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.

Because of the currency hedging, that may be an apples and oranges comparison. The dollar has been growing stronger over the past few years, so a hedged fund is likely to have done better than unhedged funds. That doesn't mean the fund will do better in the long run, as the dollar fluctuates in strength. Unless one believes that the dollar will not come down.
See my comment in another thread, which cites a Vanguard paper explaining the differences in performance between hedged and unhedged funds.
Quoting from another section of the Vanguard paper:

Over the long term, for a currency management program to produce added return in strategic asset allocations, one must believe not only in a persistent return (positive or negative) from foreign currency, but also that this return will differ substantially from the return realized by hedging.

GLDSX has all of the trappings of a friends and family fund. Golden Asset Management runs 10 strategies, including this one, through separately managed accounts. They've got about $6.5 billion in AUM. This appears to be the only one also available as a '40 Act fund.
...
David

Are you sure about that last part?
I recently ran a screen for large cap blend funds that beat the S&P 500 over the past 3,5, and 10 years (don't ask why). One of the dozen or so funds that popped out was GLDLX. I remember it because I'd never heard of Golden either.
Anyway, according to the SAI, each of these two funds "is a separate series of the Trust. The Trust is an open-end investment management company organized under Delaware law as a statutory trust on August 29, 1995." I don't see anything in the SAI that differentiates the legal status of one series (fund) from the other. They both (or neither) seem to be '40 Act funds.

Yep. The past five years have certainly been ... uhhh, golden for them. Here's their 10-year record versus their peer group:
2006: (4.2) - that is, they trailed the pack by 4.2% that year
2007: (2.1)
2008: 0.1 - that is, 0.1% better than their peers
2009: (17.7)
2010: (2.9)
2011: 5.4
2012: (1.0)
2013: (2.2)
2014: 8.5
2015: 6.4
So, they've trailed in six of the past 10 years by 1.0 - 17.7%. They've led in four years, including 2015 YTD, by 0.1 - 8.5%. Happily for them, most of the good years are appearing in the 1, 3, and 5 year windows.
David

One thing I did notice is that this fund is very tax efficient for a small cap fund. The tax cost ratio for the fund over the 1, 3 and 5 year periods is 0.06, 0.22 and 0.13, respectively. That's very low.