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.
Part of the issue is mark-to-market pricing. If you have a thinly-traded bond from a high-yield issuer, you're forced each day to answer the question "how much could I get from this bond if I had to sell it in today's (panicked) market?" The answer…
I like his argument, in the follow-on article, for why Fidelity Capital Appreciation (FDCAX) is no longer a Fanny Fifty Fund: it has been doing too well. There's an incentive fee built into the fund's price structure; if performance sucks, the e.r. …
That, of course, assumes that a stock's 50-DMA represents something like a rational price given current conditions. If "way below their recent price" is a marker of value, then we really need to rebalance toward China.
David
Well, there you go: I just checked his portfolio at Morningstar. It looks like his 3% short on "09/16/15 R 60 Markit Cdx.Na.Ig S24 5y Ba" probably reverse-arb'd his 3% long "09/16/15 P 100 Markit Cdx.Na.Ig S24 5y Ba" while the 3% long position repor…
GBMFX "has underperformed in its category"?
Uhhh .... 10 year growth of $10,000. GBMFX: $19,000. World allocation group: $14,000. Over 5 years, $13.2k to $12.7k. Over one- and three-year periods, essentially a tie. Add in volatility measures, and …
As a complement to davfor's post about the asset class projections, here are a couple notes about the newest portfolio for their Benchmark-Free Allocation Fund. Benchmark-Free is a fund-of-funds that's charged with investing in the asset classes wit…
I still own the fund and still like it. That said, it's not terribly "tactical" in that it tends to lean one way or another rather than move decisively. And it's so distinct from its Morningstar benchmark (differences I outlined in the most recent p…
My synopsis of Bill's argument: growth outperforms during periods of decelerating inflation (e.g., the Great Depression), value outperforms during periods of accelerating inflation (e.g., the 1970s) and the latter has been historically more common t…
You should look at Leuthold Core (LCORX), in many ways one of the progenitors of the category. Nominally "tactical allocation," it has a 20 year track record. Top 2% over the past decade, top 5% in 2008. It's a purely quant-driven fund. Leuthold mon…
Just as a reminder: the core Leuthold funds always rely on a mix of tactical and strategic asset allocation. They change their equity weighting frequently, often by a few percent up or down. Those changes are triggered by changes in their Major Tre…
I agree with Lewis (not surprising, really) with this small demurral: it is an "alternatives" fund if you define "alternative" as "not vanilla market exposure." If you're looking for 60/40 and think the the risk-return profile of the core stock and …
51 stocks, but 42% cash.
About 37% of the invested portion is in firms headquartered in developed markets, his peers run about 10 points lower. Domestic names in the portfolio: Visa, Facebook, and Kansas City Southern. Lesser-known names include Fi…
A lot depends, I guess, on why you bought Hasenstab in the first place. He's a very independent investor, rare in the world of fixed-income investing. He tries to get ahead of the crowd, which paid off well in his bets on Irish and Hungarian bonds. …
That is the "off" part of "off topic," I suppose. On whole, I'm more concerned that these peripheral discussions stay more or less civil, amiable and respectful.
Just a thought,
David
"Perma bear" does strike me as a curious locution, and potentially a way to avoid the argument. We don't have a similar term who folks who are sure that stocks will climb relentlessly higher; I haven't heard much of "perma bulls." Perhaps because th…
Would it be worthwhile to start with the question, "why do I need another fund? Is there something that my portfolio isn't doing for me that I need it to do, or am I looking for a successor to a fund currently slotted-in?"
I fear that too many of u…
Hi, guys.
In response to DavFor's request, a bit of info on what's up behind the scenes.
It's been a busy year. The Core Four (Ed, Charles, Chip and me) met in Chicago last fall, after the Morningstar ETF Conference. There was a sense that I neede…
Hi, Mo.
The article refers to AB-69. When I go to the California legislature's site, AB-69 deals with procedures for downloading data from police officers' bodycams: http://www.leginfo.ca.gov/cgi-bin/postquery?bill_number=ab_69&sess=CUR.
I th…
Interesting development. TCW is launching 7 or 8 "alternatives" funds, including three from Gargoyle. There will be a snapshot in Funds in Registration. Of them, only Gargoyle Hedged Value is live yet.
David
Gundlach: "you never really listen to me any more!"
M-star: "you're so not thinking rationally."
Gundlach: "you're impossible. I'm not talking to you any more!"
M-star: "you're ... you're ... you're unratable, that's what you are!"
Both: Hmpf. G…
On Grantham: through about 2010, GMO's asset class projections were about spot-on. They were right both in order (the asset class they said would finish first, finished first and so on) and in magnitude (when they said "asset X will earn 8% on 5, 7 …
Asked Mr. Huefner about the launch. They're working on shareholder/investor communication pieces now and they hope to start reaching out by mid-July but "[i]t will probably be September before anything gets launched. "
For what interest that holds,…
David Kelly, the JPM strategist and a.m. keynote, seems to think so as,well. Oil is underpriced, earnings are getting crushed, production facilities are not being built. He argues for "lagged overshoot" where oil tends to overshoot in one direction…
I do a lot of heavy work in the garden at my new place, landscaping, wall building and all that. I needed some jeans that I wouldn't mind getting trashed but that weren't themselves junk, so I went to eBay and bought two pair of used Levis in my siz…
He's amazing. I used to try to trick, wheedle, cajole or bamboozle Roy into writing a word or two about life, life after FundAlarm, life at FundAlarm, the silliest thing the industry's done or why California wines rule. No luck.
(sigh)
David
"Rather it is when the Fed goes too far that a recession comes on, which then sets the stage for a stock market plunge."
Since 1957, there have been nine bear markets. Three bears were not associated with recessions. Likewise, there have been nine …
Ya see, 'cause Royce European Smaller Companies (RISCX) could easily be mistaken for a fund that invests in kumquats, Chinese real estate, or three person Greek start-ups with $20 billion market caps (hey! it could happen) or huge companies that sim…
My sense of it was that the conference calls were a lot of work for relatively limited gain. When a fund company sponsors the call, they're ringed all around with FINRA requirements that impose spoken disclosures, guarded language, often pre-screen…
No, sir. Geist and Ende were the outliers at FPA for years. While the rest of FPA were hard-core absolute value guys, G&E ran splendid small to mid cap growth funds, fully invested in very high-quality companies, negligible turnover, drifted bet…
(nods) Confusion makes me cautious. I'm really not fretting near so much about valuations per se as about the fact that I seem to hear more worry from more insiders whose judgment I respect. Notions of systemic instability keep cropping up in their …
TheShadow is exactly right. This is positioned as a clone of Thornburg Developing World (THDIX), which Mr. Kaufman managed from inception until February of this year. All told, he has about 10 years of E.M. investing experience. He built THDIX into…
Hmmm ... I blew a job interview once with a particularly weak answer to the request to "describe a hard decision you've made and how you went about making it." I'd spent much of my professional life making really consequential decisions about people…
The prospectus is dated May 27 but the fund isn't live yet. I'm puzzled that Morningstar doesn't list it at all - usually they have pre-ticker listings for funds in registration - and mildly irked that I haven't been able to get Artisan to talk abou…
"Event-driven" tends to be code for "market neutral, we hope." In general the plan is to try to pick up a bunch of small gains from arbitrage, which you can pocket even when the market's falling. One example: if Company A is expected to buy Company …
Niche.
Hmmmm. Emerging markets contribute over 49% (and climbing) of global GDP but only 9% of global market cap, according to FTSE. The US contributes 19% (and falling) to GDP but 51% to global market cap.
I suppose if you assume that the stoc…
"A number of surveys have found Fox views to be less well informed and more likely to have factually untrue beliefs than those who receive their news from mainstream sources."
A more-striking finding, coming from a recently-published paper by a for…
On LEXCX: expenses are about 0.51%. Turnover is 0%. The portfolio was set in 1935 and hasn't changed since then except to account for corporate events such as mergers, acquisitions and spin-offs. When there are inflows, the fund (it doesn't even ha…
