Well, somebody's been buying for the last couple of years. Is all of that you, David?

re ML, exactly. I do the same there w etfs. They will not do VXX, thank goodness.
20k is good.
Doubt you will get a bite at 50 cents. He said.
You might want to do some dd on COG. I have made some money with it but given it all back as well.

My pot stocks were all up at one point, by 25% to 300%. I sold enough to make 20k even if everything else went to zero ... which is what happened. i shoulda sold, not held. but, i still came out ahead, though not by as much as i could have, by a long shot. sigh.
I remember looking at REXX when you first mentioned it and bought a bunch of different oil stocks instead, none of which have done too well either. I might put in a small limit buy order at .50 and see if it gets hit, just for snicks and giggles. hopefully in a few months we'll be laffing about it together, all the way to the bank. stranger things!
i get free trades at merrill, which is always a prodding factor when it comes to fliers like this one. i mean, with any commission at all, i'd pass. but free? ha!

The proposal doesn't do away with paper. It just makes paper opt-in, rather than opt-out. Even if you've chosen electronic, it would require funds to send a printed version at no cost on demand, within three days of your request.
The proposal doesn't require funds to even offer electronic versions, let alone make them the default.
@hank 's got the right link. The part of the doc pertaining to the paperless proposal (a new Rule 30E-3) starts on p. 149. What's there is a clear discussion of the background, the thinking, and how the rules would work. That is, English as opposed to actual legalize text of the proposed rule.
The Bloomberg article cites Roll Call as estimating the potential savings at $2B/decade. According to the SEC report, the savings are way less than that. Total printing costs are about $116M, and given the number of funds/investors expected to participate, the savings on printing would be about $105M/year. Offsetting that are new costs (maintaining web site, mailing paper copies on demand, etc.) totaling about $32M/year.
Net savings/decade (my calculation) = ($105M - $32M) x 10 = $3/4B.
IMHO the real savings are in costs to the environment - trees (as mentioned in Bloomberg), energy for paper recycling (or landfill), and mailing/shipping (fuel).
You can find the comments that people (and companies) have submitted here:
https://www.sec.gov/comments/s7-08-15/s70815-123.pdf

Thanks. Idiot reminder!
Ha, not rich beyond words, but it should recover at some point. I have studied their figures, and talk regularly w a local geezer friend (rich) who knows the CFO well, who reports they are quite solvent and just biding their time.
I certainly should shut up about it, though, at least the stupider speculations!
In other words it is not like some biotech where there turns out to be nothing there.
He said.
$500 sounds about right :) .
Why did your dope stocks tank?

FYI: Charles Schwab Corp. has upped the ante in the push to be the lowest-cost provider of target-date retirement funds, launching a new series of target-dated mutual funds on Thursday that edge out Vanguard Group and Fidelity Investments to claim the title as cheapest on the market to date.
Regards,
Ted
http://www.investmentnews.com/article/20160825/FREE/160829963?template=printart

REXX is a play, solvent and productive but extremely cheap, 61 cents or so, but it may take awhile, esp if NG pricing goes even lower. I am thinking the downside is nearly nonexistent.

DM, from dec 2014, when price was around $5/share: "I don't know how anyone is going to lose buying REXX now --- financially solid, just takes patience. Awfully low. Just one example."
i really do have to admire your tenacity. i think you've bought more all the way down. have you held onto all your shares? at some point REXX is going to take off and hopefully make you rich beyond words. I might have to throw $500 at it, just to join you in my own small way. should it go back to $5/sh, that'd make me $4k happier.
or, it could just go to 1 cent and join certain marijuana stocks i bought in 2014 and that still clutter up my monthly statements.
anyway, how financially solvent do you think the company still is?

Intriguing topic. Sketchy at best on exactly what the SEC is proposing. Maybe this is the proposal the article references? https://www.sec.gov/rules/proposed/2015/33-9776.pdf
If I read the above correctly, funds would no longer be required to make paper copies of fund reports available to investors. I get it. Saves money and trees. Can't stop progress I suppose.
Personally, much as I enjoy pleasure reading in digital form, there's something unique about legal/financial language and content that I find easier to digest in print. I wouldn't want to sign off on a 30 year mortgage for which I'd seen only a digital copy. I find Barrons much more more rewarding in print. And I don't like the thought of handing over my hard earned money to a firm whose reports exist only in the digital realm.
The suggestion in the article byline that most investors don't bother to read their fund reports sounds absurd. If you trust your manager enough to give him/her your money to invest, surely you value his or her insights into the markets and his/her unique perspectives on why the fund is invested the way it is. Not read the reports? Nuts.

Just fyi, QLENX is ntf at Fidelity, but it also has a slightly higher E.R. than QLEIX. You can get either of them at Fido with a $2,500 initial investment in an IRA; the minimums Kevin mentioned are for group retirement plans, according to the "fees and distributions" pages.

Unfortunately, I'm not with Fidelity, and I always avoid TF. Don't want those costs to eat into my returns. If I invest $2,500, I instantly dig myself a 2% hole. Same reason I'll never touch funds with loads. I've never understood the whole load concept. How do those still even exist?

@JoJo26:
QLEIX and QLENX are available in Fidelity retirement accounts for $100K and $500 minimums, respectively, with a TF.
@msf:
I totally agree with your assessment of the ER. That is why I have been advocating for years that M* report on the fund's front page the actual expense ratio that investors will be paying, as detailed in the prospectus. In this case, the actual ER of 1.87% should be reported on the fund's front page. And notice that this 1.87% figure doesn't even appear in the expense breakdown for the fund. M* could report this accurate ER but chooses to not do so, likely to favor fund managements over investors. M* could and should do better.
Kevin

The Long/Short Equity space is very troubled, as there have been very few funds which have had attractive long-term performance, and the expenses of such funds are inherently high, which serves as a drag for future performance. Whenever I look at a space with many entrants but few winners, I instinctively avoid the space, and I think that this is generally the right move.

Concur completely. Personally I go further - I tend to avoid "esoteric" categories even if they have a modest number of successful funds, at least until a category has proven itself through stressful periods.

Furthermore, M* understates -- as usual -- the actual expense ratio that investors pay for NCLIX, which is actually a net ER of 1.87%, not the 1.55% listed on M*'s front page.

That's because M* is excluding leveraging costs. The flip side, according to M*, is that depending on how that leveraging is achieved, its cost may still be hidden (even if M* isn't the one doing the hiding). Pick your poison.

Morningstar elects to exclude interest and dividend expense from the net expense ratio in order to provide the end investor with an apples-to-apples comparison of expense ratios. Depending on the leveraging techniques employed by the fund, the fund may or may not be required to report interest and dividend expense. For example, funds that employ shorting strategies or reverse-repo transactions are required to report interest expense in the Annual Report whereas funds that employ futures, swaps, TBAs, and forwards are not required to report the cost associated with those instruments as interest expense.

@JoJo26:
The Long/Short Equity space is very troubled, as there have been very few funds which have had attractive long-term performance, and the expenses of such funds are inherently high, which serves as a drag for future performance. Whenever I look at a space with many entrants but few winners, I instinctively avoid the space, and I think that this is generally the right move. From my perspective, there are exactly two attractive funds in the space -- BPLSX/BPLEX and QLEIX/QLENX -- with only the latter being open to new investors.
The managers of this very young fund have done a pretty good job at their long-only equity fund, NCVLX. I am not sure how they will do in the more treacherous L/S space. Furthermore, M* understates -- as usual -- the actual expense ratio that investors pay for NCLIX, which is actually a net ER of 1.87%, not the 1.55% listed on M*'s front page.
If you must invest in this space, I would consider QLEIX/QLENX. As for NCLIX, I would wait for a track record to develop and would be reluctant to be an early investor, as it opened its doors very recently on 12/31/2015.
Kevin

March 9, 2009 at 3:59 PM
In response to Ted's revision, I too am revising my response.
I hope I didn't sound like a smart ass, but the subtle message embedded in my terse reply above is that the best time to invest is when things are cheap. So you easily could have bought twice as much of the S&P for the same amount of money back in '09 as today.
A second message meant to be conveyed is that markets are impossible to predict.
That said, all of the other responses are well considered and should be helpful to you. Had you included factors like age, years to retirement, and personal disposition towards risk, it would have helped in suggesting appropriate allocations and methods of deploying your cash.
Regards

I remember that we had this discussion some years ago... might even have been on FundAlarm. But I still don't fully understand the mechanism: Is it accurate to say that if 40% of the equity market is now indexed (passive), then the remaining 60% is active?
And if that's true, what happens when we get to 51% indexed vs 49% active? Would that mean that a "minority" of active investors would then be determining the market?
And if that's true, what is the ongoing situation as the active share decreases further? More and more "influence" from fewer and fewer investors?

Hi Guys,
I don't worry this issue. Yes, in the recent past Indexing has attracted investor attention and money. According to Morningstar, equity Index products are 40% and bond Index products are 25% of the marketplace. Those numbers have grown substantially in the last decade.
But there will always be folks who believe they can better the Index benchmark. That's the nature of most investors; average is just not good enough.
The statistics tell the real story. Over any 10-year period, only about 25% of actively managed funds outdistance their benchmark, and the inhabitants of that select group change often. It's hard to pick individual active fund winners. Those stats decrease even more when a portfolio is assembled. Studies suggest that a passive portfolio outperforms an active equivalent portfolio over the long haul roughly 80% to 90% of the time. It's statistically easier to pick 1 winning active fund manager than picking a group of 4 or 5 such managers.
Active fund managers need to upgrade their game performance by a significant amount if they want to survive. Private investors are becoming more familiar with the disappointing active fund manager output. These guys are smart enough, but there are too many currently competing to neutralize each other, and they can't overcome their cost burden. It's a heavy load.
Active fund managers will survive, and so will we as we get smarter. Costs matter greatly.
Best Wishes.

Wow, active managers must be getting really desperate to trot out this old canard that indexing is somehow communist. Bogle had to deal with these sorts of attacks when the index fund was first created:
https://books.google.com/books?id=J2B2ZSLwRZ4C&pg=PT56&lpg=PT56&dq=index+funds+and+communism&source=bl&ots=7WPVMKPeVP&sig=0diy8QCdeZN7-ABoPGzLhgcnvHA&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwj6xcSnt9jOAhWE5xoKHY55AnYQ6AEIHDAA#v=onepage&q=index%20funds%20and%20communism&f=false
Also, this quote from the story is pretty funny: "The social function of active management, in a capitalist society, is that it seeks to direct capital to its most productive end, facilitating sustainable job creation and a rise in the aggregate standard of living." Increases in profitability can just as easily come from laying workers off, restructuring, share buybacks, and investments in labor saving technology. And many--some might argue most--active managers today care less about sustainable profits over the long-term, which may lead to job creation, than short-term speculation and price momentum of stocks. How stocks behave and the underlying long-term economic performance of the the companies they represent often diverge.

FYI: Demand for exposure to emerging markets has been on the rise in recent months, and one fund that has captured a lot of that interest is a fixed-income ETF, the iShares JP Morgan USD Emerging Markets Bond ETF (EMB).
So far in 2016, EMB has raked in $4.35 billion in net assets—huge inflows for a fund that has $9.7 billion in total assets today. EMB was the fifth-most-popular ETF in July based on creations, and is ranked among the 10 biggest creations we’ve seen year-to-date.
Regards,
Ted
http://www.etf.com/sections/features-and-news/emb-years-hot-emerging-market-bond-etf

https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/89043/000091957416015083/d7240544_497.htm
497 1 d7240544_497.htm
SEQUOIA FUND, INC.
Supplement dated August 22, 2016
to the Prospectus dated April 29, 2016
At a recent meeting, the Board of Directors of Sequoia Fund, Inc. (the "Fund") considered and approved offering the Fund's shares to all new investors, including those seeking to purchase shares of the Fund through financial intermediaries with which the Fund has agreements. Effective August 23, 2016, the Fund will begin accepting orders for the purchase of Fund shares from all new investors. At that time, Fund shares will be available for purchase as described in the section of the prospectus titled "Purchase and Sale of Shares" as amended by this supplement.
Accordingly, the first paragraph under the heading "Purchase and Sale of Fund Shares" on page 4 of the Prospectus is deleted in its entirety, and the first paragraph under the heading "How to Buy Shares" on page 7 of the Prospectus is deleted in its entirety.
In addition, the fourth paragraph under the heading "How to Buy Shares" on page 7 of the Prospectus is deleted in its entirety and replaced with the following:
Important Note to New Taxable Investors: As of August 16, 2016, the net unrealized appreciation of the Fund's portfolio was approximately 50.4% of the Fund's net assets. If the Fund sells appreciated securities and distributes the profit, the distributed appreciation will be taxable to you either as capital gains or as ordinary income, depending upon how long the Fund held the appreciated securities. You should carefully consider the potential tax effects prior to making an investment in the Fund.
* * * *
YOU SHOULD RETAIN THIS SUPPLEMENT WITH YOUR PROSPECTUS
FOR FUTURE REFERENCE.

FYI: Emerging market has been on a comeback of sorts this year, but advisers urge caution and remind clients to think long term.
Regards,
Ted
http://www.investmentnews.com/article/20160821/FREE/160819915?template=printart