FYI: Fidelity Investments started a new mutual fund and tapped two of its most successful managers, William Danoff and Joel Tillinghast, to run it. There’s just one catch: it’s only available to Canadian investors.
Fidelity Global Growth and Value Class fund marks the first time the managers will run a fund together. The new product aims to achieve long-term capital growth by investing in companies anywhere in the world, according to a news release issued Thursday. It was created by Fidelity Investments Canada, which operates independently of the U.S. fund giant.
regards,
Ted
https://www.fa-mag.com/news/fidelity-brings-together-firepower-of-star-managers-for-new-fund-39225.html?print
M*Canada:
http://news.morningstar.com/all/printNews.aspx?article=/CNW/20180614C4204_univ.xml

FYI: It has been both a good and a bad time for large-growth funds. Of the nine Morningstar categories of diversified U.S. stock funds, large growth has been the best performer over the past three and five years through May 31, 2018, and the second-best (after small growth) over 10 years.
Regards,
Ted
http://www.morningstar.com/articles/869639/are-growth-strategies-poised-for-a-comeback.html

FYI: Jeff Gundlach upped the rhetoric on DoubleLine’s webcast last night. The famed bond manager is now talking about a spike in 10-year yields to as high as 6% (from 3% currently) and the potential for a recession in 2020
Regards,
Ted
http://thereformedbroker.com/2018/06/14/gundlachs-bond-call/

FYI:
Regards,
Ted
June 14, 2018
Dear WEALTHTRACK Subscriber,
Market leadership is changing. And according to this week’s exclusive WEALTHTRACK guest, even in this unpredictable world, the changes are predictable.
We’ll be joined by Francois Trahan, Co-Founder, Partner and Co-Head of Portfolio Strategy at Cornerstone Macro, a leading macroeconomic, strategy and policy research firm. Trahan was voted to Institutional Investor magazine’s All-America Research Team Hall of Fame for Portfolio Strategy in 2016. He has been ranked number one in the category for 8 of the last 10 years.
Among the many economic statistics Trahan follows, one of his favorites is considered to be one of the most reliable leading indicators for assessing the state of the economy. It is the Purchasing Manager’s Index (PMI), a monthly survey of the people who buy supplies for the nation’s manufacturers.
A reading above 50 signifies expansion and a reading below 50 signifies contraction.
After its recent peak, just over 60 in February, the PMI has zig zagged lower but is still at historically high levels well above 50.
So why is Trahan telling clients it is signaling an important change and it’s time to shift investment strategy? We’ll find out.
If you’d like to see the show before it airs on television it is available to our PREMIUM subscribers right now. We also have an EXTRA interview with Trahan about the importance of keeping an open mind! You’ll find it exclusively on our website.
WEALTHTRACK is also available online. If you are unable to join us for the show on television, you can watch it on our website, WealthTrack.com, or by subscribing to our YouTube Channel. You can find the WEALTHTRACK podcast on TuneIn, Stitcher, and SoundCloud, as well as iTunes. Find out more on the WEALTHTRACK Podcast page.
As always, thank you for watching. Have a great Father’s Day weekend and make the week ahead a profitable and a productive one.
Best regards,
Consuelo
Video Clip:

Not sure what your thinking is.
The paper calculates a negative relationship between a manager's age (or longevity) and fund performance, statistically significant at the 1% level (more significant than the usual 5% threshold), shown in Table 4.
Is the cherry picking to show that trends allow for statistically insignificant outliers? VPMAX, team managed, has outperformed FCNTX historically over most intervals, and has a superior long term record. That isolated example shows that team management can beats star management; an exception that proves the rule.
Did you identify Tillinghast because FLPSX already supports some of the paper's conclusions: that once managers are added to a fund (here, in 2011) that its relative performance tends to decline; or that the longer a manager serves at a fund the more its relative performance tends to decline?
FLPSX's 3 year performance is 45th percentile, its 5 year performance is 39th percentile, its 10 year performance is 30th percentile, its 15 year performance is 9th percentile.

A minor quibble: how can a list of ten things be "binary"? :)

List of ten things? 10?

Fascinating.
Danoff is around 58 and Tillinghast just turned 60. I wonder if 10-15y from now underperformance of their funds will have obtained and be clear. The article possibly nods toward the well-known Yacktman / Heebner path, like having your own broker.

Here's a FT article discussing a 2016 CFA Financial Analysts Journal paper studying The Effect of Management Design on the Portfolio Concentration and Performance of Mutual Funds. Here, "management design" means the use of one manager or multiple managers.
Unlike the Bloomberg column that looked only at the ten largest funds in each of three groupings, this paper used CRSP data for the whole US fund market, excluding only funds holding fewer than 10 assets, less than $500K AUM, and funds with under 12 months history.
I think it is worth reading the paper itself (one can skim/skip the detailed analyses and focus on the plain English sections) as well as the FT piece. The paper has many observations, including:

We showed that portfolios of funds managed by a single manager tend to have a higher degree of both within- and cross-sector concentration. A singlemanager management design, on average, achieves a better net performance and has a higher expense ratio. ...
First, all else being equal, equity mutual fund investors may be better off selecting funds with portfolios concentrated in the top one or two stocks (relative to the stocks’ own size) within each sector. Investors could also benefit from selecting funds that are concentrated in a few industry sectors relative to the market portfolio.

My initial impression is that while single management vs. multiple/team management tends to lead to more highly concentrated portfolios, it is that level of concentration more than the management structure that matters. Haven't read the paper carefully enough yet to verify that impression is entirely correct.
Note also that it also observes that older funds run by long term managers tend to underperform. Your guess is as good as mine as to how one picks newer funds run by short term managers.

Graph all of their $10k growth ytd to get a vivid sense of performance vs duration. Also how active management proves useful (I compared w/ PONAX, DODIX, FSICX, also TIP). We should all be in HYG since New Year's, or, better, FAGIX.

@Maurice
Short term bond funds are not going to get one much of anything in total return, as this is where the rate hikes are landing. Higher rate = lower price.....at least for an initial period, until the traders and others sort out what they want to buy to provide for some price stability.
This chart link is for total return (6 months) for the below listed etf's. You'll note that longer term has suffered, but short term is basically flat. Short term recent remains safe, yes; but my money would return better in money market at Fido at this time.
http://stockcharts.com/freecharts/perf.php?TLT,LQD,IEF,HYG,AGG,SHY&p=3&O=011000

June 14, Today returns, after the short end rate hike:
TLT
20+ Year Treas Bond Ishares ETF
+0.83%
LQD
Invst Grade Corp Bond Ishares Iboxx $ ETF
+0.45%
IEF
7-10 Year Treas Bond Ishares ETF
+0.32%
HYG
High Yield Corp Bond Ishares Iboxx $ ETF
+0.29%
AGG
US Aggregate Bond Ishares Core ETF
+0.26%
SHY
1-3 Year Treasury Bond Ishares ETF
+0.04%

I happen to own USA as a small percentage (<2.0%) of my dividend growth portfolio. I couldn't afford to buy many of their top holdings outright so I saw this as a way to gain a foothold while getting a little back in return. The author stated that it is run by 5 managers however the company website says: "Multi-managed fund that allocates its portfolio assets on an approximately equal basis among several independent investment organizations (currently three in number) having different investment styles and/or strategies recommended and monitored by ALPS Advisors, Inc., the Fund's investment advisor."
As Lewis noted nearly all of the return comes from LT capital gains. The last time it returned capital was in 2014 and that was roughly $0.07/share.

For income investors, the yields on saving accounts and CDs are improving with 0.25% rate hike yesterday. Two additional rate hikes are expected for 2018.

While the average interest rate on a savings account is still only 0.09 percent, some top-yielding savings accounts are now as high as 2 percent, up from 1.1 in 2015

https://msn.com/en-us/money/markets/heres-what-the-fed-rate-hike-actually-means-for-you/ar-AAyB7Q1?li=BBmkt5R&ocid=spartanntp

@ randynevin: Here is your answer. May 11th, 2018
Regards,
Ted
https://www.fidelity.com/bin-public/060_www_fidelity_com/documents/mutual-funds/mf-share-splits_apr2018.pdf

I saw an announcement that some Fidelity funds (FMAGX, FDGRX, FCNTX and others) will do a 10-for-1 split. The target date for the split was June 8, but that has come and gone and the share price has not split.
Does anyone know the correct date for this split? Thx!

https://www.forbes.com/sites/brettowens/2018/06/13/this-rare-10-5-dividend-wont-be-cheap-for-long/#1b53521c6105
Couple of high returns cef to look at

https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/1535174/000119312518191657/d602674d497.htm
497 1 d602674d497.htm 497
SALIENT MF TRUST
Supplement dated June 13, 2018
to the Salient Adaptive Growth Fund Class A, Class C and Class I Prospectus and Salient Adaptive Growth Fund
Statement of Additional Information
each dated May 1, 2018, as supplemented
NOTICE OF LIQUIDATION OF SALIENT ADAPTIVE GROWTH FUND
On June 8, 2018, the Board of Trustees of Salient MF Trust (the “Trust”), including all of the Trustees who are not “interested persons” of the Trust (as that term is defined in the Investment Company Act of 1940, as amended), approved the liquidation of the Salient Adaptive Growth Fund (the “Fund”), a series of the Trust. The Fund will be liquidated pursuant to a Board-approved Plan of Liquidation on or around August 13, 2018 (the “Liquidation Date”). On the Liquidation Date, the Fund will distribute pro rata to its respective shareholders of record as of the close of business on the business day preceding the Liquidation Date all of the assets of the Fund in complete cancellation and redemption of all of the outstanding shares of beneficial interest, except for cash, bank deposits or cash equivalents in an estimated amount necessary to (i) discharge any unpaid liabilities and obligations of the Fund on the Fund’s books on the Liquidation Date, including, but not limited to, income dividends and capital gains distributions, if any, payable through the Liquidation Date, and (ii) pay such contingent liabilities as the officers of the Trust deem appropriate.
IN LIGHT OF THE PLANNED LIQUIDATION, EFFECTIVE ON JUNE 14, 2018, SHARES OF THE SALIENT ADAPTIVE GROWTH FUND WILL NO LONGER BE OFFERED TO NEW INVESTORS OR EXISTING INVESTORS (EXCEPT THROUGH REINVESTED DIVIDENDS) OR BE AVAILABLE FOR EXCHANGES FROM OTHER FUNDS OF THE TRUST.
PLEASE KEEP THIS SUPPLEMENT FOR FUTURE REFERENCE
****
SUPP ADP GRWTH LIQ 06132018

FYI: U.S. stock benchmarks retreated slightly Wednesday afternoon as the Federal Reserve’s raised benchmark interest rates by a quarter of a percentage point, as expected, and signaled that the domestic economic growth outlook warrants further rate increases.
Regards,
Ted
Bloomberg:
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2018-06-12/asian-stocks-set-to-slip-as-central-banks-meet-markets-wrap
Bloomberg Evening Briefing:
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2018-06-13/your-evening-briefing
Reuters:
https://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-stocks/wall-street-flat-as-fed-decision-awaited-idUSKBN1J91HI
MarketWatch:
https://www.marketwatch.com/story/us-stock-futures-climb-ahead-of-key-fed-decision-2018-06-13/print
IBD:
https://www.investors.com/market-trend/stock-market-today/tech-stocks-gains-fade-fed-raises-interest-rates/
CNBC:
https://www.cnbc.com/2018/06/13/us-stock-futures-dow-data-fed-decision-and-politics-on-the-agenda.html
Bonds:
https://www.cnbc.com/2018/06/13/bonds-and-fixed-income-investors-turn-to-fed-rate-decision.html
Currencies:
https://www.reuters.com/article/uk-global-forex/dollar-mixed-ahead-of-feds-interest-rate-decision-idUSKBN1J902K
Oil:
https://www.cnbc.com/2018/06/12/oil-markets-prospect-of-rising-supplies-in-focus.html
Gold:
https://www.cnbc.com/2018/06/12/gold-markets-fed-decision-in-focus.html
WSJ: Markets At A Glance:
http://markets.wsj.com/us
SPDR's Sector Tracker:
http://www.sectorspdr.com/sectorspdr/tools/sector-tracker
SPDR's Bloomberg Sector Performance Pie Chart:
https://www.bloomberg.com/markets/sectors
Current Futures: Mixed
https://finviz.com/futures.ashx

Two other funds that flopped badly despite the apparent good pedigrees of the managers are SEEDX (ex-Oakmark guys, now defunct) and GOODX (ex-Fairholme guys, now 1 star). It seems hard to predict how a manger will do based on where s/he trained.

Agree with above. Price was my first mutual fund manger ever in 1989. I stuck with them thru Mutual Series and switched to MDISX. My capital gains now are such that while I am disappointed it hasn't continue to excel, it hasn't done badly so I sell a little every year.
I was excited to follow Winters to WGRNX but his performance has been really dissapponting so I sold years ago and haven't looked back

@BrianW
The Evermore Global Value Fund (the “Fund”) is a series of Evermore Funds Trust, an investment company registered under the Investment Company Act of 1940. The Fund offers two share classes — an Investor Class (EVGBX) and an Institutional Class (EVGIX). The Fund’s shares are currently available on over 50 mutual fund platforms, including Charles Schwab, Fidelity, TD Ameritrade, Pershing, LPL, UBS, RBC, etc.
Derf