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.
Most of the world is aging demographically and while that has to be priced in to some degree, I think the benefit of developing new drugs and devices is pretty big. It may not be tomorrow, but China is aging quickly too. They spend a tiny amount p…
I feel like I read something recently about what GS was good at predicting and what they weren't but I can't remember what it was or where it was. Does anyone know whether there's any reason to believe these guys might be close?
Maybe it's changed in the last month or so, but in March he was bullish on gold because he viewed the yield (zero) as attractive compared to sovereign debt in Europe (negative) and anticipating that yields on sovereign debt would go even lower becau…
Hi MJG,
I don't think there's any question you're right. Even if people tried, they'd make a few decisions, do the opposite, find out it works (hypothetically of course), and that success would mess with their psychology so much that they'd strugg…
I won't argue with the idea that many of the ideas in the linked article can make sense a lot of the time. But as @Crash points out, there are times when more drastic action is a good idea. The key is knowing the difference! And these kinds of ar…
I don't think I'd want to bet against Gundlach in this case but I'm not sure I want to bet with him either. As @Crash mentioned, a strong dollar, with all else equal, should cause weaker gold. At the moment inflation doesn't seem like it's right a…
@TheShadow, thanks for the article, that must be one of the earliest about GP and one of the only times they've actually done public interviews. We have to give @LewisBraham some credit for getting that interview!
It's interesting that he was pr…
@JohnChisum, sorry, my use of the term larger cap wasn't very good. I didn't mean "large cap" because as you rightly pointed out there's almost no large cap stocks in GPROX. It's still a good chunk of small caps plus the mid and large cap pieces o…
The Stalwarts funds were written about in their Q4 commentary and the idea is to take the larger cap companies from GPROX and provide additional capacity to clients, hence the prospectus mentions that these will be companies with market caps greater…
Try TBGVX, I'm not sure exactly what their hedging policy is but I believe it's discretionary. They've definitely been hedging for the last year or so. If you can live with a big chunk of the exposure being to the UK and Switzerland then you'll ge…
I remember David's commentary about that was very funny if you could get past how sad it was that Gross behaved that way. I have a clear opinion about the dollar and it's the opposite of Gross', so I'm biased, but I worry a bit that he's just point…
@hank, the way I look at things everyone has their own preferences and I have no issue with that. Like you, there are things I prefer reading on paper and other things I'm happy to read on a laptop or tablet. But if I was a guy who was happy readi…
I guess if he's right about the dollar he's going to do well because there aren't many making that bet but it's not what I'd want to hang my hat on. You have to wonder who he is more bothered by- PIMCO for kicking him out or the likes of Gundlach b…
On a tangent, I've wondered for quite a while now why everyone isn't essentially doing everything electronically. I can understand if individual fund companies don't want to maintain a website where you can log in and get everything you need or wan…
@Old_Joe, agreed!! It would have been a far far better use of that lawyer's time if he had spent it comparing Federal and CA lists for where one could inject waste.
Hi @catch22, like many of us here I've gotten to an age where there aren't that many things that really surprise or shock me anymore. This one did it and I'm very grateful to you for the nice surprise!!
LLJB
I'm glad there's no real change, especially since GPEOX seems the better vehicle to really go after frontier markets. I wrote to Eric a couple years ago and asked if they might consider eventually launching a frontier markets fund and the answer wa…
Even considering the fund has most of its investments in large cap territory, this is overdue. I've been incredibly happy owning this fund and now I'm much happier.
One thing that gets tricky is that M*'s "average" market cap is a geometric average, not an arithmetic average, but I agree with your thought. The market cap of the largest positions in VSCIX is above the market cap of the smallest stocks in the S&…
@mns, how did you get the total market cap for each fund? I was trying to estimate the same but without any luck so I'd be grateful to know what I overlooked.
Based on what I read on M*'s fund analysis, VIMAX targets the 70-85% range of market capitalization and VSCIX targets the 85-98% range of market capitalization. When I read about the index they replicate, that means they should each be covering rou…
Hi Mulder, if I had to choose from the three funds you mentioned, I'd probably choose VASVX for the lower risk and only slightly lower returns than Fidelity. In the last 13 full years, Fidelity beat Vanguard 7 times and Vanguard won the other 6, so…
I'm always a little unsure about how to think about asset allocation when you read about global market cap numbers. If you use MSCI indices to estimate global market cap the US is more than 50% of global market cap whereas Bloomberg data says the U…
Based on @MJG 's insight, I'd appreciate the whole page being a soothing green. At that point we would have maximized our decision making. Does it help with predictions too? :)
Chip, thank you for all your efforts, not just this one but everythi…
I bought a small position in SBIO on the dip this morning and was happy by the end of the day. This eft is all over the place. In the last 3 months compared to the price it started at it's been everywhere from down 3% to up roughly 31%. In the la…
With $2.9 million of assets and an expense ratio of 1.50% on the retail share class, they're dragging in at most $45K of revenue. After deducting trading costs and what they undoubtedly had to pay Schwab to be a OneSource fund, you'd have to guess …
TSP, I'd contact Schwab and ask them what's going on. The restriction seems only to apply to new investors so I wouldn't expect and it's not my experience with WAFMX that I'm restricted at E*Trade. I have experienced a similar problem before at E*…
If you go to etf.com/etfanalytics/etf-finder I think you'll be able to search for European etfs and you should get a better result than M*. I even have the premium membership at M* but I find etf.com much more useful most of the time when I'm just…
@jstr, a very interesting piece but its not difficult to come up with a better approach when you know what's going to happen. It might be interesting to apply the same strategy to different periods of time in Japan, such as the 1970s or early '80s,…
It's an interesting take on what "hedging" currency risk means. Normally we think of hedging currency risk when you invest in something denominated in a foreign currency and then protect yourself against changes in the value of that foreign currenc…
I can't really complain about how HQL has performed but this stuff just doesn't sit well with me. @scott, if you take the initiative to write and get a response you will have done very well because at this point I think I'd do a bad job of writing …
I'm not a lawyer but at what point does this become defamation? If one of my previous employees buys the domain name with my name and .sucks, do I have any way to protect myself? I'm sure if someone publishes false information about someone else a…
Its possible to do with M*'s premium fund screener and its also possible with the free screener although you get a lot of duplicates due to different share classes of the same fund. I think you have to register as a free user to get there but once …
The Pi moment was just a bit less than half a second before 9:26:54 this morning- 3/14/15 9:26:53.59. We had a poster on the wall when I was growing up of Pi to 1000 digits and I'm pretty sure my brothers made it to at least 100. I think I maxed o…
Depending on what happens with inflation they may get all their money but it may be worth less. I read something this past week or the week before that Nestle was able to issue bonds with a negative yield! What a deal- I'll give you my money and p…
