I own RPHIX in a non-taxable account and wanted to purchase it in an IRA account. I got this response a couple of years ago from RiverPark when I asked:
"Unfortunately we can’t make an exception here. Since we implemented the second “soft” close in November we have been flooded with requests from shareholders that own the fund in one account and would like to open up IRAs or joint accounts or 401(k)s and we have been forced to say no just so we didn’t defeat the purpose of the tightening and continue to get flows that were so large that it would make the fund hard to manage…I hope you understand."
Matt Kelly
Chief Marketing Officer
RiverPark Funds

This is good news if their recalibration works, and I'll stand corrected during the next correction if it is. However, there is a hole in the narrative. During the 2000-2002 bear market, Oberweis Small Cap Opportunities (OBSOX) dramatically underperformed its small-cap growth peers and the Russell 2000. It did so also in 2008. Why wasn't the process corrected before during the last dramatic 2000-02 underperformance? Admittedly, Oberweis Micro OBMCX did better during the 2000-2002 period, but so did all micro-caps and it actually lagged significantly a micro-index fund --Bridgeway's BRSIX. In some respects, Oberweis reminds me of Bridgeway. Historically, the funds have done well in bull markets and poorly in bears. They seem to be slightly leveraged--not literally but from a beta perspective--amplifying their upside and down by more aggressive bets in sectors like technology. Now the style re-calibration--at both shops actually post 2008--may have changed that, but it seems the nature of the beast somewhat with small-cap growth funds that they amplify risks. From a purely sector perspective recent years have been particularly good for the tech sector and Oberweis tends to focus on those kinds of names. When the sector turns, the performance may not be so good.
Regarding tax efficiency, one secret many investors don't realize is that when a fund has a small asset base that is growing rapidly it is inherently tax efficient. If you have $50 million of capital gains it is far more dramatic in a $100 million fund than a $1 billion fund. New money dilutes the tax impact of all those gains even in a high turnover fund. When money flows in the other direction--out of the fund--the opposite can be the case.

"... she was horrid."
Maybe. The manager did address this question when I talked with him, and it's reflected in the profile. Bottom line: he was surprised and appalled at '08, and began a thorough review and recalibration of some of their stress tests and sell disciplines. Over the past five years, anyway, he's had much lower downside deviation, a better bear market rating and higher returns than his peers.
For what that's worth,
David

@LewisBraham... luckily I didn't own the fund then but using 2008 as the basis of your comment misses how they dealt with those losses. As Dr. Snowball reported in his 2013 review of the fund, "Indeed, OBIOX in 2013 isn’t even the OBIOX of 2009. During the 2007-09 market trauma, OBIOX suffered a 69.7% drop, well worse than their peers’ 57.7% decline. The manager was deeply dissatisfied with that performance and took concrete steps to strengthen his risk management disciplines. OBIOX is a distinctive fund and seems to have grown stronger."
That's not to suggest it can't still perform poorly but if you look at the upside and downside capture ratios over the last 3 and 5 years, they've done pretty well. To your point, the last 12 months haven't been great, but if you can deal with the volatility then the results over time have rewarded you with good risk adjusted returns.
One of the things that amazes me is the tax efficiency. It's a very high turnover fund, higher than I prefer by a lot, and M*'s tax cost ratio is very low. I haven't figured out exactly how they manage that based on the available information and I don't always trust M*'s numbers to tell me what I think they're telling me, but in absolute terms it's an impressive ratio that seems inconsistent with their turnover.

@BobC & MFO Members: Bill has recommended several CEF's over the years, none of which, I would invest in.
Regards,
Ted

The language here is very strange. It reads like this is a hard close except for retirement accounts but it seems to include retail IRAs. It also includes advisor managed accounts but only for rebalancing. Am I reading that incorrectly? Do they really expect Fido or Schwab, E*TRADE or TD to block taxable accounts and allow IRAs? Maybe they have that capability but I don't think I've ever seen it before. And isn't restricting advisors to rebalancing a wide open door that's almost impossible to police? It means all the advisors and clients who follow rules no matter what will limit themselves while anyone who views rules with more flexibility can do what they want more or less. If the old studies are still accurate that should mean about 10% of advisors wouldn't consider being more flexible.
I own the fund in a rollover IRA for years and I've been a very happy camper. I just hope they'll let me continue to buy and sell as I desire.

Hmmm...We should buy these closed end funds who are running discounts which if were wiped out would actually have returned positive returns for the years. Both are negative right now.
So this is like someone saying P/E ratio is low, but stock keeps sucking wind and we are supposed to buy "value". I really don't see it differently at all.

VF is right on. Mark Hockey's record is spotty in recent years. Left the International fund before 2004 when more suitable substitutes became available. Also the above average ER is ridiculous.

Morningstar's pages have a tab called "tax", which shows you the "tax cost ratio". For example, here's FCNTX 's tax page:
http://performance.morningstar.com/fund/tax-analysis.action?t=FCNTX
This calculation is but one way of representing tax efficiency. This one tells you what percentage of your investment went to pay taxes. Here's M*'s brief description:
http://www.morningstar.com/InvGlossary/tax_cost_ratio.aspx
Note that most sites (and all prospectuses) use the highest tax rates in computing tax efficiency. If you're in a lower bracket, and especially if you're in a 15% or lower bracket (where qualified divs and long term cap gains get taxed at 0%), you'll want to take the figures with a grain of salt.
There's also an oddity in how mutual funds handle cap gains. If they have net gains, they distribute them to you, just as if you'd owned the portfolio and bought and sold it yourself. But if they have net losses, they are not allowed to distribute them to you. The losses accrue (accumulate), and next year, or the year after, or ... whenever they have a net gain, they can use those accrued losses to reduce the gains distributed.
This has the effect of distorting tax cost figures. After the market swoons (e.g. 2008), pretty much everyone has large losses accrued. So for the next few years, all funds look tax efficient as they apply those losses against realized gains.
IMHO turnover should be low enough that the fund isn't generating short term gains (taxed as ordinary income). But so long as the cap gains are long term, it doesn't matter too much. Sooner or later, even with very low turnover, the fund is going to sell appreciated shares. If it's allowed the stock to appreciate a lot, then it will recognize large gains then. Averaged over time, it comes out the same as taking a little at a time.
Very low turnover (vs. low turnover) helps on the cost side, since trading costs are a big hidden cost in fund ownership. As you noted, you want low costs, whether explicit (in the ER) or implicit, in the trading commissions paid by the fund.
I pay attention to tax efficiency but I don't obsess over it.

I'd beg to differ, at least slightly, on a few points. Risk does not matter more in absolute terms. You can eliminate almost all risk and get almost no return and that's not really what matters most. Risk matters when you don't have a long enough time horizon to deal with volatility or you don't have enough discipline, which is true of most human beings, to stick with it when things get ugly.
The problem I have with funds that hold lots of cash, and this fund even more, is that we know the statistics about how hard it is for a manager to overcome his/her expense ratio over time. It seems to me when a manager holds large amounts of cash the hurdle is even higher unless they're good or lucky with their timing.
Unfortunately there's no evidence that this guy is good or lucky with his timing and he's charging a 'high' expense ratio for the privilege. He did great during the credit crisis and then he plodded along until the S&P caught up with and surpassed him. He ranks in the 72nd percentile of small value funds over 10 years, the 97th percentile over 5 years and the 88th percentile over the last 3 years. Anyone who's psychologically ill-equipped to deal with volatility should be equally ill-equipped to deal with poor performance for so long.
I don't think there's anything wrong with wanting a smooth ride if you're willing to pay for it and this fund has been very good at that. IMHO, however, the price here is too high.

Great post! Thanks. Seems for many 2008 still lives on and has severely impacted their returns.

I'd beg to differ, at least slightly, on a few points. Risk does not matter more in absolute terms. You can eliminate almost all risk and get almost no return and that's not really what matters most. Risk matters when you don't have a long enough time horizon to deal with volatility or you don't have enough discipline, which is true of most human beings, to stick with it when things get ugly.
The problem I have with funds that hold lots of cash, and this fund even more, is that we know the statistics about how hard it is for a manager to overcome his/her expense ratio over time. It seems to me when a manager holds large amounts of cash the hurdle is even higher unless they're good or lucky with their timing.
Unfortunately there's no evidence that this guy is good or lucky with his timing and he's charging a 'high' expense ratio for the privilege. He did great during the credit crisis and then he plodded along until the S&P caught up with and surpassed him. He ranks in the 72nd percentile of small value funds over 10 years, the 97th percentile over 5 years and the 88th percentile over the last 3 years. Anyone who's psychologically ill-equipped to deal with volatility should be equally ill-equipped to deal with poor performance for so long.
I don't think there's anything wrong with wanting a smooth ride if you're willing to pay for it and this fund has been very good at that. IMHO, however, the price here is too high.

I own PVFIX as a strategic part of my portfolio, as far as I understand the fund is continuing to perform its expected role in my portfolio. I am adding new funds to PVFIX through recurrent monthly investments. I am trying to resist the temptation to change my strategy due to the continued Bull run.
Question: Have we learned anything that would change the March 2015 Commentary on PVFIX?
“By any rational measure, for long-term investors Pinnacle Value is the best small cap value fund in existence.
There are two assumptions behind that statement:
1. Returns matter.
2. Risk matters more.
The first is self-evident; the second requires just a word of explanation. Part of the explanation is simple math: an investment that falls by 50% must subsequently rise by 100% just to break even. Another part of the explanation comes from behavioral psychology. Investors are psychologically ill-equipped to deal with risk: we hate huge losses and we react irrationally in the face of them but we refuse to believe that they’re going to happen to us, so we rarely act appropriately to mitigate them. In good times we delude ourselves into thinking that we’re not taking on unmanageable risks, then they blow up and we sit for years in cash. The more volatile the asset class, the greater the magnitude of our misbehavior.”

FYI: Pacific Investment Management Co. said that it has exited all its holdings of Italian bonds on the conviction that the yields were too low to compensate for the nation’s mounting political risks.
Pimco unwound its investments this year in a move that marks an about-turn for the $1.5 trillion fund, which had the securities among favored choices two years ago. It now maintains a neutral exposure to peripheral European assets. JPMorgan Chase & Co. and Barclays Plc say the odds of Italy facing snap elections as early as autumn have risen, with the U.S. bank predicting an increase in the nation’s bond yields in such a case.
Regards,
Ted
https://www.bloomberg.com//news/articles/2017-06-05/pimco-pulls-out-of-italy-as-jpmorgan-sees-risk-of-autumn-vote

Discussed this with a recently-retired client. We (our wives and us) simply don't buy clothes the way we used to, and probably will buy even less into retirement. New suits, no. Dress shirts, no. Dress shoes, no. New cars, no. Same goes for many other household things. We just are not shopping nearly as much. If that is true for much of the boomer generation, it helps to explain the pickle in which the big malls find themselves. Instead, the boomers are spending dollars on more meaningful things like travel, concerts, grandkids, volunteering, etc. It's not that we are pulling money out of the stock market (we are not, contrary to what some predictions were 10-15 years ago). We are simply changing our spending habits: spending less overall and for sure not spending as much at the malls. It goes to my comments on my most recent Retirement Blog.

Keep in mind that much of this is RETAIL money, investors trying to follow whatever trend is hot. I would suggest that more than a few of the funds on this list could have banner years. MALOX is ahead of the S&P 500 ytd. TGBAX is up more than double the gain of VTABX. JPMorgan Core Bond is ahead of VBTLX. At some point, investors will abandon the current "hot" funds and sectors, and move on to something else that has caught the next trend.
On the other hand, this is not to suggest that more than a few of the funds on this list are in serious trouble, if not on the brink of liquidation. How many times can a fund sustain outflows of more than 50% and survive? WASYX is a case in point. M* numbers are incorrect on it. Current assets are only about $230 million, down from about $1.5 billion just 3.5 years ago. It would appear this one is a goner, for a number of reasons. M* numbers must include privately-managed dollars as well as mutual fund assets for each fund. This being the case, the situation is even more dire for the mutual-fund only assets.

Definitely paring down the optional stuff except for good whiskey. Jameson 18 years is not on the chopping block.

Jameson 18 might need to be in consumer staples.

Definitely paring down the optional stuff except for good whiskey. Jameson 18 years is not on the chopping block.

I have owned PVFIX for many years. My initial investment is approaching "doubling" in the fund. When I first purchased the fund, Mr. Dreysher used to write accompanying articles to PVFIX shareholders, which I haven't seen for some time. Fund is conservative and will not "shoot the lights out" in a bull market, but I don't have to worry about my investment. I don't think the fund has passed $68mm for some time.
I remember a couple of years ago his number one holding was "Capital Southwest (CSWC)" which I still own today including its spinoff, CSW Inc.

Was just trying to get a sense of what owners of PVFIX are thinking at this time. I know besides me, we at least have 2 more who own this fund.
Energy and now Financials which seem to be rolling over has what kept this fund down. While over 40% of the fund is in cash, as per the latest information available, almost 70% is in Energy and Financials. I have always maintained it is silly to run out in the rain to find a narrow break in the clouds so you can stand with rain falling all around you but not on you. Relative Value, Absolute Value, whatever, no one can get it right if the sector is suffering. Can't expect miracles from the manager.
This fund has been good to me. I've taken lot of money out over the years in distributions and I'm still above my cost basis. I've been waiting to send money to it, but have refrained from doing so. My long term holds, I always do my ANALysis to see which parts of markets I think are doing well, but when I'm too wimpy to act on my conclusions, I take look at my funds to see who owns those parts of the market and send some money to those funds. Right now, that means *not* sending money to PVFIX, until XLE and XLF show some promise.
Would appreciate any thoughts on PVFIX from current or prospective owners.

Wonder how CEF commissions work. Like stocks and ETFs perhaps? Thinking not though.
Have been looking at purchasing CEF (yeah that is a CEF) for years but never did, and now SOR looking good.