So..........First Eagle is a branch of Volkswagen? They sold their integrity and good name for 25 mil? I've had a bunch of money with these guys for 10 years -- and they stole from me? Time to move on.

FYI: A rocky week for the broader stock market has inflicted serious damage to exchange-traded funds that track biotechnology stocks.
The $8 billion iShares Nasdaq Biotechnology ETF (IBB) fell 6.5% recent trading on Friday.
The ETF has fallen each day this week, bringing its total five-day decline to 14% — the biggest weekly drop since Oct. 2008, the height of the financial crisis.
Regards,
Ted
http://blogs.barrons.com/focusonfunds/2015/09/25/biotech-bombs-suffers-worst-weekly-decline-since-08/tab/print/

FYI: On Sept. 21, the Securities and Exchange Commission’s enforcement division filed proceedings against First Eagle Investment Management, an asset-management company overseeing $100 billion — mostly in eight stock, bond and multi-asset funds. The S.E.C. said that from January 2008 through March 2014, First Eagle improperly billed its investors $25 million for payments to brokers marketing the funds’ shares. The commission also accused First Eagle of misleading investors by maintaining in fund documents during that period that it was paying the marketing costs itself.
Regards,
Ted
http://www.nytimes.com/2015/09/27/business/sec-turns-its-eye-to-hidden-fees-in-mutual-funds.html?_r=0

"Succession planning" sounds like you might consider active management a risk because sooner or later the manager(s) must be succeeded by other managers. Vanguard states that VMFVX is actively manged, selecting approximately 200 stocks from out of the roughly 7200 in the FTSE Global All Cap Index (hedged).
(Vanguard PR on VMFVX)
Hedging is a hidden expense that may be increasing the total costs incurred by VMVFX by 50% or more: "the direct transaction costs of currency hedging have generally been low to moderate, historically in the range of 1 to 18 basis points annually for developed-market currencies. ... Unlike most major developed-market currencies, emerging-market currencies tend to have lower trading volumes and may be more difficult and costly to hedge." (Vanguard paper on hedging)
This fund "seeks lower risk, not outperformance". (First Vanguard link, above). IMHO, risk (volatility) reduction is an objective that makes this fund worth considering for many. Though you justifiably questioned its value for an investment intend to last 30+ years. Volatility of performance over that long a period of time would likely average out.
Vanguard does offer an unhedged fund (lower transaction costs but higher risk/volatility), passively managed (no succession planning) with stocks culled from the same FTSE Global All Cap Index (except it's the unhedged version of the index). VTWSX/VT (ER of 0.27%/0.17%).
I'm not advocating one fund over the other in general; just looking at how well these two funds fishing in the same pool align with some factors mentioned.

@STB65, vmvfx is available in the Admiral share with ER 0.20% and $50K minimum. That is a considerable saving in the long term. Question is does Vanguard charges the hedging at cost or close to it? Other funds such as Tweedy Browne Global Value has a considerably higher ER, 1.3%.

RPSIX is a fine fund. I keep a modest allocation in it - which replaced a similar allocation I kept in high yield bonds at an earlier stage of investing. The .67% ER Price lists on its website is a trite higher than I'd have guessed. It is, of course, based on the cost of the underlying funds, some of which have expenses in the 1% range.
When I want a "best guess" estimate how a find might perform over near-term time horizons, I look at Fund Max. Their calls aren't always right, but are interesting. For PRSIX they see a worst case of -15% over the next year and a best case of +11%. I'd say they are close - but erring on the cautious side. Keep in mind these are Best and Worst Case projections. Neither seems likely. (And I'll take exception to their overall score of "70". It's a better fund than that.) http://www.maxfunds.com/funds/data.php?ticker=RPSIX&pg=d
Price lists the fund's holdings in its annual and semi-annual reports available for download at T. Rowe. Notable are a potential weighting of as much as 25% in PRFDX (an equity fund) as well as substantial allocations to high yield and EM bond funds. Likely, it's these rather aggressive holdings which Fund Max thinks could pull the fund down in some sort of worst-case financial environment.

Fund Spy: A Workaround for High Alternative Fund Fees
09-24-2015 | This simple trick can help you halve some alternative fund fees.
http://news.morningstar.com/articlenet/article.aspx?id=715562
"Long-short equity funds can add useful diversification to an equity portfolio, but the strategy tends to come with a hefty price tag. The average long-short equity fund charges a whopping 1.85% expense ratio. Fees are, and have always been, the enemy of long-term returns, so it’s hard to blame anyone who considers a nearly 2% price tag a nonstarter. But with a little creativity, an investor can get a similar return profile from equity market-neutral funds at a much more appetizing price....
...The good news is that a skilled manager is skilled regardless of how much beta, or systematic risk, the strategy takes on. With the increased availability of exchange-traded funds today, investors can easily and cheaply buy beta to layer on top of a lower-exposure, alpha-generating strategy and, in the process, lower the overall fees. Let’s take a look at three different examples of how this would work."
Examples:

VMNIX + VOO  (WAvg E.R.:  10 bps)
BDMIX + URTH (WAvg E.R.:  86 bps)
GONIX + VOO  (WAvg E.R.: 109 bps)

See article and comments for details.

http://www.nationaljournal.com/s/73675/hillary-clinton-come-clean-get-out
Time will tell.

The fund may be purchased at Scottrade for $17. The minimums for both a regular and an IRA are $2500 and $100 for additional purchases. The fund is not registered in all states but is registered in most of them.

I have an account with Vanguard and my transaction fee charge is $20.00. It can go as high as $35.00, depending on the amount of assets held at the brokerage.

FYI: After a decent sized pullback since the Fed meeting last Thursday, just 16% of S&P 500 stocks remain above their 50-day moving averages. The 50-day moving average is typically seen as a dividing line for short-term directional trends. Stocks above their 50-days are uptrending, or at least not downtrending. Stocks below their 50-days are downtrending, or at least not uptrending.
In terms of sectors, two defensives have the highest percentage of stocks above their 50-days, which is expected in a down market, but not what bulls want to see. The Consumer Discretionary sector has just barely over 20% of stocks above their 50-days, while Technology’s reading stands at 19.1%. Health Care, Energy, Materials and Telecom all have readings under 10%. Not good.
Regards,
Ted
https://www.bespokepremium.com/think-big-blog/the-6-percenters-few-names-remain-in-uptrends/

@PRESSmUP Clinton Foundation taking $$ from foreign governments is a "fake scandal"?

Yes, a fake scandal.
Like other global charities, the Clinton Foundation receives support from individuals, organizations and governments from all over the world.

@PRESSmUP Clinton Foundation taking $$ from foreign governments is a "fake scandal"?
http://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/foreign-governments-gave-millions-to-foundation-while-clinton-was-at-state-dept/2015/02/25/31937c1e-bc3f-11e4-8668-4e7ba8439ca6_story.html
and this is from the Washington Post.
Don't have time to find references for all...on vacation...I'm sure others on the board can help you out there. The Clinton Foundation is just the one that bugs me the most.

Sloppy reporting. The SEC is proposing Rule 22e-4 that would require all open end funds (mutual funds and ETFs) to establish practices for managing liquidity risk. Only mutual funds would be permitted swing pricing (via a proposed change to Rule 22c-1.
It is not, however, allowing exchange traded funds to implement swing pricing. That wouldn't make sense, since ETF redemptions don't (usually or directly) require sale of portfolio holdings. As the SEC writes in its proposal:

like mutual funds, ETFs provide redemption rights on a daily basis, but, pursuant to exemptive orders, such redemption rights may only be exercised by certain large market participants – typically broker-dealers – called “authorized participants. ... for most ETFs, when an authorized participant wishes to redeem ETF shares, it presents a creation unit of ETF shares to the ETF for redemption and receives in return a “redemption basket,” the contents of which are made public by the ETF before the beginning of the trading day.”

The prior news stories of the proposal were likely sloppy as well (either that, or I was sloppy in my reading). I had been left with the impression that swing pricing was to be implemented via redemption (and perhaps purchase) fees, not by directly adjusting the NAV. The SEC proposal clearly says the NAV is adjusted, though I haven't yet read how that would be done. This might be a petty distinction, or it might be a serious one as the Investment News report says SEC member Michael Piwowar warned about.
A lot to digest (145 page proposal). Here's the SEC proposals page, with links to the proposal and to submitted comments. Look for the proposal dated Sept 22, 2015.
http://www.sec.gov/rules/proposed.shtml

http://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/1318342/000139834415006397/fp0016108_497.htm
497 1 fp0016108_497.htm
Toroso Newfound Tactical Allocation Fund
A series of Investment Managers Series Trust (the “Trust”)
Supplement dated September 23, 2015, to the
Summary Prospectus dated May 4, 2015, and
Prospectus and Statement of Additional Information dated May 1, 2015
As disclosed in a supplement dated August 3, 2015, the Board of Trustees of the Trust (the “Board”) previously approved a Plan of Liquidation (the “Plan”) that authorized the termination, liquidation and dissolution of the Toroso Newfound Tactical Allocation Fund (the “Fund”), and pursuant to the Plan the Fund was closed to new investment effective August 3, 2015.
Based on the recommendation of Liberty Street Advisors, Inc. (“Liberty Street”), the investment advisor to the Fund, the Board subsequently determined that abandonment of the Plan would be in the best interests of the Fund and its shareholders and approved abandonment of the Plan. Effective immediately, the Fund is open to new investment.
Please contact the Fund at 1-800-207-7108 if you have any questions or need assistance.

The fund that is reopening is the American Beacon Stephens Small Cap Growth Fund, which was closed to new investors, subject to certain exceptions on September 16, 2013 and February 14, 2014. Effective September 22, 2015, the Fund will resume offering shares to new investors in accordance with the "Fund Summary-Purchase and Sale of Fund Shares" on page 16 and "Purchase and Redemption of Shares-Eligibility" on page 33.

@PopTart @scott Hillary shmillary. She's just using drug prices as a populist tool to help her poll numbers.
AND to deflect attention from her own issues...private server, Clinton Foundation taking $$ from foreign governments, missing emails, Huma overcharging the govt, Benghazi...the list goes on.

I'm sure this (http://www.businessinsider.com/fbi-recovered-clintons-deleted-emails-2015-9) will be interesting but have little hope that anything will come of it as it is clear that rules don't apply to people like Hillary.

ICYMI: The annual CSR for the funds is dated 8/27/15 as of June 30. Note the total returns for the funds compared to their benchmarks.
http://quote.morningstar.com/fund-filing/Annual-Report/2015/6/30/t.aspx?t=GLDSX&ft=N-CSR&d=41bc71aeca8efe88b11e56b326db7c68

Hi, guys.
Finally had time to take a breath (yesterday was really full) and check. msf is quite right: two funds, one large cap (GLDLX) and one small cap. Large Cap Core is steadier with regard to relative performance. Both are ten year old, five star, $100 million funds with $2500 minimums. Small Cap Core is a Great Owl fund and it's on our Honor Roll. Large Cap Core has "better numbers" (lower standard deviation, smaller max drawdown, higher Sharpe ratio and so on) but that might just reflect the adventures in small cap land.
Haven't heard back yet from the advisor.
David

FYI: The Securities and Exchange Commission issued for public comment Tuesday a new rule requiring open-end investment companies, including mutual funds and exchange-traded funds, to establish a liquidity risk management program tailored to their specific portfolio and risks.
Regards,
Ted
http://www.thinkadvisor.com/2015/09/22/sec-wants-to-stem-liquidity-risk-of-open-end-funds?t=mutual-funds&page_all=1
Investment News.Com Slant:
http://www.investmentnews.com/article/20150922/FREE/150929972?template=printart