Dear friends,
Welcome to the December Mutual Fund Observer, and to the holiday season.
The Christmas of the early American republic would be barely recognizable to us. In many colonies, it was a workday, ignored or mistrusted; only some immigrant communities treated it as a true festival. You’ll remember the Christmas of Continue reading →
Setting aside uncertainty this year over tariffs, affordability, a slowing economy, high stock market valuations, and government shutdowns, this article is focused on the long-term risk of the next financial crisis. I am not worried about a gloom and doom scenario. I do want to have a portion of my overall portfolio prepared for another financial crisis or currency devaluation, whether it is associated with the next bear market or one after that.
This Time Is Different – Eight Centuries of Financial Folly (2009) by Carmen M. Reinhart and Kenneth S. Rogoff covers debt cycles and financial crises: Continue reading →
MFO’s founding mission is to “write for the benefit of intellectually curious, serious investors— managers, advisers, and individuals—who need to go beyond marketing fluff, beyond computer-generated recommendations and beyond Morningstar’s coverage universe.” But one of our core precepts is “80% of all existing funds could disappear today with no loss to anyone, except possibly the managers who have to explain it to their spouses.” The goodriddance group includes two overlapping sorts of idiocy: (1) many are launched Continue reading →
On October 1, 2025, GMO launched the GMO Domestic Resilience ETF (DRES), bringing the firm’s time-tested quality-focused investment discipline to a distinctly contemporary challenge: identifying companies positioned to benefit as manufacturing, defense production, and critical supply chains return to U.S. soil. DRES represents GMO’s bet that reshoring and nearshoring—the movement of production capacity back onshore or to nearby allies—constitutes more than political theater or a temporary supply-chain correction. The fund targets sectors at the heart of this shift: Continue reading →
On September 24, 2025, MFS Investment Management launched the MFS Active Mid Cap ETF (MMID), bringing one of the firm’s most seasoned mid-cap strategies into the ETF wrapper. The fund represents a straightforward translation of MFS Mid Cap Value – a strategy portfolio manager Kevin Schmitz has managed since 2008 – into a more tax-efficient and accessible structure. What distinguishes MMID is not novelty but pedigree: a 17-year track record, a manager who joined MFS as an equity analyst in 2002 and has spent more than Continue reading →
I just finished reading Principles for Dealing with the Changing World Order – Why Nations Succeed and Fail by Ray Dalio. Mr. Dalio states:
“Dealing with the future is all about 1) perceiving and adapting to what is happening, even if it can’t be anticipated; 2) coming up with probabilities for what might happen; and 3) knowing enough about what might happen to protect oneself against the unacceptable, even if one can’t do that perfectly.”
I recently spent a weekend in the historic mining town Continue reading →
On November 10th, Tiffany Hsiao rejoined Matthews Asia after leaving the firm in August 2020 to join Artisan Partners to launch a China-focused private fund. Prior to her departure, Tiffany managed the firm’s China Small Companies, former Asia Small Companies (now Emerging Markets Small Companies), and Asia Innovators strategies.
The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission cleared the way for Dimensional Fund Advisors to Continue reading →
