicopter . . .

Ideally, you still need to think of any giveaway as an expression of your corporate identity.  You want the properties of the object to reflect your sense of self and to remind folks of you.  From that standard, the best tchotchke by a mile were Vanguard’s totebags.  You wish you had one.  Made of soft, heavy-weight canvas with a bottom that could be flattened for maximum capacity, they were unadorned except for the word “Vanguard.”  No gimmicks, no flash, utter functionality in a product that your grandkids will fondly remember you carrying for years.  That really says Vanguard.  Good job, guys!

The second-best tchotchke (an exceedingly comfortable navy baseball cap with a sailboat logo) and single best location (directly across from the open bar and beside Vanguard) was Seafarer’s.  

It’s Charles in Charge! 

My colleague Charles Boccadoro has spearheaded one of our recent initiatives: extended risk profiles of over 7500 funds.  Some of his work is reflected in the tables in our long/short fund story.  Last month we promised to roll out his data in a searchable form for this month.  As it turns out, the programmer we’re working with is still a few days away from a “search by ticker” engine.  Once that’s been tested, chip will be able to quickly add other search fields. 

As an interim move, we’re making all of Charles’ risk analyses available to you as a .pdf.  (It might be paranoia, but I’m a bit concerned about the prospect of misappropriation of the file if we post it as a spreadsheet.)  It runs well over 100 pages, so I’d be a bit cautious about hitting the “print” button. 

Charles’ contributions have been so thoughtful and extensive that, in August, we’ll set aside a portion of the Observer that will hold an archive of all of his data-driven pieces.  Our current plan is to introduce each of the longer pieces in this cover essay then take readers to Charles’ Balcony where complete story and all of his essays dwell.  We’re following that model in …

Timing method performance over ten decades

The Healthy Debate. In Professor David Aronson’s 2006 book, entitled “Evidence-Based Technical Analysis,” he argues that subjective technical analysis, which is any analysis that cannot be reduced to a computer algorithm and back tested, is “not a legitimate body of knowledge but a collection of folklore resting on a flimsy foundation of anecdote and intuition.”

He further warns that falsehoods accumulate even with objective analysis and rules developed after-the-fact can lead to overblown extrapolations – fool’s gold biased by data-mining, more luck than legitimate prediction, in same category as “literate monkeys, Bible Codes, and lottery players.”

Read the full story here.

Announcing Mutual Fund Contacts, our new sister-site

I mentioned some months ago a plan to launch an affiliate site, Mutual Fund Contacts.  June 28 marked the “soft launch” of MFC.  MFC’s mission is to serve as a guide and resource for folks who are new at all this and feeling a bit unsteady about how to proceed.  We imagine a young couple in their late 20s planning an eventual home purchase, a single mom in her 30s who’s trying to organize stuff that she’s not had to pay attention to, or a young college graduate trying to lay a good foundation.

Most sites dedicated to small investors are raucous places with poor focus, too many features and a desperate need to grab attention.  Feh.  MFC will try to provide content and resources that don’t quite fit here but that we think are still valuable.  Each month we’ll provide a 1000-word story on the theme “the one-fund portfolio.”  If you were looking for one fund that might yield a bit more than a savings account without a lot of downside, what should you consider?  Each “one fund” article will recommend three options: two low-minimum mutual funds and one commission-free ETF.  We’ll also have a monthly recommendation on three resources you should be familiar with (this month, the three books that any financially savvy person needs to start with) and ongoing resources (this month: the updated “List of Funds for Small Investors” that highlights all of the no-load funds available for $100 or less – plus a couple that are close enough to consider).

The nature of a soft launch is that we’re still working on the site’s visuals and some functionality.  That said, it does offer a series of resources that, oh, say, your kids really should be looking at.  Feel free to drop by Mutual Fund Contacts and then let us know how we can make it better.

Everyone loves a crisis

Larry Swedroe wrote a widely quoted, widely redistributed essay for CBS MoneyWatch warning that bond funds were covertly transforming themselves into stock funds in pursuit of additional yield.  His essay opens with:

It may surprise you that, as of its last reporting date, there were 352 mutual funds that are classified by Morningstar as bond funds that actually held stocks in their portfolio. (I know I was surprised, and given my 40 years of experience in the investment banking and financial advisory business, it takes quite a bit to surprise me.) At the end of 2012, it was 312, up from 283 nine months earlier.

The chase for higher yields has led many actively managed bond funds to load up on riskier investments, such as preferred stocks. (Emphasis added)

Many actively managed bond funds have loaded up?

Let’s look at the data.  There are 1177 bond funds, excluding munis.  Only 104 hold more than 1% in stocks, and most of those hold barely more than a percent.  The most striking aspect of those funds is that they don’t call themselves “bond” funds.  Precisely 11 funds with the word “Bond” in their name have stocks in excess of 1%.  The others advertise themselves as “income” funds and, quite often, “strategic income,” “high income” or “income opportunities” funds.  Such funds have, traditionally, used other income sources to supplement their bond-heavy core portfolios.

How about Larry’s claim that they’ve been “bulking up”?  I looked at the 25 stockiest funds to see whether their equity stake should be news to their investors.  I did that by comparing their current exposure to the bond market with the range of exposures they’ve experienced over the past five years.  Here’s the picture, ranked based on US stock exposure, starting with the stockiest fund:

		Bond category	Current bond exposure	Range of bond exposure, 2009-2013
Ave Maria Bond	AVEFX	Intermediate	61	61-71
Pacific Advisors Government Securities	PADGX	Short Gov’t	82	82-87
Advisory Research Strategic Income	ADVNX	Long-Term	16	n/a – new
Northeast Investors	NTHEX	High Yield	54	54-88
Loomis Sayles Strategic Income	NEFZX	Multisector	65	60-80
JHFunds2 Spectrum Income	JHSTX	Multisector	77	75-79
T. Rowe Price Spectrum Income	RPSIX	Multisector	76	76-78
Azzad Wise Capital	WISEX	Short-Term	42	20-42 *
Franklin Real Return	FRRAX	Inflation-Prot’d	47	47-69
Huntington Mortgage Securities	HUMSX	Intermediate	85	83-91
Eaton Vance Bond	EVBAX	Multisector	63	n/a – new
Federated High Yield Trust	FHYTX	High Yield	81	81-87
Pioneer High Yield	TAHYX	High Yield	57	55-60
Chou Income	CHOIX	World	33	16-48
Forward Income Builder	AIAAX	Multisector	35	35-97
ING Pioneer High Yield Portfolio	IPHIX	High Yield	60	50-60
Loomis Sayles High Income	LSHIX	High Yield	61	61-70
Highland Floating Rate Opportunities	HFRAX	Bank Loan	81	73-88
Epiphany FFV Strategic Income	EPINX	Intermediate	61	61-69
RiverNorth/Oaktree High Income	RNHIX	Multisector	56	n/a – new
Astor Active Income ETF	AXAIX	Intermediate	74	68-88
Fidelity Capital & Income	FAGIX	High Yield	84	75-84
Transamerica Asset Allc Short Horizon	DVCSX	Intermediate	85	79-87
Spirit of America Income	SOAIX	Long-term	74	74-90

*WISEX invests within the constraints of Islamic principles.  As a result, most traditional interest-paying, fixed-income vehicles are forbidden to it.

From this most stock-heavy group, 10 funds now hold fewer bonds than at any other point in the past five years.  In many cases (see T Rowe Price Spectrum Income), their bond exposure varies by only a few percentage points from year to year so being light on bonds is, for them, not much different than being heavy on bonds.

The SEC’s naming rule says that if you have an investment class in your name (e.g. “Bond”) then at least 80% of your portfolio must reside in that class. Ave Maria Bond runs right up to the line: 19.88% US stocks, but warns you of that: “The Fund may invest up to 20% of its net assets in equity securities, which include preferred stocks, common stocks paying dividends and securities convertible into common stock.”  Eaton Vance Bond is 12% and makes the same declaration: “The Fund may invest up to 20% of its net assets in common stocks and other equity securities, including real estate investment trusts.”

Bottom line: the “loading up” has been pretty durn minimal.  The funds which have a substantial equity stake now have had a substantial equity stake for years, they market that fact and they name themselves to permit it.

Fidelity cries out: Run away!

Several sites have noted the fact that Fidelity Europe Cap App Fund (FECAX) has closed to new investors.  Most skip the fact that it looks like the $400 million FECAX is about to get eaten, presumably by Fidelity Europe (FIEUX): “The Board has approved closing Fidelity Europe Capital Appreciation Fund effective after the close of business on July 19, 2013, as the Board and FMR are considering merging the fund.” (emphasis added)

Fascinating.  Fidelity’s signaling the fact that they can no longer afford two Euro-centered funds.  Why would that be the case? 

I can only imagine three possibilities:

1. Fidelity no longer finds with a mere $400 million in AUM viable, so the Cap App fund has to go.
2. Fidelity doesn’t think there’s room for (or need for) more than one European stock strategy.  There are 83 distinct U.S.-focused strategies in the Fidelity family, but who’d need more than one for Europe?
3. Fidelity can no longer find managers capable of performing well enough to be worth the effort.
   

   	Expenses	Returns TTM	Returns 5 yr	Compared to peers – 5 yr
   Fidelity European funds for British investors
   Fidelity European Fund A-Accumulation	1.72% on $4.1B	22%	1.86	3.31
   Fidelity Europe Long-Term Growth Fund	1.73 on $732M	29	n/a	n/a
   Fidelity European Opportunities	1.73 on $723M	21	1.48	3.31
   Fidelity European funds for American investors
   Fidelity European Capital Appreciation	0.92% on $331M	24	(1.57)	(.81)
   Fidelity Europe	0.80 on $724M	23	(1.21)	(0.40)
   Fidelity Nordic	1.04% on $340M	32	(0.40)	The Morningstar peer group is “miscellaneous regions” – ignore it

   Converted at ₤1 = $1.54, 25 June 2013.

In April of 2007, Fidelity tried to merge Nordic into Europe, but its shareholders refused to allow it.  At the time Nordic was one of Fidelity’s best-performing international funds and had $600 million in assets.  The announced rationale:  “The Nordic region is more volatile than developed Europe as a whole, and Fidelity believes the region’s characteristics have changed sufficiently to no longer warrant a separate fund focused on the region.”  The nature of those “changes” was not clear and shareholders were unimpressed.

It is clear that Fidelity has a personnel problem.  When, for example, they wanted to bolster their asset allocation funds-of-funds, they added two new Fidelity Series funds for them to choose from.  One is run by Will Danoff, whose Contrafund already has $95 billion in assets, and the other by Joel Tillinghast, whose Low-Priced Stock Fund lugs $40 billion.  Presumably they would have turned to a young star with less on their plate … if they had a young star with less on their plate.  Likewise, Fidelity Strategic Adviser Multi-Manager funds advertise themselves as being run by the best of the best; these funds have the option of using Fidelity talent or going outside when the options elsewhere are better.  What conclusions might we draw from the fact that Strategic Advisers Core Multi-Manager (FLAUX) draws one of its 11 managers from Fido or that Strategic Advisers International Multi-Manager (FMJDX) has one Fido manager in 17?  Both of the managers for Strategic Advisers Core Income Multi-Manager (FWHBX) are Fidelity employees, so it’s not simply that the SAMM funds are designed to showcase non-Fido talent.

I’ve had trouble finding attractive new funds from Fidelity for years now.  It might well be that the contemplated retrenchment in their Europe line-up reflects the fact that Fido’s been having the same trouble.

Observer Fund Profiles:

Each month the Observer provides in-depth profiles of between two and four funds.  Our “Most Intriguing New Funds” are funds launched within the past couple years that most frequently feature experienced managers leading innovative newer funds.  “Stars in the Shadows” are older funds that have attracted far less attention than they deserve. 

Forward Income Builder (IAIAX): “income,” not “bonds.”  This is another instance of a fund that has been reshaped in recent years into an interesting offering.  Perception just hasn’t yet caught up with the reality.

Smead Value (SMVLX): call it “Triumph of the Optimists.”  Mr. Smead dismisses most of what his peers are doing as poorly conceived or disastrously poorly-conceived.  He thinks that pessimism is overbought, optimism in short supply and a portfolio of top-tier U.S. stocks held forever as your best friend.

Elevator Talk #5: Casey Frazier of Versus Capital Multi-Manager Real Estate Income Fund

Since the number of funds we can cover in-depth is smaller than the number of funds worthy of in-depth coverage, we’ve decided to offer one or two managers each month the opportunity to make a 200 word pitch to you. That’s about the number of words a slightly-manic elevator companion could share in a minute and a half. In each case, I’ve promised to offer a quick capsule of the fund and a link back to the fund’s site. Other than that, they’ve got 200 words and precisely as much of your time and attention as you’re willing to share. These aren’t endorsements; they’re opportunities to learn more.

Versus Capital Multi-Manager Real Estate Income Fund is a closed-end interval fund.  That means that you can buy Versus shares any day that the market is open, but you only have the opportunity to sell those shares once each quarter.  The advisor has the option of meeting some, all or none of a particular quarter’s redemption requests, based on cash available and the start of the market. 

The argument for such a restrictive structure is that it allows managers to invest in illiquid asset classes; that is, to buy and profit from things that cannot be reasonably bought or sold on a moment’s notice.  Those sorts of investments have been traditionally available only to exceedingly high net-worth investors either through limited partnerships or direct ownership (e.g., buying a forest).  Several mutual funds have lately begun creating into this space, mostly structured as interval funds.  Vertical Capital Income Fund (VCAPX), the subject of our April Elevator Talk, was one such.  KKR Alternative Corporate Opportunities Fund, from private equity specialist Kohlberg Kravis Roberts, is another.

Casey Frazieris Chief Investment Officer for Versus, a position he’s held since 2011.  From 2005-2010, he was the Chief Investment Officer for Welton Street Investments, LLC and Welton Street Advisors LLC.  Here’s Mr. Frazier’s 200 (and 16!) words making the Versus case:

We think the best way to maximize the investment attributes of real estate – income, diversification, and inflation hedge – is through a blended portfolio of private and public real estate investments.  Private real estate investments, and in particular the “core” and “core plus” segments of private real estate, have historically offered steady income, low volatility, low correlation, good diversification, and a hedge against inflation.  Unfortunately institutional private real estate has been out of reach of many investors due to the large size of the real estate assets themselves and the high minimums on the private funds institutional investors use to gain exposure to these areas.  With the help of institutional consultant Callan Associates, we’ve built a multi-manager portfolio in a 40 Act interval structure we feel covers the spectrum of a core real estate allocation.  The allocation includes real estate private equity and debt, public equity and debt, and broad exposure across asset types and geographies.  We target a mix of 70% private real estate with 30% public real estate to enhance liquidity, and our objective is to produce total returns in the 7% – 9% range net of fees with 5% – 6% of that coming from income.  Operationally, the fund has daily pricing, quarterly liquidity at NAV, quarterly income, 1099 reporting and no subscription paperwork.

Versus offers a lot of information about private real estate investing on their website.  Check the “fund documents” page. The fund’s retail, F-class shares carry an annual expense of 3.30% and a 2.00% redemption fee on shares held less than one year.  The minimum initial investment is $10,000.  

Conference Call Upcoming: RiverNorth/Oaktree High Income, July 11, 3:15 CT

While the Observer’s conference call series is on hiatus for the summer (the challenge of coordinating schedules went from “hard” to “ridiculous”), we’re pleased to highlight similar opportunities offered by folks we’ve interviewed and whose work we respect.

In that vein, we’d like to invite you to join in on a conference call hosted by RiverNorth to highlight the early experience of RiverNorth/Oaktree High Income Fund.  The fund is looking for high total return, rather than income per se.  As of May 31, 25% of the portfolio was allocated to RiverNorth’s tactical closed-end fund strategy and 75% to Oaktree.  Oaktree has two strategies (high yield bond and senior loan) and it allocates more or less to each depending on the available opportunity set.

Why might you want to listen in?  At base, both RiverNorth and Oaktree are exceedingly successful at what they do.  Oaktree’s services are generally not available to retail investors.  RiverNorth’s other strategic alliances have ranged from solid (with Manning & Napier) to splendid (with DoubleLine).  On the surface the Oaktree alliance is producing solid results, relative to their Morningstar peer group, but the fund’s strategies are so distinctive that I’m dubious of the peer comparison.

If you’re interested, the RiverNorth call will be Thursday, July 11, from 3:15 – 4:15 Central.  The call is web-based, so you’ll be able to read supporting visuals while the guys talk.  Callers will have the opportunity to ask questions of Mr. Marks and Mr. Galley.  Because RiverNorth anticipates a large crowd, you’ll submit your questions by typing them rather than speaking directly to the managers. 

How can you join in?  Just click

You can also get there by visiting RiverNorthFunds.com and clicking on the Events tab.

Launch Alert

Artisan Global Small Cap (ARTWX) launched on June 25, after several delays.  It’s managed by Mark Yockey and his new co-managers/former analysts, Charles-Henri Hamker and Dave Geisler.  They’ll apply the same investment discipline used in Artisan Global Equity (ARTHX) with a few additional constraints.  Global Small will only invest in firms with a market cap of under $4 billion at the time of purchase and might invest up to 50% of the portfolio in emerging markets.  Global Equity has only 7% of its money in small caps and can invest no more than 30% in emerging markets (right now it’s about 14%). Just to be clear: this team runs one five-star fund (Global), two four-star ones (International ARTIX and International Small Cap ARTJX), Mr. Yockey was Morningstar’s International Fund Manager of the Year in 1998 and he and his team were finalists again in 2012.  It really doesn’t get much more promising than that. The expenses are capped at 1.50%.  The minimum initial investment is $1000.

RiverPark Structural Alpha (RSAFX and RSAIX) launched on Friday, June 28.  The fund will employ a variety of options investment strategies, including short-selling index options that the managers believe are overpriced.  A half dozen managers and two fund presidents have tried to explain options-based strategies to me.  I mostly glaze over and nod knowingly.  I have become convinced that these represent fairly low-volatility tools for capturing most of the stock market’s upside. The fund will be comanaged by Justin Frankel and Jeremy Berman. This portfolio was run as a private partnership for five years (September 2008 – June 2013) by the same managers, with the same strategy.  Over that time they managed to return 10.7% per year while the S&P 500 made 6.2%.  The fund launched at the end of September, 2008, and gained 3.55% through year’s end.  The S&P500 dropped 17.7% in that same quarter.  While the huge victory over those three months explains some of the fund’s long-term outperformance, its absolute returns from 2009 – 2012 are still over 10% a year.  You might choose to sneeze at a low-volatility, uncorrelated strategy that makes 10% annually.  I wouldn’t.  The fund’s expenses are hefty (retail shares retain the 2% part of the “2 and 20” world while institutional shares come in at 1.75%).  The minimum initial investment will be $1000.

Funds in Registration

New mutual funds must be registered with the Securities and Exchange Commission before they can be offered for sale to the public. The SEC has a 75-day window during which to call for revisions of a prospectus; fund companies sometimes use that same time to tweak a fund’s fee structure or operating details. Every day we scour new SEC filings to see what opportunities might be about to present themselves. Many of the proposed funds offer nothing new, distinctive or interesting.

Funds in registration this month won’t be available for sale until, typically, the end of August 2013. There were 13 funds in registration with the SEC this month, through June 25^th.  The most interesting, by far, is:

RiverPark Strategic Income Fund.  David Sherman of Cohanzick Management, who also manages the splendid but closed RiverPark Short Term High Yield Fund (RPHYX, see below) will be the manager.  This represents one step out on the risk/return spectrum for Mr. Sherman and his investors.  He’s giving himself the freedom to invest across the income-producing universe (foreign and domestic, short- to long-term, investment and non-investment grade debt, preferred stock, convertible bonds, bank loans, high yield bonds and up to 35% income producing equities) while maintaining a very conservative discipline.  In repeated conversations, it’s been very clear that Mr. Sherman has an intense dislike of losing his investors’ money.  His plan is to pursue an intentionally conservative strategy by investing only in those bonds that he deems “Money Good” and stocks whose dividends are secure.  He also can hedge the portfolio and, as with RPHYX, he intends to hold securities until maturity which will make much of the fund’s volatility more apparent than real.   The expense ratio is 1.25% for retail shares, 1.00% for institutional. The minimum initial investments will be $1000 for retail and $1M for institutional.

Details and the list of all of the funds in registration are available at the Observer’s Funds in Registration page or by clicking “Funds” on the menu atop each page.

Manager Changes

On a related note, we also tracked down a near-record 64 fund manager changes. 

Briefly Noted . . .

If you own a Russell equity fund, there’s a good chance that your management team just changed.  Phillip Hoffman took over the lead for a couple funds but also began swapping out managers on some of their multi-manager funds.  Matthew Beardsley was been removed from management of the funds and relocated into client service. 

SMALL WINS FOR INVESTORS

Seventeen BMO Funds dropped their 2.00% redemption fees this month.

BRC Large Cap Focus Equity Fund (BRCIX)has dropped its management fee from 0.75% to 0.47% and capped its total expenses at 0.55%.  It’s an institutional fund that launched at the end of 2012 and has been doing okay.

LK Balanced Fund (LKBLX) reduced its minimum initial investment for its Institutional Class Shares from $50,000 to $5,000 for IRA accounts.  Tiny fund, very fine long-term record but a new management team as of June 2012.

Schwab Fundamental International Small Company Index Fund (SFILX) and Schwab Fundamental Emerging Markets Large Company Index Fund (SFENX) have capped their expenses at 0.49%.  That’s a drop of 6 and 11 basis points, respectively.

CLOSINGS (and related inconveniences)

Good news for RPHYX investors, bad news for the rest of you.  RiverPark Short Term High Yield (RPHYX) has closed to new investors.  The manager has been clear that this really distinctive cash-management fund had a limited capacity, somewhere between $600 million and $1 billion.  I’ve mentioned several times that the closure was nigh.  Below is the chart of RPHYX (blue) against Vanguard’s short-term bond index (orange) and prime money market (green).

OLD WINE, NEW BOTTLES

For all of the excitement over China as an investment opportunity, China-centered funds have returned a whoppin’ 1.40% over the past five years.  BlackRock seems to have noticed and they’ve hit the Reset button on BlackRock China Fund (BACHX).  As of August 16, it will become BlackRock Emerging Markets Dividend Fund.  One wonders if the term “chasing last year’s hot idea” is new to them?

On or about August 5, 2013, Columbia Energy and Natural Resources Fund (EENAX, with other tickers for its seven other share classes) will be renamed Columbia Global Energy and Natural Resources Fund.  There’s no change to the strategy and the fund is already 35% non-U.S., so it’s just marketing fluff.

“Beginning on or about July 1, 2013, all references to ING International Growth Fund (IIGIX) are hereby deleted and replaced with ING Multi-Manager International Equity Fund.”  Note to ING: the multi-manager mish-mash doesn’t appear to be a winning strategy.

Effective May 22, ING International Small Cap Fund (NTKLX) may invest up to 25% of its portfolio in REITs.

Effective June 28, PNC Mid Cap Value Fund became PNC Mid Cap Fund (PMCAX).

Effective June 1, Payden Value Leaders Fund became Payden Equity Income Fund (PYVLX).  With only two good years in the past 11, you’d imagine that more than the name ought to be rethought.

OFF TO THE DUSTBIN OF HISTORY

Geez, the dustbin is filling quickly.

The Alternative Strategies Mutual Fund (AASFX) closed to new investors in June and will liquidate by July 26, 2013.  It’s a microscopic fund-of-funds that, in its best year, trailed 75% of its peers.  A 2.5% expense ratio didn’t help.

Hansberger International Value Fund (HINTX) will be liquidated on or about July 19, 2013.   It’s moved to cash pending dissolution.

ING International Value Fund (IIVWX) is merging into ING International Value Equity (IGVWX ), formerly ING Global Value Choice.   This would be a really opportune moment for ING investors to consider their options.   ING is merging the larger fund into the smaller, a sign that the marketers are anxious to bury the worst of the ineptitude.  Both funds have been run by the same team since December 2012.  This is the sixth management team to run the fund in 10 years and the new team’s record is no better than mediocre.    

In case you hadn’t noticed, Litman Gregory Masters Value Fund (MSVFX) was absorbed by Litman Gregory Masters Equity Fund (MSENX) in late June, 2013.  Litman Gregory’s struggles should give us all pause.  You have a firm whose only business is picking winning fund managers and assembling them into a coherent portfolio.  Nonetheless, Value managed consistently disappointing returns and high volatility.  How disappointing?  Uhh … they thought it was better to keep a two-star fund that’s consistently had higher volatility and lower returns than its peers for the past decade.  We’re going to look at the question, “what’s the chance that professionals can assemble a team of consistently winning mutual fund managers?” when we examine the record (generally parlous) of multi-manager funds in an upcoming issue.

Driehaus Large Cap Growth Fund (DRLGX) was closed on June 11 and, as of July 19, the Fund will begin the process of liquidating its portfolio securities. 

The Board of Fairfax Gold and Precious Metals Fund (GOLMX and GOLLX) “has concluded that it is in the best interests of the Fund and its shareholders that the Fund cease operations,” which they did on June 29, 2013

Forward Global Credit Long/Short Fund (FGCRX) will be liquidated on or around July 26, 2013.  I’m sure this fund seemed like a good idea at the time.  Forward’s domestic version of the fund (Forward Credit Analysis Long/Short, FLSRX) has drawn $800 million into a high risk/high expense/high return portfolio.  The global fund, open less than two years, managed the “high expense” part (2.39%) but pretty much flubbed on the “attract investors and reward them” piece.   The light green line is the original and dark blue is Global, since launch.

Henderson World Select Fund (HFPAX) will be liquidated on or about August 30, 2013.

The $13 million ING DFA Global Allocation Portfolio (IDFAX) is slated for liquidation, pending shareholder approval, likely in September.

ING has such a way with words.  They announced that ING Pioneer Mid Cap Value Portfolio (IPMVX, a/k/a “Disappearing Portfolio”) will be reorganized “with and into the following ‘Surviving Portfolio’ (the ‘Reorganization’):

Disappearing Portfolio	Surviving Portfolio
ING Pioneer Mid Cap Value Portfolio	ING Large Cap Value Portfolio

So, in the best case, a shareholder is The Survivor?  What sort of goal is that?  “Hi, gramma!  I just invested in a mutual fund that I hope will survive?” Suddenly the Bee Gees erupt in the background with “stayin’ alive, stayin’ alive, ah, ah, ah … “  Guys, guys, guys.  The disappearance is scheduled to occur just after Labor Day.

Stephen Leeb wrote The Coming Economic Collapse (2008).  The economy didn’t, his fund did.  Leeb Focus Fund (LCMFX) closed at the end of June, having parlayed Mr. Leeb’s insights into returns that trailed 98% of its peers since launch. 

On June 20, 2013, the board of directors of the Frontegra Funds approved the liquidation of the Lockwell Small Cap Value Fund (LOCSX).  Lockwell had a talented manager who was a sort of refugee from a series of fund mergers, acquisitions and liquidations in the industry.  We profiled LOCSX and were reasonably positive about its prospects.  The fund performed well but never managed to attract assets, partly because small cap investing has been out of favor and partly because of an advertised $100,000 minimum.  In addition to liquidating the fund, the advisor is closing his firm. 

Tributary Core Equity Fund (FOEQX) will liquidate around July 26, 2013.  Tributary Balanced (FOBAX), which we’ve profiled, remains small, open and quite attractive. 

I’ve mentioned before that I believe Morningstar misleads investors with their descriptions of a fund’s fee level (“high,” “above average” and so on) because they often use a comparison group that investors would never imagine.  Both Tributary Balanced and Oakmark Equity & Income (OAKBX) have $1000 minimum investments.  In each case, Morningstar insists on comparing them to their Moderate Allocation Institutional group.  Why?

In Closing . . .

We have a lot going on in the month ahead: Charles is working to create a master listing of all the funds we’ve profiled, organized by strategy and risk.  Andrew and Chip are working to bring our risk data to you in an easily searchable form.  Anya and Barb continue playing with graphics.  I’ve got four profiles underway, based on conversations I had at Morningstar.

And … I get to have a vacation!  When you next hear from me, I’ll be lounging on the patio of LeRoy’s Water Street Coffee Shop in lovely Ephraim, Wisconsin, on the Door County peninsula.  I’ll send pictures, but I promise I won’t be gloating when I’m doing it.

By David Snowball

Dear friends,

I am not, in a monetary sense, rich.  Teaching at a small college pays rather less, and raising a multi-talented 12-year-old costs rather more, than you’d imagine.  I tend to invest cautiously in low-minimum, risk-conscious funds. I have good friends, drink good beer, laugh a lot and help coach Little League (an activity to which the beer and laughter both contribute).

This comes up only because I was moved to sudden and profound pity over the cruel ways in which the poor, innocent rich folks are being ruthlessly exploited.  Two new articles highlight their plight.

Mark Hulbert published a fairly relentless critique, “The Verdict Is In: Hedge Funds Aren’t Worth the Money”(WSJ, 06/01/2013), (While we can’t link directly to the article, you should be able to Google the title and get in) that looks at the performance –both risk and returns – of the average hedge fund since the last market top (October 2007) and from the last market bottom (March 2009).  The short version of his findings:

• The average hedge fund has trailed virtually every conceivable benchmark (gold, the total bond market, the total stock market, a 60/40 index, and the average open-end mutual fund) whether measured from the top or the bottom
• The downside protection offered by hedge funds during the meltdown was not greater than what a simple balanced fund would offer.
• At best, one hedge fund manager in five outperforms their mutual fund counterparts, and those winners are essentially impossible to identify in advance.

Apparently Norway figured this out before you.  While the Yale endowment, led by David Swensen, was making a mint investing in obscure and complex alternatives, Jason Zweig (“Norway: The New Yale,” WSJ, 03/07/2013) reported that Norway’s huge pension fund has outperformed the stock market and, recently, Yale, through the simple expedient of a globally diversified, long-only portfolio biased toward “small” and “value.”  Both Swensen and the brilliantly cranky Bill Bernstein agree that the day of outsized profits from “alternative investments” has passed.  Given that fact that the herd is now gorging on alternative investments:

“it’s somewhere between highly probable and certain that you will underperform [a stock portfolio] if you are being sold commodities, hedge funds and private equity right now.”

Think of it like this, he says: “The first person to the buffet table gets the lobster. The people who come a little later get the hamburger. And the ones who come at the end get whatever happens to be stuck to the tablecloth.”

That doesn’t deny the fact that there’s huge money to be made in hedge fund investing. Barry Ritholz published a remarkable essay, “A hedge fund for you and me? The best move is to take a pass” (Washington Post, 05/24/2013) that adds a lot of evidence about who actually profits from hedge funds.  He reports on research by Simon Lack, author of The Hedge Fund Mirage,” who concludes that the usual 2 and 20 “fee arrangement is effectively a wealth transference mechanism, moving dollars from investors to managers.” Lack used to allocate money to hedge funds on behalf of JPMorgan Chase.  Among Lack’s findings

• From 1998 to 2010, hedge fund managers earned $379 billion in fees. The investors of their funds earned only $70 billion in investing gains.
• Managers kept 84% of investment profits, while investors netted only 16%.
• As many as one-third of hedge funds are funded through feeder funds and/or fund of funds, which tack on yet another layer of fees. This brings the industry fee total to $440 billion — that’s 98 %of all the investing gains, leaving the people whose capital is at risk with only 2%, or $9 billion.

Oh, poor rich people.  At the same time, the SEC is looking to relax restrictions on hedge fund marketing and advertising which means that even more of them might become subject to the cruel exploitation of … well, the richer people. 

On whole, I think I’m happy to be living down here in 40-Act Land.

Introducing MFO Fund Ratings

One of the most frequent requests we receive is for the reconstruction of FundAlarm’s signature “most alarming funds” database.  Up until now, we haven’t done anything like it.  There are two reasons: (1) Snowball lacked both the time and the competence even to attempt it and (2) the ratings themselves lacked evidence of predictive validity.  That is, we couldn’t prove that an “Honor Roll” fund was any likelier to do well in the future than one not on the honor roll.

We have now budged on the matter.  In the spirit of those beloved fund ratings, MFO will maintain a new system to highlight funds that have delivered superior absolute returns while minimizing down side volatility.  We’re making the change for two reasons. (1) Associate editor Charles Boccadoro, a recently-retired aerospace engineer, does have the time and competence.  And, beyond that, a delight in making sense of data. And (2) there is some evidence that risk persists even if returns don’t. That is, managers who’ve taken silly, out-sized, improvident risks in the past will tend to do so in the future.  We think of it as a variant of the old adage, “beauty is just skin-deep, but ugly goes all the way to the bone.”

There are two ways of explaining what we’re up to.  We think of them as “the mom and pop explanation” and the “Dr. Mom and Ph.D. Pop explanation.”  We’ll start with the M&P version, which should be enough for most of us.

Dear Mom and Pop,

Many risk measures look at the volatility or bounciness of a portfolio, both on the upside and the downside.  As it turns out, investors don’t mind having funds that outperform their peers in rising markets; that is, they don’t immediately reject upside volatility.  What they (we!) dread are excessive drawdowns: that is, having their returns go down far and hard.  What Charles has done is to analyze the performance of more than 7000 funds for periods ranging back 20 years.  He’s calculated seven different measures of risk for each of those funds and has assigned every fund into one of five risk groups from “very conservative” funds which typically absorb no more than 20% of a stock market decline to “very aggressive” ones which absorb more than 125% of the fall.  We’ve assembled those in a large spreadsheet which is on its way to becoming a large, easily searchable database.

For now, we’ve got a preview.  It focuses on the funds with the most consistently excellent 20-year returns (the happy blue boxes on the right hand side, under “return group”), lets you see how much risk you had to absorb to achieve those returns (the blue to angry red boxes under risk group) and the various statistical measures of riskiness.  In general, you’d like to see low numbers in the columns to the left of the risk group and high numbers in the columns to the right.

I miss the dog.  My roommate is crazy.  The pizza has been good.  I think the rash is mostly gone but it’s hard to see back there.  I’m broke.  Say “hi” to gramma.  Send money soon.

Love, your son,

Dave

And now back to the data and the serious explanation from Charles:

The key rating metric in our system is Martin ratio, which measures excess return divided by the drawdown (a/k/a Ulcer) index. Excess return is how much a fund delivers above the 90-day Treasury bill rate. Ulcer index measures depth and duration of drawdowns from recent peaks – a very direct gauge of unpleasant performance. (More detailed descriptions can be found at Ulcer Index and A Look at Risk Adjusted Returns.)

The rating system hierarchy is first by evaluation period, then investment category, and then by relative return. The evaluation periods are 20, 10, 5, 3, and 1 years. The categories are by Morningstar investment style (e.g., large blend). Within each category, funds are ranked based on Martin ratio. Those in the top 20 percentile are placed in return group 5, while those in bottom 20 percentile are in return group 1. Fund ratings are tabulated along with attendant performance and risk metrics, by age group, then category, then return group, and finally by absolute return.

MFO “Great Owl” designations are assigned to consistent top performers within the 20 and 10 year groups, and “Aspiring Great Owl” designations are similarly assigned within the 5 and 3 year groups.

The following fund performance and risk metrics are tabulated over each evaluation period:

A risk group is also tabulated for each fund, based simply on its risk metrics relative to SP500. Funds less than 20% of market are placed in risk group 1, while those greater than 125% are placed in risk group 5. This table shows sample maximum drawdowns by risk group, depicting average to worst case levels. 

Some qualifications:

• The system includes oldest share class only and excludes the following categories: money market, bear market, trading inverse and leveraged, volatility, and specialized commodities.
• The system does not account for category drift.
• Returns reflect maximum front load, if applicable.
• Funds are presented only once based on age group, but the return rankings reflect all funds existing. For example, if a 3 year fund scores a 5 return, it did so against all existing funds over the 3 year period, not just the 3 year olds.
• All calculations are made with Microsoft’s Excel using monthly total returns from the Morningstar database provided in Steele Mutual Fund Expert.
• The ratings are based strictly on historical returns.
• The ratings will be updated quarterly.

We will roll-out the new system over the next month or two. Here’s a short preview showing the MFO 20-year Great Owl funds – there are only 48, or just about 3% of all funds 20 years and older. 

 

31 May 2013/Charles

(p.s., the term “Great Owl” funds is negotiable.  We’re looking for something snazzy and – for the bad funds – snarky.  “Owl Chow funds”?  If you’re a words person and have suggestions, we’d love to hear them.  Heck, we’d love to have an excuse to trick Barb into designing an MFO t-shirt and sending it to you.  David)

The Implosion of Professional Journalism will make you Poorer

You’ve surely noticed the headlines.  Those of us who teach News Literacy do.  The Chicago Sun-Times laid off all of its photo-journalists (28 staff members) on the morning of May 30, 2013, in hopes that folks with iPhone cameras would fill in.  Shortly before the New York Daily News laid off 20, the Village Voice fired a quarter of its remaining staff, Newsweek closed its print edition and has announced that it’s looking for another owner. Heck, ESPN just fired 400 and even the revered Columbia Journalism Review cut five senior staff. The New York Times, meanwhile, has agreed to “native advertising” (ads presented as content on mobile devices) and is investigating “sponsored content;” that is, news stories identified and funded by their advertisers.  All of that has occurred in under a month.

Since the rest of us remain intensely interested in receiving (if not paying for) news, two things happen simultaneously: (1) more news originates from non-professional sources and (2) fewer news organizations have the resources to check material before they publish it.

Here’s how that dynamic played out in a recent series of stories on the worst mutual funds.

Step One: NerdWallet sends out a news release heralding “the 12 most expensive and worst-performing mutual funds.”

Well, no.  What they sent was a list of fund names, ticker symbols (mostly) for specific share classes of the fund and (frequently) inaccurate expense ratio reports. They report the worst of the worst as

1. Oppenheimer Commodity Strat. Total Return (QRACX): 2.2% e.r.

Actually QRACX is the “C” class for the Oppenheimer fund. Morningstar reports the e.r. at 2.09%. The “A” shares have a 1.26% e.r.  And where did the mysterious 2.20% number come from?  One of the folks at NerdWallet wrote, “it seems it was an error on the part of our data provider.”  NerdWallet promised to clear up the fund versus share class distinction and to get the numbers right.

But that’s not the way things work, because NerdWallet sent their press release to other folks, too.

Step Two: Investment News mindlessly reproduces the flawed information.

Within hours, they have grafted on some random photographs and turned the press release into a slide show, now entitled “Expensive – and underperforming – funds.”  NerdWallet receives credit on just one of the slides.  Apparently no one at Investment News stopped to double-check any of the details before going public. But they did find pretty pictures.

Step Three: Mutual Fund Wire trumpets Investment News’s study.

MFWire’s story touting of the article, “Investment News Unveils Mutual Fund Losers List,” might be better-titled “Investment News Reproduces another Press Release”.  You’ll note, by the way, that the actual source of the story has disappeared.

Step Four:   CNBC makes things worse by playing with the data.

On Friday, May 17, CNBC’s Jeff Cox posts ‘Dirty Dozen’: 12 Worst Mutual Funds.  And they promptly make everything worse by changing the reported results.

Here’s the original: 1. Oppenheimer Commodity Strat. Total Return (QRACX): 2.2% e.r.

Here’s the CNBC version: 1.  Oppenheimer Commodity Strategy Total Return (NASDAQ:QRAAX-O), -14.61 percent, 2.12 percent.

Notice anything different?  CNBC changed the fund’s ticker symbol, so that it now pointed to Oppenheimer’s “A” share class. And those numbers are desperately wrong with regard to “A” shares, which charge barely half of the claimed rate (which is, remember, wrong even from the high cost “C” shares).  They also alter the ticker symbol of Federated Prudent Bear, which started as the high cost “C” shares (PBRCX) but for which CNBC substitutes the low-cost “A” shares (BEARX).  For the remaining 10 funds, CNBC simply disregards the tickers despite the fact that these are all high-cost “B” and “C” share classes.

Step Five: And then a bunch of people read and forward the danged thing.

Leading MFWire to celebrate it as one of the week’s “most read” stories.  Great.

Step Six: NerdWallet themselves then draw an invalid conclusion from the data.

In a blog post, NerdWallet’s Susan Lyon opines:

As you can see, all of the funds listed above are actively managed, besides the Rydex Inverse S&P 500 Strategy Fund. Do the returns generated by actively managed mutual funds usually outweigh their costs?  No, a recent NerdWallet Investing study found that though actively managed funds earned 0.12% higher annual returns than index funds on average, because they charged higher fees, investors were left with 0.80% lower returns.

No.  The problem here isn’t that these funds are actively managed.  It’s that NerdWallet tracked down the effects of the predatory pricing model behind “C” share classes.  And investors have pretty much figured out the “expense = bad” thing, which explains why the Oppenheimer “C” shares that NerdWallet indicts have $68M in assets while the lower-cost “A” shares have $228M.

Step Seven: Word spreads like cockroaches.

The story, in one of its several variants, now appears on a bunch of little independent finance sites and rarely with NerdWallet’s own discussion of their research protocol, much less a thoughtful dissection of the data.

NerdWallet (at least their “investing silo”) is a new operation, so you can understand their goof as a matter of a young staff, start-up stumbles and all that. It’s less clear how you explain Investment News‘s mindless reproduction of the results (what? verify stuff before we publish it? Edit for accuracy? Who do you think we are, journalists?) or MFWire’s touting of the article as if it represented Investment News’s own work.

Before the Observer publishes a fund profile, we give the advisor a chance to review the text for factual accuracy. My standard joke is “I’m used to making errors of judgment, but I loathe making errors of fact and so would you please let us know if there are any factual misstatements or other material misrepresentations?” I entirely agree with NerdWallet’s original judgment: these are pricey under-performers. I just wish that folks all around were a bit more attentive to and concerned about accuracy and detail.

Then Morningstar makes it All Worse

When I began working on the story above, I checked the expense reports at Morningstar.  Here’s what I found for QRACX:

Ooookay.  2.09% is “Below Average.” But below average for what?  Mob ransom demands?  Apparently, below average for US Open-End Commodities Broad Basket Funds, right?

Well, no, not so much.  Here’s Morningstar’s detailed expense report for the fund:

The average commodities fund – that is, the average fund in QRACX’s category – has a 1.32% expense ratio.  So how on earth could QRACX at 2.09% be below average?  Because it’s below the “fee level comparison group median.” 

There are 131 funds in the “broad commodity basket” group. Exactly one has an expense ratio about 2.40%.  If there’s one commodity fund above 2.40% and 130 below 2.40%, how could 2.40% be the group median?

Answer: Morningstar has, for the purpose of making expense comparisons, assigned QRACX to a group that has effectively nothing to do with commodity funds.

Mr. Rekenthaler, in response to an emailed query, explains, “‘Below average’ means that QRACX has below average expenses for a C share that is an Alternative fund.”

Morningstar is not comparing QRACX to other commodity funds when they make their expense judgment.  No, no.  They’re comparing it only to other “C” share classes of other types of “alternative investment” funds.  Here are some of the funds that Morningstar is actually judging QRACX against:

	Category	Expenses
Quantitative Managed Futures Strat C (QMFCX)	Mgd futures	9.10%
Princeton Futures Strategy C (PFFTX)	Mgd futures	5.65
Altegris Macro Strategy C (MCRCX)	Mgd futures	5.29
Prudential Jennison Market Neutral C (PJNCX)	Market neutral	4.80
Hatteras Alpha Hedged Strategies C (APHCX)	Multialternative	4.74
Virtus Dynamic AlphaSector C (EMNCX)	L/S equity	3.51
Dunham Monthly Distribution C (DCMDX)	Multialternative	3.75
MutualHedge Frontier Legends C (MHFCX)	Multi-alternative	3.13
Burnham Financial Industries C (BURCX)	L/S equity	2.86
Touchstone Merger Arbitrage C (TMGCX)	Market neutral	2.74

And so if you were choosing between the “C” class shares of this commodity fund and the “C” shares of a leveraged-inverse equity fund and a multicurrency fund, you’d know that you were probably getting a bargain for your money.

Why on earth you’d possibly benefit from the comparison of such of group of wildly incomparable funds remains unknown.

This affects every fund and every expense judgment in Morningstar’s database.  It’s not just a problem for the miserable backwater that QRACX occupies.

Want to compare Artisan International (ARTIX) to the fund that Morningstar says is “most similar” to it, American Funds EuroPacific Growth, “A” shares (AEPGX)?  Both are large, four-star funds in the Foreign Large Blend group.  But for the purposes of an expense judgment, they have different “fee level comparison groups.”  Artisan is judged as “foreign large cap no load,” which median is 1.14% while American is judged against “foreign large cap front load,” where the median is 1.44%.  If Artisan charged 1.24% and American charged 1.34%, Artisan would be labeled “above average” and American “below average.”  Meanwhile American’s “C” shares carry a 1.62% expense ratio and a celebratory “low” price label.

For investors who assume that Morningstar is comparing apples to apples (or foreign large blend to foreign large blend), this has the potential for being seriously misleading.  I am very sympathetic to the complexity of Morningstar’s task, but they really need to be much clearer that these expense labels are not linked to the category labels immediately adjacent to them.

We Made the Cover!

Okay, so it wasn’t the cover of Rolling Stone.  It was the cover of the BottomLine Personal newsletter (05/15/2013).  And there wasn’t a picture (they reserved those for their two “Great Sex, Naturally” articles).  And it was just 75 words long.

But at least they misrepresented my argument, so that’s something!  The “Heard by our editors” column led off with “Consider ‘bear market funds’” and us.  The bulk of the story is contained in the following two sentence fragments: “Consider ‘bear market funds’ as a kind of stock market disaster insurance . . . [they] should make up no more than 5% of your stock portfolio.”

Uhhh … what I said to the editors was “these funds are a disaster for almost everybody who holds them.  By their nature, they’re going to lose money for you year after year … probably the best will cost you 7% a year in the long run.  The only way they’ve work is if they represented a small fraction of your portfolio – say 5% – and you were absolutely disciplined about rebalancing so that you kept pouring money down this particular rat hole in order to maintain it as 5% of your portfolio.  If you did that, you would indeed have a psychologically useful tool – a fund that might well soar in the face of our sharp downturn and that would help you stay disciplined and stay invested, rather than cutting and running.  That said, we’re not wired that way and almost no one has that discipline.  That why I think you’d be far better off recommending an equity fund with an absolute-returns discipline, such as Aston/River Road Independent Value, Cook and Bynum or FPA Crescent, or a reasonably priced long-short fund, like Aston/River Road Long-Short or RiverPark Long/Short Opportunity.”

They nodded, and wondered which specific bear market funds I’d recommend.  They were trying hard to address their readers’ expressed interests, had 75 words to work with and so you got my recommendation of Federated Prudent Bear (BEARX, available at NAV) and PIMCO StocksPLUS AR Short Strategy (PSSDX).

Observer Fund Profiles

Each month the Observer provides in-depth profiles of between two and four funds.  Our “Most Intriguing New Funds” are funds launched within the past couple years that most frequently feature experienced managers leading innovative newer funds.  “Stars in the Shadows” are older funds that have attracted far less attention than they deserve. 

Bretton Fund (BRTNX): if you were a fund manager looking to manage just your own family’s finances for the next generation, this is probably what you’d be doing.

RiverPark/Gargoyle Hedged Value (RGHVX): RiverPark has a well-earned reputation for bringing brilliant managers from the high net worth world to us.  Gargoyle, whose discipline consistently and successfully marries stock selection and a substantial stake in call options, seems to be the latest addition to a fine stable of funds.

Scout Low Duration (SCLDX): there are very few fixed-income management teams that have earned the right to be trusted with a largely unconstrained mandate.  Scout is managed by one of them on behalf of folks who need a conservative fund but can’t afford the foolishness of 0.01% interest.

Conference Call Highlights: Stephen Dodson and Bretton Fund

Does it make sense to you that you could profit from following the real-life choices of the professionals in your life?  What hospital does your doctor use when her family needs one?  Where does the area’s best chef eat when he wants to go out for a weeknight dinner?  Which tablet computer gets Chip and her IT guys all shiny-eyed?

If that strategy makes sense to you, so will the Bretton Fund (BRTNX).

Bretton Fund (BRTNX) is managed by Stephen Dodson.  For a relatively young man, he’s had a fascinating array of experiences.  After graduating from Berkeley, he booked 80-100 hour weeks with Morgan Stanley, taking telecom firms public.  He worked in venture capital, with software and communications firms, before joining his father’s firm, Parnassus Investments.  At Parnassus he did everything from answering phones and doing equity research, to co-managing a fixed-income fund and presiding over the company.  He came to realize that “managing a family relationship and what I wanted in my career were incompatible at the time,” and so left to start his own firm.

In imagining that firm and its discipline, he was struck by a paradox: almost all investment professionals worshipped Warren Buffett, but almost none attempted to invest like him.  Stephen’s estimate is that there are “a ton” of concentrated long-term value hedge funds, but fewer than 20 mutual funds (most visibly The Cook and Bynum Fund COBYX) that follow Buffett’s discipline: he invests in “a small number of good business he believes that he understands and that are trading at a significant discount to what they believe they’re worth.”    He seemed particularly struck by his interviews of managers who run successful, conventional equity funds: 50-100 stocks and a portfolio sensitive to the sector-weightings in some index.

I asked each of them, “How would you invest if it was only your money and you never had to report to outside shareholders but you needed to sort of protect and grow this capital at an attractive rate for the rest of your life, how would you invest.  Would you invest in the same approach, 50-100 stocks across all sectors.”  And they said, “absolutely not.  I’d only invest in my 10-20 best ideas.” 

And that’s what Bretton does.  It  holds 15-20 stocks in industries that the manager feels he understands really well. “Understands really well” translates to “do I think I understand who’ll be making money five years from now and what the sources of those earnings will be?” In some industries (biotech, media, oil), his answer was “no.” “Some really smart guys say oil will be $50/bbl in a couple years. Other equally smart analysts say $150. I have no hope of knowing which is right, so I don’t invest in oil.” He does invest in industries such as retail, financial services and transportation, where he’s fairly comfortable with his ability to make sense of their dynamics.

When I say “he does invest,” I mean “him, personally.”  Mr. Dodson reports that “I’ve invested all my investible net-worth, all my family members are invested in the fund.  My mother is invested in the fund.  My mother-in-law is invested in the fund (and that definitely sharpens the mind).”   Because of that, he can imagine Bretton Fund functioning almost as a family office.  He’s gathering assets at a steady pace – the fund has doubled in size since last spring and will be able to cover all of its ‘hard’ expenses once it hits $7 million in assets – but even if he didn’t get a single additional outside dollar he’d continue running Bretton as a mechanism for his family’s wealth management.   He’s looking to the prospect of some day having $20-40 million, and he suspects the strategy could accommodate $500 million or more.

Bottom Line: The fund is doing well – it has handily outperformed its peers since inception, outperformed them in 11 of 11 down months and 18 of 32 months overall.  It’s posted solid double-digit returns in 2012 and 2013, through May, with a considerable cash buffer.  It will celebrate its three-year anniversary this fall, which is the minimum threshold for most advisors to consider the fund. While he’s doing no marketing now, he’s open to talking with folks and imagines some marketing effort once he’s got a three year record to talk about.  Frankly, I think he has a lot to talk about already.

For folks interested but unable to join us, here’s the complete audio of the hour-long conversation.

The BRTNX Conference Call

When you click on the link, the file will load in your browser and will begin playing after it’s partially loaded. If the file downloads, instead, you may have to double-click to play it.

Launch Alert: T. Rowe and Vanguard

T. Rowe Price Global Allocation (RPGAX) launched on May 28, 2013.  Color me intrigued.  Price has always been good at asset allocation research and many of their funds allow for tactical tweaks to their allocations.  This is Price’s most ambitious offering to date.  The fund targets 60% stocks, 30% bonds and 10% hedge funds and other alternative investments and promises “an active asset allocation strategy” in pursuit of long-term capital appreciation and income.  The fund will be managed by Charles M. Shriver, who has been with Price since 1991. Mr. Shriver also manages Price Balanced (RPBAX) fund and its Spectrum and Personal Strategy line of funds.  The funds expenses are capped at 1.05% through 2016.  There’s a $2500 initial investment minimum, reduced to $1000 for IRAs.

Vanguard Emerging Markets Government Bond Index Fund (VGOVX) and its ETF clone (VWOB) will launch in early June.  The funds were open for subscription in May – investors could send Vanguard money but Vanguard wouldn’t invest it until the end of the subscription period. There are nearly 100 e.m. bond funds or ETFs already, though Vanguard’s will be the first index and the cheapest option (at 30-50 basis points).  Apparently the launch was delayed by more than a year because Vanguard didn’t like the indexes available for e.m. bonds, so they commissioned a new one: Barclays USD Emerging Markets Government RIC Capped Index.  The fund will invest only in bonds denominated in U.S. dollars.  Investor shares start at $3000 and 0.50% e.r.

Pre-launch Alerts: Artisan and Grandeur Peak, Globe-trotting Again

Artisan Global Small Cap Fund launches June 19. It will be run by Mark Yockey and team.  It’s been in registration for a while and its launch was delayed at least once.

Grandeur Peak Global Reach Fund (GPROX/GPRIX) will launch June 19, 2013 and will target owning 300-500 stocks, “with a strong bias” toward small and micro-caps in the American, developed, emerging and frontier markets.  There’s an intriguing tension here, since the opening of Global Reach follows just six weeks after the firm closed Global Opportunities to new investors.  At the time founder Robert Gardiner argued:

To be good small and micro cap investors it’s critical to limit your assets. Through my career I have seen time and again small cap managers who became a victim of their own success by taking in too many assets and seeing their performance languish.

Their claim is that they have six or seven potential funds in mind and they closed their first two funds early “in part to leave room for future funds that we intend to launch, like the Global Reach Fund.”

Funds in Registration

New mutual funds must be registered with the Securities and Exchange Commission before they can be offered for sale to the public. The SEC has a 75-day window during which to call for revisions of a prospectus; fund companies sometimes use that same time to tweak a fund’s fee structure or operating details. Every day we scour new SEC filings to see what opportunities might be about to present themselves. Many of the proposed funds offer nothing new, distinctive or interesting. Some are downright horrors of Dilbertesque babble (see “Synthetic Reverse Convertibles,” below).

Funds in registration this month won’t be available for sale until, typically, the beginning of August 2013. We found 10 – 20 no-load, retail funds in the pipeline, notably:

The 11 new T. Rowe Price Target Retirement 2005 – 2055 Funds will pursue that usual goal of offering a one-stop retirement investing solution.  Each fund invests in a mix of other T. Rowe Price funds.  Each mix becomes progressively more conservative as investors approach and move through retirement.  T. Rowe Price already has an outstanding collection of retirement-date funds, called “Retirement [date]” where these will be “Target Retirement [date].”  The key is that the new funds will have a more conservative asset allocation than their siblings, assuming “bonds” remain “conservative.”  At the target date, the new funds will have 42.5% in equities while the old funds have 55% in equities.  For visual learners, here are the two glidepaths:

The new funds’ glidepath	The old fund’s glidepath

The relative weights within the asset classes (international vs domestic, for example) are essentially the same. Each fund is managed by Jerome Clark and Wyatt Lee.  The opening expense ratios vary from 0.60% – 0.77%, with the longer-dated funds incrementally more expensive than the shorter-dated ones (that is, 2055 is more expensive than 2005).  These expenses are within a basis point or two of the older funds’.  The minimum initial investment is $2500, reduced to $1000 for various tax-advantaged accounts.

This is a very odd time to be rolling out a bond-heavy line-up.  On May 15^th, The Great Gross tweeteth:

Gross: The secular 30-yr bull market in bonds likely ended 4/29/2013. PIMCO can help you navigate a likely lower return 2 – 3% future.

At least he doesn’t ramble when he’s limited to 140 characters. 

The inclusion of hedge funds is fascinating, given the emerging sense (see this month’s intro) that they’re not worth a pitcher of warm bodily fluid (had I mentioned that the famous insult attributed to John Gardner, that the vice presidency “isn’t worth a bucket of warm spit” actually focused on a different bodily fluid but the newspaper editors of the day were reticent to use the word Gardner used?).  The decision to shift heavily toward bonds at this moment, perplexing.

Details and the list of all of the funds in registration are available at the Observer’s Funds in Registration page or by clicking “Funds” on the menu atop each page.

MANAGER CHANGES

On a related note, we also tracked down 37 fund manager changes. 

Updates …

Oakseed Opportunity (SEEDX) released their first portfolio report (on a lovely form N-Q on file with the SEC).  The fund has about $48 million in its portfolio.  Highlights include:

32 well-known stocks, one ETF, two individual shorts and a tiny call option

The largest five stock holdings are Teva Pharmaceuticals, Leucadia National, AbbVie (a 2013 spin-off of Abbott’s pharmaceutical division), Ross Stores, and Loews Corp.

15.8% of the fund is in cash

2.8% is in three short positions, mostly short ETF

The three largest sectors are pharmaceuticals (15.4%, four stocks), insurance (7%, two stocks) and retail (6.6%, two stocks).

(Thanks to Denny Baran of lovely Great Falls, MT, for the heads up on Oakseed’s filing.)

Three more honors for RiverPark/Wedgewood (RWGFX).  In May, Wedgewood became one of the Morningstar 500, “the top 500 funds that should be on your radar.”  That same month, Wedgewood’s David Rolfe was recognized as SMA Manager of the Year at the Envestnet’s 2013 Advisor Summit.  SMA’s are “separately managed accounts,” a tool for providing personalized portfolios for high net-worth investors.  Wedgewood runs a bunch using the strategy behind the RiverPark/Wedgewood fund and they were selected from among 1600 management teams.  Finally, Wedgewood received one of overall Large Cap awards from Envestnet, a repeat of a win in 2011, for its Large-Cap Focused Growth strategy.   Those who haven’t listened to David talk about investing, should.  Happily, we have a recorded hour-long conversation with David.

Valley Forge Fund (VAFGX) closes the gap, a bit.  We reported in May that Valley Forge’s manager died on November 3, but that the Board of Directors didn’t seem to have, well, hired a new one.  We stand corrected.  First, according to an April proxy statement, the Board had terminated the manager three days before his actual, well, you know, termination.

The Board determined to terminate the Prior Advisory Agreement because of, among other things, (i) the Prior Advisor’s demonstrated lack of understanding of the requirements set forth in the Fund’s prospectus, policies and procedures, (ii) the Prior Advisor’s demonstrated lack of knowledge of the terms of the Prior Advisory Agreement, (iii) the Prior Advisor’s failure to adhere to directives from the Board of Directors with respect to the Fund’s portfolio holdings; and (iv) the Fund’s poor performance. 

That pretty much covers it.  According to the newest prospectus (May 01, 2013), they did have a manager.  Up until December 31^st.

Investment Adviser Portfolio Managers: Boyle Capital Management, LLC (BCM) from November 01, 2012 to December 31, 2012.

And, for the months of April and May, the Board of Trustees ran the fund.  Here’s the “principal risks” statement from the Prospectus:

Management Risk: for the months of April and May of 2013, the Board of Directors has taken over all trading pending the Shareholders’ Approval to be obtained in May 2013.

Still a bit unclear on January, February and March.  Good news: under the Board’s leadership, the fund crushed the market in April and May based on a jump in NAV during the first week of May.  Also a bit unclear about what happens now that it’s June: most of the Valley Forge website now leads to blank pages.  Stay tuned!

Security Alert: A Word from our IT Folks

We know that many of you – fund managers, financial planners, restaurateurs and all – maintain your own websites.  If, like the Mutual Fund Observer and 72.4 million others, your site runs on the WordPress software, you’re under attack.  WordPress sites have been targeted for a relentless effort to gain access to your admin controls and, through them, to the resources of your web-host’s servers. 

You’ve doubtless heard of “zombie computers,” individual PCs that have been compromised and which fall under the control of The Forces of Evil.  In some cases zombie PCs serve spammers and phishers.  In other cases, they’re used as part of coordinated distributed denial of service (DDoS) attacks directed against high-profile targets including MasterCard, the Federal Reserve Bank, Google, and others.

There are three very, very bad aspects of these attacks:

1. They’re aiming to seize control of enormously powerful network servers, using your website as a tool for achieving that.  If you can imagine a zombie PCs potential output as equivalent to a garden hose set on full, then you could imagine a server as a fire hose set on full.
2. They’re designed to keep you from knowing that you’ve been compromised; it’s not like a virus that goofs with your ability to use your machine or your site, these hacks are designed to be invisible to you.
3. Once compromised, the hackers install secret backdoors into your system; that means that installing security patches or protocols after the fact does not work, you can close the main door but they’ve already built a separate entrance for themselves.

MFO has periodically been the object of as many at 400 break-in attempts an hour.  Either manually or through our security software we’ve “blacklisted” nearly a thousand IP addresses, including a vast number from China.

Here are three quick recommendations for anyone responsible for a small business or family website using WordPress (these tips might work for other platforms, too):

1. Do not use the default administrator account! Rename it or create a new account with administrative rights. About 99% of the break-in attempts have been using some version of “admin” or “administrator” as the username.
2. Use strong passwords. Yes, I know you hate them. They’re a pain in the butt. Use them anyway. This recent attack uses a brute force method, attempting to log in with the most commonly used passwords first. You can find some basic tips and passwords to avoid at “The 25 most common passwords of 2012.”
3. Use security plug-ins. In WordPress, two to consider are Limit Login Attempts and Better WP Security. Both will temporarily lock out an IP address from which repeated login attempts occur. Better WP Security will allow you to easily make the temporary ban permanent, which is . . . strangely satisfying. (If you decide to try one of these, follow the directions carefully. It’s all too easy to lock yourself out!)

Good luck!  Chip and the MFO IT crowd

Meanwhile, in Footloose Famous Guys Land …

On May 3, hedge fund (and former Fidelity Magellan fund) manager Jeffrey Vinik announced plans to shut down his hedge fund and return all assets to his fund’s investors.  Again.  He did the same thing at the end of 2000, when he announced a desire to focus on his own investments.  Now, he wants to focus on his sports investments (he owns the NHL’s Tampa Bay Lightning), his foundation, and his family.  Given that he recently moved his family to Tampa to be closer to his hockey team, the priorities above might be rank-ordered.

The speculation is that three of Vinik’s managers (Doug Gordon, Jon Hilsabeck and Don Jabro) will band together to launch a long/short hedge fund based in Boston.

The fourth, David Iben, plans to start his own investment management firm.  Up until Vinik recruited him in March 2012, Iben was CIO for Nuveen Investments’ Tradewinds affiliate.  His departure, followed by the swift migration of three of Iben’s managers to Vinik (Isabel Satra, Alberto Jimenez Crespo and Gregory Padilla) cost Tradewinds billions in assets with a few days.   

Vinik left Magellan in 1995 after getting grief for an ill-timed macro bet: be bailed on tech stocks and bought bonds about four years too early.  The same boldness (dumping US stocks and investing in gold) cost his hedge fund dearly this year.

Former Janus Triton and Venture managers Chad Meade and Brian Schaub have joined Arrowpoint Partners, which has $2.3 billion in assets and a lot Janus refugees on staff.  Their six portfolio managers (founders David Corkins and Karen Reidy, Tony Yao, Minyoung Sohn, Meade and Schaub) and two senior executives (COO Rick Grove and Managing Director Christopher Dunne) were Janus employees.  Too, they own 100,000 shares of Janus stock.  Arrowpoint runs Fundamental Opportunity, Income Opportunity, Structured Opportunity and Life Science funds.  

For those who missed the earlier announcement, former T. Rowe Price Health Sciences Fund manager Kris Jenner will launch the Rock Springs Capital hedge fund by later this year.  He’s raised more than $100 million for the health and bio-tech hedge fund and has two former T. Rowe analysts, Mark Bussard and Graham McPhail, on-board with him.

Briefly Noted . . .

Alan Abelson (October 12, 1925 – May 9, 2013), Barron’s columnist and former editor, passed away at age 87.  He joined Barron’s the year I was born, began his “Up & Down Wall Street” column during the Johnson Administration and continued it for 47 years. His crankiness made him, for a long while, one of the folks I actively sought out each week.  In recent years he seemed to have become a sort of parody of his former self, cranky on principle rather than for any particular cause.  I’ll remember him fondly and with respect. Randall Forsyth will continue the column.

Speaking of cranks, John Rekenthaler has resumed his Rekenthaler Report with a vengeance.  During the lunatic optimism and opportunism of the 1990s (who now remembers Alberto Vilar, the NetNet and Nothing-but-Net funds, or mutual funds that clocked 200-300% annual returns?), Mr. R and FundAlarm founder Roy Weitz spent a lot of time kicking over piles of trash – often piles that had attracted hundreds of millions of dollars from worshipful innocents.  John had better statistical analyses, Roy had better snarky graphics.  At the end of 2000, John shifted his attention from columnizing to Directing Research.  Beginning May 22, he returned to writing a daily column at Morningstar which he bills as an attempt to leverage his quarter century in the industry to “put today’s investment stories into perspective.”  It might take him a while to return to his full stride, but column titles like “Die, Horse, Die!” do give you something to look forward to.

Shareholders of Kinetics Alternative Income Fund (formerly, the Kinetics Water Infrastructure Fund) participated in a 10:1 reverse split on May 30, 2013.  Insert: “Snowball rolls eyes” about here.  Neither the radical mission change nor the silly repricing strike me as signs of a distinguished operation.

SMALL WINS FOR INVESTORS

The Berwyn Cornerstone Fund’s (BERCX) minimum initial investment requirement for taxable accounts has been dropped from $3,000 to $1,000. It’s a tiny large cap value fund of no particular distinction.

Vanguard continues to press down its expense ratios.  Vanguard Dividend Appreciation Index (VDAIX), Dividend Appreciation ETF (VIG), Dividend Growth (VDIGX), Energy (VGENX), and Precious Metals and Mining (VGPMX) dropped their expenses by two to five basis points.

CLOSINGS (and related inconveniences)

Effective May 31, 2013, Invesco closed a bunch of funds to new investors.  The funds involved are

Invesco Constellation Fund (CSTGX)
Invesco Dynamics Fund (IDYAX)
Invesco High Yield Securities Fund (ACTHX)
Invesco Leaders Fund (VLFAX)
Invesco Leisure Fund (ILSAX)
Invesco Municipal Bond Fund (AMBDX)

The four equity funds, three of which were once legitimate first-tier growth options, are all large underperformers that received new management teams in 2010 and 2011.  The High Yield fund is very large and very good, while Muni is fine but not spectacular.  No word on why any of the closures were made.

Effective July 1, 2013, Frontegra MFG Global Equity Fund (FMGEX) is bumping its Minimum Initial Investment Amount from $100k to $1 million.

Effective at market close on June 14, 2013, the Matthews Asia Dividend Fund (MAPIX) will be closed to most new investors.

Oppenheimer Discovery (OPOCX) will close to new investors on June 28, 2013. Top-tier returns over the past three years led to a doubling of the fund’s size and its closure. 

Templeton Frontier Markets Fund (TFMAX) will close to new investors effective June 28, 2013.  This is another “trendy niche, hot money” story: the fund has done really well and has attracted over a billion in assets in a fairly thinly-traded market niche.

Wasatch’s management continues trying to manage Wasatch Emerging Markets Small Cap (WAEMX) popularity.  The fund continues to see strong inflows, which led Wasatch to implement a soft close in February 2012.  They’ve now extended their purchase restrictions.   As of June 7, 2013, investors who own shares through third-party distributions, such as Schwab and Scottrade, will not be able to add to their accounts.  In addition, some financial advisors are also being locked out. 

OLD WINE, NEW BOTTLES

American Century continues to distance itself from Lance Armstrong and his LiveStrong Foundation.  All of the LiveStrong target date funds (e.g., LIVESTRONG® 2015 Portfolio) are now One Choice target date funds.  No other changes were announced.

The Artio Global Funds (née Julius Baer) have finally passed away.  The equity managers have been replaced, some of the funds (Emerging Markets Local Debt, for example) have been liquidated and the remaining funds rechristened: 

Former Fund Name	New Fund Name
Artio International Equity Fund	Aberdeen Select International Equity Fund
Artio International Equity Fund II	Aberdeen Select International Equity Fund II
Artio Total Return Bond Fund	Aberdeen Total Return Bond Fund
Artio Global High Income Fund	Aberdeen Global High Income Fund
Artio Select Opportunities Fund	Aberdeen Global Select Opportunities Fund

The International Equity Fund, International Equity Fund II and the Select Opportunities Fund, Inc. will be managed by Aberdeen’s Global Equity team, a dedicated team of 16 professionals based in Edinburgh, Scotland. The Total Return Bond Fund and the Global High Income Fund will continue to be managed by their current portfolio managers, Donald Quigley and Greg Hopper, respectively, along with their teams.

BlackRock Long Duration Bond Portfolio is changing its name on July 29, 2013, to BlackRock Investment Grade Bond Portfolio.  They’ll also shift the fund’s primary investment strategies to allow for a wider array of bonds.

Having failed as a multisector long/short bond fund, the Board of Trustees of the Direxion Funds thought it would be a good idea to give HCM Freedom Fund (HCMFX) something more challenging.  Effective July 29, 2013, HCMFX goes from long/short global fixed income to long/short global fixed income and equities.  There’s no immediate evidence that the Board added any competence to the management team to allow them to succeed.

Fidelity U.S. Treasury Money Market Fund has been renamed Fidelity Treasury Only Money Market Fund because otherwise you might think . . . well, actually, I have no idea of why this makes any sense on earth.

GAMCO Mathers (MATRX) is a dour little fund whose mission is “to achieve capital appreciation over the long term in various market conditions without excessive risk of capital loss.”  Here’s a picture of what that looks like:

Apparently operating under the assumption that Mathers didn’t have sufficient flexibility to be as negative as they’d like, the advisor has modified their primary investment strategies to allow the fund to place 75% of the portfolio in short positions on stocks.  That’s up from an allowance of 50% short.  

Effective June 28, 2013, Lazard US Municipal Portfolio (UMNOX) becomes Lazard US Short Duration Fixed Income Portfolio.  In addition to shortening its target duration, the revamped fund gets to choose among “US government securities, corporate securities, mortgage-related and asset-backed securities, convertible securities, municipal securities, structured products, preferred stocks and inflation-indexed-securities.”  I’m always baffled by the decision to take a fund that’s overwhelmed by one task (buying munis) and adding a dozen more options for it to fumble.

On August 1, 2013 Oppenheimer U.S. Government Trust (OUSGX) will change its name to Oppenheimer Limited-Term Bond Fund.  Apparently Trust in Government is wavering.  The rechristened fund will be able to add corporate bonds to its portfolio.  Despite being not very good, the fund has drawn nearly a billion in assets

Pinnacle Capital Management Balanced Fund (PINBX) is about to become Pinnacle Growth and Income Fund.  The word “Balanced” in the name imposed a requirement “to have a specified minimum mix of equity and fixed income securities in its portfolio at all times.” By becoming un-Balanced, the managers gain the freedom to make more dramatic asset allocation shifts.  It’s a tiny, expensive 30-month old fund whose manager seems to be trailing most reasonable benchmarks.  I’m always dubious of giving more tools to folks who haven’t yet succeeded with the ones they have.

Pioneer Absolute Credit Return Fund (RCRAX) will, effective June 17, 2013, be renamed Pioneer Dynamic Credit Fund.  Two years old, great record, over $300 million in assets … don’t get the need for the change.

Vanguard MSCI EAFE ETF has changed its name to Vanguard FTSE Developed Markets ETF.

OFF TO THE DUSTBIN OF HISTORY

AllianceBernstein U.S. Strategic Research Portfolio and AllianceBernstein International Focus 40 Portfolio will both be liquidated by June 27, 2013.

The CAMCO Investors Fund (CAMCX) has closed and will liquidate on June 27, 2013.  After nine years of operation, it had earned a one-star rating and had gathered just $7 million in assets.

Litman Gregory will merge Litman Gregory Masters Value (MSVFX) into Litman Gregory Masters Equity (MSEFX) in June.  Litman Gregory’s claim is that they’re expert at picking and monitoring the best outside management teams for its funds.  In practice, none of their remaining funds has earned more than three stars from Morningstar (as of May, 2013).  Value, in particular, substantially lagged its benchmark and saw a lot of shareholder redemptions.  Litman Gregory Masters Alternative Strategies (MASNX), which we’ve profiled, has gathered a half billion in assets and continues to perform solidly.

Having neither performed nor preserved, the PC&J Performance Fund and PC&J Preservation Fund have been closed and will be liquidated on or about June 24, 2013.

ProShares Ultra High Yield and ProShares Ultra Investment Grade Corporate have been disappeared by their Board.  The cold text reads: “Effective May 23, 2013, all information pertaining to the Funds is hereby removed from the Prospectus.”

I’m saddened to report that Scout International Discovery Fund (UMBDX) is being liquidated for failure to attract assets.  It will be gone by June 28, 2013.  This was a sort of smaller-cap version of Scout International (UMBWX) which has long distinguished itself for its careful risk management and competitive returns. Discovery followed the same discipline, excelled at risk management but gave up more in returns than it earned in risk-control. This is Scout’s second recent closure of an equity fund, following the elimination of Scout Stock.

Tatro Tactical Appreciation Fund (TCTNX ) has concluded that it can best serve its shareholders by ceasing operation, which will occur on June 21, 2013.

Tilson Focus Fund (TILFX) has closed and will be liquidated by June 21, 2013. The fund had been managed by Whitney Tilson and Glenn Tongue, founders of T2 Partners Management.  Mr. Tilson removed himself from management of the fund a year ago. We’ve also found the fund perplexing and unattractive. It had two great years (2006 and 2009) in its seven full years of operation, but also four utterly horrible ones (2007, 2008, 2011, 2012), which meant that it was able to be bad in all sorts of market conditions. Mr. Tilson is very good at promotion but curiously limited at management it seems. Tilson Dividend Fund (TILDX), which we’ve profiled and which has a different manager, continues to thrive.

In Closing . . .

I will be at the Morningstar Investment Conference on your behalf, 12 – 14 June 2013. Friends have helped arrange interviews with several high-visibility professionals and there are a bunch of media breakfasts, media lunches and media dinners (some starting at hours that Iowans more associate with bedtimes than with meals). I also have one dinner and one warm beverage scheduled with incredibly cool people. I’m very excited. If you have leads you’d like me to pursue or if you’re going to be there and have a burning desire to graze the afternoon snack table with me, just drop me a note.

We’ll look for you.

As part of our visual upgrade, Barb (she of the Owl) has designed new business cards (which I’ll have for Morningstar) and new thank-you cards. I mention that latter because I need to extend formal thanks for three readers who’ve sent checks. Sorry about the ungracious delay, but I was sort of hoping to send grateful words along via the cards that haven’t yet arrived.

But will, soon!  Keep an eye out in the mail.

In addition to our continuing work on visuals, the MFO folks will spend much of June putting together some wide-ranging improvements. Junior has been busily reviewing all of our “Best of the Web” features, and we’ll be incorporating new text throughout the month. Chip and Charles are working to create a friendly, easy-to-use screener for our new fund risk ratings database. Barb and Anya are conspiring to let the Owl perch in our top banner. And I’ll be learning as much as I can at the conference. We hope you like what we’ll be able to share in July.

Until then, take care and celebrate your friends and family!