One reason maybe that AVEFX ''flies under the radar'' is it is not available at Fidelity or Schwab no load/NTF.

In 2020 peak to trough AVEFX lost about 10% while FPINX lost only about 2%.
AVEFX has 20% in stocks FPINX < 1%
Vanguard VASIX is a better choice than AVEFX. See (

chart). VASIX ER=0.11%. It has better performance and SD(volatility) is close.

There may well be better choices for this TYPE of fund, but the criteria I was focusing on was never a down year. VASIX has had two, including down 10.53% in 2008. Not so pretty. AVEFX has an unbroken streak during its existence dating back to 2004.

3 a.m. CDT Mstar shows $582.78.
If Mstar shows 0.00% 1-day return, that is a signal to come back later, or look elsewhere.

My holdings include BRUFX. M* shows it unchanged from the previous day, at $581.64. But elsewhere, I see it finishing today +$1.14, at $582.78..... So, Morningstar is convenient and wonderful--- unless it's wrong. Today, it's wrong... Which would make one think: what is RIGHT here? How does one know how reliable or unreliable it is, at any time, on any day.
So, Morningstar is forever a "definite maybe."

There's been some talk, largely positive, e.g. Feb 2019 thread on int'l funds and the thread this month on swaps that paid off where some people wrote of swapping into this fund.
I've been taking a close look at this fund. You're looking at it as a somewhat lateral move from domestic to foreign. My interest is in moving foreign holdings a bit more toward the growth side. (Call that capitulation to growth if you will, but I'm viewing it as broadening my portfolio.)
When I look through blend/growth foreign large cap funds, a couple that keep turning up are BGESX (unavailable to retail investors) and SCVEX. One can get the lead managers of each of these at 40% of the cost (less with Admiral shares) with the Vanguard fund.
VWIGX has a fair amount of EM. For those who prefer to manage their own allocations, this can be problematic. For those who prefer delegating some asset allocation to their fund managers, the EM holdings are a good thing.
Cost is great, performance has been great. Much (not all) of that is due to this being a heavily leaning growth fund. That makes it high risk (does not do well in bear markets, and M* classifies it as high risk in what is already a high risk category). VWIGX can be purchased at various brokerages, albeit with a TF. VWILX must be purchased directly through Vanguard AFAIK.
So I've also been looking at other funds with a fair amount of EM, but blend rather than growth - with commensurately lower past performance and lower risk. Can't beat Vanguard on cost, though.
HDVYX - value leaning blend fund, submanaged by Wellington. A bit cheaper than most.
PSILX - straight down the middle blend fund (of funds). Has a small slice of PRIDX, a closed fund.
MDIDX - a growth leaning blend fund (of funds).

I'm liking this fund. VWIGX has had nice YTD performance and a great track record...International Large Cap seems to be unloved compared to US Large Growth. It has a low ER (.43)...ranks in the top 5% of the category for trailing returns (for every time frame from 1 month through 15 years).
Not mentioned much here at MFO...I wrote this back in 2016...might be worth a review:
https://mutualfundobserver.com/discuss/discussion/54980/favorite-over-seas-funds/p1

The dollar’s tanking after decades of strength. Some of that relates to the Fed’s recent printing spree and some to our dismal failure dealing with Covid. Reminds me of the scattered bits I can recall from the late 60s and early 70s - several years before inflation really took off. Dollar down. Gold up. Repeat. Repeat. Nixon imposed wage and price controls in ‘70 or ‘71, although inflation wasn’t bad at that point compared to what it would be a few years later.
It’s not rocket science. We normally work for, trade in and buy things with dollars. When the value of the dollar falls, the price of what we buy goes up. However, the linkage isn’t real direct. Takes time for supply chains and consumer expectations to catch up. So don’t expect things to cost more tomorrow than today. In addition, the monkey wrench that is Covid has the economic picture so distorted now that it’s hard to get a good fix on relative valuations.
As for gold, I’ve seen it rise - and I’ve seen it fall - many times over my 70+ years. Pretty stuff too. It runs more on emotion than on fundamentals - although the fundamentals are currently in its favor. Some will get rich this time around. And some will get greedy and loose a fortune when the tide turns.
From Disney’s Beauty and the Beast: “A tale as old as time ...”
Just an added thought here - Conventional wisdom often links gold’s price increase with the current inflation rate. That’s a long stretch and normally not the case. Gold tends to move in sharp rapid movements like we’re witnessing. So at any given time, it’s racing ahead of or trailing inflation. Just a rough guess - but gold bullion looks to be up 20-25% over the past year. Miners are more volatile with many mining funds up 40% or more in the past year. Bad as inflation has been, it’s not running at 40% annually. However, over very long time frames it’s likely gold’s as good an indicator of the long-term inflation rate as would be real estate, lumber, tomatoes or coffee. Personally, I’ve some limited gold exposure, but I feel safer playing around the edges. Many real asset / commodity funds provide limited exposure to gold as does PRPFX. Some of the EM funds are nice indirect plays on the metals as well.

Federal police...it's just political to gin up support....remember all the bazillions of caravans heading to USA way back when... can't use that to scare people anymore so had to come up with something new.... RIOTERS, ANARCHIST replaced caravans. Are you scared? I am... police won't respond for 5 days and 911 is going away according to the scare commercials I've seen... SMH ... and people buy it, THAT'S what's scary....

EM countries are not a well defined class. You have to decide which collections of countries you're interested in when you select an "emerging markets" fund, whether active or passive.
Obviously, the inclusion or exclusion of smaller economies won't make a big difference in investment performance. But whether one includes a country like Korea can have a sizeable impact. David Snowball writes: "Over the past 3 months, Vanguard EM and the NASDAQ composite have both risen 21%."
VEMAX tracks a FTSE index that excludes Korea. Over the past three months (through July 24), VEMAX returned 22.07%, while FPADX, tracking the MSCI EM index including Korea returned just 21.37%. It should be noted that each underperformed its respective benchmark by almost a half percent.
The S&P Emerging BMI index (see Appendix A) has the same countries as the MSCI index except it excludes Korea. The NASDAQ index likewise excludes Korea but also excludes several other countries. (See p. 25 of the NASDAQ methodology.)
Here's a 2016 piece, in part explaining Why South Korea Remains Classified As An Emerging Market by MSCI.
I appreciate @Rbrt 's giving the source of the quoted material. A link would be even more helpful. With that, one can check how current the text is (the MSCI data is current). This matters because indexes periodically add and drop countries. Also, this enables one to see that the paragraph about "other sources" was direct from The Balance.
That paragraph doesn't have any footnotes giving sources. Worse, the paragraph says that these are another eight countries. But two of them (Argentina and Saudi Arabia) are not additional. Even with these, only seven countries are named (assuming Hong Kong can be regarded as a separate country). Given that MSCI moved Argentina and Saudi Arabia from Frontier Markets to Emerging Markets in May 2019, their continued presence in the paragraph could be the result of poor editing. I don't have a guess as to which other country was dropped, since the page doesn't give sources.
The bottom line is that EM is to some extent whatever you think it is. Given that, one must be careful in comparing returns, or even saying what's included in "the" index.

Tom Atteberry is a Portfolio Manager of the flagship FPA New Income fund. Atteberry brings us up to speed on conditions in the bond market, and how they have changed since Covid-19.
Atteberry will also share his One Investment recommendation with us – it might surprise you!

July 24th Episode:

July 17th Episode:

On another note, I’ve been hmmming a lot over the events in Seattle, Portland and other American cities.
I’m thinking there must be a graphic buried away somewhere (maybe in a political science department’s vault) that visually delineates the gradual progression from “protest” to “insurrection” to “revolution“. And I’m humming over whether this idea of unidentified (presumably) federal police dressed in military style fatigues showing up and “helping” to police cities that don’t want the help gains traction and becomes a permanent fixture of the American scene. More specifically, I’m wondering whether they’ll be hanging out on Michigan streets come November.
In case you’ve been living in a cave -
https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2020/07/25/seattle-

List of Businesses Amazon is in ..... (Pardon my dangling preposition.)
1. Retail goods
2. Amazon Prime
3. Consumer electronics
4. Digital content
4.1 Amazon Studios
4.2 Amazon Games Studios
5. Amazon Video
5.1 Video Direct
6. Delivery
6.1 Groceries
7. Amazon Business
8. Amazon Drive
9. Private labels and exclusive marketing arrangements
10. Amazon Web Services
11. Amazon Publishing
12. AmazonSmile
13. Amazon Local
14. Retail stores
15. Amazon Home Services
16. Amazon Cash/Top Up
hmmm... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Amazon_products_and_services
In rural / northern Michigan I just acquired internet service adequate for streaming movies. Quickly learned that Amazon Prime Video ain’t so “prime”. For most of the good stuff they hit you up for charges ranging from $2 to $4 for a maximum 48-hour rental. By contrast Netflix and others let you watch as much as you want for one flat fee ($9 a month in the case of Netflix)

insane numbers, there. And when the music stops, well you don't want to be there. Which reminds me:

One reason maybe that AVEFX ''flies under the radar'' is it is not available at Fidelity or Schwab no load/NTF.

In 2020 peak to trough AVEFX lost about 10% while FPINX lost only about 2%.
AVEFX has 20% in stocks FPINX < 1%
Vanguard VASIX is a better choice than AVEFX. See (chart). VASIX ER=0.11%. It has better performance and SD(volatility) is close.

“They said that as AUM increases, the yield will fall.”
That’s what they told me would happen back in early June. AUM was around 11 million then. If AUM is up to 17, then I has increased by about 55%. Cash has increased to 36%. This was all to be expected. The question is how will they deploy all that cash. It looks like they are expecting a covid second wave, recession/depression, defaults, etc. They want dry powder. By hiring them as managers, I’m paying for this type of tactical allocation. We’ll see how it works.
I don’t need this fund for monthly income. It’s an aggressive opportunistic allocation.

As of 6/30 they have 35.57% in cash. They will probably have an update in the week following this week. It's strange they have so much cash. 17 million is a very small portfolio and it should be very easy to find more bonds for extra 6-7 million.
The next 1-2 weeks would tell us plenty. Is the daily distribution fall around 0.0015, 0.002 or more.
If the expense ratio goes to 9.2% (the waiver of 8.38% ends at 7/31/2020) this fund will not be good.

Jeff's weekly column is always a good use of 15 minutes of my time. Hopefully you will find some value in this weeks writeup.
"I have written about economic indicators for more than fifteen years in WTWA and studied them before that. Usually there is some value in each. Not now. Very few are helpful in identifying the economic turn and prospects.
Indicator Analysis
I will summarize the indicator, how it is interpreted, the current implication, and my own comment."
Weighing The Week Ahead: Time To Look Under The Hood

@Derf - May 12 at $58.50. Haven't added to it since but wish I had.

From Jesse Felder, The Felder Report:
"Just three stocks, Apple, Amazon and Microsoft, make up more than 16% of the S&P 500 Index and over a third of the Nasdaq 100 Index. Together they are now valued at nearly $5 trillion. That’s larger than the entire economy of Germany and roughly the size of the Japanese economy."

Hi guys,
With this past Friday's market close on July 24th Old_Skeet's stock market barometer, which follows the S&P 500 Index, produced a reading of 129 which indicated, by the barometer's scale, an overbought reading for the Index. The last reported reading of 121 on July 17th reflected that the Index was extremely overbought. A higher barometer reading indicates that there is more investment value in the Index over a lower reading.
Generally, I will not open an equity spiff position until the barometer has reached a reading of around 160 or better; and, I start stepping out of a spiff postion with a barometer reading of 140, or lower. With this, we still have a ways to go before the Index becomes a buy for me.
My current asset allocation is about 15% cash, 45% income and 40% equity. I am overweight the income area by +5% because of low cash yields. My normal asset allocation is 20/40/40.
Thanks for stopping by and reading.
I wish all ... "Good Investing."
Old_Skeet