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Reply to @willmatt72: I know. They opened up a whole new opportunity set, and once you get to looking at all the options, it looks like a whole new ballgame.
I looked up GBOAX (also load-waived at Fido), and it looks like an interesting global fund. Looks to be pretty actively managed, & not that they're especially comparable, but it did better than MAINX during the taper tantrum.
Reply to @TSP_Transfer: I like the looks of TGMEX so far, too. Right, their commentary is really detailed on both fund positioning and investment environment.
Reply to @Vert: Hi Vert, no bond expert here, but my guess would be it's mainly a result of bargain-hunting management of a very small level of assets versus an enormous fund without a lot of room to add value. VWEHX is over $16 billion.
But don't…
Reply to @Old_Joe: I dunno -- seems like this kind of fund is in a pretty sweet spot now, and maybe they're only rarely in a really bad spot because they've typically got some, but not a whole lot, of both kinds of bond risk. So it might not be a ba…
Reply to @hank: I bought and sold RPIBX several years ago, before the crash, based on the strength of the euro. It was so heavily invested in developed-market, low-yielding, higher quality investment-grade debt that the currency movements totally ov…
Reply to @MaxBialystock: I think it's M* that says it's a "world" bond fund; I don't think they have categories for foreign regional bond funds.
Willmatt, it's not an EM bond fund either ... Asia includes a slug of developed markets/economies too,…
Here's a quick report on RSIIX/RSIVX portfolio statistics for Oct. 31, which David Sherman generously e-mailed to me this morning and okayed my sharing with the board.
David stressed that these figures are based on in-house, unaudited calculations…
If you're speaking of my question on that thread, David, if I didn't say so clearly, I meant holdings AND portfolio statistics and commentary ... not just the bare holdings info alone ... but stats such as duration, credit quality, asset type breakd…
Reply to @Charles: Just noticed that the mgrs did a fairly extreme portfolio makeover in the last month, a major credit quality upgrade: 80% is now B or better (13% in the C's and 7% unrated). Of the 8 HY funds I'm more or less keeping up with, it w…
Reply to @AndyJ: On the liquidity question, the bid-ask of HYLD at this moment, during trading, is 52.10/ 52.13, or 0.06%. Bid-ask range is frequently skewed and not representative when the market's closed.
For anyone looking at HYLD as a buy & hold, I wouldn't do it. But as a strategic investment for the past year (and who knows how much longer), it's been positioned well, has a very good 1y up-down capture, bond price is around par vs. above par …
Thanks, Kenster.
Love the data breakdowns he does; it makes it so easy at a glance to see what's going on with the portfolio.
That said, it was very disappointing to me to see AF put significant $ into materials stock. The core, well-considered v…
Reply to @Mark: Mark, the manager G. Johnson ran it as a small hedge fund starting in 2003, and he killed the category through both the runup and the crash.
But he had only $17 million in the hedge fund at the peak, and since converting to a Pimco…
I've been thinking of opening a small position in PMHDX, not sure yet of the timing, but if I do, I'll consider it part of my stock allocation, and not so much as an alt fund for portfolio purposes. Seems to me it runs more like a lower-volatility s…
Hi Catch,
It depends on how long it's looked like that. "Category" and "investment style" are two different things in M*'s lexicon, and I think that's a useful distinction. I remember from the reclassification of ARTKX's category a few years back …
'Joel Dickson, a senior investment strategist in Vanguard's Investment Strategy Group, said strategies that involve overweighting particular factors look a lot like active management "cloaked in index Halloween costumes." '
Mr. Dickson apparently c…
It's an excellent fund: an actively managed etf, kinda expensive but worth it. The only other 10%+ ytd HY funds I'm aware of invest a lot further down in credit quality. It does, however, have more C-ish exposure than a lot of HY funds. It got cream…
Thanks, Charles; I intended to listen but was busy elsewhere. I'll look forward to hearing the recording. Just recently bought a starter set of AKREX shares.
Reply to @scott: Maybe the board et al. think their funds are sold advisor-only, but marketing is cutting deals with brokerages that bypass advisors? The old right-hand, left-hand thing at work? If the Prez really used the word "only," then there's …
"He went on to explain that AQR funds are sold only through financial advisors."
Of course that is absolutely incorrect. I've never owned one of their funds, but test trades through Fidelity go through without a hitch on QLENX, with a TF and no adv…
Reply to @Charles: Just an FYI, not necessarily a recommendation that would add to the workload, but I've always liked the Lipper categories better than M*'s. They're a little more fine-tuned, e.g., there's a 'multi-cap' category that gets around on…
Must be for the I shares - the S share class, MNEMX, has been around for a while. It's been pretty decent, but lags SFGIX and THDIX, for a couple of examples.
Reply to @Old_Joe: Cash flow, maybe? To meet payroll obligations, etc., without having to tap into $ that might be making more in long-term investments in their sovereign wealth fund, say.
Reply to @Old_Joe: Thanks, Joe. That's a POV I can relate to.
RSIVX sounds to me like it could be an expanded opportunity-set version of OSTIX (short junk and convertibles), which in the past has been a 6-8% kind of fund (5 yr return right at 8%), …
So I'm curious, actually curious, not being snarky at all here, about why there's a rush to get into a brand new fund that hasn't yet reported a portfolio or published a single commentary.
Is it primarily the success of the other fund, with its di…
Reply to @Old_Joe: OJ, doesn't Schwab have a DCA purchase option? Fido is $5 a shot and Vanguard is $3 after the initial buy-in; hard to imagine Schwab wouldn't have something similar (?).
Yes -- here's the applicable part of the relevant footnote. It's still buy-only, too.
"Online Transaction Fees: $49.95 for most funds. Certain funds will have a transaction fee of $75. To identify any applicable transaction fees associated with th…
