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, Shostakovich.
I have a Lenovo netbook and the thing I most dislike is the default backup function. There's a partitioned Q: drive on mine with 10 GB of space, 7 GB of which are invisible. Dang thing is forever (once every two weeks) running o…
Hi, Mark.
Chip, who does IT for a living, will likely drop by later today with a few thoughts. Here's what pops into my head:
1. you can run Windows on a Mac, which might give you the best of both worlds - the machine and OS you like for 90% of y…
Reply to @scott: Hi, scott!
I think of "never in the bottom third" as a risk surrogate, rather than a pure returns measure. And risk does tend to have some predictive value. The place it breaks down are with funds that are fundamentally unlike th…
Reply to @claimui: Hey, claimui!
Thanks for the note and the careful read. Thoughts about your two issues:
1. volatile funds can be profitable ones: yes, for Vulcans. In theory, your best portfolio might actually be two incredibly volatile, neg…
A slightly more rigorous take than Gladwell's is Dan Kahneman's new book, Thinking: Fast and Slow. Hahnemann managed a Nobel Prize in Economics, an especially good trick since he's not an economist. "Fast" thinking is what we think of as "intuitiv…
The managers agree that an effect of the low NAV is that small changes, up or down, don't appear and that larger changes, when a series of small changes cross the 0.5% threshold, might be more common.
That said, the original rationale was symbolic:…
Hi, Burt.
FSICX actually has a pretty restrictive mandate. The portfolio tends to be barbell shaped, with high yield on the one end and Treasuries on the other. It works, but it's not quite "go anywhere."
The greatest flexibility tends to be sig…
Reply to @Anonymous: Hi, Andrei.
I have to admit to being a bit puzzled by this. So far as I can tell, there is no FPA Paramount Global fund. In May 2011, FPA did announce a refocusing of Paramount so that it would be global (see: http://www.fpa…
I'm willing to think about it. There are four considerations that kept me from tracking "alarming funds" from the get-go.
1. I'd need to secure the technical expertise to create it -- I'm pretty much clueless on what would actually have to happen.…
Reply to @catch22: Hi, catch,
I'm more than happy to share both data about the site and what I expect we'll be trying in the next couple months. In general I assume that folks' interest in site administration is pretty limited, so I haven't volunt…
Mr. Leuthold is 74, co-manages eight funds and lives much of the year in coastal Maine. He's been in the investment industry for over 50 years. As such, this isn't that much of a surprise.
He'll continue to manage one of the firm's hedge funds. …
Hi, catch!
Over 1600 people are signed up to receive notification of the site update each month, and we're growing by about 90 names/month. While most of the very early registrants registered from private email accounts (GMail & co.), a fair n…
Highlights from the Los Angeles Times:
Star bond fund manager Jeffrey Gundlach was found liable Friday for breaching his fiduciary duty to his former employer, asset management giant TCW Group Inc., ... a Los Angeles jury found no harm to TCW in th…
We enabled anonymous posting because folks asked for it. I don't see much advantage to it (from the poster's perspective) but it doesn't seem to cause any great harm. Mostly just kinda quirky.
And I suppose we could configure things to make old p…
Reply to @msf: It's even easier with Morningstar's "chart" feature. It calculates a fund's returns between any two points in time and charts it against any other option in Morningstar's database.
It seems to me that the question is whether, or to …
Dodge & Cox Global (DODWX) has done better than you think. The fund's underperformance occurred, almost exclusively, during the meltdown. From launch to the March bottom in 2009, the fund substantially lagged its peers. From the market bottom…
Reply to @scott: Thanks, Scott. I've never interviewed anyone with quite the level of self-assuredness that Mr. B demonstrated. That might be essential if you're going to be bold and run an incredibly focused portfolio. At a personal level, thoug…
Reply to @Investor: For what it's worth, I've been agonizing about the Utopia profile for about four years. My original profile was exceedingly skeptical, my revised profile was exceedingly supportive. The funds, briefly, performed well and then s…
You're exactly write about reading my profiles: these are not recommendations for anyone to buy a particular fund nor a signal that I'm buying them. Most profiles close with either a statement of skepticism or a recommendation to for a particular t…
If you choose to sign the e-petition, please do read carefully the disclosure about the extent to which you are granting access to your personal information. It's substantial.
Reply to @Kenster1_GlobalValue: No threat of that, so far as I can tell. Artisan is an asset gathering machine, so they're not pressed for cash. They've only liquidated one fund, Artisan Disciplined Mid Cap, which was run very briefly by two young…
Hi, Investor.
I know. There's a glitch in the program, so that it wants to alphabetize the commentaries (April, August, February, January, July, June ...) and then show on the main page only the "latest" commentary. That wasn't a problem in Augus…
Hi, Gandalf!
I'm not sure whether the term "Diversified" comes from. "Multi-sector" is a Morningstar category designation, and almost all of the multi-sector funds tend to be riskier than the typical bond fund. An article in their Five Star Inves…
Hi, OOBY!
Here's the text being added to all of the Fido bond fund prospectuses:
"You may be charged an annual index fund fee of $10.00 per fund position to offset shareholder service costs if your fund balance falls below $10,000 at the time of t…
Reply to @InformalEconomist: Yep. When Artisan SCV first opened, I sold my stake in Artisan SC and move it over. A singularly excellent move. If you've in Artisan MCV, you're getting the same fine team and the same fine discipline
The real prob…
There were a fair number of folks who inquired about establishing link exchanges with us. Most seemed to be playing a game, trying to raise sites' rankings on the various search engines. Since that didn't strike me as an immediately compelling obj…
I agree with Accipiter's note that we need a "tips" page. If anyone has the time and technical expertise to pull one together, I'd be delighted to work with Chip and Accipiter to get it edited, formatted and posted. With the start of the new schoo…
Chip lost power (hence, running water since she relies on a well with an electric pump) at about 2 this morning. Even "normal" disasters have taken power down for 3-4 days. This one should be fascinating.
David
Reply to @CathyG: Accipiter and Chip get all of the credit for technical improvements to the site, both on the board and in the body. Mostly I just pretend I understand, nod and offer encouragement.
The long, strange ride of Midas Perpetual. It was
the Bull and Bear II fund from inception to July 1, 1999.
then Dollar Reserves, Inc., through August 30 2003,
then Midas Dollar Reserves through November 22, 2005,
finally the reorganized Midas …
