Peter Lynch: Inside The Brain Of An Investing Genius FYI: ( I owned Fuidelity Magellan from
1972-
1996 and made a lot of $$$ from Lynch's skill as Magellan's manager. It is the single best investment I ever made.)
Consider that Lynch’s Magellan fund averaged +29% per year from
1977 –
1990 (almost doubling the return of the S&P 500 index for that period). In
1977, the obscure Magellan Fund started with about $20 million, and by his retirement the fund grew to approximately $
14 billion (700x’s larger). Cynics believed that Magellan was too big to adequately perform at $
1, $2, $3, $5 and then $
10 billion, but Lynch ultimately silenced the critics. Despite the fund’s gargantuan size, over the final five years of Lynch’s tenure, Magellan outperformed 99.5% of all other funds, according to Barron’s. How did Magellan investors fare in the period under Lynch’s watch? A $
10,000 investment initiated when he took the helm would have grown to roughly $280,000 (+2,700%) by the day he retired. Not too shabby.
Regards,
Ted
http://investingcaffeine.com/2015/08/15/inside-the-brain-of-an-investing-genius-2/
Ford Retirement Plans To Pull $900 Million From Fidelity Contrafund
Helping Ted out ... with Art Cashin No need to thank me Ted.
http://kingworldnews.com/art-cashin-8-15-15/Art agrees with me that the Fed won't raise rates. But, they may raise because so they could cut in the future.
US economy weak.
Stocks - more lows than highs, not good
Countries and states going into technical default!
Japan slipping back
Fed money printing not working, but, the Fed might do it again - QE hasn't worked either
Deflationary pressures continue to win.
Be careful of high yield areas
Biggest fear - 'things to get out of control'
Long - guns, bullets, beans ...
Q&A With Marc Halle, Co-Manager, Prudential Real Estate Income Fund The manager thinks its a great time to invest in real estate... of course, he is paid to invest in real estate. If you pay me six figures to invest in Florida swamp land, I can make a case for that too. Would he tell you if he thought it was a cruddy time to invest in real estate? The link looks like a thinly-guised advertisement for this nascent fund.
This fund is brand-new -- opened in June 2015, so no operating history. Its paid one divd -- but the size of that divd may not be predictive of an ongoing yield. So if one is investing here for income, its WAY premature to do so --until a track record of consistent divds is available for evaluation...
For those looking for an explicity "income-focused REIT fund , Fidelity has a good, long-lived one (FRIFX). Though if I wanted an income focused REIT fund, I'd look at CEFs. Cohen & Steers have several. IGR is another good one (at least has been, historically). Prudential has a CEF too (PGZ), but it seems to be UNDER-earning its distribution, so I am not interested.
Why Millions Of Americans Should Hope For A Stock Market Crash FYI: I hope stocks fall. That might sound pretty strange. But not everybody should be cheering for the same team. In fact, about
125 million Americans should wish for stocks to stagnate, dip or downright crash. That’s roughly the population between the ages of 25 and 55. A smaller number of people (about 76 million) should prefer stocks to rise. That’s the population of Americans above the age of 55.
Regards,
Ted
http://assetbuilder.com/andrew_hallam/why_millions_of_americans_should_hope_for_a_stock_market_crash
3 Of The Best Actively Managed Fidelity Funds
Q&A With Marc Halle, Co-Manager, Prudential Real Estate Income Fund
Fearing Market Top, Fund Group Slashes Stock Weighting Just as a reminder: the core Leuthold funds always rely on a mix of tactical and strategic asset allocation. They change their equity weighting frequently, often by a few percent up or down. Those changes are triggered by changes in their Major Trend Index, which mechanically tracks 130 metrics and generates a sort of market score. A score of 0.95 to 1.05 is neutral, which causes them to stick with their strategic allocation. Over 1.05 is positive and causes them to incrementally increase equity exposure, below 0.95 has the opposite effect.
Like GMO, they don't act on their feelings about the market's condition; they react to changing reading, some forward-looking.
And they're pretty decent at it.
I've got their most recent monthly report but haven't read it yet. I'll try to work through the big picture stuff to see if there's anything worth adding here.
As ever,
David
Does Litman-Gregory Add Value? LG should rename it the 'Alternative Balanced Fund.'
I was a long-time follower of the (former) Litman-Gregory No Load Fund Analyst, and respected their process. Since I was philosophically aligned with how they conducted due diligence on a range of money managers, I checked out their Alternative Strategies fund.
MASNX/MASFX has an enviable stable of "highly experienced managers" that provide "complementary, low-correlation investment approaches." The fund has demonstrated downside protection and alpha generating returns (check out its standard deviation, Sharpe and Sortino ratios).
It is a compelling fund - EXCEPT for its expense ratio.
I like these guys, but find it ludicrous that they claim its expense ratio is "highly competitive." They would do themselves a favor by reducing the fund's expense ratio (currently 1.49/1.74% net).
Now, THAT would add value!
Fearing Market Top, Fund Group Slashes Stock Weighting
Does Litman-Gregory Add Value? BenWP: 10:39AM
Wow! Thanks to Lewis, I was able to view the colorful, but muted, pie charts. Now that's adding value
NOW THAT'S UNFAIR!
Their bar charts are pretty, too... LINK: pretty charts
T. Rowe Price Mid-Cap Index & T. Rowe Price Small-Cap Index Funds in registration
Guggenheim Adds Real Estate To Its Smart Beta Lineup
Josh Brown: How Two Of History’s Greatest Investors Deal With Losses
Does Litman-Gregory Add Value? Thanks, Ted, I knew you'd come to my aid. I was abroad and not able to log in very much over the last 10 days.
Does Litman-Gregory Add Value? Saturday's Barron's piece on the L-G Alternative Strategies Fund, "Managing the Managers," [
http://online.barrons.com/articles/litman-gregory-manages-the-managers-1439013175] led me to take a look at the line-up of multi-manager funds that L-G has been running for a couple of decades (Equity, International, Smaller Companies). The basic idea is to hire the best managers, give each a slice of the fund, and give them the freedom to perform. Over the years, in my recollection, the line-ups have changed, but I recognize old-timers such as David Herro and Dick Weiss who are still on board. You'd think the funds would out perform because L-G can cherry pick good managers. However, my amateurish analysis of the long-term performance of the equity funds shows they barely keep up with their benchmarks. Small-cap managers are supposed to be able to add value: L-G's guys don't keep up with the Russell 2000. My conclusion is that a stable of well-known managers is no better than the nearest index fund.
Lewis Kaufman's New Fund (ARTYX) - Portfolio Allocation as of 6-30-15 51 stocks, but 42% cash.
About 37% of the invested portion is in firms headquartered in developed markets, his peers run about 10 points lower. Domestic names in the portfolio: Visa, Facebook, and Kansas City Southern. Lesser-known names include First Cash Financial (pawn shops in the US and Mexico) and EPAM Systems (small software firm). The former has one analyst covering it, the latter has none. Other developed stocks include Diageo and Delphi Automotive.
On whole, a somewhat higher-priced portfolio than its peers.
And it's seven weeks old, so that's all just for curiosity and fun.
David
Barry Ritholtz: Time Is An Investing Ally, Not An Enemy
Lewis Kaufman's New Fund (ARTYX) - Portfolio Allocation as of 6-30-15
Is it time to cut and run ... or, a time to do a little buying? I have no desire to sell, but I haven't gotten the urge to put my 401K rollover to work in equities at this point either. Sitting on a pretty good slug of cash doing nothing in the rollover account. I did buy an additional tranche of VTR since reits are doing well, but that's about it.
We are well beyond due for a pullback of AT LEAST 10%, and there are red flags all over the place.
I have sufficient equities in a taxable account and the rollover such that I won't feel the least bit nervous about missing the next move up.
But, I'm not sure that's the direction we'll be heading over the next few months.
