@MFO Members: From Mairs & Power Website:
Regards,
Ted
https://www.mairsandpower.com/news-and-updates/271-growth-fund-small-cap-fund-portfolio-manager-changes

Here's the info from the SEC filing yesterday:
Andrew R. Adams has been named lead portfolio manager of the Growth Fund and Allen D. Steinkopf has been named lead portfolio manager of the Small Cap Fund, effective April 1, 2019.
Mark L. Henneman, currently the lead portfolio manager of the Growth Fund, will serve as co-manager of the Growth Fund. Andrew R. Adams, currently the lead portfolio manager of the Small Cap Fund, will serve as co-manager of the Small Cap Fund.
Mr. Adams has been co-manager of the Growth Fund since January 1, 2015 and Mr. Steinkopf has been co-manager of the Small Cap Fund since January 1, 2015.
In addition, Peter J. Johnson has been named co-manager of the Growth Fund effective April 1, 2019.

@johnN: "I checked don't think article is posted" sorry but your wrong !
https://www.mutualfundobserver.com/discuss/discussion/48715/active-mutual-fund-outperformance-rarely-lasts-study-says#latest

1-2y true cash may be a little scant, though I just commenced moves to result in 5y cash or bonds and that seems excessive, some days

My cash area consist of two sleeves. A demand cash sleeve where I hold enough cash to meet my income distributions needs plus some for new investment purposes. Generally, this sleeve holds a sum equal to about one years worth of portfolio income generation. In my investment cash sleeve are found mine and my wife's bank savings accouts, our brokerage held money market mutual funds and a one to three year cd ladder. At one time, I considered holding the 1 to 3 year US Treasury etf SHY; but due to its current yield of 1.87% I scuttled this thought since my CD ladder is paying out north of 2.5% and my current money market funds are paying out north of 2.25%. We hold a sum equal to about three years worth of cash draw needs in the investment cash sleeve. Probally more than we should; but, there again, should we get into a protracted market decline I don't want to have to sell investments in other portfolio areas should the need arise to raise some cash especially in a down market.

FYI: Hi, I'm Susan Dziubinski for Morningstar. Retirees using the Bucket system probably put a lot of thought in how they invest their long-term buckets, but the cash bucket, Bucket 1, may get less attention. Joining me to share some tips for getting the most out of bucket one is Christine Benz, our director of personal finance at Morningstar.
Regards,
Ted
https://www.morningstar.com/videos/921196/how-to-get-the-most-from-bucket-1.html

@Gary: 2016-2017.
Regards,
Ted
https://www.mutualfundobserver.com/author/slee/

@MikeM:
For a good number of years I have referenced Mr. Rowland's Leadership Strategy to see what he is favoring and also to see what might be out of favor within the strategy thus making it a good contrarian play.
Currently, money market has moved upward over the past few weeks while scv and micro caps are at the bottom rungs of the strategy. I've been thinking of buying a little in my small mid cap sleeve as a contrarian position since they are the out of favor styles in the strategy. An example of this follows. A samll cap fund (MMEAX) that I watch that also holds a good reprenentation of micro caps was up last week by +3.67%. For those that might be interested I have linked its Morningstar fund report below.
https://www.morningstar.com/funds/XNAS/MMEAX/quote.html
I have found that if I wait for a style to green light then a good bit of the gain has already been achieved. This might be why the strategy has not outperformed for the 2008-2017 period as much as it did in the first period of your study since computerized trading has now become more common place with big money. I'm thinking that big money might be out playing the strategy and the gains that use to be made with the strategy are simply thinner today. I'm also thinking that the high frquency crowd has made stock market gains thinner for the retail investor as these guys skim off some of the trading profits that would have otherwise been left.
I feel it would be of good interest to learn Mr. Rowland's thoughts; and, I have made contact with his office requesting one.
Old_Skeet

Kudos for incorporating As You Sow's Fossil Free Funds site/data in the ESG analysis. Besides the fossil fuel holdings info, they also provide fund holdings of the Clean 200, defined as companies "leading the way with solutions for the transition to a clean energy future."
In case anybody's interested, you can get to the Clean 200 Excel list by hitting the green "Download Data" bar a short scroll down from the top of this page. You can also check fund holdings of those companies from the main page.

For the heck of it, I took the year by year performance data from this strategy and broke it into 2 segments, 1998-2007 and 2008-4/30/17 (that's where the data ends). The system seems to have 2 different results. Market Edge '98-'07 returned 16.7% versus 7.2% for the S&P 500. Pretty darn good. But results for 2008-2017, Market Edge 8.97% versus 8.94% for S&P. Almost a a dead-heat.
Wonder why the system worked so well from 1998-2007 but didn't from 2008-2017?

Here is the link from GP. It reads as if a "hard close" except to existing investors only.
https://www.grandeurpeakglobal.com/documents/grandeurpeakglobal-pr-20190329.pdf

The write-up on Brown Advisory Sustainable Growth is very revealing. I was pleasantly surprised to find that the 33 stocks held by the fund are practically household names, ones that I feel very comfortable owning: Microsoft, Danahaer, American Tower, Amazon, Visa, Intuit, Alphabet, Thermo Fisher, Ecolab, Verizon Analytics. The top ten constitute 41% of assets, so the managers have conviction. My personal bogey for a LCG fund is AKREX; however, BIAWX edges out Akre over most time periods. AKREX is more tax-efficient, so shareholders in taxable accounts may be realizing some additional gains compared to the Brown fund.

https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/915802/000139834419005915/fp0040734_497.htm
FINANCIAL INVESTORS TRUST
SUPPLEMENT DATED APRIL 1, 2019
TO THE SUMMARY PROSPECTUS AND PROSPECTUS FOR
THE GRANDEUR PEAK INTERNATIONAL OPPORTUNITIES FUND (THE “FUND”)
DATED AUGUST 31, 2018, AS SUPPLEMENTED FROM TIME TO TIME
Effective April 15, 2019, the Grandeur Peak International Opportunities Fund will no longer accept purchases through financial intermediaries unless the purchase is part of:
● a retirement plan which held the Fund prior to this closure,
● an automatic reinvestment of a distribution made by the Fund, or
●a de minimis annual rebalancing approved by a member of the Grandeur Peak client team.
The Fund will remain open to new purchases from existing shareholders and to new shareholders who purchase directly from Grandeur Peak Funds.
INVESTORS SHOULD RETAIN THIS SUPPLEMENT
FOR FUTURE REFERENCE

FYI: The Market Leadership Strategy indicates a potential to outperform the S&P 500 with less risk. See below how to implement this strategy.
Regards,
Ted
http://investwithanedge.com/market-leadership-strategy

@ MFO Members: Ben is correct, here is confirmation from Grandeur Park Website.
Regards,
Ted
https://www.grandeurpeakglobal.com/documents/grandeurpeakglobal-pr-20190114.pdf

I always like reading what he has to say.
https://svrn.co/blog/2019/3/31/yield-curve-inversion-maybe-its-different-this-time

I wonder why consumer spending keeps falling? After all, consumer spending makes up the lion's share of the economy. Linked below is an article that might be of good interest on this subject.
https://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-economy/u-s-retail-sales-unexpectedly-fall-as-economy-slows-idUSKCN1RD2CK?feedType=RSS&feedName=businessNews&utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed:+reuters/businessNews+(Business+News)
Highlights of the article ... The loss of momentum also reflects higher interest rates, slowing global growth, Washington’s trade war with China and uncertainty over Britain’s departure from the European Union.
These factors contributed to the Federal Reserve’s decision last month to abruptly end its three-year campaign to tighten monetary policy. The U.S. central bank abandoned projections for any interest rate hikes this year after increasing borrowing costs four times in 2018.

FYI: The head of the world’s largest bond fund says investors shouldn’t read too much into the recessionary signal coming from the U.S. Treasury market.
In an interview with MarketWatch, Daniel Ivascyn, group chief investment officer of Pacific Investment Management Company, or Pimco, said too many market participants were watching for an economic downturn by monitoring the twists and turns of the yield curve, which saw the rate on 10-year Treasurys fall below the 3-month Treasury bill yield on March 22, marking the first such inversion since 2007.
Regards,
Ted
https://www.marketwatch.com/story/why-the-worlds-biggest-bond-investor-is-dismissing-the-recession-warning-of-the-yield-curve-2019-04-01/print

FYI Happy April Fool Day !
Regards,
Ted
the April 2019 edition!

@MikeM's observation that absent the $300 entry fee, people were likely paying fees for just a month or two to get the more costly initial financial planning and then dropping the service makes sense.
ISTM the comments @Derf alluded to on the original site, that question the ability of Schwab staff to deliver services with this reduced pricing are missing the point. These services, whether robo or hybrid represent the industry's attempt to bring "advice" down to the "mass affluent" ($100K+) investors, largely through automation.
https://www.wealthmanagement.com/blog/serving-mass-affluent-market-technology
These services are focused primarily on asset allocation (and selecting securities to match), with only a touch of human involvement thrown in. Easy for Schwab (or anyone) to provide. They draw in customers, and as first mover on flat rate pricing, Schwab can expect to draw in many more customers. In the future some of them will move up to higher level, higher cost services. Regardless, there will be more assets in the managed accounts invested in Schwab ETFs.
Here's the full Schwab disclosure:https://www.schwab.com/public/file/CMS-BDL100049
The Premium program (the one with a fee) is the robo program plus.

The SIP Premium Program combines the discretionary portfolio management of the SIP Program, as described above, with the additional features of financial planning and ongoing access to guidance from Schwab Planning Consultants, as well as to online financial planning tools. SIP Premium Accounts are invested in SIP portfolios and managed on a discretionary basis through the SIP Program. Unless other-wise indicated, descriptions of portfolio management through SIP apply to SIP Premium as well.

A little human interaction and DIY tools.