The same thought occurred to me. Our collection of financial miscellany is about 4x that of "COREX".

@DAK: For your information.
Regards,
Ted
http://www.investopedia.com/financial-edge/0712/closed-end-vs.-open-end-funds.aspx
Pros & Cons Closed-End Funds:
http://www.wsj.com/articles/SB10001424052748703673604575550451680831216

Another email received from Ken Moraif......I copied and pasted the email where he issued his sell signal on Friday.
"Money Matters is pleased to announce that Ken Moraif has been named by Barron’s for the fourth year in a row as one of the top 100 Independent Financial Advisors in the nation. Ken has jumped ahead significantly this year and is recognized as the 18th advisor in the rankings; he was listed as 31st in 2014, 40th in 2013 and 91st in 2012. The ranking showcases the nation's top advisors based on assets under management and revenue growth, as well as quality of the practice..."
+++++++++++++++++
I don't place any value in something like this, where somehow Barron's ranks financial advisors...and Ken Moraif is supposedly the 18th best financial advisor in the US. On what basis??
and also:
"Money Matters is also proud to be named one of the
2015 Forbes Top 100 Wealth Managers!"
First Barron's, now Forbes........
"From the stock market's gyrations and the collapse in oil prices to tax planning and the guessing game around Federal Reserve rate hikes, investors have a lot to grapple with these days. More than ever they are turning to the counsel of independent financial advisors, judging by the swelling assets under management of the firms that make up Forbes' 2015 list of Top Wealth Managers. The 100 firms that made the cut collectively managed $468 billion at the end of 2014"
Below is from Barron's:

How does Barron's decide that Ken Moraif is the 18th best financial advisor in the US??
There's no way they could commit the resources to thoroughly study the financial advisors in America
3.5 hours till the market open......
I'm sure you're already on the case.....looking at the futures.....
Cheers,
Robert

To the article's question: No one really knows. While both T. Rowe Price and Dodge and Cox (my major holdings) do a nice job breaking down their income fund components, I'd venture to guess they also include a few derivative instruments and also some "unrated" bonds in these funds. So you need to have a bit of faith in their in-house analysis. With these two houses my faith is considerable. But, buyer beware.
EMs have always been prone to dramatic swings between euphoria and pessimism. The really big downturns (30%+ losses) seem to happen roughly once a decade. These big setbacks, like we're witnessing now, almost invariably affect global developed markets - especially on the equity side.
EMs have their place in some people's portfolios. But I'm a bit bemused that some who would not consider mailing off a check to be deposited in some financial institution or invested in some company located in Russia, Romania or Thailand, think nothing of buying a fund with assets in these countries..

Hi Mr. Braham and Guys,
I don’t worry that only “23% of Certified Financial Planners are women”. In fact, I congratulate that industry for its recent advances in that area. Anecdotally, I have recently attended several financial meetings where the women have been dominant players. More power to them!
From my perspective the glass is becoming half-full, and is rising. And for good reason. Long standing investment research has definitely established that women are superior investors when contrasted against men. They are more patient, they listen better, they trade less frequently, and, as a result, they enjoy better payoffs.
It’s important to put all statistics in a proper context. Here are some numbers that help.
In the USA, the workforce participation rate is 57% for women and 70% for men. Yet only roughly 2% of mutual funds are run by women on an assets-under-management basis. By the way, the mutual fund organization that deploys the highest percentage of women money managers is Dodge and Cox; at that firm, 25% of funds are controlled by females. Female leadership among the S&P 500 firms is pitiful. At this time, they occupy only 5% of leadership positions within that subpopulation.
So, on a relative basis, Certified Financial Planners are ahead of the curve. That’s both good for that industry and especially good for their clients. I’m optimistic about the future for women as money managers. As you noted, they have done a remarkable job for eons in the household. In Southern California, Mexican women do amazing jobs successfully stretching meager resources in their households.
I’m sure other, more experienced speakers are always attractive options at trade conference meetings. But announcing a celebrity speaker will guarantee a huge initial audience that will show-up for the talk and for earlier scheduled meetings. It’s a tactic that is frequently deployed at many tedious and long conferences.
I wish Monica Lewinsky success in her new career. I see no reason to introduce Bristol Palin into this discussion in any context, especially in such a cruel manner. It does not honor the goals or the standards of this fine website.
Best Wishes.

While I feel for Lewinsky and think she was unfairly treated in the press, I think her speaking in this specific case is perhaps a missed opportunity. The financial world remains fairly sexist and imbalanced relative to the population. For instance, 51% of the population are women and they are often the financial decision makers in many households, yet only 23% of Certified Financial Planners are women: cfp.net/docs/about-cfp-board/cfp-board_win_web.pdf While Lewinsky may attract a certain prurient interest from members of the audience making jokes about her dress, it might be more valuable and instructive to have a successful woman financial adviser discuss the unique needs of female clients and why the financial world isn't as diverse as it should be. In fact, the linked paper presents a slew of top women CFPs who could've been more relevant as speakers for this particular occasion.

I'm trying to think if Monica is any more qualified to address Financial Advisors than Bristol is to advise teens on abstinence.
Coming soon to a college near you. B.A. in Speaking Engagements. How to create controversy in your life and then profit from it the rest of your life.
Okay maybe the degree does not apply to Monica.

Will she be wearing the dress to address these financial advisors? Just wondering....

FYI: DoubleLine Capital’s co-founder Jeffrey Gundlach says that investors are underestimating the potential impact of higher rates on the economy and across financial markets.
Regards,
Ted
http://blogs.barrons.com/focusonfunds/2015/08/19/king-of-bonds-gundlach-no-great-case-for-higher-rates/tab/print/

Chris Davis funds (Selected American, Clipper, and New York Venture) consistently overweigh financial sector and they often performed poorly in down market than his peers.
My small emerging market allocation through Wasatch Emerging Small Cap and EEMV have not done well this year. YACKX, ARTQX, and VNQ also lagged badly. Surprisingly, the more conservative funds including Vanguard Min Voltatitly, TRP Capital Appreciation and FMI International have done well that negated the former funds.

@bee. Thanks. It's nice to see this kind of list. It would be nice to see more postings like yours and less about biotech. The irony is when I was just starting out as a financial writer I was given the job of writing a weekly dueling portfolios column interviewing Don Yacktman and Jean Marie-Eveillard about their best ideas. This was in the late 1990s and everybody hated their patient value investment styles and readers would complain about how boring the managers I covered for this column were. Of course, when the dot.com bubble burst they both became heroes and celebrities again. If one likes Yacktman's style, now is the time to buy his fund, not when he's a hero. Then again, there is one unique risk factor. Don isn't running the fund anymore. But I believe the style remains fairly consistent.

Hi Guys,
Like Ted, I made some money investing in Peter Lynch and Magellan. Unlike Ted, I only invested small amounts, and only after Lynch had piloted Magellan for a half dozen years. The percentage returns were impressive, the dollar amounts much less so. During that phase of my investment learning cycle, I was still heavily committed to individual stock positions. My bad decision, and also bad timing.
Like Lewis Braham, I question if Lynch would be as successful in today’s marketplace as he was in yesteryear’s investing world. I doubt it.
Peter Lynch's record is unarguably outstanding. There can be no debate over his superior 13 years of active Magellan fund management. Today’s investing environment is significantly different. In his hay-day, Lynch enjoyed several advantages that do not currently exist.
His Fidelity boss (Ned Johnson) allowed him to go anywhere; today, a manager is more tightly constrained by a discipline to stay within prescribed box styles. Lynch was permitted to invest internationally, a rare option in the late 1970s and early 1980s. He invested in countless stocks, some after merely visiting a busy store; one wonders about the sagacity of that tactic. It is often said that Lynch never saw a stock that he didn’t want to buy.
Thirty-five years ago, Lynch was mostly investing against Joe Six-Pack. The competition was definitely inferior when contrasted against today’s fully trained money managers. This is the most common explanation for the disappearing Alpha phenomenon. It is tough to build long winning streaks when nobody owns an advantage for very long. Information exchange quickly erodes any such advantage.
I’m sure Lynch would do a competent managerial job today. Given the highly sophisticated and competitive environment that currently exists, becoming a superstar fund manager is far less likely. This is not a knock specifically aimed at Peter Lynch. The financial field is presently loaded with talented, deeply supported folks.
Institutional agencies carefully research and hire successful active fund managers. It is a laborious process. These institutions are finding that a much more challenging task. The selected management’s performance records are deteriorating. Alpha is more elusive. In response, these same institutions are now punting, and are presently hiring more passively managed sub-units. Things change.
Best Wishes.

Hi Guys,
I just read the Barry Ritholtz referenced column. It certainty has a philosophical bent to it. Each of us is likely to have a very personal takeaway from it based on our investment and life experiences.
Mine is that he is cautioning investors to be patient. We may have a reasonable understanding of what might happen tomorrow, but extend the timeframe to weeks and months and that understanding evaporates quickly over time. Except for a few rare souls, whose record over extended times is somewhat suspect, the experimental evidence is that forecasters can’t forecast.
Market gurus’ prediction accuracy rate falls precipitously over time. Phil Tetlock is proving just how challenging forecasting is in his extensive multiyear studies. Here is a Link to an older Tetlock perspective::
http://longnow.org/seminars/02007/jan/26/why-foxes-are-better-forecasters-than-hedgehogs/
My simple takeaway from Tetlock’s staggeringly huge study is that forecasting is a very illusive skill that can only marginally be improved under certain restrictive conditions.
Near the end of the Ritholtz article he suggests that mathematicians might prosper in the investing universe by the manner and tools by which they approach problems. That speculation might be true, but I suspect the evidence is meager, if it exists at all. Anecdotally, I know too many solid mathematicians who have not done especially well with their investment portfolios or financial decision making.
As Rudyard Kipling noted: “There are nine and sixty ways of constructing tribal lays, And every single one of them is right”. There are likely that many ways to win in the marketplace. It is equally likely that there are many more than 69 other ways to lose in the marketplace. I doubt that mathematicians have discovered the magical mix.
Experience is certainly one way to enhance the success odds. But experience alone is costly, is painful, and leaves scabs and scars. The science that a mathematician can contribute is an alternate way. It trades on statistical analyses, which is mostly backward dependent for relationships.
The future will not necessarily resemble that history. Hence mathematics alone is not a sufficient answer. A more promising approach is a merger of scabs, scars, and science to improve investment outcome odds. Exactly how that merging should be executed is far above my pay-grade.
But note that the Tetlock article that I referenced is titled “Why Foxes are Better Forecasters than Hedgehogs”. Relying on a more diversified investment toolbox just might improve our investment outcomes. Using an entire toolkit of experience, scabs, scars, and science is a worthwhile approach to consider.
Since Barry Ritholtz waxed philosophical in his column, I believe that permits me to wax philosophical in my reply.
Best Wishes.

51 stocks, but 42% cash.
About 37% of the invested portion is in firms headquartered in developed markets, his peers run about 10 points lower. Domestic names in the portfolio: Visa, Facebook, and Kansas City Southern. Lesser-known names include First Cash Financial (pawn shops in the US and Mexico) and EPAM Systems (small software firm). The former has one analyst covering it, the latter has none. Other developed stocks include Diageo and Delphi Automotive.
On whole, a somewhat higher-priced portfolio than its peers.
And it's seven weeks old, so that's all just for curiosity and fun.
David

Hi JohnN,
Thank you for the Link to this Joshua Kennon article. Over many years I have been informed by his many fine financial articles. This one did not disappoint in that regard.
Kennon mostly directs his writings towards neophyte investors. After many years, I am not a novice investor, but since I have no formal training in that arena, my amateur knowledge base is somewhat spotty. It has holes that Kennon can and does fill.
Although I read Benjamin Graham’s “The Intelligent Investor”, it completely escaped my memory that Graham recommended a portfolio asset allocation that had a 25% bond holding floor and a 75% bond position ceiling. I didn’t recall these limits to his conservative investing approach. I wonder if his student, Warren Buffett, shares the same or similar portfolio construction constraints.
Best Wishes.

Curiously, I ran across a shareholder report for the FMI group this morning, who echoed similar sentiments. The first 5 pages of the linked document are pretty sobering if financial engineering makes you a bit queasy. They don't have a great deal of confidence in a good slice of the biotech sector either.
But....that's what makes a market.
http://www.fiduciarymgt.com/funds/shrpt/qly_shrpt_063015.pdf

I found this one pretty damning from a June speech he gave to the CFA Society:
"Capital formation, as this process is known, is largely represented by the raising of equity capital for new and existing companies. In recent years, total public stock issuance (IPOs, etc.) has averaged some $250 billion annually. On the other hand, during the same period, the annual volume of stock trading has averaged $35 trillion. Thus, capital formation has represented just 7/10ths of 1% of the activities of our financial system, trading activity 99.3%. And much of that trading, to state what must be obvious, has nothing to do with long-term investment. In fact, much of that frenzied activity is merely short-term speculation. Our challenge is to return long-term investing to its starring role in the financial movie, not merely as a co-star or in a cameo role, nor as a mere extra."
What does this say about the functioning of our capitalist system to spur job creation, innovation and true economic growth when so much money is devoted to just paper trading hands and so little is actually devoted to new capital formation?

People who complain about things like this are labeled as "doomers" until the issue can't be ignored and then we hear about it as a "crisis" and the financial media of course goes, "who could have known?"
Hey, ZIRP was really great at creating something sustainable and not just another boom/bust, right? The fact that the dollar volume of ETFs traded has now gone past US GDP (and as you mention above, capital formation has represented just 7/10ths of 1% of the activities of our financial system, trading activity 99.3%) shows an economy not built on sand, right?

Yeah, Reckless monetary policy powered by absurdly short-term thinking only results in positives. Right.
It wouldn't surprise me if this is the "ultimate" bubble and things in the global economy look very different on the other side.
Now the he Chinese have devalued, the economy is weak, it would appear that there's a bust going on in oil that will very likely get worse and the Fed seems less and less likely to raise interest rates, or they'll raise 50 basis points only to come back down to zero which will look awful. Yeah, the economy couldn't take a rise in the interest rate of 50 basis points, but everything's just a-okay.
If we have another crisis at or near the zero bound after several years or ZIRP and multiple QEs, the Fed will have some explaining to do.
So hey, what's next? John Kerry is making threats about how the dollar may not be the reserve currency if the Iran deal isn't passed. Wouldn't surprise me if it just happened anyways.

So, again, my view is that this period ends badly. It's not a question of if, but a question of when.

I found this one pretty damning from a June speech he gave to the CFA Society:
"Capital formation, as this process is known, is largely represented by the raising of equity capital for new and existing companies. In recent years, total public stock issuance (IPOs, etc.) has averaged some $250 billion annually. On the other hand, during the same period, the annual volume of stock trading has averaged $35 trillion. Thus, capital formation has represented just 7/10ths of 1% of the activities of our financial system, trading activity 99.3%. And much of that trading, to state what must be obvious, has nothing to do with long-term investment. In fact, much of that frenzied activity is merely short-term speculation. Our challenge is to return long-term investing to its starring role in the financial movie, not merely as a co-star or in a cameo role, nor as a mere extra."
What does this say about the functioning of our capitalist system to spur job creation, innovation and true economic growth when so much money is devoted to just paper trading hands and so little is actually devoted to new capital formation?

Excerpt from the Prospectus:
PURCHASE AND SALE OF FUND SHARES
As of the close of business on March 5, 2014, the Fund is closed to new investors seeking to purchase shares of the Fund either directly or through third party intermediaries, subject to certain exceptions for financial advisors whose clients have already established an account in the Fund and participants in certain qualified retirement plans with an existing position in the Fund as of May 1, 2013.
Existing shareholders of the Fund as of March 5, 2014 may continue to purchase additional shares of the Fund. The Fund’s investment adviser retains the right to make exceptions to any action taken to close the Fund or limit inflows into the Fund.