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.
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…
Oaktree (OAK) owns a pretty decent % of Doubleline.
Oaktree loaned JG some administrative employees to help get DoubleLine off the ground, enabling DL to go from nothing to a fully functioning investment group in a matter of a few months, explained …
@AndyJ Are there better indices (superior to market-cap) to use "on the way down"? I'm looking at RAFI
Bitzer, I don't know the research on the downside aspect of RA's fundamental index approach, but it would be worth looking into ... seems fairly…
There are several discrete sections of the monthly commentary, and for the most part, the author and/or theme of each repeats each month. Skim or skip the parts that aren't of interest. There's no law that says you have to read every word of every s…
Staples (VDC etc.) are bouncing today, up ~ 1%, while industrials (VIS, etc.) are flat. The more defensive of the two is where the $ is going. Big surprise? Nope - looks like the active $ may be semi-hedging against more weakness ahead.
Good piece, backing up the clear tendency of market-cap indexes to be great on the way up and very un-great on the way down. It's amazing how something as simple as the clearly documented record of those indexes in up- and down-markets escapes the c…
Thanks for the news, David. Looks like they've changed the retirement plan/account hard-close exception since the GPGOX and GPIOX hard closes; earlier the exception included accounts at 'intermediary platforms,' and now it's 'direct shareholders onl…
This is a good link to monitor the spread of high yield bonds. Currently the spread is 375 basis points, up from 330 basis points just a few months ago.
I didn't know about that specific spread calculation you linked, Mozart, but here's another on…
In the past year-plus, Fidelity has waived loads on lots of A shares. Other brokerages apparently do this also - it's a matter of negotiation between the supermarket and fund management. Load-waived shares are designated with the suffix .lw added on…
Janus Global Allocation is a mini-family: conservative, moderate, and growth. The allocations favor equities maybe more than you'd expect from the names, at least right now; for instance, Conservative, the one I have on a watch list, ~ 45% stock, 48…
Well, you've got RPHYX, with their lousy 1* rating, yet closed to additional investors, who doesn't really seem to care that M* really has no idea what they are all about. A healthy 20% of our portfolio is with them.
What's with the 1* on that? Odd…
Ha! Sounds like G and Co. have had just about enough of what G. seemed to think is a bunch of incompetents at M*. He referred to them over and over in his webcasts as 'some analysts in Chicago' who didn't know what they were talking about after the…
The only pure emerging/frontier holding I have is WAFMX. Also own MAINX, a small chunk of PAFSX just to try it out, and GPROX; those are all ~ in the 40-50% range in EMs.
I also keep an eye on HLMOX, MEASX, and SFGIX, but no $ there.
RIMIX look…
Scott, you've owned JM for quite a while, I think? I forgot about it until recently, but see it's done pretty well for quite a while and yet is still priced below book (according to M* anyway).
