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.
All the pure plays are pretty volatile - the ups and downs have been a fact of life to this point. I've owned a tiny bit of NEXTX for a while - the theme is "new economy," including renewables - and I've bought and sold some QCLN and ICLN a time or …
As a former brokerage account holder there, I'd say Vanguard's highest and best use is as a spot for holding a low-maintenance portfolio (or sub-portfolio) of Vanguard funds, and that's it. I agree with larry and little5 that the V. customer service…
At Fidelity, there is a $2,500 initial buy for AQR, but it's only in retirement accounts. (Bitzer, the Fees and Distributions page for a fund is the place to look at Fido for the details on cost & purchase minimums - the Summary page is the abbr…
The Fed has talked this one up, so it'd be surprising if they don't move now.
But all the blather about it over the past years is coming mainly from the financial press, most of whom have never had any idea what they're talking about.
J, I'd call that protecting accumulated profits, and I have my own reasons for wanting to call it that - this week, for selling DBL as it started heading into serious premium-land and then watching it get more and more serious for days afterward.
S…
The only active bets I'm making right now in any asset class/sector (other than the ones the managers I've hired are doing for me) are short commodity energy equity and high yield corporate FI, zero commodities, and overweight FI non-agency mortgage…
MUB, though, was up, and on greater than avg. volume, but nothing like the HYD volume anomaly (if Yahoo & M* are correct). Something specific to HY munis, about, say, private activity bonds or Puerto Rico? Tax selling after Monday's dividend pay…
True, msf, though the fund reports aren't much to write home about, they do sometimes point out a wrinkle or two you wouldn't know from the parent co.'s material. Like just about everything, it takes a grain (or a bucket) of salt to get down to the …
For me, numero uno of the specific features by far is the premium portfolio info for oef's, etf's, cef's. Without that, I wouldn't pay for the rest of the features.
Otherwise, I occasionally use fund analyst reports (more value there for etf's, for…
Bitzer, imho, the best shot at figuring out why an MF fund loses or gains a ton on a given day/week is to look at the last portfolio data disclosure and see if the long and short exposures explain it. But of course the disclosures are infrequent and…
Some cef's are thinly traded, some aren't, pretty much the same principle as goes for the universe of etf's. For sure, check the trading volume and the spreads between bid and ask for both cef's and etf's.
Another caution: cef's employ leverage, so…
Vert makes a good point about earned income. Another reason to keep up on earnings is that a blip on that score can be a signal to cef traders to sell-sell-sell, which will drive down the price (which can be a buying opportunity, or not, as with any…
Edmund's got a good point - BOND does look like a global fund these days. It looked much more like a conventional IT-TR bond fund when I owned it in 2012-13.
Cef's are complex and at times volatile investments that deserve a lot of study prior to diving in with more than a few test bucks (a tutorial, lots of reading at the M* CEF forum and the buy-sell thread under the M* Fidelity forum, etc.).
Just fo…
Crash, that's the first I've heard of PRSNX in a while ... owned it once, right out of its gate, when I had quite a bit of $ with Price. It was known as Strategic Income then; did they change the investment strategy, or just the name? Looks about mi…
I guess time will tell how AF's overweight to Latin America will work out, especially the ~ 2.5x weighting of Brazil. May have to wait a while for the upside.
Yes to junk munis, and junk mortgages have done pretty well too. And, for the last 3 months or so, so have less corporate-junky bond cef's and some of the US$-denominated EM debt universe.
Personally I am glad to be ... in ASHIX albiet it's has a bit of a rough past month.
Mona
Yep, I noticed that like several other high-yieldy funds, they bought into battered energy really early, from a couple of percent to 9% in one swell foop. Du…
Mona: "I am still trying to understand why all the ink on MFO on RSIVX and not a drop on ASHIX ...."
Hi Mona, the Allianz fund is mentioned in this thread, and a few others. Search on ASHDX to find them, as that seems to be the share class people h…
Is the MFO Premium membership really tax-deductible if we are getting something for it (access to search tools)? How does that work?
Good question. For donations to non-profits that publish a magazine, say, or put on charitable dinner events, you h…
Hi OJ, I owned it in an IRA for a year-plus, but sold it when I decided to dump all pure HY corp exposure a few months back. I do think it's about the best thing going in the asset class, though. Looks like it's still doing ok within the category.
…
The dedicated board seat is a worry to me. Directors named on that basis are prone to acting for the good of the outside interest they represent, and not necessarily for the good of the organization they're governing. My impression is that it's more…
Echos of Andrew Foster's outlook going back three years - and he's crushed the index with SFGIX. Still, even following the Foster/GaveKal formula, EMs haven't done much, in absolute terms.
Good piece, heezsafe. AD's analysis of what VRX may actually be worth if they transition it to a sustainable business in the usual pharma mode seems to makes sense, but I don't think the SEQUX boyz will like the bottom line.
I would like to see Gundlach start an unconstrained fund of his best ideas not exclusively tied to bonds ....
I've had that thought too, and every time I do, check out DMLIX (multi-asset growth, I think the closest thing to that approach in his fun…
+1 for Lipper categories, which are more "granular" (in the terminology du jour) than M*, e.g., the all-cap equity categories vs. the M* "what's the cap average" approach that lumps all-caps and mid-caps together.
JG talks about the difference between TOTL and DBLTX.
Good, clear interview. When TOTL first came out, JG said that it would be essentially the DBLFX universe of FI asset classes with the duration of DBLTX and the barbell approach that both oef's f…
I followed GOODX for a while after inception, but gave up. Looks like they had a decent 2012 and an okay 2013 and then fell off a cliff in '14 and '15, so now they come in at the bottom of the category.
If I recall correctly, the now-#1 holding, W…
Do Yahoo or Fidelity show total return for mutual funds? I know only Morningstar, that provides such data.
Yes, like Ted linked above, but not several funds on a single page like you can set up with M* Portfolio Mgr. I still keep watchlists at M* f…
+1 for Yahoo.
Only place I know that's faster is Fidelity. If you have holdings at Fido, you can add non-Fido holdings to a watchlist, which is accessible directly from your portfolio page. That setup is consistently a bit faster to update than Ya…
Sequoia's status on Morningstar seems to have gone from "Under Review" back to "Gold" now. Maybe their review consisted of reading this thread?
The revised analyst report says the board resignations that M* said triggered the review of the fund wer…
The M* analyst rating page says the main reason for the fund's being "under review" is the resignation of the two independent board members, and secondarily, the stake in Valeant, which "illustrates the fund's heightened risk levels."
Aside: isn't …
Hi Bee, the chart pages for PDI and other cef's show both nav and price (but for TR on each, you have to go to the Performance page). As far as I've been able to tell, it's just when you start from an oef page and add a cef that you get TR on nav fo…
I've found I have to be careful using M* charts with regard to cef's. When you bring up a chart on an oef (e.g., PIMIX in Bee's post above) and then add a cef to compare, the chart shows total return for the cef on nav, not on price. The 'Performanc…
Speaking of RiverNorth, it boggles the imagination that RNSIX could be so mediocre YTD, at slightly less than 1% total return -- when many FI cef's are up 4-5% or more, and (representing the Gundlach sleeves) DBLTX and DBSCX are up 3.1% and 3.7% res…
Thought it must have been something like that, Hank. Yep, it's pretty much a short duration high yield fund, and junk has been out of favor (putting it at a disadvantage to its M* peers in MS*), but even so, Riverpark hasn't kept up with its real pe…
Hi Hank, I don't know what M* page you were copying from as far as the RSIVX credit quality breakdown goes, but here are the figures from the page that's on the site now, with data as of 9/30.
In round #s, all of the A categories (AAA-AA-A) = 3%,…
