Search

Howdy, Stranger!

It looks like you're new here. If you want to get involved, click one of these buttons!

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.

Dodge and Cox
I'm reading, learning with interest on this thread. Way back in 2010, I agreed t babysit my colleague's money. I put him into PRWCX, which I own, too. I put his wife in DODBX. (And DODIX, too.) I just read the Morningstar update on DODBX. Morningstar is not "gospel-truth," but they have, I notice, reduced the DODBX rating down to 3 stars (from 5, then 4 some time ago) but they continue to rate it "GOLD." And not every fund even gets one of those "metal-medals:" bronze, silver, gold. THEY are not too worried.
Over the past 10 years, "risk" is rated HIGH, but that's compared to other funds in a not-so-risky category, yes? Over the same 10-year period, "Returns' are rated Above-Average. I must say, I don't like that recipe: high risk but (only) above-average profit. But it's not a deal-breaker. So, over that long-haul period of 10-years, it's performing better than the avaerage in its category. I take solace in that, at least.

Crash April 2020 in Fund Discussions
Old-Joe or anyone, Home page acting differently
In the past when I logged into the Discussion Home Page all the new or unread posts were shown with a white background and the word 'New' was highlighted in yellow.
• OK, that's the same
Posts which I had read at some point but had since been updated with additional comments also contained the yellow highlighted word 'New' on a grayish background.
• This is slightly different than you are describing. The yellow highlighted word 'New' does not have a "grayish background"... just yellow, with the number of new posts preceding the word "new". (eg: "3 new")
Once I had read either "one" of these new or updated posts and returned to the discussion home page the screen refreshed itself to show the yellow highlighting gone and the gray background on read posts. It showed me posts I had read in other words.
• OK, I see what you mean here. We have two Mini's, and I have MFO up on one using Firefox, and on the other using Safari.
- With Safari the "grey background on read posts" is so faint as to be useless.
- With Firefox it's still pretty faint, but visible.
However, only the posts which I've read have no little yellow tag with "new" or "3 new", so that's an easy way to sort the already read posts out from the newer ones.
Are you opening posts in a new browser tab, or are you simply clicking on the post that you want to read, and transferring to that page within MFO?
If you open a new browser tab, the original MFO home page won't update automatically, and you would have to refresh it to update. If you stay within the MFO tab to read the post, when you return to the home page it should automatically refresh and update.
It's still not exactly like your setup, as the Mini's are using OS 10.11.6 (El Capitan), and Safari version 9.1.2, which is at least four years old. Your OS, for sure, and Safari, most likely, are much newer versions, but I hope that this helps somewhat.
OJ

Old_Joe April 2020 in Technical Questions
Dodge and Cox
Dodge & Cox was founded in 1930. The company has introduced only six mutual funds since then. The firm's analysts and managers tend to stay at the company for a very long time. Dodge & Cox funds are team-managed and they have below-average expense ratios. There is a lot to admire about the firm's philosophy and operations. As others have mentioned, value has generally been out of favor for many years. I agree with Mark that it is inappropriate to compare Dodge & Cox funds to growth funds from other shops.
1) Is the SP500 a growth fund?
2) DODGX hold Google and MSFT in their top 10, are these not growth?
3) How can you explain DODGX falling behind VTV(value ETF) for 1-3-5-10-15 years. But wait, VTV also have lower volatility(=SD) and better Sharpe. See 16 years results (link)
4) VOO (SP500) expense = 0.03% and VTV = 0.04% are definitely cheaper than DODGX = 0.52%

FD1000 April 2020 in Fund Discussions
Dodge and Cox
Dodge & Cox was founded in 1930. The company has introduced only six mutual funds since then. The firm's analysts and managers tend to stay at the company for a very long time. Dodge & Cox funds are team-managed and they have below-average expense ratios. There is a lot to admire about the firm's philosophy and operations. As others have mentioned, value has generally been out of favor for many years. I agree with Mark that it is inappropriate to compare Dodge & Cox funds to growth funds from other shops.

Observant1 April 2020 in Fund Discussions
Wealthtrack - Weekly Investment Show - with Consuelo Mack
Thank you @bee. some takeaways from this one:
Appropriate to sell stock here.
Riskiest market since the late 20's.
Long term different for everyone than 2008 (obvious 12 years later).
Interest rates have been low because the economy is slow.
Corporate debt on the verge of becoming junk debt and the banks owns that debt.
Raise cash
there are shallow and steep recessions, this one is going to be terrible.
cash #1 investment.

MikeM April 2020 in Fund Discussions
Dodge and Cox
More observations:
1. For 5 years DODFX is rated at 75-89 in its category.
DODGX lags the SP500 for 1-3-5-10-15 years which is a blended index not growth or value. But Wait...DODGX also lags VTV(value ETF) for 1-3-5-10-15 years
2. If you read DODGX strategy (link)
Stocks — The Fund typically invests in companies that, in Dodge & Cox’s opinion, appear to be temporarily undervalued by the stock market but have a favorable outlook for long-term growth.
It's similar to PRWCX
"invests primarily in the common stocks of established U.S companies believed to have above-average potential for capital growth."
The value approach carries a risk that the market will not recognize a security’s intrinsic value for a long time or that a stock judged to be undervalued may actually be appropriately priced because of the fund’s fixed-income holdings or cash position, it may not keep pace in a rapidly rising market.
PRWCX managers are excellent while D&C are not and the rest are just excuses.

FD1000 April 2020 in Fund Discussions
When Can America Reopen From Its Coronavirus Shutdown?
I realize that some of you may be mildly shocked when I say this, but by no means is all of this Trump's doing. It's been building for many, many years now, and the chickens that flew off have come home as swans. Here's a copy of something I just posted in another thread:
I have to concede that I was very much against the "offshoring" of such critical types of manufactures back in the 80's, and I've seen no reason to change my mind on that. In fact that's one of the few areas with which I basically agree with Mr. Trump. If it's non-critical to the safety, defense, or economy of the US, fine- manufacture it wherever is the cheapest. Otherwise, do it here!
If ever there was an example of the results from letting libertarian financial types and market capitalists run free, this is it. For years people of respectable credentials have pointed out the dangers involved, but no administration of either political party took notice or alarm. You need look no farther to observe the results of the lobbying and bribing of the Koch brothers and their bought and paid for Cato Institute. Those people have made their vast fortunes here in the United States, but have absolutely no loyalty to anything other than profit, no matter the damage to our country.

Old_Joe April 2020 in Other Investing
DSENX - another one that was good until it wasn't
I think the Doubleline website does a good job of explaining how it works, but I wonder how many people did proper research on it.
Proper research? @fundfun, it is pretty hard to research how a fund may perform in a bear market if it's never been in a bear market. Now we know. A lot of Doublelines info is a sales pitch. Actually the best information I've seen is in past posts here at MFO.
CAPE is a simple concept. That is explained. The bond-derivative part is not explained well at all, so investors have nothing but performance to go by and a leap of faith. From the start this fund was great. The past couple years when value has underperformed so did this fund. Now we know it won't hold up well when bonds are selling off. Now we know.
CAPE ytd = -24.5
DSENX ytd = -31.1

MikeM April 2020 in Fund Discussions
Dodge and Cox
One plausible explanation of the lagging performance of D&C for the last 10 years is the value stocks invested in their funds are out style. Not only D&C, other value-oriented mutual funds companies are also lagging, most notably Oakmark. The growth stocks such as the FANNG stocks dominate and contribute to their out-sized performance in S&P 500 relative to the value-oriented stocks. In contrast, PRWCX is a growth-oriented balanced fund and the top to holdings consist of Microsoft and Google (at one point it held Amazon). David Giroux has also done a good job picking his allocation and stocks well in this environment.

Sven April 2020 in Fund Discussions
When Can America Reopen From Its Coronavirus Shutdown?
Howdy folks,
Great article [rono loves to read economists].
While it is way too soon, getting somethings back up in safe manner is what we need to study. How can we morph our society and economy into one that is safe?
My son is a county park manager (essential) and had to go pickup a tractor bucket from a vendor. Called first, made an appointment, drove to the back of the building and called again. They opened the door, brought the bucket out and put it on his trailer. They waived and he was gone.
We have a local farmer that sells starts and plants in the spring. He's always been an Honor System vendor (e.g. put your money in a box and take change if you need it) but he's already come out on his fb page how he's going to be safe, comply and be open for business.
All that said, right now we all have to stay home. Period. It's going to be an ugly few weeks folks.
I've been talking with my brother more than we've done in years. He's Associate Dean of Medical Education at a Med School and spent 25 years running an ER Residency program. Huge problem with the lack of testing, PPE gear, ventilators, etc. We had absolutely no surge capacity anywhere in the system. None. We used to have departments and offices at all levels of gov't to deal with pandemics and all. We used to have supplies and inventory. Not any more. All that 'what if' stuff has fallen to the budget axe over many administrations and in the hospitals. Have to cut costs and it's such low hanging fruit. In addition, Just in Time Supply is pervasive in every field including health care and medicine. Oh, and he starts all of this with the fact that Trump's an idiot. He's leaning towards the middle to high side estimates. Sorry.
BTW, wait until you start seeing layoffs in the health care industry?!? Health care is so specialized these days a LOT of people cannot 'cross over'. There's no elective surgery going on anywhere on the planet. The folks that replaced my hip a few years back will most often receive three choices - furlough with unemployment, taking vacation and sick time, volunteering to 'be reassigned'.
and so it goes,
peace and flatten the curve,
rono

rono April 2020 in Other Investing
Dodge and Cox
D&C have good funds but many of them are riskier and it shows at market stress such as 2008 and many times when stocks go down and 2020 is no different
For YTD
Allocation DODBX -23.4...PRWCX -16.2...JABAX -13.1
Mostly US LC: DODGX -32.1....SPY -22.4
Foreign stocks: DODFX -34.5...AFCNX -21.9
BTW, all the funds above have better long term(1-3-5-10-15 years) risk/reward than D&C funds too.

FD1000 April 2020 in Fund Discussions
M* Are Bond Funds 'Broken' as Diversifiers?
Hi @Charles ........not picking on you, as you have placed valuable thoughts with your posts, relative to "bonds".
Your April 3 post: "On regulation..."
From the article:
“I think you need more transparency where bonds are trading real time, [to aggregate] where the prices are at and find a best bid, best offer [so that] there’s a lot of increased confidence where bonds are trading, just like you have in equities,”
>>> I continue to try to imagine how the S.E.C. or any other regulatory group can "force" the bond market (which has many various sectors, yes?) to otherwise price to an "exact" in a marketplace (for price and NAV) where it has been noted that a $10 trillion bond market doesn't have a similar amount of daily trading (sells and buys), relative to the equity market.
Also, from the other April 3 post, "Indexes are one thing."
Last February, there were $6T in bond funds (about $4.5T in OEFs) and I understand in March, like $250B in redemptions.
>>> My math indicates a redemption amount of about 4.17%. Doesn't really seem so bad, eh?
And from where did these redemptions arrive? Corp. and HY bonds? I don't have supporting data.......just my guess.
..... the lack of volatility providing (for some funds) false sense of security; therefore, more shocking the surprise when a crisis happens, which makes bond investors not used to drawdown, head for the door.

..... I see some bond funds like icebergs now.

>>> One thing that I am sure of, and hopefully; not writing/sounding like a smart ass, is that over the years here reading questions and comments; is that most folks relative to bonds somewhat understand the difference between AAA bonds and HY/junk bonds. Everything in between is a mystery. I replied too many times in the last several weeks to express why such and such bond fund is "down". I've posted more than once bond rating standards by S&P. A question arises as to why "person X's" bond fund is reacting poorly.
The answer is to look at the last known holdings and to discover that more than 50% of the "strategic/total or magic" bond fund is invested in BBB (edge of good junk) and lower rated bonds. Investor "x" was overly happy with the higher than normal yield, versus a plain vanilla bond fund that held higher rated bonds with lower yields. The reflection of the high yield is related to risk of the asset, yes?
My takeaway is that the most common wording related to investing are the words, "the stock market"; with a common question being, "Are you invested in the stock market?' I've mentioned in direct conversation, "Well, yes; but also the bond markets". This always gets the question mark face expression, a "huh". Bond investing awareness is thin.
Are Bond Funds 'Broken' as Diversifiers? No !!!, depending where the bond monies are parked.
It is easy to say after the fact, is that not all bond area investing areas are equal and that folks will attempt to continue to educate themselves about bonds. Never before has an unlimited amount of learning been available via the internet. A lack of curiosity and wanting to know are the major limiting factors.
The watching process begins, relative to COVID-19; and the long thread from Feb. 22, related initially back to Jan. 21. Link here, if you choose to read again.
I've run my typing mouth enough.
Be well.
Catch

catch22 April 2020 in Fund Discussions
Bond mutual funds analysis act 2 !!
I usually do lots of research but this market volatility and unpredictability are extremly high.
3 good funds for you TGLMX,VFIIX,ANBEX
TGLMX VS VFIIX
1) VFIIX bonds rating are higher. Both heavily in MBS.
2) VFIIX duration=2.3 is much lower than TGLMX duration=5.8
3) VFIIX SD is lower and especially YTD. TGLMX peak to trough in March was over 6% while VFIIX was about 2.1%.
4) And why YTD performance is close
So, for the unknown wild market, VFIIX looks more of a sleep better fund.
TGLMX VS ANBEX
1) ANBEX invests mostly in Gov and lower % in Corp and hardly in MBS
2) ANBEX risk/reward is better for YTD + 1-3 years and since inception 03/2016. See PV(link) since inception
Portfolio CAGR Stdev Best Year Worst Year Max. Drawdown Sharpe Ratio Sortino Ratio
ANBEX 4.91% 3.14% 7.84% 0.27% -2.32% 1.12 2.29
TGLMX 3.72% 3.43% 7.27% -0.52% -3.13% 0.7 1.27
VFIIX 2.86% 2.18% 5.83% -0.04% -1.95% 0.7 1.1
3) For YTD (chart) ANBEX performance is better with a lower peak to trough loss too
4) Of course, I also like ANBEX much smaller AUM and in this market also it's much higher turnover which means the managers' skill is working and they have many years of experience prior to running this fund.

FD1000 April 2020 in Fund Discussions
DSENX - another one that was good until it wasn't
I sold it on 3/26 and split the proceeds on the same day between adding to current position AKREX and opening a new position in YAFFX. I prefer funds that protect the down side. I thought this one might do that but results proved me wrong. Take a look at it's upside/down side capture ratio. Pretty poor looking at the past 3 years. The past 1 year returns are very disappointing too.
Oh well, when the results were in, it didn't meet my expectations, which may have been more about CAPE sounding like a great idea. And the secret bond sauce, how tantalizing it was. I wanted to think it was a great long term concept versus relying on managers picking stocks and holding cash, but that's not what the data says.
Glad you started the discussion again. I'm also curious how others see it now.

MikeM April 2020 in Fund Discussions
M* Are Bond Funds 'Broken' as Diversifiers?
Some jumbled thoughts on bonds and portfolio construction:
I swapped my pure corporate bond funds for a global bond fund about 3 years ago in my Roth account. Since the Roth can sit idle longer than my traditional 401k and therefore has longer to recover, I am comfortable taking more risk in the Roth. The Roth is more of a laboratory for me, to keep me from doing massively stupid stuff in my 401k (which is larger, and where I apply conventional strategies). That said, I retain vanilla corporate coverage (and the usual bond/stock splits) via balanced funds, which are 45% of my Roth.
The global bond fund I hold (DODLX) in my Roth has dropped more than it's vanilla corporate cousin (DODIX) would have, and has performed worse over it's lifetime. I rebalance quarterly, and would like to think that I have gotten some portfolio gains vis-a-vis a medium duration bond fund given reasonable rebalancing and global's greater volatility. Time will tell.
Having lived through 2008 early enough in my investment career (when during the early stages of the crashing the correlation between all assets was high), I would not have expected bonds to have done spectacular in our current situation. Indeed, they have largely performed as I would have expected. It makes sense to me that downturns and pullbacks are different than panics.
I went into 2020 holding about 25% cash in my 401k since everything just seemed completely out of whack. I have been rebalancing into all asset classes (domestic large cap & small cap, international, domestic corporate and global bond). I will be shifting my cash hold to 18% for the foreseable future. I don't think I'll go below 10% cash matter what happens.
Time will tell, "interesting times", etc.

Shostakovich April 2020 in Fund Discussions
U.S. High-Yield Bond Funds See Record Inflow After Exodus
ORNAX had a chart that looked like a stock fund for some six years. Now it looks like an inverted hockey stick.

BenWP April 2020 in Other Investing
M* Are Bond Funds 'Broken' as Diversifiers?
Indexes are one thing. Ditto large, passive ETFs. Transparent. US Treasuries.
I read a Dave Nadig interview recently about bond pricing. He likens it to Zillow. Especially precarious with lightly traded assets in an open-ended vehicle that must sell to meet redemption, which we've now seen, with awful results.
Last February, there were $6T in bond funds (about $4.5T in OEFs) and I understand in March, like $250B in redemptions.
While the risks in equities are clear and present, rapid 30% fluctuations, the risks in bond funds are not ... the lack of volatility providing (for some funds) false sense of security; therefore, more shocking the surprise when a crisis happens, which makes bond investors not used to drawdown, head for the door.
I see some bond funds like icebergs now.
Doesn't help (going forward) that we have had literally 40 years of falling interest rates. Which way will rates go from here? Nowhere I expect for a while. But when rates rise and all those bond funds fall, watch out.
And, when IG bond fund holding lots of BBB need to unload after downgrades in days/weeks ahead.
And, what happens when Fed stops buying corporate bonds?
So, sure, diversifier, but certainly not without their own set of serious risks (especially pricing risk) that probably needs to get more attention, likely more regulation. Glad financial media is talking more about it.
It's a really important lesson for me and I'm still processing how to reengage and be better for it.

Charles April 2020 in Fund Discussions
The Selling Has Been Merciless ...
Please remind me in 10 years!

Charles April 2020 in Fund Discussions
The Selling Has Been Merciless ...
Really brutal. That's what happens after 11 years of bull market returns. Never want to get complacent again! c

Charles April 2020 in Fund Discussions
The Selling Has Been Merciless ...
@VF - The article mentioned one, "An investor who bought MFA financial five years ago was up 70% as of February 20th. Now they’re down 73%. It went from $8 to $1.28 in 28 days. Unbelievable move."
Others include NRZ (-68.9%), TWO (-73.9%), LADR (-73.7%), WMC (-77.8%) and ABR (-65.9%). In addition there are several more with YTD losses of between -50 to -60%.

Mark April 2020 in Fund Discussions