Central banks are still concerned with the nasty "deflation". Euroland just went negative for "inflation" from a report a few days ago.........correct me if I am wrong. South Korea reported today a +.6% inflation rate.
Lets see/think............Norway just cut rates again, yes? India did a rate cut the first part of this week, I recall. Although India is benefiting muchly from inexpensive crude pricing.
As a bond investor over the years, I remain concerned about the amount of issuance in high yield, corp. and gov't. bonds. HY in the energy sector is already getting wacked, the M&A issues bonds every which way on the cheap in order to buy "something", just "anything". And centrals banks worldwide have so many issues flowing around at really low yields............ I suspect the words "what the hell we gonna do when no one wants these anymore?" have been spoken at more than one meeting.
The intra-day low yield on the 10 year was 1.91%.
Holy crap........just a very large boat load of all flavors of bonds floating about.
To repeat, in spite of having been a bond person for a number of years; I really don't like the fast forward picture.
Hang in there.
Catch

FYI:
Regards,
Ted
October 1, 2015
Dear WEALTHTRACK Subscriber,
Today’s front page of “The Wall Street Journal” sums it up: “A Painful Quarter for Markets.” The third quarter, which just ended was the worst for stocks since 2011’s third quarter during the European debt crisis. In the three months ended yesterday, the S&P 500 lost 6.9% and the Dow Industrials dropped 7.6%. Concerns about a slowdown in global growth, especially in China and faltering corporate earnings contributed to the damage. According to the Journal, analysts are predicting third quarter profits for S&P 500 companies will decline 4.5% versus a year ago. They fell 0.7% in the second quarter. It will be the first time since 2009 that profits fall two quarters in a row. However, a big decline in energy company profits is responsible for most of the anticipated damage. Without the estimated 65% decline in energy operating profits the S&P’s earnings would be up 3.4%.
Another key contributor to the market’s malaise was the Federal Reserve’s decision not to raise interest rates in September. After nearly seven years of its unprecedented zero interest rate policy, or ZIRP as it’s known on Wall Street, the consensus was it was time to get interest rates out of emergency mode and back to some sort of normalcy.
It turns out Federal Reserve Chairwoman Janet Yellen agrees with the consensus. In a stunning speech the week after the Fed’s decision, Ms. Yellen made a lengthy case for a rate hike this year “…it will likely be appropriate to raise the target range for the federal-funds rate sometime later this year and to continue boosting short-term rates at a gradual pace thereafter as the labor market improves further and inflation moves back to our 2% objective.”
As veteran Fed watcher, Roberto Perli at Cornerstone Macro noted, after months of not knowing where Chairwoman Yellen stood on rate hikes, we now have clarity on her views at least.
This seemingly endless fixation on when and if the Fed will raise short term rates might seem overdone but the signals and actions of the world’s most influential central bank, of the world’s reserve currency country has huge implications and can steady or roil global markets.
This week’s guest, Kathleen Gaffney, is among those very concerned about recent Fed policy and its financial impact on markets and investors, but she is also more optimistic than most about the world’s growth prospects.
Gaffney is Co-Director of Diversified Fixed Income at Eaton Vance Investment Management. She is also lead portfolio manager of the Eaton Vance Bond Fund, which she launched in early 2013. Until 2012 Gaffney was Co-Portfolio Manager of the Loomis Sayles Bond Fund with legendary investor Dan Fuss where their team was named Morningstar’s Fixed Income Manager of the Year. In this week’s interview, I asked Gaffney why the Federal Reserve’s decision not to raise interest rates in September was a mistake and about the contrarian positions which have hurt her fund’s performance this year.
If you’d like to see the show before it airs, it is available to our PREMIUM subscribers right now. We also have an EXTRA interview with Gaffney, about bond market illiquidity and how she is handling it, available exclusively on our website.
As always, if you have comments or questions, we encourage you to connect with us via Facebook or Twitter.
Thank you for watching. Have a great weekend and make the week ahead a profitable and productive one.
Best Regards,
Consuelo

After becoming more caffeinated and a few hours later, I'll note:
Still have the same feelings on the MLP structure - that it isn't going away.
However,
Do I think the MLP sector is going to thrive in the years going forward? Probably not. It will remain something of a "niche" and I don't think that there's anything really wrong with that.
I do occasionally think that the structure has caused a significant disconnect between price and value, such as the instance of BPY, which I think is an instance where the MLP structure has resulted in people staying away from it (plus, it's not a REIT, so it's not bought up by REIT and probably many general RE funds, etc.) This has been mentioned by management. That said, I'm more than happy to sit on it and reinvest dividends in the meantime.
Excellent link from Mark- that's well worth a read.

Hope sellers don't have to pay a heavy toll...

That's their problem correct? Since I have been in the required distribution phase for over 10 years now and no earned income, it does cause a more careful attention to asset allocation.

If YAFFX (+12% distribution) is any indication, this year the tax man cometh.

Glad I bailed out of this fund earlier this year. Its supposed to do well in down years, but that hasn't been the case this year (-12% YTD). And now it's paying a hefty distribution? No, thanks.

There are so many stocks/funds in negative territory and getting worse. I've been through this a number of time in my 40-50 years as an investor. And you know what, I mostly held all the stocks/funds I had because they were some of the best. it was painful but profitable and I was never in a position where I had to sell so that's what I'm doing and so should you. Just keep the cash position available for your needs a year or so.

@rjb112
no, it was definitely not in the last 5 years...more like the '08-'09 bottom. I think the fund was probably bleeding assets and needed some inflows.

@scott: yes, I'm quite familiar with the history of the fund, and Buffett closing down his partnerships and recommending the investors go with Bill Ruane. I was referring to any recent recommendations of SEQUX by Buffett.......say in the past 5 years.....
@little5bee: "I just remembered seeing Uncle Warren on CNBC and recommending it. It was open then"
Do you recall approximately what year that was little5bee?
Thanks!

I remember Warren Buffett singing the praises of SEQUX during the recession...hmmm...interesting, considering he is a vocal proponenet of everyone paying his/her "fair share". Thanks for the background info @LewisBraham!

Buffett is a tremendous example of say one thing, do another. I believe Buffett has recommended Sequoia as a Berkshire alternative for quite some time.
Too bad some of the other Berkshire alternatives (Loews, Leucadia) have done poorly in recent years.

There are some, but we are batting around some ideas to do it more easily than in the past years.

Looks like SVOAX lines up very well with BPAIX (the shareclass of BPVAX with the same min). It's doing 3-6% better short term (YTD, 1 year), a bit less than 1% worse over 3 and 10 year spans, 1.25% better over 5 years.
Clearly doing better tha BPAIX in the 2015 down market, and held up nearly as well as BPAIX in 2008 (losing about 2% more, but still about 10% less than the market).
It did that as a midcap blend fund, and has been gradually drifting over to large, then value where it sits now. It's a minimum volatility fund (check its name); its low standard deviation and M* risk attest to that. On the other hand, that also means it is subject to higher turnover as noted in its prospectus: "Due to its investment strategy, the Fund may buy and sell securities frequently."
Overall, looks like an interesting fund, definitely worth consideration.
It's a little hard to get a handle on its management - three different management companies, each with several managers involved. Don't know whether each team is allocated a sleeve, or if there is dynamic allocation among teams.
SEI apparently has two different sets of funds with the same names, organized as series of SEI Institutional Managed Trust (including SVOAX), and as series of SEI Institutional Investment Trusts. There you'll find another SEI US US Managed Volatility Fund (SVYAX), managed with nearly the identical slew of managers, lower expenses and a similar but slightly better record (some of which may be attributable to a lower ER). Unfortunately, this appears to be a "true" institutional fund, sold only to institutions, 401k plans, etc.

RNDLX is a fine fund. It's had a bit of a down year because of the closed end allocation. The closed end space has been hurting this year. Expect out performance most years. And it is a "total return" fund, "The RiverNorth/DoubleLine Strategic Income Fund seeks to provide current income and overall total return."

I need a Large Cap Value fund for my IRA at Fidelity, preferably a NTF fund.
I was looking at BPAVX (Boston Partners All Cap Value Fund). It did quite well **comparitively*** in down market of 2008-09. Seems like it is one of those lesser known funds but has great performance for last 10 years.
Anyone heard of BPAVX?
My other Options are JVAAX, TWEIX, BRLVX.
Thoughts?

I might suggest adding REGN to GILD and CELG as cornerstone holdings in the biotech space. I will be adding to ETNHX as a basket.
Not to be overlooked is a stock I've held for many years which is now available for what I consider to be a bargain price, and that's JNJ. And you get a growing divi which is currently 3.2%.

REGN is an excellent choice, too. JNJ is down quite a bit, as is ABT. The latter - I think - is particularly penalized because of its significant EM exposure.

I might suggest adding REGN to GILD and CELG as cornerstone holdings in the biotech space. I will be adding to ETNHX as a basket.
Not to be overlooked is a stock I've held for many years which is now available for what I consider to be a bargain price, and that's JNJ. And you get a growing divi which is currently 3.2%.

Here are the risk/return metrics for GLDSX through August since inception and across various evaluation periods. (The screenshot is from our beta MFO Premium site.)
David points out that GLDSX trails the pack at the 10 year mark, which is reflected in the lifetime metrics below and across the current market cycle since November 2007.

Its performance here is another example of a fund that gets recognized for its shorter term performance (eg., Great Owl and Honor Roll designations), while the longer term performance may be lacking. We've discussed other such funds before on the board.
As a reminder, Honor Roll from the legacy Fund Alarm rating system means the fund is top quintile based on absolute return across the past 1, 3, and 5 year evaluation periods. While MFO Great Owls are top quintile based on risk adjusted returns for all evaluation periods 3 years and greater (eg., 3, 5, 10, and 20).
In this case, through August the fund is just under 10 years, so there is no 10 year ranking. But when our rankings get updated through September, the 10 year performance will be pretty poor and GLDSX will no longer get the GO designation, which is supposed to go to funds that have consistently produced top risk adjusted returns.
My rambling here is because I've been considering updating the GO designation slightly to require lifetime performance to also be top quintile if that period is less than 20 years. David Moran got me thinking along these lines a while ago...he actually has bigger issues with the designation, but he did get me thinking about imposing the lifetime constraint. As always, would appreciate any thoughts.

Given the relatively small amount of money involved (as was pointed out in the NYTimes article), this may have been a situation where First Eagle cut legal corners on something it could have done legally.
It could have gone to the board and said: The fund is bleeding cash. This is causing fire sales and hurting investors. We need to staunch the outflow, by increasing marketing. Raise our management fees to cover that marketing and we'll pay for the marketing services. That would have been legal, and the net effect would have been to have the investors pay for the extra marketing expenses.
Instead, First Eagle decided to short circuit the process and just use the fund assets directly without involving the board. It was aware this wasn't legal, because it hid the payments from the board and from shareholders by saying they were for shareholder services (which were allowed to come from investor assets).
I'm not saying this was their thinking, and what they did certainly wasn't legal. But since the same investor money could have been spent legally on marketing, it doesn't seem to me that investors were fleeced. Rather, what bothers me is the deliberate illegality.
A footnote - Morgenson's calculation of the amount of money First Eagle netted from management fees on the net inflows is wrong. She said that First Eagle took in $23.1B over six years. Multiplying it by the management fee of 0.75% per year, she gets additional management fees of $173M.
But this was over six years. The average extra AUM was half of the $23.1B (assuming linear growth). And this amount should be multiplied by 0.75 times six (for six years). That makes the $25M spent on marketing look even smaller, and thus less likely that this was done by First Eagle to make an illegal buck. Hardly excuses it.

So..........First Eagle is a branch of Volkswagen? They sold their integrity and good name for 25 mil? I've had a bunch of money with these guys for 10 years -- and they stole from me? Time to move on.

"Succession planning" sounds like you might consider active management a risk because sooner or later the manager(s) must be succeeded by other managers. Vanguard states that VMFVX is actively manged, selecting approximately 200 stocks from out of the roughly 7200 in the FTSE Global All Cap Index (hedged).
(Vanguard PR on VMFVX)
Hedging is a hidden expense that may be increasing the total costs incurred by VMVFX by 50% or more: "the direct transaction costs of currency hedging have generally been low to moderate, historically in the range of 1 to 18 basis points annually for developed-market currencies. ... Unlike most major developed-market currencies, emerging-market currencies tend to have lower trading volumes and may be more difficult and costly to hedge." (Vanguard paper on hedging)
This fund "seeks lower risk, not outperformance". (First Vanguard link, above). IMHO, risk (volatility) reduction is an objective that makes this fund worth considering for many. Though you justifiably questioned its value for an investment intend to last 30+ years. Volatility of performance over that long a period of time would likely average out.
Vanguard does offer an unhedged fund (lower transaction costs but higher risk/volatility), passively managed (no succession planning) with stocks culled from the same FTSE Global All Cap Index (except it's the unhedged version of the index). VTWSX/VT (ER of 0.27%/0.17%).
I'm not advocating one fund over the other in general; just looking at how well these two funds fishing in the same pool align with some factors mentioned.

I have $300k to invest for generating income. The money will be income invested for 3 years and at that point pension kicks in so the money can be reinvested less for income and more for growth at that time. I was looking at TRPrice Spectrum Income as a convenient income vehicle with some diversification of income sources. I am open to other suggestions and possibilities of mutual funds or even ETFs, individual securities. Any comments are welcome and appreciated.