Dear friends,
Welcome to winter.
Dame Edith Sitwell, a poet and crank, observed, “Winter is the time for comfort, for good food and warmth, for the touch of a friendly hand and for a talk beside the fire: it is the time for home” (Taken Care Of: An Autobiography (1965)).
How could you not be drawn to someone who said of herself, “I am not eccentric. It’s just that I am more alive than most people. I am an unpopular Continue reading →
Happy New Year to everyone. May there be peace in your home, on the planet, in the stars, and in all living beings. I am very glad to share that I have recently published a book of children’s stage plays.
Growing up in Mumbai, India, I studied at a school where theatre and drama were an important part of our education. Many of our school plays were then drawn from English literature. A few years ago, I was asked to take on a project to translate nine plays written in Gujarati, my first language, to English. Acclaimed playwright Prakash Lala wanted to make his stories available to young children everywhere. The average 10-12-year-old child in India has a different upbringing than the American kid. Family, grandparents, household help, and even neighbors play a much larger role in raising the kid than we see in society here. I’ve enjoyed translating the plays, working with my own kids on editing, and recently publishing the book on Amazon. Look for the title “Nine Children’s Plays.” I hope you will Continue reading →
I have no idea what the best investment of 2023 will be, and neither does anyone else. The annual exercise in futility and fantasy is well underway in the financial press and market pundit community, notwithstanding the fact that their 2022 forecasts were laughably wrong, as were their 2021, 2020, 2019 …
Section 1, The Terrified Investor
Section 2, The Exhausted Investor
Section 3, The Enterprising Investor
If you’re obsessed about 2023, our best advice is Continue reading →
On Friday, 6 January, we will be conducting our year-end webinar to review funds and MFO Premium. If you can make it, please join us by registering here. There will be just one session this year: 9 a.m. Pacific (noon Eastern).
We will use MultiSearch Pre-Set screens and other custom criteria to review fund performance in 2022. MultiSeach is the site’s main tool, enabling searches with numerous screening criteria. We will also demo some of the many features across the site.
MFO Premium includes the Continue reading →
(And by implication, frowns on celebrity endorsements)
Happy New Year! I wish everyone a prosperous 2023. It is that time of year again when investment companies, analysts, and pundits create outlooks for the coming year. The quote attributed to Dwight D. Eisenhower that “Plans are useless, but planning is indispensable,” is applicable as there are risks to the outlook, which is the first section in this article. The second section is my outlook and strategy for 2023. The final section is the outlook from the Federal Reserve, The Conference Board, and Vanguard. Links to other outlooks are included in the Appendix.
Thanks to the notice by David Snowball, I have become a premium subscriber to The Independent Vanguard Adviser. I use the Continue reading →
Disruptors disrupted: the suite of Fidelity Disruptive funds is being converted to ETFs in June 2023.
The funds are approaching their three-year anniversary, but only one has reached to $100 million AUM threshold. Fidelity offers that the conversion might provide “lower net expenses, additional trading flexibility, increased portfolio holdings transparency, and the potential for enhanced tax Continue reading →
Dear friends,
Welcome to the darkest and brightest season of the year. Each year we share the reminder of a long and resolute human impulse: to stare into the gathering gloom, frozen fields, and biting winds and to declare, “we will not surrender to the darkness, within or without. Light the fires, summon the family, call our friends and set the table. Tonight, we rejoice together.” Continue reading →
On December 31, 2019, Oelschlager Investments launched the Towpath Focus Fund (TOWFX). The fund invests in 25-40 domestic stocks regardless of market capitalization. The fund is managed by Mark Oelschlager.
Towpath is a concentrated, all-cap equity fund. The portfolio currently holds 41 securities. About 15% of the portfolio is invested in non-US stocks and 12% in cash. Compared to its Morningstar peers, the fund has more cash, more international, and more small-cap exposure. The portfolio stocks are higher growth companies (measured by sales, cash-flow, and book value growth) that sell for lower prices (measured by price-to-book, price-to-earnings, and price-to-sales) with higher returns than either their peers or their index. Continue reading →
We are approaching the end of an extraordinary year, one that has left many of us – citizens, investors, employers, workers, and parents – feeling whipsawed, anxious and confused. Much of that comes from the sense that we can’t figure out what’s behind this year, so we don’t have much hope about managing, much less thriving in, the year ahead.
I entirely agree with your feelings, but I’m here to suggest that you take a deep, cleansing breath. We’re doing better than you know, and if we keep our wits about us, we’re going to do okay. Continue reading →
I hope that Readers enjoyed their Thanksgiving as much as I did and wish everyone a safe and happy holiday season and a prosperous new year.
I expect this Santa Claus Rally will give way to a New Year’s hangover as investors start to anticipate a recession more than they fear inflation. On November 10th, the Consumer Price Index for all Urban Consumers was released to show the inflation rate increased by 7.76% from a year ago and 0.44% from the previous month which is still a high annual rate of 5.3%. The minutes of the November Federal Open Market Committee Meeting provide insights: Continue reading →
On September 1, 2022, Fidelity launched Fidelity Hedged Equity (FEQHX) which is also available in five Fidelity Advisor share classes.
The goal is Fidelity Hedged is to provide capital appreciation. Presumably, it’s also to provide capital appreciation with less volatility than the stock market, hence the “hedged” piece. The strategy is to invest in an S&P 500-like stock portfolio. That means some growth and small value but mostly large cap. The managers then apply “a disciplined options-based strategy designed to provide downside protection” mostly by buying put options, which appreciate when the relevant underlying asset depreciates. Generally, the hope is Continue reading →
Bridgeway’s Omni Tax-Managed Small-Cap Value Fund will be converted into the Omni Small-Cap Value ETF. The conversion will require the approval of existing shareholders. If the conversion is approved, it is expected to take effect on or about during the first quarter of 2023.
Fidelity, likewise, is moving more funds into an ETF wrapper. Two and a half years ago, Fido launched a series of trendy funds which promises to find the disruptors, not just the innovators, and profit from them.
To date, the funds have gathered Continue reading →
On behalf of my Celtic forebears, happy New Year! November 1 marks the traditional beginning of the Celtic year at a fire-rich festival called Samhain (or Samhuinn or something like it). It’s a curious cultural choice: the old year ends with the harvest, and the new year begins “the darker half” of the year, a period of confinement and, frequently, gnawing hunger.
On whole, the Romans chose the bright path: they began the year around March 1st when the first hopeful sprouts of spring appeared. The Celts, made of sterner stuff, looked the darkness Continue reading →
One can take a cold, analytical approach to environmental (and other) concerns. One can also be motivated by an emotional connection. Being a generally dispassionate investor, I took last August to reconnect with nature, to hug a few trees, as it were. Continue reading →
The great charm of traditional index funds is that they offer broad market exposure at a low cost. Critics deride their diversification as “diworsification,” where a portfolio automatically contains too little of the really great stuff and too much of the really poor stuff. Bold and confident managers have staked their careers – or at least their investors’ fortunes – on their ability to find one or two great (and greatly misunderstood) companies and then pour resources into them.
At its peak, the legendary Continue reading →
2023 Sleeping Bears in Waiting
We are in a classic late stage of the business cycle with the Federal Reserve raising rates to reduce demand in order to control inflation. What is different this time is that the inflation is likely to be higher for longer because it is a global issue resulting from a combination of factors, including COVID-related supply chain disruptions and related stimulus, an extended period of low-interest rates and easy monetary policy, and the Russian invasion of Ukraine that, in addition to being a tragic loss of lives, also disrupted supply chains. I look at the base case of the Federal Reserve raising the Fed Funds (FF) target rate in November and December and holding the rate relatively constant next year. The next six to nine months are key to determining Continue reading →
Let’s be blunt!
Why bury the lead?
“90% of everything is crap.”
That’s Ric Dillon, the fund’s PM, quoting Theodore Sturgeon (1918-85), a science-fiction author frustrated by a prevailing thought of his time– that works of science fiction are universally bad.
His defense of his chosen field, argued in a New York University lecture hall, can be boiled down to a simple argument. Continue reading →
Aristotle Capital Management is to buy Pacific Asset Management, the specialist credit manager with about $20 billion AUM from Pacific Life. Afterward completion, Aristotle will be renamed Aristotle Pacific Capital.
Lazard US Convertibles Portfolio is in registration. The principal investment strategy is to invest in convertible securities economically tied to the United States. The portfolio managers/analysts will be Arnaud Brillois, Andrew Raab, Emmanuel Naar, and Zoe Chen. Open share total annual portfolio operating Continue reading →
Dear friends,
Our hearts go out to people around the world whose lives are being wracked by forces beyond their control, whether that’s the madness of dictators or the ravages spawned by the world’s increasingly unstable climate. Those folks represent needs far beyond the annoyance caused by our collective loss of $9 trillion in the stock market’s ongoing revaluation.
Those of us only indirectly affected by such tragedies have three imperatives:
An impending civil war in the US. A planet on fire. The worst drought in 1500 years. The prospect of Putin using nuclear wars in Europe. A market decline that might be accelerating rather than slowing. Inflation at 40-year highs. Crazy people storming the Capitol. Voter restrictions. Politicians increasingly willing to assert control over women’s lives. Continue reading →
