I was referring to Z shares when I wrote that Columbia has been cutting off access through supermarkets.
If you have a direct account with Columbia, then that is a fund account, not a brokerage account. Technically each fund is held in a separate account - you get a separate 1099-DIV for each fund you hold (unlike at a brokerage). So when you did the exchange, you opened an account for Emerging Markets.
You are right that the website does allow exchanges to new funds. But it doesn't allow the opening of new funds online if you want to pay from a bank or by check. For that, you have to use a special paper form (seven pages) that is not available online.
That form is not user-friendly:

Part 8: Financial Adivsor's Firm
Your financial advisor should complete this section. Please note: missing or incomplete information may result in our failure to establish the account.

What's a financial advisor? The only investment designation I'm familiar with is DIY :-)
With respect to non-Acorn funds:

Part 11: Class Z or Load-waived Class A Share Eligibility Certification
Investors interested in purchasing class Z (or load-waived class A shares if class Z is not available) of mutual funds distributed through Columbia Management Investment distributors [sic] Inc. (Distributor) must declare their eligibility by certifying the appropriate information below:
[box] I (we) am a shareholder ... of a fund distributed by the Distributor (i) who holds Class Z shares; (ii) who holds Class A shares that were exchanged from class[sic] Z shares; or (iii) who purchased certain no-load shares of funds merged with funds distributed by the distributor [sic].

So you can purchase any Columbia fund's Z shares (if they exist), else load-waived A shares of the fund.

I suspect any responses you get will be from legacy investors like Maurice and myself. Though unlike Maurice, I did invest in a Columbia fund ages ago, when Columbia was a boutique shop in Oregon with a few good growth funds. Got rid of that in 1997 when Columbia was acquired by Fleet Boston (later called Fleet Financial).
The Acorn lineage that Maurice is referring to is almost completely separate. Liberty acquired a bunch of fund companies including Stein Roe (Young Investors fund, Stein Roe Special), Newport Pacific (Newport Tiger Fund), Wanger (Acorn Funds), and others.
Fleet Boston brought these Liberty lines together with Columbia in 2001 (when it acquired Liberty). BofA in turn acquired the whole mess in 2004, subsequently merging some Nations Bank funds into it. (BofA had merged with Nations Bank previously.)
Regarding Excelsior funds - they were acquired by US Trust (which was acquired at some point by Schwab, but sold to BofA in 2007), and rebranded Columbia when BofA acquired them.
BofA has since sold the Columbia line to Ameriprise.
The Acorn funds have been kept somewhat separate, but otherwise, I don't have a clue what "Columbia Funds" means anymore. It's certainly not the low cost growth-oriented boutique I bought years ago.
I do know that they make it exceedingly difficult for "eligible investors" (those who are allowed to purchase noload Z shares like SMGIX). Can't seem to open an account online, can't even find an application to download that includes Z class shares.
Columbia has closed off access to Z shares via supermarkets - you can buy their A shares, but Z share accounts are frozen (no buys allowed, even for grandfathered customers).
You put all that together, and maybe Columbia is of interest for hard-to-find types of funds, but it's not a family I'd be looking to for most categories. All that said, Pope seems to be doing a fine job at SMGIX. It's natural that this resembles the current incarnation of UMBIX, since Pope manages that as well (albeit with others there).
But as M* opines, it's a different style now - not the same as the value-oriented fund you sold off. If that's what you're looking for, it seems you may still need to keep looking.

I rarely see any of their funds mentioned on MFO, I have SMGIX which seems to be fairly similar to my old fave UMBIX which I sold when the manager retired. I recently added their tech fund CMTSX to my retirement portfolio. Would like to see if others use this family, and what they think. Im aware most of the board uses Fidelity, T D Ameritrade and such rather than ones with financial advisors, so it may be a small pool of investors here.

FYI: REITs are an inferior form of real estate investing. – Real estate investment trusts have become quite popular in recent years, as the Fed’s easy-money policies have sent investors to all corners of the financial markets in search of yield. From my perspective, buying the common stock of publicly-traded REITs is an inferior form of real estate investing.
Regards,
Ted
http://learnbonds.com/this-weeks-top-bond-market-stories-november-8th-edition/

FAIRX ytd -1.68% last month +8.56%
Maybe it is time to sell.
Holdings top 2: AIG +6.34%, BAC +11.95%
The rest... with exception of St Joe, all are down double digit ytd.

Interesting discussion comparing JOE and the Ackman-chaired HHC from a couple of years ago. You can see the difference in the two stocks since.
http://www.tilsonfunds.com/pdf/A Tale of Two Stocks-Kiplinger's-8-11.pdf

The beginning of the end? That's what it looks like to me.
http://www.reuters.com/article/2014/11/07/us-sears-holdings-reit-idUSKBN0IR13B20141107
Up to 300 stores to be sold. If they want to make it an online presence, they still have to change the whole model of what Sears is.

Sears is selling the stores to the REIT and leasing them back. So, effectively, Sears is the tenant of the REIT in those cases. It's sort of what Ackman wanted Target to do several years ago, but Target wasn't having it.
If Sears does this REIT, "While the REIT move would raise money, it also would bring additional expenses. McGinley estimates that the company would pay about $150 million in mall rents if it goes through with the plan. It’s one additional burden on a company that’s burning over $1.5 billion in free cash flow,” he said. “This places Sears as a retailer in a more precarious predicament.”"
They've sold a number of the best locations already, including the most profitable in the chain to General Growth. (http://online.wsj.com/articles/SB10001424052702303643304579109023202738550)
"Investors have speculated ever since that part of the attraction for Mr. Lampert was the underlying value of Sears's real estate. Yet, only a quarter of Sears mall stores are in the best centers, with the rest in average and even subpar malls, according to Green Street Advisors, a real estate research firm."
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2014-11-07/sears-considers-sale-and-leaseback-deal-to-strengthen-finances.html
"Not all of Sears’s space is in prime locations, though. About 27 percent of the company’s square footage lies in what CoStar Portfolio Strategy calls “weak local trade area demographics.” That means households in the surrounding neighborhood aren’t big spenders.
An additional 23 percent of Sears’s space is in “questionable” locations, with somewhat better buying power, according to Suzanne Mulvee, CoStar’s director of research in Boston."
If they are leasing back the stores, it's effectively providing a liquidity boost in the near-term. Why are they not just getting rid of this valuable real estate outright? You have this case that Simon Properties has X amount of space and Sears also has a huge amount of retail space, but that doesn't mean that the quality of the real estate is at all similar.
There's value there, but I think the relative silence in terms of people interested in buying this space from Sears over the years speaks volumes as to the value of it.
There's a ton of net lease REITs in existence. No one wanted to take this on? I do think it will be interesting to see the reaction to the Sears REIT from the standpoint of showing what the market thinks of the value. If some other REIT took this on, that's one thing, but this will be a purely Sears REIT and will be judged as such when it starts trading.
Meanwhile, you effectively play a game of Jenga with the core business, taking out parts and pieces and weakening what's left of the core. All of this discussion about Sears creating a member-centric retail operation is incredibly unrealistic from the standpoint of, you have a CEO who has neglected the retail operations for years and suddenly he goes, "Lets be Costco, only without the membership fees or value proposition." I've said previously, either Lampert is not being honest (this was never about a turnaround of the retail, and Berkowitz has said as much in an interview) or he really does think a turnaround of the business is possible and in that case, I think that's almost laughable.
Meanwhile, he's dragged out his time wrecking value at Sears to what, almost a decade now? He has a legacy as a skilled and intelligent investor. He's been a complete disaster as a retailer and as an investor, he's attempted to turn Sears - still a very large company - into his own personal financial Frankenstein experiment. Take a classic American brand and add the worst aspects of financial engineering, take nearly a decade and wind up with enormous losses and a more irrelevant brand than ever. Just take the thing private already.

We should also add here that Eddie Lampert has his own hedge fund. ESL Investments. SHLD is over 46% of the funds portfolio.
http://www.insidermonkey.com/hedge-fund/esl+investments/14

How much in the way of redemptions has Lampert seen due to Sears? Probably lots.
http://dealbook.nytimes.com/2013/12/05/investors-pull-back-from-lamperts-fund-2/?_r=0

http://www.marketwatch.com/story/why-sears-is-still-a-sell-2014-11-07?link=MW_home_latest_news
Creation of a REIT would amount to “just buying them some more time,” said Ken Perkins, president of Retail Metrics. “Almost all of what they have done over the past several years is financial engineering and not addressing the core business problems.”
EXACTLY. People complained about IBM's financial engineering - what Eddie Lampert has done to Sears over the last several years is the biggest example of the worst aspects of financial engineering.

The prospectus says the fund is closed with a handful of exceptions, none of which seem like they would apply to new investments at either Schwab or Scottrade unless you were using a financial advisor and paying an asset based fee. But indeed Schwab's website seems to suggest the fund is open. I didn't try to process an order but maybe it would have stopped me at some point. E*TRADE also says its closed to new investors.

@finder.
I share same disappointment about GTAA performance. It's never been easy to love.
I tried to articulate both Mebane's disappointments and successes so far in the piece "The Existential Pleasure of Engineering Beta."
I actually think he's is one of the more prominent figures in the fund industry today, particularly exchange traded fund industry.
Certainly not by AUM.
But in his ability to distill complex and breakout investment strategies (at least for the common investor) into terms we can understand. Then, his attempts to employ them via ETFs.
I first came across his work in the standout paper on timing methods, entitled "A Quantitative Approach to Tactical Asset Allocation."
Then, his books Ivy Portfolio, Shareholder Yield, and Global Value. All straight-forward, unpretentious, transparent...yet innovative.
All must reads. (But granted, I'm a fan.)
Scott (our jewel of a contributor on the board) was person that alerted me to GTAA and its disappointing performance.
I attribute it to three main factors: 1) all-asset (aka "Ivy League") have performed pretty poor over the period since GTAA started, 2) AdvisorShares excessive fee structure, and 3) volatility in commodities and foreign equity also likely detracted, since timing does best in trending markets versus short-term gyrations.
Certainly, the new Cambria ETFs address the fee issue. Its fees are considerably less the those charged by AdvisorShares.
Time will tell on the other two factors!
A one month drop (or rise) in GVAL should not really concern an investor, since the long-haul strategy looks to benefit from undervalued companies in undervalued countries (aka hated companies in hated countries). So, expect a bumpy ride.
And, SYLD seems to be doing quite well.
Hey none of this helps much, I know, if you happen to be holding a fund that is doing poorly. Trust me, no matter how many times M* told me Dodge & Cox employed a time-proven value strategy with experienced staff, low cost, shared incentive, high integrity, and share-holder friendly policies...none of that helped me to stomach its performance in 2008 or even late 2011.
Well, after it recovered, maybe it did.
At the end of the day, David encourages us to call attention to funds trying to do good things, especially smaller and younger ones. I certainly think Cambria qualifies.
Again, these are young funds, and time will tell if the strategies and their implementation pay-off in satisfactory excess returns. But, if they don't, we will be first to call attention to it.
Hope my rambling helps explain a little.
(Hey, what to you think of championing a policy that financial writers must be invested in any fund they recommend? Ha!)

it's still a regular IPO process with 5% underwriting fee and over-allotment shares (support). It takes around 45 days to get rid of the premium most of the time. under certain market conditions and in several "star" offerings, premium might only increase over and above 5%, but it is indeed a rare occasion.
underwriting fees are paid by investors who get access via financial advisors associated with the underwriting, most notably UBS, MS, BAC.
for a semi-educated investor, the time to buy after the IPO premium has disappeared. it could be due to the price going down or due to exceptional performance of the NAV catching up with the price.

My understanding of the ipo issue with CEFs: There are costs to bring a new closed end fund to the market. Those costs are borne by those who purchase the initial public offering. When I looked into it years ago, those costs averaged approx. 5%. So at the time, most closed end funds, at the ipo prior to the first trading day, were priced roughly 5% above the NAV, due to those costs.

Thank you for pointing out the PRUZX utilities fund and the advice on alternative healthcare funds. Is it fair to say that their Z class shares (no load class) are more likely to be offered at financial advisors than at the "supermarket" brokerages?

I suppose for Prudential the answer is yes (regardless of whether the fund is open or closed) - but that doesn't mean you'll get any bargain.
What Prudential writes about its class Z shares is: Class Z shares are available to individual investors through certain retirement and wrap fee programs, and to institutions at an investment minimum of $5,000,000.
Usually, if you work with an advisor, you're paying for the advice (whether you get/use it or not). That payment could be in the form of loads and commissions, or a percentage of assets you've got invested through that advisor (a "wrap fee" acccount), or some other arrangement.

Thank you for pointing out the PRUZX utilities fund and the advice on alternative healthcare funds. Is it fair to say that their Z class shares (no load class) are more likely to be offered at financial advisors than at the "supermarket" brokerages?

@learningcurve, I have PHSZX, got in through my financial advisor at Merrill Lynch. Some funds are closed but still available through these channels. It is a solid fund. If you cannot find a way in, might I suggest FBIOX for biotech exposure and pair it with the etf PJP for pure pharma exposure. I own all three, with less overlap than you would think. PHSZX has biotech, pharma, medical devices and medical service companies. Another option would be to look at PRHSX at Trow Price, it would be similar PHSZX.

In his commentary (recent news section), David mentioned remarks given in a speech by Norm Champ, director of the SEC's Division of Investment Management, to the Securities Industry and Financial Markets Association, as briefly reported here:
http://www.investmentnews.com/article/20141029/FREE/141029914
Presumably, this speech will be posted soon on the SEC website. In the meantime, I suspect it will have covered many of the same points that Mr. Champ made in speeches to other professional organizations earlier in the year. By coincidence, I just happened to have the June speech in my MFO Working File already, and so I found and read the September speech this afternoon as well. I have pulled out some things from each to give you a flavor of what's inside, but there is much more, including pricing issues, conflicts of interest, expectations and additional fiduciary duties of BDs who decide to oversee these new contraptions, and some adumbration about compliance challenges that advisers may face re. liquidity, leverage, and risk management (and the transparent and timely reporting of such).
June Speech to Private Equity Forum
http://www.sec.gov/News/Speech/Detail/Speech/1370542253660#.VFK_j4dYVVU
"Recently, investment strategies that have historically operated in the private fund space have started to appear in the mutual fund area. This morning I will discuss the growing use of alternative investment strategies by open-end mutual funds; a burgeoning industry that had over $300 billion in assets as of the end of May 2014, according to Enforcement’s Risk Analysis and Surveillance Team. [...] I will discuss three broad topics: (1) alternative mutual funds, (2) the potential benefits and risks associated with these funds, and (3) some new developments within the Commission and the Division regarding alternative mutual funds. [...] I would like to highlight today a few key ’40 Act issues that are raised .... I will offer some observations on how to approach the regulatory issues associated with valuation, liquidity, leverage and disclosure."
September Speech to Hedge Fund Management Forum
http://www.sec.gov/News/Speech/Detail/Speech/1370542916156
"In contrast to private funds, mutual funds are subject to registration and regulation under the Investment Company Act and (in most cases) their shares are registered under the Securities Act of 1933, which means that they can be offered to retail investors. [...] many hedge fund advisers are becoming involved with alternative mutual funds, either as sub-advisers to funds launched by traditional registered investment company managers, or by launching their own registered investment companies. [...} alternative mutual funds present heightened risks in all of the areas that I just mentioned – compliance programs, conflicts of interest, valuation, portfolio management, and marketing."
"While fiduciary duties and disclosure are also key elements of the Investment Company Act, the Investment Company Act regime imposes many additional, substantive restrictions. For example, Section 206 of the Advisers Act [new laws governing private/hedge fund behaviors] permits an adviser (or an affiliate of an adviser) to engage in a principal transaction with a fund or other client, provided that the client consents to the specific transaction after receiving full disclosure of all material facts. By contrast, Section 17(a) of the Investment Company Act generally prohibits such transactions for a fund, not only with its adviser, but with any affiliate of the fund, or with any affiliate of an affiliate of a fund. Furthermore, Section 17(d) and Rule 17d-1 under the Investment Company Act generally prohibit an adviser to a registered fund, or any other affiliate or affiliate of an affiliate of a registered fund, from engaging as principal in any “joint enterprise or other joint arrangement or profit-sharing plan” in which the registered fund is a participant, without first obtaining an exemptive order from the Commission. The breadth of these provisions can capture many types of transactions and arrangements, and may present concerns for advisers who manage registered and private funds alongside each other."
"I encourage private fund advisers to proceed thoughtfully and cautiously before becoming advisers to registered funds. [...] a private fund adviser may need to make significant changes to its compliance program in order to take on a registered fund client. Merely “tacking on” new policies and procedures to the adviser’s existing program, without considering the overall impact to the adviser’s business model, may increase the risk of compliance weaknesses, deficiencies or violations."

All this "swooning" and "surging" in the financial press--- are they trying to make everyone develop cardiac arthymias? It feels like oxygen is leaving the room.

FYI: The idea of retirement is scary to many, especially those without a traditional pension. But at last week's Bogleheads meeting -- which gathered 250 fans of Jack Bogle, founder of low-cost index-fund-focused mutual fund company Vanguard -- investors focused on how to make it to retirement.
Retirement is possible, said the consensus. Not easy, but possible. Here's advice from 11 mutual fund managers, authors, financial advisors and ordinary people about how you can save enough to quit.
Regards,
Ted
http://www.thestreet.com/print/story/12933449.html

Oy vey. So much financial engineering. So much absurdity. If Fairholme and Lampert love Sears so much, take the thing private already and stop all the nonsense. Short sellers will be back because they know Christmas isn't going to be any better because there's no real interest in improving the underlying business whatsoever. And the bonds they're offering are unsecured? Gee, where can I sign up to get unsecured bonds from a retailer in bad shape?
So dismaying, can't just run a solid business today, have to engage in this sort of nonsense - which inevitably gets bigger and more utterly ridiculous the weaker the underlying business becomes.
http://seekingalpha.com/article/2601325-as-the-sears-canada-rights-approach-zero-a-risk-emerges

Really interesting. Thanks for posting. Lambert may not be good at running a retailer, but he clearly is pretty brilliant at financial engineering.

I especially liked the "blood-sucking parasites" part. Applies to most of the financial system!

No, but funds like these I want heavy manager investment. Like at least $500K. One trustee and one manager does own in $100K range.
One manager has last name Wisdom and has written a book. Hmmm...
Here...
http://www.amminvest.com/files/Communications/Archive.html
No mention of fund on the website but maybe one can get some insight into the management. The way I look at it right now, this fund was around during the financial crisis, its name suggest they know value investing, it has "income" in its name and drops close to 30% in 2008 and then does not recover better than its category. In short, I'm not seeing a single plus point and lack of any literature on the AMM website tells me they don't even want you investing.

"There is a potential mismatch between the liquidity of the funds and the liquidity of the assets they own. A stampede out of ETFs might cause a fire sale of assets that would ripple through the financial system."
"Imagine that one big investor in an ETF with, say, a 10% stake, wanted to sell its holding in a single day. There might not be ready buyers for such a large holding, causing the ETF to fall to a price below the value of the assets it owns."

⇒ This way to the article...