erudite

It fascinates me that people obsess about round numbers on indices.

It is fascinating isn't it? Not just stock indexes. Toss in 50th anniversaries, turning 70 or 100, or becoming a millionaire - to name a few. The goverrnment, however, seems not to have such fixation. Witness the 70.5 years of age RMD requirement or tax brackets like 28 and 33%.
Is Dow 20,000 meaningful? Hardly. But if it's like Dow 10,000 the gang at CNBC will celebrate. Unlike your 50th anniversary, they'll probably get to celebrate Dow 20,000 more than once.
There could be a psychological aspect to all this that will motivate those investors who are less erudite than we to throw caution to the wind and start pouring money into an already hot market, driving indexes even higher for some period of time. Or, I suppose, the opposite may also accur - with the daunting figure stoking fear in the hearts of many and causing stocks to sell off.

I agree with msf about FPA funds. I still own both FPPTX (when it was load fund and got in before it closed the last time) and FPACX (never had a load). FPACX is expensive and bloated. Once Bob Rodriguez stopped managing FPPTX, the fund went downhill. Problem is the fund has been closed for many years...it may be another Sequoia Fund (prior to its fall) less the performance of Sequoia.

Matthews, in my opinion, is still the cream of the Asia funds, so I don't see where over rated applies. If there is a problem with the fund family itself, I think they just have to many funds in their stable. How much can you slice and dice a geographic sector?
FWIW, I don't own any Matthews funds now, only because owning an Asia-only fund doesn't fit with my desire to simplify the number of funds that make up my self managed portfolio. Makes more sense to me to hold a good EM fund that will decide how much Asia to own. Asia or any specific region won't always be a good bet. Asia-only hasn't been a good hold for a number of years.

Shouldn't we be in "short bonds" only and not at all if we are young? I mean, I dunno if yields have to go negative for bond funds to perform like they have been over past several years.

Oh man! I posted this before heading out for vacation. Was not accepting such a response. Thank you very much.
I have to read the thread in its entirety to absorb. I skimmed it a bit and would agree Fidelity, Calamos, Wasatch are overrated. I reached this "conclusion" myself over past few years.
I would offer Royce is overrated too. I see a Third Avenue style disintegration when Chuck hangs his boots.
And Brandywine but they have been absorbed by AMG I think.
Little surprised to see Matthews being overrated. I thought they were the best bet out there.

I really don't pay much attention to fund families in general, unless they do something really stupid or illegal (yeah, Janus comes to mind here, along with a select few other groups). There are some fund groups that continue to surprise me they are even still operating, and Putnam is the classic case, along with Pioneer. Oppenheimer as a whole is a disappointment, although ODVYX has been an exception. Also surprised that Invesco and Harbor are still going. The disappointing fund families for my own experience are no longer in existence, having been bought out and eventually disappearing: Fremont, Nicholas-Applegate,
If it were not for the commission brokers, American Funds would never have grown so large. It's recent ability to continually add share classes has been a brilliant marketing move.
Interesting note to prior comments on TGBAX: just when many had written off Mr. Hastenstab, his management once again has brought the fund to the top of its group. Hot money flowed in, hot money fled. In 2010, the fund had about $18 billion in assets, which grew to $37 billion in 2014, and is now at $21 billion. The fund now is again top decile for 1, 5, 10, and 15 yrs. The manager's ideas often take time to pay off, but like all great managers, Hastenstab might have 2-3 years of under-performance then it's back to the races. We'll see.

From a hard bottom in early Feb. 2016, a large portion of the better managed HY bond funds are running about +16% returns. This movement may exist and continue the trend into the unknown future for "x" months or ??? One is or would be buying HY at a pretty high price at this time, IMHO. If pricing starts to decline for any number of reasons, one will find the yield even better than now; but at the expense of the loss of capital (losing money on the pricing, eh?). This situation would likely find a loss in value overall. We've held as much as 60% of our portfolio in HY/HI; but not at this time, nor would I buy at this time. Just my personal 2 cents opinion.
As to VWINX (40 bond/60 equity): you may entry any fund you choose to compare at this site page and find how returns compare going out to 10 and 15 years for this conservative fund. Yes, bonds may affect this fund going forward more so than in past years. Institutions and folks will buy bonds going forward. Pension funds and others have limited choices for some holdings to maintain policy pay out into the future. Bonds may have been wounded recently, but they are not dead. And as you understand, there are many types of bonds; and all have their day(s) in the sun.
http://performance.morningstar.com/fund/performance-return.action?t=VWINX&region=usa&culture=en_US

"They've already been great for years, as both stocks and bonds have delivered fat returns since the worst of the financial crisis passed in 2009. But after such a strong and long gallop upward, markets have many reasons to slow down, analysts and fund managers say."

Hi @VintageFreak
@JoJo26 noted: "Most overrated, BY FAR = Fidelity", @sma3 noted: "Fidelity Most too big too identical" and your notation of ditching your RiverPark and moving the monies to Eaton; I will note.....
>>>One must consider what might be found at a "fund house", sort what you find of value for your investing needs, quality of timely and accurate data processing and ease of use of the existing structure.
Fidelity has had a long list of mutual fund choices for a number of years, including what were first of a kind choices for the "common folk" investors with the introduction of the "select" funds. Fidelity also helped beat down the cost of investing from the full "load" fees charged by the big retail houses of the earlier period for mutual fund investing.
We use Fidelity (since late 1970's) as a portal for investments. There is nothing written stating that one's brokerage account is restricted to Fidelity offerings.
The portal is as flexible as needed by this house.
Over the years, from the point of Fidelity fund choices; we have traveled into these choices (may be a few that escape memory at this time):
FCNTX FDGRX FLPSX FAGIX FSPHX FLBIX SPHIX FRIFX FNMIX FINPX and several of the select funds.
The majority of our holdings today are not Fidelity funds; with the brokerage portal allowing travel to........well, everything, to which, we desire access.
If one can't find an investment path(s) within this fund house; I can't offer another solution.
Our 2 cents worth.
Catch

There are other views that are better elucidated.
I just finished reading James Cloonan ( head of AAII) book on "Level 3 investment" where he makes the case that there has only been one ( 1929) situation where the SP500 has not recovered from a bear market in five years. So it must follow that that the only investment calculation required is to put four years of retirement expenses ( or college expenses or emergency money etc ) into safe assets and the rest into small cap (micro would be preferable he insists ) stocks and don't worry. He has interesting data to prove that as long as you didn't sell at the bottom in 2008-2009 you made out fine, even if you retired that year,
The question is will the next correction be equal to 1929, or will the general market take a decade to recover like the Nasdaq did?
I wonder how the market can keep climbing with job growth anemic, hourly average wages flat, declining stock earnings and the huge public debt.
If he is right we should be close to 80% invested... but what if he is wrong and the SEC has a good reason for requiring a statement "that past performance does not guarantee future results"?

Wow. rforno alludes to a spectrum of quant funds ("quant-lite") and you ask me whether these funds fit the definition of quant funds. Especially since there doesn't appear to be a clear definition.
Okay, FWIW. First let's deal with a technical item. Even assuming that CAPE is a quant fund, IMHO DSEEX would not be because its objective and technique is to beat the model by using leverage and bonds. It does this in a manner similar to an equity-linked note that provides index exposure by buying index options and downside protection by using the remaining assets to purchase debt. DSEEX uses the latter to provide upside potential as opposed to downside protection. (It also amplifies exposure with leverage.) Besides, where's the model for the bonds?
My take on what a quant fund is includes two axes, a major one and a minor one. The major one is how static the model or models are. If they never change, what you've got is a fundamental index. The models may be updated often, in which case you've got a quant fund. What I care about is how good the team is in continually improving the models, recognizing that markets don't literally repeat. (For example, the "January effect" is thought to have gradually diminished over the years.)
The other axis is human intervention in security selection, as opposed to model design. ISTM that the more discretion there is held by humans, the less quantitative the fund is.
The CAPE ETN seems to operate the same way as any other fundamental index fund or note. It has a fixed set of rules that it uses to select securities and periodically "resets" its portfolio. Fundamental indexes may use a set of rules as simple as equal weighting or as complex as those in any fund. Call them quant funds if you wish, but then borrowing from rforno's sense of lite-ness I'd call them consomme, clear and nearly colorless.

FYI: Being the “investment guy” in the family means I’m often approached during the holidays or at parties with questions about the markets. My most recent question was about a sector fund investment and its prospects going forward.
I’m sure you could come up with any number of intelligent-sounding narratives to describe which sectors will perform best or worst in the future, but no one really knows the answer to this question.
When asked about the potential for the sector in question I was reminded of this chart I created a couple years ago, which I have updated through last Friday:
Regards,
Ted
http://awealthofcommonsense.com/2016/12/the-hierarchy-of-investment-difficulty/

American Beacon has two different LCV funds. I believe you mean American Beacon Bridgeway Large Cap Value (BRLVX) and not American Beacon Lg Cap Value (AAGPX).
As appears to be common with quant funds, Bridgeway's rule based systems (or model based, if you prefer) worked until they didn't. Between about 2007 and 2011 Montgomery worked on developing new models. You can see the change in performance of several funds around then. Sometimes the changes worked for a longer period of time, sometimes they only worked for a couple of years (BRUSX).
When Quant Funds Fail, M*, August 2010.
Was Bridgeway overrated? It may be the best of the bunch (quants), so perhaps the question might be rephrased as "are quant funds overrated?"

"The change has been so seismic that investors poured a net $20.7 billion into U.S. stock funds last month. That's the biggest month for stock funds since 2014 and a stark turnaround from the nearly $76 billion that left those same funds in the 10 earlier months, according to Morningstar."
That's great news for some of us. Although valuations have been stretched for some time (to say the least) there hasn't been the kind of euphoria among the Mom & Pop crowd that would lead me to move to a highly defensive position. My sense is markets don't die so much from high valuation as from investor euphoria. (Were the cause simply valuation ... we wouldn't witness drops in the magnate of 25-50% as sometimes occur.) Might a nice bubble now be in the formative stage? How many months or years will it persist before the inevitable pop?
At some future point (months or years out) fixed income will again look attractive and the smarter money will move out of their equity positions in favor of fixed. One fly in the ointment, alluded to by the writer, is we don't really know if Trump's stimulative agenda will get through Congress. Conceivably, he could hit a roadblock that would drastically alter current market perceptions.

FYI: For years, many refused to buy into the hype even as the stock market climbed to record after record. Wounds from the 2008 financial crisis were still too raw, and investors couldn't stomach the risk of watching their nest eggs drop by more than half for a second time. Instead, they favored bonds, which have pumped out relatively steady and healthy returns for decades.
Enter Donald Trump.
Since his surprise victory in last month's presidential election, stock prices have soared even higher, and bond prices have sunk on expectations that faster economic growth and inflation may be on the way. The change has been so seismic that investors poured a net $20.7 billion into U.S. stock funds last month. That's the biggest month for stock funds since 2014 and a stark turnaround from the nearly $76 billion that left those same funds in the 10 earlier months, according to Morningstar.
Regards,
Ted
http://bigstory.ap.org/article/eccce9265a14436696911e70363398df/greed-trumping-fear-investors-give-stocks-another-chance

FYI: Irecent years, historically low interest rates have led many investors to seek income from dividend-paying stocks. This penchant for yield led to strong demand for dividend-paying stocks in general, and dividend stocks with higher payout ratios—those paying a higher percentage of earnings as dividends—in particular.
The willingness investors have shown to pay a premium for high absolute yield may have boosted the income from their portfolio, but as valuations rose on high yield stocks, so too did the risk of price losses.
With a recent sharp rebound in bond yields, the investment outlook for dividend-paying stocks appears to be more unpredictable and uncertain. If rates begin to rise, some dividend stocks may be hurt, while others are much better positioned. So investors may want to reconsider the type of dividend stocks they own, and look at actively managed mutual funds and separately managed accounts to manage the risks and opportunities in this part of the market.
Regards,
Ted
https://www.fidelity.com/viewpoints/investing-ideas/dividend-stocks-rates-rise

Hank - no offense taken! And yes, the modern Templeton isn't Sir John's, that's for sure. :/
In their defense, I've held their tax-free FKTIX in my portfolio since (I think) the late '80s, and also think their utility/income funds were pretty good, though I don't own those.
I'll echo someone's earlier point about Arnott's Research Associates. PAUIX/PAAIX were all the rage and hyped everywhere around the GFC, then (as now) you rarely see them mentioned and only sometimes see RA in the media.

Points taken about Templeton - I don't necessarily disagree w/the counter-arguments there, although I was referring to the firm and not just a specific fund.

No disagreement on my part with anything you said. And I'm aware they've had their share of losers - not just a single fund.
However, if you were investing in funds in the 70s-80s (as I was) when someone said "Templeton",

Templeton World lept to mind. It was their flagship fund, run by Sir John himself for many years. Don't know how many other funds they had back than, but it would be only a fraction of all the funds now under the Franklin Templeton umbrella. Sometimes bigger isn't better.
Ahh - Yes the loads too. I think loads were less of an issue for many of us in workplace plans in the 70s and 80s. First, we received group discounts. Second, we didn't have the plethora of no-load funds to choose from that are available today. And third, there wasn't nearly the amount of fund information which we now take for granted (this site being a prime example). Many of us new inexperienced investors were operating in the dark and relied on the advice of an experienced commission-based advisor, even if it did cost us a few pennies on the dollar.
PS - I'm not aware of a single Internet site devoted to mutual funds in the 1970s when I bought my first shares of TEMWX. :)

Points taken about Templeton - I don't necessarily disagree w/the counter-arguments there, although I was referring to the firm and not just a specific fund.

No disagreement on my part with anything you said. And I'm aware they've had their share of losers - not just a single fund.
However, if you were investing in funds in the 70s-80s (as I was) when someone said "Templeton", Templeton World lept to mind. It was their flagship fund, run by Sir John himself for many years. Don't know how many other funds they had back than, but it would be only a fraction of all the funds now under the Franklin Templeton umbrella. Sometimes bigger isn't better.
Ahh - Yes the loads too. I think loads were less of an issue for many of us in workplace plans in the 70s and 80s. First, we received group discounts. Second, we didn't have the plethora of no-load funds to choose from that are available today. And third, there wasn't nearly the amount of fund information which we now take for granted (this site being a prime example). Many of us new inexperienced investors were operating in the dark and relied on the advice of an experienced commission-based advisor, even if it did cost us a few pennies on the dollar.
PS - I'm not aware of a single Internet site devoted to mutual funds in the 1970s when I bought my first shares of TEMWX. :)

I'd pick Wasatch but I'm not sure how they're generally thought about so maybe they're overrated for me but no one else. I think they have a pretty serious cultural problem when Robert Gardiner was able to basically walk out with a complete firm a while ago and then Laura Geritz left earlier this year. They still have a few funds that are doing well but they have a lot of pretty mediocre funds. I still have a small investment in Laura Geritz' fund but I sold the other funds I owned a few years ago and I'm glad I did.

Intriguing Question.
My experience only encompasses about 10 families. Can give only give a very limited perspective.
My nomination for most overrated: is Calamos. 15 years ago when I decided to invest with them, reviews from many reputable sites suggested they were top-notch. Could damn near walk on water - especially during tough markets. That was not my experience after a decade and I abandoned them.
My nomination for underrated: Oakmark: While overall reviews of OAKBX have been good, it's taken considerable flack, including here, for lagging benchmarks and peers. I've always felt this was a tough fund to benchmark. These are deep value long-term focused investors who try to avoid currently hot stocks and sectors. They'll buy things that are unpopular with the crowd and slowly build a position. They'd rather sell early than eat a big loss. So they abandoned long term bonds a few years too early which hurt them relative to peers. I don't fully understand their hedging strategy designed to protect against big losses. But it seems to depend on certain components like smaller energy producers, big defense contractors, financials, beaten down large caps, and, when appropriate, government bonds.
Re: Franklin Templeton (nominated by rforno): My first and only fund for the first 20 years was TEMWX. During the 70s, 80s and most of the 90s these guys seemed to have a license to print money. I and several coworkers did very well by them. So it's with sadness that I observe that fund's lackluster performance over the past decade or more. I don't know what happened to a once very fine company.
Clip from Wikepedia (the Free Encyclopedia) on their rapid expansion through acquisition and merger beginning in '92. Might have contributed to their problems:
"In October 1992, Franklin acquired Templeton, Galbraith & Hansberger Ltd. for a reported cost of $913 million, leading to the common name Franklin Templeton. Mutual fund pioneer Sir John Templeton was the owner of Templeton, Galbraith & Hansberger Ltd together with his son Dr. John Templeton and John Galbraith who together owned 70% of the firm. In November 1996, Heine Securities Corporation, known for the Mutual Series of funds, merged into the Franklin Templeton complex. In October 2000, Franklin acquired Bissett Funds to increase its Canadian presence, and Bissett remains a key brand from Franklin in the Canadian market. The Fiduciary Trust Company was acquired by Franklin Templeton in April 2001."