@VintageFreak.
...rolling returns over X years...
What is highest X you think is of interest?
10, 15...20?
Let me know.
Thanks, c

Actually I think lower numbers are useful.
3 would show how fund does across typical 50% declines
5 would show investor patience justified or not (all those people lamenting investor returns don't match fund returns need to get a reality check)

FYI: The United States has been borrowing from the rest of the world since the mid-1980s. From 2000 to 2008, this borrowing averaged over $600 billion per year, which translates into U.S. spending exceeding income by almost 5.0 percent of GDP. Borrowing fell during the recent recession, as would be expected, and then rebounded with the recovery. Since 2011, however, borrowing has trended down and fell to 2.4 percent of GDP in 2013, the smallest amount as a share of GDP since 1997. A reduced dependency on foreign funds can be viewed as a favorable development to the extent that it reflects an improvement in the fiscal balance to a more easily sustainable level. However, it also reflects the lackluster recovery in residential investment, which is one reason the economy has yet to get back to its full operating potential.
The amount borrowed from the rest of the world is measured by the current account balance, which is the broadest measure of cross-border transactions. As seen in the chart below, the United States was spending substantially above its income before the recession, to the tune of 5.8 percent of GDP in 2006. The amount of borrowing fell during the recession and started to rebound in 2010, but borrowing has since trended down.
Regards,
Ted
http://www.ritholtz.com/blog/2014/09/the-declining-u-s-reliance-on-foreign-investors/print/

FYI: Sell in May and go away? Not with this summer's hot action.
In August, investors dumped ETFs that short the stock market — and picked up a healthy shot of gains from biotechnology funds.
Regards,
Ted
http://license.icopyright.net/user/viewFreeUse.act?fuid=MTg0MjUyNTY=
Enlarged Graphic: http://news.investors.com/photopopup.aspx?path=webETPbio090314.gif&docId=715631&xmpSource=&width=1000&height=562&caption=&id=715630

@ MikeM: Do you mean these Bills ? Chicago Bears 35- Buffalo Bills 7
Regards,
Ted

How do I decide between Parker's prediction of a 50% increase and Tice's drop of 60%
Perhaps not acting on either prediction is best.

No pay-out at year's-end of 2013? The fund surely shines, statistically. But it's holding $25 BILLION AUM now. Time to close it?

FYI: U.S. stocks fell Tuesday, pulling back from gains in August that were the largest monthly increases for the Dow industrials and the S&P 500 since February.
Regards,
Ted
http://online.wsj.com/articles/u-s-stock-futures-inch-higher-1409660047#printMode
Markets At A Glance: http://markets.wsj.com/us

From Link:
"Unlike a traditional two-asset 60/40 balanced fund, the 7Twelve balanced strategy utilizes multiple asset classes to enhance performance and reduce risk.

The 7 of 7Twelve represents the suggested number of asset classes to include in your portfolio. The Twelve represents the 12 separate mutual funds or exchange traded products to fully represent the 7 asset classes in your 7Twelve portfolio. Our portfolio has approximately a 65/35 allocation: approximately 65% of the portfolio is invested in equity and diversifying assets and about 35% invested in bonds and cash."

Link:
7Twelve-Model-Intro

This lipper video provides more details.....

My most expensive fund, which I know several other people here hold, is WAFMX at 2.25%. Ed's commentary made me think a lot as well, and it seems to me that you either have to believe you're getting something valuable for the expense ratio or you shouldn't invest in the fund. In this case I chose the fund because it gives me access to markets that I believe will provide above average returns in the long run and I wanted exposure to the growing middle class in those markets rather than the big financial institutions that some other frontier markets funds offer.
In the case of each fund I own, a bit more than 20 of them, I consider the expense ratio as one aspect of whether I want to trust them with my money. In the case of Primecap, I love that the expense ratio is low, and I think they far more than earn it. In the case of Grandeur Peak, I don't like that the expense ratio is as high as it is, but I feel like their approach, their shareholder friendliness and the fact that the managers as a group have a lot of money invested in each of their funds gives me confidence that the expense ratio will be worth it.

@MFO Members: Complete data from Lipper.
Regards,
Ted
http://www.reuters.com/assets/print?aid=USL1N0QY2K520140828

If it makes you feel any better, the management fee is "only" 1.15% (see M*'s note on the fund's expense page).
That's 1.15% of all assets under management, including the borrowed money (leverage). Since the borrowed money (amount of leverage) is 44.24% of the total assets of the fund, the expenses as a percentage of the amount that investors put in (as opposed to being borrowed) are nearly double the stated 1.15%. I come up with 2.06% vs. M*'s 2.17%, which is based on the older leverage figure found in the annual report - 47.20%.
Viewed this way, the total cost of borrowing adds about 2% to the ER: 0.98% direct cost of borrowing money and about 1% to manage the borrowed money. (Personally, this doesn't make me any more comfortable, but at least the management fee is not some totally outrageous percentage of AUM.)
BTW, have you read the prospectus (well, offering)?

From the link in MFO post, http://www.mutualfundobserver.com/discuss/discussion/14903/causeway-funds-in-registration#latest,
the following information was posted in their SEC filing:
"...The Fund expects to pay significantly increased taxable distributions of net short-term capital gain (that is, the excess of short-term capital gains over short-term capital losses) and net capital gain (that is, the excess of net long-term capital gain over net short-term capital loss) in 2014 due to its conversion
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Table of Contents
in October 2014 from a “fund of funds” structure to directly investing in portfolio securities. This is because when it converted, the Fund redeemed shares in underlying Causeway Funds that had appreciated from the time the Fund purchased the shares, causing the Fund to realize capital gain during 2014. Taxable investors receiving the distributions should be prepared to pay taxes on them (at ordinary income rates for the net short-term capital gain and, for non-corporate shareholders, at the 15% and 20% maximum rates mentioned above for the net capital gain). However, if you are investing in the Fund through a tax-advantaged retirement plan or account, or are a tax-exempt investor, there will be tax consequences to you from those distributions. "

@bee: Bee is correct the ER for PABGX is 1.00%, for TRBCX it's .74%. That .26% might not seem like a lot, but over the years it adds up.
Regards,
Ted
TRBCX: (10k)
3 Years: $237.00
5 Years: $411.00
10 Years $918.00
PABGX: (10k)
3 Years: $318.00
5 Years: $552.00
10 Years $1,225.00

If this has been discussed at length already, please forgive me (and someone share the link!) but I wanted to ask you all how much you're willing to pay in expense ratios? Ed's commentary this week made me think of this again.
The conventional wisdom is, the cheaper the better, but with a few funds you really do seem to get your money's worth. According to M*, PDI charges a 2.17% fee after excluding interest expenses. With interest expenses (for leverage), the fee is 3.15%. The advisor fee is 2.10%. Yet it's been a remarkable performer and has outperformed PIMIX, by the same manager, which only charges 0.45%. And that manager, Ivascyn, has been putting his own money into PDI. Of course he, like most of us, could be overestimating his ability to add value, and we'll have to see if PDI holds up as well as PIMIX next downturn.
My most expensive funds are HUSIX, small value, 1.85%, and GPIOX, foreign small cap, 1.73%. I'm a little uneasy about both, especially HUSIX, since there are good and somewhat cheaper SV funds out there. HUSIX and GPIOX have both earned their money so far, but wow, what a high hurdle they have to overcome.
My thoughts are that with high ERs, you're betting you've got a genius on your hands (and not someone who just got lucky for a few years), while with cheap ERs, a team that's merely very good can earn their fees. Since genius is tough to spot, logicially I should have all my money with D&C and Primecap, but I don't. (Though a Primecap fund is my single largest holding.)
Yet Ed's commentary this month made me think about the other side of the coin: if the fees are too low, talent will flee, and a mediocre fund won't even earn back its modest ER.
What are your thoughts? How much are you willing to pay? What are your highest conviction high cost funds?

Newbie investors might not be aware of this costly fact...advisor shares cost usually .25% more than the "original" fund. PABGX and other advisor share class funds carry this added "advisor fee" for the benefit of being NTF at many brokerages, but the brokerage recieves the added fee as their cut.
I prefer to the lower fee funds. You are almost always better off buying directly from the mutual fund company. As a way of keeping things simple I will grudgingly pay the transaction fee once for TRBCX at my brokerage and then set up a periodic purchase plan (monthly) if you want to d.c.a into or out of the fund later. This keeps fees lower than owning the advisor shares.
Fidelity also markets these pricier advisor shares. Just one more cost to avoid.

Hello @AndyJ,
Here are a couple of ways I have recently raised cash within my own portfolio.
The first one is to sell into strength. I reviewed my portfolio and selected funds that I was overweight in and/or no longer wished to hold. I used the S&P 500 Index as my measure of the market (you can select an index that best fits) and for every 25 point increase I’d sell some of the unwanted funds usually about an amount equal to one percent of my total equity positions.
Here is an example of how this works. Let’s say the S&P 500 Index is now at about 2000 and when it reaches 2025 I'll sell a sum equal to about one percent of all my equity positions and let the residual 0.25% gain ride. I’ll keep doing this until my targeted cash position has been reached.
Another one is to set all bond, stock, and fund investment positions, etc. to pay their distributions to cash.
Combine the two of these together and I have found that it did not take long for me to grow my cash allocation by four, five or perhaps even ten percent over a one year period of time.
I hope this might help you with some ideas as to how you might grow your cash allocation.

FYI: Six funds we've known about for a while but that investors have missed.
Regards,
Ted
http://news.morningstar.com/articlenet/article.aspx?id=663519

FYI: The S&P 500 is up a whopping 200% from its March 2009 low. At 2,003, the S&P has already exceeded many analysts' forecasts.
Morgan Stanley strategist Adam Parker and economist Ellen Zentner believe that the conditions are just right for the bull market to keep going for years.
"Our best guess is that an S&P 500 peak of near 3000 is possible should the U.S. expansion prove to have five or more years left to it, based on 6% per annum EPS growth through that time frame and a 17x price-to-earnings ratio," Parker writes.
Regards,
Ted
http://www.businessinsider.com/morgan-stanley-sp-500-3000-2014-9

@catch22: I went onto stockcharts.com to put in the data that Charles presented on the other thread, SPY from Nov 1, 2007-June 30, 2014. You titled this thread "the quick method". Messing with that slider bar did not seem like "the quick method" to me, but eventually I got it!
But it gave me the result in terms of cumulative total return, and Charles presented his data in terms of annualized return. Is there something you need to click on stockcharts.com to get annualized total return instead?