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Here's a statement of the obvious: The opinions expressed here are those of the participants, not those of the Mutual Fund Observer. We cannot vouch for the accuracy or appropriateness of any of it, though we do encourage civility and good humor.
  • Larry Summers and the Crisis of Economic Orthodoxy
    The 2 biggest items for most people are housing and transportation. They increase 40+% and vehicles are up 30+% since 01/2020. Do you know many who got a 30% salary increase?
    Are most better off now than four years ago? the answer is clear, it's not. https://apnews.com/article/biden-poll-economy-survey-jobs-inflation-b3c77cb208f96f9b039cf48cbc4fb67b
    You don't need a weatherman to know which way the wind blows.
  • Portfolio X-Ray Alternatives
    @yogibearbull,
    I reached out to M* Library Services with a question regarding adding individual TIPS to Portfolio X-Ray.
    They said this wasn't possible (no surprise) so I informed them I would just use a TIPS fund as a proxy.
    This was their reply (my name was changed below):
    "Great, sounds good, Observant1! I wanted to share with you that we are going to be retiring the Portfolio X-Ray tool when we move to a new platform in September. Since this is a tool you use, please let me know if you have any feedback to provide to our product team and also do share with me what library you are accessing the database through."
    Which tools do you use for portfolio analysis?
  • CD Renewals
    I'm uncertain as to how to read WABAC's post. Stillers, if I interpret him correctly, seems to have understood it as WABAC having sold, or tried to sell, short term CDs before maturity.
    I read WABAC as saying that he has tried holding short-term CDs, but didn't like that. No indication that he tried to sell them prior to maturity.
    Left undefined in all of this is what exactly is the definition of "short term CD" as being used here.
    While I agree with Stillers regarding the correct way to use CDs, I really don't appreciate his condescending style- apparently he's attempting to emulate a certain FD person.
    "Stillers, if I interpret him correctly, seems to have understood it as WABAC having sold, or tried to sell, short term CDs before maturity."
    Did I say that? No, I did not. I made general comments about holding CDs to maturity that YOU misinterpreted. Go back and re-read my post and show me EXACTLY where I said what you THINK I said.
    --------------------------------------
    "While I agree with Stillers regarding the correct way to use CDs, I really don't appreciate his condescending style- apparently he's attempting to emulate a certain FD person."
    C'mom man! Are you serious?
    TRY to take my post to FD at face value. His self-aggrandizing post about trading bond OEFs has NOTHING to do with this topic, and any poster worth his salt tries to STOP the BS that he daily spews. Well, not daily on BB as FD's been banned there for about two more months.
    I (as do many poster who have borne witness to FD for 10-15 years) know that FD can't be stopped. I simply do my part to TRY to control him.
    ----------------------------------------
    On the latter, FWIW, AFTER I made my post to FD I received a PM from a very reputable poster who appreciated my on-going containment efforts. So please STOP with BS accusations. Saying that I am "attempting to to emulate...FD" sounds a wee bit, well, nuts.
  • Buy Sell Why: ad infinitum.
    Bought a handful more of BHB shares today. Of course, the share price fell hard from there. ORK! Stinky poopy. Bar Harbor Bank. I note they just lately filed a form with the SEC. The reason is that they were going to run past a deadline because the mutual fund Manager connected with their 401k or pension fund had recently been changed. Doesn't sound like a big deal, but the Market overreacts to EVERYTHING, eh?
  • Memoriam: Robert Bruce (Bruce Fund)
    https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/47071/000158064223003441/bruce_497.htm
    497 1 bruce_497.htm 497
    Bruce Fund, Inc.
    Supplement dated July 5, 2023
    To the Prospectus and
    Statement of Additional Information (the “SAI”)
    each dated October 30, 2022
    On June 23, 2023, Mr. Robert B. Bruce, one of the Portfolio Managers of the Bruce Fund, passed away.
    Accordingly, all references to Mr. Robert B. Bruce in the Fund’s Prospectus and SAI are removed effective as of said date. R. Jeffrey Bruce will continue as Portfolio Manager.
    You should read this Supplement in conjunction with the Prospectus and Statement of Additional Information, which provide information that you should know before investing in the Fund and should be retained for future reference. These documents are available upon request and without charge by calling Shareholder Services at (800) 872-7823.
    My condolences to his family and friends.
    https://www.legacy.com/us/obituaries/name/robert-bruce-obituary?id=52381905
    2011 article on the Bruce Fund:
    https://www.forbes.com/forbes/2011/0627/money-guide-11-funds-bruce-fund-heebner-cgm-invest.html?sh=240f0c1432a7
  • ETFMG Breakwave Sea Decarbonization Tech ETF (BSEA) to liquidate
    https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/1467831/000089418923004618/etfmgbsealiquidationsupple.htm
    497 1 etfmgbsealiquidationsupple.htm SUPPLEMENT RE FORTHCOMING LIQUIDATION
    Filed pursuant to Rule 497(e)
    File Nos. 333-182274; 811-22310
    Supplement to the
    Summary Prospectus, Prospectus and Statement of Additional Information (“SAI”)
    dated October 31, 2022, of the ETFMG Breakwave Sea Decarbonization Tech ETF (BSEA)
    July 3, 2023
    The Board of Trustees of the Trust has approved a Plan of Liquidation for the ETFMG Breakwave Sea Decarbonization Tech ETF (the “Fund”). The Plan of Liquidation authorizes the termination, liquidation and dissolution of the Fund. The Fund will create and redeem creation units through July 20, 2023 (the “Closing Date”), which will also be the last day of trading of the Fund’s shares on the NYSE Arca, Inc., the Fund’s principal U.S. listing exchange.
    On or about July 21, 2023 (the “Liquidation Date”), the Fund will cease operations, liquidate its assets, and prepare to distribute proceeds to shareholders as of the Liquidation Date. Shareholders on the Liquidation Date will receive cash at the net asset value of their shares as of such date. While shareholders remaining on the Liquidation Date will not incur transaction fees, any liquidation proceeds paid to shareholders should generally be treated as received in exchange for shares and will therefore generally give rise to a capital gain or loss depending on a shareholder’s tax basis. Shareholders should contact their tax adviser to discuss the income tax consequences of the liquidation.
    In anticipation of the liquidation of the Fund, ETF Managers Group, LLC, the Fund’s adviser, will manage the Fund in a manner intended to facilitate its orderly liquidation, such as by raising cash or making investments in other highly liquid assets. As a result, during this time, all or a portion of the Fund may not be invested in a manner consistent with its stated investment strategies, which may prevent the Fund from achieving its investment objective. Shareholders may sell their holdings on the NYSE Arca, Inc., on or prior to the Closing Date. Customary brokerage charges may apply to such transactions. After the Closing Date, we cannot assure you that there will be a market for your shares. Please contact the Fund at 1-844-383-6477 if you have any questions or need assistance.
    Please retain this Supplement with your Summary Prospectus, Prospectus
    and SAI for future reference.
  • quick reminder: please don't be a troll
    Hi, guys!
    July 3rd is reported to be the hottest day ever, worldwide. Please be careful outside. It might be an opportune moment to drop a note to an elected official asking the simple question, "what are you doing to help?" Even at the local level a simple building code change to encourage "green" roofs can make a lot of difference in reducing the urban heat island and supporting wildlife.
    One of the local big box churches, the folks who convert abandoned 40,000 square foot retail spaces into worship spaces (which is a fine example of upcycling), systematically encouraged members to evangelize by joining other churches, participating actively in public while in private explaining to their new friends that there's actually a much better church just across town. In consequence, the size of the religious community did not grow but a series of traditional churches were weakened by the scavengers.
    That's the "trolling" of the title. It's disrespectful, devious and destructive. Please don't do that.
    David
  • July MFO Has Been Posted
    A couple notes from Mr. P. On inside ownership of the fund:
    The GoodHaven Fund disclosed in its annual and semi-annual reports insider ownership as follows - and please note the vast majority of these shares are related to Mr. Pitkowsky and entities connected to his immediate family - "As of November 30, 2022, the members, officers, and employees of GoodHaven Capital Management, LLC, the investment advisor to the GoodHaven Fund, owned approximately 124,075 shares of the Fund. It is management’s intention to disclose such holdings (in the aggregate) in this section of the Fund’s Annual and Semi-Annual reports on an ongoing basis."
    He's also thinking about the redemption fee question, and might yet share thoughts there.
    We also talked about two misrepresentations of the fund's portfolio, which Chip will correct from the wilds of the Catskills tonight. First, I reported Morningstar's cash stake of the fund and concluded it was fully invested. It's not because the fund uses T-Bills as cash equivalents. Cash-like is around 10%, still less than half of its pre-transition average. Seond, I suggested they had too much exposure to special situations. Mr. P's take is that they had too much exposure to not-quite-special-enough situations leading to a portfolio with a lot of exposure to "the messy middle." Those were stocks that weren't super high quality or super distressed, which are his targets. They've been mostly purged. Following the transition the fund's turnover ratio has dropped 80% from an average of 15% pre-transition to around 3% now.
    For what interest that holds,
    David
  • Active Management and Superstars
    A good but incomplete history of Fidelity and its famous star managers.
    Post Tsai, a young Ned Johnson III (of course related to Johnson II) ran a private/in-house Fido fund called Magellan from 1963-71 with quite spectacular performance. Ned would have been a star manager if he just stuck to being a fund portfolio manager, but he had other and bigger ideas. After a few years, Magellan (now a listed FMAGX) was handed over to Peter Lynch (1977-90) who became even a bigger star than Ned Johnson III, and in fact, among the most famous portfolio managers ever. But to the regrets of many, Lynch decided to retire at 48 and is still with Fidelity as consultant and mentor.
    Actually, Lynch wanted to retire even earlier, but the crash of 1987 intervened. Lynch didn't want to leave the "huge" fund ($20 billion, peanuts by today's standards) that was under heavy redemption to somebody else, so he stuck around for a while until 1990. He lamented later that the management of Magellan under redemption was very different from what he was used to during its explosive growth period.
    Magellan's assets did peak at $100 billion, but has languished under managers that followed Lynch; the AUM is only $27 billion now. An ETF FMAG hasn't yet reached $50 million in 2.5 years. That is another lesson - don't count on past history or successes for the ETFs.
  • Larry Summers and the Crisis of Economic Orthodoxy
    Not a wage-price spiral but a profit-price spiral or "greedflation" perhaps: https://cnbc.com/2023/04/21/why-economists-are-no-longer-so-worried-about-a-wage-price-spiral.html
    Profit-price spiral
    There has also been increased discussion about how those corporate profits are contributing to inflation.
    In a recent note, economists at ING looked at Germany, where inflation is increasingly a demand-side issue. While cautioning that so-called “greedflation” cannot be proven and there are variations by sector, they wrote that there are signs companies have been hiking prices ahead of the rise in their input costs, and that “from the second half of 2021 onward, a significant share of the increase in prices can be explained by higher corporate profits.” They call this a profit-price spiral.....
    Not the 1970s
    ....Richard Portes, professor of economics at London Business School, told CNBC there is “no serious risk” of a wage-price spiral in the U.K., U.S., or major European countries, however. He also cited reduced union power in the private sector as a notable change from the 1970s.
    “If you look at core inflation in the U.S., rentals, housing, have been driving that. That’s got nothing to do with wages — with rentals, it’s more sensitive to interest rate rises,” he added.
    There is evidence — including from the IMF — that wage-price spirals aren’t common. The IMF research found very few examples in advanced economies since the 1960s of “sustained acceleration” in wages and prices, with both instead stabilizing, keeping real wage growth “broadly unchanged.” As with so much in economics, the idea that wage-price spirals even exist has also been challenged.
    For Kamil Kovar, an economist at Moody’s Analytics, the scenario was always seen as a risk, not necessarily likely. But he, too, said that as time progresses it has become clear that it is not happening.
    Wages are likely to increase fairly rapidly for Europe, but there’s “so much scope for wages to catch up with prices, to get to a spiral situation we would need something totally different to happen,” he said. The ECB expects nominal wage growth, not adjusted for inflation, of around 5% this year.
    Real wages in Europe are so much lower than before the pandemic they could increase another 10% without going into a “danger zone,” Kovar said; while in the U.S. they are roughly equal but exiting the risky zone.
    When comparing the current situation to the 1970s, Kovar said there were some similarities such as an energy shock; back then it was in oil, whereas this time it is bigger and broader, impacting electricity and gas too. There has also been a more rapid drop in energy prices as this shock has subsided.
    And again, he noted the ongoing growth in corporate profits and the absence of powerful unions as yet more factors for why this time it’s different.
    “It’s an example of how we are slaves to our historical parallels,” he said. “We potentially overreact even if the underlying situation is different.”
  • Anybody Investing in bond funds?
    My wife and I both have pensions, but they are not necessarily the great deal that some people think they are. Our pensions are with the state of North Carolina, and have no inflation adjustments. So we are totally dependent on our Republican controlled legislature for any increases to cope with inflation. Guess what, the legislature has made zero inflation adjustments since we retired 6-8 years ago, aside from a few minor one-time bonuses. So, our real income from our pensions have declined by at least 15% since we retired.
    Fortunately, we both held off starting Social Security payments, and those are adjusted for inflation. Plus, we have sizable investments in IRAs that are invested about 60% in stocks. Our IRAs are essentially functioning as in inflation adjustments for our pensions that are steadily decreasing in value. I like having the pension payments because it frees me from worrying about the stock market, but they are like having annuities with no inflation adjustments.
  • Changes involving Stuart Rigby and Grandeur Peak Global Advisors
    Surprisingly, GP's version of events concerning First Republic doesn't contain so much a shred of admission that they made any kind of error.
    "Our very selective approach to investing in Banks led us to own First Republic at portfolio weights that expressed a high degree of conviction in the company’s risk-adjusted return profile. As you are likely aware, over the past month, First Republic experienced a significant crisis, as collateral damage from the Silicon Valley Bank (SIVB US) collapse, which resulted in a severe de-rating of the FRC share price. A fair question for anyone to ask is how to reconcile our very selective approach to investing in banks with a large position in a bank that has experienced a significant crisis. At a very high level, our investment thesis on First Republic was based in its application of a world-class client service model to arguably the world’s most attractive banking client markets (specifically, the high net worth and high-end professional services markets in urban coastal population centers across the United States). That strategy for First Republic had enabled the company to structurally grow earnings while preserving exceptionally conservative underwriting standards. In other words, while First Republic is a bank, we observed that its unique model and exposure profile largely neutralized most of the quality attributes that generally make banks less attractive and more risky. Put another way, an attribute-by-attribute analysis of First Republic, reinforced over its long successful track record, made us comfortable treating First Republic as we would treat best-in-class growth companies we discover in other industries.
    "However, after SVB Financial shared its post-close announcement on Wednesday, March 8th, highlighting elevated deposit attrition, the sale of available-for-sale securities at a material loss, and an equity capital raise, we spoke with First Republic’s CFO in order to confirm our knowledge of the company’s exposure to deposits from early-stage companies, net unrealized losses in available-for-sale securities, and other aspects of its capacity to avoid the negative feedback loop that SVB was beginning to experience. We left that balance sheet review confident enough to continue holding our positions. What destabilized our confidence was Friday’s announcement that SVB Financial would enter receivership and the recoverability of uninsured deposit balances at SVB was in question. As these revelations became clear, we concluded that the probability of contagion extending to First Republic depositors had become too high to justify continuing to hold our positions. In other words, we concluded that First Republic had ceased to be an investment opportunity and had instead transitioned to more of a pure gamble on which wagering our clients’ funds was unacceptable. We proceeded to exit our entire investment position in First Republic at the next opportunity (the Monday morning pre-market) as efficiently as we could without further pressuring the share price."

    https://secure.alpsinc.com/MarketingAPI/api/v1/Content/grandeurpeakglobal/grandeurpeakglobal-comm-20230421.pdf
    If they can't find any mistake in their investment process, then what's to prevent them from making the same mistake again?
  • Changes involving Stuart Rigby and Grandeur Peak Global Advisors
    Agree that GP had a great start as a splintering off from Wasatch, but went downhill. As recently as 18 months ago, Mutual Fund Observer gave 4 GP funds "Great Owls" and wrote:
    "In general, your portfolio would really benefit from holding one Grandeur Peak fund."
    ● "We've pulled the record since inception for every Grandeur Peak fund from the MFO Premium screener. On both an absolute return and risk-adjusted return basis, every Grandeur Peak fund beats its peers … by a lot."
    ● "Top-notch team."
    ● "Clear, coherent discipline."
    ● "If you're a long-term investor with a reasonable tolerance for short-term volatility and you don't already own a Grandeur Peak fund, Global Explorer should go on your due diligence list."

    https://www.mutualfundobserver.com/2022/01/launch-alert-grandeur-peak-global-explorer/
  • Changes involving Stuart Rigby and Grandeur Peak Global Advisors
    In late 2022, GGSOX held SVB (1.9%) and First Republic Band (4.9%), and that is a lot for a medium cap global fund. SVB failed in March 2023 and FRB got bought out by JP Morgan a month later. Wonder how much Stuart Rigby contributed to GP company culture since he was a “guardian” portfolio manager for several funds?
    In light of that, who are your favorite fund managers?
  • CD Renewals

    ...
    You've done well the past year without the ups/downs that the folks in the market have, likely a little better than SPY without the drawdown, not too shabby.
    ...
    Baseball Fan
    Just curious: How has someone who has invested (pretty much exclusively, it appears) in ~5% ST CDs all year (therefore mid-year, UP about 2.5% on an annual basis) done "likely a little better than SPY" when SPY is UP ~15% YTD?
  • CD Renewals
    FD, the purpose/intent of this thread is VERY clear. It has NOTHING to do with bond OEF trading.
    ----------------
    So, a serious question:
    What purpose is your post about bond OEF trading on THIS thread other than feeding your incessant self-aggrandizing?
    Puhlease don't say you are just offering up an alternative to CDs.
    You KNOW that DT knows all about bond OEFs and he has told you countless times over the past 10-15 years that he does not trade bond OEFs. When he invests in them he does it LT.
    -----------------
    Too bad you "never in your life owned CD(s)." In the 1980s they averaged 12%.
    Oh, and good for you that you (allegedly, as always) made a few pennies on some secret sauce bond OEFS while the smart money this year was played on big tech, AI and semis. You're only trailing the S&P this year by ~10+%!
    Atta boy!
  • Fidelity Money Market Funds
    The following is one link where you see Fidelity MM and what they pay in real time
    (link).
  • Changes involving Stuart Rigby and Grandeur Peak Global Advisors
    My thinking is the more concentrated a fund is in a few stocks, the more managers need a forensic accountant to go over the financial documents of their companies with a fine tooth comb looking for fraud or problematic areas. But for funds with 100 or 200 stocks as many Grandeur funds are, it seems less necessary. There is less individual company risk in a 1% position than a 5% one.
    That said, Silicon Valley Bank wasn’t a case of fraud or hidden funny numbers like Enron or Worldcom. These were risks on the balance sheet in plain sight. Maybe managers just didn’t believe rates would rise as quickly as they did and instead thought that SVB would have time to adjust and reduce its rate exposure.