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Here's a statement of the obvious: The opinions expressed here are those of the participants, not those of the Mutual Fund Observer. We cannot vouch for the accuracy or appropriateness of any of it, though we do encourage civility and good humor.
  • Some Top funds over 10 years with YTD to 3/7/22 returns

    Name Ticker "%TR YTD" "% TR 5 Year" "%TR 10 Year"
    William Blair Large Cap Growth I LCGFX -21.08 19.62 16.55
    Akre Focus Retail AKREX -18.4 16.49 15.23
    Jensen Quality Growth J JENSX -12.88 15.57 14.59
    Parnassus Core Equity Investor PRBLX -11.95 14.79 14.42
    Vanguard 500 Index Investor VFINX -11.65 14.05 14.08
    Vanguard Health Care Inv VGHCX -9.13 9.59 13.84
    Conestoga Small Cap Investors CCASX -18.81 14.2 13.59
    Grandeur Peak Global Opportunities InvGPGOX -22.38 13.17 12.94
    Mairs & Power Small Cap MSCFX -10.37 7.86 12.41
    T. Rowe Price Capital Appreciation PRWCX -7.79 12.25 12.16
    T. Rowe Price Mid-Cap Value TRMCX -1.1 9.49 12.06
    Wedgewood Retail RWGFX -19.05 14.82 12.04
    Artisan Small Cap Investor ARTSX -26.13 12.73 11.89
    AMG Yacktman Focused N YAFFX -5.99 12.17 11.59
    AMG Yacktman I YACKX -5.55 12 11.54
    Manning & Napier Disciplined Value I MNDFX -5.1 10.6 11.42
    Meridian Growth Legacy MERDX -15.53 11.6 11.3
    T. Rowe Price Small-Cap Value PRSVX -11.01 9.61 11.11
    Amana Income Investor AMANX -11.49 10.97 11.03
    Walthausen Small Cap Value WSCVX -7.27 7.06 10.32
    Osterweis OSTFX -13.03 11.42 10.31
    Fidelity Advisor® Small Cap I FSCIX -16.18 9.97 10.07
    FPA Queens Road Small Cap Value QRSVX -6.81 9.64 9.68
    Fairholme FAIRX 4.21 10.44 9.44
    Vanguard Balanced Index Inv VBINX -9.02 9.39 9.24
    Auxier Focus Inv AUXFX -5.04 9.24 9.23
    Janus Henderson Small Cap Value T JSCVX -7.67 5.1 8.66
    Oakmark Equity And Income Investor OAKBX -6.33 8.2 8.46
    Artisan International Value Investor ARTKX -10.86 6.98 8.35
    DCM/INNOVA High Eq Inc Innovt TILDX -12.74 7.52 7.98
    FPA Crescent FPACX -8.32 6.96 7.96
  • Oil touches $139 / barrel in overnight trading
    Some years back the WSJ or someone ran a brief piece noting that the hybrid battery had not been replaced on a single Prius in the US except for trauma. Surely not the case by now, 22y in. But a remarkable article which I wish I could find.
  • Oil touches $139 / barrel in overnight trading
    Hybrid vehicles have improved considerably in the last 15 years. They are now in the 5th or 6th generation with improved battery life and reliability. My neighbor has a Prius that gets over 40 miles per gallon on average and it is so quite while operating. Once the chip shortage is solved, the pricing will return to normal.
    I suppose so, but my '08 Prius (bought '07) has been unimaginably reliable from day 1, and I am hardly alone. Never had a car like it except for four somewhat newer Priuses; no repairs other than the routine maintenance. 45mpg and all that, down from 55 a while ago. Just an amazing ownership experience.
  • Oil touches $139 / barrel in overnight trading
    Warren Buffett says never to hold money during a war. Here’s a stagflation playbook for stocks... https://www.marketwatch.com/story/warren-buffett-says-never-to-hold-money-during-a-war-heres-a-stagflation-playbook-for-stocks-11646655287
    Interesting in this same article is some commentary on the oil situation visa via Russia ... JavierBlas tweets "The current half-hearted talks on Russia energy ban is a win for the Kremlin..."
    But the gist of the story is: "“The one thing you can be quite sure of is if we went into some very major war, the value of money would go down — that’s happened in virtually every war that I’m aware of. The last thing you’d want to do is hold money during a war,” he said.
    Buffett bought his first stock in 1942, when “macro factors were not looking good,” but insisted investors would frankly “be a lot better owning productive assets over the next 50 years” than pieces of paper."
    In a subsequent MarketWatch story: https://www.marketwatch.com/articles/berkshire-hathaway-tesla-market-cap-value-51646661852 = To answer @Mark question... Warren generally wins these.
  • Oil touches $139 / barrel in overnight trading
    Hybrid vehicles have improved considerably in the last 15 years. They are now in the 5th or 6th generation with improved battery life and reliability. My neighbor has a Prius that gets over 40 miles per gallon on average and it is so quite while operating. Once the chip shortage is solved, the pricing will return to normal.
  • Oil touches $139 / barrel in overnight trading
    Another seriously RED U.S. evening, 11:50pm, Sunday
    Global equity futures
    FINVIZ futures, various markets
    Sidenote: I've watched gasoline futures for a number of years, and generally; our area finds retail pump prices to be +$.70/gallon above the futures price.
    I.E., $3/gallon futures price would = $3.70/gallon retail, more or less.
    The current futures price is $3.81/gallon as of this write.
    This should translate to $4.51/gallon retail, locally. I purchased gas this afternoon at $3.89/gallon. This is the highest price for the last month, and increases have been small increments, but not in line with futures pricing.
    I know there can be many variables to pricing in any given area.........strictly a local observation.
    Fingers positively crossed, for the world,
    Catch
  • European equities getting clocked today …
    A fund that does not mark down properly may fail redemptions, which could expose the fund family and board to worse legal and sentiment risks. Russia did not have a stock market for nearly 70 years before the 1990s. There is no saying that it will not happen again - it does have a history of enabling (fascination for) strongmen who by nature do not conform to norms.
  • Mairs & Power proxy vote on murkiness
    THANKS for the responses. :)
    fyi, general state of US play as of some years ago (from an expert who has repaired to Europe), so perhaps things have changed, but I thought it a good summary:
    The entire thing can be explained in a few words:
    - In US mutual funds, the trust is the umbrella structure and the individual funds it holds are (singularly and collectively) a series. It's done this way for organizational efficiency. There's nothing inherently negative about it from a shareholder perspective.
    - There are two areas where it is SOP for funds to set broader "official" limits than they generally intend to rely on, and then to back off those by setting internal limits that are more restrictive. Those two areas are fees and investment limits. This allows them to periodically adjust fees and investment limits without the bother and expense of a proxy vote. This is how it is possible for the "official" limits to be broadened while the effective (internal) limits remain unchanged. Because of this, in many cases the limits in the prospectus can be quite misleading. A fund may say it invests at least 2/3 of assets in security type X, but if you look at its history you might see that in practice it rarely invests less than 93% in security type X. Portfolio managers want to have as much flexibility as they can in case they need it, but they generally don't expect to -- and don't want to -- use it.

  • Real Estate - What Under $20 Million Buys in NYC
    The Corcoran Group Australian writer and director Baz Luhrmann and his wife and creative partner Catherine Martin are listing their New York home, a 19th-century townhouse with a bold, colorful interior, for $19.995 million. The 28-foot-wide Gramercy area property dates to the 1850s and has views over Stuyvesant Square, one of the city’s oldest parks. Anglo-Italianate in style, the house has stately proportions, with four rows of round-arched windows, a paneled cornice and a patterned cast-iron balcony that runs the width of the house. Mr. Luhrmann, director of films including “The Great Gatsby”and “Moulin Rouge,”and Ms. Martin, a costume designer and his frequent collaborator, purchased the property for their family for $13.5 million in 2017 and completed a multiyear renovation project. New Yorkers for over a decade …
    They had planned to live there full-time, but the pandemic threw a wrench in the works, keeping them on the Gold Coast of Australia, where they have been their two children have reached around college age and the couple is on the verge of becoming empty-nesters. “We just thought, ‘This is ridiculous.’”Ms. Martin said of their decision to list the home. “The house has been empty for nearly three years. And somebody should be enjoying it. But it’s breaking our hearts.”It isn’t the first time the couple, who have a passion for historic homes, have been reluctant to sell a piece of real estate even long after it was practical.

    Excerpted from: The Wall Street Journal - March 4, 2022
    Article: “Baz Luhrmann to List Manhattan Townhouse for $19.995 Million” by Katherine Clarke
    image
  • Penn Mutual Am 1847 Income I
    Yup @Bopa, I'm in and have been for a while.
    I've watched the snippets of Cipollini III the fund mgr, formerly one of the fund mgr's of Berwyn Income and like what I hear. Rational thinking, talks to picking up holdings during volatility in the markets...I know he would make better decisions than me during the frequent market schmeissings, the fund allows me to stay invested during the large downdraft days. I also like that he is I'm guessing 15 years or so younger than me so I'm thinking I can hold this one as I get older, maybe?
    Stock portfolio portion is balanced between small, mid, large stonks, some intl stocks, def value stocks, real balanced between categories meaning defensives, cyclicals, market senstitive segments.
    I think he was in something like 20% cash going into 2022 which likely assisted the positioning of the fund.
    Someone here did mention the co-port mgr, Saylor left the fund several months ago?
    This one, HSAFX Hussy and PVCMX Palm Valley have been some funds that have allowed me to stay invested over the past few months.
    I do remember when he was running BERIX few years back, there was a posted brochure on their website that going back 10 years, drawing down THE 4% every year, the BERIX fund then co managed by Cippollini III, actually increased in value even when accounting for the withdrawls. Maybe he can make that happen here too?
    FWIW, from my perspective, it's a keeper, YMMV.
    Good Luck to All,
    Baseball Fan
  • Mairs & Power proxy vote on murkiness
    Crash: speaking of the proxy vote, which way did you vote?
    I dumped M & P a few years ago, consolidating and simplifying my portfolio.
  • when up is down
    @davidrmoran - The Off-Topic posts are not allowed to appear anywhere other than the actual OT section. This was a compromise that David made some years ago, when there were a fair number of complaints from posters who did not want to see any OT stuff mixed in with the financial posts. It was either that or get rid of the OT posts altogether. The general idea was that those interested in OT discussions would know where to find them, and those who are not interested (evidently the majority of posters) would not have to sort through them.
    That compromise depends upon the poster to use good judgement in selecting the posting category, and that has really worked quite well. Lately I've noticed a few OT posts in the financial categories, but they've generally been uncontroversial and pretty harmless.
    OJ
  • when up is down
    As we all know there are many subtleties to overall financial and economic situations. Sometimes there is even disagreement between "experts" in the fields.
    As we also know from years of discussion here on MFO, the great majority of individuals cannot even construct a reasonable picture of their own personal financial situation, or make reasonable projections in that area.
    How then could we expect these very same people to understand national and international financial and economic matters with any degree of accuracy?
    a) They really don't care.
    b) If information isn't presented to them via some kind of "social media" it isn't real anyway.
    c) No amount of information presented via the MS media is going to be read or believed in any case.
    So let's put the responsibility for all of this exactly where it belongs:
    People- Ignorant and Proud of It.
  • Russian Ruble and Interest Rates: news link
    See some talk about Bitcoin and rubles here
    Some running to Bitcoin to hide assets, escape the collapse in the ruble, some to make it easier to cross borders as a refugee
    Do remember my post from 2 years ago regarding high grade rubies. Don't be surprised if market for high grade gem stones takes off. Inflation is weakening all currencies in real terms, real threat of Cyber warfare crippling financial network
    What happens if Russia escalates, demands removal of NATO weapons back to old borders etc with threats of nuclear war?
    Many more refugees?
    Like I said then you could shove a million bucks of gem stones into your sock and no one would know
    Crazy
    Baseball Fan
  • Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant, attacked and on fire
    It is frightening news. I read "Midnight in Chernobyl: The Untold Story of the World's Greatest Nuclear Disaster" a couple of years ago. A much worse disaster could be set off by a single missile strike.
  • Buffet’s Shareholder Letter
    The two best jobs that I had in my life were four years with the Coast Guard and twenty-something years supporting San Francisco's public safety radio systems.
    Were you still working at 91 like Buffett, OJ?
    And, nice to see Queen Elizabeth II at 95 is back on the job.
    I’d agree with the sentiment that public service work (of assorted types) is highly rewarding - even if the pay less than in the private sector. Having read / participated on the board a long time, I do think managing money would have been both enjoyable and profitable. However, I’d have lost people a fortune in the early years.
    PS- Thanks @bee for posting. There was a bit of coverage in the WSJ, but the Russian War has kind of diminished / overshadowed the normal attention Buffet’s letters receive.
  • Buffet’s Shareholder Letter
    The two best jobs that I had in my life were four years with the Coast Guard and twenty-something years supporting San Francisco's public safety radio systems.
  • To dip or not ?
    GWB made an error on trusting the former KGB agent who pined for the good old days. Russia is close enough to supply oil and gas to Europe. Transporting these fuels is the bottleneck of the business, either through pipelines or tanker ships. Mark mentioned that Russia and China signed a 10 years deal to supply gas on pipelines yet-to-build through Siberia. Distance and climate themselves pose considerable challenges. The Alaska pipeline was build with great expense in the 70’s and this proposed deal is much more difficult that take many years. Similar deal was made with India where the pipelines will be build over the Himalayan mountains. Neither projects can be completed several years from now. In the meantime where can Russia sell their oil and gas that they desperately need the cash flow? The gas pipeline to Germany built under the North Sea is much more feasible.
  • Buffet’s Shareholder Letter
    I taught my first investing class 70 years ago. Since then, I have enjoyed working almost every year with students of all ages, finally “retiring” from that pursuit in 2018.
    Along the way, my toughest audience was my grandson’s fifth-grade class. The 11-year-olds were squirming in their seats and giving me blank stares until I mentioned Coca-Cola and its famous secret formula. Instantly, every hand went up, and I learned that “secrets” are catnip to kids.
    Teaching, like writing, has helped me develop and clarify my own thoughts. Charlie calls this phenomenon the orangutan effect: If you sit down with an orangutan and carefully explain to it one of your cherished ideas, you may leave behind a puzzled primate, but will yourself exit thinking more clearly.
    Talking to university students is far superior. I have urged that they seek employment in (1) the field and (2) with the kind of people they would select, if they had no need for money. Economic realities, I acknowledge, may interfere with that kind of search. Even so, I urge the students never to give up the quest, for when they find that sort of job, they will no longer be “working.”
    Charlie and I, ourselves, followed that liberating course after a few early stumbles. We both started as part- timers at my grandfather’s grocery store, Charlie in 1940 and I in 1942. We were each assigned boring tasks and paid little, definitely not what we had in mind. Charlie later took up law, and I tried selling securities. Job satisfaction continued to elude us.
    https://berkshirehathaway.com/letters/2021ltr.pdf