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https://friess.com/about/In 2001, Friess Associates facilitated succession from its founder by partnering with Affiliated Managers Group (AMG), making Friess Associates a majority-owned subsidiary of a public company. In the years following the 2008 financial crisis, senior management determined that Friess Associates needed to restructure to better position the firm to meet the long-term needs of clients and employees. Friess Associates and AMG agreed to terms that returned Friess Associates to private ownership in 2013.
https://www.reuters.com/business/finance/fired-fund-manager-friess-battle-amg-over-brandywine-portfolios-2021-04-22/Friess Associates, which managed Brandywine Funds on Affiliated Managers Group's (AMG) platform since 2013, [in April] filed preliminary proxy materials with the Securities and Exchange Commission. Reuters reported the firm's plans before the filing, which protests the firm's firing and points out that investors had no say in the termination.
Friess Associates said that investors are being harmed because their money is no longer being managed the way it was when they first invested.
The Global Impact Fund [formerly Brandywine Fund] follows an ESG mandate and the Global Real Return Fund [formerly Brandywine Blue] follows a real return strategy including short positions in global index futures.
This was outdated in 2008, let alone today. Bengen had raised the figure to 4.5% in 2005 by incorporating small cap stocks, and today his figure is even higher:One of the primary questions clients want answered is: What is the safe maximum withdrawal rate? Once again, Bengen has done some of the seminal work on this topic and has currently settled on a withdrawal figure of 4.15 percent for a portfolio with 63 percent in stocks.
Kitces, Financial Advisor Success Podcast!, Oct 13, 2020Bill [Bengen]: [I]n 2005, while I was working on my book, I introduced small cap stocks, U.S. small cap stocks, which really juiced everything. The return – they didn't have a perfect correlation with large cap, so that juiced it from 4.15% to almost 4.5%. ... And that's when I came up with that number.
...
Michael [Kitces]: And so, what do you think about as the number in the environment today?
Bill: I think somewhere in 4.75%, 5% is probably going to be okay. We won't know for 30 years, so I can safely say that in an interview.
In a nutshell, this is why I (and some other posters here) focus on total return, not yield.Clients think that because they are retired, the way to get income is through dividends and interest. Such thinking arises from what my partner Deena calls the “paycheck syndrome,” and it is nonsense. ...
... if clients depend on income largely from their bond portfolios, then when interest rates go up, they feel rich. But what is actually happening to the value of their portfolio? It is going down. When interest rates go down, they feel poor, but the portfolio value is going up. The strategy runs counter to financial reality. ...
People need real income. They need real cash flow, not nominal cash flow, and they do not get that real cash flow from an income portfolio.
He goes on for several paragraphs with examples and ways to address his concerns.[T]here is nothing new about it. ... I think it has been misused and overused. ...
I see several problems ... First, the increased number of guesses that Monte Carlo allows does not mean more accuracy. Second, Monte Carlo devalues the goal-setting process. Third, Monte Carlo probabilities are all or nothing. If Monte Carlo says I have a 70 percent chance of success, what does the remaining 30 percent mean? Starvation? Finally, Monte Carlo offers no insight into the unexpected, such as a Katrina event or the subprime crisis.
https://www.advisorperspectives.com/articles/2020/04/20/bucket-strategies-challenging-previous-researchThe first bucket strategy was developed by financial planning pioneer Harold Evensky in 1985. This was a two-bucket approach with a cash bucket holding five years of retirement spending, and a longer-term investment bucket consisting mostly of stocks. When the stock market performed poorly, withdrawals were taken from the cash account to avoid selling stocks in a down market, and when the stock market did well withdrawals were taken from the investment bucket, and investments from this bucket were also sold to replenish cash.
E&K Cash Flow Strategy. Sometime in the early 1980s, at Evensky and Katz we developed the E&K cash flow strategy that we continue to use today. It allows us to break the paycheck syndrome -The traditional withdrawal strategy for retirement is the income portfolio. It is a deeply flawed strategy, and any financial adviser who recommends income portfolios should cease and desist. Clients think that because they are retired, the way to get income is through dividends and interest. Such thinking arises from what my partner Deena calls the “paycheck syndrome,” by providing clients with a regular cash flow that they can depend on. Typically, it also includes an inflation adjustment because pay typically goes up with inflation.
To implement the cash flow strategy, we bifurcate the portfolio into two components—the cash flow reserve and the investment portfolio. The cash flow reserve portfolio is made up of two parts: two years’ worth of cash flow and any amounts needed for lump-sum expenses—a wedding, a new car, for instance—over the next five years. We base this amount on our five-year planning model. We do not believe in investing in stocks or bonds unless we have a five-year window in which to decide when to sell. We thereby mitigate the timing risk because we have control over the timing.
Congress has done the opposite for inherited IRAs by eliminating the stretch provision for heirs. All inherited IRAs (including Roth IRAs) must be fully distributed within 10 years. This at least forces this $5 billion Roth account to be liquidated 10 years after the death of the Account holder.The problem is no one in Congress thought about putting an upper limit on Roth IRA withdrawals when they wrote the law
When someone inherits property and investments, the IRS resets the market value of these assets to their value on the date of the original owner’s death. Then, when the heir sells these assets, capital gains taxes are applied based on this reset value. The result is a situation – often considered a tax loophole – that allows investors to pass assets to their heirs virtually tax-free.
https://kiplinger.com/retirement/estate-planning/602701/biden-hopes-to-eliminate-stepped-up-basis-for-millionairesIf President Biden gets his way, many wealthy Americans will no longer be able to pass stocks, real estate, and other capital assets to their heirs when they die without paying capital gains tax. He wants to do this by changing the tax rules that allow a "step up" in basis on inherited property. This proposal, along with others designed to increase taxes on the wealthy, is included in Biden's recently released American Families Plan – a $1.8 trillion package that includes spending on childcare and education, guaranteed paid family and medical leave, tax breaks for lower- and middle-income Americans, and more.
He’s done somewhat better recently. But for 10 years you’d still be underwater. Wonder what they’d say if you phoned and asked them why that’s the case. I did something like that once years ago with a different fund. The response was: “Our manager has been positioning himself.”Well, Hussman is still the king of perma-bears. Does anybody hold any of his mutual funds? Even his defense is questionable, and there is no offense.
Taking a quick look at MWFSX, I couldn't help but notice that M* reports a rather suspiciously high SEC yield of 8.55%! Just curious how that is possible in today's low interest rate environment? Certainly raises a red flag for me.
I did address these, but tersely, and I concur with the concerns.MWFSX : ER is a turn off for me. Wavier will expire the end of July '21 , if I'm reading fees correctly.
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