We've mentioned this one a couple times in previous commentary and on the board:
Morningstar Conference Notes
Meb Faber gets it right in interesting ways
Fund summary:

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.

Link to fund webpage and fact sheet:
Cambria Global Momentum EtF

How about Thompson Bond?

Take a look at OSTIX...similar holdings...shorter duration...better results:
They both seem to be Short Term High Yield funds, yet M* doesn't categorizes them that way. THOPX is a 5* fund in the ST Bond category and OSTIX is a 1* fund in the HY category.

Hi Gandalf,
Indeed a good fund ... but, not held within my deck of 52.
Old_Skeet

Hi JohnChisum,
Thanks for making a comment.
I agree, no doubt some folks get turned off by a sales load. But, once paid they are usually free to move around within that family of funds to other funds, through nav exchanges, without paying another sales load.
One of the best ways I have found to manage the sales load, for a small retail investor, is to buy a fund family’s bond fund which usually has a smaller sales load than their equity funds and then do a nav exchange later into the equity position. You might check on this in more detail if you are interested as usually there are certain required holding periods and a limit as to how often you can do nav exchanges among funds.
I like holding all of my investments with one broker and in this way come tax time I get one consolidated 1099 statement for all my investment positions within my taxable account. If I held them split among a few fund houses or split among a couple of brokers then my accountant would have to generate a consolidated 1099 spread sheet as a part to filing my tax return. I figure, what I pay in mutual fund sales commissions that get spread over many years is a savings over having to pay my accountant annually to compile a consolidated 1099 spread sheet plus there are other things to consider.
Old_Skeet
Additional comment. I have owned both NARAX and PGUAX, each from time-to-time. I currently own PGUAX and if I chose I could move to NARAX commission free through the nav exchange program and then once parked in NARAX, I believe for 90 days, I could move back to PGUAX. The nav exchange program is one way I have found to move from fixed income to equity to play seasonal strategies without paying a sales load. And, the bookeeping is maintained by the broker's back office through sending out the account's 1099 Form which details all the account's transactions, etc. The one 1099 Form has certaintly reduced the hassels I generally have to deal with come tax time vs. many.
For those interested I have linked the M* report for PGUAX below. Notice its nice dividend of better than 4.25%.
http://quotes.morningstar.com/fund/pguax/f?t=PGUAX
Something to perhaps think on.

2.25% load on a bond fund? No thanks.

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%.
Seperately, as note above: "Short term bonds vs Savings/checking accounts for cash"..... these are different critters for most investors I know. The "at home" local account is more of an emergency money allocation; versus short term bond funds being a parking spot as needed, that exist within a retirement account.; unrelated to a savings or checking account.
Not unlike any other active managed fund, there are lots of different critters for investment style among short term bond funds; and that short term bond funds and short term gov't bond funds are indeed different critters, eh?
M* short term bond list
An alright place for "cash" monies within retirement accounts, IMHO.
Me 2 cents worth.
Take care,
Catch

"We're putting the band back together. We're on a mission from God."

Hmmm...we would need to know the portfolio of GDX and GDXJ over the years. If you look at TGLDX portfolio 70% is International, but mostly developed markets. I do recall international exposure used to be 85%. If all of the 15% difference was EM, that could explain it.

Very interesting chart! Yes I would have thunk lot of miners would be international. Or could it be they sucked up the place and the index gradually dropped them? That would explain things too no?

I follow your logic, but when I look at M*'s Region Breakdown data of GDX and GDXJ I get only 11% of GDX stock assiociated with Emerging Market regions. Even stranger only 5% of GDXJ stock is assiociated with EM regions. Something doesn't add up. Did the EM mines get bought up and put into moth balls by Canada, the UK and Austrilia PM companies?

@VintageFreak,
A correlation that seems to have changed recently is the performance of EM funds verses PM funds. Prior to 2011, there seems to be a fairly high correlation between Emerging Market and PM equity funds. Not sure what changed since 2011. My understanding of this correlation was based on the fact that many of the PM equity companies (their mines) are located geographically in the EM areas of the world.

@MFO Board Members: Here's what a long-term sea of red looks like in regards to precious metals. Enough said !
Regards,
Ted
1Mo. YTD 3MO. 1Yr. 3YR. 5Yr.
Equity Precious Metals -16.99 -14.28 -31.24 -26.02 -29.70 -12.95

FYI: Fund managers, flush with $4.7 billion in fresh cash, are running out of options to catch up with the Standard & Poor’s 500 Index (SPX) after trailing the measure’s record rally.
Regards,
Ted
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/print/2014-11-03/record-s-p-500-runs-away-from-mutual-funds-trailing-index.html

There are lots of gotchas with closed end funds. For example, the "spread" may be due to the fund being a managed payout fund that is eating away at your principal.

Managed distribution funds attempt to pay the same amount in dividends monthly (or quarterly or whatever). If they are making at least that much money, wonderful. But if not, they're paying that high dividend rate out of principal - you're getting your own money back, not earnings.
ETY is an example of this. According to its latest semi-annual report, "the Fund makes monthly cash distributions to common shareholders, stated in terms of a fixed amount per common share. The Fund currently distributes monthly cash distributions equal to $0.0843 per share."
That's regardless of whether the fund is even making money at all. M* reports that YTD, out of $0.843/share in total dividends (i.e. 10 months worth), $0.5281/share was your own money back (returned capital), not earnings. That comes out to be around 5% per year of dividend not being income. The true "spread" is thus closer to 3% than to 8%.
M* writes of this fund: "This fund, among others in the series, has used destructive return of capital extensively in the past to meet its distribution targets. ... data for calendar-year 2013 thus far indicates the fund may again use destructive return of capital to a limited degree. That's one reason the fund earns a Morningstar Analyst Rating of Neutral."
Leverage is another factor in a lot of closed end funds. Not this one, and I'll leave that for another post, or for others to comment on.
Make sure you understand how CEFs work - how they're traded, what affects their price, how their dividends work, how they raise money if leveraged, etc.

Bill Bernstein M* interview talks breifly about adding precious metals equities to your help lower overall portfolio volatility and help long term returns. Most PM equity funds are now offering a free gift of Band aids and iodine with each set of falling knives that you purchase.
From their M* interview:
"Benz: On the flip side or in a similar vein, one deeply unloved asset class right now is precious metals, which was very much in vogue a few years ago. You think it's also a pretty interesting time to be looking at that asset class, too.
Bernstein: I do. It's a market that I've always been interested in. I've been following precious-metals equities for the past 25 or 30 years, and it's important to understand how this asset class behaves in the long term. It has very low long-term returns. If you look at Ken French's series, which goes back more than a half century, the return if you count the most recent declines probably comes out to be less than 5% per year nominal, which is 1% more than inflation over that period, which was 4%. So, it has gotten very low returns. It has bone-crushing volatility. Now, three times in the past 50 years, it's fallen in price by approximately 70%.
"Benz: So, why do we even want to own this asset class?
Bernstein:Well, it occasionally zigs. When the overall market sags, it does particularly well. When there is high inflation--and one of the reasons why it has done so poorly recently is that inflation hasn't turned up--it turns out that even with its high volatility and its crummy returns, adding several percent of it to your portfolio does improve its behavior. It improves its return and it improves its volatility as well; it lowers its volatility."
I must admit from a price stand point, these funds are grabbing my attention.
morningstar.com/cover/videocenter.aspx?id=670230

@VintageFreak: Excellent point ! Top Managed Futures Funds from U.S. New & World Report, but boy are they expensive.
Regards,
Ted
http://money.usnews.com/funds/mutual-funds/rankings/managed-futures
M* Managed Futures Fund Returns:
http://news.morningstar.com/fund-category-returns/managed-futures/$FOCA$13.aspx
M* Top Performing Managed Futures Funds 3mo.
http://finance.yahoo.com/funds/lists/?mod_id=mediaquotesmutualfunds&cat=$FOCA$13$$&rcnt=50

It seems, good corporate earnings and improvements in the economy are keeping the little train going ...
Are you on board?
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2014-11-03/u-s-index-futures-little-changed-after-s-p-500-record.html

@heezsafe, Thanks for posting this. One paragraph of the Sept. speech caught my eye.
"Although alternative mutual funds only accounted for 2.3% of the mutual fund market as of December 2013, the inflows into these funds in 2013 represented 32.4% of the inflows for the entire mutual fund industry, with almost $95 billion of inflows into alternative mutual funds in 2013. That is over five times more than the amount of inflows into alternative mutual funds in 2012.[19]"
That shows just how much demand there is for these funds.

In his commentary (recent news section), David mentioned remarks given in a speech by Norm Champ, director of the SEC's Division of Investment Management, to the Securities Industry and Financial Markets Association, as briefly reported here:
http://www.investmentnews.com/article/20141029/FREE/141029914
Presumably, this speech will be posted soon on the SEC website. In the meantime, I suspect it will have covered many of the same points that Mr. Champ made in speeches to other professional organizations earlier in the year. By coincidence, I just happened to have the June speech in my MFO Working File already, and so I found and read the September speech this afternoon as well. I have pulled out some things from each to give you a flavor of what's inside, but there is much more, including pricing issues, conflicts of interest, expectations and additional fiduciary duties of BDs who decide to oversee these new contraptions, and some adumbration about compliance challenges that advisers may face re. liquidity, leverage, and risk management (and the transparent and timely reporting of such).
June Speech to Private Equity Forum
http://www.sec.gov/News/Speech/Detail/Speech/1370542253660#.VFK_j4dYVVU
"Recently, investment strategies that have historically operated in the private fund space have started to appear in the mutual fund area. This morning I will discuss the growing use of alternative investment strategies by open-end mutual funds; a burgeoning industry that had over $300 billion in assets as of the end of May 2014, according to Enforcement’s Risk Analysis and Surveillance Team. [...] I will discuss three broad topics: (1) alternative mutual funds, (2) the potential benefits and risks associated with these funds, and (3) some new developments within the Commission and the Division regarding alternative mutual funds. [...] I would like to highlight today a few key ’40 Act issues that are raised .... I will offer some observations on how to approach the regulatory issues associated with valuation, liquidity, leverage and disclosure."
September Speech to Hedge Fund Management Forum
http://www.sec.gov/News/Speech/Detail/Speech/1370542916156
"In contrast to private funds, mutual funds are subject to registration and regulation under the Investment Company Act and (in most cases) their shares are registered under the Securities Act of 1933, which means that they can be offered to retail investors. [...] many hedge fund advisers are becoming involved with alternative mutual funds, either as sub-advisers to funds launched by traditional registered investment company managers, or by launching their own registered investment companies. [...} alternative mutual funds present heightened risks in all of the areas that I just mentioned – compliance programs, conflicts of interest, valuation, portfolio management, and marketing."
"While fiduciary duties and disclosure are also key elements of the Investment Company Act, the Investment Company Act regime imposes many additional, substantive restrictions. For example, Section 206 of the Advisers Act [new laws governing private/hedge fund behaviors] permits an adviser (or an affiliate of an adviser) to engage in a principal transaction with a fund or other client, provided that the client consents to the specific transaction after receiving full disclosure of all material facts. By contrast, Section 17(a) of the Investment Company Act generally prohibits such transactions for a fund, not only with its adviser, but with any affiliate of the fund, or with any affiliate of an affiliate of a fund. Furthermore, Section 17(d) and Rule 17d-1 under the Investment Company Act generally prohibit an adviser to a registered fund, or any other affiliate or affiliate of an affiliate of a registered fund, from engaging as principal in any “joint enterprise or other joint arrangement or profit-sharing plan” in which the registered fund is a participant, without first obtaining an exemptive order from the Commission. The breadth of these provisions can capture many types of transactions and arrangements, and may present concerns for advisers who manage registered and private funds alongside each other."
"I encourage private fund advisers to proceed thoughtfully and cautiously before becoming advisers to registered funds. [...] a private fund adviser may need to make significant changes to its compliance program in order to take on a registered fund client. Merely “tacking on” new policies and procedures to the adviser’s existing program, without considering the overall impact to the adviser’s business model, may increase the risk of compliance weaknesses, deficiencies or violations."

The pain-to-gain threshold is very interesting. The health care funds seem to be a recurring theme. Seems like a 5-10% stake continues to be prudent.

I should have mentioned it would be in an IRA. No K-1 that I'm aware of.

CTF is trading at a nearly 20% discount to NAV.
Some have suggested it should be restructured:
http://seekingalpha.com/article/2569765-nuveen-long-short-commodity-total-return-fund-should-be-restructured
However, that's a commodity futures CEF that's trading at a nearly 20% discount to NAV. There is the potential for capital appreciation is commodities bounce back and, if something happens (restructuring, etc) narrowing of the discount, although there is certainly no guarantee on a restructuring happening.