FYI: Gold-rated Dodge & Cox Stock’s seasoned team, low fees, and decisive value approach have led to enviable long-term results.
Regards,
Ted
http://news.morningstar.com/articlenet/article.aspx?id=815776

Reminder that with PRPFX you are paying an active management fee for almost no active management. This fund historically has done better than equities alone during bear markets, during periods of stable interest rates, and when gold is soaring. And it has a history of hot money flowing in and out rather dramatically. It went from $1 billion to almost $17 billion from 2007 to 2012, then has dropped to $2 billion now. That amount of wild money flow is an issue for active managers, especially when they are not very active.

I have no reason to believe Foster has suddenly taken dumb pills. He has ably managed dollars for my clients and me for about 10 years, first at MAPIX and with SIGIX since he started that fund. I frankly do not care if the fund under-performs during an EM bull market. It is up about 12% year to-date. I'll gladly take that. The way bigger test for me is when EM is struggling, as they did in 2013, 2014, 2015, and even 2016 to some extent. In those years, SIGIX came through as I expected it would. If you bought SIGIX for outsized gains during EM bull markets, you bought the wrong fund. That is not how the fund is run. While I am sure Andy would like to be at the top this year, and that he is frustrated to be near the bottom, that does not bother me one bit.

Another way to play the "Innovators" Concept is with IWIRX , more than just Asia, it is global and beats MATFX in 1, 3, 5 10 and 15 years. It has not done as well as MATFX ytd, but worth looking at if you like the Innovators concept. I own it and plan on keeping it for the long haul, recently added to it. There is an interview with David Snowball a few years ago on MFO.
http://www.mutualfundobserver.com/2014/08/guinness-atkinson-global-innovators-iwirx-august-2014/

It looks like they all did only that some did it better than the others. The only trouble I have is the usual and customary past performance is ..... blah-blah.

Yeah - Me too. If humans lived to be 300 and spent 100 years in retirement these kinds of simulations would be a lot easier. Market cycles are more predictable over 100 years.
Just for fun, from January, 1992:
Dow - around 3000.
NASDAQ - around 600
10-year Treasury - around 7%
Gold - around $350
Never considered PRPFX an income fund. Not sure why it was included. If anything, it's a "wild card" - liable to do almost anything over 25 years - with the potential to hold up better during periods of unusual financial stress due to investments in precious metals (25%) and Swiss Francs (10%).
Personally, I don't think in these terms (generating income in retirement). Probably because my overall positioning is quite conservative, having a lot of hybrid products, I pull distributions "off the top" without the concern about market fluctuations many voice. (That's not to say I don't include income generating investments for diversification within the whole mix.) Guess my approach is quite unorthodox - based on board discussions.
@Mark - I hope @ Old_Joe gives us the color of those things he never thinks about. :)

@catch22 - I think you misconstrued the point of the article/exercise. The exercise was to determine how these 4 funds would hold up over a 25 year withdrawal period assuming a 4% withdrawal rate with a 3% inflation kicker each year of withdrawal.
Set up another way lets say you decide to quit working in 1992, so you take all of your savings ($100K), plop it down in one of these funds, and then withdraw the 4% and the added 3% of that over the next 25 years. Will any or all of the funds hold up?
It looks like they all did only that some did it better than the others. The only trouble I have is the usual and customary past performance is ..... blah-blah.
It was just a barebones look at the numbers, a "what if" if you will.

FYI: In a bull market (the current one reached its eighth birthday in March), mutual fund managers can find many ways to win. In the second quarter, three of the better-performing stock funds scored with picks as varied as well-known technology companies, micro-cap stocks and Asian innovators.
Regards,
Ted
https://www.nytimes.com/2017/07/14/business/mutfund/ways-of-winning-in-a-bull-market.html

Hi again @bee
Opps, you did have the question; which fund?
I would vote VWINX, too. We have some money in this fund.
A chart compare of the 4 funds starting with Jan. 1999.
A few points:
---one may see the market melt area
---also reactions to the U.S. AAA downgrade in July of 2011
---there was also a bond blip/psuedo sell off in mid-July, 2015
Also, that after the begin of the U.S. recovery in markets in March of 2009; Europe in particular, but also Japan were still very twitchy markets for several years after and for whatever reason, as I recall, most of the market jerks were in the late spring months. We know that Europe has just began to find some favor within the last 9-12 months.
PRPFX seems to have had a stumbling time since early 2011.
USBLX and GLRBX appear to have flattened a bit from early 2015.
Jan. 2015 to date:
---USBLX = +15.3%
---VWINX = +14.7%
---PRPFX = +7.7%
---GLRBX = +3.6%
The last two above remind me of VILLX , which was a very decent fund and then fell on its face in 2014 and 2015 and has not been very happy since. I read about investment rotations with this fund moving more into sm/mid cap and apparently the fund is still stuck in a funk.
http://stockcharts.com/freecharts/perf.php?VWINX,PRPFX,USBLX,GLRBX&n=4662&O=011000
Regards,
Catch

My daughter starts college this fall and it is completely funded by a 529 account. Knowing that we have only 18 years investment horizon, we started a month after arrived once we got her social security number. We continue to invest through the ups and down including the 2007 downturn. Thanks to monthly automatic investment and many discussion on this board. And it all pays off now.

Hi @bee
A few quick observations, with a quick read of the article, as outside chores await.
---Writer didn't note whether the investments are all, any or partial IRA monies
---Writer didn't note any other income/living sources
---Writer didn't state age....over 59 1/2 ???
I don't follow why the writer moves the dividends to a money market account. This move skews all of the data work he did with his graphics. How the hell does he think the 25 years of data he noted arrived? Not from removing distributions.
If these monies were rollovers into IRA's or mostly IRA's at the time of his write, he wold be required to pull about 4% after age 70 1/2. We don't have any reference to any of this.
I could not offer any opinion or suggestion to this writer, as there isn't enough information provided.
Regards,
Catch

Hi @Old_Skeet
First, we have not been front or back loaded fund investors, and have never used an advisor. I recall discussions with a friend back in the early 80's about an investment club he helped organize and they were going to use a local Merrill-Lynch broker/office. Others here or you may help with this; but I recall some of the mutual funds under consideration with ML had loads as high as 8%. Is this accurate from the early 80's?
We steered all of our personal investments to Fidelity and never had any investments with the big money houses of the day with the front/rear loaded funds.
Note: for the newer investors, Fidelity did have loads on some funds (3%) and I have a list stashed away somewhere in a filing cabinet from the way back days.
Secondly, a question about your loaded fund investments; at least your long ago initial purchases.
A presumption on my part of how the front loads may work:
Example: Fund "x" has a front load of 5%.
I will presume at some monetary level one no longer pays any load to add more money to the "same" fund? I'm guessing at levels, but perhaps the first $2,500, $5,000 or $10,000 of monies has the full load and then the load is no longer, yes?
The only clear status of the loads that I understand is payment, at least in part; to a/the firm and/or an advisor for their work.
Anyway, would appreciate your description of how this works or did work.
Regards,
Catch

Hi @Derf,
Not all the nav transfers were in retiremnt accounts as ira accounts were not available (I believe) until sometime in the 80's. And, I started investing during my early teenage years around 1960. Therefore, some nav transfers were subject to capital gain taxation on profits.
Skeet

@Benwp If it came across as I was suggesting you specifically were attacking the fund, I apologize. I was referring to the general disappointment of the top three posts and the suggestion of dumping the fund by year-end. That kind of short-term underperformance in a raging bull for emerging markets in 2017 is not enough in my view to throw in the towel if you believe in this manager's defensive process. The fund is functioning as designed. A better sell sign to me would be if it started lagging during a downturn in emerging markets. I guess what I'm saying to everyone, not specifically you, is don't expect a golden glove winning short stop to hit home runs. This is not the right environment for this fund to outperform.

A Rod won a couple golden gloves AND hit home runs :)

Hello,
Thanks @carew38 for the question.
No, I was never charged an additional sales charge that I remember. This is not to say all my purchases were in bond funds which got moved to equities. The way I learned to do this was through a seasonal investment strategy where during the late spring I'd do some nav exchanges from equity funds to bond funds. During the summer months I'd buy more of the bond type funds; and, then come fall I'd move some back to the equity type funds. Nothing was ever said, to me, nor was I charged any additional commission and/or fees to do these nav transfers other than the commission I paid when additional shares of the bond or stock funds were purchased. With this, I started to purchase more bond funds than equity funds and made portfolio adjustments through more and more nav transfers from bond funds to equity funds. And, I did this for a good number of years. Now, in retirement I am doing less and less new purchases; however, I am moving a good bit of money from all equity funds to some hybrid type funds (over time) rather than to bond funds. I am wanting to grow my footprint in hybrid funds by about one percent per year while reducing all equity fund holdings by a like amount. Currently, about 20% of my portfolio is in cash and cds, about 10% in bond funds, about 45% in hybrid funds and the remaining 25%, or so, in equity funds. When Xrayed this produces an asset allocation of about 20+% cash, about 30% domestic equity, about 20% foreign equity, about 25% bonds and about 5% other. Notice I used the word "about" a good bit because the percentages are rounded to the nearest 5% whole number. As the equity allocation contines to grow I periodically rebalance and move some equity money to hybrid money through nav exchanges. In doing this the hybrid type funds generally have a broader investment universe that they can invest in over other fund types giving the hybird fund manager leadway within ranges, of course, to position into assets classes they feel will offer the better returns and/or offer a more complete investment package. This makes my overall portfolio more adaptive to the ever changing investment environment more automatic whether due to seasonal trends and/or investment activity in the markets by other investors relative to positioning.
For me, one of the better benefits for A share investors is the ability to do nav exchange transfers without paying additional sales charges. I believe the level load funds many classified as T shares do not offer the free nav exchange transfer option.
I hope this somewhat lengthy answer is helpful to understand how and why nav exchanges were made along with cost associated, for me, with these nav transfers.

@Old_Skeet-when you paid the lower sales charge on the bond funds, did the brokerage ever charge you the higher sales charge when you moved into the stock funds? I know I wish I had been willing to pay the 5% sales charge on SGENX in 1993.

@Benwp If it came across as I was suggesting you specifically were attacking the fund, I apologize. I was referring to the general disappointment of the top three posts and the suggestion of dumping the fund by year-end. That kind of short-term underperformance in a raging bull for emerging markets in 2017 is not enough in my view to throw in the towel if you believe in this manager's defensive process. The fund is functioning as designed. A better sell sign to me would be if it started lagging during a downturn in emerging markets. I guess what I'm saying to everyone, not specifically you, is don't expect a golden glove winning short stop to hit home runs. This is not the right environment for this fund to outperform.

FYI: Vinson Walden and Brian McMahon, who manage the Thornburg Global Opportunities Fund, picked through the rubble in the U.K. stock market after last year’s Brexit vote to find golden opportunities. Walden said they’re still making most of the mutual fund’s new investments outside the U.S.
The Thornburg Global Opportunities Fund is run by Thornburg Investment Management of Santa Fe, New Mexico. The $2.3 billion fund is able to buy securities anywhere in the world, including the U.S. The portfolio is concentrated, typically holding 40 or fewer stocks.
Regards,
Ted
http://www.marketwatch.com/story/managers-of-23-billion-global-fund-turn-away-from-the-us-2017-07-14/print
M* Snapshot THOAX:
http://www.morningstar.com/funds/XNAS/THOAX/quote.html
Lipper snapshot THOAX:
http://www.marketwatch.com/investing/fund/thoax
THOAX Is Ranked #9 In The (WS) Fund Category By U.S. News & World Report:
https://money.usnews.com/funds/mutual-funds/world-stock/thornburg-global-opportunities-fund/thoax

Yea, even with my own millennials it's hard to convince them that investing in the tried and true hitters who spray it all over the field year after year is a better bet than the hitter who cranks out a grand slam once every 5-10 years.
However, if they wanted to construct an investing motif of their five to ten best tech stock ideas I wouldn't discourage them.

I don't give a hoot about meeting any particular performance benchmark but my own.
If a fund I hold gains 16% and everyone else gains 25% in a given year, I am not worried; it's still a very solid rate of return imho. Conversely, if a given fund loses significantly less than everyone else, I will chalk that up as a 'win' for the year, as it shows some concern over downside risks and/or good allocations.
And besides, one year does not matter if you're a long-term fund investor. Unless you're in a bubble, not everything moves equally and in the same direction at all times.

Attacking the fund in this environment is a failure to understand Foster's strategy. He is a defensive risk-averse emerging markets investor. When the average emerging fund is up 21.5% in 6 1/2 months like in 2017, this fund will probably lag. Anyone complaining about its 16.5% return instead of 21.5% is suffering from a bit of irrational exuberance. Foster ran Matthews Asian Growth & Income for six years with the same defensive strategy. It too would lag in go-go markets and shine in more stable or bearish ones.