I have a small toehold in it, but may sell it - not that impressed with management. First, they completely missed the previous runup in renewable energy (in 2013); they had zero renewables or close to it for most of that run. Second, the overall reward:risk, imho, is just okay for what it is, but not that impressive. But it isn't nearly as risky as the cap-weighted etf's out there, so it may work fine for a small position over a period of time.
PRBLX is good - don't own it now, but have owned it most of the time for > 10 years - but if action on climate change is a thesis you want to pursue, it's not what you're looking for. It's a best-in-class generalist fund, almost always with commodity energy exposure and nothing in any sort of alternatives.
One of these days someone somewhere is going to hire a firm like Wellington to run an ESG-with-lots-of-E moderate allocation fund, and it'll be a big hit.

Too expensive for my tastes on both ER and 12(b)-1 fees but I do like many of its holdings. If you want ESG fund, maybe look at PRBLX which has done better than this one for the past several years and is cheaper, too. It's more US focused, though. (I own it)

9/25 of LCC and LCV had lead manager changes in the last 8y. Top tier to bottom tier.
Did not check LCG after I saw Danoff got an X:
'Toxic : Very poor returns relative to index for most investment periods except for an insignificant percentage of intervals so unless investors caught that interval would have suffered significantly relative to the index'
I'm not the only buy-hold investor who likes to know who's running a fund and if there is a change. Investopedia points out that manager "performance data that goes back only a few years is hardly a valid measure of talent. To be statistically sound, evidence of a manager's track record needs to span, at a minimum, 10 years or more." An extension of what I was querying in this RARE methodology. I cannot find exactly how M* accounts for tenure, only that they do.
Investopedia do go on however to note a study that individual-manager added value accounts for less than a third of performance, which I hadn't read before, and if true speaks more to your take re persistence / consistency, institutional approach / method. (Maybe this is a claim you are not making explicitly; don't mean to misattribute based on my inferences.)
Is it reasonable also to conclude that reduced volatility is being measured here, so if you are not buy-hold you are advised to look for lower volatility?

I had been looking at this ESG fund, for last two years. (this will be less than 5% of my retirement portfolio). PGRNX has 37% renewable energy, 40% water, 11% waste management.
http://paxworld.com/system/storage/19/d7/e/1748/fact_sheet_globalenvironmentalmarketsfund.pdf
This is tracked as a world stock. Expenses are a bit high, But I have more than 15 years for my retirement and was thinking to add one of ESG funds. I used to believe this was a hype but I do believe in climate change and have experienced personally scarce water issues in other parts of the world.
Thoughts? Opinions?
Thanks
Mulder

Notes on grading Large Cap Growth
Benchmarked to index funds IWF and V I G R X (cannot post with this symbol whole, seems like a bug in the software) for measuring alpha.
Most funds come from US News Money Top Funds and contain well known names. Most funds in this category that are top rated put in very strong numbers in this metric.
Note that the Large Growth Category in the Metrics at this site and everywhere else also includes funds that use Nasdaq 100 stocks as the benchmark or sector. I have intentionally removed them from this list as their performance compared to a broader Large Cap Growth index fund used here was very lopsided and unfair to funds that use a broader sector. Perhaps, they can be evaluated in the future on their own compared to the relevant index like QQQ.
The surprise stinkies in this metric for this category were FCNTX and PRGIX both of which returned negative alpha for most periods in the last 8 years. Individual returns with these funds really do depend on when you invested in them.
Just a reminder to readers that what this metric is measuring is the alpha or the over/under performance relative to the index not absolute performance so all of these funds may have good cumulative returns over specific periods (or poor returns in down markets). What the analysis exposes is whether the actual returns for an investor in these funds are sensitive to when you invested in them and the grading reflects that sensitivity. Less sensitive a fund is, more likely that an investment at any time in such funds can benefit, not just a few lucky ones who got in at the right time.
It isn't meant to be the one and only grade that decides what a good fund is. It measures one (so far unexplored) dimension of fund selection and quantifies it.

I am not being clear. Perhaps Charles can comment. vkt, do you know if any of the funds in your lists have had manager changes in the last eight years? Maybe my puzzlement is mootable only.

Charles...I was looking at FAIRX yesterday, and saw the AUM was 2.8B.....wasn't it over 10 a few years ago? That's gotta hurt.
press

"If it works don't fix it" I guess I fit that description. At age 82 I own funds and stocks I expect to hold till dooms day. I expect everything I own to be profitable over the coming years. I don't like this market but don't make changes easily so I expect to hold what I now have. Call it stupid or stubborn. I've been through this before and made enough mistakes in past 45 years and will make more as I age. As they say, "till death do us part"

Howdy folks,
Mark is spot on. Goes back to Peter Lynch - play what you know. Everybody has some area of knowledge superior to most and if played . . . I've collected coins for some 60 years so I should know pm's. I've watched Mark play MLPs for years and tried, but I have NEVER been able to figure them out. Indeed, over the years, most of my investment losses have been from playing somewhere I had no business being.
That said, when you play within your circle of competence, as Mark put it, you are able to bear greater risks with a larger percentage of your portfolio.
As for investing differently because I have a pension is really beside the point of financing a retirement.
I've always thought of retirement as a footstool with one or more legs. Social security is a leg, as is a DB pension, and a 401(k), an IRA, savings, home equity, rental income, other streams of income, a child who is a physician with a granny flat, etc. Each of these represents a leg under your stool. The game is to get as many legs and make each of them as strong as you can.
and so it goes,
peace,
rono

Junkster said: "... Stock indexes on the other hand trading huge multiples above their 70s levels."
Yes - And most of us here are probably overweight equities today for that very reason.
But here's what makes some of us age 70+ and retired shudder when contemplating where to invest. It's an excerpt from a purportedly independent study of PRPFX - the fund many love to hate.
(Excerpt): ... Turn the clock back a bit and revisit a time when the sky was falling and “Mr. Market” seemed to have it in for all of us regardless of where you tried to put your money. That was in 2008. ... (Let's) refresh you on the performance of certain asset classes/indexes that year:
S&P 500 -37.00%
Mid Cap -41.46%
Small Cap -33.79%
MSCI EAFE (International) -43.06%
Emerging Markets -53.18%
(Continued) ... If you had any Bond exposure in your portfolio that’s probably all that you had to celebrate as they at least turned in a positive +5.24%. Most people realistically didn’t have enough Bond exposure but flocked to them in 2009. They were rewarded with another positive year with +5.93%. The problem with that, however, is that the areas they just cut bait on (stocks) returned the following:
S&P 500 +26.46%
Mid Cap +40.48%
Small Cap +27.17%
MSCI EAFE (International) +32.45%
Emerging Markets +79.02%
Source: http://www.myportfolioguide.com/blog/168-independent-review-of-the-permanent-portfolio-fund-prpfx-.html
Article doesn't give stats for junk bonds, but my recollection is they lived up to their name in 2008. By contrast, PRPFX lost a bit over 8% that year.
-
How many small investors had the stomach to sit out 2008 passively watching their life savings depreciate by 40% or more? More unlikely still, how many who yanked their $$ out in panic after suffering big losses realized on March 9, 2009 that the bear had ended and it was now time to reinvest?
So Junkster ... That large outperformance of equities since the 70s is only as good as an individual's ability to hold on to those investments through thick and thin. I realize you are a experienced and adapt trader within your specialty. However, the research, work, education and temperament required to execute your approach doesn't fit many of us.
All of the above is why I keep a foothold in PRPFX. Won't make you nearly as much $$ as equities will long term. But it's a fund that allows some of us to sleep a little better. (And yes - you can replicate the fund's mostly static investments on your own for a lower ER if you want to.) At near 10% of my holdings I like it and recently converted to a Roth.
Loved Rono's reference to the teddy bear. I never had one as a kid, but occasionally took a bottle of Johnny Walker Red to bed in my younger years. Probably served a similar purpose. :)

I didn't own or follow FAIRX from the start, but didn't the fund hold a huge chunk of Berkshire Hathaway in it's early years? Could variability have increased and returns decreased since Bruce's decision to go it alone - without Buffets consistant returns? Berkowitz surely isn't the great manager he was thought to be.

I think it all depends on one's investing plan, circle of competence and, if you're a trader, the current investing environment for the issue at hand.
Speaking as one of the bigger fools in the room I don't believe rono would anymore trade his entire portfolio in and out of junk/muni bond OEF's than Junkster would a portfolio of PM's. Circle of competence: rono knows PM's; Junkster knows bonds. I have no doubt that both can successfully trade their chosen vehicles like nobody business. However, I don't see either pounding the table for their way of doing business but rather expressing opinions on what they know and understand. As in all matters, weigh the options for yourself mindful of the risks and rewards in view of your overall endpoint.
PRPFX (which I've never owned) has it's ups and downs like any investment. It's glory environment is during market calamities, recessions/depressions and so on. It pretty much lags during times of market advances as we've seen the last 5 years but kills it when we're falling into the eternal abyss. Again, treat it accordingly if you choose to invest. All things in moderation for most of us.

Thanks Mark, a most excellent 5 star post!

I think it all depends on one's investing plan, circle of competence and, if you're a trader, the current investing environment for the issue at hand.
Speaking as one of the bigger fools in the room I don't believe rono would anymore trade his entire portfolio in and out of junk/muni bond OEF's than Junkster would a portfolio of PM's. Circle of competence: rono knows PM's; Junkster knows bonds. I have no doubt that both can successfully trade their chosen vehicles like nobody's business. However, I don't see either pounding the table for their way of doing business but rather expressing opinions on what they know and understand. As in all matters, weigh the options for yourself mindful of the risks and rewards in view of your overall endpoint.
PRPFX (which I've never owned) has it's ups and downs like any investment. It's glory environment is during market calamities, recessions/depressions and so on. It pretty much lags during times of market advances as we've seen the last 5 years but kills it when we're falling into the eternal abyss. Again, treat it accordingly if you choose to invest. All things in moderation for most of us.

The difference in FAIRX volatility between its first 7 years of existence (Cycle 4) versus the last 9 years (Cycle 5) is astounding ...

Hard times lately for our hero Bruce Berkowitz ...
massive drawdowns and substantial under-performance these past 12 months for all his funds:

Flagship FAIRX is in fact an MFO Three Alarm fund, which means bottom quintile absolute return in its category for the past 1, 3, and 5 years.

@davidmoran, you are measuring a different thing. This is explained in my earlier thread/post on the results and in the discussion above. That difference is exactly the thesis for this study. Simply put, what you have measured is the relative performance for a specific start or end date for the various periods. If you were to vary the start or end dates for measuring it, you will find a different value for the over or under performance. If you were to do it for all possible start or end dates, you would get a distribution of values. The RARE grades are based on that distribution to see how sensitive the over or under performance is to when you start or end your investment for a fixed length of investment.
In the case of PRBLX, the 5yr expected alpha (over performance) across all possible 5 yr periods was 1.36% (cumulative not annualized). This is in the index hugger region. But the median was -0.94%. In other words, if investors invested uniformly in that period, half the people would have seen slight underperformance relative to index. Hence the C-. Or if you were hypothetically adding to it every day, half of your lots would be worse off than an index after 5 years from their purchase. Not intuitive from looking at a snapshot at any one time but this is what happens.
What that means is that PRBLX overperformed in some period over the last 8 years and if your investment period happened to coincide with sufficient part of it, you would benefit otherwise you would see the same as or worse than an index fund. The current available metrics/tools do not expose this aspect of the performance. RARE does.
PS: I am using the category index returns to benchmark that being the S&P 500 for large blend. The category average that M* uses is not very useful since it is a simple average over the funds in that category and subject to distortions by outliers. Besides, you cannot buy a fund that gives you category averages as the alternative. You can buy an index fund instead of the fund being studied, hence the comparison more useful.

Thanks Rono, I was wondering if you'd chime in or not!
Ramble away, I'm soaking it all in. I remember your pounding the table for pm's 5 or 6 years ago, which led to my buying GLD, CEF and GDX back then. I owe you a beer or 4, thanks!
Momentum seems to have switched in favor of GDX for the moment. Thanks also for your comments on momentum investing. Don't think I'll do so, but the temptation is there. I don't have the time during the day to watch the ticker, plus I have a wife and 2 kids to think about. I've enjoyed everyone's input though!

Howdy PopTart,
I too have been watching the space very closely and actually added to my VERY small positions with junior silver miners just yesterday.
First of all I am still of the mind that everyone should have a wee bit of precious metals in their portfolio. By wee, I'm talking 3-10%. I consider this to be a security blanket type of investment (something for that EOTWAWKI moment). My grandkids have their bed buddies and my pm holding is my bed buddy.
More pm than this core holding is speculation. Speculation is fine and fun so long as you realize the risks. Is now a good time to speculate? What do I know? When I play with investments, speculate, if you will, I lean towards momentum investing. In this I look for trends and when they appear, gradually scale in to my target amount - as long as the trend (momentum) is with me. Let's say you think this nascent trend in the pm's is going to last, and you figure you have $10K to play. Invest $2500 and see if you make money. If you do, add another $2500 and again, see if you make money. If you do, go with the remaining $5K. If at any time it doesn't make money - do not add any more. If it loses, or starts to, have a mental stop loss of say 5-10% at which point, you start scaling out of the play. If it drops some more - exit. This momentum style investing and my penchant for this particular arena, is why I added to my junior silver miners yesterday.
Now as for investing in pms. Funds and ETFs are of two types - bullion and mining stocks. Bullion ETFs will tax your gains at the Collectible rate of 28%. My favorite fund is still TGLDX which does have a little bullion but is taxed at normal cap gain rates. Or, you can go with CEF, a closed end bullion fund that is about 55/45 gold to silver. Or you can go with mining stock funds, ETFs or individual stocks. Lastly, and this is important to many people. For you core holding in pm's, the 'hard corps' recommend holding the physical metal. Although some peeps like safe deposit boxes and such, cripes, a roll of American Gold Eagles comes in a tube 2" tall and the size of a quarter. You can hide it in the oatmeal box and it's worth ~$25,000.
All this said, at this point in time, based upon the metrics of the gold/XAU and gold/silver ratios, miners are undervalued vs. bullion and silver is undervalued vs. gold. Note that this is on the margin. The great leverage is with the junior miners but this is also nose bleed territory. My only homerun in about 40 years of investing was with Silver Wheaton that I bought around 2002-3 for under 3 that I sold in the 40's. Cha-ching!
Right now there are several geopolitical factors at play. China's economy has slowed and they have been fairly steady gold buyers both by the CB and by individuals. The threat of terrorist attacks has really spooked the traveling public and this fear translates in to bullion demand. We also have the zika virus shutting down travel to central and south American and I am far from convinced that Rio is going to be able to even have the Olympics. Oh, and did I forget the Saud family's gas war to end all gas wars? And with Iran coming online, I don't see oil much higher than today for quite a while.
Now all this stuff is what Fear and Loathing are made of (where's Hunter?).
BUT when all is said and done, the POG is dependent upon the price of the U.S. Dollar. Because gold is priced in terms of the dollar and the dollar is the world's reserve currency, they normally are indirectly proportional and this has greatly contributed in the pull back in bullion prices from it's high of ~$1900 in 2011. Recall that the great bull market ran from 2002-3 until this time and commodity bull markets normally last in the 12-15 range. This is due to the complexity of bringing additional supply online in response to higher demand and prices (e.g. you have to find it).
As for the dollar, I've said it was trash since they started QE-nth but compared to any alternative currency, it is still the cleanest pair of dirty socks in the hamper. Lately, it's been showing some weakness but due to ???? Although, I'm starting to sense a negative impact on the dollar caused by the anger of the general public directed at Washington is the support for Trump and Sanders.
Sorry to ramble on,
and so it goes,
peace,
rono

@vkt
With what you noted, and the words just before and after in that paragraph:
"CEO goes to his executive team and says this year's bonus plan will be tied to the share price at the end of the period"
Ya......reminder of one of a company(s) mantra......"increase shareholder" value.
So many established companies lose their vision of what got them to where they may have arrived, and it wasn't through share buybacks.
A sadly sad state of affairs for too many organizations and their worker bees.
I could scream and rant and tell stories of things gone wrong for companies, but it is too early on a Saturday morning; as I would have to strap a blood pressure device onto my arm.
Wishing that I had the desire and/or skills to do a complete review of changes in the accepted and apparently legal changes in accounting standards from 20 years ago and currently used by corporations.
The best that may be obtained for this house is to "play" around the edges with being an "investor" attempting to continue to dodge the bullets arriving from any direction. Too many days find we small folk are way out of our league against the large, fast, the machines and other, eh?
Take care,
Catch

Yes, I remember drinking the cool-aid after this fund was so highly praised on this board 3 or 4 years ago. Luckily I didn't stay in long. I still remember Ted saying no one needs this fund or funds like it - they're losers. Good old Ted is right more times then not. I think it is still true about most of these 'alternative/market neutral/long short' funds out there today. They aren't going to beat a good balanced fund over time.