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.
MAINX is mostly EM, but not 100%. The Matthews site lists several countries in the portfolio that are either always or usually considered 'developed' - Hong Kong, Oz, Singapore, Korea (they mean South, of course), and very small holdings in NZ and J…
As several have said here over time, beware M* on their bond/cash/hybrid breakdowns within bond and allocation funds. Their analytical tools for bonds are very, very shoddy and inconsistent compared to the tools for stocks.
Looks like if you have an AIP in place, it may be okay in taxable, as they say below - assuming it's all "OR's" between the bullets. This is from the PDF hard-close announcement on the GP site:
"Retail Shareholders (Direct Shareholders Only):
• Ret…
JG upped the HY corp stake in the core fund from 2% to 5%, so not exactly a ringing endorsement. Junkster, I follow the HY spread chart on FRED, and it's now bounced up off the 3.8% level that's been a top or bottom basically every time the spread's…
CNBC is showing the direct quote below from Gundlach on the subject:
U.S. 10-year bond rates will remain between 2.2 and 2.8 percent for the rest of the year, bond guru Jeffrey Gundlach told CNBC on Tuesday.
"The low in U.S. rates was in July 201…
I bought into ARIVX and Cinnamond when it first came out because of his conservative style .... I dumped it when I saw his affinity to precious metal miner stocks. He has been caught in a value trap for years now and won't adjust.
That was my ARI…
Hey Catch, it can also be a buy ... then sell and buy something else if it doesn't work out - no shackles.
Around here it's 4%, on its way to 5 by the end of the month.
Hi Will, on the "short-term, high quality bond fund with low risk," I'm not a big fan of THOPX either, but don't you already have something like that in the Baird fund? Also, keep in mind that Fed rates have the most influence on the short end of th…
Howdy @AndyJ,
There are a few that make comments form time-to-time ... and, you are one of these.
And, in the spirit of trying to be helpful ...
Well ... How was I to know?
No problem, Skeet; thanks for the helpful attitude. But if you read the …
If I'm doing the math right, then, 50% of the total portfolio is in assets that have significant equity/credit risk (40% stock plus 10% in bond funds that are totally on the credit-risk side - EVBAX, PRHYX, BHYAX).
If you're a conservative investo…
Are you 100% in bonds, or are the percentages of the bond side of your portfolio only? If the latter, it's impossible for anyone to comment intelligently on the bond breakdown without knowing how much and how risky your stock sleeve is. In other wor…
That was a rhetorical question, Old Skeet, meaning for starters that someone thinking of raising cash should have a solid view of what in his/her portfolio is (most) overvalued before selling. In other words, a plan is desirable before changing a de…
rjb: "If someone has a 100% bond fund portfolio, this fund would provide great diversification. If someone has a stock heavy portfolio, not sure how much diversification this fund would provide."
My thoughts exactly. Also, I'm thinking that KG's vi…
Hi Bee, always check the A shares ... some brokerages have deals with the fund companies to waive the loads on those. Fidelity for example has EVBAX load-waived & NTF, minimum investment of $2.5k.
David, if you do get in touch with GP, it might be good to know if they consider a hard close for GPROX as imminent or somewhat further down the line - if they're even prepared to make a guesstimate.
Thanks for all your help.
AJ
'Core' in the case of a bond fund usually means a predominantly investment-grade intermediate-term fund that's light on 'extras' like ex-U.S. and non-IG; total bond funds, like say Vanguard's VBTLX, are probably the purest examples. 'Core plus' mean…
Scott: "That's what I thought - I really don't think that should allow "absolute return" in the title. If a fund has "absolute return" in the title, that should cover the fund as a whole, not just one aspect."
Agreed - plus it doesn't seem accurate…
For the OP, I'd say that if I were going to own an index fund in EMs, it would probably be this one because of the fundamental factor approach vs. market cap ... but I prefer active managers in EM.
Charting it against other EM funds is interesting;…
VPGDX, the managed payout fund, may not be a slam dunk, but one of its constituent funds may be worth a look: the new Global Minimum Volatility Fund, VMVFX, which looks to be well diversified across geography, sector, and market cap, and so far at l…
Yes, thanks for the detailed explanation of TK's views, David.
Countries of the issuers are shown on the Matthews web site; see the lower half of the page, under 'Country Allocation.' This is another case where information from the source is more u…
Yikes. Angel Oak = mortgage fund run by three alums of banks (the third guy was with B of A) that were up to their necks in the exotic-mortgage disaster. What could possibly go wrong?
In the 'Portfolio' area for each fund on M*, the Premium screen shows moat ratings (wide, narrow, none) for the fund's portfolio. The usual suspects (PRBLX, VDIGX, etc.) show up as high scorers in the moat department. I'm not sure that exactly trans…
Hi rjb, the only way I know how to find trailing P/E at M* is to put the fund in a Portfolio Manager watchlist and set up 'My View' to include trailing P/E; it's one of the data points on the long menu of statistics you can pick for that page. -Che…
What does he do for risk control? It's been a great fund so far, but the trailing/forward PE's are up to 27/24 (per M* - the AKREX fact sheet doesn't mention P/E), so how much upside can there be left in it this market cycle, and how much risk is th…
Yes, I think the return:risk ratings (Hi to Lo on both) are useful and fairly indicative of the personality of the fund in most cases. I don't mean the medal ratings, which are the issue in the linked story; I couldn't even tell you what any of the …
Thanks - I didn't immediately find either of the pages you guys mentioned, but found a news page on that corporate site that had a link to the PDF. So I bookmarked it and hopefully it'll refresh to the current page next time around.
As far as GPEOX, I've invested more than I normally would have because of the hard close and because I would rather have to reduce my position at some point in the future than not be able to add to it if I want to.
That's the approach I'm taking …
Hi Sven, M*'s performance pages yesterday (Monday) showed a loss of 0.34% for the past week for FOCIX (the Fairholme fund's ticker) versus a loss of 0.09 for THHYX, the hedged fund whose ticker the article says is Fairholme. It looks like a case of …
Looks like the usually reliable JW got two funds confused, or conflated, or something ... per M*, Fairholme (FOCIX) is up 6.11% ytd, but it's Toews Hedged HY (THHYX) that's down less than 0.1% in the last week.
I find it inconsiderate and disrespectful of my craft as a writer and work as a journalist that you post the entirety of my texts on your site instead of just a paragraph and a hyperlink as other blogs do.
I agree entirely, having had the same kind…
