@davidmoran,Mr Sherman encouraged investors to contact DblL for any ???s concerning the funds.The slides were informative and the presentation gave me a better understanding of the Cape Enhanced Strategy.Mr Sherman did not address the under performance of the new fund but it was shown on a couple of the slides.The slides are probably available today, but without Mr Sherman's comments. I just became an investor in the domestic strategy within the past 6 month's ,thanks to you and other posters here.
From DL this PM
Shiller Enhanced CAPE® and Shiller Enhanced International CAPE® Webcast replay
The replay will be available in 5-7 business days. I have added your email to our notification list and you will receive word when it posts to the site.
Thank you,
Leena Park
Investor Services
DoubleLine Capital LP || 333 S. Grand Avenue, 18th Floor || Los Angeles, CA 90071
direct 213.633.8498 || main 213.633.8200 || [email protected]
This might be an automated email link *
[email protected]
Hello,
*Once the presentation begins, please send me a copy of the slides.

My bond exposure is mostly in funds that are invested in higher yield (which are less affected by interest rates), or have an unconstrained mandate (which can benefit from rising interest rates since they can move to negative duration). I also have multisector funds which will also make the bond allocation decisions. The rest of my "safe" money, at least in my 401k, is in a stable value fund. Although funds with higher yielding bonds are not completely safe, I am more concerned with interest rate risk than credit risk right now.

OS: "The article does not state wheather there is a wrap fee on the account that would hold F1 shares or a transaction fee for the purchases themselves. I'm thinking, there are going to be some fees somewhere associated with F share purchases"
Repeating myself: Schwab and Fidelity offer 57 American Funds NTF (e.g. CIBFX at Schwab and at Fidelity). This is a new arrangement that was set up a couple of months ago.
Check out the links I provided. If Schwab were to add fees on its AF NTF funds, it would be cheapening its OneSource™ brand and SelectList® service. I realize that one should be suspicious of things that seem too good to be true, but given that lots of other load families are making their funds available load-waved, NTF, but carrying 0.25% 12b-1 fees, does this move by AF really seem too good to be true, or just good?
BobC: "C-class shares should be outlawed. "
While I concur with the sentiment, I fail to see the difference between class C and wrap accounts. I'll use the same fund as above: Capital Income Builder, to compare.
Class C (CIBCX):      1.40% ER + 0% advisor costs = 1.40% total cost of ownership
Wrap/Class F-2 (CAIFX): 0.40% ER + 1% wrap fee = 1.40% total cost of ownership
Wrap/Class F-1 (CIBFX): 0.67% ER + 1% wrap fee = 1.67% total cost of ownership
Reverse churning appears to be a similar risk either way.

My new favorite song!!

@ VF Mr Sherman did not discuss the International version@ length .Only includes Euro region. NOT hedged. Only uses performance data since the dawn of the common currency.Both funds bond duration around 1.8 %.DoubleLine opines that the US strategy can handle $20 bln in assets. DblL has 1st refusal for an E T F utilizing the strategy.Barclays has an E T N @ present.Didn't get the symbol.
The biggest mystery to me is what happened to Mr Gundlach's "Just Markets" webby from January 10, 2017 The website has no link or mention of it.
Edit/Add
E T N http://etn.barclays.com/US/7/en/etnsnapshot.app?instrumentId=174066
http://etn.barclays.com/US/7/en/details.app?instrumentId=174066
The replay is under compliance review.
http://www.doublelinefunds.com/webcasts/

Linked below is an interesting article (January 30, 2017) by Kiplinger on American Funds F1 shares and where they can currently be purchased without a sales charge. The article does not state wheather there is a wrap fee on the account that would hold F1 shares or a transaction fee for the purchases themselves. I'm thinking, there are going to be some fees somewhere associated with F share purchases.
http://www.kiplinger.com/article/investing/T041-C007-S001-how-to-buy-american-funds-without-a-sales-charge.html

I was invested through 1994 when Fed (Alan Greenspan) raised rates 6 times. Bond lost 3% that year, BUT all asset classes rocketed from 1995 to 2000 when tech bubble.
Remember that we have a very different Fed Chairman today, Janet Yellen. My opinion is that I don't anticipate 6 rate hikes this year. Thus I will continue to keep moderate % to bond - intermediate and high quality. Also stable value fund is a better choice than money market if you have access to it.

This is the best thing that's happened to retirement accounts and its owners. Imagine people everywhere day trading ETFs. Their already disastrous investment results would become worse.
Any libertarians out here who want the "freedom" to do this in their 401ks?

FYI: ETFs comprised 0.02% of 401(k) assets.
Regards,
Ted
http://www.marketwatch.com/story/retirement-accounts-a-holy-grail-that-remain-out-of-reach-for-etfs-2017-02-06/print

Thank you all. I'm looking at Balanced and Global Balanced at this time. They seem to have deliver the smoothest ride. F1 shares are still cheaper than other like funds. Options at TIAA are limited in NTF space.

It's apocryphally repeated among English majors that when, in the late 1950s, some professors (Yale, I believe) drove up to the Hartford accident and indemnity insurance company where the great poet Wallace Stevens had worked for 40y until his recent death, to collect papers and other pertinent whatnot from his VP office, his longtime secretary responded to their introduction with "Wally? Poetry?"

Hi @BobC
From Mr. Gross.......the expansion of central bank balance sheets from perhaps $2 trillion in 2003 to a now gargantuan $12 trillion at the end of 2016 is remarkable. Not only did central banks buy $10 trillion of bonds, but they lowered policy rates to near 0%
and in some cases, negative yields.
>>>Apparently the notations from Mr. Gross regarding central bank balance sheets and related central bank thoughts from Mr. Gross, have no barring upon anything we investors should concern ourselves.
The phrase of the day going forward thus becomes: "Please move along folks, there is nothing to see here."
Regards,
Catch

@Old Skeet said, "use to own WASAX (Ivy Asset Strategy) years back when it was nimble enough to reposition from time-to-time towards the faster moving market currents"
@briboe69 WASAX had $35 billion in assets a few years ago, and now is down to $5 billion - wow! There is nothing a manager can do when the outflows are that large.
@kevindow had a good thumb nail on WASAX's former manager's new fund in this post from last week
@TSP_Transfer,
Thanks for the tip on CCAPX, which is an interesting global allocation fund, but really not in the ALT space. The CCAPX manager, Ryan Caldwell, served as the assistant manager of WASAX when it was on top of the world (1/2007 - 6/2014), and during his tenure, this fund beat the heavy hitters like MALOX and SGIIX, and even the wannabes, like WGRNX.
Test trading for CCAPX indicates that it is not available at Scottrade and Wellstrade, but it is available in TDAmeritrade and Fidelity retirement accounts with no minimum + TF. At an actual 1.15% expense ratio, this fund has very reasonable expenses.
Kevin
https://www.chironfunds.com
https://www.chironfunds.com/Data/Sites/3/media/docs/Chiron_FactSheet.pdfhttps
https://www.chironfunds.com/Data/Sites/3/media/docs/Chiron_Portfolio_Composition.pdf
http://www.mutualfundobserver.com/discuss/discussion/comment/84694/#Comment_84694

What's an investor to do ?

@Derf - 80% of the time: nothing
10% of the time: buy low and sell high
10% of the time: sell high and buy low
Just my humble opinion. Good luck!

Hi Guys,
I want to especially thank Hank and Lewis Braham for their thoughtful and thought provoking posts. I fully understand and appreciate the time commitment and deep thinking required to produce such excellent submittals. Their perspectives might not totally agree with all MFOers, but the diversity of opinion is what makes MFO so useful.
Data is the bedrock for investment decisions. Braham especially emphasized the market conditions when active fund management might add Alpha to a portfolio. SPIVA reviews the relative performance differences between actively managed funds and Index outcomes. Here is the SPIVA Link to their 2016 end of year report:
https://us.spindices.com/documents/spiva/persistence-scorecard-december-2016.pdf?force_download=true
It's a tough uphill road for active management and persistence is particularly challenging.
MFOer msf and I have been discussing John Neff's fund management performance in a running exchange on this thread.
It appears that he and I would choose to assess a fund manager's lifetime performance differently. That's not surprising since an assessment set of criteria was never established. Some measurement standard needs to be defined.
Based on his submittal, he would elect to evaluate a manager's lifetime achievements over several selected timeframes. I would choose the manager's overall record.
If you were a potential investor in 1985, it would have been difficult to ignore Neff's VWNDX performance of 20 years up to that point. It was superb. His relative record did slip a little thereafter but it was far from a disaster. Most importantly, projecting future returns is impossible. It's not a bad idea to cut a little slack for a proven winner if he subsequently stumbles. Slumps happen.
That policy paid dividends for me during Sumday's Super Bowl game. Tom Brady is a proven winner. I believed he and the Patriots would be winners before the starting kickoff. Brady had a miserable first half. The odds against a Pats victory lengthened and I took them. As you all know, Brady and the team rallied in the second half. Great for him and good for me. Recovery happened.
Do you assess his performance on the distinctive two halfs or for the entire game? The completed game is what matters. The final score and not the quarter-by-quarter scoring matters completely. Taken over multiple games, it's the total cumulative record that counts in winning a league championship and not a single game. The same is true in the investment world.
Best Wishes.

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.

What's simple about the three index portfolio is the costs--both management fees and trading costs. There is no question this is an advantage over higher cost actively managed funds. But in other respects three total market index funds are not so simple as they appear. Consider how complicated a portfolio of thousands of stocks or bonds is and understanding the various micro and macroeconomic factors driving those securities. Perhaps it is not so simple as an old-fashioned actively managed fund with fifty stocks picked based on valuation/business prospects--micro--and economic trends--macro--the rationale for owning those specific securities the manager explains--or should explain if he/she is decent--in shareholder letters.
Just saying with an index fund "I get the market's return" is fine and "simple" so long as markets are rising. During that period, you don't have to care what the factors are driving that performance. But meanwhile the portfolio in your index fund is shifting dramatically. The Russell 3000 index of January 2000 during the dotcom bubble was vastly different in its sector composition and stock weights from the Russell 3000 of January 2003 after the stock bust. And until the crash occurred you didn't have to care. But there's nothing really simple about the underlying dynamics of index funds.
This leads me to my second point on a more practical level. There are certain environments where total market index funds will invariably shine versus actively managed ones and understanding those environments can help with your investment strategy:
1. When large cap stocks are beating small, total market stock indexes will beat active managers as these index funds are market cap weighted so the largest companies drive their performance. Active managers tend to buy smaller companies.
2. When stock markets are rising it's harder for active managers to win as they generally hold some cash and their fees act as a drag on top of that. The longer the stock market rises the worse the comparison between active and passive will be. So now we're in February of 2017--eight years into a bull market that began in March of 2009. Of course, total market index funds will look really strong right now.
3. The narrower the breadth of the stocks rising in a rising stock market the worse the comparison between active and passive will be. This is typically what happens as bubbles reach their peak. Just a handful of bellwether stocks--in 1999 it was Cisco, Worldcom, Intel, etc.--drive the market higher. Active managers--especially valuation conscious active managers--that don't hold those stocks lag. This is when you should be looking at stats like the advance/decline ratio.
4. Stock dispersion and correlation also can affect active managers. If stocks are all moving in the same direction and have similar daily variation in returns--so not only if the stock market is up 1%, do all stocks go up but all stocks go up about 1%, it is harder for active managers to differentiate themselves. So if we're in a low dispersion/high correlation market--all stocks rising and falling together about the same amount--it is virtually impossible for active managers to beat index funds after deducting their fees.
So as you can see, this is a tough game, not simple at all, from both an active or passive side. But simply buying and forgetting about a three index fund portfolio in 2017, after an eight year stock market rally, with valuations stretched and with interest rates near historic lows and set to rise--not to mention a heightened level of geopolitical risk-- seems a fool's errand. What's going on underneath the hood of those index funds is immensely complex.

From review of the chart ...
Interesting ... Seems a lot of Edward Jones advisors must be pushing their firms Bridge Builder Small/Mid Cap Value Fund through selling their firms Advisor Solutions Program.
Seems, Jones is on the move towards managed money. As I understand, this fund can only be purchased through thier advisor; and, only if you opt to be a part of their Advisor Solutions Program. To me, this fund, as well as other Bridge Builder Funds, could potentially suffer from asset bloat.
I use to own WASAX (Ivy Asset Strategy) years back when it was nimble enough to reposition from time-to-time towards the faster moving market currents without market dislocations. Overtime, this fund, because of its good performance, became asset bloated and began to falter. So, I moved away from it into another world allocation fund years back after the 2010 Flash Crash where Ivy Asset Strategy allegedly flushed a large number of S&P E-Mini contracts into the system. When buyers dried up the flash crowd computers began massive sells and the markets crashed. Now, it seems, others are moving away from the fund. Currently at 5 Billion in assets I'm thinking it is still too large to run the type of strategies it did when I owned it. I might invest in it again if it were to reach a size where it could become more nimble moving back towards a more aggressive style of positioning.
And, what's up with folks moving away from Dodge & Cox Stock Fund? Is it asset bloat?
And, furthermore, seems likes Americn Funds has some good funds getting kicked to the curb as well.
Perhaps, too many investors chase good performance rather than position for it.
Makes me wonder?
Skeet

C-class shares should be outlawed. NO ONE except the broker benefits from these. If this is the only way some investors can eventually get to F-class shares, go somewhere else. It wasn't very long ago that folks who were sold C-class shares were told "these are no-commission funds". Yeah, no upfront load. Just a killer annual 12b-1 that goes to the broker-dealer and salesperson.

The Study: The author (Ben Carlson) based his article on a newly released NACUBO Study of Endowments (NCSE).http://www.nacubo.org/Documents/about/pressreleases/2016 NCSE Press Release FINAL.pdf
Overview:
Over the past 10 years the Vanguard Portfolio (an index-based model comprised of 60% equities and 40% bonds) beat the performance of the average college endowment studied by about 1% per year (6% yearly for the Vanguard model and 5% yearly for the average endowment).
Unlike the Vanguard model, the endowments invested substantially in alternative investments. The amount so allocated varied by size of endowment, and was highest (58% of invested assets) for endowments over 1 billion dollars.
Author's Conclusions and Assertions:
(1) The author states that he was surprised by the results because the endowments are considered more "sophisticated" than the Vanguard balanced index. (He seems to equate using alternative investments with "sophistication").
(2) He notes that the higher costs of alternative and actively managed investments partially explain the underperformance of the endowments.
(3) He concludes that "sophisticated" investments (i.e. alternative and actively managed investments) do not work as well as "simple" investments.
My Observations:
- 10 years is a very short time on to base such sweeping generalizations. The past decade was marked by both generally positive equity and bond markets. In particular, the rate on the U.S. 10-year Treasury bond fell from around 5% in 2007 to 2.45% at the end of 2016. (Interest rates and bond prices are negatively correlated.) Thus, the balanced index fund was helped by the dramatic fall in interest rates.
- Indexes don't think. So they didn't have to consider the damage a sharp rate reversal would have imparted on their value. But human investors do think. By diversifying into alternatives the endowment managers were mitigating risk (away from bonds). From a gambler's perspective those sticking stodgily to a 40% bond component were the true gamblers.
- Since indexes don't think, they didn't have to consider the damage a prolonged bear market in equities would have imparted on their value either. Human investors, as already established, do think. By diversifying into alternatives the managers were mitigating risk away from equities.
Use of Alternatives:
- Alternatives are much maligned. What are they? Broadly defined they are investments not thought to be closely correlated with equity or bond performance. One common alternative is hard assets (real estate, commodities, energy, precious metals). While not necessarily expensive to own, these investments are highly volatile. Commodities, as defined by the Goldman Sachs Commodity Index (GSCI), endured one of their worst bear markets in history over the 10 year period covered by the study, off more than 50% from their peak at one point in 2016. Another popular alternative is short-selling. This approach also suffered over the past decade as equity prices were generally positive (excepting 2007-2008). Additionally, short selling and various forms of derivative investing are quite expensive. By owning these alternatives an investor is in-effect buying "insurance" to protect against a steep market decline.
Final Thoughts:
- Generally, a 100% equity based index should outperform most alternatives (including bonds) given a long enough time frame (but 10 years is painfully short). By logical extension (given a multi-decade time frame) lower cost index funds should prevail. I've no argument there - if one wants to assume the risk inherent in equities. I suspect that under normal circumstances the 60/40 Vanguard Portfolio represents significantly less risk than an all-equity portfolio and would be a prudent investment for many. However, in an era of ultra-low interest rates the risks were (and remain) considerably elevated.
- Think of what the endowments did during the decade studied as hedging their bets. They bought insurance to protect their portfolios (and institutions) against potential steep declines in equities and/or bonds. It cost them about 1% per year (compared to the Vanguard index) to carry this insurance. Indexes don't think. So, they'd never perceive a need to carry insurance. Over the past decade the unthinking won out over the thinking. That's my take-away.