@Charles: Thanks. Sorry I did not realize that they were in different tabs of same excel sheet. I am able to see them now. The issue is that I have been adding to the same 9 equity MFs in taxable a/c, month after month, in rotation that I thought I will get some new prospects.(btw, I used to browse thru the fundalarm honor roll few years ago quite frequently).

Unfortunately, there's really not much on the company (no SeekingAlpha articles or anything of the sort. It's largely limited to presentations on the company website or brief articles on Bloomberg and elsewhere. Additionally, it was a Wintergreen (WGRNX) holding for a while, not sure if it still is (Winters discussed Cielo in a "Wealthtrack" video interview not that long ago part of his play on emerging market consumers.)
The interview is here:
http://www.wintergreenfund.com/news/2013/0719-wealthtrack/
The Cielo discussion starts at about 16 minutes in.
I think my "issue" is that I'd like to invest a little bit in Brazil. My problem is that I like to do so in a way that I can get my head around. A fund can be volatile, too, but if I can have a thesis for something like Cielo (which goes along with the larger holdings that I have that are payment-related), it's easier for me to hold through the volatility than a fund that I don't have a real connection to/thesis for and may just dump if things get rocky (well, with how Brazil is now, rockier.)
I definitely like the payments space (a lot) and Cielo has a very large share of the market in Brazil. Cielo also bought US company Merchant E-Solutions (https://www.merchante-solutions.com/about-us/overview/)
Also, Cielo is an ADR where I can actually reinvest dividends. It varies by brokerage, but I've found that DRIP/reinvesting is usually no problem with US shares. When you get into ADRs or foreign ordinaries, then it becomes possible much less often and seems almost random as to what can/can't (possibly depends on which bank is the adr depositary?) Additionally, Cielo has also split twice in the last four years or so.
Anyways, it's not something that I'd recommend for a conservative investor at all. It's my way of investing in Brazil in a manner that I can feel comfortable with longer-term. Most people COMPLETELY UNDERSTANDABLY (and again, they're certainly not wrong) feel more comfortable if they were to invest in something like Brazil investing in a fund. I'm weird though and feel more comfortable investing in one company whose business I can wrap my mind around and feel fairly strongly about long-term.
For me, investing in the last few years or so has become, how can I structure my investments in a way that allows me to feel comfortable with a long-term view point and far less concerned about the day-to-day. The funny thing is, for most people, that would likely involve being less in single names and much more in funds. I feel more comfortable more in single names than funds because I feel strongly about various themes, sectors and companies. Plus, nearly everything I own pays a dividend.
Again, I'm weird - most people would understandably feel more comfortable in funds and probably rightly so. Older and/or more conservative investors should go the fund route.
Again, Ambev (ABEV) was the other name that I often thought about in terms of Brazil, but ultimately was more interested in the payments space. As I also noted above, Femsa (FMX) is something that I've thought about a lot, but I think the issue that I had with Femsa is its investment in Coca-Cola Femsa and the obesity problems in Mexico. There was a terrific hour-long presentation by a futurist in front of Femsa execs on Youtube and one of the major topics of discussion was in regards to health issues. (edited to add: found it)

Mexico ultimately decided on a soda tax to combat one of the world's highest obesity rates (http://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/jan/16/mexico-soda-tax-sugar-obesity-health) and it's apparently been successful.
While the conglomerate nature of Femsa is appealing, as is its reasonably solid track record, the problem that I have is: what's the future? The company's Oxxo stores are very compelling, but I have no interest in investing in Coca-cola in this country or any other (Asian conglomerate Swire is a Coke bottler, another company I want to like but can't.) Bill Gates was a large shareholder in Femsa for a while, but I believe he sold his shares not that long ago.
Although, that said, there was an interesting article on "The Most Successful Company in the World" the other day, and it wasn't a company that makes things that are good for people. (http://www.fool.com/investing/general/2015/02/13/the-extraordinary-story-of-americas-most-successfu.aspx)
I certainly don't own all things that are good for people. I own a liquor stock, although it's not a large holding. People do drink in good times and bad, but I think what's really kind of compelling is that you have this enormous industry where the big public names are now down to a few (and one less after Beam was recently bought.)
Long, rambling story short,
1. If I'm invested in a single name, the intent is a long-term holding with reinvesting dividends. It may have periods of under-performance, but I'm definitely diversified.
2. Most people should go with a fund and if I were to go with a fund, I'd likely go with T Rowe Latin America.

@davidmoran
I can't really speak to DODGX which is the topic of Charles' post. But, I've done well with this company in general. Converted a bunch of their Global (DODWX) to a Roth near the bottom in 09 and rode it back up for about 3 years. Paid off very well. The past 2-3 years that money's been tucked. away in their Income Fund (DODIX) and their Balanced Fund (DODBX). Very pleased with the 5 YR numbers for the Balanced - 13.35% annualized.
Heck, it's lagging the S&P by only a little over 2% for that period. The funds you list look like equity funds rather than balanced. They appear to be fine funds. They'd running 1-2% ahead of DODBX over the 5 year time frame from what I can observe.
In a way I hate touting good numbers like those for fear there will be another stampede of hot money into the funds. Folks than yank it back out when markets start correcting and it makes it really tough for those of us who are in for the long term.

It may have been pronounced dead of bloat but its ensuing performance put another nail in the boat, or whatever a good phrase is. Glad I bailed and dove into GABEX and later added YACKX. Years of suboptimal decisions, seemed to me. I had been in it for decades prior.

Hi,
I'm starting to do some research on Latin American funds -- particularly interested in Brazil as the market has taken a substantial hit over the last 5 years. I'd greatly appreciate it if folks on the board could steer me to: 1) good funds in the category that I can read up on more. 2) Good research that I can read on the Latin American market as a whole. This will be for just a small portion of my funds and I understand that there is risk here. Would value your thoughts. thanks.

Hi davidrmoran!
Yes, on the soup thing....this is an area I've never been in before....like emerging markets and frontier markets.....so a name I know is good. I owned Mario before. GABAX, GABEX some time back. I am very, very bullish on this country. The American can do spirit still lives in smaller companies. And I do believe this market has years to go.
God bless!
the Pudd

Do real estate funds in general have a high turnover rate? Also, is there a place one can research prior years to check the turnover rates for those years?

I don't think index funds have high turnover. Good reason to own them, like VNQ.

FYI: Some smaller corners of the market have stalled recently, even as the Standard & Poor's 500 index closes in on its record high. That means some fund managers are once again welcoming new investors, after they had closed their funds years ago to new money.
More than a dozen mutual funds have reopened their doors over the last year, according to data compiled by Morningstar. The number doesn't include funds that have partially re-opened -- those that still bar new entrants but allow longtime investors to add more money.
Regards,
Ted
http://abcnews.go.com/Business/print?id=28927836

Edmond said: "AU is not an investment ... Its insurance."
I like that. But instead of "insurance", I'd call it a hedging tool used by money managers to hedge other risk positions. Than again, "insuring" against various unforeseen events that could trash most paper assets is, I guess, a type of hedging.
I think charting the highest performing asset over 100 or 500 years and than promoting that single asset to the exclusion of all others constitutes a gross oversimplification of the investment process. If that's all there is to investing, let's say "Good Bye" to bonds, real estate, cash, precious metals, fine art, collectables, and an assortment of other alternative assets that help carry us through those periods when equities fall flat on their face.
Mr. Siegel wrote a book. "Stocks for the long run" - or something like that. Wonder how well that would have sold in 1929 or 2008?

One of our real estate holdings for the past several years is FRIFX. It is an odd duck fund for the other RE in its category; as it averages about 50/50 equity and bond mix.
The fund turnover runs about 30; among 570 or so holdings as of the most recent report period.
Fido summury view of this fund
For turnover rate/ratio with a fund; the understood measure method covers a 12 month period. According to statistics, the average managed mutual fund turnover is 85%.
A turnover event "count" occurs when a stock is sold before being held for 1 year. I will presume, without further investigation; that a turnover count does not happen if the stock is sold at a holding period of 1 year and 1 day from purchase date.
Obviously, turnover, as a ratio; is also affected by the number of holdings in a fund.
I/we at our house; are not concerned with turnover numbers.......if the fund functions in a manner as we anticipated and/or understood to begin; and continues in a positve direction.
Regards,
Catch

A long-term owner of gold here. I think the question asked is wrong.
AU is not an investment -- good or bad. Its insurance. What is the rate of return on homeowner's insurance to someone who never files a claim? (hint: its a negative number, as cash only goes out, and does not come) Does that make homeowner's insurance something to be avoided? In a precise sense, purchasing insurance is not "investing", its an outlay, an expense. In return for the outlay, you are obtain protection for an asset.
AU is similar. You decide on an appropriate allocation, you incur an outlay. The difference being, with AU (unlike homeowner's insurance) after several years of holding it, you can decide to liquidate it and get (some portion of) your money back. Try doing that with your H/O insurance premiums....
As to dryflower's comment about a miniscule ROR on AU over 'thousands of years'... First, my investment horizon is not that long. Second, directly to D/F's point, if you were WERE sitting (for example) in pharoanic Egypt circa 1500 B.C., or 200 B.C Carthage, and invested in loans to the pharoah (i.e. Treasurys), fertile farm acreage and tenement apartments (real estate) , or the local camel merchant (equity ownership in commercial enterprises, i.e. 'stocks') ...then here come the Romans, they kill the camels, topple the govt, set fire to your buildings (real estate) and seize the lands (or in Carthage's case, 'seed' the land with salt to make it unusable).
What is the ROR on THOSE investments once title has been seized or property destroyed? (hint, if your equity in an asset goes to $0, its gone, forever.)
The camel merchant who sold his camels the day before the Romans landed, could easily hide the proceeds from that sale (gold coins), throw them a bags, walk them out into the desert somewhere, bury them by night (perhaps in sundry locations, to thwart burglars, and come back in a year or two, and his AU and wealth intact. Still not impressed? Fair enough, but what is the ROR (or current value) on an IOU from the last, deposed sovereign of Carthage? --- 10 years before he was deposed, all Carthaginians assumed the sovereign's IOU was AAA-rated...
The above story is tongue-in-cheek, but meant to get the point across about AU being insurance, not an investment. AU, because of its inherent attributes (universally desirable -- among all cultures past and present, relative scarceness, indestructability, portability) makes it a unique diversifier against the potential ravagings of conventional investment assets, WTSHTF.
We all may lucky enough to NOT experience a "Mega Black Swan" event. And our houses may never burn down. [I also have stocks, and bonds (in far greater value than my AU -- so please don't consider me a 'gold bug', any more than I am a 'stock bug' or a 'bond bug'. ]
Like Henry Walton Jones Jr, I am "a cautious fellow". I renew my H/O insurance each year and I hold some AU. I consider neither to be "investments"; I consider having some of both prudent.

I used to find Kiplinger the best of the monthly finance (print-) mags, but the quality of their advice seems to have grown increasingly shoddy since the 2008 crisis. A couple impressions from the link:
a. The writer, Steve Goldberg (SG), observes T-rates are very low, and bonds are priced high. No argument there, rather, a question-- Is this news to anyone? It shouldn't be. But, OK, that is the underlying premise of the article. So how to react to this condition...
b. His suggestion? "Stick to bond funds with relatively short average maturities. If you’re willing to take some risk, buy funds that invest in some lower-quality corporate bonds." Hmm? SG doesn't seem to know/acknowledge the difference between owning bonds vs bond funds. (Or perhaps Kiplinger doesn't want their columnists to mention indiv bonds, as it might upset their mutual-fund advertisers?) -- An investor can invest in individual Treasurys -- perhaps in a bond ladder -- hold them to maturity and encounter no loss of principal.
Instead, he suggests short duration funds. This is a very, VERY crowded trade, as investors have been shoveling money into these for years --- The last time I looked (and its been a while) many of the holdings of short-duration funds were trading at premiums to par. The funds yield very little. Buying funds which hold bonds trading at premiums is a guaranteed drag on performance -- all dollar-good debt will move to par as it approaches maturity. Holding a bag of premium priced bonds is a good way to see your capital be whittled down.
Contining -- he suggests lower-quality corp bonds. That sound like junk. So SG cautions us to avoid Treasurys due to risk, but posits junk bonds as a less risky alternative.... Huh? Junk funds may/may not be a good bet here, that is not the argument I am making. Rather that as a "risk avoidance" strategy, it would not occur to me move from Treasurys to junk. Also, corporates, whether junk or IG are spread-products, their prices will not be immune to significant rate spikes in Treasurys. If (admittadly-) overpriced Treasurys suddenly and violenty sell-off, its is unlikely in the extreme that junk bonds will be a destination for capital wanting a "flight to safety"...
Another idea -- mine, not SG's--- online FDIC-insured banks can be found offering MMFs which yield ~ 1%, with NO duration risk. If the column's premise is "ways to downsize risk in your fixed-income allocation, Why doesn't SG mention those? --- Perhaps they don't advertise with Kiplinger?
SG is one more reason to avoid subscribing to Kiplinger.

@rjb112
(1) Since you are familiar with Siegel's book, do you have any reason why a supposedly scholarly undertaking like this fails to identify on its central chart which T-Bill maturity the plot-line reflects? The difference would be small. But I'd have more confidence in his numbers if I knew the methodology employed to reach them.
(2) I think we agree that gold is not an attractive long term investment.
(3) I think we also agree that over shorter periods (such as the referenced 15 year time-span) gold does sometimes perform quite well when compared against some other investments.
I'm not sure we disagree on anything of substance here.

hank, I don't know the answer to your question in (1). I strongly suspect the answer to which Treasury Bills were used will be found in Chapter 5, where he says, "In Chapter 5 we examine the details of these return series and see how they are constructed."
I don't have the time nor inclination to read that chapter. I don't own the book, but have it available thru the public library e-book series.
I agree with you when you say "The difference would be small." Since he refers to short term bonds as having the 2.7% annualized real return, he is equating the Treasury Bills he used for the chart to short term bonds. Perhaps he used one year T-bills? I have no idea, and agree with you that it would be much better to have that stated outright. I would also like to see the bonds identified....such as 30-year Treasury bonds, and even the stocks identified. That's where I'm guessing Chapter 5 comes into play.
I agree with your (2) and (3) above........certainly over the past 210 years, gold has been a terrible investment, but also, nobody has lived 210 years to hold it that long and achieve that terrible return. So if you bought gold in January of 2001 and sold it in 2011, you did fabulously. If you bought gold in 1980 at over $800/ounce and sold it in 2000 or 2001 at under $300/ounce, you did terribly.
All these things, including small cap value stocks, large cap growth, value stocks versus growth stocks, foreign stocks vs. US stocks, emerging market stocks, etc etc......are quite time period dependent. Large cap growth did great from 1995-2000, then did terrible, while small cap value did great starting 2000.........
Actually, I don't think we disagree on anything here.
And I'm not against gold.
Some of my favorite investors have invested in gold, such as Jean Marie Eveillard, the late Peter Bernstein, William (Bill) Bernstein, and others. I think Buffett may have even invested in gold or silver at one time. And John Templeton I'm pretty sure bought silver at one time.
And you don't have to look at gold as something you invest in to hit a home run with respect to total return. Many invest in it as an insurance policy against bad outcomes.
take care

Hmm. The fund in question is one I own. ARYVX. It has done very well but looking at it recently I noticed it had 275% turnover. Maybe this was a one year thing? That is why I wondered where I could get previous years turnover rates.

Do real estate funds in general have a high turnover rate? Also, is there a place one can research prior years to check the turnover rates for those years?

Howdy campers,
Wow. Interesting discussion.
I see gold pretty much the way I always have - as a security blanket. Hell, I didn't even play gold before 2002 . . . and I have collected coins for over 50 years AND played silver since the Hunt Bros. It wasn't fun, nor profitable. However, when the bull woke up back in 2001/2002, it was the kinghellbastard momentum play. Geez, it was just back up the truck and roll back in a multi-orgasmic state if bliss. Hopefully, some of you played along.
That said, when the music's over, it's over. The outsized profits in the pm's are long past. That's OK. Eventually, they'll come again . . . but it may be 50 years.
I guess I'll stay with what I've been saying for some 10 years or so - everyone should have some small percentage of their wealth in pm's, preferably physical, hands on stuff. I like to use 3-7% as a guide, but it's really up to you. More than this is fine, but now you're speculating. Speculation is fine so long as you know what is afoot.
Some 5% or is like the bed buddies, my grand kids still have. It helps them sleep at night.
My wee staff of pm's helps me sleep at night.
and so it goes,
peace,
rono

"Does Stock Market Data Really Go Back 200 Years? by Jason Zweig at the WSJ.
http://www.wsj.com/articles/SB124725925791924871

hank, maybe this will assist you. From Siegel's book, latest edition. Looks like a read of Chapter 5 might clarify things for you even more. Hope this helps.
"Asset Returns Since 1802
Figure 1-1 is the most important chart in this book. It traces year by year how real (after-inflation) wealth has accumulated for a hypothetical investor who put a dollar in (1) stocks, (2) long-term government bonds, (3) U.S. Treasury bills, (4) gold, and (5) U.S. currency over the last two centuries. These returns are called total real returns and include income distributed from the investment (if any) plus capital gains or losses, all measured in constant purchasing power."
...................."The real return on fixed-income investments has averaged far less; on long-term government bonds the average real return has been 3.6 percent per year and on short-term bonds only 2.7 percent per year."
hank, note that the 3.6% and 2.7% correspond to the bonds and bills in his chart.
"The average real return on gold has been only 0.7 percent per year. In the long run, gold prices have remained just ahead of the inflation rate, but little more. The dollar has lost, on average, 1.4 percent per year of purchasing power since 1802, but it has depreciated at a significantly faster rate since World War II. In Chapter 5 we examine the details of these return series and see how they are constructed."
hank, regarding your comment: "Regarding investing in T-Bills, it's hard for me to understand how they would have approached gold's return through appreciation during the post-2000 time-frame"
I agree with you. From 2001 to 2011 gold had superb performance, and I'm sure Treasury bills did not even come remotely close. Siegel's data is the really long term......from 1802 thru 2012. He never suggested that there were not time periods of 10, 15, 20, 25 years, etc, where the results were not significantly different.
Take gold for example: it lost 90% of its purchasing power, that is to say, real return, from 1980 until it bottomed, somewhere around 2001. Even on a nominal basis it lost 70% (not taking inflation into account). Then from 2001 till 2011 it was probably the very best performing asset class, far better than stocks, bonds, "bills" [Treasury bills], etc.
Happy Investing

Note: The above data was taken from Jim Cramer's own website!
Just buying an S&P 500 index fund, you would have performed 36% better than enacting every single buy and sell of the Action Alerts PLUS portfolio, which is a paid service so you can constantly check your emails and make all the buys and sells.........so you can drastically underperform the market, and pay much higher taxes from all your buying and selling, versus say the Vanguard S&P 500 Index fund where you will only pay taxes on qualified dividends, as there has not been a capital gains distribution in more than 10 years.

Thanks. Personally, I effectively have a "filter" and that filter has been trying to improve over the years. I love to research, I'll read anything, but it becomes filtering the information and maybe I take one little thing away from an article. Maybe I take nothing. Maybe I take a lot or enough to start research that leads me to adding a new position.
I've done less lately from the standpoint of wanting to put a cap on the number of positions and just focus on what I have, but the overall thing is that you have to have some degree of love/interest in it because - as everyone on this board knows - it takes work and research.