Value investors generally have had a tough go the past couple years.
Here's good post by the folks at AlphaArchitect ...
Update on the Valuation Metric Horserace: 2011-2015
and even better ...
Has the Value Investing Pain Train Ended?
c

@LewisBraham
Your write takes me back to my time machine. :)
In the way back days with Fido in the mid-80's, I used to "trade/swap/move" using Fido's select funds. Fido had established their F.A.S.T. system (Fidelity Automated Service Telephone) which allowed buy/sell/pricing info via the touch tone telephone. At the time, Fido's select funds could also be traded each hour of a trade day with pricing set at the top of each hour. Using Fido's fund numbers and touch tone character codes, one could move money around among the majority of their fund offerings.
I also used the phone system for obtaining closing prices on many funds which were placed onto a paper graph and/or chart. I used this info to establish moving averages via hand graphed charts/tables of funds drawing my attention. The "other" method for we retail investors at the time was to await a paper copy of the WSJ or Barron's for printed pricing of funds.
Some of this "work" was eventually performed on a real pc at the time (1987). This magic pc, a N.E.C built in Japan; had a massive 20 MB hard drive and 640K ram (the upper limit usable by MS at the time). Twas cool at the time, but very expensive with the monitor and printer.
A proper reply to your write is that "yes", money can be made using Fido select funds and/or the many combinations available today. We here are well aware of the many choices via select funds or etf's. Folks who are on the ball with what is going on in the markets may obtain excellent returns with these methods. Lots of folks have traveled this road over the years since the introduction of these select funds.
A Fido time line at the below link:
https://www.fidelity.com/static/dcle/welcome/documents/Timeline_fid_092709fla.swf
Regards,
Catch

If anyone wishes to hold cash in large amounts, I'll be happy to hold on to it for you at only 0.5%.
Note: In the event of unanticipated requests for withdrawal of large amounts of cash ($10 or more), management, in it's sole discretion, reserves the right to make such payments in Monopoly scrip.

@Ralph
Dr. Snowball very politely exposed the weaknesses of FPACX, and the responses from the FPACX reps were essentially "FundSpeak" as far as I am concerned. I honestly do not care how actively managed fund managers justify huge cash positions, as such allocations objectively represent market timing -- or market guessing -- which has never worked over long periods.
One question I have for the FPACX team: Why has the management fee remained a constant 1% despite the ballooning of AUM ? The answer, unfortunately, is that FPACX is the cash cow for the firm, and asset gathering is in their best financial interest, but obviously not in the best interest of investors. The cow must be milked.
I would avoid FPACX solely for fund stewardship, which is poor in my opinion.
Instead of FPACX, I would consider using the Backtest Tool of Portfolio Visualizer to construct a viable alternative.
Two attractive combinations would be an 80/20 mix of VWIAX with either VIG (preference) or VYM. Since 2007, each of these combinations would have had higher total returns, lower standard deviations, lower maximum drawdowns, higher sharpe ratios and higher sortino ratios than FPACX. And both combinations have an average expense ratio of 0.15%, as compared to 1.11% for FPACX.
At this time, I would never, ever recommend FPACX to friends or family.
Kevin

I wonder if they are for sale again - this article reads like a 'promo' for a company that doesn't like publicity ......... if they sell out, hope it is to a good company. I will hate to sell out of POAGX.
"THE VANGUARD RELATIONSHIP was critical, because it gave Primecap patient, sticky capital from the get-go. In 1998, when Schow was 70, Primecap briefly put itself up for sale. The bids reportedly came in too low, and there was concern that Vanguard might pull its assets if Primecap were sold to a rival."

hi randynevin, it was actually prior to the company offering a 401K, but was a part of an employee profit sharing account if I remember correctly, which eventually rolled into a 401K. I don't have the original paperwork on this, but I believe it was 1986 or 87....seems like such a long time ago.

@Ralph--Morningstar's "star ratings" are 100% data based. They do not "upgrade" or "downgrade" star ratings. The number of stars is based on the fund's performance, which of course changes based on whatever rolling performance period is being considered. Thus, the star ratings are not meant to convey ANY sort of conviction Morningstar has about the fund's future prospects. That is what the "medalist" ratings are for. FPACX continues to have a gold medalist rating.

I Have Been Watching BTBFX For Years - I Cant Buy It Because Fido Makes You Buy a Minimum Of $100,000.00. Its a Great Fund, Its Up Over 4% ytd

Latest Update.I continue to own the fund.
FPACX 1st Quarter Update
TOTAL CASH & EQUIVALENTS 6,183,252,260.14 36.25%
TOTAL NET ASSETS: $17,059,264,885.05
Activity:
o Sold out of Anheuser-Busch, Jardine Matheson, Joy Global, Orkla, and Walgreens
Boots Alliance.
o Added to several names, including Alcoa, American Express, Bank of America, CIT
Group, and Citigroup.
o Top contributors for the quarter were Oracle, Aon, Yahoo/Alibaba pair trade, United
Technologies, and Cisco. Citigroup, an undisclosed equity position, AIG, Bank of
America, and Esterline were the largest detractors for the period.
Positioning:
o Gross exposure to equities is 60.9% and net equity exposure is 57.6%. Corporate Bond
exposure increased to 4.9%.
o Cash and cash equivalents allocation is 36.3%.
Outlook:
o We continue to research financials, high yield, cyclicals and various commodities-related
businesses.
http://www.fpafunds.com/docs/fpa-crescent-fund/q1-2016-crescent-update.pdf?sfvrsn=2
Full Schedule of !st Quater Holdings
http://fpafunds.com/docs/funf-holdings/crescent-03-31-16-for-website.pdf?sfvrsn=2
You can attend this event and ask for your self.
Southern California in Early June ? F P A Investor Day on the Pacific !
t
http://fpafunds.cvent.com/events/a-day-with-fpa-2016/agenda-66af952dc057428fbafd4a90b856dcb7.aspx
From David Snowball
The better question is, can the fund consistently and honorably deliver on its promise to its investors; that is, to provide equity-like returns with less risk over reasonable time periods? Given that the management team is deeper, the investment process is unimpaired and its size is has become more modest, I think the answer is “yes.” Even if it can’t be “the old Crescent,” we can have some fair confidence that it’s going to be “the very good new Crescent.”
But....Beware the Siren Song ?

http://www.sirensongwetsuits.com/home

Also:
Gundlach: Swap Corporate Bonds for Mortgage
J. Gundlach, bond King, Doubline, is suggesting to blow out of your corporate bonds, especially junk, that were purchased at the height of panic when everyone thought the Fed was crazy enough to hike rates four times this year.
Wait, aren’t they still saying that?
Gundlach quote from Tuesday:
“The junk market was scared to death that the Fed was actually going to go forward with their suicide mission to raise rates four times this year, four times next year and four times the year after,” Gundlach said. “It’s not surprising that the same burst of enthusiasm for Treasury bonds, once the Fed seemed to abort their suicide mission, it also helped junk bonds. I don’t think that can continue any longer.”
Government-backed Ginnie Mae mortgage-related securities “are cheap relative to Treasuries,” the fund manager said. “That’s been a good buy point for the past six years.”
http://ibankcoin.com/flyblog/2016/04/12/gundlach-swap-corporate-bonds-for-mortgage/
From Ted's link
"The easy money has been made," Gundlach said.
Seemed to be his general theme not only with "junk" but oil and C E F's.Harder to get to $45 oil than from $30 to $40. Many C E F nav discounts have narrowed .Good way to
participate is RNDLX/RNSIX .Likes the Puerto Rico Municipals for high income individual/family taxpayers.Likes C M B S '( Principal Real Estate Income PGZ up near 2% today ). Continues to stick with his now 2 year old prediction of $1400 gold.Bond investors at least 25% defensive posture which of course would be comparable to his own managed (DFLEX/DLINX).
Also
Try this asset allocator
http://bluerockfunds.com/asset-allocator/
And questions or comments besides WHY?
TI+ is a fund for individual investors that seeks current income, low-volatility, capital preservation and long-term capital appreciation. In the three+ years since its inception through February 29, 2016, TI+ has delivered a total annualized return of 8.93%, including 12 consecutive quarterly distributions at an annualized rate of 5.25%. Significantly, the Fund has achieved risk-adjusted returns of five to seven times higher than leading stock, REIT, and bond market indexes, underscoring the Fund’s low volatility.
As of 4/14/2016 NAV
TIPRX $28.79
TIPPX $28.37
TIPWX $29.00
http://bluerockfunds.com/documents/

I believe those were not actually money market funds, but other MMF-like vehicles including short term investment funds (STIFs) and enhanced cash funds. Extensive quotes from an ICI paper explaining these are below (after --- break).
The ICI also has a two pager: Money Market Funds in 2012, History of Money Market Funds
It says:
- Money market funds were created in the early 1970s ...
- In 1994, the Denver-based Community Banker’s U.S. Government Money Market Fund reported a NAV below $1.00 and ultimately investors recovered approximately 96 cents on the dollar.
The reason why I quoted the second item is that the first MMF to fail was an institutional MMF, not a retail one. That shows that in this paper, the ICI is talking about institutional as well as retail funds when it writes that MMFs were created in the early '70s.
FWIW (can't verify, I don't know anything about the firm other than it makes the same claim on its own webpages):
"Drinker Biddle & Reath's lawyers are nationally recognized as pioneers in the bank-related mutual funds market dating back to the mid-70s. The firm developed the country's first institutional taxable and tax-exempt money market funds"
http://www.thefreelibrary.com/Drinker+Biddle+&+Reath+ranked+No.+1+mutual+fund+counsel+in+the...-a016805468
---------------
From the 2009 Report of the Money Market Working Group:
(Section 3.1) "Money market funds were developed in the early 1970s as a way to allow retail and other investors with modest amounts of assets to participate in the money market. ... Previously, market rates of return had been available only to wealthy individuals and large institutions with sizeable amounts to invest.
[Note "market rates of return", not "money market funds"]
It goes on to describe STIFs in Section 5.1.2:
"Bank trust departments offered a short-term investment product (STIF) several years before the first money market fund appeared. These cash pools amortized cost to meet client and fiduciary demands for low-risk investments that function much like money market funds."
The only mention of an investment vehicle available to wealthy individuals in the paper is the enhanced cash fund (Section 3.1):
"These funds seek to provide a slightly higher yield than money market funds by investing in a wider array of securities that tend to have longer maturities and lower credit quality. ... Enhanced cash funds target a $1.00 NAV, but have much greater exposure to fluctuations in their portfolio valuations. Enhanced cash funds are privately offered to institutions, wealthy clients, and certain types of trusts."

Very interesting article on smart beta funds fwiw.
http://investorfieldguide.com/alpha-or-assets/?sent=1

The Reserve Fund was the first MMF for retail investors. I think institutional MMFs came into existence much earlier.... sometime in the 1940s?

I must be having a bad hair day. Don't get confused, as I did, by the phrase "classified two company investments as passive", thinking that this might have something to do with passive mutual funds. Or that mutual funds have different disclosure requirements (as do ETFs) depending on whether they are passive or active.
The "passive" here has got nothing to do with a fund's investment style. It has to do with buying shares and just sitting back and enjoying the ride. Which makes me wonder whether even voting for board members is at some level "active". Or something only slightly less extreme - a fund voting on a shareholder initiative to limit executive compensation. The cited article references executive compensation in the context of "activism".
I think this Bloomberg opinion column sheds a lot more light on what's going on:
http://www.bloombergview.com/articles/2016-04-04/shareholder-activism-might-have-antitrust-issues
That has a lot of facts about the ValueAct case, including a link to the Bloomberg news article:
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2016-04-04/valueact-sued-by-u-s-over-halliburton-baker-hughes-purchases
It also discusses a possible impact on mutual funds. It suggest that the underlying action (saying that a hedge fund owning competing companies in an M&A was being "active") moves a step toward saying that mutual funds (which sometimes own competing funds in concentrated industries) may likewise be illegal. It links to an older column:
http://www.bloombergview.com/articles/2015-07-22/index-funds-may-work-a-little-too-well
That column in turn suggests that maybe funds are safe if they don't vote, which curiously brings me full circle to my speculation at the top of this post.

This column does not do a good job of making its point - I'm even sure what its point is.
As it notes, aside from continuing to prohibit demand deposit (traditional checking) accounts to offer interest, Regulation Q had been phased out years before Dodd Frank. Even regarding checking accounts, except for commercial accounts interest bearing checking accounts had been around for decades (think "NOW").
It doesn't explain why, if Reg Q started in 1933, it took until 1972 for the first MMF (the Reserve Fund) to be created. (The answer appears to be that Reg Q was changed in 1966; until then banks offered above market rates.)
For a more extensive and clearer history of Reg Q (through 1986, when it had all but gone the way of the dodo), see the 1986 Fed paper:
Requiem for Regulation Q: What It Did and Why It Passed Away

FYI: Federal laws and regulations that are enacted can last decades, but they tend to change after a major financial crisis. After the sub-prime mortgage meltdown in 2008, a slew of new regulations were pressed into law. The most far-reaching new regulation was the Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act that was passed in 2010,
Regards,
Ted
http://mutualfunds.com/education/what-deregulation-q-means-for-your-portfolio/

FYI: The U.S. government's lawsuit against ValueAct Capital targets one activist investor but could call into question routine practices across the $16 trillion mutual fund industry, according to attorneys and industry representatives.
The U.S. Department of Justice last week alleged the hedge fund improperly classified two company investments as passive -- and therefore exempt from disclosure requirements -- while taking an activist role with executives. ValueAct disputes the claim.
Regards,
Ted
http://www.fa-mag.com/news/lawsuit-against-valueact-puts-mutual-funds-on-alert-26301.html?print

Isn't that the whole idea of ETFs? That APs generally redeem in kind (thus providing the tax efficiency that is purportedly lacking in open end funds).
Admittedly there are some types of ETFs that typically trade in cash, but they're the more esoteric ones (inverse and leveraged, and I believe commodities). But for the most part, the expectation (as marketed) when shareholders (i.e. APs) redeem (not sell) shares, the sellers get the underlying securities (or whatever is in a Creation Unit).
For example, from BOND's prospectus: "Except when aggregated in Creation Units, shares of a Fund are not redeemable securities. Shareholders who are not Authorized Participants may not purchase or redeem shares directly from a Fund."
There is a potential tracking problem with ETFs that hold illiquid assets (e.g. bonds in a credit crunch, to use your example). When normal (not AP) shareholders try to bail on an exchange, the market (not NAV) price gets depressed. APs may decline to step in, because they know they'll get illiquid assets they can't dump at a profit (the spread between the supposed NAV of the underlying assets and the market price of the ETF).
So the market price of ETFs can go into free fall. That's a related but different issue.

Response from Sequoia's David Poppe:

For many years Sequoia Fund has clearly disclosed that we can and do pay large redemptions with securities rather than cash, and we have done so thousands of times before this year without incident. So we were puzzled by “Sequoia Clients Get Stock Shock” (Business & Finance, April 9) questioning the practice as a “shock” to investors and trying to tie recent in-kind redemptions to our Valeant stake. This policy isn’t new, is unrelated to the ups and downs of our fund and, specifically, is unrelated to our holding in Valeant.
We redeem with shares to benefit our continuing shareholders, who might otherwise pay capital-gains taxes on the sale of appreciated stock that might be required for redemptions. By redeeming in kind, our 20,000 continuing Sequoia shareholders will pay lower capital-gains taxes in the future. Our goal is always to be tax-efficient and to do what is right for continuing shareholders. For a departing shareholder, there is no tax or other consequence to receiving stock instead of cash, aside from the minor inconvenience of having to sell a security upon receipt. We take care to always deliver stocks that trade in sufficient volume so that the exiting shareholder can sell them immediately without depressing the market for a particular security.
David M. Poppe
President
Sequoia Fund
New York

http://www.wsj.com/articles/sequoias-redemption-with-securities-is-tax-efficient-1460583731

FPACX 1st Quarter Update
TOTAL CASH & EQUIVALENTS 6,183,252,260.14 36.25%
TOTAL NET ASSETS: 17,059,264,885.05 100.00%
Activity:
o Sold out of Anheuser-Busch, Jardine Matheson, Joy Global, Orkla, and Walgreens
Boots Alliance.
o Added to several names, including Alcoa, American Express, Bank of America, CIT
Group, and Citigroup.
o Top contributors for the quarter were Oracle, Aon, Yahoo/Alibaba pair trade, United
Technologies, and Cisco. Citigroup, an undisclosed equity position, AIG, Bank of
America, and Esterline were the largest detractors for the period.
Positioning:
o Gross exposure to equities is 60.9% and net equity exposure is 57.6%. Corporate Bond
exposure increased to 4.9%.
o Cash and cash equivalents allocation is 36.3%.
Outlook:
o We continue to research financials, high yield, cyclicals and various commodities-related
businesses.
http://www.fpafunds.com/docs/fpa-crescent-fund/q1-2016-crescent-update.pdf?sfvrsn=2
Full Schedule of !st Quater Holdings
http://fpafunds.com/docs/funf-holdings/crescent-03-31-16-for-website.pdf?sfvrsn=2
Southern California in Early June ? F P A Investor Day on the Pacific !

http://fpafunds.cvent.com/events/a-day-with-fpa-2016/agenda-66af952dc057428fbafd4a90b856dcb7.aspx
From David Snowball
The better question is, can the fund consistently and honorably deliver on its promise to its investors; that is, to provide equity-like returns with less risk over reasonable time periods? Given that the management team is deeper, the investment process is unimpaired and its size is has become more modest, I think the answer is “yes.” Even if it can’t be “the old Crescent,” we can have some fair confidence that it’s going to be “the very good new Crescent.”
Beware the Siren Song ?