Both of those look like good funds. I own GAOAX and have considered RPGAX. I also own QVGIX, which you might want to look at also.

I was looking at the Oppenheimer fund and noticed that the fund managers have been there for about 3 years or less. I wonder how that fund would do in a downturn.

@msf, here's a recent article from Advisor Perspectives that confirms growth has been outperforming value recently but that value eventually has its turn. Over time based on their comparison of the cheapest 20% of stocks on a book value basis compared to the most expensive 20% of stocks on the same basis, value handily beats growth.
advisorperspectives.com/articles/2015/08/11/why-you-should-allocate-to-value-over-growth
I suppose it would be interesting to know how well those cheapest P/B stocks do compared to the other 80% or to "blend" stocks because it could be that the deep value stuff suffers a lot more volatility or a bigger drawdown but doesn't outperform by nearly as much over time.
Thanks for the thoughts about cash! That seems at least as reasonable and how I was thinking about it and I guess it means I'd have to look at the details of those funds before drawing any conclusions about their approach. I do find it interesting, however, that Longleaf is pretty clear about their "deep value" orientation but the style box says large blend and their portfolio statistics don't lead me to the same conclusion. Obviously it hinges on what they determine the intrinsic value to be but it seems they've had a lot of difficulty keeping up with any of their peers for the last 10 years.
The Timothy Plan Emerging Markets fund you mentioned is pretty remarkable. They're really what I would expect to see in "deep value". Lots of Brazil, Russia, basic materials, utilities, industrials and very small P/E, P/B and P/S. The expense ratio is really high considering they have a 5.50% front-end load, but I guess that's what's necessary to earn any money when you only have $7.8 million of AUM.

Just like to mention that TPEMX is managed by Brandes and you could get pretty much the same thing a lot cheaper with BEMIX.

That doesn't surprise me. A couple of years ago I went to a fund shareholder meeting and JPMorgan didn't send a single board member or manager - just their lawyer and a couple of other people.
In contrast, at the only other fund shareholder meeting I've gone to - T Rowe Price - I got to meet Brian Rogers, talk with people involved with their health care fund, etc.

Hi Guys,
Like Ted, I made some money investing in Peter Lynch and Magellan. Unlike Ted, I only invested small amounts, and only after Lynch had piloted Magellan for a half dozen years. The percentage returns were impressive, the dollar amounts much less so. During that phase of my investment learning cycle, I was still heavily committed to individual stock positions. My bad decision, and also bad timing.
Like Lewis Braham, I question if Lynch would be as successful in today’s marketplace as he was in yesteryear’s investing world. I doubt it.
Peter Lynch's record is unarguably outstanding. There can be no debate over his superior 13 years of active Magellan fund management. Today’s investing environment is significantly different. In his hay-day, Lynch enjoyed several advantages that do not currently exist.
His Fidelity boss (Ned Johnson) allowed him to go anywhere; today, a manager is more tightly constrained by a discipline to stay within prescribed box styles. Lynch was permitted to invest internationally, a rare option in the late 1970s and early 1980s. He invested in countless stocks, some after merely visiting a busy store; one wonders about the sagacity of that tactic. It is often said that Lynch never saw a stock that he didn’t want to buy.
Thirty-five years ago, Lynch was mostly investing against Joe Six-Pack. The competition was definitely inferior when contrasted against today’s fully trained money managers. This is the most common explanation for the disappearing Alpha phenomenon. It is tough to build long winning streaks when nobody owns an advantage for very long. Information exchange quickly erodes any such advantage.
I’m sure Lynch would do a competent managerial job today. Given the highly sophisticated and competitive environment that currently exists, becoming a superstar fund manager is far less likely. This is not a knock specifically aimed at Peter Lynch. The financial field is presently loaded with talented, deeply supported folks.
Institutional agencies carefully research and hire successful active fund managers. It is a laborious process. These institutions are finding that a much more challenging task. The selected management’s performance records are deteriorating. Alpha is more elusive. In response, these same institutions are now punting, and are presently hiring more passively managed sub-units. Things change.
Best Wishes.

@msf, here's a recent article from Advisor Perspectives that confirms growth has been outperforming value recently but that value eventually has its turn. Over time based on their comparison of the cheapest 20% of stocks on a book value basis compared to the most expensive 20% of stocks on the same basis, value handily beats growth.
advisorperspectives.com/articles/2015/08/11/why-you-should-allocate-to-value-over-growth
I suppose it would be interesting to know how well those cheapest P/B stocks do compared to the other 80% or to "blend" stocks because it could be that the deep value stuff suffers a lot more volatility or a bigger drawdown but doesn't outperform by nearly as much over time.
Thanks for the thoughts about cash! That seems at least as reasonable and how I was thinking about it and I guess it means I'd have to look at the details of those funds before drawing any conclusions about their approach. I do find it interesting, however, that Longleaf is pretty clear about their "deep value" orientation but the style box says large blend and their portfolio statistics don't lead me to the same conclusion. Obviously it hinges on what they determine the intrinsic value to be but it seems they've had a lot of difficulty keeping up with any of their peers for the last 10 years.
The Timothy Plan Emerging Markets fund you mentioned is pretty remarkable. They're really what I would expect to see in "deep value". Lots of Brazil, Russia, basic materials, utilities, industrials and very small P/E, P/B and P/S. The expense ratio is really high considering they have a 5.50% front-end load, but I guess that's what's necessary to earn any money when you only have $7.8 million of AUM.

Here's an article on Longleaf Partners (generally considered a deep value fund) discussing their cash buildup.
It confirms my impressions (which are admittedly vague and not well supported since I'm not a deep value enthusiast) - that the market has been trending toward growth for several years (okay, that impression is reasonably solid) and that funds have tended to drift along with the market.
As the article suggests, deep value funds have basically two alternatives - build cash (not to be defensive, but because there aren't enough companies meeting their stringent requirements), or drift with the market (staying toward the "left" side of the market as it moves "rightward"). LLPFX has been doing both - last year they had over 1/4 in cash; they've since made purchases and M* now classifies its portfolio as blend. In fact, M* has classified the portfolio as blend for each of the past several years except in 2014, when it apparently stuck closer to its knitting and let cash build.
For a fund to the left of value, take a look at TPEMX. Most of the really low P/E funds right now are EM funds.

FYI: ( I owned Fuidelity Magellan from 1972-1996 and made a lot of $$$ from Lynch's skill as Magellan's manager. It is the single best investment I ever made.)
Consider that Lynch’s Magellan fund averaged +29% per year from 1977 – 1990 (almost doubling the return of the S&P 500 index for that period). In 1977, the obscure Magellan Fund started with about $20 million, and by his retirement the fund grew to approximately $14 billion (700x’s larger). Cynics believed that Magellan was too big to adequately perform at $1, $2, $3, $5 and then $10 billion, but Lynch ultimately silenced the critics. Despite the fund’s gargantuan size, over the final five years of Lynch’s tenure, Magellan outperformed 99.5% of all other funds, according to Barron’s. How did Magellan investors fare in the period under Lynch’s watch? A $10,000 investment initiated when he took the helm would have grown to roughly $280,000 (+2,700%) by the day he retired. Not too shabby.
Regards,
Ted
http://investingcaffeine.com/2015/08/15/inside-the-brain-of-an-investing-genius-2/

@hank, I agree that PRWCX is an outlier among the moderate asset allocation fund. Consistency year after year has been one trait that other AA funds lack, including DODBX. I understand they use different approach, but the results are quite different. During drawdown periods, DODBX sustained more loss than the benchmark, Vanguard Balanced Index for example, while it (sometime) outperformed on the upswings. 2008 is a good example. Considering a full market cycle, DODBX is on the bottom of my list. I also like FPA Crescent, but the ER is not shareholder friendly with its already large asset basis. Vanguard Wellington is another one of my favorite and it takes on a value approach.
I have invested with PRWCX for over ten years, and still surprise how well it performs.

PRWCX is an "outlier" in my opinion. I'm hard-pressed to understand why it has consistently bested its categories (has been placed in a number of different ones) over its 25+ year existence. As I recall, it was introduced by Price in '86 as an even more conservative alternative to their than high-flying PRFDX which had met with much success under popular manager Brian Rogers. (Since PRFDX was already deemed a very conservative offering, PRWCX seemed truly an equity fund for widows and orphans.)
Since it's had three or four different managers over this period, some with markedly different approaches (and relatively little experience), manager alone cannot account for the success of PRWCX. Smaller size initially was a strength - as it was able to play largely in the mid-cap market, but that's not been the case over the past decade. Fees have consistently fallen as with many other Price offerings as scale has increased. But at .70 it's certainly not cheap compared to the .53 for DODBX. Nor does a highly flexible mandate fully explain its success - since, as we know, that can be either a blessing or a curse (and is all too often the latter).
Early on it held significant stakes in Newmont and other miners. At other times it's favored junk bonds. More recently it overweighted big "blue chip" stocks. And quite recently it reported selling call-options on some of its equity holdings as a way of generating higher income than the fixed rate markets can currently provide. (A recent post alluded to the low return on PRWCX's bond portfolio - but may have overlooked this important income component).
I'd say the fund exemplifies Price's generally careful "Steady-Eddy" investment approach and the company's very deep managerial bench. Culture, promotion from within and a customer-friendly philosophy all play a part. But I also sense that luck, good-fortune, statistical oddity, or whatever else you want to call it play as big a part. I own some PRWCX and have for a couple decades - but I'd be loath to pour all my money into this single fund offering. Time will tell if the next 25 years can be as successful as the last.

@prinx, PRECX is a fine moderate allocation fund, but you still need exposure to international equity for the next 20 years or longer.

I was intrigued many years ago, when the "Masters" funds appeared. I was skeptical re their E/Rs, so I figured I'd wait and see. Honestly, I'd kind of forgotten about them, til I saw this thread. Prompted by the thread, I decided to "look and see"....
Looking at trailing returns between MSENX vs. VFINX (S&p 500) and FCNTX (Fido Contrarian), there certainly does NOT seem to be any convincing evidence that the "master investors" are adding Alpha, above the fund's E/R..
MNILX? (the Intl fund)... I hold Artisan's ARTKX, which blows it away (though its closed to new investors). MNILX doesn't seem to have any evident advantage over Fidelity's FOSFX. I guess MNILX is 'OK', but again, the 'masters' don't seem to bring anything special in delivering performance.
As for small cap MSSFX, Vanguard's "no master" index fund VISVX convincing trounces MSSFX over trailing periods.
The numbers are what they are. An admittedly intriguing concept of owning a 'masters' vehicle, but implementation (along with the cost burden of high E/Rs) simply has not delivered, in this writer's opinion.

Loved MJG's response.
Not considering myself an investment expert of any sorts, I luckily chose dollar cost averaging in a field I know something about...... health. So a 30 year period of regular
contributions to Vanguard Health worked out well. Later I switched to T Rowe Price Health Sciences. I did not know much about any other field but eventually I read about
diversification and have since acted upon it. But my first approach was like throwing out a dart. Would it not be a scream if after another 20 years I wished that I did not learn about diversification and kept on placing money only in PRWCX?
prinx

I agree with Lewis (not surprising, really) with this small demurral: it is an "alternatives" fund if you define "alternative" as "not vanilla market exposure." If you're looking for 60/40 and think the the risk-return profile of the core stock and bond markets is reasonable, this doesn't add a lot of value but it does charge a lot in fees. If you're skeptical of the state of, say, intermediate-term investment grade bonds or the S&P 500 but you'd still prefer market exposure to a plethora of weird derivatives and inexplicable strategies, then this might have a role.
My greater concern is not with Alternative Strategies or even International (they're run through 22 managers over time and produced a good record, but simply investing with their first manager's flagship fund - Mark Yockey and Artisan International - would have been even better). My greater concern is with Focused Opportunities (liquidated), Value (liquidated), and Equity (which has parlayed 33 all-stars into decent returns since inception but poor ones over both the current market cycle starting in 2007 and the past ten years). Collectively they raise serious questions about either the possibility of finding a stellar collection of long-term domestic equity managers or the appropriateness of a total return measure (as opposed to one that's more sensitive to risk or process or some such).
David

Saturday's Barron's piece on the L-G Alternative Strategies Fund, "Managing the Managers," [http://online.barrons.com/articles/litman-gregory-manages-the-managers-1439013175] led me to take a look at the line-up of multi-manager funds that L-G has been running for a couple of decades (Equity, International, Smaller Companies). The basic idea is to hire the best managers, give each a slice of the fund, and give them the freedom to perform. Over the years, in my recollection, the line-ups have changed, but I recognize old-timers such as David Herro and Dick Weiss who are still on board. You'd think the funds would out perform because L-G can cherry pick good managers. However, my amateurish analysis of the long-term performance of the equity funds shows they barely keep up with their benchmarks. Small-cap managers are supposed to be able to add value: L-G's guys don't keep up with the Russell 2000. My conclusion is that a stable of well-known managers is no better than the nearest index fund.

Next crash. GROW goes to $0.25. Buy, sell at $2.50. That's my plan. Of course it would mean I buy a stock after like forever. And I have a history of buying stocks of companies that go bankrupt. But hey, if I don't bind it, maybe someone will and they will bless me.

You basically have a commodity fund that behaves like a 3x fund and a handful of other okay/so-so funds. Frank Holmes is well-researched in terms of commodities, but at some point they could have produced a nat resources fund that doesn't seem as if it's on steroids.
It's astonishing that this was $35 several years ago. PSPFX is cents above its 2008 low.

Hi JohnN,
Thank you for the Link to this Joshua Kennon article. Over many years I have been informed by his many fine financial articles. This one did not disappoint in that regard.
Kennon mostly directs his writings towards neophyte investors. After many years, I am not a novice investor, but since I have no formal training in that arena, my amateur knowledge base is somewhat spotty. It has holes that Kennon can and does fill.
Although I read Benjamin Graham’s “The Intelligent Investor”, it completely escaped my memory that Graham recommended a portfolio asset allocation that had a 25% bond holding floor and a 75% bond position ceiling. I didn’t recall these limits to his conservative investing approach. I wonder if his student, Warren Buffett, shares the same or similar portfolio construction constraints.
Best Wishes.

I found this one pretty damning from a June speech he gave to the CFA Society:
"Capital formation, as this process is known, is largely represented by the raising of equity capital for new and existing companies. In recent years, total public stock issuance (IPOs, etc.) has averaged some $250 billion annually. On the other hand, during the same period, the annual volume of stock trading has averaged $35 trillion. Thus, capital formation has represented just 7/10ths of 1% of the activities of our financial system, trading activity 99.3%. And much of that trading, to state what must be obvious, has nothing to do with long-term investment. In fact, much of that frenzied activity is merely short-term speculation. Our challenge is to return long-term investing to its starring role in the financial movie, not merely as a co-star or in a cameo role, nor as a mere extra."
What does this say about the functioning of our capitalist system to spur job creation, innovation and true economic growth when so much money is devoted to just paper trading hands and so little is actually devoted to new capital formation?

People who complain about things like this are labeled as "doomers" until the issue can't be ignored and then we hear about it as a "crisis" and the financial media of course goes, "who could have known?"
Hey, ZIRP was really great at creating something sustainable and not just another boom/bust, right? The fact that the dollar volume of ETFs traded has now gone past US GDP (and as you mention above, capital formation has represented just 7/10ths of 1% of the activities of our financial system, trading activity 99.3%) shows an economy not built on sand, right?

Yeah, Reckless monetary policy powered by absurdly short-term thinking only results in positives. Right.
It wouldn't surprise me if this is the "ultimate" bubble and things in the global economy look very different on the other side.
Now the he Chinese have devalued, the economy is weak, it would appear that there's a bust going on in oil that will very likely get worse and the Fed seems less and less likely to raise interest rates, or they'll raise 50 basis points only to come back down to zero which will look awful. Yeah, the economy couldn't take a rise in the interest rate of 50 basis points, but everything's just a-okay.
If we have another crisis at or near the zero bound after several years or ZIRP and multiple QEs, the Fed will have some explaining to do.
So hey, what's next? John Kerry is making threats about how the dollar may not be the reserve currency if the Iran deal isn't passed. Wouldn't surprise me if it just happened anyways.

So, again, my view is that this period ends badly. It's not a question of if, but a question of when.

I found this one pretty damning from a June speech he gave to the CFA Society:
"Capital formation, as this process is known, is largely represented by the raising of equity capital for new and existing companies. In recent years, total public stock issuance (IPOs, etc.) has averaged some $250 billion annually. On the other hand, during the same period, the annual volume of stock trading has averaged $35 trillion. Thus, capital formation has represented just 7/10ths of 1% of the activities of our financial system, trading activity 99.3%. And much of that trading, to state what must be obvious, has nothing to do with long-term investment. In fact, much of that frenzied activity is merely short-term speculation. Our challenge is to return long-term investing to its starring role in the financial movie, not merely as a co-star or in a cameo role, nor as a mere extra."
What does this say about the functioning of our capitalist system to spur job creation, innovation and true economic growth when so much money is devoted to just paper trading hands and so little is actually devoted to new capital formation?

Tell that to the Japanese - 25 years. I don't think we will have that type of decline and for so long. However, maybe a drop and then a trading range for many years - % and years your guess. The cause if you want: Fed foolishly raising interest rates, terrorist attack, war, and then VAT, raise in tax rates to pay for debt, war, aging pop, increasing entitlements.

The article is too focused on the US stock market. Through out history there have been stock markets that have crashed and burned.
Worry and be happy.

Actually, TGBAX is doing better than Fuss and Gaffney, not as well as Ivacyn and the Poobah. But why anyone would compare him with these is beyond me. Nothing has changed with the way TGBAX is managed. What HAS changed is the various world economies, and the dollar in relation to other currencies. Investors who bought this fund should have bought it for the diversification it adds to a portfolio, not for the returns that it had in any given year or time frame. Hastenstab is incredibly defensive right now, with a duration of 0.13 years and an average maturity of 2.36 years. We captured some significant gains a year or so ago, but we maintain our positions in the fund.