Another one bite the dust. It is too bad that after Third Avenue was sold several years ago. Majority of their funds have performed poorly, except for the Real Estate fund. Same thing can be said with Royce funds.

The idea that net worth (or salary) can serve as a proxy for investing expertise is IMHO absurd. One can luck into money (win a lottery ticket). Even without that kind of luck, what is it that makes a surgeon (high income) any more knowledgeable about startup investing than someone who's bounced around from startup to startup?
This is why I feel that the whole concept of accredited investor is fatally flawed. Investors are accredited so that a company can sell stock to them without having to go the nuisance of filing disclosures. Who cares if the investor is being taken for a ride? Caveat emptor. The investor's rich - so surely he can watch out for himself, ask all the right questions to get at the information that would have been disclosed anyway?
This legislation seems like a reasonable step toward qualifying investors, rather than using wealth/income as a proxy. But it also strikes me as grandstanding. The SEC is already required to revisit accredited investor requirements every four years (Dodd Frank). It was in the process of doing so, with better insight. There was not a need for this blunt legislation.
Here's a nice summary of where the SEC was a few months ago, including some of the nuances of various proposals.
http://media.mcguirewoods.com/publications/2015/SEC-Considers-Updating-the-Accredited-Investor-Definition.pdf?utm_source=Mondaq&utm_medium=syndication&utm_campaign=View-Original

When Trends Reverse
Posted on December 8, 2015 by David Ott Acropolis Investment Management
Some strategies, managed futures being the most obvious, are based exclusively on trend following and they really got hurt last Thursday.
Managed futures funds attempt to catch trends by buying what has gone up recently and selling short assets that have fallen recently. Going into the meeting, they were short euros and long German bonds (among other things) and were hit with a tough reversal.
The Newedge Trend Index, an equally weighted index of large managed futures managers, lost -3.66 percent on Thursday, wiping out all of the gains for that index for the year. http://www.newedge.com/en/newedge-indices/
Although we haven’t really invested in managed futures programs, we have been looking into them over the past several years.
We’re not opposed to managed futures and trend following, but we don’t feel like anyone understands them like traditional asset classes like stocks and bonds.
..there is good data on stocks and bonds that goes back to the 1800s for the US and many decades from countries all over the world.
As always, we’ll keep looking and learning, just like we did last Thursday.
http://acrinv.com/when-trends-reverse/

FYI: Jeffrey Gundlach, whose $51.3 billion DoubleLine Total Return Bond Fund has outperformed 99% of peers over the past five years, said the Federal Reserve may come to regret raising U.S. interest rates amid signs of a fragile economy and a crumbling credit market.
Regards,
Ted
http://www.investmentnews.com/article/20151209/FREE/151209917?template=printart

Eventide Healthcare & Life Sciences N ETNHX
Only real bright spot for me this year.Volatile with smaller companies.
http://eventidefunds.com/our-products/#!healthcare
As of September 30, 2015:

Collegium Pharmaceutical Inc (5.66%) Abuse-deterrant treatments for chronic pain
Ultragenyx Pharmaceutical Inc (3.37%) Bringing treatments to market for debilitating genetic diseases
Neurocrine Biosciences Inc (3.25%) Innovative pharmaceuticals for diseases with high unmet needs
DBV Technologies (2.85%) Patient-friendly therapies for food and pediatric allergy patients
BioMarin Pharmaceutical Inc (2.81%) Providing new therapeutics for severe or life-threatening diseases
Dyax Corp (2.68%) Treating hereditary angioedema and licensing phage display technology for research
Portola Pharmaceuticals Inc (2.64%) Treatments for thrombosis and other hematologic diseases
Kite Pharma Inc (2.59%) Clinical-stage therapies that harness patients’ immune systems to fight cancer
Bluebird Bio Inc (2.58%) New drugs for patients with severe genetic and orphan diseases
athenahealth Inc (2.57%) Cloud-based services for health records and medical practice management
Related
From WSJ Business
How Pfizer Set the Cost of Its New Drug at $9,850 a Month By Jonathan D. Rockoff
Updated Dec. 9, 2015 12:01 a.m. ET WSJ
Process of setting the price for breast-cancer treatment shows arcane art behind rising U.S. drug prices
At $11,000 a month, one official said the plan “would definitely require physicians to document medical necessity for Product X,” according to a person familiar with the surveys. It was the kind of paperwork obstacle Pfizer wanted to avoid.
Staff members put together a chart estimating the revenue and prescription numbers at various prices similar to those of the three drugs Pfizer had decided to use as benchmarks.
The chart showed a 25% drop in doctors’ willingness to prescribe the new drug if it cost more than $10,000 a month. This indicated Pfizer might collect higher returns by charging toward the lower end of its range.
Pfizer also had been talking with the Food and Drug Administration. The agency agreed in late 2014 to a speedy review, without waiting for results from an elaborate “Phase 3” clinical trial, so that patients with life-threatening conditions could get the drug earlier. This sped up the time to market by about two years.
Pfizer staff members staged two mock reviews by health-plan officials. The officials, who were paid for their time, sat around a conference table and simulated a day-long discussion of how to handle a drug such as this one.
Pfizer employees say the mock reviews supported a monthly price below $10,000. If it was higher, insurers could start requiring doctors to fill out paperwork justifying its use.
The staff felt they finally had it. When they met in November 2014 to nail down a price, they picked a figure just below the cutoff: $9,850 a month. This would be the list price, from which health insurers and pharmacy-benefit managers would negotiate discounts and rebates with Pfizer.
http://www.wsj.com/articles/the-art-of-setting-a-drug-price-1449628081

Do these people have some kind of secret sauce?

Yep - they get people willing to pay 1.25% per year to own their Large Growth fund. Paying more than .60 is highway robbery for a domestic stock fund, in my view. ;/
Of course it looks good -- it launched in 2011 and has pretty much ridden alongside the artificial 'bull' market these past 5 years. Most stock fund returns look good in that timeframe, which fund PR folks eagerly pitch at every opportunity. Let me see how such funds work "over a full market cycle" and through some major downtrends .... then I might be interested. Until then, not really. And not at that ER -- ever.

My energy exposure are two mlp funds, TMPLX and INFIX, which were bought when I switched from AMLP. Needless to say, I am down about 45% from when I bought them a year ago. I am in the process of deciding whether to just take the loss and sell, based on the fact that they would now have to almost double to get back to even. I don't see that happening in the next 3-5 years. This is in my IRA, so it is long term money, but I may be better off just putting these monies into S + P Index which in my opinion has a better chance of positive results at a faster pace than midstream pipeline companies.
Would love to hear some thoughts on this. Otherwise, I am very well diversified with stocks, funds etfs and 30% bonds. Do not need to tap IRAS for at least 6 more years when RMD starts.

I only just last week initiated a miniscule toe-hold in COP ConocoPhillips, and will very slowly grow it. (Their DSPP is about the best I've seen in terms of simplicity. The charges all come at the back-end, when selling, and it's not unreasonable at all.) I bought at $53.12, and a bit more will be recorded tomorrow (already sent and noted as "pending,") and the stock is today at $48.21. I intend this as a long-term position. If it takes even a few years for oil to bounce back, I'll be growing my dividend, which is being reinvested. 5.5% yield....In the back of my mind, I keep remembering the airlines barely able to stay afloat, (and the airline bankruptcies!) until oil swooned, and now I note HA at about 30 for 40 X where it was just several years ago. In the same vein, I don't want to look back and see that I missed the best entry-point for the biggest oil E & P company in decades or maybe my lifetime. (Jeez, if only I had money to invest, back in the '90s!) COP is shortly to have a conference call re: 2016 plan, and has a cost-cutting plan already underway, re-aligning its portfolio into cheaper sources of product. The company says in a "forward-looking statement" that they expect to become profitable again, in 2016.
https://www.flashratings.com/stocks/3529-COP?in=true

FYI: Dividend mutual funds have underperformed the S&P 500 over the past 10 years through Nov. 30. In a volatile 2015, their performance has been especially laggard.
In the decade ended Nov. 30, dividend mutual funds tracked by Morningstar Inc. averaged an annual return of 6.36%.
Regards,
Ted
http://license.icopyright.net/user/viewFreeUse.act?fuid=MjEwOTA2MTA=
Enlarged Graphic:
http://news.investors.com/photopopup.aspx?path=webLV1208.gif&docId=784206&xmpSource=&width=1000&height=1063&caption=&id=784211

People have been calling for another major decline for years.

ok, now 3 lc funds, 15 years or older age and tenure, and 1% er or less...

yields 40 funds...

now, 3 lc funds, 15 years or more with manager tenure 15 years or more...

yields 77 funds...

now, 3 lc funds age 15 years or more...

yields 326 funds...

Nevertheless, Money, Kiplingers, U.S. News, and all the other mags will have their list of funds to buy NOW. It must sell magazines, but it is shoddy journalism.

Hi Bob....I have a soft spot for Kiplingers.
About 30 years ago, my dad bought me a subscription to that magazine. It served as the starting point for learning about the need to save serious money, and how to go about investing.
It may not be the most sophisticated source of information, but it fills a need and provides needed information to many. It truly provided a benefit to me, and still does.
press

I have not been a premium subscriber for many years but I did find the top holding detail useful (that is the top holdings and how much was held by each fund as slick mentioned) along with duration information on fixed income. The information could have changed over time as it has been a long time since I was a premium member. I feel I get everything needed without being a permium member including duration detail.

For me, numero uno of the specific features by far is the premium portfolio info for oef's, etf's, cef's. Without that, I wouldn't pay for the rest of the features.
Otherwise, I occasionally use fund analyst reports (more value there for etf's, for which the coverage is much wider and more detailed) and the premium fund screener (and once in a blue moon, that includes some of their pre-selected screens on the fund page and the ones they use to structure some articles). Used to use x-ray more, but it's not all that useful for a portfolio with a substantial slug of fixed income. (I did use stock intersection a lot in the past, but almost never now.)
Bottom line, I could get everything I get from premium here & there, elsewhere, but it's a time saver, for what I want, to get it in one place. As far as value goes, I haven't paid the full asking price in years - although the last time I renewed, my request for a better rate got a chilly reception and some argument before they granted it.
By the way, the link in the OP goes to a standard "for more info" page, no mention of the $69 rate.

Source: Morningstar data as of 9/30/15; calculations by Charles Schwab Investment Management, Inc.
"For each month, beginning in February 2003, we tracked the funds that received each of the five possible star ratings and then compared the performance of those funds to the median fund in the corresponding Morningstar category over the next three years. The chart shows you the percentage of funds of each rating that did better than that median category peer over the next three years."
Ha--- love it!! :)

http://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/915802/000091580215000101/grandeurpeakfeecapfootnoteup.htm
h497 1 grandeurpeakfeecapfootnoteup.htm
FINANCIAL INVESTORS TRUST
Grandeur Peak Emerging Markets Opportunities Fund
Grandeur Peak Global Reach Fund
SUPPLEMENT DATED DECEMBER 4, 2015 TO THE PROSPECTUS DATED AUGUST 31, 2015
Grandeur Peak Emerging Markets Opportunities Fund
The footnote under the Table titled “FEES AND EXPENSES OF THE FUND” on page 2 of the Prospectus is hereby deleted in its entirety and replaced with the following:
** Grandeur Peak Global Advisors, LLC (the “Adviser”), has agreed to waive and/or reimburse fees or expenses in order to limit Total Annual Fund Operating Expenses After Fee Waiver/Expense Reimbursement (excluding acquired fund fees and expenses, brokerage expenses, interest expenses, taxes and extraordinary expenses) to 1.95% and 1.70% of the Fund’s average daily net assets for the Fund’s Investor Class Shares and Institutional Class Shares, respectively. This agreement (the “Expense Agreement”) is in effect through August 31, 2016. The Adviser will be permitted to recover, on a class- by-class basis, expenses it has borne through the Expense Agreement to the extent that a Fund’s expenses in later periods fall below the expense cap in effect at the time of waiver or reimbursement. Notwithstanding the foregoing, the Fund will not be obligated to pay any such deferred fees and expenses more than three years after the end of the fiscal year in which the fee and expenses was deferred. The Expense Agreement may not be terminated or modified prior to August 31, 2016 except with the approval of the Fund’s Board of Trustees.
Grandeur Peak Global Reach Fund
The second footnote under the Table titled “FEES AND EXPENSES OF THE FUND” on page 10 of the Prospectus is hereby deleted in its entirety and replaced with the following:
** Grandeur Peak Global Advisors, LLC (the “Adviser”), has agreed to waive and/or reimburse fees or expenses in order to limit Total Annual Fund Operating Expenses After Fee Waiver/Expense Reimbursement (excluding acquired fund fees and expenses, brokerage expenses, interest expenses, taxes and extraordinary expenses) to 1.60% and 1.35% of the Fund’s average daily net assets for the Fund’s Investor Class Shares and Institutional Class Shares, respectively. This agreement (the “Expense Agreement”) is in effect through August 31, 2016. The Adviser will be permitted to recover, on a class- by-class basis, expenses it has borne through the Expense Agreement to the extent that a Fund’s expenses in later periods fall below the expense cap in effect at the time of waiver or reimbursement. Notwithstanding the foregoing, the Fund will not be obligated to pay any such deferred fees and expenses more than three years after the end of the fiscal year in which the fee and expenses was deferred. The Expense Agreement may not be terminated or modified prior to August 31, 2016 except with the approval of the Fund’s Board of Trustees.
* * *
Please retain this supplement for future reference.
ttp://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/915802/000091580215000101/grandeurpeakfeecapfootnoteup.htm

@AndyJ I think you are spot on, at least as far as yesterday's results are concerned. The WSJ states that the euro had the biggest one day percentage gain against the dollar in six years. My MFs presumably have positions in favor of the dollar.
I knew my MFs had currency exposure, but not to the degree presumably reflected in yesterday's results. Leads me to wonder whether I want to be this exposed to currency fluctuations...

As of market close (12/03/2015) Old_Skeet is down according to M* portfolio manager by about 1.5%. In comparison, the Lipper Balanced Index is about even for the year. I have a good number of funds in the Growth & Income and Growth Areas of my portfolio that are generating positive returns; but, overall they can not offset the others that are down. However, my broker generated monthly statements indicate I have positive returns thus far this year due to special investment positions (spiffs) that I have utilized from time-to-time. With this, my trading activity has put me net positive through November.
With a current high P/E Ratio (23.1 TTM) on stocks (S&P 500 Index) along with as reported earnings in decline, a strong dollar and expectations of a FOMC rate increase I'm thinking it is going to be a bad year for my portfolio. I could reduce my portfolio's equity allocation downward another 10% and still be within my equity allocation range of 40% to 60% equity; however, that would put me extremely overweight cash as I am already above my cash allocation range now of 10% to 20% along with being light fixed income (currently at 20%) with an allocation range of 20% to 40%. In addition, other assets as defined in Xray remain at 5%.
So, it is what it is. Some years you make good money, some years you do not. In addition, M* portfolio manager indicates that my portfolio's mutual fund holdings combined and on average are currently off their 52 week highs by about 8.5% as I write. With this, I've got some funds that have been extremely poor performers, thus far over the past 52 week peroid, with the worst performers being my emerging market and global infrastructure funds. I am glad I sold my gold and commodity funds, a while back, as they would also have been detractors.
In addition, @Old_Joe, I am thinking that @Junkster will make money this year along with @Ted. Then there is @bee that is an active investor ... she may as well. I am sure there are also a few others ... so, let's not leave out @Scott.
And, so it goes ...