FYI: Measuring it is a challenge. We can’t trust what people say because they become bullish after they buy and bearish after they sell, convincing themselves that past trades were the correct way to go. Humans are notorious liars -- especially to themselves. When they are not lying, they often can be found busy making excuses and other rationalizations for their actions.
Hence, we need to find more objective ways to view and measure sentiment.
That is why I find Jason Goepfert’s SentimentTrader website so intriguing. He follows an extraordinary number of indicators that track investor sentiment.
Regards,
Ted
http://www.bloombergview.com/articles/2014-11-05/when-negativity-helps-a-bull-market

Morn'in @Old_Skeet
It appears that LALDX is also a short duration, high yield bond fund. This FIDO view, from June 30 data, also indicates a 30 day yield of 2.6%.
...
Me 2 cents worth.
Take care,
Catch

LALDX appears in a M* article Is Your Short-Term Bond Fund More Risky Than You Thought?
FWIW, it is available load-waived and w/o transaction fee at TDAmeritrade.

"He's much less kind to Amazon (AMZN -1.2%), asserting the company's latest numbers are especially disappointing since they suggest the growth used to justify a dearth of profits is slowing, and in doing so is yielding higher losses.Einhorn: "One of the principal bullish assumptions supporting many bubble stocks is, 'the company is growing too fast to be very profitable.' We think AMZN is just one of the many stocks for which this narrative will ultimately prove false."Einhorn doesn't explicitly state he's short Amazon, though he does say Greenlight increased its exposure to "bubble basket" shorts in Q3."
http://seekingalpha.com/news/2096315-einhorn-talks-up-emc-calls-amazon-a-bubble-stock
Greenlight similar to Whitebox in its attempts to short momentum/flashy names, although the latter calls it their "Never Never" names and the latter is likely more substantially short.
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2014-06-10/whitebox-shorting-never-never-stocks-in-graham-reversal.html

@finder.
I share same disappointment about GTAA performance. It's never been easy to love.
I tried to articulate both Mebane's disappointments and successes so far in the piece "The Existential Pleasure of Engineering Beta."
I actually think he's is one of the more prominent figures in the fund industry today, particularly exchange traded fund industry.
Certainly not by AUM.
But in his ability to distill complex and breakout investment strategies (at least for the common investor) into terms we can understand. Then, his attempts to employ them via ETFs.
I first came across his work in the standout paper on timing methods, entitled "A Quantitative Approach to Tactical Asset Allocation."
Then, his books Ivy Portfolio, Shareholder Yield, and Global Value. All straight-forward, unpretentious, transparent...yet innovative.
All must reads. (But granted, I'm a fan.)
Scott (our jewel of a contributor on the board) was person that alerted me to GTAA and its disappointing performance.
I attribute it to three main factors: 1) all-asset (aka "Ivy League") have performed pretty poor over the period since GTAA started, 2) AdvisorShares excessive fee structure, and 3) volatility in commodities and foreign equity also likely detracted, since timing does best in trending markets versus short-term gyrations.
Certainly, the new Cambria ETFs address the fee issue. Its fees are considerably less the those charged by AdvisorShares.
Time will tell on the other two factors!
A one month drop (or rise) in GVAL should not really concern an investor, since the long-haul strategy looks to benefit from undervalued companies in undervalued countries (aka hated companies in hated countries). So, expect a bumpy ride.
And, SYLD seems to be doing quite well.
Hey none of this helps much, I know, if you happen to be holding a fund that is doing poorly. Trust me, no matter how many times M* told me Dodge & Cox employed a time-proven value strategy with experienced staff, low cost, shared incentive, high integrity, and share-holder friendly policies...none of that helped me to stomach its performance in 2008 or even late 2011.
Well, after it recovered, maybe it did.
At the end of the day, David encourages us to call attention to funds trying to do good things, especially smaller and younger ones. I certainly think Cambria qualifies.
Again, these are young funds, and time will tell if the strategies and their implementation pay-off in satisfactory excess returns. But, if they don't, we will be first to call attention to it.
Hope my rambling helps explain a little.
(Hey, what to you think of championing a policy that financial writers must be invested in any fund they recommend? Ha!)

As Max points out from time to time, it's kind of a mystery how DBLTX has ~ 15x the AUM as DBLFX.

Very interesting, Charles. The M* analyst report for GONIX (assuming the details are accurate) has a good description of the strategy.
Basically, it's designed to be 25% net long (120 long, 95 short, but with such a tiny beta that it falls into the M* market neutral category). They do a quant sort on adjusted cash flow and earnings for a universe of 2,000 U.S. stocks, and then, based on the rankings they come up with from doing their preferred math, go long the highest-rated 400+ and short the lowest-rated 400+.
I've never looked into MN funds much before, so have no idea how this approach compares to others, but from a quick view, I'm thinking this one at least bears watching, on the off chance they'll eventually make retail shares available at less than outrageous cost.
GARIX, the long-short fund, goes 60% long using the same methodology, with ~ 400 long and 300 short positions.
I do like this wave of quant and rules-based strategies that have been coming out over the last few years.
Thanks for the reference,
AJ

total assets of GARIX are 1.2B after being available since May 2013!
GARIX has 2.7B
GONIX has 0.75B since August 2013.

it's still a regular IPO process with 5% underwriting fee and over-allotment shares (support). It takes around 45 days to get rid of the premium most of the time. under certain market conditions and in several "star" offerings, premium might only increase over and above 5%, but it is indeed a rare occasion.
underwriting fees are paid by investors who get access via financial advisors associated with the underwriting, most notably UBS, MS, BAC.
for a semi-educated investor, the time to buy after the IPO premium has disappeared. it could be due to the price going down or due to exceptional performance of the NAV catching up with the price.

My understanding of the ipo issue with CEFs: There are costs to bring a new closed end fund to the market. Those costs are borne by those who purchase the initial public offering. When I looked into it years ago, those costs averaged approx. 5%. So at the time, most closed end funds, at the ipo prior to the first trading day, were priced roughly 5% above the NAV, due to those costs.

The ones by Gotham Funds.
GARIX. GENIX. And, market neutral, GONIX.
Juiced-up. revamped versions of Formula Investing Funds, which were based on the great book "The Little Book That Beats The Market."
Here's summary through 3Q since inception for each of three young (and very expensive) Gotham offerings:

managed distribution is almost unique to equity CEFs. ... i generally don't understand why you need to access equities via CEFs anyway... so managed distributions is not a concern for majority of the CEF investors.

Still true, but not as obvious as one might think. From ICI's 2014 Investment Company Fact Book:

Historically, bond funds have accounted for a large share of assets in closed-end funds. A decade ago, 75 percent of all closed-end fund assets were held in bond funds, and the remaining 25 percent were held in equity funds (Figure 4.2). At year-end 2013, assets in bond closed-end funds were $165 billion, or 59 percent of closed-end fund assets. Equity closed-end fund assets totaled $114 billion, or 41 percent of closed-end fund assets. These relative shares have shifted, in part because cumulative net issuance of equity closed-end fund shares has exceeded that of bond fund shares over the past seven years. In addition, total returns on U.S. stocks* averaged 8.1 percent annually from year-end 2003 to year-end 2013, while total returns on bonds† averaged 4.7 percent annually.

CEFconnect reports only 6 out of 146 closed end taxable bond funds (and no tax-free bond funds) have managed distributions, confirming that most managed distribution funds are equity funds.

Thank you for pointing out the PRUZX utilities fund and the advice on alternative healthcare funds. Is it fair to say that their Z class shares (no load class) are more likely to be offered at financial advisors than at the "supermarket" brokerages?

I suppose for Prudential the answer is yes (regardless of whether the fund is open or closed) - but that doesn't mean you'll get any bargain.
What Prudential writes about its class Z shares is: Class Z shares are available to individual investors through certain retirement and wrap fee programs, and to institutions at an investment minimum of $5,000,000.
Usually, if you work with an advisor, you're paying for the advice (whether you get/use it or not). That payment could be in the form of loads and commissions, or a percentage of assets you've got invested through that advisor (a "wrap fee" acccount), or some other arrangement.

I looked at the countries in the Cambria Global Value. Indeed 8% in Brasil and 10% in Russia, 4.5% in Hungary, 5.4% in Czech Republic. Lots of money in Greece, Italy, Ireland, Portugal. Zero in US, Germany, UK, France, Finland, Sweden, Norway, Denmark, Switzerland. Looks like an ultimate top down approach. Maybe it can work if paired with his new momentum ETF. But since GVAL takes low valuation to an extreme, it may require lots of discipline and trust to the manager for a very long time. Maybe the combination of value and momentum in the two new funds will work, but I would watch it for a while before coming to any conclusions. I would also like to understand why his previous charge, GTAA, was such a disappointment.

My understanding of the ipo issue with CEFs: There are costs to bring a new closed end fund to the market. Those costs are borne by those who purchase the initial public offering. When I looked into it years ago, those costs averaged approx. 5%. So at the time, most closed end funds, at the ipo prior to the first trading day, were priced roughly 5% above the NAV, due to those costs.

It looks like this ETF does not invest in stocks but in other ETFs. Maybe a fine line there. From the Fact Sheet;
"The Cambria Global Momentum ETF (the "Fund") seeks to preserve and grow capital from investments in the U.S. and foreign equity, fixed income, commodity and currency markets, independent of market direction. The Fund intends to target investing in the top 33% of a target universe of approximately 50 ETFs based on measures of trailing momentum and trend. The portfolio begins with a universe of assets consisting of domestic and foreign stocks, bonds, real estate, commodities and currencies."
Maybe I'm the one that confused.

Well, at least GTAA did not fall during 4 years (it hugely underperformed other global funds). But his new global fund GVAL plunged down 13.5% during the first 8 months of its life. I do not know what is wrong with Meb as a money manager. Having his money in his funds is commendable, but should we follow his example? He is getting paid even when his funds are going down.

GVAL has a ton in Brazil and Europe (Spain, Italy, etc.)
Brazil has been a mess and doesn't look to be really improving. Europe is problematic, as well.
From the fund website:
"Removing Emotional Decision Making - One of the difficulties of investing in foreign countries is the inability to stay the course when geopolitical headlines
are negative. The Cambria Global Value ETF rebalances into countries that are trading at low valuations, which often coincide with negative headlines and
bear markets in such countries’ stock indexes. GVAL gives the investor the potential benefit of owning securities in over-sold markets."
So you have a fund that searches out stocks trading at levels believed to be below intrinsic value, but is it taking into account anything else, like potential catalysts? Appears to be no.
So, you have a fund that's going to lag, possibly for a long time, while it tries to move towards undervalued areas but is unconcerned if there's any sort of catalyst/reason.
Not quite sure on this methodology of searching out value based purely on unseen metrics, or at the very least it's something that should be a small % of a portfolio and understood that it's a long-term time horizon. Not something I'm really interested in, but that's just me.

Well, at least GTAA did not fall during 4 years (it hugely underperformed other global funds). But his new global fund GVAL plunged down 13.5% during the first 8 months of its life. I do not know what is wrong with Meb as a money manager. Having his money in his funds is commendable, but should we follow his example? He is getting paid even when his funds are going down.

Reuters reports the 27.5B figure for the fund:
https://news.fidelity.com/news/news.jhtml?articleid=201411041712RTRSNEWSCOMBINED_KBN0IO293_1&cat=Top.Investing.RT&IMG=Y
120B down, another 100B to go ....... to make it sanely manageable.

one discusses ETF while the other discusses a mutual fund.

But that doesn't seem to jive with this current article from Barron's:
Investors Pull $27.5B From Pimco Flagship Fund In October
http://blogs.barrons.com/incomeinvesting/2014/11/04/investors-pull-27-5b-from-pimco-flagship-fund-in-october/?mod=BOLBlog
Mike_E

But that doesn't seem to jive with this current article from Barron's:
Investors Pull $27.5B From Pimco Flagship Fund In October
http://blogs.barrons.com/incomeinvesting/2014/11/04/investors-pull-27-5b-from-pimco-flagship-fund-in-october/?mod=BOLBlog
Mike_E