@Mulder420 asked for thoughts on FISMX, so I provided an alternative. No shenanigans, pure math. If you do not care about strict replication accuracy, use fewer ETFs. Sure, FISMX performance may divert from that of the ETF portfolio over time. Nevertheless, thanks to the fund inertia, you can track it reasonably well with a 1-month delay (a different fit mode) and still get better risk-adjusted results (e.g. by about 1.3% since Aug 2015). In addition, ETFs will give you an immediate visibility into exposures, as opposed to the "black box" nature of the mutual fund (re: the delayed semi-annual holdings disclosures subject to all sorts of manipulation). This is very useful when constructing the overall investment portfolio.

5 year records:
GBLAX "This fund makes the Fantastic 45 in its first year of eligibility. Launched in February 2011 ..."

A couple that don't involve liquidity per se:
* Longer duration is what got whacked in fixed income, and OSTIX is short duration.
* The carnage in the FI cef's I own/follow (which generally live right around the boundary of investment grade and junk with short to moderate duration) was all in the price, not the nav. Most of the nav's were flat-ish: some slightly down, some flat, some even had tiny gains. Oef's of course trade on nav, so I'd expect similarly positioned oef's to have also come in flat-ish on nav/price.
P.S. Looks like short taxable junk oef's have been little affected, as a category. ASHAX, MDHAX, and OSTIX have TR losses of 0.1% or less for the last week, whereas taxable junk oef's with intermediate duration report larger losses.

FYI: I have been quite surprised by the number of queries I’ve received recently from advisors and clients regarding the dire economic and market forecasts of Frank Porter Stansberry. So, I thought I would share my response.
Regards,
Ted
http://www.etf.com/sections/index-investor-corner/swedroe-ignore-forecasts-theyre-usually-wrong?nopaging=1

Yawn. Same old, same old. Why only funds with 10-yr records? And how in the heck was PRWCX NOT on the list last time? They actually pay someone to do this?

FYI: GMO’s Jeremy Grantham and Lucas White came out with a report entitled An Investment Only a Mother Could Love this past week laying out the prospects for natural resource equities. Here’s the executive summary of their findings and thoughts.
Regards,
Ted
http://awealthofcommonsense.com/2016/09/an-allocation-only-a-mother-could-love/
GMO Website:
(An Investment Allocation Only A Mother Could Love: The Case For Natural Resource Equities)
https://www.gmo.com/docs/default-source/research-and-commentary/strategies/equities/global-equities/an-investment-only-a-mother-could-love-the-case-for-natural-resource-equities.pdf?sfvrsn=3

It would be real nice to have the Symbol column stick (stay) when scrolling horizontally.
Here's an exercise for US LC div / value types. Examine mfund PRBLX against the usual etfs SPHD, CAPE, NOBL, OUSA, HDV, SCHD, VYM, DVY, with IJH for a side entity. (Some are 'high-div', yes.) Observe that the UI range is over an order of magnitude for these similarish funds, with DVY by some measure the worst. Is this chiefly because it is older than all the other LC etfs save one? Examine the various risk columns. Check which are GO (CAPE!). Then do a $10k-growth graph at M* for 1/3/5/6/7/8/9y when available, with changing start points, looking at the the fall 08 dip and recovery the next spring or later, ditto for more-recent dips, and see if you can fathom the UI range noted above.
All very puzzling and for me not such a helpful screen. Why would anyone prefer DVY, for example, based on this? Or IJH? It is as though we are ranking by recovery months (say) when one has had mild allergic rhinitis and the other whopping pneumonia. Gosh, the former has to be a healthier person, right?

@LLJB
Here's link to Patrick O’Shaughnessy's Commentary page. He's a true student of the markets. And, here is link to the paper he briefed in Chicago Friday, Alpha or Assets?
Market cap index investing certainly making a lot of smart money managers look not so smart these past several years. Everyone would have been wise to simply invested in VFINX or VBINX back in 2009 and forgotten about it.

Value investors, which have all the academic findings to back-up the strategy's premium, have underperformed during this period. Hard to say exactly why. Some argue it's the cheap money that enables investors to chase growth stocks, which would otherwise be "unaffordable," if you will. Others argue since all assets have been "artificially inflated," again because of ZIRP, there has not been much distinction between value and growth ... everything is expensive!
It's interesting to think of the market cap index as the first quant fund. And, in fact, because it is market cap, it's actually a momentum strategy.
Yes, I'm skeptical of many money managers, fund families, and attendant fees. Published misuses of investors by firms like Edward Jones abound. Heck, look at what Wells Fargo did recently! I hate front loads, back loads, 12b-1 fees, and multiple share classes. I have made my dislike of American Funds known for all these reasons. Assets are sticky, so asset gathers abound.
All that said, I remember Peter Lynch once saying that just because an investment wins, does not mean it was for the right reason. And, just because it underperforms, does not mean it was for the wrong reason. I do think there are money managers and shops out there that are really trying to do the right kind of investing for all the right reasons.
I know David's mission for MFO is to help investors identify those very opportunities, especially when they are under-the-radar, like the individuals and firms you mentioned.
@MikeM2
I did not make it over to the Fidelity booth, unfortunately. But will keep eye out for Fidelity's new offering.

All ratings have been updated on MFO Premium site, including MultiSearch, Great Owls, Fund Alarm (Three Alarm and Honor Roll), Averages, Correlation, Dashboard of Profiled Funds, and Fund Family Scorecard.
Three perennial GOs remain GOs this month along with Honor Roll distinction: Vanguard Wellesley Income (VWINX), Vanguard Wellington Balanced (VWELX), and Vanguard PRIMECAP (VPMCX). The past 12 months, they've each delivered top quintile excess returns. They are also among the highest AUM funds in their respective categories. So much for scale eating returns, in this case anyway ... it's been that kind of market. All these funds, more than 10% return! So much too for 1% real return predictions.
Also, interesting to see how low the volatility of Aggregate Bond Index ("USBond") has been this past year, especially with respect to SP500 Index, placing bonds in bottom quintile risk category versus below average (2nd) quintile historically.

Agreed, being a one-issue investor isn't always wise, but it is not worth looking at State Street's 2015 numbers. The important news here is the shift in voting in 2016. According to the article: "State Street supported the resolutions 51 percent of the time at S&P 500 companies including Exxon Mobil Corp and Chevron Corp in this year's proxy season, up from 14 percent last year, according to a review of recent securities filings by research firm Fund Votes." This is an important change that could ultimately influence other fund companies. It will be interesting to see whether State Street has shifted its votes on any other governance issues as well.

I'm not sure there are any great managers in terms of voting records, but I'll take a look.
FWIW, here's SSgA's 2015 proxy voting record (all 9945 pages):
https://www.ssga.com/investment-topics/environmental-social-governance/2016/2015-Vote-Summary-Report.pdf
and its proxy voting guidelines:
https://www.ssga.com/investment-topics/environmental-social-governance/2016/Proxy-Voting-and-Engagement-Guidelines-US-20160301.pdf
As important as the environment is, I'm not a one-issue voter or investor. For instance, I've mentioned executive compensation. On that, SSgA is among the worst (though the average is nearly as bad):
http://www.asyousow.org/wp-content/uploads/2015/12/statestreet-2016-execcomp-resolution.pdf
Pick your poisons and your managers accordingly.

Hi,
I saw that you expressed interest in fund shops that supported climate change resolutions. Well, it seems State Street has officially acknowledged that climate change matters and is now expressing its concern with its proxy votes:
reuters.com/article/us-climate-statestreet-idUSKCN11C2HK
Since State Street offers competing low-cost index ETFs, it is a worthy alternative to the naysayers.

O’Shaughnessy was best of Friday's session. An industry stand out. His presentation was about the inherent conflicted nature of delivering alpha and accumulating assets. Basically. the more AUM, the more holdings a portfolio must maintain, the more it then looks like an index, the less likely its performance will deviate from the index. "Scale eats returns." He sees active share as a measure of the potential to be better (or worse) than index. "Dare to be great." He thinks both Wes Gray and Meb Faber are offering ETFs closest to the strategies he recommends. That said, he admits there are only a few money managers he would trust with his money. (He would not say which ones.)
Met with Rich Powers, Vanguard's head of EtF product management. Vanguard offers 70 ETFs with AUM totalling $565B. As a whole, the US EtF industry offers some 1800 ETFs with about $2.4T AUM. So, with just 4% of products, Vanguard has captured one quarter of the AUM. Can you believe that? Our fund family data on the MFO Premium site shows that 60 of their 70 ETFs have beaten their peers since inception. That's simply amazing. Rich had a quick response: "The power of low fees." Vanguard is the only company to offer some ETFs as simply another share class of its open-ended sibling. "Economies of scale," Rich explained.

Here's a set of slides from a recent "Jeffinar" presentation:
businessinsider.com/jeff-gundlach-full-presentation-september-2016-election-economy-gold-2016-9?op=1/#-1

FYI: Don’t blame DoubleLine’s Jeff Gundlach for causing the stock market to tumble the most since the aftermath of the U.K.’s decision to break from the European Union roiled global markets in late June.
Regards,
Ted
http://www.marketwatch.com/story/how-gundlachs-fed-tightening-talk-set-stage-for-a-stock-bond-market-meltdown-2016-09-09/print

I had initially bought into the hype surrounding the total return fund DLTNX, but have since sold it and added to GIBIX. Before 2016 I didn't have any bond funds, as I held individual muni bonds, but half of them were called (had a total of 4) and needed to find bond funds that I could use for income and to funnel profits to on my equity portion of portfolio. With over 80% in mortgage related bonds, DLTNX seemed a bit too aggressive, despite Mr Gundlach's record. I am sticking with GIBIX, PFBPX, PYACX and STRYX plus CPXIX for some preferred stock income. My equity allocation of 65% has some fairly aggressive components along with some more moderate positions, figured my bond portion needed to be more conservative. Honest best wishes for other MFO members who have a bit more faith in Gundlach and his team. Please Lord, let him be wrong about Trump.

Apologies if I didn't catch this in TSP's posts, but JG said pointedly that rate risk is a place to dial back; the rate bottom's in, he says, with the failure to breach the earlier T lows. Also:
- Reiterated that 2% on the 10yT may be a buy, but probably not for the long term.
- The place to take credit risk now is in non-agency mortgages.
- DBLTX is about as defensively positioned as it's ever been against rate risk - duration of ~ 2, distribution yield of 3.7%.

Chock full day.
More than 650 total attendees at the conference, including more than 500 registered attendees (mostly advisors), more than 80 sponsor attendees, nearly 40 speakers, and more than 30 members of the press. Up somewhat from last year.
Morningstar will soon start giving forward looking "aptitude" medal ratings to exchange traded funds. Will use same 5 Ps methodology as open ended funds. About 300 will be rated along with open ended funds in same category. EtF AUM now at $2.4T. While no plans yet to merge conferences, I believe it is inevitable for June and September Morningstar Chicago conferences to merge.
Lots of discussion of value and momentum strategies today. Fama calls the latter the premier anomaly in investing. AQR's Ronen Israel discussed facts and fiction. Despite that everybody knows benefits of each strategy, AQR believes it is fact that premia in each exist will continue.
One of Morningstar's brigthest, Alex Bryan, moderated a session on largely same topic by Gary Antonacci, Meb Faber, and Wes Gray. All disciples. Wes, probably the hardest core "believer" in pure value. But, data backs-up momentum as well. Why do these strategies persist? Because they are so utterly painful to stick with. Gary, however, uses an "absolute momentum" overlay (based on 12 month SP500 total return vs risk free) to mitigate drawdown, which he argues is more steady than simple moving average methods.
Met with John Ameriks, head of Vanguard's Quantitative Equity Group. He believes that a big reason "quants are winning" is that they provide a rules-based methodologies so investors better know what to expect. Unlike, say, the sometimes surprising behavior of active investors, like Fairholme's Bruce Berkowitz. John's group has 25 analysts and has been in existence for 25 years. At $30B in AUM, lots of responsibility here.
In a panel on "best ideas," Rich Bernstein, John West of Research Affiliates and Mark Yusko of Morgan Creek Capital Management seemed mostly conflicted. Bernstein believes cyclical equities and perhaps equities as a whole, will continue their bullish run. Expects excess returns the next two years for industrial's. But, the catastrophe will be bonds. Yusko, the most vocal, believes US stocks will crash in next year or so. Doomed based on valuations and demographics. He thinks that the only thing investors do well is invest in the last thing that worked. So, investing in index funds going forward will be catastrophic. While he dropped names like Seth Klarman of Baupost, Yusko's positions seemed to me ... hmm, what's a good word ... malarkey. West was most tempered of the trio, touting Research Affiliates benefits of all asset diversification, which always takes the 10 year view.
Took several other interviews, including a couple EtF managers that focus on EM consumers and Millennial consumers. Can you believe that? The PM at Iowa's Prinicpal, named Paul Kim, formally at PIMCO, seemed pretty impressive to me. More to come.
Looking forward to morning talk by Patrick O’Shaughnessy, entitled Alpha or Assets. As well as interview with Vanguard's Head of Equity EtFs and walking the exhibitor booths.
c

@MikeM said
I put a good portion of my self managed portfolio into DSENX (15%) after reading about the funds objectives and style,
@gmarceau said
Shiller's indexes almost seem like a free lunch at this point
@davidrmoran said
.." I have so much money in a fund"..
Mr Gundlach referred to investors like you guys as "sophisticated" in recognizing a smarter beta product that has delivered the return it was designed to do.He again encouraged equity investors to consider the fund. DSENX
After a mostly entertaining hour and 15 minutes he finished with "enjoy the N F L season and Go Bills ! "
@hank said
Glad I didn't follow my own advice, as I'm sitting on a double-digit return year to date. Cash wouldn't have done it. Still…
Mr Gundlach said "don't get cute and try to get every last bit of juice from the orange ".
Get more defensive with less risky assets and cash
@davidrmoran said
jeeeeeeezus, how can I have so much money in a fund where the co-manager thinks DT is going to win the election? Politics aside, what does that say about his intellect and thought processes and observational and analytical skills ?
Mr Gundlach very briefly reiterated his belief that Donald Trump is going to win.
Mr Gundlach said he has no plans to open a Long /Short bond fund and doesn't believe a fund of that nature has a place in one's portfolio because of the interest costs involved in holding the short positions.And here I bought a fund ,CRUPX, of that nature to help mitigate my perceived risks .
Mr Gundlach said that the untimely death of his colleague, Bonnie Baha, had saddened the entire firm but her spirit and legacy would be reflected in the 21 person team she had personally built from an original 4 .He sees the firm as intact in Ms Baha's vision and mission.
A note from one of Bonnie Baha's obits
.Bonnie Baha, a U.S. bond portfolio manager who helped Jeffrey Gundlach turn DoubleLine Capital into a $100 billion asset management firm, has died. She was 56.
“People don’t pay me to hope; they pay me to make an assessment,” Baha said of the trading call. “If you are managing risk by hoping that somebody is going to buy Lehman Brothers or whatever other bank is in trouble, you’re not really doing your job.”
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2016-08-22/bonnie-baha-doubleline-s-head-of-developed-credit-dies-at-56

Here is a link to the presentation...
http://www.businessinsider.com/jeff-gundlach-full-presentation-september-2016-election-economy-gold-2016-9/#-39