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.
Reply to @Charles: Works for me. When I attempted the back conversion on my own I get enough compatibility warnings that I gave up the idea. I'm glad you were able to make it work.
David
Reply to @Investor: Hi, big guy!
Sorry about the delayed response. Just returned yesterday and faced a surprisingly large pile of stuff of the "why didn't you do this before vacation?" variety. Since Chip and Charles have weighed-in on copy edits…
Reply to @VintageFreak: Perhaps because the folks who buy it today will be holding it, mostly, under the new leadership? As a result, Morningstar might want to be signaling "don't move in so quickly"?
Just a guess.
David
Stephen has been reading this thread and says "thanks," by the way. He's fairly sure that FINRA regs preclude his saying it directly, in a post here. After our conference call with him, some folks reached out to ask about Vanguard availability. He…
Reply to @VintageFreak: Stephen was funny on the subject in our conference call. He's just adamant that he won't become a NTF ("an NTF"?) fund because that would require jacking up the expense ratio for everybody (40 bps would be needed to match th…
Reply to @Charles: Read an interesting proposal once, that the top research universities (Harvard, Yale, Stanford...) form a consortium to buy and run The New York Times. The argument, at base, was that great universities need great newspapers (he…
Reply to @Charles: I mostly think of funds falling into three baskets.
1. Funds that give me a sinking feeling. Ones where you look at think, "dear God, what are they up to?" There are a lot of those. The geography of the fund universe is such t…
Reply to @JoeNoEskimo: The speculation from folks in the field, though not Robeco per se, was that the fund will likely close by year's end. They'll likely have the new fund, with vaguely extortionate fees, live by then.
David
"It's time to stop worrying and start acting," say the author (who also seems to suggest that a sustained rate increase "isn't expected to happen until sometime next year or beyond").
His suggestions are common: short-term bonds, maybe high yield…
Three current / impending changes:
Bill Frels at Mairs & Power Growth (oddly, no word about Balanced)
Preston Athey at T. Rowe Price Small Cap Value
Jesper Madsen at Matthews Asia Dividend
Morningstar is reasonably sanguine about each. They m…
Reply to @kevindow: Morningstar is wrong but they expected to have the number right by Monday. Given that the correction was imminent, I was disinclined by harp on the error.
The error is occasioned by a policy decision on their part: they report …
Hi, Daves.
There are others far better qualified on this topic than I am, so I'll be brief:
1. Get an idea of what your retirement income will look like. The official Social Security benefits estimator is http://www.socialsecurity.gov/estimator/.…
I screened for U.S. stock funds whose average market cap was under a billion. There are 84. I sorted them by Sharpe ratio, generally considered the best one-stop stat for risk-adjusted performance. The top three are:
Pinnacle Value (PVFIX): as…
FPA Crescent (FPACX), my largest holding, was up and has been quietly splendid this year. Likewise FPA International Value (FPIVX), about which we've written a fair amount.
Curiously, FPA Perennial (FPRAX) and Source Capital (SOR), it's closed-end…
Can you say TNSTAAFL? ("tin-staffle")
None of that free content you read on commercial websites is free. Every tap on every keyboard has to be paid for by somebody. The fact that you don't pay for it up front in a subscription fee doesn't change…
You might want to read the prospectus for RiverPark Strategic Income, which is not yet available for sale. It was featured in last month's "coming attractions." David Sherman is quite risk conscious and hates losing money. In conversation, he's i…
It might be worth considering a global small cap fund as a way of broadening your (or your manager's) opportunity set. In August we'll profile Grandeur Peak's new Global Reach fund which fits in that niche, as does the relatively new Royce Global D…
Hi, Catch.
Google Analytics tracks numbers of unique visitors (hah!), visits, pageviews, length of stay and so on. The aggregate numbers (10,500 - 11,500, depending on season) come from there.
Folks can, optionally, sign up to be reminded of our …
If somewhat wants to try posting a link, that would be great. Because I subscribe, my attempted links often lead other folks to crash straight into a paywall.
Reply to @MaxBialystock: Exactly the same concerns were expressed when Mr. Frels took over Mairs and Power Growth from Mr. Mairs in 2004. Oh sure, he'd been the co-manager for five years but he wasn't The Big Guy. Seems to have worked out okay and…
Most of the 2008 relative failure occurred in the first three weeks of the fund's existence. Here's Mr. Smead's discussion of that period:
Our first year of managing the Smead Value Fund could not have been more difficult. The fund began trading on…
Reply to @GregFromBoston: The Winkelvoss Bitcoin ETF! It's coming! The "investing risks" section alone runs to 18 pages and notes that Bitcoins might, maybe, just a little be illegal or that hackers conceivably could make the entire enterprise dis…
The reference comes from a book by George Lakoff, Women, Fire and Dangerous Things: What Categories Reveal About the Mind (1991). Lakoff's a fairly major voice in the realms of language and meaning, but his writing gives me a headache. As a result…
Reply to @AndyJ: Hi, Andy!
Junior recognized Abnormal Returns as a "best of the web" site among human-curated financial news aggregators back in May, 2012. He's recently submitted a bunch of updates for the "best of" series, and we'll be working …
Reply to @Rocky: Thanks for the suggestion and the kind words, Rocky.
Like you, I'm a bit concerned about perverse structural incentives: if your incentive is to generate the greatest number of clicks, certain messages become economically suicidal …
The fund industry, collectively, owns 35% of all domestic equity. Jack's pissed with what he sees as the systematic betrayal of investors by a closed corporate culture that rewards short-term thinking with breath-taking compensation and with Vangua…
For what interest it holds, we'll share Charles's long/short data and the recommendations from a number of L/S fund managers as part of the July update. That doesn't cover the gamut of "alternative" funds but might give you a boost.
More soon,
Da…
Reply to @CathyG: Hi, Cathy!
We're sure trying to figure out a good way of handling the data. In general, I'm perfectly comfortable sharing it with folks who are comfortable with Excel, understand the definitions of the various measures and ... we…
In vino veritas, dude. And if you've ever had the opportunity to pick up some "Two Buck Chuck" at Trader Joe's, you'll even recognize the glint of value investing in the wine world.
David
The short version: over the past 12 months, gold-rated large-blend and intermediate-term bond funds have outperformed their benchmark indices. Golden large-growth and large-value funds also outperformed the S&P 500. No word on how they perform…
Reply to @Old_Joe: It's coming.
We have risk profiles of something like 7700 in a series of spreadsheets (divided by age of the fund). I was reluctant to post the .xlsx file by itself. One reason was that many folks who find a 125 page document w…
from the Artisan website: "Artisan Partners will launch a new active equity fund, Artisan Global Small Cap Fund (ARTWX) on Tuesday, June 25, 2013. The fund will be managed by the Artisan Partners Global Equity team."
Reply to @willmatt72: Heigh ho, and welcome!
Also: no. I have turned indolence into an investing art form. I tend not to track my portfolio as frequently as I once did. The only time I recall market pressure triggering repeated sells on my part…
