As we are lucky to live in an era of being able to utilize investment products that represent underlying production of excess returns over buy and hold ( as per academic literature ), using well designed, systematic, objective tactical strategies have produced asset accumulation growth (with the benefit of income withdrawal). Over the 60+ year sample, it appears that the myriad of many scary contrarian forecasts, geopolitical events, market shocks, presidential administrations, etc. had little affect on returns.
https://docs.google.com/document/d/14OG8dGZolcXg7WGy_vGFN1dTJq1TccfgKwK7x27HAAA/edit?usp=sharing
Be wary of expert opinion and anecdote and stay on course with "the evidence".

And, @JoJo26 of your bold comment ..., I am most thankful that you don't govern my affairs for you appear, to me, you might be a person that is penny wise but dollar foolish.
Old_Skeet

Talk to me in 15 years and we will see whose portfolio performs better. Why on earth would you want to dig yourself into a 2-5% hole by paying loads.....

@BobC - thanks for your post. In some cases at least, as @catch22 pointed out, the learning experiences weren't even mistakes. At the time there were sound reasons for the choices, whether they worked out or not.
Small companies often use annuities in their 401(k) plans. The annuities generate so much income for the insurance companies that they don't charge the employer (plan sponsor) anything for all the filings and administrative work they provide. This makes the employer happy, the employees less so.
With C shares, some annuities give you credit for the trailing fees they are getting from the funds. So instead of paying, say 1.25% for the annuity and 1.77% for TEGBX, you'd get credit for the 1% kickback, and get charged a total of :
(1.25% - 1%) + 1.77% = 1.25% + (1.77% - 1%) = 2.02%.
Effectively, you're getting TEGBX for 0.77%.
Regarding archives - google is your friend. Of course, you have to know what you're looking for :-)

Hi @msf
Yup, have held TEGBX (C shares); cause I/we wanted the fund holding at the time and the fund was only available via a company retirement offering. I don't recall all of the nuts and bolts of the share pricing at the time, but that the outright E.R. is/was .77%.
Our house history with this fund:
---Purchase about May, 2009.........sell May, 2012 total return for this period = +27%
---this fund ran about another year with solid returns; May 2012-May 2013 = +14%
---Two price peaks occurred near May, 2013 and again at Sept. 2014
---May 2013 return through present = -1%
---Sept 2014 return through present = -2%
I won't "dis" the manager's skill and/or knowledge of global bonds. Our house was merely attempting to wade through the nasty investing environment of the time. The U.S. was still moving to the next Q.E. policy, Euroland was still in austerity mode, Greece was blowing investing "stuff" up every 6 months or so and bonds were still having positive price moves (U.S. credit rating downgrade, Aug. 2011). TEGBX during our holding period was another diverse area in bondland, aside from investment grade and high yield. Playing in bondland is about as much of a challenge as one may choose in the investment world, IMHO. So, we got lucky with our "in" period for this fund, but apparently left when the leaving was good.
I will presume @JoJo26 never had to be concerned with "A" or "C" share choices inside an offered retirement program. We all have different plates of choice, at least involving retirement plan offerings via an employer.
I will nominate you, @msf for the MFO archiver award. :)
This link is overview of this fund and class info:
https://www.franklintempleton.com/forms-literature/download/406-FF
Regards,
Catch

FISMX has done well, but just be aware that they have had a lot of manager changes. Since the fund's inception in 2002 there have been 9 different fund managers. Sam Chamovitz, the current manager, has been managing the fund since 2014. He does have a $1M+ invested in the fund which is good.

I must be really stupid. I've knowingly purchased B shares. At the time it seemed like it was worth the cost to get more dollars into a sheltered account (401k) where they would grow for 25-50 years without having to worry about taxes. Wasn't any more expensive than noload funds offered inside annuity wrappers I've had with other 401k's.
At least I have company in my stupidity. Lots of people here have purchased C shares of Templeton Global, or at least recommended it: CathyG, Shostakovich, Catch, Scott, 00BY.
Then there's OJ and his American Fund shares, recommended to him by what he described as an honest adviser.
I'm sure I can find others here as well who have ever paid a load. I don't think we're all stupid. But that's just MHO.

QUSIX or ICMIX

If you were going to make a choice between the two, which would you choose and why?
I was impressed with the information in Dennis' write-up of ICMIX this month but Dr. Snowball called QUSIX one of the 3, and only 3, great small cap international funds. I'm a little surprised Intrepid has only been able to raise $17MM in assets with a good record over more than 2 years. It almost seems like the risk of liquidation for ICMIX could be pretty high if it doesn't garner a good amount more interest in the next 12 months. They're eating almost half of expenses under the expense waiver and that most likely means "future" shareholders will eventually bear those costs if the expense ratio eventually falls below the waiver.
I also like FISMX a lot, Global Stalwarts and GP International Opportunities and I own several of these funds but I'm looking to add some "value" to the mix with new money.
Thanks.

@Ted
I have tried to pay much more attention recently to dividend safety and dividend growth, using ETFs like SDY and VIG, and am willing to sacrifice yield to avoid surprises.
There are several excellent websites to look at. Barron's profiled a couple I have found very useful
http://www.barrons.com/articles/the-best-websites-for-dividend-stock-ideas-1468037242
How concerned are you re FTR and CTL high payout ratios and leverage? NLY is always tempting but I have always shied away unless it is at a low price. The complexities of the impact of the spread between their mortgage returns and the borrowing costs add another dimension I can never figure out.

M* has had a problem with classifying a lot of funds. It's nature is to fit everything into neat boxes, often times without regard to what the fund really is, its philosophy, and its history. They crammed OSTIX into the HY group a few years ago, which immediately caused the fund to go from 5* to 1 or 2*. After that, they refused to acknowledge their error and actually compounded it by saying the risk level was much higher than it really is or ever has been. As others have said, it is important to know a fund's real strategy before making any comparison with other funds within a M* category.
For years, M* lived and breathed its self-created style boxes, when it know dang well that a lot of funds do not fit the boxes they were assigned. No matter, they just assigned lousy ratings to those who did not fit the mold when their numbers were not as good as the box average. It seems, thankfully, that we are pretty much over style boxes. But the asset category issue is still with us. Be cautious when using M* risk measures.

Hi Crash. I'm certainly in the rank amateur club too, but the fund certainly fits with the buy low sell high mantra. The perfect value/contrarian style I have tried to use myself with out much success. This fund does it for me with a fairly simple formula I can understand.
Right or wrong, I don't view the fund as a pure equity large cap value fund as M* labels it. I see it more as a balanced fund (which I prefer) because it does use debt securities/bonds for total return and to damper volatility. I'm always leary when something seems to good to be true, so I hold the thought this fund will not perform as it is now in every economic scenario. It has to see soft spots somewhere down the line. But, it sure has knocked it out of the park for the last 3 years. I've upped it to about 15% of my portfolio, right up there with PRWCX and ICMBX as my biggest holdings.

I just found a nice research article on SPHD, which represents 13% of our portfolio:
SPHD Article
Kevin

I have been looking at their funds. The Tactical all Asset and the Bond fund are rather transparent as Blumenthal publishes his allocations on line weekly. He has little or no info on the long short strategy, which would probably be the hardest to implement. The mutual funds do not have a long track record as they started in 2015 but the separate accounts go back years and if you believe his summaries they seem to be relatively low risk and seem to deliver what they promise. Unless you want to pay 1.7% for the bond fund, you can tease out his strategy online...

One can choose how much credibility to give to subjective analyses. That said, "scoring" that is retrospective is generally objective. What's important there is understanding what goes into that score.
For OSTIX risk, M* and Lipper are in pretty close agreement, i.e. their different scoring systems in this case lead to the similar conclusions. Risk has been low but slightly increasing in recent years. You can see this in M*'s 3 year risk rating (below average) vs. its 5 and ten year risk ratings for the fund (low).
Lipper represents risk differently. It uses "Preservation" to represent downside risk. (Here's its methodology.) On preservation OSTIX has been very solid - 4 or 5 over all timeframes. (Dropping from a 5 rating over five years to 4 over three years, tracking M* over these periods.)
MAXFunds rates OSTIX's risk at 1(low) on a scale of 1-5. But it isn't clear whether that is relative to the fund universe or to HY funds.
All these sources seem to concur that OSTIX is a low risk fund. This despite the relatively low credit rating (B vs. BB for some HY funds) that the fund sports. This supports the M*assessment that the credit rating in this case doesn't accurately represent the risk in the fund.
At least some of that risk control may be coming from its bipolar approach to credit - around 20% AAA, over 20% in cash, and nearly all the rest in really low grade stuff (B or below). It's like a barbell approach, but a barbell on credit quality, not duration.
---
FWIW, here's MFO's review of fund sites as of five years ago:
http://www.mutualfundobserver.com/2012/03/march-2012-mutual-fund-rating-sites/
Also a thread about one of the sites it liked, FundReveal.
http://mutualfundobserver.com/discuss/discussion/2441/fund-reveal-please-try-it-out
That's a pay-only site, and apparently it's tripled its fees in the past five years, from $100-$150 to $495 and up.

M* December 2014: "So this fund's true risk profile has been more conservative than the portfolio's credit profile suggests. ... Thanks to having the category's lowest 10-year Morningstar Risk score, its risk-adjusted return over that period lands in the group's top quartile. As a result, this fund has, somewhat improbably, proved to be one of the category's better options for risk-averse investors."
M* December 2015: "One of the better high-yield offerings on a risk-adjusted basis. ...Although its long-term returns trail its benchmark, the fund has been excellent on a risk-adjusted basis. For this reason, the fund retains its Morningstar Analyst Rating of Bronze."
You'll need M* Premium Membership to follow the links.
Maybe it's not that M* has erased its history, but that it didn't say the fund was too risky. What it did write, repeatedly, was that while the fund delved well into junk it also managed that risk exceedingly well. Thus the fund's actual risk profile was different (and lower) than what one would think looking only at its credit ratings.

I really can't tell how the manager had anything to do with it given "value" in general performed very well in 2016. It's not like it returned 20% +

They had been dissing this fund for a time. Saying it was too risky. No suddenly come December 2016, they suddenly like it. There is no evidence they didn't like it before. History is erased just like that. Apparently "not its virtues are not appreciated". Really M*?
And then they pen articles now and again how their rated funds have performed. This is not the first time, and it will not be the last. I wonder if I'm the only one who notices these things, or others don't care. By any chance did anyone "save" their opinion of OSTIX from before December? I want to make sure I'm not losing my mind as I'm getting older.

Week Ending January 6, 2017 © 2016 Payden & Rygel All rights reserved.
Highlights of the Week:
Municipals: The municipal market continued to see heavy mutual fund outflows over the holiday period; however, municipal/Treasury ratios actually rallied, and the market delivered strong positive performance for the month of December. With limited supply and strong demand in the new year, we expect the “January effect” to provide support for municipals in the coming weeks.
Corporates: Corporates started the year with a bang with heavy issuance right out of the gate. Total new issuance for the week was $53 billion,
well above the $20-$25 billion anticipated for the week and reflective of strong sentiment among issuers. Last year was the heaviest year of
issuance ever, but 2017 is forecast to decline by 5-10% by many analysts.
High Yield: In recent years, high yield issuers have taken advantage of low rates to refinance their balance sheets. As a result, only 2% of the high yield universe will mature in 2017. Headed into the new year, we believe this financial cushion will provide a measure of security for the asset class.
Treasuries The 5/30 yield curve remained flatter and close to the lows of the past 12 months at 107 bps. Two rate hikes are currently 100% priced in for 2017, with the Fed’s “median dot” signaling three hikes.
© 2016 Payden & Rygel All rights reserved.
https://www.payden.com/weekly/wir010617.pdf

Hi @johnN,
Thanks for posting the Schwab Municipal Bond Outlook. I have a small representation of muni's in my income sleeve and was wondering when might be a good time to add to the position. I'd like to build it to where it is about 5% of the sleeve. In 2016, the fund was about a break even position as it's nav dropped about the same as it paid in interest. Since, it is held in a taxable account the income was not taxable for me while it put an unrealized loss on my books which will be a tax loss benefit should I choose to sell.
Thanks again for posting the outlook.
Skeet

The Shiller Barclays CAPE US Core Sector Index -- underlying index for the CAPE ETN --has had attractive backtested returns during periods of both growth dominant and value dominant markets. So I am adequately confident to hold DSEEX in varying market conditions. In fact, last week I increased my DSEEX position from 15 to 18%. And like @davidmoran, I am confident that Gundlach will enable his mutual fund to have a higher upside/downside ratio relative to the CAPE ETN. But of course, the future is unknown.
Growth vs. Value
Backtested Returns of CAPE Index

CAPE vs. DSEEX
Kevin