@Derf
Amy Johnson, MBA, CFP(R)
Sr. Manager, Client Relations
801-384-0044
has been very helpful and quick to answer investor questions. She also has an email, which may be on the Grandeur Peak site.

That’s very helpful, @finder. I was referring to the same 19(a) forms and with your explanation I now realize that a more precise tabulation of ROC will be required. I hope Schwab does it right.

I just called to Fidelity, they discussed it with tax people without connecting me to them, and the reply was that I should wait for the final version of 1099 and if there is any issue I should contact IOFIX directly. So I will wait.
I have 19(a) forms from March to November 2020 as pdf files. Note that the forms 19(a) are not personal, my name is not present on them, they are addressed to ALL shareholders. However, I am not sure that one can use them for filing tax returns since each of them says that this is just AN ESTIMATE, not for tax reporting. Each form that I have says that approximately half of the distribution is ROC, the March form is special, it says that 100% of it is ROC. This is very different from what I see on my preliminary 1099; let us hope that this issue will be clarified.

https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/923184/000119312521047245/d136720d497.htm
497 1 d136720d497.htm 497
MATTHEWS ASIA FUNDS
Supplement dated February 18, 2021
to Prospectus dated April 29, 2020, as supplemented
This supplement should be read in conjunction with the Prospectus dated April 29, 2020, as supplemented.
For all existing shareholders of the Matthews Emerging Asia Fund—Institutional Class (MIASX) and Investor Class (MEASX):
The Board of Trustees (the “Board”) of Matthews Asia Funds (the “Trust”) has approved the tax-free reorganization (the “Reorganization”) of the Matthews Emerging Asia Fund, a series of the Trust (the “Target Fund”), into the Matthews Asia Small Companies Fund, a series of the Trust (the “Acquiring Fund”), which is expected to be renamed the Matthews Emerging Markets Small Companies Fund on or about April 30, 2021. The Reorganization does not require the approval of the shareholders of the Target Fund or the Acquiring Fund.
The Matthews Emerging Markets Small Companies Fund will, as a result of the name change, also change its investment policies so that it will invest, under normal circumstances, at least 80% of its net assets in the common and preferred stocks of small-capitalization companies located in emerging market countries anywhere in the world. Emerging market countries generally include every country in the world except the United States, Australia, Canada, Hong Kong, Israel, Japan, New Zealand, Singapore and most of the countries in Western Europe. These changes to the name and principal investment strategies of the Acquiring Fund are subject to possible further changes related to obtaining effectiveness of an amendment to the registration statement and revised disclosure, which is expected to occur on or about April 30, 2021.
The Reorganization was proposed because Matthews International Capital Management, LLC, the Funds’ investment adviser (“Matthews”), recognized that Asia now represents approximately 75% of the emerging markets small capitalization universe, and therefore that there is an increasing overlap between an investment strategy focused on small companies in emerging market countries and one focused on small companies in Asia. Further, Matthews believes that shareholders of each Fund will benefit more from exposure to a broader investment universe as well as from potential operating efficiencies and economies of scale that may be achieved by combining the Funds’ assets in the Reorganization, than by continuing to operate the Funds separately. Matthews also believes that the Acquiring Fund’s investment objective and strategies make it a compatible fund within the Trust for a reorganization with the Target Fund. The Target Fund and the Acquiring Fund have the same investment objective and similar investment strategies, policies, risks and restrictions.
To effectuate the Reorganization, the Target Fund will transfer all of its assets to the Acquiring Fund, and the Acquiring Fund will assume all of the liabilities of the Target Fund. On the date of the closing of the Reorganization, shareholders of the Target Fund will receive Institutional Class or Investor Class shares, as applicable, of the Acquiring Fund equal in aggregate net asset value to the value of their shares of the Target Fund, in exchange for their shares of the Target Fund. The Reorganization is expected to be effective on or about April 29, 2021.
Effective after the close of business on April 16, 2021, shares of the Target Fund will no longer be offered to new or existing shareholders, and shareholders holding shares of any other series of the Trust will not be able to exchange their shares for shares of the Target Fund.
Effective on or about April 30, 2021, in connection with the name change of the Acquiring Fund, Robert Harvey, CFA, who is currently a Lead Manager of the Target Fund, will become a Co-Manager of the Acquiring Fund. Vivek Tanneeru, who has been Lead Manager of the Acquiring Fund since August 2020, will remain as Lead Manager of the Acquiring Fund. In addition, Jeremy Sutch, CFA, who has been a Senior Research Analyst at Matthews since 2015 and has supported the firm’s India and Pacific Tiger strategies, will become a Co-Manager of the Acquiring Fund.
If you do not want to participate in the Reorganization, you may redeem your shares of the Target Fund in the ordinary course until the last business day before the Reorganization is effective. Redemption requests received after that time will be treated as redemption requests for shares of the Acquiring Fund received in connection with the Reorganization.
Please keep this Supplement with your Prospectus.
From Matthews' website (check the footnotes) on the page:
https://us.matthewsasia.com/resources/docs/fund-documents/

My 1099 from the transfer agent has total ordinary dividends, qualified dividends, and non-dividend distributions with amounts.

I hold some IOFAX at Schwab and since the disastrous fall in the share price last year, I have received an email referring me to the monthly AC details on the distributions, with the ROC clearly identified. Unfortunately I have not archived or saved those emails, so I’m not sure how I’m going to access the information when I do my taxes. Given what others are saying here it may be my job to track down the ROC monthly figures and plug them into TurboTax. I’ll need the ROC info for 2021 taxes because I’m selling down my position now, but I had no sales in 2020.

@fundly: Thanks for correcting my post. Right, how did you find that percentage if it wasn't from AlphaCentric? Maybe you had better luck last year than finder did this year getting it from AC?
@finder: I bet you know this, but just in case, ROC on the Fido 1099 shows up under nondiv distributions. I just looked at mine again, and it's on the last page. (Had some from ETNMX and PFNIX.) Yes, sounds like there's a problem if you've got 19a's with ROC info & Fido's not showing it. (The recording on the CSR line there said Monday, I think it was, that it was a 35m wait to get somebody on the phone.)

"[1]"Hard Closure": means that these Funds will no longer accept purchases, from new or existing investors, through financial intermediaries unless the purchase is part of: (1) a retirement plan which held the Fund prior to this closure, (2) an automatic reinvestment of a distribution made by the Fund, or (3) a de minimis annual rebalancing approved by a member of the Grandeur Peak client team. The Funds will remain open to purchases from existing investors, and to new investors who purchase directly from Grandeur Peak Funds. The Funds retain the right to make exceptions to any Fund closure or limitation on purchases.
So it appears one can still buy directly through the fund , YES or NO ?
Derf

Hi, guys.
I wanted to follow up with the GP folks before sharing anything. Exchanged notes with their president yesterday, and we've just sent this note to the folks on MFO's mailing list. I wanted to share if with you against the prospect that any of it is interesting to you.
David
- - - - -
On February 12, Grandeur Peak announced their intention to institute a "hard close" for four funds and a soft close on one fund. A hard close is one that stops additional purchases by both new and existing shareholders; a soft close stops new investors from opening accounts. The funds affected are:
Hard closed: Global Opportunities, International Opportunities, International Stalwarts and Global Micro Cap.
Soft closed: Emerging Markets Opportunities.
Each of the affected funds returned between 30-50% in 2020; Global Micro Cap and Emerging Markets have already posted double-digit returns for 2021. The hard closed funds all have four star ratings from Morningstar and are MFO Honor Roll funds; in addition, International Stalwarts is an MFO Great Owl which signals consistently first-tier risk-adjusted returns.
The public explanation was "we carefully review capacity at both the strategy and firm level. We are committed to keeping our investment strategies nimble to fully pursue their investment objectives without being encumbered by their individual asset base or the firm’s collective assets."
I asked president Eric Huefner to talk a bit about the necessity to close a $60 million fund and the oddity of hard-closing one of their least capacity-constrained funds. He noted that Global Micro Cap closed on the day it was launched but has doubled in size in the past 12 months. That's due to modest inflows, "sticky" investors and a 50% return in 2020. Grandeur's goal is "total investment flexibility in the micro-cap arena"
The Stalwarts funds were created, primarily, to serve the needs of investment advisors who had worked with Grandeur for years but found that Grandeur's "core" funds were now closed and, hence, inaccessible to new clients. The suite of Stalwarts funds were designed to give investors access to Grandeur's style through funds that targeted slightly larger (hence, more liquid) stocks. The hope was that those funds would not have to close as quickly as the small- and micro-cap focused core funds. I asked about what had happened to limit capacity. Mr. Huefner noted that total capacity for the Stalwarts strategy - funds + SMAs, US/global/international - was in the $5-7 billion range with International having more assets than the other two combined. "We soft closed the Int’l Stalwarts strategy in June [but] the AUM in the International Stalwarts strategy has still grown more than 40% since then. Given the continuing rapid growth, it felt necessary to close it in order to preserve space for our other Stalwarts strategies."
If you believe that the market will continue on its recent trajectory, dominated by US large tech stops, then there's nothing much you need to do. If you believe that the market might be rotating in response to a new administration, a new environment or simple exhaustion, you might anticipate international outperforming domestic, developing outperforming developed, small outperforming large. These funds are at the vanguard of investing in those style.
Possible responses to their closing:
Check your target asset allocation, whether for the individual fund or the asset class it represents. Consider whether you want to make an additional allocation now, in an admittedly pricey market, to bring your investment in line with your target.
In my case, Global Micro Cap is my third-largest holding and represents 15% of my portfolio. As much as I'm delighted by its performance - 18% annually since launch - it would be hard for me to justify allocating more there now.
Consider alternative GP funds as options. The young Global Contrarian fund has an R-squared of 97 against Global Micro Cap. Both have substantial micro cap exposure (about 40%) with Contrarian's stocks being a bit larger and noticeably lower priced than Micro Caps.
Similarly, Global Stalwarts has a correlation to International Stalwarts of 98 and a nearly identical Sharpe ratio, annual return and maximum drawdown. Global is about 55% international.
Consider Rondure, Wasatch and Seven Canyons funds as options. All four families are driven by Wasatch alumni. While they have very distinctive perspectives and strengths, all have a shared perspective on global small- and micro-cap investing and a respect for their investors as partners. By way of example, Rondure New World (four star, $250 million) has an R-squared of 95 against Emerging Markets Opportunities and Wasatch EM Small Cap (four star, $520 million) has an R-squared of 93. These are all very solid advisors with investor-centered cultures and strong records, though not identical strategies. Between them, 11 of their 24 eligible funds (those with records of three years or more) have earned an MFO Great Owl designation.

Thank you very much for responding. I believe that as of now, prior to sending us 1099 form, Fidelity considered all their distributions as dividends (as listed in my yearly report), and I know that they did not subtract ROC from my basis in IOFIX yet. In fact, IOFIX did not even send its 19(a) form for December yet.
I just received a preliminary version of 1099 Div from Fidelity. (They wait for some info from another fund, they have full information from IOFIX, but incomplete info from another fund.). They list all distributions from IOFIX as ordinary dividends, not a word about ROC. Thus as of now it seems that there is a problem.

@AndyJ .For 2019 IOFIX distributions included 10.71% in Federal obligations. I cannot remember how I got that figure but I would have not used it if it was not correct. Depending on the amount invested this could be a good chunk of a deduction on state taxes if the % amount was similar this year. I decided to go with SVARX which has a chunk of IOFIX in it. Thanks for the other fund info. Much appreciated.

Here's a bit of additional information excerpted from a recent article in the WSJ:

The billionaire Warren Buffett added two more big, American brands to Berkshire Hathaway Inc.’s investment portfolio.
Mr. Buffett’s conglomerate has purchased $8.6 billion in stock in Verizon Communications Inc., the largest U.S. mobile carrier, and $4.1 billion in Chevron Corp. according to a snapshot of investments held in the quarter ended Dec. 31.
In 2020, Chevron had its worst year since 2016, and Verizon’s fourth-quarter profit fell after it booked higher costs and gained fewer new customers than usual.
It isn’t clear whether Mr. Buffett made the decision to invest in the two firms or if the decision was made by Berkshire money managers Todd Combs and Ted Weschler. The two are expected to take over all of Berkshire’s investments once Mr. Buffett is no longer in the top job.
Berkshire adjusted some of its drugmaker investments bets. The conglomerate sold off its $136 million investment in the Covid-19 vaccine maker Pfizer Inc., while increasing stakes in the pharmaceutical brands AbbVie Inc., Merck & Co. and Bristol Myers Squibb Co.
It also continued to cut back from financial firms, selling off its remaining $93 million investment in JPMorgan Chase & Co., and whittling away at its stake in Wells Fargo & Co. by $1.4 billion.
Last year Berkshire Hathaway sold stakes in airlines, including United Airlines Holdings Inc., American Airlines Group Inc., Delta Air Lines Inc. and Southwest Airlines Co. Mr. Buffett said he thought consumer behavior regarding travel had changed for the long term.

Additionally, I believe that in the past few days I read an article reporting that Berkshire had significantly cut back it's investments in Apple, but I'm unable to locate that source at this time.

I agree that Fidelity seems to get the 1099 details right, consistently. I've never found a mistake on cost basis and ROC (non-div distrib) accounting, nor on their treatment of wash sales. They don't figure for you the state tax deductions you'd likely get from fed obligations and your state's tax-exempt muni distributions.
The only problem I've had with Fido lately has been four consecutive times they accounted for a specific-shares sale as first in-first out. Every time I called to correct that, I asked them to fix the problem with their programming. Finally, this week, they did.
From reports I used to read when I owned IOFIX, it didn't look like they ever held much if anything in qualifying fed obligations, so I don't think you're missing anything there, @finder. Plus there are quite a few structured credit funds out there, so I doubt you'll miss AlphaCentric if you still want to invest in that category. Newer ones include JASSX and DBLNX.

House hearing marks first time major figures have all been forced to publicly reckon with trading saga
Following are edited excerpts from a current article in The Guardian:

Frenzied trading in the shares of GameStop and other companies will be the subject of what is expected to be a fiery hearing in Congress on Thursday, when US politicians get their first chance to quiz executives from the trading app Robinhood, Reddit and other players in the saga.
The House financial services committee will hold a hearing at noon in a first step to untangling the furore surrounding trading in GameStop, AMC cinemas and other companies whose share values soared to astronomical levels as small investors piled into the stocks.
Shares in GameStop, a troubled video games chain store, soared 1,600% in January, as an army of small investors, many using the trading app Robinhood, appeared to have bet that Wall Street hedge funds had overplayed their hand when betting the stock price would collapse – a practice known as short-selling. Spurred on by meme-toting members of the Reddit forum WallStreetBets, investors kept buying the shares, driving up the price and triggering huge losses for some hedge funds.
Robinhood briefly suspended trading in GameStop and other hot stocks at the end of January and sparked allegations that the hedge funds and others may have pushed Robinhood and other trading platforms to stop the rout.
Among those testifying are: Robinhood’s CEO, Vlad Tenev, Reddit’s CEO, Steve Huffman, Gabe Plotkin, founder of the Melvin Capital Management hedge fund (which was forced into a rescue after retail traders crushed its bets against GameStop), Ken Griffin, billionaire CEO of Citadel, an investment firm that executes Robinhood clients’ trades and also helped to bail out Melvin, and Keith Gill, a trader variously known online as "Roaring Kitty" and "DeepFuckingValue" and a longtime GameStop booster.
The associate director for economic policy at the Center for American Progress, said: “The GameStop drama raised quite a few public policy questions but first it’s important for members of Congress to understand how events played out.”
More broadly, he said, GameStop had highlighted many crucial issues for regulators, including the role and regulation of hedge funds, whether or how Wall Street is using social media to drive investment strategy, the “gamification” of investing by trading apps and the economic incentives at play for the trading platforms.
“What would have happened if Robinhood had failed? What would have been the knock-on effects for financial markets?” he asked. “These are huge investor protection questions.
The hearing will not be the last inquiry that the executives at the center of the controversy will face. Federal prosecutors have begun an investigation, according to the Wall Street Journal, and the Securities and Exchange Commission, the US’s top financial watchdog, is reportedly combing through social media posts for signs of potential fraud.
In the meantime, evidence has emerged that small investors were not the largest buyers of GameStop and other hot companies. According to an analysis by JP Morgan, institutional investors may have been behind much of the dramatic rise in the share price: “Although retail buying was portrayed as the main driver of the extreme price rally experienced by some stocks, the actual picture may be much more nuanced”.

@Mark You'll have to wait until April, unless you don't mind receiving them frozen solid during delivery. A full 20 degree temperature rise since daybreak here; and now at +10 degrees outside with a bright, blue sky. Almost getting to springtime.

I did receive my 1099 concerning IOFIX; my shares are held with the transfer agent; not a brokerage.
We receive a Form 2439 (Notice to Shareholder of Undistributed Long-Term Capital Gains) for the same company; one is from the transfer agent and the other one is from the brokerage. Form 2439 from the transfer agent is generally received weeks ahead of the one from the brokerage.

Hi @LewisBraham and @Old_Joe

Is it me or is there something unsavory sounding to the word "money" as a verb? It makes it sound like money is something you do instead of something you earn through work.

Financial Literacy ??? Is this the question related to "money" as a verb or just a random thought placed in this thread?
I've been outside removing too much snow and the static temp is -10 F. Perhaps I just have a brain freeze with the money and verb statement.
Lastly, if I didn't want to expand the reserve of our money by something I do (investing); with the base money having arrived over many years of what was earned through hard work; I would be spending my time at web pages discussing why my fudge brownie recipe is better than yours.
Thank you for the reply.
Catch

FWIW, I held a different fund through Fidelity where about 5% of the dividends were ROC. I also sold some of the shares in November.
Fidelity handled everything well. It reduced the amount of divs (box 1a) on the 1099 by the ROC amount and reported the ROC in box 3. To my delight it correctly prorated the ROC between the shares sold and the remaining shares and adjusted cost bases of each lot of shares accordingly.
So at least on the Fidelity end, they know what they're doing. They even provided the 1099 on Feb 13th, two days before required. As far as the Alphacentric end is concerned, you'll have to see if some investors in IOFIX have more information.

I wonder whether IOFIX informs brokerages like Fidelity or TD that in 2020 about half of its distributions were not dividends but return of capital (ROC)? When I talked to IOFIX and Fidelity, they said that I should not worry and everything will be properly mentioned in 1099, but I have heard from a friend with an account at TD that this may not be the case.
So I wonder whether anybody received 1099 correctly describing dividends and ROC in the distributions of IOFIX? Any other related experience/comments?

I "love" Grantham/GMO predictions
12/31/2020 (link) 7 year prediction were: US LC will make 0.4% + 2.5% = 2.9% annually. EM will make 4.1%+2.5% inflation=6.6%. The real results(link) show SPY=13.65 annually EEM=1.9% annually
2012(link): "Jeremy Grantham Warns 2013 Will Be A Dangerous Year For Stocks". 2013 results: VFIAX 32.3%.
2015(link>): "GMO founder Grantham says markets ‘ripe for major decline’ in 2016". The results: +11.9%
Why do they keep listening to him? Panic and bad news sell....wait, I know, one day the market will crash, what a story.