@ MFO Members:
Total Return: GLRBX Is Winner
1wk. 13wk. YTD 1yr. 3yr. 5yr. 10 yr.
GLRBX James Adv:Bal GR;Retail -0.86% 2.37% 2.95% 7.12% 8.89% 9.01% 7.47%
VWINX Vanguard Wellesley;Inv -0.50% 1.03% 1.78% 5.79% 8.04% 8.97% 7.31%

Hi Ted,
VWINX has a lower 3-year, 5-year, 10-year, and 15-year Standard Deviation, a measurement important to me.
Best Regards,
Mona

From M*: Matthews has announced that this diversified Asia-Pacific Japan fund, which closed in June 2013, will reopen to new investors on April 30, 2015. (Matthews Pacific Tiger MAPTX, which closed in October 2013, will remain off limits to most new investors.)

@MFO Members: The AQR White Paper in case you missed it.
Regards,
Ted
http://www.mutualfundobserver.com/discuss/discussion/20715/dailyalts-aqr-deactivates-active-share-in-new-white-paper#latest

@Charles I am revising the May 2 post I made yesterday during my daily MFO visit. It was made shortly before I left on a cross country plane ride and it didn't really make my point. Here is a second effort.
The fund family rankings are a great idea! Its important to point the way towards fund families that are successful at helping mutual fund investors achieve their long term goals.
The Turner Investment screen prints you posted above make sense to me. My concern still relates to the proposed “Fund Family Score Card”. The intended audience is not clear to me. That audience might be significantly broader than the audience that routinely views the detailed screens. If so, then some sort of additional data or some kind of qualifying statement in the main body of the score card might be warranted.
Here are my reasons for continuing to think that way. Per my original example, I am looking again at the Turner Investment data. Here are the number of funds that have beaten their respective category averages over various time periods:
Life time: 5 of 6. (This is the basis of the Top Fund Family ranking.) Those funds are:
TSCEX +2.1, Originated in 1994
TMGFX +1.5, Originated in 1996
TMCGX +9.5, Originated in 1998
TSPEX +2.8, Originated in 2009
TMSCX +10.0, Originated in 2011
Here is out performance data based on the other relevant MultiSearch time periods:
Full Cycle 4 (09/00 to 10/07): 1 of 3 (TMCGX +7.7) originated in 1998
Full Cycle 5 (11/07 to 03/15: 0 of 3
Last 20 years: 1 of 1 (TSCEX +1.6) originated in 1994
Last 10 years: 1 of 3 (TSCEX +0.2) originated in 1994
Last 5 years: 1 of 4 (TSPEX +2.1) originated in 2009
Last 3 years: 2 of 6 (TMSCX +14.4, TSPEX +2.4) originated in 2011
Lifetime fund out performance appears in all cases to be based on an initial surge of out performance by each fund. Is this characteristic representative of a "superior" fund family that has been around for over two decades? (I realize the jury is still out on TSPEX and TMSCX.)
Part of this thought circles back to my original comment about Fund Turnover (survivor-bias). I am remembering back to the turn of the century and new Turner funds like TTPOX, TGTFX, TBTBX, and TIWCX. None of those funds are still around. (I wondered if enough long-term survivor-bias data was available to flesh out this characteristic.) But, this issue does relate to the characteristics of a superior fund family.
That's enough....The fund family ranking will definitely be a plus as far as I am concerned!

From the research paper "Patient Capital Outperformance". I know the AQR paper which tries to downplay active share was highlighted in this months issue.....but I think this is worth checking out http://blog.alphaarchitect.com/2015/04/30/is-passive-perfect-high-active-share-long-term-investing-works-better/

its managers have been on the job only since right before the crash, so some might prefer GLRBX based on tenure alone. But again, best to own both.

Here's a chart with performance since the crash (click on image to view more clearly):

A couple of posters have pinged me to add that they did not know of this fund and M* has not done deep reporting, so below are some news/interview items, two of them dated a bit, and I think the fees were reported too high.
http://online.barrons.com/articles/SB50001424053111903715504577305581580259926
http://online.barrons.com/articles/SB50001424052702304539504576532400452721090
more recent and pertinent, one supposes:
http://online.barrons.com/articles/SB50001424127887324616904580105840921790752
I found the fund and family long ago because, being from the Midwest, I was always pining to get into MAPOX but could not do so via Fido or BoA portals. GLRBX seems pretty widely available.
@dicksonL, yes, thanks, a brief version of what I was trying to point out.
Another delta is that VWINX, however steady and better-than-indexlike it is and has been, its managers have been on the job only since right before the crash, so some might prefer GLRBX based on tenure alone. But again, best to own both.
@bee:
>> the one area where GLRBX shines far and above is if it's held in a taxable account.
Did not even mention that.
As to your and Sven's other assertions, see the subsequent discussion. I'm not baffled about either one myself. Just that if you had to choose only one and go with it for long holding, the bond-heavy megacap would not be the preferred choice imo. But the differences are pretty small.

@ MFO Members:
Total Return: GLRBX Is Winner
1wk. 13wk. YTD 1yr. 3yr. 5yr. 10 yr.
GLRBX James Adv:Bal GR;Retail -0.86% 2.37% 2.95% 7.12% 8.89% 9.01% 7.47%
VWINX Vanguard Wellesley;Inv -0.50% 1.03% 1.78% 5.79% 8.04% 8.97% 7.31%

Good stuff davfor.
Granted, the lifetime metric gives the family the benefit of doubt and for me serves as an initial look.
For the family data, that may be good enough.
We have the full, up, and down cylce evaluation windows, plus the fixed year windows for all fund metrics. So, easy to punch in say "Tuner", pull up the funds and look at the different time periods.
Here's summary of the 6 funds in the family...lifetime eval window:

Turner's alternative funds are rather young but one has very strong over-performance despite sick fees. Emerging Growth has amazing long-term performance, but most of it came during the late '90s. It outperformed in the full cycle from 200009 to 200710, but under-performed somewhat in current cycle since 200711.
Here's the data for last two cycles:


In any case, easy to see these three are volatile funds.
The situation is not unlike CGM...all three Heebner funds have great life time records, but most of out-performance was last decade.
Lifetime, great...

Current cycle, pretty bad...

Similar situation for Berkowitz's Fairholme, rough going near term...

I suppose we could do fund family ranks for all the different time periods, just not sure it would add anything that is not already available in the fund specific screens.
Honestly, my biggest reservation with the score card is impact of survivor-bias for families with a relatively small number of funds. Bad fund? Close it. And the family score goes up overnight. We just don't have dead/merged funds in our database...not yet anyway. Still think the scorecard is insightful though.

Well, since 1997, if you go by years per M*, each has outperformed the other exactly half the time (also GLRBX ytd if anyone cares about shorter-term). (True, I shoulda looked all the way back to 1991.) I also was weighting its superior dip performance, as that is the sort of reason causing people to bail. More important to some are the facts that GLRBX is like a tenth the size, has a lower min, more exposure to midcaps (~15% the average market cap size of VWINX), and less foreign. VWINX is this more often 40/60 bond fund that balances out using megacaps, that's all; look at its imbalanced stock portfolio against its own benchmarks. Surprising no one went under the hood.
Perhaps not truly comparable, in other words, and there is no "better choice"; it all depends on what you want. I like somewhat smaller-company stocks, per history, hence my statement. A good portfolio would happily hold lots of both, as there is little overlap.

Great fund, but why anyone would take it over GLRBX is baffling.

To unbaffle your thoughts, over the last 23 years VWINX (portfolio 2) out performs GLRBX (portfolio 1) by almost all metrics and it did this with a razor thin expense ratio (.17%) compared to GLRBX's 1%.
GLRBX is a great choice if you can't access VWINX, just not as great.
In the chart below (created at this website) I wrote:
"Though GLRBX lost less (-6.19% vs -9.78%) compared to VWINX and had a lower drawn down (-17.48% vs -18.82%) VWINX recovered in half the time compared for how long it took GLRBX." Recovery time is what help most investor sleep well at night.
Click on the image to enlarge and see details better:

dr: VWINX looks less volatile on the downside to me. expenses are much less. 3 year record, GLRBX is slightly ahead. 5 year record, dead even. the one area where GLRBX shines far and above is if it's held in a taxable account.

Though ya wouldn't expect it, the high cash position phenomenon is not exclusive to stock funds.
RNDLX= 26% cash (just noticed last night; wondered why the monthly dvd had been a bit depressed as of late; well, wonder no more)
http://www.rivernorth.com/mutual-funds/rnsix-rndlx
BERIX= 30=35% MMkt and cash reserves, since beginning of 2015 (the highest in a decade)
http://www.theberwynfunds.com/biffacts.pdf

rmt,
Over the last 8 years anchoring POAGX with funds like WHOSX and PONDX would have smoothed out a portfolio's volatility. Not sure if these two funds will serve a similar purpose in a raising rate environment, but they should out perform when markets temporarily correct for other reasons.
Here's the two portfolios suggestions:

And here's the performance over the last 8 years:

Also, NSEIX seems like a pretty good US-centrric value companion to POAGX "growthiness", though I would argue selecting a set of "growth stocks at the right price" is another value metric in my book.
I like your idea of a Primecap global growth fund.
MDISX has performed well globally (world allocation fund).
Love to hear from others in this space.

The managers see4m to have assumed the market would always be in a moderately large trading range. The allocation formula is many years old and since the $+P has gone up considerably in the last 5 years the allocation is mostly bonds.I would call it a market timing fund not a conservative allocation fund. If you don't agree with their formula you can wait for a different time to invest in it .

Errata: "which might have come at the cost of a few minor typos than usual" should have read "which might have come at the cost of a few more minor typos than usual" .
David, that's just too funny- a typo in the typo apology!
:) Regards- OJ

From Article:
"Through our own independent research and due diligence as a risk manager, I have found that one of the best single funds to own for retirees seeking a modest income stream and a diversified exposure to the equity and fixed-income markets is the Vanguard Wellesley Income Fund. I want to highlight this fund because I think it makes sense as both a portfolio building block, and as a stand-alone single-fund strategy."
the-one-fund-lazy-retirement-income-portfolio

Ecolab holding up reasonably well, considering a so-so quarter and the market being the way it is. The company seeing difficulty in their energy business, but their other hygiene/sanitary businesses are doing well and their water business is seeing benefit from the situation in California. Dividend aristocrat and something I'd consider adding to. An enjoyably boring business that serves important needs and is the largest in the industry. Bill Gates owns a large amount of the company.
Blackstone holding up okay, awaiting the spin-off later this year.
Intercontinental Exchange doing okay after CME reported good earnings.
V/MA holding up okay. Mastercard with good earnings, Visa with okay earnings.
Biotech bouncing after Gilead's ridiculous number yesterday.
Brookfield Property (BPY) disappointing lately, but enormous real estate empire that still trades under book and a 5 p/e. I'll continue to collect dividends.
One real estate play that continues to hold up well for me is one that doesn't offer dividends - Howard Hughes (HHC), but given that company's exposure to oil/Houston (which isn't enormous, but nevertheless it has been a factor), the move higher in oil lately seems to have helped.

FYI: I will link the interview on Monday as soon as it becomes available.
Regards,
Ted
http://www.moneylifeshow.com/upcomingGuests.asp