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Hi, Mike.
I'll ask but I think the "ballast" function of cash might be covered by their options positions. It seems to me that I read that their goal is to remain more-or-less fully invested but that not all of that investment is in the stock marke…
Hi, guys.
One of the charms and limits of MFO is its size: at base, three or four volunteers running it all as a public service. (Morningstar, by comparison, had Q3 revenues of $314 million with 5200 employees worldwide.) That's not a complaint. It…
Morningstar's new portfolio pages are pretty interesting, though perhaps a bit busy. They show a couple things about the portfolio. As a snapshot, it's large-verging-on-ultra-large cap and, by their measure, fairly growthy. About a tenth of the port…
Matt Kelly, one of the RiverPark folks, wrote to confirm that and to lament the amount of time it took Schwab to register the change. "Schwab has told us that RPHYX and RPHIX will finally be reopened there tomorrow. Apparently they are experiencing …
On RPHYX's return: David Sherman's line is close to "we take what the market is willing to give us." The translation is, "there is a level of risk that we're willing to subject our investors to, we target assets that meet our risk criteria and retur…
For what interest it holds, Wasatch Small-Cap Growth is the only SCG fund that's both a Great Owl (risk-adjusted, entire market cycle) and Honor Roll (total returns, 1,3,5 years) fund; it has the additional endorsement of Morningstar, which recently…
Hi, simon.
I think you might be over-reading my original statement, or at least its intent. The argument is simply that many younger investors (or potential investors) are paralyzed by fear right now, and are struggling to imagine investments that …
Hi, David. Shiller had an article in today's (1/5/20) New York Times, if you're interested. He explains the rationale for the Shiller CAPE, notes that it's at its 3rd highest level in history (1929, 1999) and talks a bit about "animal spirits" as an…
Hi @lrwilliams: (sigh) This likely explains why neither Charles nor Chip trusts me to do math any more complicated than figuring out the tip.
@msf: we might ask Charles. Part of what I was searching for was to find a way to help investors who do no…
Hi, David.
I simply set the screener using three parameters:
Category - 12 styles (LCV, etc) plus Equity Income, Aggressive Allocation, Flexible
Universe - mutual funds or ETFs
Display - full cycle 5
You get a warning that there are 1400 resulting…
He's kind of embarrassing, don't you think? This is the guy who has, in consecutive weeks, written the articles on why everyone should own hazardous waste stocks, why everyone should own pet care stocks, why everyone should own water stocks...
Howdy.
Good question, and I suspect that Mark is about right. Mr. Cinnamond is, beyond any reasonable question, a very talented stock selector. He's also adamantly unwilling to pay more for stocks than he thinks they're worth. He probably one of 10…
Hi, guys. I'm deeply grateful to Skeet for sharing the sad news. Lynn's preference is that there be no memorial service at all. I have, however, sent a small remembrance to her on your behalf.
Quite separately, I am having an oak planted in Ted's h…
Hi, Mike.
At the very least, it's a function of the MFO Screener. Get a list of up to 12 funds, click "analyze" then "correlation." It will default to the longest period that includes all of the funds on your list; for example, if your youngest fun…
She'd be an interesting person to talk to, one day. She's now the public face of a process that she tried hard to avoid. So far as I can tell, her plan - endorsed, curiously enough - by anti-Trump conservatives - was closer to "his electoral defeat …
After Sunday, the views on the click-bait piece virtually flatlined. That is, about 400 more people have read it in distinct contrast the initial surge. If the 27,000 had been humans, I would have anticipated more spillover into the rest of the issu…
Yikes on the price thing. Charles had raised the ante to $120 to cover the cost jump we were hit with but seems to have missed one piece of text! I'll write him now.
As a time-kill, I chose the "target date 2040" category at random.
37 funds. Five year returns range from 5.0 - 7.9% a year. Maximum drawdown from 9.0 - 14.4%. Standard deviation from 7 - 11%. That strikes me as pretty vast differences for funds w…
Thank you, sir. It took two months to write because the system - the stuff under the hood - is so fiendishly complex that I kept having these "oh, I got it! No, I don't" moments. That might contribute to reader-avoidance.
Quartz did a special repor…
The Matthews fund is pretty much sui generis. In the US market, I can find only two other funds that are vaguely comparable, Harvest Asia Bond and Aberdeen Asia-Pacific Income. One other Asia bond fund liquidated a couple years ago. That makes it ha…
Hi, MikeM!
From your lips to my keyboard! Coming in January, an article on the least deviant winners. Also, because schadenfreude, an article on the biggest baddest funds: funds with over a billion that have managed their way onto the three alarm l…
Hi, Ben.
I've got three portfolios, which I can't much change.
My college's retirement account is through TIAA-CREF. That money can't be easily moved anywhere. Currently it's four funds, with most of the money in a lifecycle fund and a real estate…
Why do it? At base, we actually try to follow up on every serious suggestion that folks make. Charles does it on the Premium/screener side of things and I try to do it on the monthly issue side. Sometimes the result is discovering a gem of an idea, …
Hi, Ben.
I agree about Bridgeway. Regrettably, about how halves on Bridgeway.
I was so impressed with John Montgomery that, back when I ran the college's Institute for Leadership and Service, I invited him to campus to spend an evening talking wit…
The Bottom Line pieces are distinctly collaborative efforts. Mark Gill says they've been thinking about storyline "X" and asks if I could suggest, say, 10 funds that fit their parameters. Usually the parameters are perfectly sensible, so usually I s…
Hi, ff!
Sorry, but I left after about 25 minutes. At that point, the focus of the talk still wasn't clear. I think, based on the teaser, that he was going to endorse investing in the EMs but that hadn't yet been mentioned. My departure was mostly o…
FPA
https://fpa.com/docs/default-source/FPA-News-Documents/all-fund-year-end-2019-distributions.pdf?sfvrsn=4
Hmmmm .... In my browser, the file just downloads but I think that's a browser setting, not a characteristic of the file.
Thanks, Mark! I don't know either, but it is, as with Lewis's note, a fascinating addition. I'm a little nervous about the upcoming AAII conference talk - it's accelerated my normal monthly bout of self-loathing by a week - so I might defer the Fami…
Hussman x3, Merger, Arbitrage. T Rowe Price Global Multi-Sector Bond (formerly Strategic Income), First Trust/Aberdeen Emerging Opportunities (a multi-asset EM CEF) ... not much from the universe I scan.
When I've spoken with them about it, the Invenomic folk certainly seem sanguine about their fees, perhaps because they've been seeing strong inflows and rising interest among European investors. No evidence yet that the summer instilled any particul…
