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.
Well, Barry's buying EMs for his clients:
"Barry Ritholtz, CEO of online quantitative research firm Fusion IQ and author of the widely read “The Big Picture" blog, recently trimmed back his clients’ exposure to U.S. equities and used the gains to b…
Reply to @VintageFreak: Yes it does. For the third time I will quote you, and if you don't understand the English language, I can't help you:
"Never made it past benchmark / peer group in its life."
The statement is CLEARLY not true. Look up the m…
Hi Catch, IMHO, best uses for Facebook are the special groups, plus the ability, through the simple search function, to find an old friend you've lost track of.
If you do the regular F'bk thing, be careful who you sign up with as "friends," and do…
S&P 5c is hovering around the 50d ema & just above the sma. Levels ~ the 50d have been a floor & bounce level 4x since late last year. If there's a clear break down from here, we might have a change in the wind.
Reply to @VintageFreak: I agree with you about it not really being a risk-averse fund, but the numbers don't lie about performance vs. the benchmark. "Never made it past benchmark ... in its life" was just plain wrong.
On the graph you linked, ch…
From Bob's list, MALOX (a hilarious ticker, by the way): MDLOX, the same fund in A shares, is one of those Fidelity's now offering NTF and load-waived.
In the ETF world, GAL is the only actively managed global allocation fund I know of that's reall…
"Never made it past benchmark / peer group in its life."
I don't have a horse in this race whatsoever, but that statement is clearly not true.
See here, halfway down the page, under "Performance." Lower numbers in the percentile rankings mean it …
ARTKX and WAFMX, and a Blackrock version of a U.S. bond index fund (!) in the 401k.
Europe's got the greatest momentum in the Invest w/an Edge weekly report, and EMs are starting to pick up a bit too.
Well, M* classifies FPNIX as a 'non-traditional' bond fund, and it doesn't chart all that well against the average of that classification. But it also doesn't chart very well against other short term bond funds, which seem to be more its league. I g…
Reply to @Kenster1_GlobalValue: Are you still holding both FMIJX and ARTKX, Ken? (I think I remember you were at one time.) It's a great combo, one currency hedged and one not; I've been doing 50-50 for a while.
Reply to @Kenster1_GlobalValue: FMIJX may be pretty high on the active share measurement too; FMIHX, from the same group, is 3rd on the list of U.S. large blend funds in the M* article on the category. It's probably too new for them to include in th…
Reply to @David_Snowball: I've been transposing a lot more the past few years; I'm happy to pretend for the time being it's not a, um, symptom of anything.
They also ran articles earlier on active share in large blend U.S. funds and small blend U.S.
Note that, except for these articles, they make their active share ratings available only to institutional/advisor customers, not to retail customers, ev…
I noticed the P/B of SFGIX is right at the same as the beaten-down index, so that's encouraging; I'm continuing to feed a little more into the fund each month.
Of the consumer-oriented EM/FM funds I follow, WAFMX looks like the best valuation; it,…
Looks like a good fund. Wasn't familiar with it, so did a quick look; the only possible flag I can come up with is a fairly steep drawdown in 2008, greater than the two low-risk, large blend, all-stock funds I own. WBALX is a growth fund so a little…
Reply to @VintageFreak: A lot of people own Pimco I-shares at Vanguard, where the minimum investment is $25k. I hope that doesn't make an investor rich.
In equity land, I'd look for high-quality portfolios, which are less prone to big drawdowns; some of them accumulate cash when there are no good investments according to those managers' disciplines. GMO, which maintains that they're still undervalue…
Reply to @ron: Ron, OSTIX has been a pretty steady fund with the same basic mix for a few years now ... the corporates are short junk at the higher end of the junk credit quality spectrum, so you get decent yield with low interest rate risk and rela…
Reply to @Charles: Have fun on the coast. Don't miss the Tall Trees Grove in Redwood NP -- a short walk off a gravel road from the highway into the hills.
Do you do John Wayne too, Charles?
In this house, putting some cash back to work, adding incrementally to existing funds ARTKX, WAFMX, PRBLX, and MAINX; and giving some thought to WAGOX vs. ARTWX, HYLD, NABAX, and making MWTRX my one-only core bond…
Art, thanks for the note about GOBAX. Just spent 20 minutes looking into it, and it at least deserves a spot on the watchlist. Like you say, that A-class load-waived deal at Fido could be a game-changer.
Reply to @STB65: STB, it hasn't been around for 3 years, and the strategy is more on the defensive side, so you wouldn't expect it to top the charts after a year of all stocks going up and up and up.
Reply to @David_Snowball: That is the way it works. At one time, I held APPLX direct, before it became available via supermarket, and the E.R. went up (from memory here) from 0.96 to 1.25. I called to ask what happened, and was told that was the pri…
Reply to @VintageFreak: As in Charles's screen shot, the TF is "up to" $35. It's $20 (each way) if you have $50k in V. funds or etf's.
A lot of people don't like 6-month redemption periods, thus the reminder in the OP.
Reply to @AndyJ: Followup on NABAX at Fido: the fund prospectus (p. 36) contains a provision for a "contingent deferred sales charge" of 1% for shares held less than 18 months (!!) purchased load-waived (with additional language that makes it somewh…
Reply to @mrc70: Good idea; that'd be an excellent fund. To pull it off, though, Price would have to hire some new foreign stock managers. Their existing ones are mainly growth-oriented, and mediocre at best.
I've been half-arsedly looking for a g…
Reply to @Charles: Charles, did you see this little tidbit in the ARLSX report? They're saying shorting is getting to be a crowded trade and returns from it may be weakening. I don't get exactly how that works, but it sounds a little ominous for L/S…
Slick, if you want to go conservative in developed ex-U.S., the FMI fund FMIJX is in that ballpark ... curmudgeonly skeptical of the big rally in the face of slowing global growth, selling stocks that've done big runups, holding some cash, staying w…
Reply to @MaxBialystock: Max, Andrew F. has already done the spreading; the fund is weighted in Asia almost exactly the same as the EM index. (But a chunk of that exposure is developed Asia, so you could say he's underweight EM Asia.) Most of the re…
Looks like an excellent core/intermediate bond fund; it's actually positive YTD, and not many can say that. Interesting collection of funds in that family, too ... unfortunately, not available to this kid (in Vanguard & Fidelity brokerage accoun…
Reply to @scott: The A-share class of the Neuberger absolute return fund is NABAX, and it's load-waived & NTF at Fido too.
Took a quick look at the up/down capture ratios of L/S funds ARLSX, NLSAX, and PMHIX on M*: the only directly comparable…
NLSAX is load-waived and NTF at Fido. Never heard of it before, but I used to have some $ at Neuberger-Berman and thought they were a good shop. Then they went all load on us, but with Fido waiving some funds' A-shares' loads, N-B becomes an option …
Reply to @VintageFreak: As he says in the interview, they do the 7 yr. forecasts according to a standard methodology ... and so he's being honest with us by saying he's not sure the standard methodology captures everything that's churning in the EM …
Reply to @scott: According to the M* analyst report, PCLIX/PCLDX has some limited flexibility to stray from its index, over- or under-weighting by a few points as they see value. No idea how that compares with Highbridge's flexibility ... but PCLIX …
Reply to @Mona: Not Kenster, but I'll throw in my $0.02; I own them both in a 50-50 split. They both use a moderate, very disciplined value style and most of the time, they've got at least some overlap in individual names. The ways I see them as com…
+1 on PCLIX, per claimui ... I'm not in commodities now, but if we ever get to the late-cycle stage in this recovery before we get another recession, that's the source of commodity exposure I have in mind.
