Oberweis International Opportunities Fund closing to new investors @LewisBraham... luckily I didn't own the fund then but using 2008 as the basis of your comment misses how they dealt with those losses. As Dr. Snowball reported in his 20
13 review of the fund, "Indeed, OBIOX in 20
13 isn’t even the OBIOX of 2009. During the 2007-09 market trauma, OBIOX suffered a 69.7% drop, well worse than their peers’ 57.7% decline. The manager was deeply dissatisfied with that performance and took concrete steps to strengthen his risk management disciplines. OBIOX is a distinctive fund and seems to have grown stronger."
That's not to suggest it can't still perform poorly but if you look at the upside and downside capture ratios over the last 3 and 5 years, they've done pretty well. To your point, the last
12 months haven't been great, but if you can deal with the volatility then the results over time have rewarded you with good risk adjusted returns.
One of the things that amazes me is the tax efficiency. It's a very high turnover fund, higher than I prefer by a lot, and M*'s tax cost ratio is very low. I haven't figured out exactly how they manage that based on the available information and I don't always trust M*'s numbers to tell me what I think they're telling me, but in absolute terms it's an impressive ratio that seems inconsistent with their turnover.
Artisan Global Discovery Fund in registration It's hard for me to get excited about Artisan. AT one time, we had rather large positions with Mid Cap and Mid Cap Value, as well as International. We sold out of Yockey's fund quite a while back, and it has really struggled to be relevant. We have used ICEIX for a long time now and have been very happy with it. Mid Cap had a great run with Andy Stephens at the helm. Both Mid Cap and Mid Cap Value have seen enormous swings in their asset bases. Value has gone from $10 billion in 2013 to $2 billion now. Not sure what is going on at Artisan, but with a couple of exceptions, there has been a large exodus of assets.
Oberweis International Opportunities Fund closing to new investors The language here is very strange. It reads like this is a hard close except for retirement accounts but it seems to include retail IRAs. It also includes advisor managed accounts but only for rebalancing. Am I reading that incorrectly? Do they really expect Fido or Schwab, E*TRADE or TD to block taxable accounts and allow IRAs? Maybe they have that capability but I don't think I've ever seen it before. And isn't restricting advisors to rebalancing a wide open door that's almost impossible to police? It means all the advisors and clients who follow rules no matter what will limit themselves while anyone who views rules with more flexibility can do what they want more or less. If the old studies are still accurate that should mean about 10% of advisors wouldn't consider being more flexible.
I own the fund in a rollover IRA for years and I've been a very happy camper. I just hope they'll let me continue to buy and sell as I desire.
