https://www.kiplinger.com/investing/stocks/stocks-to-buy/603079/best-growth-stocks-for-the-rest-of-2021
11 Best Growth Stocks for the Rest of 2021
Growth stocks have started to pick up momentum of late. These 11 names are worth a closer look in 2021's second half.
Couple interesting ones out there

https://finance.yahoo.com/news/3-big-charts-from-the-june-jobs-report-morning-brief-090813859.html
OJ is correct - the link is to each individual's email. I suspect that if Derf logged out of Yahoo and then followed the link, the system would prompt for a login.

Interesting analysis. If you want a contrary opinion, you’ve got it here. Rosenberg is a former chief economist at Merrill Lynch. (Bio) Excerpted judiciously. Here’s a link to the Article
“It is a good time for growth stocks, Treasury bonds, and rate-sensitive parts of the market”
The consensus is that U.S. equities will deliver strong performance as the economy recovers, and that higher inflation will drive rising interest rates. All of that is wrong, according to David Rosenberg. The Toronto-based Rosenberg started his own economic consulting firm in January 2020, Rosenberg Research & Associates, after working a decade as chief economist and strategist at Gluskin Sheff & Associates.
The “fiscal juice” from stimulus checks and the re-opening of the economy are outstripping supply, creating temporary inflation. Supply will catch up when demand subsides as the effect from the stimulus wanes, according to Rosenberg. That will happen before the end of the year.When the effect of stimulus checks expired last year, GDP declined by 2.5%. We will see a repeat of that this year, according to Rosenberg.
We don’t and won’t have a trend of inflation, Rosenberg said. Fed Chairperson Jay Powell will be right that inflation will be transitory, he said, just as deflation was a year ago when the pandemic began. Rosenberg recalled one of Bob Farrell’s classic market rules: When all the experts and forecasts agree, something else is going to happen. The consensus has never been more lopsided, he said, and that is reflected in asset allocations that heavily weight stocks relative to bonds. We are not going have a redux of the prior century’s “roaring 20s,” despite the covers of many business magazines. Rosenberg said that era had nothing in common with today; the debt-to-GDP in 1920s was 10%, which allowed for declines in personal tax rates, which will not happen in the 2020s.
When you strip out the government transfers, real personal spending is on a downward trend. The share of personal income from government spending is 28%; it has never been that high, according to Rosenberg. That is today’s “soup line,” he said, and it is temporary, based on borrowed money. Approximately 10% of the labor force is receiving government support. Economic growth has been four parts stimulus and one part reopening, according to Rosenberg.
-
Here’s a recent piece by Rosenberg …
“How to play commodities, semiconductors, COVID, tapering and the reflation trade”
Link

The writer is a monthly columnist for the WSJ. I can find no corresponding working paper through the writer's website.
Unannounced to their investors, mutual-fund managers will often lend the shares they hold ...
Unannounced?

Securities lending is a well-established practice whereby U.S. registered funds, such as mutual funds, make loans of securities to seek an incremental increase in returns for fund shareholders. This paper explains the basics of securities lending, outlines the benefits and risks for investors, and describes BlackRock’s leading approach to securities lending.

BlackRock Securities Lending, Blackrock, January 2021

Vanguard’s securities-lending program—which lends equities under the same philosophy and approach today as it has since well before the global financial crisis—is unique in its exclusive focus on benefiting our investors and not our bottom line. We adhere strictly to a "value-lending" philosophy, managing our counterparty credit limits and collateral pool internally through [Vanguard Fixed Income Group] FIG.

How well did your asset manager weather the market storm? Vanguard, Sept. 2020
Moving on:
- Do US growth, US value, US large cap, int'l, and EM really encompass all funds? ("I looked at the full sample of actively managed equity mutual funds"). What defines these categories and where do small cap blend funds or global funds fall?
- Is "average" unweighted, dollar weighted, or median: "The average percent lent out by active funds was 0.80%." An unweighted average would be propped up by a few funds lending over 20% of assets (see next item).
- "we see over 2% of funds ... lending out an average of more than 20% of their underlying holdings each year—coming close to SEC guidelines." Coming close?
From Barron's (see cite below): "Legally, exchange-traded and mutual funds can lend out as much as 50% of their unlevered securities’ portfolios to borrowers who pay them interest."
I can offer another possible explanation for his figures. It is well known (read: find sources on your own) that high ER funds tend to be more aggressive hence more volatile, in attempting to overcome their higher costs. If these funds also are more aggressive in their lending, then one would see what he is reporting: higher rates of security lending correlating with poorer performance (due to higher ERs) and higher volatility.
Related to covering costs is the question of how much of the lending revenue goes back into the fund vs. how much lines the pockets of the fund company? You can pretty well guess what Vanguard does. Other companies are less considerate of their investors. The writer did not attempt to correct for this factor. Nor did he attempt to control for ERs, e.g. by looking at gross rather than net returns.
There's an excellent piece in Barron's (by some guy going by the name of @LewisBraham) discussing this and more, albeit in the context of index funds and ETFs.
ETFs’ Hidden Source of Return—Securities Lending, Barron's April 7, 2018.

I assume Index funds (which don't pick stocks) may also lend stocks that can be shorted. Behemoth index funds would have lots of share to lend at or below the 1 % level.
Let's look at VFINX (VOO). HD is 0.97% of the fund which equates to 22 million shares of HD it could lend and which is 2% of HD shares.
A fund like FSHOX, HD is 15% of the fund, but because of its small size it could only lend 280K shares. This equates to 0.03% of HD shares.

Author: Derek Horstmeyer (with assistant Pamy Arora
“Unannounced to their investors, mutual-fund managers will often lend the shares they hold to short sellers who bet against particular stocks.By doing so, a fund manager can earn a little extra money (on the interest charged) and reduce the overall costs to operate the mutual fund—hopefully passing on the cost savings in the form of a lower expense ratio to the investor. But the flip side is that if the manager is lending out a good amount of the fund’s holdings, this means there is a lot of demand by other investors to bet against the exact holdings the fund manager has in the mutual fund.
“When all is said and done, if your fund manager is lending out a good amount of the underlying portfolio, is this a negative sign for future returns? The answer is a resounding yes: Active fund managers who lend out more than 1% of their holdings on average during the year underperform their fellow mutual-fund managers by an average of 0.62 percentage point a year across multiple asset classes …
“In the U.S. large-cap arena, we can see that if a fund manager is lending out shares, it isn’t a good sign for the fun fund performance. Active large-cap fund managers who lent out more than 1% of their shares averaged a return of 12.93% a year over the past 10 years. Active large-cap fund managers who lent out less than 1% of the shares averaged a return of 13.29 a year over the past 10 years. This amounts to a 0.36 percentage point difference in returns a year. … When we look at mutual fund managers who have lent out more than 2% of their portfolio on average, the results look even worse for lenders …“
WSJ July 6, 2022
Interesting Article - However, “total return” doesn’t tell the whole story. Article doesn’t address impact on fund volatility or downside performance. My (uninformed) guess is that the lenders perform better on those scores, even while generating lower overall returns.

“Retail investors keep pouring money into markets, even as many of their favorite meme stocks and cryptocurrencies have languished. In June, so-called retail investors bought nearly $28 billion of stocks and exchange-traded funds on a net basis, according to data from Vanda Research’s VandaTrack, the highest monthly amount deployed since at least 2014. That even trumped the amount retail traders spent in January during the first meme-stock frenzy.
“The activity underscores the enduring influence of ordinary investors in markets. When the Covid-19 pandemic ushered in a wave of first-time traders, many market observers suspected these investors would retreat when the economy reopened. Instead, individual investors have grown in number: More than 10 million new brokerage accounts are estimated to have been opened in the first half of this year, according to JMP Securities. That is around the total for all of 2020 …
“Retail investors’ enthusiasm is in contrast to professional money managers’ growing and ease about the market outlook. This has risen as markets on the surface appear placid but volatility has grown around individual stocks … (One) gage of retail traders’ sentiment currently shows that the group is nearly 70% confident that the US stocks will keep rising over the next three months. Meanwhile, professional traders are only about 44% confident that stocks will rally during that period.”
WSJ July 6, 2021

Thought the folks buying into commodities recently might find this article worthwhile. Most commodities have fallen over the past 4-6 weeks. Oil is a rare exception, although seems to be weakening as of late. Certainly appears to be a disconnect between the rally in the 10-year bond (near 1.3% now) on one hand and higher inflation expectations on the other.
Excerpt :
“Prices for U.S. grains are locked in a volatile pattern as growing areas of the country wait for rain. Following the long holiday weekend, grain futures trading on the Chicago Board of Trade have plummeted to start the week. Most-active corn futures closed Tuesday down by their limit of 40 cents a bushel, falling 6.9% to $5.40 a bushel. Soybean futures fell 6.7% to $13.05 a bushel, and wheat dropped 4.1% to $6.26 a bushel.
“Today’s move lower essentially erases upticks seen last week, when futures soared after the U.S. Department of Agriculture released two key reports detailing the outlook for grains supplies and demand. Last Wednesday, the most-active corn contract on the Chicago Board of Trade soared 7% to $5.88 per bushel, while soybeans climbed more than 6% to nearly $14 per bushel. Wheat rose more than 5% following the report’s release.
“Heading into the hottest days of the summer, above-average temperatures and dry conditions in the forecast may roil crop production in areas already in the grips of a drought. The volatility in agricultural futures is linked to the Uncertainty that growing regions will get the rain they need
WSJ July 7, 2021
Related - Lumber Prices Dive More Than 40% in June
CNBC
Added note : Oil continues to benefit the funds that have large concentrations in energy. In addition, both real estate and utilities have benefitted recently from falling rates; so to the extent a commodities / NR fund holds those, it has held up better.

@lynnbolin2021 : Thanks for that explanation. Thinking I will take another look at this fund for some cash that is waiting for a place to land.
Stay Kool, Derf

BPTRX: 1st bought 1/9/20 at 72.57, close position 3/11/21 at 171.21. MSSMX: 1st bought 10/6/20 at 15.06, close position 3/11/21 at 23.23.

Lynn, thanks so much for sharing your thoughts, especially on GAVAX. I look forward to reading your commentary on non correlated assets. Your articles have really helped me, and I’m using MFO screeners more and more. I feel indebted.

Rick, Here is what I started doing. I divide my funds into three groups 1) Mixed Asset, 2) Uncorrelated, and 3) the tactical sleeve. The first two categories are buy and hold and as long as the quality of the fund is intact, I don't worry about performance. For the tactical funds, I track the previous month return, three month trend, and flows. If they are negative, I have to ask myself why? Is the fund peaking or is it blip.
On GAVIX/GAVAX, which is an uncorrelated fund, see below. The Ulcer Index is about half of the S&P 500 meaning half as risky. The average three year return is 7.4% which is good for a conservative fund. The Composite MFO Rating is 2 which is below average (3). It is not very consistent, which is not a major flaw, and it's capital preservation is good. The one month return is down as is the three month trend, and money is flowing out. The yield is 2.2%. What I like is that the correlation to the S&P 500 is only 0.58 which is low, and the downside capture is only 9.7 which is why it has a good capital preservation rating of 4.
APR 7.4
Ulcer Index 2.9
Martin Ratio 2.13
Composite Rating 2
Consistency 1
Preservation 4
1 Month -1.87
Trend -0.6
Flow -1.8
Yield 2.24
Correlation SP500 0.58
Down Cap S&P 500 9.7
The stats are good for GAVIX. I track 81 uncorrelated funds, and GAVIX rates 58. The composite rating of 2 is the only thing that I don't like. For my next MFO article, I identify six potential uncorrelated funds to own. These are COTZX, ARBIX, DEVDX, RLSIX, SPEDX, and SUBFX. I am still researching these, but already own COTZX and ARBIX.

Each month, I download hundreds of ETFS and generally require that they have at least three years of history, and at least $100M in assets before up loading them into my Ranking System. I maintain a list of funds that have at least $100M but aren't three years old. This is a short listing of the funds:
https://seekingalpha.com/article/4438107-infant-exchange-traded-funds-attracting-inflows
ESGV, BBAX, USSG, SUSL, IVOL, VSGX, EAGG, RPAR, VCMDX, PTBD, SWAN, DRSK, NTSX, NUSI, LDSF, XLSR, JCPB, PTIN, MUST
All but three of these funds have lower risk than the S&P 500 as measured by the Ulcer Index. These funds either have positive three-month trends or inflows. All but one fund have earned more than 6 percent annualized.

https://www.wsj.com/articles/top-mutual-fund-rose-140-in-a-year-11625519533
* Morgan Stanley mutual fund skippered by Dennis Lynch tops our quarterly survey of the best-performing stock-fund managers in the past 12 months*
You can incognito search article title for content
Couple interesting MF out there. Anyone bought these funds previously?
MSSGX
BPTRX
Brsvx
today winners maybe tomorrow poor looser

Some additional Info: http://www.mfwire.com/article.asp?template=article&wireid=2&storyID=63094&bhcp=1

https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/908802/000139834421014025/fp0066718_497.htm
497 1 fp0066718_497.htm
Filed pursuant to Rule 497(e) and Rule 497(k)
under the Securities Act of 1933, as amended
File Registration No.: 033-65632
SCHRODER SERIES TRUST
(the “Trust”)
Schroder Long Duration Investment-Grade Bond Fund
(the “Fund”)
Supplement dated July 6, 2021
to the Fund’s Summary Prospectus, Prospectus and
Statement of Additional Information (the “SAI”), each dated March 1, 2021, as supplemented
This supplement provides new and additional information beyond that contained in the Summary Prospectus, Prospectus and SAI, and should be read in conjunction with the Summary Prospectus, Prospectus and SAI.
The Board of Trustees of the Trust, at the recommendation of Schroder Investment Management North America Inc. (the “Adviser”), the investment adviser of the Fund, has approved a plan of liquidation providing for the liquidation of the Fund’s assets and the distribution of the net proceeds pro rata to the Fund’s shareholders. In connection therewith, the Fund is closed to new investments. The Fund is expected to cease operations and liquidate on or about September 30, 2021 (the “Liquidation Date”). The Liquidation Date may be changed without notice at the discretion of the Trust’s officers.
Prior to the Liquidation Date, shareholders may redeem (sell) their shares in the manner described in the “How to Sell Shares” section of the Prospectus. For those shareholders that do not redeem (sell) their shares prior to the Liquidation Date, the Fund will distribute to each such shareholder, on or promptly after the Liquidation Date, a liquidating cash distribution equal in value to the shareholder’s interest in the net assets of the Fund as of the Liquidation Date.
In anticipation of the liquidation of the Fund, the Adviser may manage the Fund in a manner intended to facilitate the Fund’s orderly liquidation, such as by holding cash or making investments in other highly liquid assets. As a result, during this time, all or a portion of the Fund may not be invested in a manner consistent with its stated investment strategies, which may prevent the Fund from achieving its investment objective.
The liquidation distribution amount will include any accrued income and capital gains, will be treated as a payment in exchange for shares and will generally be a taxable event for shareholders investing through taxable accounts. You should consult your personal tax advisor concerning your particular tax situation. Liquidation costs will be accrued on the date of this Supplement and shareholders remaining in the Fund on the Liquidation Date will not be charged any additional fees by the Fund associated with the liquidation. Shareholders will receive liquidation proceeds as soon as practicable after the Liquidation Date.
PLEASE RETAIN THIS SUPPLEMENT FOR FUTURE REFERENCE
SCH-SK-015-0100

Well, Hussman is still the king of perma-bears. Does anybody hold any of his mutual funds? Even his defense is questionable, and there is no offense.

He’s done somewhat better recently. But for 10 years you’d still be underwater. Wonder what they’d say if you phoned and asked them why that’s the case. I did something like that once years ago with a different fund. The response was: “Our manager has been positioning himself.”
HSGFX 10-Year Chart from Lipper (shaded dark blue.)

SVARX works hard (ER over 3%) to produce an upside of 128 and a downside of (-53). Help me understand the negative downside capture number.
Explanation of Upside and Downside Capture:
https://freefincal.com/how-upside-and-downside-capture-ratios-are-calculated/

SVARX is currently my largest bond fund holding so was curious about this. The answer is kind of what I expected:

In principle, it is possible to see a negative downside capture ratio. In that case, it means that the manager has a negative beta on average, i.e. the manager went up when markets went down. This, of course, is very hard to achieve consistently.

Upside downside capture - Breaking Down Finance

@msf, thanks for your insights on EIXIX, and the fund's lack of clarity. Its a Legacy bond fund with a short history. I may be reaching a bit for that yummy yield.
Another defensive play is small cap fund PVCMX, which supposedly held an 80% cash position at 3-31-2021. Palm Valley Capital (Eric Cinnamond) must not be trustful of the waters.

I like to look at upside and downside cature ratios of mutual funds to see how defensive a fund is. The Morningstar site provides this data (look in the "risk" tab). When I use Portfolio Visulaizer's data it appears inconsistent with M* (FWIW). You may to constrain PV to the last ten years of data to match M*'s data. PV data can go back to 1985 if the fund is that old.
One of the best funds for this type of risk/reward is PRMTX. Here's its risk profile (Upside=114 / Downside=65):
https://morningstar.com/funds/xnas/prmtx/risk
Some others I hold:
FSMEX (100/58)...100% of the upside with 58% of the downside
PRWCX (117/88)
PRNHX (108/69)
PRHSX (98/71)
PRGSX (122/86)
A fund like CTFAX has a (78 upside cature/13 downside capture) so this fund captures 78% of the upside (reward) while only taking 13% of the downside risk. Pretty good risk/reward.
SVARX works hard (ER over 3%) to produce an upside of 128 and a downside of (-53). Help me understand the negative downside capture number.
Some other notables in this thread:
TGHNX (123/72)
Explanation of Upside and Downside Capture:
https://freefincal.com/how-upside-and-downside-capture-ratios-are-calculated/

“Red flag special” MWFSX
It’s so new Lipper hasn’t yet created a scorecard for it. 105% in bonds means they’re borrowing to exercise leverage. Yahoo doesn’t show duration or credit quality. But, @msf has indicated 25% below B Yikes!
Here’s Moody’s rating scale from Wikipedia Hopefully, I got the cut and paste of the chart correct. Not all junk is created equal. Some good income funds (DODIX) dabble in the BB area. Few decent funds want to go below B, although some of their BB will occasionally fall to the B level.
B2 B B B3 B− B− Highly speculative
Caa1 CCC+ C CCC C 5 Substantial risks
Caa2 CCC Extremely speculative
Caa3 CCC− Default imminent with little prospect for recovery
Most experienced investors are aware the junk bond market is not very liquid. Even daily pricing is suspect and sometimes inaccurate. During good times a fund like this can sail along posting nice returns. On those rare eventful occasions (2008 and early 2020 come to mind) these funds can submerge literally overnight. Per Warren Buffett: "It's only when the tide goes out that you learn who's been swimming naked."
One of the better threads we’ve had in a while. Thanks to @lynnbolin2021 for joining in / sharing considerable knowledge and data.