MFO Ratings Through 4th Quarter >> implying along the possibility of
>> comparing versus manager tenure.
>> If funds did not perform after changes in management,
\\\ Sentence structure and punctuation make a huge difference in reading.
No kiddin'.
>> our database does not account for category drift...or, manager drift, sad to say...past performance, numbers only.
I have an idea. How about a cell or field for manager tenure? In years. There's a number.
In fact, I may be misremembering FA HR, but did not Weitz et alia have something along those lines?
>> Of the 1800 or so surviving funds that have been around 20 years, only about 30 are top quintile across all five evaluation periods (20, 10, 5, 3, and 1 year), yes even in 2014.
>> Some of them are: ...
>> Meridian Growth Legacy (MERDX)
The current managers of this venerable fund have been on the job for like a year and a half. Gosh and golly, should I invest in it? I pray it has magical momentum. I wonder how the new guys will do. Is there any way to tell? Does the brandname confer skill? Were they trainees?
Well, no, no, and who the hell knows? It is a scandal this is an MFO Great Owl. Makes the site look ridiculous. People are always going off about Fidelity manager tenure and turnover, and here this venerable site dares to list effectively a brand-new fund as a Great Owl. Makes all the wonderful data work that goes into the effort dubious.
Here is M* from a few months ago:
\\\ This mid-growth fund's future was uncertain after Rick Aster, the lead manager since its 1984 inception, passed away in early 2012. Other investors from his team then oversaw the portfolio, but most had other funds to manage as well and Aster's eponymous firm was left rudderless. In 2013, Arrowpoint Partners (founded by three former Janus portfolio managers in 2007) agreed to purchase Aster's firm and take over the fund. Arrowpoint hired Chad Meade and Brian Schaub, who amassed a superb seven-year record at Janus Triton (JATTX), away from Janus to run the Meridian fund. They took over in September 2013 following a shareholder vote.
\\\ Meade and Schaub's early returns here are subpar; the fund trails both its typical peer and the Russell 2500 Growth Index (a mix of small- and mid-cap stocks that also served as the benchmark for Janus Triton) by 3 and 2 percentage points, respectively. But they've demonstrated an ability to pick winners among both rapid growers and more-stable fare over the longer haul. A six-person analyst team that includes several former Janus colleagues supports them, and they are working with a smaller asset base than they had in their last two years at Triton.
Seriously, is it too much to ask for a trigger or criterion screen having to do with manager tenure, so brand-new funds, whatever their name, do not get the highest designation this site has to offer? An absurd situation.
Which energy etf would you buy? XLE, VDE or ? Non-MLP types.....
For Healthcare Investors, A Medical Breakthrough ETF. Geez, these NURO guys are getting NO credit! Market cap is $13MN. This is tiny of the tiny and it doesn't look like there's been any real bounce from the announcement that they were going to introduce the product. If it does well I guess this will be a superstar investment, but right now it seems like no one's willing to bet on that.
I wrote a bunch on Friday night about the exoskeleton companies, didn't quite finish, and then Windows kindly installed updates overnight and restarted my computer so I lost it. The basic gist was that you can see what funds/etfs own Ekso, Cyberdyne and ReWalk in this ownership section of M*'s quote page for each. These guys all went public in 2014 and there's not much interest from funds, although Ekso is clearly the least "discovered" and maybe you could even say its undiscovered considering the only fund that owns it is called 3D Printing and Technology and it has a whopping $2.8 million in AUM. Ekso seems to be the one with ties to the military and they're clearly getting funding from the military to develop those applications. Cyberdyne is the biggest in terms of market cap and seems to have made good progress in Germany, getting their product covered by state medical.
My conclusion was that Ekso seems like the most interesting opportunity at the moment because of their ties to the military, because they're clearly not discovered and because one of their 2015 goals is to be listed on a primary exchange. In addition, what's written about them on their own site and by Forbes is that they have the best technology out there. The biggest risk I see is that they say they'll need cash by the middle of this year and that'll mean dilution, but they've been very open about that so maybe its priced in. ReWalk has FDA approval, which is nice and they're in a better cash position than Ekso plus they've also made inroads with Germany, but somehow it just seems like they don't have as broad a relationship base as Ekso does in terms of future potential.
Thanks JC for bringing this up!
It will all be about income - interest, dividends ... Get them now while you still can.
Which energy etf would you buy? XLE, VDE or ? Non-MLP types..... XLE and VDE are about a coin toss for ER at .16 and .12 . XLE has 44 holdings and VDE has 144; being all of the big energy companies. I also reviewed IYE, with similar holdings, but an ER of .45%.
Both XLE and VDE may be "played" with options, too. Not by this house, but by others.
All of these moved about +3.2% with last Friday's close
Thank you for your considerations.
Catch
Difference between TTM Yield and 30 day SEC Yield @Soupkitchen Mark's link, yes.
Basically, the "TTM" is the previous 12 month period average of what the stock or fund was paying. For the two funds you noted, both the dividends from equities held and yields from bonds held in the fund were higher during the prior 12 month period. As the price of either or both the equity and bond holdings increased, the dividend/yield moved lower. Which was generally the case for both in 2014. This TTM will vary depending upon what is held within any given fund based upon the mix.
The 30 day yield is related (as noted in Mark's link) to the most recent short time period, usually based at the end of the prior month (in this case, Dec. of 2014).
The funds you noted show yields decreasing; being from price appreciation during the previous 12 month period.
The same applies to high yield/junk bonds; but in reverse to what you find with the funds you mentioned.
SPHIX is an example: 12 months ago, more folks were still buying junk bonds, moving prices up and yields down. Today is the reverse, with folks selling junk bonds causing pricing to move down and yields to much higher.
TTM for the above fund is
5.44% (average). The 30 day SEC yield is 6.08%.
'Course, related to investment grade bonds in particular; is some of the supposedly sharp folks who talk on the tv and write articles; is that how can one expect to make any money with IG bonds with such crappy, low yields. Seldom do they note what happened to the bond pricing as yields continued downward. The answer, of course; is that investors made money on the price appreciation, not really caring about the yield, as long as it (the yield) was still going down.
Hope this helds somewhat.
Regards,
Catch
Difference between TTM Yield and 30 day SEC Yield
Difference between TTM Yield and 30 day SEC Yield I've been looking at a fund that has a 4.67% TTM yield, at the same time having a 2.99% 30 day SEC yield. What would the difference be between the two yields (not mathematically :), and why are the numbers so different? Oh, the fund is CAIBX by the way. Looking at another income fund, VWINX, I see that the two yields are almost the same. 3.10% TTM and 2.53% 30 day. What gives?
