Are you feeling better? 2011 saw enormous stock market volatility, ending with a total return of one-quarter of one percent in the total stock market. Who then would have foreseen Q1 2012: the Dow and S&P500 posted their best quarter since 1998. The Dow posted six consecutive months of gains, and ended the quarter up 8%. The S&P finished up 12% and the NASDAQ up 18% (its best since 1991).
The Observer in The Wall Street Journal; A celebration of a dozen innovative funds; A launch alert for Seafarer Overseas Growth & Income; A profile of GRT Value (GRTVX; A profile of Matthews Asia Strategic Income (MAINX); A review of Fidelity’s new ad campaign; The Best of the Web, a new Observer feature; and the usual collection of notes about liquidations, mergers, manager changes, funds in registration and more.
Welcome to the Year of the Dragon; The Difference One Month Makes; Those Who Can’t Teach, Teach Gym; Does Anyone Look at this Stuff Before Running It?; Fund Update of HNP Growth and Preservation; Profiles of Bretton Fund (BRTNX), Grandeur Peak Global Opportunities (GPGOX), and Matthews Asia Strategic Income (MAINX); Launch Alert for Seafarer Overseas Growth and Income; and The Observer: Milestones and Upgrades
Consider Taking a Chill Pill: Implications of a Stock-Light Portfolio;Launch Alert: TIAA-CREF Lifestyle IncomeThe Great Unanswered Question: “What Are Our Recommendations Worth?”; Two Amateur Hour in Ratings Land: TheStreet.com and Zacks; Two funds: HNP Growth and Preservation and Tocqueville Select; Launch of The Navigator.
Finding Funds that Lose at Just the Right Time: funds that trail in “frothy” markets and excel in all others; Press Release Journalism: CNBC and the End of the Western World; Miscommunication in the Workplace: Sources, Prevention, Response, a research-driven guide and thanksgiving gift to Observer readers; profiles of Artisan Small Cap and Lockwell Small Cap Value; foolishness at the Alpine funds.
The Observer’s Honor Roll, Unlike Any Other: 24 funds that never finish in the basement; Trust, but Verify: the mess surrounding reports of MNDFX’s portfolio; profiles of Manning and Napier Dividend Focus and Pinnacle Value; Morningstar’s “best new funds of the past three years”
Why Google Flu Should Be Worrying the Fund Industry Sick; the Database of Dismal and Roll Call of the Wretched lists; Trust Us, We’re Professionals: strategies used by fund trustees to ignore Wretchedness; profiles of Mairs and Power Small Cap and SouthernSun Small Cap; quick review of the book Willpower: Rediscovering the Greatest Human Strength.
The Latest Endangered Species: Funds for Small Investors: the last 13 firms to offer easy entry to beginning investors; The Quiet Comeback of Artisan Small Cap; ranting about the SEC’s inability to find a competent programmer; profiles of RiverPark Wedgewood, Walthausen Select, Northern Global Tactical Asset Allocation and Walthausen Small Cap.
Dear friends, The folks in Washington are, for the most part, acting like six-year-olds who missed their nap times. The New York Fed is quietly warning money market managers to reduce their exposure to European debt. A downgrade of the federal government’s bond rating seems nearly inevitable. The stock market managed only one three-day set [...]
May 1, 2012
Dear friends, April started well, with the super-rich losing more money in a week than I can even conceive of. Bloomberg reports that the 20 wealthiest people on Earth lost a combined $9.1 billion in the first week of April as renewed concerns that Europe’s debt crisis might worsen drove the Standard & Poor’s 500 [...]