FPA Crescent Fund – Q3 2015 Update
Activity:
o Sold out of Norsk Hydro and Sulzer
o Added to several names, including Alcoa, CIT Group, Cisco, LPL Financial, General
Electric
o Purchased a handful of new equity positions and a few new fixed income positions,
including Glencore and Bombardier, in the quarter.
o Top contributors for the quarter were Google, Sound Holdings, Microsoft, Sears Holding
Corp. 6.625% Due 10/15/2018, and Bombardier 7.750% Due 3/15/2020. Oracle, Joy
Global, Aon, Citigroup and United Technologies were the top detractors for the period.
Positioning:
o Gross exposure to equities is circa 58% and net equity exposure is approximately 55%.
Fixed Income increased a bit to 3.4%.
o Added to private investments, specifically real estate partnerships.
o Cash is approximately 40%.
Outlook:
o Still challenging to find bargains, but is improving. We are looking at various areas of
opportunities, including Chinese internet, copper, oil/gas and Brazil
http://www.fpafunds.com/docs/fpa-crescent-fund/q3-2015-crescent-update.pdf?sfvrsn=2

@bee: Your question on tracking a portfolio is thought provoking. Here’s my 2 cents.
I am retired, thus I am in the withdrawal stage, not the accumulation phase. I use a Lazy Portfolio Scheme to implement an asset allocation of 50/50 stocks to bonds.
I use Excel worksheets as follows:
A “Portfolio” worksheet tracks the portfolio (I also have a “Temp” and “Rebalance” worksheets described later). At the top are today’s date, current value, value at end of last year, and YTD percent gain/loss. My current YTD is a loss of 2.114% that includes all drawdowns to date including most of my Minimum Required Distribution (MRD).
NEXT is the “Assets” table of current price, shares owned, value and category (Domestic Stock, International Stock, Fixed Income, and Cash) for each asset. It is arranged in alphabetic order to accommodate brokerage watch lists and Excel LOOKUP functions.
I use the following categories:
Domestic Stock
International Stock
Fixed Income
Cash
NEXT are details for each account in my portfolio (Rollover IRA, TIAA Traditional, A-Trust, B-Trust, Individual, Experimental, and Credit Union). For each account the Price, Shares, Value and category of each asset are listed. A summary by category shows the value, and percent of each category in the account.
LAST is a Consolidated Details for all accounts. I use a separate table for each of the categories. For each asset I list Price, Sum of shares from all accounts, Value, Current Allocation, and Target Allocation.
Thus I can visualize my portfolio in terms of assets, assets in each account, and assets sorted by category.
A “Temp” worksheet provides an intermediary for specifying current asset prices. I copy values from a Watchlist in my Fidelity account. I paste the values from the watchlist into the Temp worksheet and then copy the price column to the portfolio worksheet. (Note that I have arranged my assets in alphabetical order for this to work.) The Temp worksheet can be used for general calculations with the restriction that no other worksheet should link to any cell in the Temp worksheet.
A “Rebalance” worksheet calculates buys and sells when I rebalance my asset allocation portfolio. In general I compare the current allocation of an asset to a target allocation and do buys and sells to rebalance to target values.
First I create a “Target Allocation Table” that shows target allocations for each of the four categories and the assets in each category. I initially set the target values in collaboration with a fee-only Financial Advisor. The values by major category:
29% Domestic Stock ETFs
21% International Stock ETFs
45% Fixed IncomeS
5% Cash
I won’t go into details of this worksheet, but have the following remarks:
1. There will be a variety of account types: As one gets older different financial situations occur, e.g. trust accounts, retirement, death/divorce of spouse, marriage, etc. There needs to be flexibility to handle financial resources that are not mutual funds or ETFs. My situation has accounts:
Trust-A
Trust-B (with its separate tax-ID)
Rollover IRA
Individual (used as a conduit between other accounts and my bank)
Experimental
Credit Union
Life can become more complicated in retirement!
2. I fine-tune allocations between accounts: Although my Rebalance worksheet does an initial calculation of buys and sells, I manually fine-tune the allocations for the following reasons:
a. I want to have sufficient cash in the IRA to fund my MRD from that account.
b. I want to take capital gains in tax deferred accounts, not taxable accounts.
c. In the Trust-B account I want to minimize taxes so I over allocate a muni-bond fund.
d. The Experimental account is exempt from buys and sells of a rebalance operation.
3. I combine two or more assets into a “Combined Asset”. For example I am taking a Minimum Required Distribution (MRD) from a TIAA Traditional account that does not allow me to trade this asset. (There are other options I could have selected, but immediately liquidating the entire asset was not available.) I have solved this by combining the TIAA with my BND ETF and allocate a percentage to the combined quantity that I call “Total Bond Market/Long-Term Fixed Income” Within this combined asset, I assign TIAA’s target allocation to its current allocation, and the BND target allocation to the difference of the target allocation assigned to the Combined Asset and the TIAA current allocation. Another example might be a $10,000 T-Bill that can only be sold in its entirety. Yes, I know this is a forum about mutual funds and ETFs, but stuff happens and we need to adapt.
4. I rebalance based on a calendar event, not a market event or a difference between current and target asset percentages. I have chosen the middle of August and February. I want to avoid any semblance of market timing.
I hope you find this useful.

@David_Snowball,
This may be an unrelated scenario, but over the next 30 year cycle there will be a large portion of our economy (baby boomers...you included) that will be spending a sizable portion of their retirement as their main source of income.
To me this will provide a significant boost to the economy. Without the need to grow jobs, retirees will transfer their jobless income to someone who will claim this spending as their earned income.
If Ray Dalio is correct when he states,
"one man's (retirement) spending is another man's (working) income",
then haven't we added a sizable and persistent form of liquidity into the economy as retirees spend a portion of their retirement income annually?
No one seems to talk about this much.
Without adding any additional labor costs, retirement income is spent and transformed into working income. Working incomes depend on others to spend so they may earn their income...retirees do this almost exclusively from unearned income. But this unearned income once spent becomes a worker's earned income. These earned income workers may even find ways to save enough to invest, thus maintaining an equilibrium on the investment and financial side of the equation.
Over the next 30 year cycle I believe most retirees will be consistent and significant spenders of their wealth. To me, this is a reliable source of liquidity and should be a long and steady "shot in the arm" for the economy.
My apologies if these comments seem unrelated to your thread topic.

Anyone who has been through an SEC examination understands they will find some aspect of the business that is not right. In the last two years, examiners have been quite aggressive. The ability of the SEC and similar organizations to access data even before the exam begins is much greater than it was a few years ago. I am not giving a pass to First Eagle on this. But I am saying it is entirely possible this one instance was an oversight, since no compliance department wants to be responsible for the publicity that the news generates. The fact that First Eagle cooperated fully and made corrections immediately is certainly positive, unlike some firms who obfuscate and try to make less of the problem than it is. In the grand scheme of things, this is relatively small potatoes compared to some of the egregious fee-and-expense gouging that happens in the financial world. It is important to note, however, that the SEC is looking very closely into all aspects of fees and expenses and how they are reported. My guess is that they used this instance as a broad shot to all other firms to check into their own fee structures. And that is a good thing.

Do most of the buyers of the new fund also still wait outside all night for concert tickets and apple phones and, dare I say, do you go shopping when the rest of the us are comatose on Thanksgiving?
Sorry, but I just don't get the hype. Nor the rush to be the first adopters of any fund.

Hi Bee,
This will mark the first time I've jumped through these types of hoops for a fund, but the reason is fairly straightforward.
To first justify this of course, one needs to determine if a fund with this capitalization target is what you want. If yes, then you look for a manager with a fund with a track record in this space and their record in terms of shareholder value, and you simply base your decision on that....you are betting on a manager and their track record.
The reason for this leap of faith is because, unfortunately in the small cap space, you don't have the luxury of watching a fund for a few years and then buying in. By the time you've made that decision, the fund is long since closed or the AUM is so bloated to make the capitalization targets meaningless.
Of course, one additional risk needs to be mentioned as pertains to funds discussed on financial sites...even one as esteemed as this, and that is the avoidance of group-think. But, that goes for any decision made in the midst of conversation I suppose.
press

Janus has had enough problems over the years. Now they have Mr. Gross.

:)
I'm not planning on transferring any money to either of these two firms. But it does make one wonder how other large financial instutions - especially in the mutual fund arena - deal with these types of personality issues? Can't imagine anything getting near this ugly at TRP or D&C for instance.

Also, watch-out for your kid's "Barbie" when discussing family finances.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-switch/wp/2015/03/11/privacy-advocates-try-to-keep-creepy-eavesdropping-hello-barbie-from-hitting-shelves/
"Kids using 'Hello Barbie' aren't only talking to a doll, they are talking directly to a toy conglomerate whose only interest in them is financial," Susan Linn, the group's director, said in a statement. "It's creepy - and creates a host of dangers for children and families."
--
"Honey - Give me that password for our bank account one more time!" :)

But you can't polish the turd piles into a diamond. Think that is called financial engineering.

Most fund groups that push for insider ownership allow a little wiggle room. Managers might be required to place "substantially all of their investable assets" in the firm's products, or "all of their equity exposure" in their own fund, or invest their year-end bonuses in them. That allows them to put their kids' 529 money in target-date funds or to maintain age-appropriate income exposure and so on.
The rub is that the SEC does not require disclosure of a firm's policy, if any, and the SEC investment bands are badly out-of-date. The top band for fund directors is "over $100,000" and the top band for managers is "over $1,000,000." As stunning as I find the phrase "over $1,000,000," apparently large financial services firms compensate key personnel pretty generously. Who knew? For many, investments in the millions are routine and in the tens of millions are not unusual.
As ever,
David

The one (more aggressive) choice that leaps to mind is T.Rowe Price's Growth Stock Fund (PRGFX) ... R-Class would allow you to own Class A equivalent at Oppenheimer without paying the customary (near 5%) load.

I'll try again to describe loads.
Would you be as comfortable suggesting the RRGSX share class of TRP's Growth Stock Fund? That's what is being offered. These are R shares, with an ER nearly double that of PRGFX (an extra 0.50%, to be precise). Oppenheimer R shares likewise add 0.50% and cost more than their load-waived A shares found in some other 401k plans (and also NTF at several discount brokerages).
This extra 0.50% is taken out year after year, even if one switches funds within the 401k, since the all funds assess this fee (or something close to it).
That's a load. It goes into the pocket of the plan administrator. The SEC calls it a load, FINRA calls it a load. Over a decade, it's going to cost as much as a front end load.
That S&P Mid cap index fund? Here's its financial statement and its M* profile. J class management fee is just 0.07%. But oh, those administrative fees (think 12b-1), they add 0.63%, bringing the total ER up to 0.70. That gravy goes to the plan administrator.
Briefly on the investment options - if you don't like the actively managed options, the index funds cover the major areas, large cap (S&P 500 index), mid cap (S&P Mid Cap index), small cap (Russell Small Cap index), foreign (International index). They're cheaper than the other offerings (even at 0.7% or so ER), and should beat lackluster funds.
If you want to add some bond exposure and actively managed allocations, several people here have written positively about Blackrock Global Allocation (MRLOX), notably BobC, but also Bee, VintageFreak, myself, and others.
Yes folks, posts on the internet live forever :-)

David- it's been customary both on MFO and it's FundAlarm predecessor site to express financial affairs in terms of percentages, rather than dollar amounts. There are good reasons for that practice: privacy of course, and equalization of "opinion weight" being but two. By that I mean that a contributor's opinion on any given matter is not enhanced or diminished merely because that person may have ten times as much, or maybe only one-tenth as much wealth as someone else.
In fact the issue seldom rises, and probably arose here only because of the nature of the underlying linked article, which does quote dollar amounts. By the way, I found that article to be misleading, simplistic and useless; in fact, really nothing more than a thinly disguised banking puff piece. Compare the article title: 62% of Americans Have Under $1,000 in Savings, Survey Finds with the actual "information": GOBankingRates conducted a survey that posed the question, “How much money do you have saved in your savings account?”
Since when do we evaluate someone's "savings" solely by the amount they may have in a bank account?

M* stewardship grades supposedly take manager ownership of fund shares into account. From their (PDF) explanation of stewardship grades:
"Manager Ownership of Fund Shares
Fund managers who invest in the funds they run demonstrate conviction in their investment process and align their own financial interests with fund shareholders'. Morningstar analyzes fund-share ownership trends to determine whether a firm's managers meet the industry's highest standards. For non-U.S. fund firms, Morningstar surveys fund companies to determine the extent to which their fund managers' ownership illustrates industry best practices.
For U.S. fund firms, where funds report their managers' ownership annually to the SEC in the Statement of Additional Information, Morningstar will consider the percentage of the firm's fund assets where at least one of the fund's managers invests in fund shares more than $1 million, the highest ownership level reported to the SEC.
In all analyses of fund-ownership trends, Morningstar excludes types of funds where manager ownership would be difficult or impossible, including funds used only in insurance products, wrap accounts, or retirement plans. Morningstar also excludes fund of funds from the analysis."
If memory serves per what the stewardship pages used to include (text and figures for each component of the grade), they've stopped putting much effort into them; a few funds I looked at had only a summary for the fund family, not the fund itself, showing only an A, B, C etc. for each component of the grade, but no rationale besides the sketchy info in the summary.
The newer version of fund analyst reports, though, does show management ownership (at least for some funds, and of course for only the limited number of funds they do reports on) under the "People" rating rationale.
The reports and stewardship grades are 'premium' products. Otherwise, it's off to the SAI for each fund you're interested in for the info (which are usually linked on M* under the Filings tab).

Funds | Mon Oct 5, 2015 10:13am EDT
By Lawrence Hurley
Oct 5 (Reuters) - The U.S. Supreme Court on Monday left intact an appeals court decision that allowed a financial adviser to sue Charles Schwab Corp over allegations that the brokerage firm deviated from objectives set for a mutual fund, costing investors millions of dollars in losses.
The court rejected Schwab's appeal of a March ruling by the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals that revived the lawsuit.
The..court said Northstar Financial Advisors Inc could sue on behalf of its clients and that Charles Schwab should face claims of breach of contract over the alleged losses in the Schwab Total Bond Index fund.....plaintiffs said that by investing more than 25 percent of assets in non-agency mortgage securities and collateralized mortgage obligations, Schwab portfolio managers ignored the fund's fundamental investment objectives of tracking the Lehman Brothers U.S. Aggregate Bond Index and avoiding big industry bets.
They said this caused the fund to lag its benchmark from Sept. 1, 2007, to Feb. 27, 2009, losing 4.80 percent while the index posted a positive total return of 7.85 percent.
http://www.reuters.com/article/2015/10/05/usa-court-schwab-idUSL1N12512920151005

A section from blog of Steve Blumenthal, CEO of CGM Capital Management Group, Oct 2
On My Radar: Defaults Will Breach the Historical High Next Year – The Fed is the “Wild Card”
http://www.cmgwealth.com/ri/on-my-radar-defaults-will-breach-the-historical-high-next-year-the-fed-is-the-wild-card/
High Yield – Rising Defaults
Edward Altman, the New York University professor who developed the Z-Score method for predicting bankruptcies, says “defaults will breach the historical high next year and the Fed is the “wild card” that has the power to determine how quickly the current credit cycle ends.” (Bloomberg)
“We have blamed the wider Junk Bond spreads on Energy issuers, but last week there was a buyer’s strike. If this continues, you can say goodbye to easy financing for M&A which will remove one large pillar of support from stock prices”. (361 Capital)
* Altice on Friday sold $4.8 billion of junk bonds to fund its $10 billion purchase of Cablevision Systems Corp., according to S&P Capital IQ LCD. When the deal was shopped earlier this month, Altice expected to sell $6.3 billion of debt, investors said. A 10-year bond was priced to yield 10.875%, compared with yields as low as 9.75% that were suggested by bankers initially, according to S&P Capital IQ.
* Olin on Friday sold $1.2 billion of bonds to pay for its pending acquisition of Dow Chemical Co.’s chlorine-products unit. Earlier in the month, Olin was expected to sell $1.5 billion of bonds, fund managers and analysts said. The annual interest rate on Olin’s 10-year bonds sold Friday was 10%, up from 7% expected earlier in the month, according to S&P Capital IQ.
* Companies have announced $3.2 trillion of M&A this year, according to Dealogic, emboldened to merge by cheap debt and the long stock rally that began after the financial crisis. That puts 2015 on pace to rival 2007 as the biggest year ever for takeovers. Issuance of junk bonds backing M&A deals hit a year-to-date record of $77 billion through Friday, according to data from Dealogic.
* A souring of investors on junk bonds could limit the availability of financing for deals that require a lot of borrowing. Banks have been under pressure from federal regulators to reduce their loans to such companies, and a pinch in the bond market could leave those deals struggling for financing. (WSJ)
* After investors snapped up more than $37.5 billion of bonds issued by junk-rated energy companies in the first six months of 2015, just $5.9 billion has been raised since then, according to data compiled by Bloomberg. (Bloomberg)
* Junk-bond investors are bracing for a surge in corporate defaults that would exceed the most pessimistic forecast from credit raters as the Federal Reserve contemplates its first interest-rate increase since 2006.
* A measure of distress in the market is suggesting investors have priced in a default rate of 4.8 percent during the next 12 months, according to Martin Fridson, a money manager at Lehmann Livian Fridson Advisors LLC. That’s almost two percentage points higher than the pace being projected for June next year by Standard & Poor’s, the world’s biggest credit rater, as concern mounts that energy companies that loaded up on cheap debt are going to struggle to refinance. “Unless there is a miraculous turnaround in oil prices there is likely to be a lot of defaults,” Fridson said. “The rating agencies’ approach isn’t capturing the fact that a large part of the economy is far out of step with the overall picture of the mark” (Bloomberg)
* On HY fair valuation from Martin Fridson this week: Now that the sector has sold off sharply, it’s finally at fair value, finds Fridson, chief investment officer at Lehmann Livian Fridson Advisors. He uses a model that includes current economic and market conditions to judge valuations. (Barrons)
* Note that fair value can move to significantly undervalued as happened in 1991, 2002 and 2008. Recessions are a bear (no pun intended).
* The S&P U.S. High-Yield Corporate Bond Index posted a yield to maturity of 7.51% on Tuesday, up from a recent low of 6.21% in late February. Morningstar data shows that the iShares iBoxx $ High Yield Corporate Bond ETF (HYG) has lost 3.6% in the past six months.

Remain tactical with your HY exposure. We are seeing liquidity issues in the market. [...] Corrections create the next great opportunity. As prices decline, yields move higher. Defaults are only a bad thing if you sit on the bus as it falls over the ledge. It will be higher defaults and declining prices and higher yields that will bring us returns like those achieved after the prior crisis.
@AndyJ @Edmond
Well, I hope you two get your signals straight this year about who is going to send the memo re. positive "Oct-Dec seasonality." Last year, Q4, Mr. Junk Bond Market didn't get it. :)

As someone who (like so many here) studies the Commentary texts intensely, I am trying to fathom the extreme Leuthold valentine.
>> They’re an independent firm that produces financial research for institutional investors.
okay
>> They do unparalleled quantitative work deeply informed by historical studies that other firms simply don’t attempt.
Seriously, unparalleled?? Not just unsurpassed? Did you really mean to write that?
>> They write well and thoughtfully. x 2
Moreso than the best of the others who do so?
>> Quite beyond that, they put their research into practice through the Leuthold Core (LCORX) ...
k, who doesn't?
>> Core was a distinguished “world allocation” fund before the term existed. $10,000 entrusted to Leuthold in 1995 would have grown to $53,000 today (10/01/2015).
Lots of different managers were making decisions during those two decades, per M*, unless you are claiming Leuthold himself really ran the show, regardless of the group dynamics and inputs, until 2011, but also still, albeit mostly retired, that he has major say from jealousy-inducing Bar Harbor.
>> Over that same period, an investment in the Vanguard 500 Index Fund (VFINX) would have growth to $46,000 while the average tactical allocation manager would have managed to grow it to $26,000.
Not sure whether to go there, using many owned oranges. One would not want, over those two decades, to compare Core with FPACX or OAKBX; but are they tactical? One would not want to compare Core with FCNTX or FLPSX or PRBLX (management change here) or even GABEX, listed here since all equities (SP500) was mentioned.
>> All of which is to say, they’re not some ivory tower assemblage of perma-bears peddling esoteric strategies to the rubes.
All righty then.
>> The bottom line is that a cyclical bear began in August and it’s got a ways to go.
Huh. If they say so. Maybe they're right.
Whence this valentine and pitch ?

Hi, Press.
The firm is supported by several minority owners:
From today"s news: "Lovell Minnick Partners is almost home after a trip through Asia. The firm agreed to sell a portion of its stake in investment management firm Matthews International Capital Management LLC to Japan’s Mizuho Financial Group. Matthews International, also known as Matthews Asia, invests solely in Asia and serves as the investment adviser for the Matthews Asia Funds, a group of 16 open-ended equity and fixed-income mutual funds organized in the U.S. and 11 SIVACs registered in Luxembourg."
The earlier stories are linked below. There is some concern from friends of the firm that the outsiders may have fostered a culture change of sorts, which might account for some of the manager departures and the launch of newer, narrow funds (their newest funds are Value, ESG, Emerging, Focus). As with all stories of institutional change, it's impossible for outsiders (and almost impossible even for insiders) to know quite why things transpired as they did.
For what that's worth,
David
http://matthewsasia.com/matthews-news/press-releases/article-342/default.fs
https://www.pehub.com/2015/09/lovell-minnick-sells-part-of-matthews-asia-stake/

FYI:
Regards,
Ted
October 1, 2015
Dear WEALTHTRACK Subscriber,
Today’s front page of “The Wall Street Journal” sums it up: “A Painful Quarter for Markets.” The third quarter, which just ended was the worst for stocks since 2011’s third quarter during the European debt crisis. In the three months ended yesterday, the S&P 500 lost 6.9% and the Dow Industrials dropped 7.6%. Concerns about a slowdown in global growth, especially in China and faltering corporate earnings contributed to the damage. According to the Journal, analysts are predicting third quarter profits for S&P 500 companies will decline 4.5% versus a year ago. They fell 0.7% in the second quarter. It will be the first time since 2009 that profits fall two quarters in a row. However, a big decline in energy company profits is responsible for most of the anticipated damage. Without the estimated 65% decline in energy operating profits the S&P’s earnings would be up 3.4%.
Another key contributor to the market’s malaise was the Federal Reserve’s decision not to raise interest rates in September. After nearly seven years of its unprecedented zero interest rate policy, or ZIRP as it’s known on Wall Street, the consensus was it was time to get interest rates out of emergency mode and back to some sort of normalcy.
It turns out Federal Reserve Chairwoman Janet Yellen agrees with the consensus. In a stunning speech the week after the Fed’s decision, Ms. Yellen made a lengthy case for a rate hike this year “…it will likely be appropriate to raise the target range for the federal-funds rate sometime later this year and to continue boosting short-term rates at a gradual pace thereafter as the labor market improves further and inflation moves back to our 2% objective.”
As veteran Fed watcher, Roberto Perli at Cornerstone Macro noted, after months of not knowing where Chairwoman Yellen stood on rate hikes, we now have clarity on her views at least.
This seemingly endless fixation on when and if the Fed will raise short term rates might seem overdone but the signals and actions of the world’s most influential central bank, of the world’s reserve currency country has huge implications and can steady or roil global markets.
This week’s guest, Kathleen Gaffney, is among those very concerned about recent Fed policy and its financial impact on markets and investors, but she is also more optimistic than most about the world’s growth prospects.
Gaffney is Co-Director of Diversified Fixed Income at Eaton Vance Investment Management. She is also lead portfolio manager of the Eaton Vance Bond Fund, which she launched in early 2013. Until 2012 Gaffney was Co-Portfolio Manager of the Loomis Sayles Bond Fund with legendary investor Dan Fuss where their team was named Morningstar’s Fixed Income Manager of the Year. In this week’s interview, I asked Gaffney why the Federal Reserve’s decision not to raise interest rates in September was a mistake and about the contrarian positions which have hurt her fund’s performance this year.
If you’d like to see the show before it airs, it is available to our PREMIUM subscribers right now. We also have an EXTRA interview with Gaffney, about bond market illiquidity and how she is handling it, available exclusively on our website.
As always, if you have comments or questions, we encourage you to connect with us via Facebook or Twitter.
Thank you for watching. Have a great weekend and make the week ahead a profitable and productive one.
Best Regards,
Consuelo

John Kimelman of Barron's summarizes, and points readers to, an article written by one independent investment advisor who believes the financial operating structure of the MLP may not survive in its current form. Energy companies with conventional structures, that may weather the continuing storm better over the near term, are mentioned at the end of his entry.
http://www.barrons.com/articles/why-the-mlp-business-model-may-be-a-goner-1443476002?mod=BOL_hp_highlight_4
The article, written by Brian Nelson of Valuentum Securities, can be found here:
http://valuentumbrian.tumblr.com/post/130073604290/warning-the-mlp-business-model-may-not-survive
Now that bankers are re-evaluating price decks and borrowing capacity [...] most master limited partnerships and midstream corporates may have to make the difficult decision to either cut their distributions/dividends or suspend growth plans in them altogether, a move that would completely negate forever the dividend-based equity pricing framework used by brokerage houses, leading to a further unraveling of equity prices. Falling stock prices would then weaken credit quality, and a bust would truly ensue, as shares finally revert back to traditional, tried-and-true free cash flow valuation processes, as opposed to one based on a financially-engineered payout.

Sounds like a good gameplan! Here's my ongoing list:
AMG Funds:
https://ip.amgfunds.com/income_cap_gain_distributions
Aston Funds:
https://astonfunds.com/includes/modules/assets/controllers/Files/download.php?file=1445889033_aston-funds-9-30-15-capital-gains-estimates.pdf&r=/
Calvert:
http://www.calvert.com/resources/tax-center/estimated-distributions
Columbia Acorn Funds:
https://www.columbiathreadneedleus.com/content/columbia/pdf/2015_ACORN_YEAR_END_CAP_GAINS_ESTIMATES.PDF
Credit Suisse:
https://www.credit-suisse.com/media/am/docs/us/asset-management/2015-credit-suisse-notification-preliminary-distributions.pdf
Deutsche:
https://fundsus.deutscheawm.com/EN/products/mutual-funds-capital-gains.jsp
Dodge and Cox:
https://www.dodgeandcox.com/pdf/shareholder_services/dc_estimated_distributions_2015.pdf
Eaton Vance:
http://funds.eatonvance.com/tax-information.php
Federated:
http://www.federatedinvestors.com/FII/daf/pdf/45720.pdf
Gotham Funds:
https://www.gothamfunds.com/UploadFiles/9942fb85-d.pdf
Hartford:
https://www.hartfordfunds.com/dam/en/docs/pub/funddocuments/regulatorydocument/Tax Center/2015 Estimated Cap Gains .pdf
Invesco:
https://www.invesco.com/static/us/investors/contentdetail?contentId=9a64a8c235512410VgnVCM100000c2f1bf0aRCRD&dnsName=us
IVA:
https://www.ivafunds.com/documents/news/Estimates 2015 Capital Gains and Income Distribution - Final.pdf
Johnny Hancock:
http://www.jhinvestments.com/CMS/DownloadableItems/NewsDocuments/Public/MFCGBL.pdf
Legg Mason:
https://individualinvestor.myleggmason.com/portal/server.pt/gateway/PTARGS_0_355661_3518_1277_37025_43/http;/indinvserver;8400/indivPortletWebApp/documents/tax_information/D17213-2014 December Estimates for Posting 2 F.pdf
LKCM Funds:
http://www.lkcmfunds.com/media/pdfs/LKCM_Distribution_Estimates.pdf
MetWest:
https://www.tcw.com/~/media/Downloads/MetWest_Funds/Distribution_and_Tax_Information/MWFUNDsb.ashx
MFS:
https://www.mfs.com/wps/FileServerServlet?articleId=templatedata/internet/file/data/backlot/mfs_cg_fly&servletCommand=default
Nationwide:
http://www.nationwide.com/financial/advisor-mutual-funds-distributions.jsp
Neuberger Berman:
http://www.nb.com/pages/public/en-us/tax-information.aspx
Pioneer Investments:
http://us.pioneerinvestments.com/misc/pdfs/taxcenter/capgains15.pdf?adtrack=news-hmpg-capital-gain-estimates-sept15
Putnam Investments:
https://www.putnam.com/literature/pdf/EO183.pdf
Russell Investments:
https://www.russell.com/US/documents/syndication/Fund_Information/Tax_Information/2015_estimated_cap_gains_ric_004712828.pdf
TCW:
https://www.tcw.com/~/media/Downloads/TCW_Funds/Distribution_and_Tax_Information/FUNDsb.ashx
TIAA-CREF:
https://www.tiaa-cref.org/public/products-services/mutual-funds/planning-tools/tax-planning
Tweedy Browne:
http://www.tweedy.com/resources/library_docs/general/2015 Estimated Distributions 8-31-15.pdf
UBS:
https://www.ubs.com/content/dam/internethosting/us_library/en/mutual/cap_gains.pdf
UBS PACE:
https://www.ubs.com/content/dam/internethosting/us_library/en/pace/cap_gains.pdf
Wells Fargo:
https://www.wellsfargoadvantagefunds.com/wfweb/wf/funds/performance/distributions.jsp?BV_UseBVCookie=no

Deep cleansing breath, deep cleansing breath ...
Eric Heufner, GP's president, writes:
Sorry for the confusion. We have three large buckets of clients: individual investors, institutions, and financial advisers.
The “DIRECT PURCHASERS” section of the Indication of Interest Form is the section to be used by individual investors and institutions.
The “ADVISER PLATFORM PURCHASES” is only meant to be used by our financial adviser clients. These financial advisers use a trading platform at Schwab, Fidelity, TD Ameritrade, Pershing, or such that is specifically designed for Advisers. For example, an advisory firm that uses Schwab for their client trades will have a specific Adviser Code with Schwab, and every trade they place with Schwab will have that code on it so that Schwab can track the assets accordingly. This gives Schwab an additional management tool. Consequently, we will be able to put the fund on the Schwab Adviser platform in an already closed status and then ask Schwab to only allow trades from advisers having the specific codes that we have approved (which is why we need our adviser clients to tell us what their code is). Unfortunately, this would be much more complicated to execute on the individual investor platforms, so a similar approach is not available there (thus the need for individuals to come direct instead).
Perhaps we should have sent two separate forms tailored to the type of client. For your audience the short answer is to ignore the ADVISER PLATFORM PURCHASES section since it is meant just for the financial adviser audience.
For what interest that holds,
David