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.
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.
Reply to @golub1: Pimco has PEFIX, apparently a total return version of the RAFI EM approach; not the simplest strategy in the world, and I haven't researched it in any depth.
Unless you're specifically after a RAFI product, "fundamentally weighte…
Reply to @Charles: Yup, I can see safe bonds getting hit on earnings reporting, but not necessarily risk-on bonds and stocks ... but I guess stocks could be just digesting the latest high.
Reply to @claimui: He started heading into those names months and months ago, which was the nail in the coffin for me ... sold it all early in the year. Several analysts/managers this year (Rich Bernstein on Wealth Track two weeks ago being the late…
Oh boy, it's another one of the "everything gets killed" days; guess we're not done with those. Only thing in stocks or bonds I see up is tech, which looks like just a handful of stocks up a lot, including Apple and EMC, both up > 5%.
TE Connec…
Reply to @Heathbob: AF answered a question on just that on the conference call last Thursday, basically saying it won't happen anytime soon, and would only be if they figure out some other strategy that would work as a mutual fund. It's a tiny shop …
Reply to @TonyGstring: Hi Tony, ARTKX is great, but you're getting a lot of the specific stocks in ARTGX, not just the investment style alone. Last I checked on M* stock intersection a couple of months ago, the overlap was 22 stocks (of 45 in ARTKX …
The team did spend several minutes explaining the two LA materials positions (SQM and Vale), which accounted for 40% of the fund's Q2 losses, while LA overall accounted for 75% of the losses. Basically, they were considered quality businesses with g…
Thanks, Charles, I'd registered but spaced that it's today.
I'll be interested to hear if AF expands on the Q2 narrative concerning the source of losses during the quarter -- he says two Latin American mining/materials stocks were responsible for …
No reputable economist agrees with much of anything Arnott has to say on macro, which is almost entirely ideological. However, his AA (not AA-AA, which the linked article is about) is a decent mashup of the various Pimco credit strategies, with a sm…
Reply to @MaxBialystock: Come out west sometime too, Max. BC is some of the most amazing country on the continent, and Vancouver and Victoria are terrific cities.
Hadn't heard of it, but any fund that charts better than Vanguard Wellesley Income over just about every time period ... which it does ... has to be pretty good.
Reply to @Hogan: Ottawa ... don't miss the Canadian National Museum & the Parliament building, right across the river from each other. The WW-I memorial in one of the upstairs towers of Parliament is a real tear-inducer.
Reply to @scott: ECON is run as a concentrated, cap-weighted index (30 stocks), so yep, it's got at least some risk of overvaluation in the top names. Pretty high P/E for an EM stock fund, too ...
I have Bespoke Investment Grp's page on SA bookmarked, and check it fairly frequently; otherwise, I don't spend any time there for the reasons cited. (There are other actual pros who post decent analysis there too, probably as part of the free conte…
Reply to @GregFromBoston: I knew my partial career as a writer was headed down the tubes the first time a guy called and asked me to be a "content provider" for his tourist-oriented web site, and offered "exposure" rather than actual, you know, pay.
I agree with Scott: diversified EM is my preferred way of getting a little LA exposure, although it's been the bane of SFGIX, the one diversified EM stock fund I own: Andrew Foster says in his Q2 commentary that two LA stocks were responsible for 3/…
Barry R's The Big Picture, Abnormal Returns, GMO, Bespoke Investment Group (their site, and they do regular commentary on Seeking Alpha), Calculated Risk, Invest With An Edge (for momentum scores), Guru Focus, Barron's blogs (Income Investing, Focus…
Cef's don't get to have all the fun; some etf discounts are really piling up. The biggest EM debt etf's (EMB and PCY) are at 5% discounts ... enormous price drops today, only very small drops in NAV so far, as reflected in the IIVs.
BWG, thanks for the reminder about FEO. I watched and watched it for about a year and a half looking for an entry point & then forgot about it. It's back on watch from today. Yes, does seem a little early ... don't have an opinion on when to buy…
FYI, out of curiosity, I sent Bretton an e-mail asking about progress toward availability from fund supermarkets. Steve D. replied, saying Fidelity is a no because they're not taking any more small independents, but that Vanguard is likely to offer …
I've followed BRTNX a bit ... kinda like it, but no place in the portfolio for it unless I really got to be a serious collector. Max, I guess you picked up on the family ties between Bretton and the Parnassus gang ... think I recall you're invested …
