FYI: The funds are a new twist on sector investing. The idea is that investors might want broad exposure to the S&P 500 but would like to underweight a specific sector they don’t want. ETF Report sat down with Michael Sapir, chief executive officer of ProShares Advisors, to discuss the funds and the idea behind them.
Regards,
Ted
http://www.etf.com/sections/features-and-news/new-twist-on-sector-etf-investing

FYI: If you wanted to own gold in the bad old days, there were only a handful of choices: You could take physical delivery (but if you needed any size, you would incur costs for storage and security); you could buy futures contracts, but they also incur steep expenses; or you could buy the gold miners, with their “proven reserves.”
Earlier this year, I laid out the reasons I believed the gold miners were no longer a good proxy for the metal itself. The change occurred when the SPDR Gold Shares Trust exchange-traded fund gave professional and amateur investors a fast, cheap and easy way to gain instant exposure to gold.
Regards,
Ted
http://www.bloombergview.com/articles/2015-11-12/gold-miners-are-a-trade-not-an-investment
M* GLD Performance: http://performance.morningstar.com/funds/etf/total-returns.action?t=GLD&region=USA&culture=en_US

With respect to the tax case (previously reported and discussed, see for example, link below) reported in Philly paper - which claims that "Vanguard has no legal justification for charging its mutual funds artificially low management fees that reduce its reported profits and tax obligations" - it seems that one strategy [?] might be to just wait-it-out.
As reported here - http://tinyurl.com/blkrk-schwab-cuts - others are now charging around 3 bps or so for broad-based ETFs. Once others charge next to nothing, it seems (to this non-lawyer) that this might improve Vanguard's position.
Philly.com: http://articles.philly.com/2015-09-24/business/66826472_1_washington-tax-journal-tax-law-lee-sheppard

Valeant should mean Valiant aka Brave. Another twist to the tale
http://finance.yahoo.com/news/valeant-ackman-must-face-u-013040755.html

Decision Moose over last 20 months or so has gone from high of $1,203,581 to current value of 1,008,249. A total loss of 16.23%.
http://www.decisionmoose.com/Moosistory.html
I just took some HSGFX off the table today, like I also did last year (each year regretting why I didn't take more off, but then you never know...). By contrast over the same period HSGFX lost 13.65%.
ADANX (people love AQR so much, I don't get why) lost around 10% over the same period.
Pretty much everyone else did better I guess.

TFS Funds
http://www.tfscapital.com/wp-content/uploads/2015_Distribution_Estimate-11.11.15.pdf

"But [ I ] am considering PNM as a bond equivalent in my taxable portion when one of my bonds cashes in mid 2016. "

slick, PNM is a stock that fell -28% in '07 and another -50% in '08. From the M* graph it looks like it took almost 7 years to come back to it's '07 peak value. Bond equivalent??? My goodness.

Thanks Ted,
Also discussed here:
mutualfundobserver.com/discuss/discussion/comment/71065/#Comment_71065

FYI: Over the past year, small-company value funds
have provided little value for their shareholders. On average, funds that focus on cheap small-capitalization stocks lagged both the small-cap Russell 2000 index and Standard & Poor’s 500-stock index, which tracks big-company stocks. One small-cap fund
that bucked the trend was James Micro Cap (JMCRX), which whipped the category average by nearly 11 percentage points.
Read more at http://www.kiplinger.com/article/investing/T041-C009-S002-james-micro-cap-wins-with-tiny-companies.html#QI3AOtuUv7DztvMr.99
Regards,
Ted
http://www.kiplinger.com/article/investing/T041-C009-S002-james-micro-cap-wins-with-tiny-companies.html#
JMCRX Is Ranked #13 In The (SCV) Fund Category By U.S. News & World Report:
http://money.usnews.com/funds/mutual-funds/small-value/james-micro-cap-fund/jmcrx

FYI:
Regards,
Ted
http://news.investors.com/photopopup.aspx?path=WebMFperf111115.gif&docId=780140&xmpSource=&width=1000&height=562&caption=&id=780142

@Old_Joe
Including the bond side of life, I'm leaning more towards.....
3.14159265359
Now go have a piece of "pi". Free to veterans today.
Lastly, I'm still pondering negative swap rates in bondland; and wondering if a good butt kicking is ahead on the road to successful investing.
Take care,
Catch

Gee, not 5% or 3%. Just 4%. Should this make us feel good?

Well, ask and sometimes the World hears you.
http://www.ft.com/intl/cms/s/0/e86a211e-847f-11e5-8e80-1574112844fd.html?siteedition=intl
"US interest rate swaps, popular derivatives that track government bond yields, have experienced a spectacular collapse this month with an array of reasons being suggested by traders. [...] Analysts at Deutsche Bank say the recent swap spread tightening reflects 'tighter macro prudential regulation, higher capital requirements and reduced dealer balance sheet capacity.' Also playing a role is swapping activity from companies selling debt.
Some say swaps are a broken market... Under normal market conditions the current inversion should be swiftly reversed, but thanks to tougher bank capital regulation, derivatives trading appears to have entered a new era. Currently, no one appears willing to normalise the relationship between swap rates and Treasury yields.
Trading Treasuries and swaps relies on funding via the repurchase or repo market. Thanks to balance sheet constraints, the use of repo by dealers is shrinking, another factor sustaining negative swap spreads."
So, as I read it, the consequences for us would be that our bond/income fund managers, for the time being, have just had a hedging tool taken out of their toolkit. And, once again, we see that the repo market is involved, a part of the shadow banking system that remains largely under-regulated because of humongous efforts by the global financial players to keep it that way.

I think I've commented on this particular writer before. So many writers come in with a cliche point of view but fail to martial their facts.
"The expenses are higher (and returns lower) for other share classes of the [PIMCO] Total Return fund, such as B-share class (PTTCX)"
He's writing about something that doesn't exist (anymore). PTTBX (not PTTCX) vanished around the end of 2014, when the last of the B shares automatically converted to A shares. (Nov. 2009 prospectus closed this share class, and the shares purchased in the years preceding that closure converted 5 years from purchase. That's why Shadow won't - I think - find any explicit termination of PTTBX.)
"Looking at performance, ABNDX loses to the index in the one-, three-, five-, 10-, and 15-year returns.
"Furthermore, the holdings for ABNDX average out to be intermediate-term bonds with an A credit rating. This type of bond fund fills the space of a core holding, which is the same for VBMFX.
"Why not just hold a bond index fund?
Perhaps because looking at performance, VBMFX loses to ABNDX in the YTD-, three-, and five-year returns? Or perhaps because, as John Bogle points out, bond index funds hold too much in treasuries?
I'm not saying that one couldn't reach the same conclusions in spite of the amended facts I provided. Just that there are lots of financial "writers" who seem more intent on making points (or filling space) than backing them up with accurate facts.

FYI: Stop using “bubble” every time you want to express disenchantment with the stock market.
Please.
Stock market bubbles are extremely rare events. When we indiscriminately throw “bubble” at everything we think has become overvalued, a fad or simply disapprove of, the term risks becoming meaningless.
Regards,
Ted
http://www.marketwatch.com/story/theres-only-a-4-chance-were-in-a-stock-market-bubble-2015-11-10/print

@Crash : glad to see you do so much homework, and thanks for posting websites to go to. I use FRUAX for my utilties exposure , about 5% and have been pretty happy with it, but am considering PNM as a bond equivalent in my taxable portion when one of my bonds cashes in mid 2016.

@dryflower: Try Yahoo Finance which updates funds between 5:00PM-7:00PM CST.
Regards,
Ted

TTI is short for Trend Tracking Index (hopefully you didn't lose too much sleep).
Here's a bit about how this TTI in the Q&A section of Ulli's site:
"Q: Ulli: Thanks for your online free service, it is appreciated. My question has to do with using a 39 week simple moving average. I noticed that when the chart is looked upon at the end of the week when it is updated that it is easy to see the price relation to the moving average. You report often where the TTI is in the middle of the week for instance my question is how do you know what the weekly moving average number is until the end of the week? I would appreciate your input. (7/31/2015)
A: Larry: The answer is simple. I update the TTI prices daily to not only show the changes but to also to be prepared for a trend line crossing and the resulting ‘Buy’ or ‘Sell’ signal.
Since I use a weekly moving average (M/A), that number is only calculated every Friday, and I usually have it updated/corrected in the ETF/Mutual Fund Tracker by about 6 PM PST. It remains the same until the following Friday when it gets recalculated again."
theetfbully.com/questions-answers/

THANKS for the info, Slick!
@Catch22 : I did not own a utility fund, and I knew my utility exposure across my portfolio was rather low. Even if they get hit by a rate hike, over the long haul, it will be a good dividend payer. Utility stocks are historically good defensive positions, come hell or high water. I lived briefly in NM, too. So the idea did not seem literally foreign and strange to me. I'll be 62 at my next birthday, and looking for reliable income. They are taking steps to transition away from coal to natgas. Their San Juan Generating Plant (coal) is already half-shut-down. The company is taking bids right now for a natgas generating facility, to operate on that site. There were 4 "units." Two are shut down. And now, at least one of the two remaining will before too long be operating using gas, rather than coal. This is all Clean Air Act compliance stuff.
Last summer, they requested a rate increase. It was rejected. The State's agency wanted more information. So, they re-filed in August or September. It's not approved YET. PNM's service area is in NM and in separated geographical pockets in Texas, via a sister-utility, under the same umbrella: TNMP.
I checked P/E. Not out of bounds, yet. The stock price has been rising, so the yield is down from 3% to about 2.82%. Whoever the professional Analysts are, they are rating PNM Resources a 4.3 out of a possible 5, averaged-out, as listed on Morningstar's page. I also looked at the stock using a webpage called "Simply Wall Street." It's a cool tool! And of course, I went and read a bunch of stuff on the PNM website. By now, though I'm not a pro, I'm not still a "babe in the woods" when it comes to translating those "forward looking statements." It's like reading Real Estate listings: "fixer-upper" means the place is a disaster, and you are merely buying the property, while the structure will need to be demolished, and something new erected in its place. ;)
"FlashRatings" was another webpage I went to. ...... And the DSPP lets me get in without saving-up a fortune before I can move on my choice. Nice. ... Gotta run, now. ...

FYI: Vanguard announced that the $50 billion Vanguard Emerging Markets Stock Index Fund, including its ETF share class (ticker: VWO), will begin tracking a new FTSE transition index, in the first phase of a two-phase change to a new target index, FTSE Emerging Markets All Cap China A Inclusion Index. This change will be effective with the opening of trading on November 2, 2015.
Regards,
Ted
https://pressroom.vanguard.com/content/press_release/Press_Release_Emerging_Markets_Transition_110115.html