You cannot praise them enough. Don’t take my word. Look at the MFO Premium search engine:
Results sorted by AUM with Year-to-date Returns and other metrics: Continue reading
Who, from a universe of 200+ emerging markets managers, did we choose to speak to … and how?
Good question! We decided to rely on insiders’ judgment, rather than mere notoriety or a strategy’s recent performance. We started by talking with Andrew Foster about his take on his investable universe and its evolution, then asked Andrew whose judgments he respected and who we ought to talk with. We asked those folks the same. Those recommendations, constrained by time and availability, led to conversations with the six worthies below. Continue reading
Is it time to overweight EM stocks now? To answer this and many other questions, the Mutual Fund Observer reached out to six EM Equity Fund Managers. Our plan was to talk with each at length, sharing one manager’s insights with another and seeking their response. Our hope was to help you gain an insight deeper than “boy, EM valuations sure are low! Time to buy, right?”
I am deeply grateful to them for helping our readers further their understanding. This essay will walk you through their arguments and our reflections on what EM investors might Continue reading
I’m not sure that I can. If I were to offer any tip, it might be to avoid TIPS.
Some investors (me included) bought Treasury Inflation Protected Securities (TIPS) to protect against rising inflation. Inflation has been raging in 2021-2022. Are you frustrated that shorter dated TIPS have made no money, while anyone who bought longer TIPS lost a bundle? All bonds lost money this year but TIPS were supposed to make money. And they didn’t. This very frustrating outcome is counterintuitive. In this article I take a look at Continue reading
Irresponsibility might not be the gravest sin committed by internet pundits, but it’s surely one of the most widespread. We are forever regaled by advice from “the strategist who called the 2008 crash” has announced the 2022 recession will be worse than 2008, though we are spared the messy details about the source’s other 49 missed guesses. It’s the nature of the internet that Continue reading
Retail investors or advisors serving retail investors can choose to keep it simple with portfolios that follow a handful of easy-to-grasp rules:
Hope your road is a long one.
May there be many summer mornings when,
with what pleasure, what joy,
you enter harbors you’re seeing for the first time;
may you stop at Phoenician trading stations
to buy fine things,
mother of pearl and coral, amber and ebony,
sensual perfume of every kind—
as many sensual perfumes as you can;
and may you visit many Egyptian cities
to learn and go on learning from their scholars.
“Be careful what you wish for because it might come true” – someone wise
In this article, I lead by laying out the irony in today’s Federal Reserve behavior and the financial markets. Acknowledging a tough year for the 60/40 portfolio, I look at the worst of historical drawdowns in down market cycles. I benchmark my own expectations for the 60/40 in the current cycle and invite readers to do their own work. Finally, Continue reading
There is a risk that 2022 is just the beginning of a treacherous investment decade. If so, it may be time to question what we know about conventional investment practices. In this article, I first highlight the so-called risk of a lost decade of real returns. Then, I raise 4 Questions we need to ask ourselves:
(1) what should be the mix between risky and riskless assets
(2) what about the active vs passive debate
(3) which assets work well during inflation
(4) which investment habits might we want to leave behind if the returns are slim.
After proposing some answers, I suggest Continue reading
When I came across a quote by Peter Lynch on how passive fund investors were making a mistake, I had two choices: to sweep his comments under the rug or evaluate the validity of them. In the article below, we will look at:
The takeaway: Outperforming MFs do exist but their taxable distributions are a larger drag than expected.
We’re inviting you to Continue reading