Two trades late December:
Sold remaining shares of PRNEX - up 25% in 2016.
Bought PIEQX - up 1.43% in 2016.
Sell high. Buy low.
"Nobody's ever made money in commodities."

55% in bank loan fund BXFYX and 45% in junk corporate IVHIX. Bank loans are overloved and overbought while junk corporates are just overbought. Since 12/08 my goal has been to beat the S&P total return trading bond funds and with minimal drawdown. Except for 2013 made my goal. Something tells me unless 2017 is a bear market for stocks, I will fall short of my goal this year.

I am not sure there is a compelling reason to own smallcap value or smallcap growth per se. Why not look at the entire Intl smallcap space? QUSIX has been a good option for actively-managed funds. I would compare it to DLS even though DLS is a lot more dividend oriented. Expenses are a big deal. You will pay 73 bps more for active management that won a bit over five years, broke even over three, and lagged by 600 bps over last 12 months. Will management be able to match the 5-year comparison going forward? SCZ is a blend of value and growth. It has similar numbers with expenses of only 40 bps. Also note that QUSIX has about 20% in EM small caps, so the potential volatility is higher. Maybe the bigger question is whether you need an international small cap at all. Will this really bump your returns or just increase the potential risk?

In addition to having no alternatives in Annuities and some 401k, some of us have worked with brokers in the past who only have access to A or C shares. I have done the math many times, and old_skeet is correct... A shares make sense if you hold them for long periods of time ( usually 7 years or longer) to take advantage of their generally lower ER, even factoring in the opportunity cost of not investing the 5.75% immediately.
If you use a broker whose advice you find excellent, this is a small price to pay and probably a better deal than the 1% of all assets Merrill Lynch is reportedly going to charge their customers yearly.
There are some brokers whose advice is excellent. Advisers, fee only or in wrap accounts or whatever, will not work for nothing. I would rather know what I was paying them than find hidden fees buried in the prospectus

@LLJB

I'm a little surprised Intrepid has only been able to raise $17MM in assets with a good record over more than 2 years. It almost seems like the risk of liquidation for ICMIX could be pretty high if it doesn't garner a good amount more interest in the next 12 months. They're eating almost half of expenses under the expense waiver and that most likely means "future" shareholders will eventually bear those costs if the expense ratio eventually falls below the waiver.

Thank you for your preceding comments. Let me add a few points.
Intrepid seeks to put the shareholder’s interests first and generate great risk-adjusted returns. They have six different mutual fund strategies launched since 2005 and have been patient with each of these strategies, recognizing that it takes time for the asset base to grow and for the funds to start showing up on screens.
They give every fund they launch a multiyear timeframe to prove itself, which should at least reflect a full market cycle, and specifically have little expectation that any new fund will grow materially until it secures a three-year track record and receives a Morningstar rating.
ICMIX is on track with their initial assumptions for asset growth, does not foresee eliminating its expense ratio caps, and hopes to reduce the expense ratios as the fund grows.
As Franklin said in his 3Q 16 commentary, “Thank you for letting us build”, i.e., the building process takes time, and that being patient and building the portfolio right pays off for everyone.
I appreciate your interest in this month's article.
Best.

bought little of CANADIAN NAT RES LTD NOTE CALL MAKE WHOLE 7.20000% 01/15/2032 cusip 136385AC5 last wk

http://seekingalpha.com/article/4035753-marijuana-mutual-fund-focus
Sorry if this article offend anyone
I never used this but this maybe tip of iceberg in term of good vehicle/income to hold in the near future

And, @JoJo26 of your bold comment ..., I am most thankful that you don't govern my affairs for you appear, to me, you might be a person that is penny wise but dollar foolish.
Old_Skeet

Talk to me in 15 years and we will see whose portfolio performs better. Why on earth would you want to dig yourself into a 2-5% hole by paying loads.....

@BobC - thanks for your post. In some cases at least, as @catch22 pointed out, the learning experiences weren't even mistakes. At the time there were sound reasons for the choices, whether they worked out or not.
Small companies often use annuities in their 401(k) plans. The annuities generate so much income for the insurance companies that they don't charge the employer (plan sponsor) anything for all the filings and administrative work they provide. This makes the employer happy, the employees less so.
With C shares, some annuities give you credit for the trailing fees they are getting from the funds. So instead of paying, say 1.25% for the annuity and 1.77% for TEGBX, you'd get credit for the 1% kickback, and get charged a total of :
(1.25% - 1%) + 1.77% = 1.25% + (1.77% - 1%) = 2.02%.
Effectively, you're getting TEGBX for 0.77%.
Regarding archives - google is your friend. Of course, you have to know what you're looking for :-)

Hi @msf
Yup, have held TEGBX (C shares); cause I/we wanted the fund holding at the time and the fund was only available via a company retirement offering. I don't recall all of the nuts and bolts of the share pricing at the time, but that the outright E.R. is/was .77%.
Our house history with this fund:
---Purchase about May, 2009.........sell May, 2012 total return for this period = +27%
---this fund ran about another year with solid returns; May 2012-May 2013 = +14%
---Two price peaks occurred near May, 2013 and again at Sept. 2014
---May 2013 return through present = -1%
---Sept 2014 return through present = -2%
I won't "dis" the manager's skill and/or knowledge of global bonds. Our house was merely attempting to wade through the nasty investing environment of the time. The U.S. was still moving to the next Q.E. policy, Euroland was still in austerity mode, Greece was blowing investing "stuff" up every 6 months or so and bonds were still having positive price moves (U.S. credit rating downgrade, Aug. 2011). TEGBX during our holding period was another diverse area in bondland, aside from investment grade and high yield. Playing in bondland is about as much of a challenge as one may choose in the investment world, IMHO. So, we got lucky with our "in" period for this fund, but apparently left when the leaving was good.
I will presume @JoJo26 never had to be concerned with "A" or "C" share choices inside an offered retirement program. We all have different plates of choice, at least involving retirement plan offerings via an employer.
I will nominate you, @msf for the MFO archiver award. :)
This link is overview of this fund and class info:
https://www.franklintempleton.com/forms-literature/download/406-FF
Regards,
Catch

I must be really stupid. I've knowingly purchased B shares. At the time it seemed like it was worth the cost to get more dollars into a sheltered account (401k) where they would grow for 25-50 years without having to worry about taxes. Wasn't any more expensive than noload funds offered inside annuity wrappers I've had with other 401k's.
At least I have company in my stupidity. Lots of people here have purchased C shares of Templeton Global, or at least recommended it: CathyG, Shostakovich, Catch, Scott, 00BY.
Then there's OJ and his American Fund shares, recommended to him by what he described as an honest adviser.
I'm sure I can find others here as well who have ever paid a load. I don't think we're all stupid. But that's just MHO.

M* has had a problem with classifying a lot of funds. It's nature is to fit everything into neat boxes, often times without regard to what the fund really is, its philosophy, and its history. They crammed OSTIX into the HY group a few years ago, which immediately caused the fund to go from 5* to 1 or 2*. After that, they refused to acknowledge their error and actually compounded it by saying the risk level was much higher than it really is or ever has been. As others have said, it is important to know a fund's real strategy before making any comparison with other funds within a M* category.
For years, M* lived and breathed its self-created style boxes, when it know dang well that a lot of funds do not fit the boxes they were assigned. No matter, they just assigned lousy ratings to those who did not fit the mold when their numbers were not as good as the box average. It seems, thankfully, that we are pretty much over style boxes. But the asset category issue is still with us. Be cautious when using M* risk measures.

Hi Crash. I'm certainly in the rank amateur club too, but the fund certainly fits with the buy low sell high mantra. The perfect value/contrarian style I have tried to use myself with out much success. This fund does it for me with a fairly simple formula I can understand.
Right or wrong, I don't view the fund as a pure equity large cap value fund as M* labels it. I see it more as a balanced fund (which I prefer) because it does use debt securities/bonds for total return and to damper volatility. I'm always leary when something seems to good to be true, so I hold the thought this fund will not perform as it is now in every economic scenario. It has to see soft spots somewhere down the line. But, it sure has knocked it out of the park for the last 3 years. I've upped it to about 15% of my portfolio, right up there with PRWCX and ICMBX as my biggest holdings.

I just found a nice research article on SPHD, which represents 13% of our portfolio:
SPHD Article
Kevin

I have been looking at their funds. The Tactical all Asset and the Bond fund are rather transparent as Blumenthal publishes his allocations on line weekly. He has little or no info on the long short strategy, which would probably be the hardest to implement. The mutual funds do not have a long track record as they started in 2015 but the separate accounts go back years and if you believe his summaries they seem to be relatively low risk and seem to deliver what they promise. Unless you want to pay 1.7% for the bond fund, you can tease out his strategy online...

One can choose how much credibility to give to subjective analyses. That said, "scoring" that is retrospective is generally objective. What's important there is understanding what goes into that score.
For OSTIX risk, M* and Lipper are in pretty close agreement, i.e. their different scoring systems in this case lead to the similar conclusions. Risk has been low but slightly increasing in recent years. You can see this in M*'s 3 year risk rating (below average) vs. its 5 and ten year risk ratings for the fund (low).
Lipper represents risk differently. It uses "Preservation" to represent downside risk. (Here's its methodology.) On preservation OSTIX has been very solid - 4 or 5 over all timeframes. (Dropping from a 5 rating over five years to 4 over three years, tracking M* over these periods.)
MAXFunds rates OSTIX's risk at 1(low) on a scale of 1-5. But it isn't clear whether that is relative to the fund universe or to HY funds.
All these sources seem to concur that OSTIX is a low risk fund. This despite the relatively low credit rating (B vs. BB for some HY funds) that the fund sports. This supports the M*assessment that the credit rating in this case doesn't accurately represent the risk in the fund.
At least some of that risk control may be coming from its bipolar approach to credit - around 20% AAA, over 20% in cash, and nearly all the rest in really low grade stuff (B or below). It's like a barbell approach, but a barbell on credit quality, not duration.
---
FWIW, here's MFO's review of fund sites as of five years ago:
http://www.mutualfundobserver.com/2012/03/march-2012-mutual-fund-rating-sites/
Also a thread about one of the sites it liked, FundReveal.
http://mutualfundobserver.com/discuss/discussion/2441/fund-reveal-please-try-it-out
That's a pay-only site, and apparently it's tripled its fees in the past five years, from $100-$150 to $495 and up.

M* December 2014: "So this fund's true risk profile has been more conservative than the portfolio's credit profile suggests. ... Thanks to having the category's lowest 10-year Morningstar Risk score, its risk-adjusted return over that period lands in the group's top quartile. As a result, this fund has, somewhat improbably, proved to be one of the category's better options for risk-averse investors."
M* December 2015: "One of the better high-yield offerings on a risk-adjusted basis. ...Although its long-term returns trail its benchmark, the fund has been excellent on a risk-adjusted basis. For this reason, the fund retains its Morningstar Analyst Rating of Bronze."
You'll need M* Premium Membership to follow the links.
Maybe it's not that M* has erased its history, but that it didn't say the fund was too risky. What it did write, repeatedly, was that while the fund delved well into junk it also managed that risk exceedingly well. Thus the fund's actual risk profile was different (and lower) than what one would think looking only at its credit ratings.

What would the turning point be and how would it be arrived at and proceed? Necessarily a general broad slump (SP500), no? Or sentiment where the lower-valuation SP500 were somehow deemed excessively expensive and the higher-valuation SP500 not?
The original trumpeting credit, again, goes entirely to Snowball / MFO.