Columbia Acorn Shareholders' Meeting 9-24-14 A few highlights:
The management seems sensitive to lackluster performance of Acorn funds and treated us as adults, explaining in depth more of their approach.
A few snippets:
1. ACRNX performance seems partly joined at the hip to M&A activity. More of its holdings became takeover targets this year (repeatedly referred to as "takeout," which sent the aging audience into 10-minute revery on Peking duck) than in previous 18 months; portfolio managers very excited about that.
2. In their purchased-equity field, companies with low PE and poor earnings or negative earnings did slightly better than others over past investment year (begins midyear, maybe), but their GARP philosophy led them to purchase slightly higher up the PE and earnings ladders, generally, and not to overweight the lower end. The fund, ACRNX, still benefited from bounces at the low end. (The differences were very slight, such as 25% and 26%, not 10% and 60% -- in terms of buying low PE + neg or small earnings versus higher up the ladder.)
3. Company philosophy is to ignore macroeconomic events (at least as decision drivers).
Answers to audience Qs:
1. Where to put $10k? Ask a registered investment adviser.
2. Long bull market run: going to cash? No. Mngt does not time cash. It is up to investors to sell their own holdings and go to cash. (Per M*, ACRNX, ACINX, and CEFZX all hold zero cash.)
3. Doing what else? Harder to find great cos. with no problems. So portfolio managers are looking for companies with good business model and some problems that co. mngt might be able to turn around in short- to mid-term (within 5 years).
Cookies; wraps, with and without meat or cheese; coffee, soft drinks, iced tea. Free coffee mug.
Rant on Printing Mutual Fund Docs (SAI) on M* and [deleted by Maurice]
How much do fund companies pay to be on fund supermarket platforms? FT: Pimco, WisdomTree join Schwab’s ETF platform
By Jackie Noblett Sep 23, 2014Quote from Jackie Noblett's FT article:
Schwab charges ETF sponsors a fixed yearly fee of up to $250,000 to participate in the OneSource platform ...
Sponsors also pay an asset-based fee based ...once it has been added to the platform. Those fees can range up to 0.
15 per cent annually.
Here is link to search for complete article:
https://www.google.com/#q="Pimco,+WisdomTree+join+Schwab’s+ETF+platform"
Ban On US Investors Overseas From Buying Mutual Funds (VIP)
Federal Reserve Says it will Raise the Fed Funds Rate 3.75% by the end of 2017 Kyle Bass (sitting in as special guest) on CNBC this AM: "I can't imagine a Fed funds rate at 4%."
Edited to add:
The Chicago Fed's Charles Evans doesn't disappoint his dovish fans urging the FOMC to "err on the side of patience in removing highly accommodative monetary policy," and not to worry about an inflation rate moderately exceeding the 2% target for a limited time."I am very uncomfortable with calls to raise our policy rate sooner than later. I favor delaying liftoff until I am more certain that we have sufficient momentum in place toward our policy goals."
lol.
http://seekingalpha.com/news/1999685-evans-fed-needs-to-be-extraordinarily-patient-on-rate-hikes
Grandeur Peak MF Wire Article
Pimco ETF Draws SEC Investingation
Chart OI The Day: Russell 2000 Trend
Grandeur Peak MF Wire Article "Global Microcap, the micro-cap subset of Global Reach"
Hmmm.....Global Reach only has a market cap average of 7
18 million.
Sounds like a micro-cap subset will probably have a market cap of 200-300 million
Grandeur Peak MF Wire Article The big picture at Grandeur Peak (from our August 20
13 issue)
In the course of launching their new Global Reach fund, profiled below, Grandeur Peak decided to share a bit of their firm’s long-term planning with the public. Grandeur Peak’s investment focus is small- to micro-cap stocks. The firm estimates that they will be able to manage about $3 billion in assets before their size becomes an impediment to their performance. From that estimate, they backed out the point at which they might need to soft close their products in order to allow room for capital growth (about $2 billion) and then allocated resource levels for each of their seven envisioned strategies.
Those strategies are:
- Global Reach, their 300-500 stock flagship fund
- Global Opportunities, a more concentrated version of Global Reach
- International Opportunities, the non-U.S. sub-set of Global Reach
- Emerging Markets Opportunities, the emerging and frontier markets subset of International Opportunities
- US Opportunities, the U.S.-only subset of Global Opportunities
- Global Value, the “Fallen Angels” sub-set of Global Reach
- Global Microcap, the micro-cap subset of Global Reach
President Eric Huefner remarks that “Remaining nimble is critical for a small/micro cap manager to be world-class,” hence “we are terribly passionate about asset capping across the firm.” With two strategies already closed and another gaining traction, it might be prudent to look into the opportunity.
Two questions about recent market action @rjb112.
@Charles, how do you distinguish a bid-ask spread from a premium-discount to NAV?
Which of those 2 are you trying to minimize?
Thanks man. Ultimately, it's the premium-discount to NAV.
Yes, I've come to use stops and limits on all stock/EtF transactions, but especially those trading with low volume.
Grandeur Peak MF Wire Article Some news of interest to many at MFO:
