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.
Hi, Ben!
Thanks, and thanks for the reminder: "FMI Provident" popped immediately into my head, then I checked the FMI family, it wasn't there and I didn't have time to go suss out the story.
David
The fund (RCRIX) exists already, the registration is to allow conversion from an interval fund (which, from an investment perspective, makes all the sense in the world if you're looking to invest in illiquid assets) to an open-end fund (which, from …
The article reviews Taylor Larrimore's "The Bogleheads' Guide to the Three-Fund Portfolio." Rekenthaler concludes that Vanguard should simply offer one fund comprised of a US equity index, international equity index and bond index. JR writes in the …
Click on the "Discussions+" link and you'll only see discussions which have, well, generated discussion. Clicking on "Fund Discussions" has a similar effect. We're not looking to spend time or resources reprogramming the board beyond that.
Take car…
Hi, sma3.
And thanks! I mention three at the end of my publisher's letter: we'll revisit RLSFX and LSOFX, then add AGAQX. Beyond that, I'm spending a lot of time at MFO Premium, trying to make sure that I'm thinking as clearly as the data and narra…
Hi, guys.
We tried to offer a light, low-stress issue in celebration of mid-summer.
Ed reflects a bit on the Morningstar conference and its billionaire founder
Charles, after months of conversation with Venk Reddy & co., offers a profile of t…
Fascinating fund. About the best investment you could possibly have made over its first 17-18 years of life (1965 onward) as it profited from one financial disaster after the next. After that, not so sweet as the stock of disasters dried up a bit. T…
I suspect Mr. Ashton's hedge fund pays the bills. As I noted in the piece, money flooded in when he crushed in both '08 and '09; having shown up after they should have, investors grew impatient at 7-9% returns with muted volatility and began trickin…
(nods) Nakoma Absolute Return was a learning experience for me. Not a disaster, not a fund that ever lived up to its promise. I trusted too much in the fact that the Wisconsin folks trained excellent managers and had some success with their hedge fu…
We've posted a (rare) mid-cycle addition to our May issue. Ed Studzinski reflects on the lessons of Showtime's Billions and on the imperative for traditionally successful investment managers to regain their edge in a world where the market for funds…
On the fund's profile page at Morningstar, click on the link that says "coming soon: see a preview of our new fund profile page." It seems to have a bit more information there.
The fund's homepage is http://www.americanbeaconfunds.com/mutual_funds/…
I'll ask Charles to weigh in, since he actually knows the thinking that went into the thresholds. As a general matter, I suspect that answer has two parts: (1) sometimes it's good to have the big picture - which MFO Risk gives by reminding you that …
Hi, Ben.
It's the nature of that particular metric that pretty much all stock funds have a risk of four or five. Here's why. Charles starts by defining the S&P 500 as "the market." The question is whether you're substantially more or less volat…
With Ed just back and recovered from his European vacation, we'll publish an update soon. That is, we'll add Ed's essay - on the need by professionals investors to reinvent themselves to maintain their "edge" in a rapidly evolving ecosystem - to the…
Funds and ETFs prefer to launch by Dec 31, March 31, June 30, and Sept 30. That allows them to have full-quarter results to report. There's a sag in launches just after those dates.
Consistent with that pattern, there are a lot of new funds in reg…
The last time I looked - maybe four years ago? - Prime shoppers spent an average of $2500/year at Amazon while other Amazon shopped averaged a third of that. The question is whether Prime was a rational choice made by people who were going to spend …
My last Pirates home game in Three Rivers saw Bonds, Bonilla and Van Slyke starting in the outfield. That might well have been the last home game worthy of memory.
Hmmm ... short-term bonds. Floating rate funds. Financials. Market-neutral funds (thinking of the new TRP multi-strategy and the impending Camelot funds as I write that).
Some folks warn against commodities, which do well in inflationary periods, w…
Sequoia seems a shadow of itself. It's had asset outflows each quarter since Q2 2014 and is at about half of its peak size. If you look at performance since the departure of Bob Goldfarb in March 2016, it's pretty weak. $10,000 in Sequoia would have…
Hi, Hank.
Thanks for keeping an eye on it for us.
We often make small rewrites in the week following publication of an issue. Charles, for example, went in and added links to one of the stories. Adding the explanation of style premia was a bit big…
Hi, guys.
I tend to report what I hear from the advisers. If they say "we're working to get onto the Fidelity platform by spring" or "we'll be available on Fidelity soon," I pass it on. It's certainly possible that those negotiations might hit a sn…
Hi, Elie.
I was invested in Artisan Small Cap Value, virtually from the day it launched until the day it merged into Mid Cap Value. Many good years, some bad ones but I tend to stick with managers through thick and thin. (A recent Morningstar study…
Sure.
Case for: (1) reduces home country bias and (2) forces you to rebalance periodically. Our tendency is to invest a lot in the US, especially with the seemingly unending rise of the market here while there have been entire decades when the US l…
Heigh ho!
I've been reading about what distinguishes truly remarkable folks (Buffett, Gates, Musk and others) from ... well, me. The writing about them seems to keep coming back to the same point: they're less "connected" than most folks are. They …
A lot depends (a) on you and (b) on the fund you pick.
It makes sense to reallocate assets within your portfolio in response to market changes, tilting it if not flinging it from side to side. If the US market crashes, it might be time to pour asse…
Hi, guys.
Quick highlights.
Charles got to spend some serious time with quant investors and shares his experiences at, and conclusions from, the Democratizing Quant Investing conference.
Ed reflects on the ripple effects from interest rate rises …
Meh ... I wouldn't describe it as "fake" at all, in the sense that JC has no financial stake and clearly identifies the costs and benefits of membership. Not "news," but Humble Dollar doesn't claim to be a news source. It's a long-time columnist's p…
Hi, guys.
Sorry about the delayed response.
The story is this: after two members of the Board flagged a thread as problematic, we reviewed it and deleted it. It's a judgment call. I made it.
In general, there's an issue of heat versus light that…
Hi, Derf.
Sorry about whining, but the glitches are an almost daily feature now. When you can't even rely on the simplest function - correctly identifying that a fund exists in their system - work gets challenging.
David
Hi, Derf.
My portfolio review is a victim of my problems with the Morningstar website. I can't even see my portfolio through Chrome, my default browser, and I've been exchanging (amiable and patient) notes with them for six weeks about it. That kee…
Our latest profile of LEXCX is from 2012. The point that I've made before is that it's the coolest fund to write about once, the dullest to try to write about twice.
David
Hi, David.
He's using average, which is inflated relative to Leuthold's calculation and including the frothiest part of the tech/telecom bubble (1997-20) in his calculation of what's normal. Using the average overweights the impact of the largest, …
The only L/S fund that's been around for the full market cycle and has qualified as a Great Owl, is Hundredfold Select Alternatives (SFHYX). That's not an endorsement, just a statistical report. It has outperformed its peers by 2.7% annually for the…
