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.
I agree, by the way. Getting active share data has been a damned iffy proposition; the only people willing to share the data are high AS managers and most of the academic stuff has been out-of-date by three years or more.
Hi, bee.
Yes and no. The information is listed in the fund's statement of additional information but in 90% of the cases the listing is Schwab or some other brokerage.
In the case of US Growth, the listing is:
As of November 30, 2016, the followi…
I'd consider Zeo Strategic Income (ZEOIX), which we've profiled. It's a bit more volatile that RPHYX but not hugely and a bit more rewarding. In terms of a risk-return tradeoff, I checked for funds with standard deviations at or below Zeo's and retu…
Ed, for what interest it holds, thinks of the Financial Times as the world's premier financial publication these days both because of its intrinsic strength and Murdoch's decision to thin out the Journal's ranks.
I subscribe electronically, mostly …
Then choose the "rolling period." It defaults to something silly, like three months. You can set it to show a long series of five year periods and set the report to "max."
You might want to play using FCNTX, which gives you lots of data to visualiz…
Hi, Sandra.
The panic of 1837 was one of the major financial events of the 19th century, at least as far as the emerging U.S. economy was concerned; about a hundred actors were moving simultaneously and independently, and we have terrible documenta…
Hi, hank.
I was pondering that very point ("in a 100 years") on the drive in this morning. At least in terms of political culture, the last shift this disruptive might have been when Andrew Jackson came to power in 1829. Mr. Jackson represented a s…
Hi, Ben.
It's a relatively concentrated fund with just 38 stocks; that's high commitment for a small cap product. A number of their holdings had a decent day (1-2%) but their second largest holding (Blackbaud) rose 13.5% and their fifth largest (Ty…
Thanks, Ted!
I've been tracking one of the advisors, Davenport & Co., which has three pretty strong, smaller funds. I should probably get off my duff and move one of them from "track" to "profile."
Of the remaining funds
Dreyfus Global Real …
Hi, guys.
So far as we can tell, nothing's at risk. We don't collect any personal or tracking information about anybody, other than the email address you sign up with. We channel contributions, including those in support of MFO Premium, through sit…
I don't think so, but I'm waiting for Chip and the ISP's verdict. The short version is that this particular group seems to do no damage to the sites they break into. They spray paint their name on your wall and then use it to buy status within their…
Thanks for the nod. Brenda's life was a cautionary tale: a wickedly smart small college econ major who, almost literally, worked herself to death for her employer. At the point that she resigned the presidency of Pepsi, she said she was leaving home…
Two quick additions.
I got an intriguing sense of calm from Mr. Deshpande. Very sharp, very attentive but ... hmmm, centered? Appropriately self-confident? Patient? You don't get the sense of a guy who feels pressured to make a splash, much less a …
Indeed. He left at year's end but, on his Linked In page, still lists himself as responsible for 40% of the TAVFX fund's assets.
Ian Lapey worked as Marty Whitman's co-manager then the sole manager for much of 2012. The fund performed brilliantly …
It's an awfully admirable decision. They've been struggling for years to get attention. They returned 54% last year, despite a contracting pool of opportunities, and got serious attention. Having concluded that there simply aren't many opportunities…
For what interest it holds, Mr. Jain and I are talking mid-month. At the very least, we'll run an Elevator Talk feature in February.
With luck, I'll catch up with Paul Espinosa of Seafarer Value later this month and do an Elevator Talk on that fun…
This is actually modestly curious news. The $10,000 retail shares disappear but the $5,000,000 institutional shares become available for $10,000. In addition the e.r. drops and the management teams change.
Joyeux noel, dear friends.
(Sorry but that, and "fromage", are the extent of my French. I thought I had another with "croissanwich" but a Francophone friend sort of blew Shar-dough-neigh out her nose when I said it.)
The most interesting development so far, in the short story of Seafarer Value: in the week following the US presidential election (11/8-11/15), SFGIX and Morningstar's EM peer group dropped a bit under 6%. SFVLX, which is fully invested, dropped abo…
"Total" usually signals "balanced," at least in EM funds.
Charles is certainly more likely to understand the intricacies of the data than I am; I'm sure there's a good reason why Lipper and Morningstar return different funds from, ostensibly, the s…
Hi, msf.
I wasn't using Morningstar. I was using the Lipper database that MFO screens through. There are many ways to define "value" but the portfolio metrics we have preset in the screener is p/e and p/b. I tried the lowest p/e (
"there is no Emerging Markets screen"
Well, if you select "category: emerging markets" and then the portfolio parameters, you can generate a screen pretty easily, including an option to screen out ETFs in favor of just active and passive OEFs.
Dav…
I used the premium screener to find EM equity funds with the lowest p/e ratios and ended up with 8 funds with a p/e below 15 and a p/b below 1.5.
Advisory Research Emerging Markets Opportunities (ADVMX) sort of stands out.
AllianzGI Emerging Market…
I do about the same thing as Shadow, reading 497's and 485's each evening. Haven't needed a sip of NyQuil in over 15 years.
As an aside, I suspected that he'd made up the name of this particular fund when I glanced at the subject line, in part beca…
Those are, I think, perfectly reasonable concerns. It's possible that her small-cap experience at Wasatch convinced her that all-cap made sense. It's possible that another flavor of small-cap raised the Royce Funds problem. It's possible something e…
Nope.
It struck us as "fair use" of the material. Here's the test of 17 US Code 107, which establishes the fair use standard:
Notwithstanding the provisions of sections 106 and 106A, the fair use of a copyrighted work, including such use by reprodu…
Highlights of the November issue include:
BobC works through a quick, clean list of our investing biases and mistakes, then offers a half dozen tips for managing them.
Leigh Walzer of Trapezoid LLC takes on the myth that the road to riches lies alo…
"Every ranking says same thing - focusing on outcomes ..."
Oddly, most of them do the opposite. They focus on inputs. They want to know how much money you spend, how much money you have in your endowment, how good your entering students are, how ma…
There's an interesting finding from a long ago study. Student engagement is good: you ought to send your kids to places where the students do the readings, do the homework, work with peers outside of class, talk with their teachers and so on. That's…
Part of a longer note I sent to my president this morning:
The WSJ claims that its ranking is distinguished by focusing on outcomes rather more than inputs and on valuing student reports of fit, engagement and so on. I think you should be able to s…
Wow. A blast from the past. The very first story in the very first issue of the Observer was entitled "Successor to 'the worst best fund ever.'" The story started this way:
They’re at it again. They’ve found another golden manager. This time To…
