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 @WallStreetRanter: Right; thanks, WSR. So apparently you buy whatever whole motif you want, and then tweak it however you want as you go.
Besides the advantage of tax-liability management, seems like you could also bank a lot of savings o…
Reply to @Maurice: No one said a word about "special tax treatment." The question is whether these things are structured as a single investment (one set of transactions to keep up with & enter on tax forms) versus a pile of individual stock posi…
Hmm. What about tax accounting, assuming a taxable account? I imagine the brokerage is buying/selling shares in all those individual stocks for you, no?
I like the idea a lot & will probably spend some time learning more about it and thinking through how I'd use it. I don't think I'm too hot on the themes they feature on the site (Caffeine Fix? Lots of Likes?), but I can see using it like the ex…
Interesting interview; gives a window into his strategy/thinking - which seems largely longer-term macro-driven, more so than I would have expected. I don't know about the U.S. macro call (housing bottom, consumer spending a strength), but he's done…
The next Luz P. web cast on the DoubleLine web site is next Tuesday, and I'll be more interested to hear it now, seeing this piece on changes in the portfolio. The "especially in Asia" thing would be a pretty big departure, if it's not being exagger…
Reply to @bee: Makes perfect sense, Bee. I wondered if you used other periods to confirm or not, and you explained that too! So yes, I'll test drive your method on a couple of funds over the next little while.
Thanks, and best o' luck out there --…
Bee - question on your Pondx strategy - why three years? I'm thinking I'd like to give it a trial run. I like the idea of Pimco Income as an indicator - as it has a pretty balanced approach to safe and more risky bond types.
I don't have an 'auto-p…
Reply to @Old_Joe: Yah, some definitely are like that, but you may have to do some research to make sure those that advertise as such aren't, um, stretching the truth a bit. One bank in my state still advertises itself as a "community" bank, but the…
Yep, those M* CEF articles that highlight one CEF only sure read like infomercials, and this one is almost transparently off-base.
On the Vietnam article, recall that it's one of Andrew Foster's top country picks.
Reply to @Rbrt: M* portfolio info on Pimco funds is always many months stale. For monthly portfolio updates on Pimco funds, which are about 4-5 days old when they come out, go here: http://investments.pimco.com/Pages/Default.aspx and go to the page…
APPLX and GOODX are fine funds, but they're not pure mid-cap if that's what someone's looking for. They both average out at mid-cap, but actually hold assets up and down the cap ladder. Not a knock, just a portfolio construction consideration ...
Jim Bianco was on WealthTrack this week, and one of his pound-the-table points was the pretty much unprecedented, extremely high correlation among S&P 500 stocks over the last couple of years. If he talked about exactly why that is the case, I m…
I recall there was also a long position in a Mexico ETF in the top 25 holdings, which has now disappeared. I think that was the only macro-ish ex-U.S. long position of any kind in the portfolio last reporting period.
I'm still mildly interested in …
Tip on Barry R's blog: the pieces HE writes are well researched, knowledgeable, and well written. For some reason there's not much oversight or vetting of the other contributors; I've noticed that lately with a few of his irregular posters. BR's wee…
Reply to @scott: I agree with most of what you've said; my comments were mainly about the "trade in your low-yielding bonds for dividend stocks" meme that is expressed somewhere in the financial media nearly every single day.
However, I do have to…
Reply to @scott: Hey Scott, On T's, the obvious and simple thing the "trade in your Treasuries for dividend stocks" people don't acknowledge is that individual investors, and many diversified bond fund managers like Gross and Gundlach, are holding T…
Reply to @scott: I guess the thing I wonder about the initial portfolio is why the fairly long startup process for the fund (after he'd gotten Seafarer Capital organized) wasn't enough time for him to do at least some DD to come up with a somewhat m…
Reply to @scott: I hope I didn't imply that stocks aren't worth owning; I didn't mean that at all. I was a heavily committed stock fan during the foreign-stock runup in the mid-aughts and during the 2009 ff. recovery, and have never been out of them…
Reply to @catch22: Yeah, Catch, old Simon is out there a lot. I rely on a handful of blogs to selectively pick quick links to his and other peoples' work -- otherwise you could spend all your waking hours on this stuff.
On the other thing, I was do…
Appears what the quoted individuals in the "close bond funds" story were really saying is "We've got to get these people to buy our stock funds, with their higher ERs, or our profits and bonuses are going into the toilet!"
Simon Johnson on the JPM fiasco:
http://baselinescenario.com/2012/05/11/jp-morgan-debacle-reveals-fatal-flaw-in-federal-reserve-thinking/
One of the points being that TBTF banks are just TB for people in management to know what's going on ... even…
Good suggestions here already: munis and low-turnover stock in taxable, higher yielding/total return bonds in tax advantaged (Pimco & DoubleLine being two of the poster children on that score) is a standard suggestion for investors a ways from r…
I'd highly recommend Artisan's Samra and O'Keefe. Since their ARTKX is closed, ARTGX is the only option for new investors. Just be aware it's almost 100% developed markets and mostly large cap, and typically owns more in North America than many glob…
Reply to @catch22: Hey Catch,
Right, GDP is never the whole picture of a nation or an economy. I take PK's comment more or less as he states it, that this is a quick look to dispel the notion that Argentina did itself in by giving the IMF et al. th…
Reply to @catch22: Hey Catch, beware of conventional wisdom. Look at the GDP chart near the top of this page, and see if you think Argentina has not set a decent course for itself in the past decade:
http://krugman.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/05/03/down…
I bet Jody is a perfectly nice person if you met her at a coffee shop, but she may have been doomed from the start by her last name to work in financial "services."
Reply to @Maurice: Maurice, I take it you're not a fan of the email marketing service "Constant Contact" either. The name alone sends me into a frenzy of repeated whacking at the delete key.
I don't know if you've noticed this or find it strange if you have, David, but the Fund Reveal page linked in the ARTGX update doesn't support your analysis; in fact, it's dead opposite your analysis.
FR says it's "not a well managed fund" and exh…
I've had FCG on the radar for only a few days, but it looks like traders are already well onto it as a value opportunity. It's gained 9% in the past week, and price and intraday indicative value are down about 3% in early trading today.
Reply to @hank: Sure, bonds come in different flavors, some more correlated, some less, depending on the environment. But there's usually a bond class that will help hedge stock risk, and well-run, actively managed, diversified bond funds never real…
Reply to @fundalarm: That's the thing with etf's: there are so many of them, and it takes a lot of effort to drill down and see what they're each doing.
Reply to @hank: Hank, your bond example brings up the main reason I've usually avoided explicit shorting or market neutral approaches in the past: why do it at all when you can own negatively correlated assets in bonds that provide a hedge against s…
Reply to @WallStreetRanter: Points well taken. I had a notion that the only time Hsgfx had done anything for investors was 02 & 03, but looking now at the year by year returns on the M* performance pages, JH didn't really underperform outrageous…
Reply to @fundalarm: I agree that's a good choice, but on the point about etf's not working when there's stress in the market, I have to toss in another data point. In '08: DEM -34.58%; ODMAX -48.03%. DEM's lesser loss in '08 had a good bit to do wi…
Just another view here: many of the indexes used by etf's are custom-built and fundamentally weighted, which research by Arnott & Co. among others has shown to earn a premium over traditional cap-weighted indexes. The best EM etf's combine funda…
For WallStreetRanter, I'm just curious, not critical, because I have no pooch in this search, what in particular you observe about HSGFX that makes you think the future may be better than the past.
TIA - AJ
I'm a little late to the thread with this thought, but I've started looking at two new low-volatility EM etf's: PowerShares' EELV and iShares EEMV. Of the two, at first glance I like EEMV a little better because it has rules in place to keep sector …
A couple of W'Tree's etf's are actively managed, ELD being one, and PCY, the etf Kenster linked to, has a volume of 593,000 plus. So, not all etf's in the space are passive or low-volume. That said, good active OEF managers are certainly more flexib…
Reply to @Investor: Hi investor, a rule of thumb I've seen referenced several places is a minimum of $100 mm assets, 50,000-share average volume to be on the safe side. So yes, I agree 18k is small volume - but I was a little surprised that the bid-…
