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.
I own both, but then I have a pretty big chunk in Matthews so am able to have meaningful positions in both. I do think they're different enough to consider owning both: MAPIX, like Mark said, is heavier in the "really developed" developed Asia-Pacif…
Thanks for the update. We're thinking a lot alike; ARTKX is my largest foreign diversified holding, and I've also been thinking about opening a starter position in GPGOX.
Reply to @fundalarm: I should have been more specific on what I meant by "slowing down": I was referring to the yield of DBLTX, which has been in steady decline. The cash stake, which has been up to 20% in the past 6 months or so, must bear a lot of…
Reply to @Investor: Investor, just curious, since I've been considering ARTHX too ... are you keeping both FMIJX and ARTHX, or did you sell FMIJX? There's not a lot of holdings overlap, but I think of the "global footprint" strategy as roughly the s…
Reply to @Bitzer: Well, the assets are piling up, pushing $17 billion now. Gundlach's DBLTX (all mortgage, versus PIMIX's half or more mortgages) started slowing down in the mid-20 billions or so. Consider that there's a large slug of PIMIX's AUM in…
Reply to @Mona: Hi Mona, quick reply here, maybe others can chip in too.
There has probably never been a more risk-averse EM debt fund than DBLEX. If the lower-IG EM bonds Luz P. has $ in continue to make their way up the credit scale, it's likely …
Reply to @MaxBialystock: Hey Max,
Both his intermediate bond funds are set up on a barbell; the T's in Core FI and the gov't mortgages in Total Return are the risk-off counterweights to the riskier assets in the funds ... mainly EM bonds in the fo…
Reply to @claimui: And was it WSR who also pointed out that M* gives gold ratings to some index funds, which appears to fly in the face of the stated ratings criteria?
Edit: to be more explicit, an index fund can't logically get better than an aver…
Shosta,
I guess my response would be kinda-sorta, but not exactly. The indexes have a slight bias toward momentum and "not-value" because cap-weighting cheats a little toward stocks with higher prices relative to the market as a whole. So, I guess …
Reply to @bee: The incorrect CW about rate rises is repeated in the article, to wit:
"Short-term Bonds: Rising interest rates make prices of bonds go down but the longer the maturity, the farther prices will fall. Therefore, shorter maturities will…
Reply to @davfor: Right, got it. It'll be interesting when there's a significant correction, say like the one in 2011, before SFGIX existed, to see how that all plays out.
Reply to @SlowLane: Great find on the chart, SlowLane. Senior bank loans look good, and so do munis, especially lower quality.
High yield (corporates) in '04-'06 are kind of intriguing: not so good in the one year in that period, 2005, when the Fe…
Reply to @davfor: Just for general information, since it's possible to infer from your post that the funds are similar except for the percentage of Asia exposure, SFGIX and MAPIX are significantly different funds even within their Asia & Pacific…
Hey, good discussion topic, folks.
The argument as stated in the article parallels one of Andrew Foster's main investment theses at SFGIX.
My EM stock $ is all with Matthews and Seafarer, except for a small position in FEO, Aberdeen's EM 'balance…
Gary, are you sure you're prevented from investing the $ in the IRA due to the hold? My understanding and experience with Fido and Vanguard is that you can't redeem deposited $ for whatever the hold/clear period is, but that you can use it to buy fu…
Reply to @BenWP: Ben, you may know this, but to be clear, those are past distributions, up to September, listed in the tables; as the text at the top says, eoy estimates will be out the week of 19 November, so in about two weeks.
Reply to @MaxBialystock: Hi Max, "YTD" means for the year since January 1, as of the current date; so SFGIX will never have a "YTD" performance figure for 2012. (It'd be nice if they computed a 6-month figure ... but that's readily DIY-doable from Y…
Reply to @Investor: I don't know what the rules and hoops are on transfers, rollovers, etc. out of the average 401k, but with IRAs, almost all trustee to trustee transfers require specific forms to be submitted with a medallion signature guarantee, …
Reply to @Old_Joe: Or, as the article says down near the end, some of the withdrawals are to roll over into better, cheaper investments ... some 401ks I've heard an earful about from friends are pretty awful: mediocre investment choices or worse, co…
Reply to @Rbrt: Since Romick is always throwing around the term "fiat currency," I suppose this P.S. from Barry Ritholtz (in a post today about stocking up on necessities ahead of Sandy) is directed at him, among others:
"PS: All you fiat money fol…
Reply to @hank: Yay! Gordon Lightfoot makes it into MFO! (FWIW, Gord's looking a lot older these days than he does in the video. Our loss when he stops touring ....)
Reply to @catch22: I'm with Catch on this one. Down-town Josh Brown has the symptoms of the common disease these days of extrapolating from Treasuries to the entire bond market, which is much larger and more diverse than the equity universe. Risk-ba…
Reply to @Charles: I second the FMIJX idea, with the qualification that it may not be some people's idea of a core foreign fund ... the theme is solid companies with global operations bought at reasonable prices, including U.S. stocks, lots of Europ…
Reply to @Ted: The linked page shows only past distributions, not estimates for this year. I haven't seen a headline yet on the V. home page for distribution estimates for this year ... if anyone has, that'd be of interest here, for sure.
David, I think what that set of stats means is that cash is predicted to outperform a U.S. total bond market index, specifically. However, I doubt that any competent, active bond manager is going to keep the same bond profile in his/her fund as the …
As I understood the article, it's not MSCI changing anything, it's the makeup of the Vanguard funds that will change.
V. is shifting from the MSCI indexes, which classify S. Korea as emerging, to FTSE, which classifies it as developed, so the V. fu…
Saw this earlier and was about to post, but Ted beat me to it. One interesting thing in the article is the case of South Korea: changing from MSCI to FTSE international indexes makes a pretty substantial difference because South Korea is "emerging" …
I'll just register a vote for the conference call approach to digging into newer, interesting, and innovative funds-- that is, if it's worth David's time considering the number of participants. The board's had a number of mentions of funds like that…
Reply to @LarryH: If you want to break it up into components to figure your whole portfolio's asset allocation, I'd do it ~ like this (like you probably do with any other allocation fund in your portfolio):
Jot down the asset allocation for the pas…
