I agree with most of the posters on this. The market does not NEED to drop 25%. Indeed it COULD drop 25%. Unlikely, but it could. Just because I did not have everything in the S&P 500 the last five years does not mean I want a big sell off. My below-market returns (because of my wide diversification) are still in my NEED range for future retirement. This was not one of Mr. Clements best moments.

FYI: Legendary fund manager Robert Rodriguez, who forecast the global financial crisis, sees money managers and advisors in peril. They will be victims of their own heedlessness, he says.
The day of reckoning will come within three years in a financial crisis at least as big and pernicious as The Great Recession, he told ThinkAdvisor in a recent, exclusive interview. The country is treading a tenuous path toward another disaster of massive proportions, according to Rodriguez.
Regards,
Ted
http://www.thinkadvisor.com/2014/10/27/bob-rodriguez-new-great-recession-coming-in-3-year?page_all=1
M* Snapshot Of FPA Capital Funds: http://quicktake.morningstar.com/fundfamily/fpa/0C00001YR9/fund-list.aspx

A fund that has had 2.2 billion in recent redemptions ... Makes them a fickled bunch? I don't think so.
I was invested in the fund for a good while and left becasue of its assets bloat not because of its managers. Seems Mainstay tried to be too many investors sweetheart with this fund! Mainstay should have closed this fund a long time ago to new money. Perhaps with a good number of investors leaving and now with reduced AUM the managers will be able to better position the fund in ever changing macro environments ... and, it might now become to have respectable returns. In the early years I made good money in this fund but after it became bloated the returns began to wane.
Should this happen ... Then we know it was asset bloat! I like the manager ... but, not what Mainstay did in leaving the fund open and letting it become, by my thinking, to large to manage.
Old_Skeet

Not directly related to U.S. healthcare, I am sure many here are aware of the foreign health centers that have come into place in the past 10-12 years, in particular with India and Thailand.
This is a new entry that I have watched for the past two years; although there isn't any investment potential directly related the hospital, as it is private.
Acension Health/Caymans
Ascension is a full blown, very sophisticated total health care organization involved in all areas of the business from venture capital startups to insurance and is a non-profit, Catholic based group.
Regards,
Catch

Barrons has an interesting article on ETFs in which one of the panel suggests IUSB , a relatively new(June) ETF from i shares fund with much more than the standard bonds in the Barclay index (this includes high yield and emerging market denominated in dollars.ER is .15, duration about 5 years yield a bit high than the standard bond index

Same here but several years earlier.

Does anyone own RNCOX (River North Core Op?)
I have owned it for 3 years and am trying to decide if I should fold it into another fund. I am consolidating and was considering putting it into PRWCX (T Rowe Price Capital Appreciation) , or FPACX(FPA Crescent). I currently already own all three funds.
One of my concerns with RNCOX is the cost of owning it. The expense ratio is 2.22%

Does anyone own RNCOX (River North Core Op?)
I have owned it for 3 years and am trying to decide if I should fold it into another fund. I am consolidating and was considering putting it into PRWCX (T Rowe Price Capital Appreciation) , or FPACX(FPA Crescent). I currently already own all three funds.
One of my concerns with RNCOX is the costs of owning it. The expense ratio is 2.22%

Notes:
Stats for the top quartile managers 2000-2010:
97% of those who ended up with the best record (=top quartile managers for 2000-2010) spent at least 3 of those 10 years in the bottom half of performance
79% spent at least 3 yrs in the bottom quartile of performance
47% “spent at least 3 of the 10 yrs in the bottom decile of performance, meaning they were in the bottom 10%, so you’re pretty sure that none of their clients actually stuck with them to get the good return”
Two academic studies of institutional investors. Both studies concluded the same thing:
“There is only one metric that you need to predict institutional cash flows: and that metric is, how did the fund do last year, If it did well, it gets all the inflows, if it didn’t do well, it gets all the outflows”
“The best strategy for most people is the one they can stick with”
He likes the structure of ETFs a lot but does not like market cap weighted indexes. He prefers a value index like iShares Russell 1000 Value IWD

@MFO Members: On July 17, 1995, the index closed above the 1,000 mark for the first time. It made steady gains in the following years to reach 2,000 points by 1998, then began to accelerate significantly. This process mushroomed in late 1999 amid concerns that businesses would require massive technology replacement to achieve Y2K compatibility, allowing the index to close that year at 4,069.31 points. On March 10, 2000, the index finally peaked at an intra-day high of 5,132.52,[1] and closed at an all-time high of 5,048.62. The decline from this peak signalled the beginning of the dot-com bubble burst.
Regards,
Ted
Source: From Wikipedia

Here's a link to the fund's investor returns over the past 1, 3, and 5 years. What a contrast to the fund's actual returns. Bottom line: Many investors didn't participate in the up years but are participating in the down years.
http://performance.morningstar.com/fund/performance-return.action?p=investor_returns_page&t=MFLDX&region=usa&culture=en-US

FYI: Health care mutual funds have outperformed the S&P 500 by a wide margin in the past 15 years and have really taken off the past two years.
You'd be sitting on $48,522 today if you'd invested $10,000 in the average health care fund on Sept. 30, 1999, according to Morningstar data. The same investment in the S&P 500, which tracks the broad stock market, would have grown to $21,149.
Regards,
Ted
http://license.icopyright.net/user/viewFreeUse.act?fuid=MTg2NjE0NjA=
Enlarged Graphic: http://news.investors.com/photopopup.aspx?path=WEBlv1114.gif&docId=726493&xmpSource=&width=1000&height=1152&caption=&id=726495

Hank ... and, others:
I just don't keep losers. There are too many good funds that one can invest in to keep underperforming funds. After all, how long would you keep a sales rep that continued to under perform and not meet sales goals? Years ago, I learned there was only one rule that really applied ... If you can't sell ... you can't say. My job was to move those along that could not meet expectations. The old coach would say … “Old_Skeet fire them up or fire them out.” Same with a mutual fund ... If it doesn't perform to expectations ... find another one that can as there are many to choose from.
And, occasionally I will fire one and move to another … WASAX and MFLDX are examples as they are now history and no longer held within my portfolio. Simply stated they failed to meet my expectations and the outlook was not favorable that they would going forward.
Old_Skeet

Nice post Old_Skeet, couldn't agree more. But I disagree with Hank as I see many here that cling to losers and/or underperforming funds and stocks. And then they recite 1001 reasons why they won't let go of such funds/stocks.

There is some question among people as to when one should pull the trigger and fire the fund. Three years seems to be a common answer. Another answer is when the fund has changed its strategy or if the manager leaves with no visibility ahead. In the case of MFLXD, The "Olds" made their decisions when the fund didn't perform to expectations.
With funds like these (alternatives), maybe a tighter leash is required?

Hank ... and, others:
I just don't keep losers. There are too many good funds that one can invest in to keep underperforming funds. After all, how long would you keep a sales rep that continued to under perform and not meet sales goals? Years ago, I learned there was only one rule that really applied ... If you can't sell ... you can't say. My job was to move those along that could not meet expectations. The old coach would say … “Old_Skeet fire them up or fire them out.” Same with a mutual fund ... If it doesn't perform to expectations ... find another one that can as there are many to choose from.
And, occasionally I will fire one and move to another … WASAX and MFLDX are examples as they are now history and no longer held within my portfolio. Simply stated they failed to meet my expectations and the outlook was not favorable that they would going forward. When the funds had a relative small to medium assets under managemnt base I did indeed made some good money from these holdings. However, as the AUM begin to bulk up that is when they began to lag and I noticed both were slow in their repositioning process and with this, I left.
Old_Skeet

FWIW, I kinda like the fund. It is pretty unique. But the returns are pretty paltry. It holds up better in down markets (-6.5 max draw down) and is tame (ulcer index of 1.1), but the returns just aren't high enough to have me interested (annualized over the past 3 years, 3.5%). There's a place for this type of fund in some people's portfolio.

Hi all, I'm a big fan of the discussion board here at MFO. I was looking for some advice for my girlfriend's Roth that she can no longer contribute to due to her current income bracket.
I got her out of a small cap growth fund from Buffalo Funds. She's at least 25 years away from withdrawing and I was looking at DMCRX, because of the outperformance that I found on M* over the past 12 years compared to other small value and micro funds.
I'm also considering TSELX and WSVRX, but I'm not sure how long Mr. Walthausen is going to be around to keep working his magic.
Thanks for your help

FYI: With the S&P 500 seemingly hitting record highs on a daily basis, it is not surprising to see bullish sentiment increasing along with the market, and that's exactly what we saw this week. According to the American Association of Individual Investors (AAII), bullish sentiment increased by 5.24 percentage points to 57.93% from last week's level of 52.69%. What is likely to raise eyebrows, though, is the fact that with this week's increase, bullish sentiment hit its highest level in more than four years, and is the second highest reading we have seen in the current bull market.
Regards,
Ted
http://www.bespokeinvest.com/thinkbig/2014/11/13/bullish-and-bearish-sentiment-both-increase.html?printerFriendly=true
AAII Website: http://www.aaii.com/sentimentsurvey

Well ... Ted:
Perhaps, there will be new leadership, within the sectors, for 2015 ... Seems, the defensive sectors of health care, consumer staple and utilities have been the three big winners thus far for 2014. Not surprised ... as they generate good yield ... and, most folks today want a good yield. Look at some of the large cap tech's that have started to pay dividneds. Years back they would never have done this, with perhaps, the exception being IBM.
My late father use to remind me often that yield generating stocks may go out of favor from time-to-time but they want go stale like the others. And, when the market pulls back they will still be around paying you a dividend where you can find patience awaiting the turn around. In capital appreciation ... Well, you might be looking with your hand extended for some time hoping some crums might come your way. With this, my family's portfolios have been built around diverisfied income generation for years with a goodly amount to the dividend paying stocks over fixed income.
And, so it goes ...
Old_Skeet

FYI: The S&P 500 is up a shade more than 10% for the year. If it can hold those gains – and the market is already in Santa-Claus rally mode – then that would mark three consecutive years of double-digit percentage growth. But one look at the sector breakdown should give the bulls pause.
Regards,
Ted
http://blogs.wsj.com/moneybeat/2014/11/13/morning-moneybeat-a-utilitarian-stock-rally/tab/print/
Sector Tracker: Click On YTD: http://www.sectorspdr.com/sectorspdr/tools/sector-tracker
Current Futures Looking Good: http://finviz.com/futures.ashx