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@YBB: good catch! In the Morningstar chart, KRUZ was the blue line, NANC was the red line, and my brain was the flatline. Fixed it to reflect the Dem's lead.
Bill Gross, by the way, is shorting DJT, according to today's WSJ. He tried a riff on Mr. Trump's "stable genius" sobriquet, explaining that "a patient genius" might well prevail with a short position.
Given my general assessment of Mr. Gross's men…
I saw the same teaser and thought "when Simplify is your headline name, you know you've got a small story." Assuming that the providers are, indeed, tiny boutiques on whole, I feel badly for them. That said, TNSTAAFL.
I read an interesting analysis of meme stock trading which comes down to the argument that meme stocks have two types of "investors," the cynical traders and the true believers. The former make up half of the owners and they pretty much live by flee…
Hi, Balu.
Investors have assiduously weeded out virtually every absolute value investor. Search the main MFO site for "dry powder" or "absolute value" to see some of our earlier articles on the subject. For a retail investor, FPA is about the bigge…
Hi, yugo.
In general, I invest with people who've earned my trust. That generally has two components: (1) this isn't their first rodeo and (2) I've talked with them and came away impressed. As you'll note from my annual portfolio review, my typical…
Hi, JD_co.
To be clear, Mr. Cinnamond doesn't "time" and doesn't change. Not in decades. He's among the most rigid of the absolute value guys. He's got his standards for what's worth owning. If there is not a single stock that meets those standards…
Reddit doubles since debut, arguably driven by the options traders: This from Quartz, 3/26/2024
Reddit’s share price surged even higher Tuesday morning trading after a big rally the day before. The stock rose to a new high of $74.80 after market ope…
Hi, BaluBalu.
"Specific option strategies" is probably outside of the ambit of a daily newspaper, even a very good financial paper. A bit more likely in its sister publication, Barron's, I'd suspect.
David
Hi, yugo.
A lot depends on what qualifies as "left and came back." There are relatively few managers who liquidated their funds and took a sabbatical. Michael Fasciano comes to mind, but his second act was short.
If you think, instead, about manag…
It would be prudent not to pursue this line is argument. The situation is complex and multi-faceted, neither of which tends to be reflected in social media posts. The on-topic lines of argument might be (1) will the "higher for longer" actually play…
The print version had two bar charts with returns over five or six time frames, both for all periods and after "quarters like this." The first three data points were one-, two- and five-year periods.
Thanks for the show notes. That had been bugging…
Drama. Growth. Evolution. Ten of one, half dozen of the other!
Since our July 2023 profile, GOODX has posted top 10 (of our 300+ peers) performance in both total return and risk-adjusted return.
I read that aloud to Chip. Her response was to moan and declare "not well. We have a version mismatch between our database and the site software that I've got to get figured out."
Our host has successfully migrated a copy of the site to a new serve…
@ybb: different software. The board and its search is driven by Vanilla. The main site and its search is driven by WordPress. We used Vanilla because it was closest in feel to FundAlarm, which helped users adapt more comfortably to the new site.
@Balu: managers of absolute return funds strive to always produce a positive return. Relative return guys want to outperform their benchmark, absolute returns guys want to outperform zero percent.
Their mantras:
"return of principal is more import…
@Balu. Absolute return guys are the planet's most stubborn people. They know The Right Way to invest despite being subject to years of ridicule and redemption. The prospect of getting two of them to agree on a compromise through a merged portfolio /…
Why would that matter?
This is akin to Ed Studzinski's "what if the manager gets hit by a bus?" query. Ummm ... then you reassess and either keep the fund or sell it. The response is "yes, but what about the taxes on selling it?" My thought has alw…
Welcome back!
As far as we can tell, the MySQL software we use (v 5.5) is so old that it crashes things every time it's touched. And, for reasons yet unexplained, our web host did not learn from Crash #1 or near-Crash #2 (hi, Crash!) and so didn't …
I'm so sorry to hear it. Occasionally you need to clear your cache (that is, the previously downloaded copies of page) after a reboot. Otherwise, I've got no idea ... but I will go ask Chip what she thinks.
Grrr ... they made me a ridiculous return once upon a time. In the late '90s I happened across as WSJ article that claimed something like "Japanese small companies are the most underappreciated, undervalued dynamos on the planet." Thinking something…
Hi, Hank!
Just checked the "stock overlap" in my Morningstar portfolio. My version of the Magnificent Seven appears to be:
Alphabet
Analog
Hyundai
Amazon
Comcast
Holcim
Meta
Except for Alphabet (1.0% weight between four funds), they all weigh in ab…
@dily Hi! Devesh makes the essential point: are you getting what you're paying for? Does the manager offer sufficient value to justify their fees?
For about 80% of all funds, the answer is "no." Our corporate position has always been that 80% of f…
One thing I didn't mention in the portfolio story, by the way, was the correlation matrix that I ran through MFO Premium. It did a 56 month matrix since that's the age of the youngest fund.
Only two funds have a correlation of 0.9, and no one is …
@Derf. Good catch. Copy error, which does not affect the bottom line numbers on the portfolio as a whole. RPSIX returned 7.9%, 0.1% better than its peer group. I'll have Chip fix it.
It might be evidence that it's just too easy to launch ETFs. Tuttle has rolled out a surprising array of incredibly ... ummm, whimsical ETFs over time. Inverse Socially Conscious. Self-Defense. 2X Reverse AI. FOMO. De-SPAC. Short Innovation, which a…
For what interest it holds, the folks at Morningstar say that the "value destroyer" article was taken down "to correct some minor data errors" and should be live again by 2 February or so.
For what interest it holds, I have a phone call coming up with Ms Geritzto talk about what she takes away from this experience and how she's thinking about the firm's next steps.
In some ways it's a classic "not quite enough" story. The performance…
It's certainly the case that there was other language that he might have chosen to make the same point: "I will not panic or abandon the discipline when times get tough and markets turn against us. I haven't, and won't. I am hopeful that you won't e…
Mitch had a couple disastrous years in both absolute and relative terms. The "all offense, all the time" strategy, always risky, sort of imploded and the funds' small asset base shrank. He left both funds (long-only, long-short), and was replaced by…
The team today wrote, in response to JD's observation:
In November of 2021, the fund did have a down -5% day. After a nice run in both equities and macro oriented markets like energy and currencies, on the day after Thanksgiving, there were scares …
I'm working on a profile of the fund for January. The metrics are pretty impressive even though I am skeptical of anyone relying on managed futures. Still, the numbers need to be accounted for. Higher returns than virtually any flexible portfolio fu…
YBB: Working on it.
The challenge is that we're reliant on two customized sets of software (WordPress and Vanilla Board), both are outdated versions and we haven't had a programmer with a sufficient skill sets to manage the upgrade. (We have been …
Apparently the game can be stretched out, at least according to the article. Not my area of competence, really. I'm interested mostly because of the "house of cards" risk.
Thanks to all. I'm vertical and working. Still can't quite get the left side of my head online, but my doctor - who is ... umm, young and healthy himself - isn't concerned. "Ten days to two weeks to resolve. Check in after that if you still can't ..…
Hi, msf.
You're right. Perhaps I should have said "closed without the prospect of reopening" since funds continue to flow in in 2023 from existing shareholders, keeping the fund capped.
The net flows are actually negative for the TTM, by $100 mil…
