"The irony is that if you are moderately wealthy, advisory fees might be your single largest annual expense -- and you're probably oblivious to them. You diligently include an $8.99 Netflix subscription in your monthly household budget, but have no idea you're paying 50 times that much to your 401(k) adviser. No other industries work like this."
If I recall correctly, many years ago John Bogle was saying that he wanted a requirement that mutual fund companies include on each statement the actual dollar amount of expenses for that specific person's account.
So if a person had a mutual fund account of $100,000 and the expense ratio of the fund was 1.26%, the account statement would say that $1,260 in expenses had been deducted from the account.
I'd like to see regulations requiring that. Not going to happen, but would be a real eye opener for everyone.

Here is the paragraph containing that link. He believes that Hussman's fund is "the worst mutual fund to own over the last 10 years"
The truth is that finance is filled with people who remain in business despite awful track records. There were 894 mutual funds in 2012 that had been in business in 1998. Of those, only 275 beat their benchmarks. That means more than 600 funds have underperformed what could be achieved in a low-cost index fund, but still remained in business for a decade and a half. The worst mutual fund to own over the last 10 years -- one that has underperformed all of its peers and trailed its benchmark by 150% -- still manages more than $1 billion.

everything growthy, small and european has been lagging YTD. i added a percent to growthy MC and 2% to EAFE benchmarked thingies. also, put 1% into CBI. i have been underweight equities for years since i felt my employment had very high correlation to the equity market. i now feel a bit more stable at work and am trying to get equities a bit higher. it's very painful for me, i have to admit. i don't have any defined benefit pension waiting in the wings and capital preservation is one of the goals. so i lack the risk tolerance of our chief linkster. but slowly and surely am on the way to get half of my portfolio in equities.

i would say - identical.
the porfolio balance is now slightly better than 70% in PREMX in the past and probably warrants the new handle, but still not diversified enough. for someone counting days to a reduced SS check, investing like a 20 year old is not appropriate. whatever your real name is, we care about your investment results and that's why we've commented over the years. did you wake up one day and decided that MEASX is the way to go just because you don't want to deal with setting up a brokerage account or with paperwork transfer from matthews to another custodian? these should not be investment considerations in this century.
still, best of luck to you.

Crash, your situation sounds remarkably similar, if not virtually identical, to another fellow who hasn't posted here in a long while... by the name of Max Bialystock.

...... down funds and whether folks were adding to their's..............whether or not it's wise to add to our laggards on the way down. Doing so runs contrary to the adage about not trying to catch a falling knife. I don't think its a clear cut choice. There are a tremendous number of other variables one must consider.

The question as to whether to add to down investments is a very difficult one.
All the precepts of value investing say to buy the unloved, buy the out of favor, be greedy when and where others are fearful......buy at a discount.
Other precepts say 'Let your winners run'.
Peter Lynch said don't 'water the weeds and don't cut your roses', or something like that.
Remember at the end of 2013 and very beginning of 2014 when almost No One wanted emerging markets. They just kept going down and down. They had a terrible 2013 performance compared to the US market, -5% vs. +32.4%. Would have been a perfect time to buy emerging markets I believe in February 2014, not sure when they bottomed....but ever since them they just can't be stopped. I've seen several down stock market days [US and developed int'l] where emerging markets were up in the past several months.
I own Sequoia, SEQUX. Underperforming the market by 9.5% year to date. Good time to buy more? I think so, but I'm already fully invested in my equity allocation.
What about small cap growth? A big underperformer this year. Good time to buy?
What about megacap stocks, as represented by XLG. On a relative basis, megacaps have underperformed for many years. A 2% underperformance relative to the S&P 500 over the past 5 years. An excellent time to buy? They are the most stable companies, at relative bargain valuations vs. the market.

I hold this fund in taxable account so would not sell all at one time. I need to manage the tax consequences.
It has done very well for me but its been laggard if one compares 1, 3 or 5 years returns with similar type of funds.
and it has very high ER

Thanks, fundalarm. I've been chewing on this for a long time. It certainly is not a rush-job. I REALLY didn't want to add a 14th fund. My portfolio is just not THAT big, to need 14 different funds: $128,000.00. But MAPIX was getting to be a victim of its own success for me. It was a very nice problem to have. I was simply getting too nervous about its growing size. It was 30% of total, while others I own are under 3% of total. I have, over the years, found ways to make some strategic moves, using "hot" funds to feed more tame core, balanced funds, as mentioned above. I'm growing my MAPOX stake with new IRA money this year that will bring it from $11,000 to maybe $16,000.00 by the end of 2014.
You've confirmed what I had known, deep down--- that my MAPIX was becoming a behemoth. Too risky to have such an amount in one basket. I expect I'll be too late to grab huge profits right away in MEASX. I'll have to be patient with it. But it is certainly making money!

I also own WAMVX, GPROX, BRUSX and WSCVX in taxable accounts. It appears that you have several small cap value funds.
I suspect that if you have held WAMVX since 2003, then you probably have substantial capital gains in the fund as I note my WAMVX value has more than doubled in the last couple of years since I made my initial investment; I have made no additional investments since that time.
You don't mention if WAMVX is in a taxable or non-taxable account.
I have been quite pleased with Grandeur Peaks management/investment team with how they have handled their funds.

"Less than two years ago MFLDX was darling of the board."
It was? I don't think a fund can be a darling of the board when there are people who act as if the existence of alternative funds is - for some bizarre reason, as they don't have to invest in them - terribly upsetting. It's a fund that some people have taken to, certainly, but the Marketfield religion is not as large as those that follow some other popular funds.
As for questions of asset bloat (and people say Marketfield has taken in too much while investing in other funds that have larger AUM....) and other issues with the fund, this article provides a detailed summary.
http://www.investmentnews.com/article/20140612/BLOG12/140619969/the-20-billion-mainstay-marketfield-funds-chicken-or-egg-problem#
“The strategy is based off of multiple themes and a large chunk of them didn't perform well.” I'm not seeing how this is really any different than a number of long-only managers over the years who have lagged because they made bets that didn't pay off or took longer to pay off then expected.
"But hate to see folks flee a fund so quickly."
It's the way things are these days. People buy a conservative fund only to eventually be disappointed when it lags and sell probably when it would be best to have it, people hold aggressive funds too long and bail when they should be buying, etc etc etc....

FYI: Bonds sold by investment-grade companies worldwide are on pace to deliver something they’ve managed only twice in the past 17 years: annual returns of at least 10 percent.
Regards,
Ted
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/print/2014-08-26/junk-bonds-overtaken-by-high-grade-as-2014-s-favored-bet.html

MAPOX is a decent fund. I don't know its history during bear markets but it's been around for a while. I had forgotten that MAPTX was closed.
Matthews is a great company. I have MAINX as well as MAPIX. MAINX is around 5% of my portfolio. But, they are Asia centric. That's their business and they are good at it. Having exposure to Europe is good too.
You may have more moves to make but take it slow and use opportunities to make changes. My favorite visual for my $cost avg method was the water hose and bucket. The water was my money going into investments. The hose directed that money. The buckets were my investments. As some investments fell out of favor and I still believed in them I would point that hose and fill that bucket more than the others. It's a value type $cost avg method. On the other hand if a fund had a big year I would sweep profits in one or more of the others. My big year was the year TWCUX had a 80% +/- return. I swept the profits. The next couple of years were not that good. Typical after a big return.
I think you will be happy with MEASX.

I purchased WAMVX the day it opened in 2003 and bought on regular basis; I stopped purchasing into this fund few years ago and It is still substantial portion of my overall portfolio.
This fund has been inconsistent over last few years.
As I have position in GPROX (Grandeur Peak Global Reach), I am thinking about selling lot of this and put that money in GPROX. I am impressed with consistency of all Grandeur Peak funds.
Another option is to buy Hodges Small Cap.
Are there any other funds I should look into to purchase after selling WAMVX? I also own BRUSX, WSCVX and FSCRX.
Any reason I should hold out and wait for it to turn around?
I know David also own this fund so anxiously waiting his response. :-)
Thank you all in advance.
KHP

Hey, all. I'm sitting on way too much MAPIX. Ya, I got in years ago, and it's no secret the fund has done well. The original share purchase was one big chunk, getting myself 100% out of TAVIX in early 2009....... I took a chunk and put it in MJFOX, and it went nowhere. I moved that chunk (with a small "paper" loss) and moved it to their FOCUSED fund with not many different equity positions. It moves, but at a snail's pace. Am I going to move it to MEASX? (Frontier/emerging Asia.) I don't want to go performance chasing, and I don't like the ER. But if it's good, it's good. It's already had a good rise, ytd and going back 1-year. This would be 6% of portfolio. And I own other frontier stuff in TRAMX, but it's just 2.8% of portfolio. Thanks.

FYI: (Click On Article Title Top Of Googel Search)
Barry James knows about managing risk.
In 2008, when the Standard & Poor's 500 lost 37%, the James Balanced Golden Rainbow Fund (ticker: GLRBX ) lost just 5.5%.
Yet James isn't just good in a crisis. His fund, which garners a five-star rating from Morningstar, has consistently outperformed its peers and is in the top percentile of its category for the past decade. In the past 15 years, the fund returned an annualized 6.5%, compared with 5% for the S&P 500.
Regards,
Ted
https://www.google.com/search?newwindow=1&site=&source=hp&q=5+stock+picks+barron's&oq=5+stock+picks+barron's&gs_l=hp.3...1971.12349.0.12990.22.21.0.1.1.0.94.1699.21.21.0....0...1c.1.52.hp..6.16.1249.ZoGbSjFJH9A
M* Snapshot Of GLRBX: http://quotes.morningstar.com/fund/f?t=GLRBX&region=usa&culture=en-US
Lipper Snapshot Of GLRBX; http://www.marketwatch.com/investing/fund/glrbx
GLRBX Is Ranked # 22 In The (CAA) Fund Category By U.S. News & World Report:
http://money.usnews.com/funds/mutual-funds/conservative-allocation/james-balanced:-golden-rainbow-fund/glrbx

Ha! That's a "Catch 22" if you ask me. Funds mentioned favorably here at MFO grow very large very rapidly it seems. Than, in so year or two they're too big to manage. What a bummer. Of course, the manager can choke off inflows anytime as Skeet says.
Why does all this remind me of Dodge and Cox in 2009? Go back and read the archives (FA/MFO) if you can find them. Too big, too bloated, and unmanageable were cited frequently as reasons to flee. Seems they've managed to confound their skeptics and make some $$ for those who held on. Having low ERs in the vicinity of .50% hasn't hurt them either.
You may be correct that this fund can function successfully only with a smaller asset base. But, I wouldn't bet on it. There are economics of scale as well. I do think stability of assets is more important than size. So, if they haven't been able to convince their clients to hang in there for longer than a year or two without jerking out their $$ than that's a failing on their part which will come back to bite them.
Don't like any of these goanywhere funds. But hate to see folks flee a fund so quickly. Less than two years ago MFLDX was darling of the board. You could almost hear their cash register going "ka-ching" every time somebody invested in the fund. I think another issue is that these funds by nature will sometimes appear "out of sync" as they are trying to run against the grain and do something different than the general mob. My prediction is that on August 31, 2017 the commentary here will be decidedly favorable towards MFLDX. No special knowledge - just think the odds favor that.

And hopefully I haven't committed the cardinal error of investing in something I don't understand. I had decided way back that funds were better for my purpose as I can let the manager deal with maturities and durations. But I also knew that diversification was important in the bond world as it is with equities. So my research pointed me to a core bond fund which has done okay and now this unconstrained bond fund. This one I'm taking a chance on. My defense is that only a small part of the portfolio is involved so if it went to zero and I don't think it will, I will be okay.
The last few years have seen this explosion in bonds with all the new funds.
The way that the mortgages were handled was truly criminal. I know someone who stopped making their payments in 2009 and has just this year got notice of foreclosure. Their mortgage was in the blender for sure. They stopped payments due to the underwater situation which I disagree with but that is a topic that is well worn already.

FYI: T he average U.S. taxable bond fund continues to boast a higher return than the S&P 500 in the past 15 years, though the general stock market has been catching up since it hit bottom after the 2007-08 financial crisis.
Regards,
Ted
http://license.icopyright.net/user/viewFreeUse.act?fuid=MTg0MDcyMTg=
Enlarged Graphic: http://news.investors.com/photopopup.aspx?path=WEBmutPent082614.gif&docId=714744&xmpSource=&width=1000&height=1063&caption=&id=714746

The first time I ever heard Bob Brinker was around 15 years ago when he was recommending I Bonds with a coupon rate of 3% plus inflation. I knew that anybody recommending I Bonds and low-cost no-load funds had to be okay in my book. He's always emphasized proper investment allocation and the role that fixed income securities have in a portfolio.

For those who don't know, Admiral James Stockdale was a POW during the Vietnam war; the highest ranked 'guest' in the Hanoi Hilton. He was there for eight years and was tortured more than twenty times.
Many POWs didn't make it but Stockdale and some others did.
Collins asked Stockdale, "Who didn't make it out?"
"Oh, that's easy," he said. "The Optimists."
Collins was confused as he thought Stockdale was an optimist as he had no doubt he would get out of his situation.
Stockdale clarified:
"The optimists. Oh, they were the ones who said, 'We're going to be out by Christmas.' And Christmas would come, and Christmas would go. Then they'd say, 'We're going to be out by Easter.' And Easter would come, and Easter would go. And then Thanksgiving, and then it would be Christmas again. And they died of a broken heart."
"This is a very important lesson. You must never confuse faith that you will prevail in the end - which you can never afford to lose - with the discipline to confront the most brutal facts of your current reality, whatever they might be."
As applied to investors, there are a lot of optimistic investors that don't make it. For example, people who were excited about stocks in the late 1990's were optimistic that stocks will continue to earn 15-20%/year just as it had in the recent past. This was sort of the "we'll be home by Christmas" optimism in Stockdale's story. Maybe it doesn't seem so bad as the market hasn't done much since then, but most likely, these people piled in at the top and then puked out their positions in the following bear market (and most likely didn't get back in).
A very insightful post.
Regards,
Reo
http://brooklyninvestor.blogspot.in/2014/08/good-to-great-stockdale-paradox.html

Hi Old_Joe,
While you are extending the rope for MFLDX ... Mainstay thanks you. I believe in giving a fund manager ample time to position the fund but when Mainstay kept the fund open rather than closing it to where it could be well managed based upon ever changing macro themes ... Well, I recently decided to book my profit in the fund and move on. It has now got to turn some good investment tricks to move the nav. By the way MFLDX shorted DUK during its merger with PGN and it moved the nav big time. With its size today this play would now amount to no more than a drop in a big bucket.
The same thing happened in Ivy Asset Strategy. I held that fund for a good number of years and as the assets under management kept increasing I noticed so did the time it took the managers to reposition the fund. And, it became so large that it was noted and alleged by some that its repositioning and rapid selling of some S&P 500 futures caused and lead to the great ... Flash Crash. With that, I let it go.
Sometime things just get too big to manage.
That leads me to BankAmerica ... It to got too big for its britches, by my thinking, and look what has transpired. Glad I sold the family stock in that monster before it tanked. And, now there is Duke Energy another Charlotte, NC based company. When the board of directors of Duke hoodwinked the North Carolina regulators about the planned merger with Progress Energy ... Well, I sold off my DUK stock too. And, I still do not feel good about the size that DUK has become. From my thinking ... It is just now too big to effectively manage and I am looking for something to crop up if it has not already ... Look at the problems they now face with those toxic coal ash ponds.
Simply stated when I feel things have gotten too big to be managed ... I move on.
Old_Skeet