The reason for this distance is because that was the measurement used in England and the U.S. railroads were built by British expats.

No the U.S. railroads were built by mostly non-British immigrants, many of them Chinese:ocp.hul.harvard.edu/immigration/railroads.html

Chinese laborers were brought in by the Central Pacific Railroad in large numbers. Indeed, by the height of the construction effort in 1868, over 12,000 Chinese immigrants were employed, comprising about 80 percent of the Central Pacific's workforce.

Carlson is confusing design with building, and even there he's wrong. Theodore Judah--born in Connecticut not Britain--designed the Transcontinental Railroad:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Theodore_Judah
Moreover, the three prominent early designers of U.S. railroads were American born:
Stephen Harriman Long, George Washington Whistler, and Herman Haupt.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rail_transportation_in_the_United_States
While they were influenced by British trends, they were not British.

Just put some "rewards cash" into FMIJX. Weird that credit cards now throw off rewards for investment. Adjusted my retirement (403B/401A) deposits to go to VHCAX & VWENX rather than a target date fund and encouraged the other money to go towards international.

FYI: In the U.S., the standard distance between railroad train tracks is four feet, eight-and-a-half inches wide.
The reason for this distance is because that was the measurement used in England and the U.S. railroads were built by British expats.
Regards,
Ted
http://awealthofcommonsense.com/2017/11/one-of-the-biggest-sources-of-market-inefficiency/

FYI: This article is part of a regular series of thought leadership pieces from some of the more influential ETF strategists in the money management industry. Today’s article features Jack Gilligan, director of research for ClearRock Capital.
We spent two days this month in Newport Beach, California, at the Inside Fixed Income conference. It was a great opportunity to try to get our finger on the pulse of the active versus passive debate in fixed income, a deeper dive into the intricacies of trading fixed-income ETFs and an attempt to soak up the market outlook of industry sages such as Dennis Gartman, Bob Smith and Jim Grant.
Here are our key takeaways from two jam-packed days
Regards,
Ted
http://www.etf.com/sections/etf-strategist-corner/inside-fixed-income-2017-takeaways

I have updated my November 11th post with an update. With this, I choose to bump the thread to the front of the stack.

High Yield bonds have been in the news this past week, eh? Some folks sense a twitch to the "dark" side of investment land and perhaps a prelude to something else. Tis not pure profit taking as the returns YTD are not in need of a hair cut. Articles have noted the failure to secure loans at a "decent" rate for financing in a few retail sector companies. One may presume there is good reason to "demand" a higher rate.......like, we're not happy with the forward business model. Makes sense, yes?
@bee , I recall, placed a post which included debt burdens of large retailers. This is one sector that indeed may be on shaky ground to pay off the debt, but is not a large percentage of outstanding high yield bond area.
So, are junk bonds just a forward view of the growth potential of the economy in general? My pay grade is not high enough to know the answer. I'll let the technical indicators point the way.
---High Yield below. A few choices on the list have been prior holdings; although we do not currently hold any HY directly. Of the 6 below, one may be able to "see" the value of active management.
1 week and YTD
ARTFX = -.7%, +7.9%
SPHIX = -. 8%, + 7.4%
DHOIX = -.7%, + 6.5%
PRHYX = -.8%, + 6.4%
HYG = -1%, +5%
JNK = -.9%, +5.4%
The below chart for the above from June 2 through Nov. 10
http://stockcharts.com/freecharts/perf.php?ARTFX,SPHIX,DHOIX,PRHYX,HYG,JNK&n=113&O=011000
Lastly, at least related to the etf side of high yield is that etfs are "used" by hedge funds and other similar to help them use the efts as portfolio "insurance" or "adjusters" or whatever phrase/word one prefers. I would not be surprised that the option side of calls/puts has had some effect on HYG and JNK.
Let us keep our fingers crossed that companies make enough profit to pay off the "investment grade bond" debt, too; lest it become junk.
---HY bond $ issued 2016 = $204 Billion; 2017 to date $240 Billion
---IG bond $ issued 2016 = $1.16 Trillion; 2017 to date = $1.2 Trillion
Oh, well.
Good night,
Catch

@jlev, there are others here who would disagree and you can see it some of the portfolios but my rule of thumb has always been that I don't want more than 10% in a single fund and prefer to keep a fund family below 20%.
I'd also point out, however, that I would differentiate between Grandeur Peak and a lot of the fund families I own compared to a Fidelity or T Rowe Price and I'd also differentiate between an active fund and a passive one.
In the same vein I have multiple bank accounts and taxable brokerage accounts, not because I want to make sure everything is insured but because if anything ever goes wrong I don't want to lose access to everything for however long it takes the insurance to get worked out. I'm sure I'm overly conservative but there was a time in the early '90s when I worked on teams that shut some of the savings & loans down, I saw their customers and it affected me. I'm much less concerned about retirement accounts because there's no time sensitivity for me yet and I only make sure I don't exceed any insurance limits.

@msf, you're exactly right. Even though it doesn't work perfectly based on my past reviews, GPRIX is supposed to hold everything and then each of the other GP funds is just a different subset, probably with the exception of GPMCX although I've never asked or read that. I haven't asked them about any holdings I've found in one or another fund that wasn't in Global Reach but my assumption has always been that the theory rarely works perfectly in reality.
@jlev, I guess my answer to your question might depend a bit on the context. Assuming you and the misses have decided on something that you want to add to your GP holdings then my preference would be one of the Stalwarts funds. I don't own Global Reach and I assume you do because it's hard closed and even then I think there are very limited exceptions for adding. Anyway, I'm somewhat sensitive to the number of holdings a fund has and I'd much prefer the 100-130 in the Stalwarts funds to the 320 in Global Reach. I also feel like, although I'm sure this isn't totally true, that Global Reach is just a grab bag with a lot less thought put into portfolio composition than any of the other funds.
Whether you prefer the International Stalwarts or the Global Stalwarts I think depends on your feelings about US stocks and potentially dealing with adjustments in the future. My personal belief is that International is a better place to be right now because of valuations and because I think the Fed will slow down US stocks before the ECB or BOJ slow down international markets. In the long run, though, I'd rather have the global fund. The nice thing is that since the funds are still open you can make adjustments later as you please.

October marked the 10th year of the current full market cycle, which started in November 2007 (top of last cycle) and bottomed in March 2009.
Here are 10 funds that have delivered perfect scores in their categories across multiple risk and performance metrics since the start of the cycle and consistently within it (click image to enlarge):

By name and symbol:

• Matthews Asia Dividend Fund Inv (MAPIX)

• Artisan International Value Fund Inv (ARTKX)

• MFS International Value Fund A (MGIAX)

• GMO Quality Fund IV (GQEFX)

• Jensen Quality Growth Fund J (JENSX)

• Eaton Vance Atlanta Capital SMID-Cap Fund I (EISMX)

• American Century NT Mid Cap Value Fund G (ACLMX)

• Janus Henderson Small Cap Value Fund L (JSIVX)

• Vanguard Tax-Managed Balanced Fund Admiral (VTMFX)

• Eaton Vance and Diversified Currency Income Fund A (EAIIX)

Eight are MFO Great Owls (five 10-year, three 20-year).

While I didn't agree 100% with what she wrote (who does?), I did agree with her the vast majority of the time. She performed an admirable service extremely well and will be missed.

To a fair degree, I've got to beg off, since Grandeur Peak isn't a family I follow that much.
That said, a superficial look at GPRIX, GGSYX and GPGIX suggests a fair degree of overlaps among the Grandeur Peak funds.
Top 10 holdings in both GPRIX and GGSYX include Man Wah, First Republic, First Cash.
Another top 10 holdings in GPRIX held by GGSYX is China Medical Systems.
Other top 10 holdings in GGSYX held by GPRIX are Nihon M&A, Power Integrations.
There's a similar pattern of overlaps with GPGIX.
So at least at first blush, I'd be inclined to view these funds as covering slightly different segments of the market, but otherwise not fundamentally different. Others can speak more cogently about them. Consequently, I'd focus on whether I wanted more small cap (GPRIX) or midcap (GGSYX). Everyone manages their portfolio differently, e.g. "core and explore", multiple sleeves, covering style boxes, etc. You have to see what fits best in your portfolio.
Personally, my own style is more to look at foreign funds (combined with domestic funds) than at global funds. So I'd be less inclined to use Grandeur Peak global funds in a portfolio, possibly looking instead at GISYX. But for the purpose of this thread (a single desert island fund), I'd take a global equity or global allocation fund.

Hi Skeeter!
Thanks for the x-ray. The 40% stocks will rise as money is added. As for the PE of 19.1.....no, I'm surprised it's so high. I have been buying things with low PE which is why overseas has grown so quickly. It is something I look at when buying or adding. As to how I monitor the portfolio, Fidelity has screens to do this. Think of it as a lower class of Morningstar. Also use Yahoo. There are no caps on a position. I try to move where there is value. But saying that, no more will the S&P index be 30% of my portfolio.....nor healthcare, as it once was. I'm less of a gunslinger now.....after all, I'm retired. This portfolio is just my IRA, taxable money is in CDs with Ally and MDISX. Mrs. Pudd's 401 is in TSP (Thrift Savings Plan). We will roll that into an IRA upon her retirement. Where I am positioning looking for value.....I will say most new money will go overseas right now. What would I share? How hard it is to wait for value (i.e., pullback or, better yet, a correction!) to add new money in a market that has parts overvalued, I believe. Returns? I want more than 4% for sure. I did do a primitive back test, but I'm not sure I remember the number, so I won't say.
Hi Derf!
Yeah, it's hard. Value is driving where I'm adding so it's mostly overseas. PARWX was still reasonable at about PE 15 a while back. I started in 7-12-17 with over 50% cash, so it's a journey. Right now, I'm pausing to get some coverage on my buys before adding again.....where is a correction when you want one? lol......
MikeM,
I see what you're saying. But, as I'm adding, things are getting skewed because of where value is. I will say this: the funds that have "done" next to them are core: VWINX, PONDX, FSPHX. These following funds are a core wrap around.....they would have to stumble badly to be sold: PRBLX, PARWX, GIBLX, FMIJX, GLFOX.
Art,
Yeah, you're right. Small caps were sold after the Trump Bump as they then started to deteriorate. In January, I thought them overpriced and still do, as with other parts of the market. As far as real estate, that fund is not typical in its holdings. That's why I like it....but that's just me.
God bless
the Pudd

I think you can buy KCMTX at Schwab, but the ER is 1.62% for the R-1 shares, at a minimum purchase of $100. Schwab sells Driehaus funds at low minima also, even though that company’s website would have you believe the minimum is 10K.

hmgodwin

A concern about the Launch Alert for American Beacon Shapiro Equity Opportunities Fund: There is almost no relevant information about the fund besides the strategy seems to have done well for the past decade-plus. There is almost no one who is going to put money into such fund without knowing what is currently in it or at least some examples of what used to be in the strategy during certain time periods.

Thanks for your comments.
Because the funds only recently launched, we will not see relevant information until EOY 4Q2017. Most new funds will not have current information available immediately after launch, and so this is as expected.
On the other hand, while investors may be unwilling to invest in these funds without knowing what is currently in them, ten years of detailed quarterly commentary for both private strategies are available from the firm. These commentaries have significant explanatory depth and clearly communicate specific stock positions, the reasons for owning, selling, or holding them, how discrete segments of the portfolio are constituted, and how current market conditions affect their positioning and outlook -- in other words -- we know what has been in them from detailed facts about how the strategies are being managed, not only currently, but also historically.
This year the Observer has done three launch alerts of new funds that have begun from successful predecessor strategies. The ones from Shapiro are the fourth. The launch alerts are not recommendations to buy these funds but are intended to provide relevant background, such as composite strategies, so that we can decide what potential they may have for investment based on what is already known.
The 3Q2017 commentary of the Shapiro composite strategies was released October 26th. While they don't discuss the new funds, they do provide information about some specific holdings replete with their usual overall depth about the strategies -- a helpful analysis in seeing how the new funds may be invested.

We thought we’d start catching up with the 130 U.S. equity funds which have passed their second anniversary but have not yet reached their third, which is when conventional trackers such as Morningstar and Lipper pick them up. As Charles has repeatedly demonstrated, the screener at MFO Premium allows you to answer odd and interesting questions. I’ll try to look at several questions over the next week, starting with “which of these new funds might be badly miscategorized?”
That’s an important question, since investors tend to buy the (Morning)stars. In general, that’s an okay decision: five star funds rarely become stinkers, one star funds rarely become gems. Except when a fund has gotten dropped in an inappropriate peer group, so that Morningstar is looking at a banana and trying to judge it as an apple. Our two favorite examples are RiverPark Short Term High Yield (RPHYX) and Zeo Strategic Income (ZEOIX). Both are outstanding at what they do: generate low single-digit returns (say, 2-4%) with negligible volatility. And both get one star from Morningstar because they’re being benchmarked against funds with very different characteristics.
How did we check for miscategorized funds? Simple, we get our screener to identify all U.S. equity funds that had been around for under three years. We downloaded that to Excel, eliminated funds with under two years of history then sorted them by their correlation to their peers. We found that over half of the funds were indexes or closet indexes (correlations over 95, with some “active” funds at 98). Just six funds, three active and three index, had correlations under 75.
Cambria Value and Momentum ETF (VAMO, as in Vamoose?) has the lowest correlation (0.43) with peers of any of the two-year-olds; Lipper thinks it's a large cap value fund. Why should you care? Because a low correlation with the peer group raises the prospect that a fund has been miscategorized and it makes it very likely that any rating it receives – positive or negative – will be unreliable. One illustration of that possibility: 5 of 6 six low correlation funds trail their peer group with VAMO lagging by 14% annually. Does that mean they’re bad funds? No, it means that its strengths and weakness can’t be predicted from its peer group.
The other two-year-olds with peer group correlations under 0.75 so far:
HTDIX Hanlon Tactical Dividend and Momentum Fund (Lipper: Equity Income)
PTMC Pacer Trendpilot 450 ETF (Mid-Cap Core)
BMVIX* Baird Small/Mid Cap Value Fund (Small-Cap Core)
PTLC Pacer Trendpilot 750 ETF (Large-Cap Core)
FSUVX Fidelity SAI US Minimum Volatility Index Fund (Multi-Cap Core)
Note: BMVIX is actually just shy of 2 years through October, but I want to touch on it for December commentary.
Next up: two-year-olds leading their packs.
David

FYI: For the past 20 years or so, as a business columnist for The New York Times, I’ve had a front-row seat for bull and bear markets, scandals, crises and management mischief.
But I am leaving The Times, and this is my last shot at Fair Game. So it seems a fitting moment to look back at what’s changed and what hasn’t in the financial world, for better or worse.
Regards,
Ted
https://www.nytimes.com/2017/11/10/business/after-20-years-of-financial-turmoil-a-columnists-last-shot.html?rref=collection/sectioncollection/business&action=click&contentCollection=business&region=rank&module=package&version=highlights&contentPlacement=1&pgtype=sectionfront

@msf, you're right about the fund but the question is how much reality should we suspend for a decision that isn't very realistic to begin with. There are other funds people would have chosen that are closed to new investors and picking a single fund for the next 15 years isn't really a model for diversification, admitting that some of the choices would be far better than others just in terms of being reasonably diversified. I don't think GPMCX is a bad choice and while I'd agree with you on growth vs. value these guys are GRP guys and that makes me more comfortable. The thing I'd think long and hard about is how big can the fund get before it's a lot more difficult to pursue their stated purpose. The fund was started at roughly $25 million 2 years ago and it's now $41 million according to M*. If it doubles in 7 years plus the contributions existing investors are allowed to make, does $80 or $100 million make pursuing the tiniest of the tiny a lot more difficult. They currently have 187 holdings and the average market cap of their holdings is $326 million. That's $200K on average and suggests to me they could deal with more assets as long as the float isn't a small percentage of the market caps. Nothing suggests a big problem to me in the few minutes I worked on it but that's what I'd be focused on.

There's some ambiguity in the question. Does owning a fund for 10-15 years mean only that one doesn't make changes, or does it also imply that one is investing with the intent to draw from the fund after 10-15 years?
jlev seems to take the former view - starting at age 31, the portfolio could still have many years to go past the 15 year target before getting tapped. In that case, a more aggressive, pure equity fund would be a reasonable choice. No disagreement on that broad perspective.
Ted is hooked on growth funds (we've had this exchange before). Value and growth tend to take turns leading, but the alternations can be glacial. Personally, I wouldn't bet the farm on growth over the next fifteen years considering the long run that growth has already had. So in that sense I'd disagree with GPMCX.
Note that even existing shareholders can't buy much of GPMCX. From the prospectus:
"Fund is closed to both new and existing investors seeking to purchase shares of the Fund either directly or through third party intermediaries, subject to certain exceptions for participants in certain qualified retirement plans with an existing position in the Fund and direct shareholders with existing accounts who may purchase up to the amount of the current IRA catch up limit per year in additional shares, regardless of account type."

"The interesting thing about this kind of lending is that from a legal perspective two mutual funds even if they're run by the same manager are separate investment companies ..."
How deep into the weeds do we want to go? :-)
These days, many funds are structured as separate series of a common trust. For example, Fidelity Contra (FCNTX) is a series of a trust containing FCNTX, FNITX, FVWSX, and FAMGX.
While Fidelity funds are generally organized as Massachusetts trusts, most series trusts are Delaware trusts. Here's a somewhat old (Feb 2009) but likely still accurate description of Delaware trusts. On p. 3 is a section entitled "Is a Series of a Delaware Statutory Trust Functionally a Separate Legal Entity?" The authors note that the law isn't crystal clear, but that various facts they present lead "the authors to conclude that a series of a Delaware statutory trust is not a separate legal entity and does not possess many of the characteristics often associated with separate legal entities."
Of particular note for Delaware trusts is that the "ability to limit the liabilities of a series is not an inherent attribute of a series—it is only available to statutory trusts that comply with the requirements of Section 3804(a)." Of course virtually all mutual fund series trusts do comply with the legal requirements. But this raises the interesting possibility that if fund A (MMF) lends cash to fund B (stock/bond fund) in the same trust, then the lender might not be assuming more risk. It might have already been on the hook for B's debts, even before lending money.
The Delaware doc cited observes that "the limitation of interseries liability provided in Section 3804(a) has not been interpreted by any Delaware court, so whether equitable or other exceptions are applicable is unclear." In plain English, even though funds may comply with the statute to keep each fund's liabilities separate, there may nevertheless be reasons why a court would hold fund A liable for fund B's debts.
You'll find the same sort of formalities for Massachusetts trusts explained in the Contra SAI I linked to above. There it says that "Under Massachusetts law, shareholders of such a trust may, under certain circumstances, be held personally liable for the obligations of the trust. Each Declaration of Trust contains an express disclaimer of shareholder liability for the debts, liabilities, obligations, and expenses of the trust or fund."
Bottom line is the same as in your column: if anything goes wrong, “It will be a bonanza for the lawyers.” That's even before one gets to a fund lending another money.