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.
Thanks Mark, great to read the interview and for the first time I think I have a more specific understanding of the differences between the funds. Luckily it confirms the feelings I had from reading the available documents.
In terms of Europe, I think the Oakmark fund has done very well most years except 2007 was painful and this year is painful as well. I don't own the fund but that wouldn't make me lose faith in it either. I own OBIOX and its not having a great yea…
I actually prefer MEASX over MSMLX, although there's certainly nothing wrong with it. I get most of my Asia small cap emerging markets exposure from GPEOX and GPIOX, so I appreciate the frontier market investments of MEASX as well as some exposure …
I don't believe we're going to have a crash. Another minor correction, or some consolidation wouldn't surprise me. The US economy is better than most others now and I think if we saw the market down 10% there'd be lots of buying interest. I don't…
I'm happy to report that I noticed mid-morning that HQL is pricing accurately!! At first it wasn't showing any volume but eventually it did. Maybe we're headed in the right direction, fingers crossed!!
Thanks Ted!! This was a nice article and I tend to agree with a number of their predictions. I added the link to my favorites so we can judge them 12 months from now!! :)
Eleven days ago I wrote to M* that their quote for HQL was based on the previous day's NAV rather than a real quote, and PM reflected the same. They wrote back more than a week ago that it had been forwarded so it could be fixed. The quote page an…
I'm sure there are plenty of people who can talk better than I can about the details of taxes for these types of things. My experience is that the IRS is relatively straight forward but the States can be quite different depending on how you set up …
And if this continues I won't hesitate to vote 'yes' for the Hall of Fame regardless of whether there were PED's involved or not. It would be appropriately ironic if health care stocks were using drugs!
Right, and I've used it to allow a service person from HP to access my computer remotely to solve some problem I was having. I guess maybe this weakness is that user "b" in your example could take control of user "a's" computer without user "a" tur…
I've read some more, although I'm a little surprised it seems there's very little "news" out there about this, but I think the idea is that someone can send something from a remote server, exploiting a weakness in the operating system, and take cont…
I'm just the messenger and I'm not a technical guy so the simple answer is I don't know. With that said, my impression from what I've read is that it impacts the secure communication you might have on the internet, so it has to involve a browser. …
I would guess the M* person was referring to data feeds for mutual funds rather than "all" data feeds. It wouldn't make a lot of sense for Morningstar to buy data from an exchange, which I assume they have to do, and then re-distribute it to Yahoo …
Good point! I guess it depends on the size of your portfolio, but I would never come close even though I have something like 10x as much invested compared to their percentage of global capitalization. To put it in perspective, I think if your port…
I get pretty frustrated with everyone telling us we're always wrong. One guy does studies or writes articles that tell us we're too emotional and we sell when things are down and don't buy until things are up too much already. The next guy tells u…
The minimum investments are too big for me, but I guess if you can attract the assets you want in that way then more power to you.
Whatever they've done with the small cap emerging markets fund has worked. They've been better than their category…
I don't know much about Driehaus and it seems they've done a good job with their Emerging Markets funds, but is anyone worried that these frontier emerging markets funds now seem to be popping up everywhere? A year or 18 months ago there were just …
I'm not sure whether the timing matches or not but M* updated the look of their site in the past month or two and I felt like things went downhill after that. PM updates are incredibly slow even though when I click on individual mutual funds in my …
The prospectus says the fund is closed with a handful of exceptions, none of which seem like they would apply to new investments at either Schwab or Scottrade unless you were using a financial advisor and paying an asset based fee. But indeed Schwa…
@kevindow, thanks for the idea. Do you have an idea what helped them do so well last year when emerging markets weren't the place to be? And is there something you prefer about their investment approach or is it other factors that lead you to pref…
Whenever I write I just use the contact us link. And as to your thought about how much more than $1MM Leverenz has in the fund, I'm sure they won't tell you. But in the SAI also on page 48 it talks about how the managers are compensated. The long…
I agree it is useful and interesting. I think you can get a decent idea of how asset allocations are changing on a much bigger scale by looking at fund flow data, which I don't do very often. Of course that doesn't include direct stock investments…
@Junkster, I think of it like throwing pennies in a wishing well. We all know that you're not likely to have any wishes come true "because" you threw a penny or two in the pond, but we do it anyway because its fun.
I'd just be a little careful because their Portfolio Pulse Survey has a lifespan of exactly 3 months. Making a claim that "data" shows investors are loading up on stocks based on 3 whole months of data doesn't make me feel very comfortable.
I'd consider writing to them and just asking in some politically correct way. My experience with most fund shops has been pretty good when I ask questions and while I doubt they'll minimize Keikenfield's role but I wouldn't be surprised if they'll …
@Old_Skeet, why do you think the dollar will weaken in the coming months? I would expect continued strength as the Japanese weaken the yen to stimulate their economy and change the mindset related to inflation, as the ECB is going to have to get mo…
mutualfundobserver.com/discuss/discussion/16594/exploring-gold-miners-emerging-market-stocks#latest
Here's the discussion about the difference between buying the metal and buying the miners.
mutualfundobserver.com/discuss/discussion/16497/a-gold-etf-for-the-paranoid#latest
Here's the discussion where @rono talked about the ratio of bullion to both miners and also silver. There was a recent post about the difference between buying gold…
I've been thinking about it but I haven't taken any action yet. I do have a small position in GDX and I've been debating whether to add to the miners or buy gold itself. I've also thought about buying gold against Euro and/or Yen (GEUR and/or GYEN…
I hope this link hasn't been posted in other places, but I thought it would be good to add it to this list. Its a calendar of global economic data with details about expectations as well as analysis of the data once released.
online.wsj.com/mdc/…
I received a note back from Matthews thanking me for my interest and telling me they share my excitement for healthcare in Asia... but they're not planning an Asian healthcare fund. I also realized iShares closed a lot of international/emerging mar…
I like the make-up of the fund so far. Its investments are not just in "emerging" markets, but also frontier markets and even a few developed markets, although I gather those are investments in companies who are registered in a developed country bu…
@Ted, its a reasonable thing to point out but sometimes it even happens to the best of us. :)
mutualfundobserver.com/discuss/discussion/14342/m-the-fantastic-48/p1
mutualfundobserver.com/discuss/discussion/16662/m-s-fantastic-48#latest
@JohnChisum, you're right, I looked at MATFX. MEASX, MSMLX and MJFOX are in the same neighborhood, and the big winner to my great surprise was MCSMX, which has 22.4% in small-cap Chinese healthcare. That's pretty good, and I would expect/hope for …
