A shares make sense if you hold them for long periods of time ( usually 7 years or longer) to take advantage of their generally lower ER, even factoring in the opportunity cost of not investing the 5.75% immediately. ... If you use a broker whose advice you find excellent, this is a small price to pay and probably a better deal than the 1% of all assets Merrill Lynch is reportedly going to charge their customers yearly. ... There are some brokers whose advice is excellent. Advisers, fee only or in wrap accounts or whatever, will not work for nothing. I would rather know what I was paying them than find hidden fees buried in the prospectus

John Rekenthaler, Vice President of Research at M* would seem to agree with you. He makes essentially the same point in Barron's ("The View From 30,000 Feet" - Jan. 9, 2017). Rekenthaler adds: "I think A shares, in which you pay a one time commission (known as a load) are underappreciated."
---
(This is from the print edition. However, Ted's recent link, "How to Pick Great Funds", should take you to the online version.)

I am not sure there is a compelling reason to own smallcap value or smallcap growth per se. Why not look at the entire Intl smallcap space? QUSIX has been a good option for actively-managed funds. I would compare it to DLS even though DLS is a lot more dividend oriented. Expenses are a big deal. You will pay 73 bps more for active management that won a bit over five years, broke even over three, and lagged by 600 bps over last 12 months. Will management be able to match the 5-year comparison going forward? SCZ is a blend of value and growth. It has similar numbers with expenses of only 40 bps. Also note that QUSIX has about 20% in EM small caps, so the potential volatility is higher. Maybe the bigger question is whether you need an international small cap at all. Will this really bump your returns or just increase the potential risk?

In addition to having no alternatives in Annuities and some 401k, some of us have worked with brokers in the past who only have access to A or C shares. I have done the math many times, and old_skeet is correct... A shares make sense if you hold them for long periods of time ( usually 7 years or longer) to take advantage of their generally lower ER, even factoring in the opportunity cost of not investing the 5.75% immediately.
If you use a broker whose advice you find excellent, this is a small price to pay and probably a better deal than the 1% of all assets Merrill Lynch is reportedly going to charge their customers yearly.
There are some brokers whose advice is excellent. Advisers, fee only or in wrap accounts or whatever, will not work for nothing. I would rather know what I was paying them than find hidden fees buried in the prospectus

@LLJB

I'm a little surprised Intrepid has only been able to raise $17MM in assets with a good record over more than 2 years. It almost seems like the risk of liquidation for ICMIX could be pretty high if it doesn't garner a good amount more interest in the next 12 months. They're eating almost half of expenses under the expense waiver and that most likely means "future" shareholders will eventually bear those costs if the expense ratio eventually falls below the waiver.

Thank you for your preceding comments. Let me add a few points.
Intrepid seeks to put the shareholder’s interests first and generate great risk-adjusted returns. They have six different mutual fund strategies launched since 2005 and have been patient with each of these strategies, recognizing that it takes time for the asset base to grow and for the funds to start showing up on screens.
They give every fund they launch a multiyear timeframe to prove itself, which should at least reflect a full market cycle, and specifically have little expectation that any new fund will grow materially until it secures a three-year track record and receives a Morningstar rating.
ICMIX is on track with their initial assumptions for asset growth, does not foresee eliminating its expense ratio caps, and hopes to reduce the expense ratios as the fund grows.
As Franklin said in his 3Q 16 commentary, “Thank you for letting us build”, i.e., the building process takes time, and that being patient and building the portfolio right pays off for everyone.
I appreciate your interest in this month's article.
Best.

Thanks for the suggestions!! I know FISMX has been a revolving door and I stopped adding to it years ago partly because of that and partly because I found other funds I liked more, but I've always kept what I had and been pretty happy with the longer term performance.

It is really simple @JoJo26, pay the up front load and avoid the ongoing account wrap and advisor fees plus higher transaction cost, etc. Also, note the load diminishes as the amount invested increases. With load funds, it is all contained into one while in most no load funds many of the items contained in to the loaded fund fee structure are paid separate by the investor such as transaction cost, advisor fees, and account wrap fees, etc. In addition, once the sales load is paid an investor is free to do nav exchanges into other funds within the family of funds without paying another load.
By my math the one time load is extreemly small considering the number of years I have been invested and, as such,is no longer factored into my expenses. According to Morningstar I pay an estimated 0.86% expense ratio for everything. With this, I plan to continue to move forward as I have in the past.
Wishing you the very best while you grow wisdom.
Skeet

And, @JoJo26 of your bold comment ..., I am most thankful that you don't govern my affairs for you appear, to me, you might be a person that is penny wise but dollar foolish.
Old_Skeet

Talk to me in 15 years and we will see whose portfolio performs better. Why on earth would you want to dig yourself into a 2-5% hole by paying loads.....

For what it may be worth and to whom it may concern ...
I have been investing a good number of years and a good number of my A share fund holdings can be traced back to the 70's and beyond. When I look at what some brokerage houses are charging in wrap fees of upward of one percent (and more) and I compare it to what Morningstar estimates my fund fee ratio to be (0.86%) ... Well, I'm thinking I've gotten a great deal compaired to others who are paying an annual account wrap fee plus advisor fees, etc. In addition, there is no sales load on American Funds A share funds (as well as some other fund families) once a million dollar threshold has been reached. And, purchase discounts are available depending on how much one invest with most loaded fund families back of the million.
In addition, I pay no account fees (or advisor fees) to hold my funds at my brokerage house which includes my IRA account. So for me buying A share funds and holding them through the years have been indeed a low cost option (not saying there are not other low cost options available).
I'm thinking I am going to continue to keep what I have and let my broker grandfather my IRA account in April when the DOL ruling takes effect.
And, @JoJo26 of your bold comment ..., I am most thankful that you don't govern my affairs for you appear, to me, you might be a person that is penny wise but dollar foolish.
Old_Skeet

I must be really stupid. I've knowingly purchased B shares. At the time it seemed like it was worth the cost to get more dollars into a sheltered account (401k) where they would grow for 25-50 years without having to worry about taxes. Wasn't any more expensive than noload funds offered inside annuity wrappers I've had with other 401k's.
At least I have company in my stupidity. Lots of people here have purchased C shares of Templeton Global, or at least recommended it: CathyG, Shostakovich, Catch, Scott, 00BY.
Then there's OJ and his American Fund shares, recommended to him by what he described as an honest adviser.
I'm sure I can find others here as well who have ever paid a load. I don't think we're all stupid. But that's just MHO.

QUSIX or ICMIX

If you were going to make a choice between the two, which would you choose and why?
I was impressed with the information in Dennis' write-up of ICMIX this month but Dr. Snowball called QUSIX one of the 3, and only 3, great small cap international funds. I'm a little surprised Intrepid has only been able to raise $17MM in assets with a good record over more than 2 years. It almost seems like the risk of liquidation for ICMIX could be pretty high if it doesn't garner a good amount more interest in the next 12 months. They're eating almost half of expenses under the expense waiver and that most likely means "future" shareholders will eventually bear those costs if the expense ratio eventually falls below the waiver.
I also like FISMX a lot, Global Stalwarts and GP International Opportunities and I own several of these funds but I'm looking to add some "value" to the mix with new money.
Thanks.

I am not sure this is such a contrarian view. It is perhaps more withering than some others, but we are inundated by doom and gloom most every day. The last few years have forced investors to be contrarians if they want to have a positive return. Perhaps CGM and others are so bleak because their funds are crappy?

M* has had a problem with classifying a lot of funds. It's nature is to fit everything into neat boxes, often times without regard to what the fund really is, its philosophy, and its history. They crammed OSTIX into the HY group a few years ago, which immediately caused the fund to go from 5* to 1 or 2*. After that, they refused to acknowledge their error and actually compounded it by saying the risk level was much higher than it really is or ever has been. As others have said, it is important to know a fund's real strategy before making any comparison with other funds within a M* category.
For years, M* lived and breathed its self-created style boxes, when it know dang well that a lot of funds do not fit the boxes they were assigned. No matter, they just assigned lousy ratings to those who did not fit the mold when their numbers were not as good as the box average. It seems, thankfully, that we are pretty much over style boxes. But the asset category issue is still with us. Be cautious when using M* risk measures.

Hi Crash. I'm certainly in the rank amateur club too, but the fund certainly fits with the buy low sell high mantra. The perfect value/contrarian style I have tried to use myself with out much success. This fund does it for me with a fairly simple formula I can understand.
Right or wrong, I don't view the fund as a pure equity large cap value fund as M* labels it. I see it more as a balanced fund (which I prefer) because it does use debt securities/bonds for total return and to damper volatility. I'm always leary when something seems to good to be true, so I hold the thought this fund will not perform as it is now in every economic scenario. It has to see soft spots somewhere down the line. But, it sure has knocked it out of the park for the last 3 years. I've upped it to about 15% of my portfolio, right up there with PRWCX and ICMBX as my biggest holdings.

All good --- SSHFX was bruited by Consumer Reports some years ago --- but having today closely reviewed 3y+ outperformance and risks via MFO, M*, and Lipper, I predict beating them all of them in that LV space via DSENX / DSEEX / CAPE, and am moving even more moneys into DSEEX as we speak.

I have been a DL investor. I noted the buzz here on this board when this fund opened. It's certainly doing spectacularly. I read the short version of what this fund is about on the DL page. I understand the description, but not all the implications. Is this a fund that a rank amateur should be considering? DSEEX Cape-Schiller.

I have been looking at their funds. The Tactical all Asset and the Bond fund are rather transparent as Blumenthal publishes his allocations on line weekly. He has little or no info on the long short strategy, which would probably be the hardest to implement. The mutual funds do not have a long track record as they started in 2015 but the separate accounts go back years and if you believe his summaries they seem to be relatively low risk and seem to deliver what they promise. Unless you want to pay 1.7% for the bond fund, you can tease out his strategy online...

One can choose how much credibility to give to subjective analyses. That said, "scoring" that is retrospective is generally objective. What's important there is understanding what goes into that score.
For OSTIX risk, M* and Lipper are in pretty close agreement, i.e. their different scoring systems in this case lead to the similar conclusions. Risk has been low but slightly increasing in recent years. You can see this in M*'s 3 year risk rating (below average) vs. its 5 and ten year risk ratings for the fund (low).
Lipper represents risk differently. It uses "Preservation" to represent downside risk. (Here's its methodology.) On preservation OSTIX has been very solid - 4 or 5 over all timeframes. (Dropping from a 5 rating over five years to 4 over three years, tracking M* over these periods.)
MAXFunds rates OSTIX's risk at 1(low) on a scale of 1-5. But it isn't clear whether that is relative to the fund universe or to HY funds.
All these sources seem to concur that OSTIX is a low risk fund. This despite the relatively low credit rating (B vs. BB for some HY funds) that the fund sports. This supports the M*assessment that the credit rating in this case doesn't accurately represent the risk in the fund.
At least some of that risk control may be coming from its bipolar approach to credit - around 20% AAA, over 20% in cash, and nearly all the rest in really low grade stuff (B or below). It's like a barbell approach, but a barbell on credit quality, not duration.
---
FWIW, here's MFO's review of fund sites as of five years ago:
http://www.mutualfundobserver.com/2012/03/march-2012-mutual-fund-rating-sites/
Also a thread about one of the sites it liked, FundReveal.
http://mutualfundobserver.com/discuss/discussion/2441/fund-reveal-please-try-it-out
That's a pay-only site, and apparently it's tripled its fees in the past five years, from $100-$150 to $495 and up.

Week Ending January 6, 2017 © 2016 Payden & Rygel All rights reserved.
Highlights of the Week:
Municipals: The municipal market continued to see heavy mutual fund outflows over the holiday period; however, municipal/Treasury ratios actually rallied, and the market delivered strong positive performance for the month of December. With limited supply and strong demand in the new year, we expect the “January effect” to provide support for municipals in the coming weeks.
Corporates: Corporates started the year with a bang with heavy issuance right out of the gate. Total new issuance for the week was $53 billion,
well above the $20-$25 billion anticipated for the week and reflective of strong sentiment among issuers. Last year was the heaviest year of
issuance ever, but 2017 is forecast to decline by 5-10% by many analysts.
High Yield: In recent years, high yield issuers have taken advantage of low rates to refinance their balance sheets. As a result, only 2% of the high yield universe will mature in 2017. Headed into the new year, we believe this financial cushion will provide a measure of security for the asset class.
Treasuries The 5/30 yield curve remained flatter and close to the lows of the past 12 months at 107 bps. Two rate hikes are currently 100% priced in for 2017, with the Fed’s “median dot” signaling three hikes.
© 2016 Payden & Rygel All rights reserved.
https://www.payden.com/weekly/wir010617.pdf

Yeah, you mentioned that concern before. All I care about is that it continues to seriously outperform SP500, whose value components surely will dip at some point, yes, and all its div etfs.
With considerably less risk and downside movement (as analyzed for Sharpe / Sortino / Martin ratios and Ulcer Index per MFO, plus M* and Lipper's quintile rankings), CAPE alone has outperformed SP500 significantly, if I am reading the M* data right, by:
15% in '14
331% in '15
51% in '16
DSENX / DSEEX has improved on the above by another percent or so, amazingly, owing to Gundlach's secret global-bond sauces.
We have not had real testing dips, of course, but it does less badly whenever we have had the little ones the last 3+ years.
I learned about this consistent engine from Snowball / MFO writeup. (So hopefully sometime this year I should be able to do more in return than just the Amz thing.)

All good --- SSHFX was bruited by Consumer Reports some years ago --- but having today closely reviewed 3y+ outperformance and risks via MFO, M*, and Lipper, I predict beating them all of them in that LV space via DSENX / DSEEX / CAPE, and am moving even more moneys into DSEEX as we speak.

FYI: (Click On Article Title At Top Of Google Search)
Actively managed mutual funds are poised to make a comeback after years of being trounced by ETFs. Seven great ones to buy.
Regards,
Ted
http://www.barrons.com/articles/stockpickers-delight-1483767162