Mark Hulbert's column today in the WSJ Investing in Funds section is quite revealing. For those who subscribe:
https://www.wsj.com/articles/want-to-invest-in-a-true-value-fund-good-luck-finding-one-11549249860?mod=searchresults&page=1&pos=1
For those who don't, Hulbert points out, citing a study by a trio of academics, that no ETFs and only a couple of nearly unknown OEFs really invest in pure value stocks, those "that trade for the lowest ratios of price to book value."
Maybe our members have a favorite value investor or fund to offer by way of rebuttal.

(Sorry, didn't see Ted's post from earlier this morning)
https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/277751/000119312519026477/d613622d497.htm
497 1 d613622d497.htm 497
Janus Investment Fund
497 1 d613622d497.htm 497
Janus Investment Fund
Janus Henderson Global Unconstrained Bond Fund
Supplement dated February 4, 2019
to Currently Effective Prospectuses
Effective March 1, 2019, William H. Gross, the Portfolio Manager for Janus Henderson Global Unconstrained Bond Fund (the “Fund”) intends to retire. In connection with Mr. Gross’ retirement, effective on or about February 15, 2019, Nick Maroutsos will become the new Portfolio Manager of the Fund, and the Fund will change its name to Janus Henderson Absolute Return Income Opportunities Fund. The Fund’s investment objective and principal investment strategies are not changing, and the name change is intended to align the Fund’s name to other Janus Henderson products managed by Mr. Maroutsos using the absolute return income investment approach.
The Fund is expected to experience increased shareholder redemptions as a result of the above changes, which may cause the Fund to sell portfolio securities at times when it would not otherwise do so. As a result, the Fund may deviate from its stated investment strategies and policies in order to meet redemption requests. Increased shareholder redemptions and efforts to realign the Fund’s portfolio to reflect Mr. Maroutsos’ investment approach may also accelerate the realization of taxable income to shareholders if such sales of investments result in gains, and will also increase transaction costs. In addition, increased shareholder redemptions would result in the Fund’s current expenses being allocated over a smaller asset base, which would lead to an increase in the Fund’s expense ratio, but will not alter the expense caps currently in place for each share class of the Fund.
Based on the above changes, effective on or about February 15, 2019, the Fund’s prospectuses are amended as follows:
1. Under “Management” in the Fund Summary section of the Fund’s prospectuses, the following paragraph replaces the corresponding paragraph in its entirety:
Portfolio Manager: Nick Maroutsos is Executive Vice President and Portfolio Manager of the Fund, which he has managed since February 2019.
2. Under “Investment Personnel — Janus Henderson Global Unconstrained Bond Fund” in the Management of the Funds section of the Fund’s prospectuses, the following information replaces the corresponding information in its entirety:
Nick Maroutsos is Executive Vice President and Portfolio Manager of the Fund, which he has managed since February 2019. Mr. Maroutsos is also Portfolio Manager of other Janus Henderson accounts. He joined Janus Capital in 2015, and is a member of the Janus Global Macro leadership team. Prior to joining Janus Capital, Mr. Maroutsos was a Founder and Managing Director of Kapstream Capital, now a Janus Henderson subsidiary. Prior to forming Kapstream Capital in 2006, Mr. Maroutsos held positions with Pacific Investment Management Company LLC from 1999 to 2005. Mr. Maroutsos holds a Bachelor of Arts in Economics from the University of California at San Diego and an MBA from the UCLA Anderson School of Management.
Effective on or about February 15, 2019, all references to William H. Gross are deleted from the Fund’s prospectuses.
Supplement dated February 4, 2019
to Currently Effective Prospectuses
Effective March 1, 2019, William H. Gross, the Portfolio Manager for Janus Henderson Global Unconstrained Bond Fund (the “Fund”) intends to retire. In connection with Mr. Gross’ retirement, effective on or about February 15, 2019, Nick Maroutsos will become the new Portfolio Manager of the Fund, and the Fund will change its name to Janus Henderson Absolute Return Income Opportunities Fund. The Fund’s investment objective and principal investment strategies are not changing, and the name change is intended to align the Fund’s name to other Janus Henderson products managed by Mr. Maroutsos using the absolute return income investment approach.
The Fund is expected to experience increased shareholder redemptions as a result of the above changes, which may cause the Fund to sell portfolio securities at times when it would not otherwise do so. As a result, the Fund may deviate from its stated investment strategies and policies in order to meet redemption requests. Increased shareholder redemptions and efforts to realign the Fund’s portfolio to reflect Mr. Maroutsos’ investment approach may also accelerate the realization of taxable income to shareholders if such sales of investments result in gains, and will also increase transaction costs. In addition, increased shareholder redemptions would result in the Fund’s current expenses being allocated over a smaller asset base, which would lead to an increase in the Fund’s expense ratio, but will not alter the expense caps currently in place for each share class of the Fund.
Based on the above changes, effective on or about February 15, 2019, the Fund’s prospectuses are amended as follows:
1. Under “Management” in the Fund Summary section of the Fund’s prospectuses, the following paragraph replaces the corresponding paragraph in its entirety:
Portfolio Manager: Nick Maroutsos is Executive Vice President and Portfolio Manager of the Fund, which he has managed since February 2019.
2. Under “Investment Personnel — Janus Henderson Global Unconstrained Bond Fund” in the Management of the Funds section of the Fund’s prospectuses, the following information replaces the corresponding information in its entirety:
Nick Maroutsos is Executive Vice President and Portfolio Manager of the Fund, which he has managed since February 2019. Mr. Maroutsos is also Portfolio Manager of other Janus Henderson accounts. He joined Janus Capital in 2015, and is a member of the Janus Global Macro leadership team. Prior to joining Janus Capital, Mr. Maroutsos was a Founder and Managing Director of Kapstream Capital, now a Janus Henderson subsidiary. Prior to forming Kapstream Capital in 2006, Mr. Maroutsos held positions with Pacific Investment Management Company LLC from 1999 to 2005. Mr. Maroutsos holds a Bachelor of Arts in Economics from the University of California at San Diego and an MBA from the UCLA Anderson School of Management.
Effective on or about February 15, 2019, all references to William H. Gross are deleted from the Fund’s prospectuses....

I’ve always been leary of EM equity funds. Perhaps unjustified - but it relates to approximately 35 years ago when a fee-based advisor moved me (and his other clients) from TEMWX, which at the time was a great fund, into TEGOX*, Templeton’s new EM fund. (At that time it represented 100% of my assets.) His stated reason was that the latter would outperform. But it never did as long as I was with him and Templeton. The first had lower fees and an enviable track record. Much easier to “digest” during falling markets. The second had high fees and poor erratic performance at that time.
I do like to own some EM bonds however. Currently own PREMX. I perceive them less risky than EM equities and still offering potential above average long term return. A big reason they’ve spiked recently is in response to the Fed’s 180-degree change in posture and the subsequent pullback in the dollar vs many foreign currencies. As for EM equities, many globally diversified equity funds commit anywhere from 5-25% of their assets to EM equities. (Read Prospectus / Fund Report.) Gets you the EM equity exposure while leaving the harder part (where, when, how much to commit) to the managers.
* Just noticed this fund has been liquidated.
FWIW

How do you get into the Inst. or Z class of shares, thus avoiding the heinous 5% front-load?

Whether he was simply lazy or dishonest, I was bothered by the fact that for after-tax performance he compared small cap funds with the S&P 500:

For the “after fee” performance record, we ... look[] at mutual fund out and underperformance versus the S&P 500 ... [O]ver the 15-year investment horizon (2002 to 2017), ... one in 23 small-cap managers were able to outperform their benchmark index after fees.

This use of a wrong "benchmark" is made more egregious by that fact that he says that large cap funds are leading (his point #3). So we may assume that the large cap benchmark (S&P 500) did better than small cap benchmarks.
He compared small cap funds with a large cap index that outperformed an appropriate small cap benchmark, thus making small cap funds appear worse.
Honest in the sense of "mea culpa"? Perhaps. Intellectually honest? I'm not so sure.

Don't have time to read the underlying paper now, but a few thoughts come to mind regarding his first point. Namely that funds are reportedly outperforming "less often" before fees.
He uses "less often" to mean smaller percentage. We don't know if the fund universe has grown with lots of lousy funds that decrease the percentage of successes or that there are actually fewer funds outperforming.
More important is Sharpe's simple argument that before fees, the average dollar invested in the market must match market performance. If fewer funds are outperforming, that strengthens the possibility (above) that there are just more lousy (small) funds. The data doesn't show that actively managed dollars (pre-expense) are doing worse now. They can't be, per Sharpe.
One needs to be precise here. Actively managed dollars invested in the market must on average match market performance. If the cash drag on funds has increased (percentage of fund assets on the sidelines in cash) has increased, then of course the average fund performance will have decreased. But the average performance of the fraction of fund dollars actually invested will not have. They may just be getting held back more forcefully by larger cash drags.
The average actively managed cost figures quoted are for actively managed dollars (i.e. dollar-weighted average of funds), and not the simple average expense ratio of actively managed funds as stated in the piece. See, e.g. here. This is important because while the dollar weighted average of ERs is dropping, that doesn't say anything about the simple average of ERs. It can easily be the case that the simple average isn't dropping at all; merely that people are moving their dollars to cheaper funds. This seems to put his conclusion about fund expenses being unrelated to performance in doubt - because he's looking at performance fund-by-fund, not weighted by dollars.
Ptak at M* knows what he's writing about and what gaps exist in his (and others') work. I'd start with his paper to understand what's really going on.

https://www.gurufocus.com/news/808561/fund-performance-before-and-after-fees-does-it-matter
Funds are increasingly underperforming both before fees are included as well as not included in their return calculation

HY in muni-land isn't as risky as comparably rated HY corps.

That’s my impression as well - but little experience with munis. Had some non-sheltered $$ to tuck away for about a year a while back and used Price’s PRFHX. If memory serves, I cut it 50/50 between that fund and their investment grade intermediate muni just to be safe. Worked reasonably well at the time. However, the fund isn’t rated very high by M* and the others. Knowing how risk averse T Rowe tends to be that doesn’t surprise me.

FYI: In one respect, Scott Moore probably never belonged at American Century funds. “I grew up in a small town called Carterville, Illinois, with a population of about 3,000,” says the 54-year-old entrepreneur and manager of Nuance Mid Cap Value. Though American Century is hardly a Wall Street behemoth, for Moore, working at the Kansas City, Mo.-based firm with $100 billion in assets and 1,300 employees still required some cultural adjustments.
Moore now runs his boutique, three-fund shop— Nuance Mid Cap Value (ticker: NMAVX), Nuance Concentrated Value (ticker: NCAVX), and Nuance Concentrated Value Long-Short (NCLIX)—that is more like Carterville than Kansas City. The firm has 16 employees and defined capacity constraints for each fund. Mid Cap Value is the largest at $935 million. Combined with privately managed accounts run in an identical style, the strategy has $1.3 billion, and Moore sees its total capacity at $2 billion and $3.5 billion for his entire firm.
Regards,
Ted
https://www.barrons.com/articles/big-returns-at-fund-with-small-town-values-51548943200?mod=hp_DAY_9
Nuance Funds Website:
http://www.nuanceinvestments.com/funds

FYI: Every few years, Steve Romick pens a long letter to clients about looming risks for the stock market. His timing is usually too early—credit-default swaps in 2002, subprime mortgages in 2005, excess leverage in banks and investment banks in 2006—but eventually the dangers came to pass. Recently, Romick wrote his latest jeremiad, this time about the risks lurking in sovereign and corporate bonds.
Regards,
Ted
https://www.barrons.com/articles/a-winning-mutual-fund-prepares-for-the-next-storm-51549044547?mod=hp_DAY_10

FYI: The term aristocrat is usually associated with snobbery and status.
In the context of dividends, it’s a lot more down to earth and benevolent. The S&P 500 Dividend Aristocrats have boosted their payouts for at least 25 straight years—a bar that usually reflects solid, durable underlying profit growth for a company. (For more on this group, see “These 5 Stocks Are In Line to Be the Next ‘Dividend Aristocrats.’”)
For retail investors, buying all 53 of the S&P 500 Dividend Aristocrats can be cumbersome and expensive. But there are exchange-traded funds that can help investors that have this income bent. The accompanying table includes three such funds.
Regards,
Ted
https://www.barrons.com/articles/3-etfs-with-reliable-dividends-51548936003?mod=hp_DAY_7

FYI: In February 2018, Vanguard launched a suite of promising, actively managed factor exchange-traded funds. These factor ETFs are not active in the traditional sense. They are systematic, rules-based strategies, so there are no qualitative judgments about the investment merit of each stock. But the managers have discretion to rebalance the portfolios (or not) when they see fit, which should help reduce implementation costs.
The Vanguard Quantitative Equity Group, which oversees the new funds, has managed similar factor ETFs listed in Europe since December 2015.
Regards,
Ted

Started at E.F. Hutton then went to Edward D. Jones, Pioneer Funds in here some place then A.G Edwards Dain Rauscher, City Group, Solomon Investment finally ended up at Fido for IRA's and Morgan Stanley for stocks and bonds. This has been over 56 years. I'm still here but a lot of my investment companies didn't make it.

For institutional class funds, Fidelity. Access can be easier than at other brokerages. Often Fidelity sells institutional shares with low mins in IRAs (not displayed on the website's fund pages); and transaction fees are low, at $5 for incremental investments and $0 for sales. I also use Fidelity for retail funds where terms are not worse than at other brokerages/fund families. The ability to input the cost of lots and to select lots to sell, even for noncovered shares, is invaluable.
For Vanguard funds, Vanguard. Now that they've removed transaction fees on all ETFs they sell, I might consider using them for ETFs. They also offer PIMCO institutional share classes (e.g. PIMIX) at a low min ($25K), should I choose to go in that direction.
I've got other funds spread out at other institutions, generally for one-off reasons. For example, I've funds at Merrill Edge (not Merrill Lynch) for the sole purpose of boosting my credit card cash back. They're funds I never trade.

@thundley459 and @slick,
thanks for sharing your thoughts on GQGPX and also PRIJX. Morningstar doesn't cover either. Can I ask what draws you to PRIJX? I see that its a top performer over the last 3 years. For GQGPX, I'm assuming Rajiv Jain's track record is the driver. thanks so much.
@AndyJ and @davfor.. thanks for providing your funds too.

Vanguard. JP Morgan for a rollover IRA. American Funds for 529 direct.

Recently started positions in both iras for GQGPX, run by manager Rajiv Jain who left Virtus to start his own boutique firm in 2016. Owned his Virtus fund for 5 years prior to his leaving and it had an excellent record there. David highlighted his fund recently. I also own GSIHX which he subadvises, that one has a small portion in emerging markets, mainly foreign large growth.
I initially bought GQGPX at td Ameritrade last year until it was available Fidelity late 2018. Am adding to it each month.

Might I ask. - What is the “series”? They already have FSKAX. - https://fundresearch.fidelity.com/mutual-funds/summary/315911693

@MikeW: I sold SIVLX in December to take a tax loss and immediately replaced it with PZVEX. Its a low turnover holding as was SIVLX.
Here is a link to the latest Fact Sheet for PZVEX:
https://snl.com/Cache/1001247182.PDF?O=PDF&T=&Y=&D=&FID=1001247182&iid=4162576

@MikeW: As you requested here are my thoughts along with a barometer report. As of market close today Old_Skeet's market barometer which follows the S&P 500 Index indicates that the Index ... based upon its metrics ... is in the overvalued range on the barometer's scale with a reading of 140. With this, Old_Skeet would not be a buyer of the Index at this time. Coming off the December lows the Index has gained more than half of what it lost from its recent high. I'm thinking the next half will take a good bit longer to regain what was lost.
The time to have been a buyer of the Index based upon the metrics of the barometer was during the last week of December and first week of January. Back then the barometer had reading of 182 and 183 respectively indicating that the Index was extremely oversold and due for a rebound (or throw back rally).
Remember, a higher barometer reading indicates there is more investment value in the Index over a lower reading. In addition, there has been a recent increase in short interest for SPY over the past week or so. So, as the Index has recovered and risen in its valuation some investors are now increasing their short positions in the Index over the past couple of weeks. Short interest as measured in the number of days to cover has risen from 1.1 days to cover to 1.8 days.
I'm thinking ... and, this is just a scientific wild ass guess (SWAG) ... we will see the markets pullback some once we get through 4Q2018 earnings and revenue reporting. After all, forward earnings growth projections for the Index have, of late, been on the decline. Also, remember there is a lot of "hot" money that frequently gets reposition in the markets form time-to-time through computerized trading systems. Since stocks have recently had some good upward momentum during January here comes (or came) the fast money. And, how long will it be before the FOMC again begins to bump interest rates? They are still low by historical standards and I'm thinking although they say they are on hold for now their actions might be quite different in a few months, or so. Perhaps, they have raised to far and to quickly and this is the true reason for their pause.
For me, I'm watching the yield on the US10Yr Treasury as a clue of what might be ready to happen with stocks. Today, it closed with a yield of 2.64% which is way down from its October high yield of around 3.23%. Seems, the US10yr is still in good demand. Since, bond values and their yield generally move in opposite direction of one another ... Well ... I'm thinking ... the time to again become a buyer of stocks will be when investors begin to flee bonds and their yield begins to rise. Right now cover seems to still be sought by some investors with their demand for bonds.
So, emerging markets just might be the near term ticket since both domestic stocks and bonds seem to be overbought, from my perspective, and explains why they are catching investor interest. After all, both of my emerging market funds are up nicely thus far this year and their P/E Ratios are quite low compaired to other choices. Plus, they are both off their 52 week highs by better than 10%. Remember, though, the hot money crowd also chases after opportunity.
I hope my thoughts @MikeW have been helpful.
Old_Skeet