When Laura Geritz left Wasatch Advisors in June after a decade with the firm, there was a clear and understandable sense of loss. Ms. Geritz had three public charges:
Wasatch International Opportunities (WAIOX), : a $635 million international small-growth fund. It’s got a five-star rating from Morningstar. Over the past five years, it’s posted higher returns with lower volatility than its Lipper peer group. The estimable Lewis Braham reports Continue reading
It’s no secret that the consuming passion of fixed income investors is “the search for yield.” The Financial Times offered a nice snapshot of the problem; here is the income available (the yield) from the super-safe benchmark 10-year Treasury bonds Continue reading
You know it’s a bad month for fund registrations when the most interesting thing out there is a bad idea: The ETF Market ETF (TETF). If you’ve ever thought to yourself, “there’s nothing I want more than to be trapped investing in a very limited universe of companies, almost none of whom have enduring competitive advantages,” you can now not only invest there, you can day trade if you want. (sigh) Otherwise, year-end is a slow time in the fund launch world. Continue reading
In a peculiarly peculiar move, Praxis Small Cap (MMSCX) is becoming Praxis Small Cap Index Fund. Praxis might, charitably, be described as “bad” (its five-year record trails its peers by 600 basis points annually) and “expensive” (1.68% with a 5.25% sales load). In an attempt to be less “bad,” they’re giving up active management but remaining expensive (1.13% with a 5.25% sales load). Here’s advice to prospective providers of index funds: if you can’t make it cheap, you’re going to lose. Praxis is attempting to dodge that ugly truth by being not-quite-an-index funds: its benchmark is the S&P SmallCap 600 but “the Fund seeks to avoid companies that are deemed inconsistent with the stewardship investing core values. In addition, the Adviser uses optimization techniques to Continue reading
Dear friends,
I walked along today, kicking leaves, marveling at the maples, crunching through my last Golden Russet apple and wondering at the tension between local delight and global despair. Things are good in my life. My classes are full and my students are … hmmm, fascinating in a “bright but so very different from what I recall” way. My son just earned his driver’s license and I bought him a respectable used car. I harvested my first-ever potato crop and the last of my carrots and onions, so roasted root veggies are on the menu this week. I’m happy.
The world beyond mine is less happy. Weather forecasters report that Continue reading
Technically, 10,315,656 miles high.
The IMF reported in October that global debt, government, corporate and individual, is now $152 trillion. (That’s $152 followed by 000,000,000,000.) That’s historically high, both in absolute terms and relative to global GDP. And it’s not limited to slow-growing developed economies; increasingly emerging markets are issuing debt at a record pace.
Folks at the Endowment for Human Development, who have either spiffy calculators or too much free time, calculate that Continue reading
There’s a good chance that the next five years will be far more challenging for investors than the past five. It’s rare that a market delivers returns (12% annual returns) greater than its volatility (11% standard deviation). We’ve had five years of extraordinary monetary policy; if the next five years look more ordinary (say, 10 year rates back to their normal 3-4% range), there’s likely to be a “repricing” of assets, possibly dramatic, surely erratic. GMO’s asset class projections, which simply assume a return to normal levels of profits and earnings, say that almost all asset classes are set for negative real returns.
For folks looking for managers well-equipped to handle hostile markets, we used Continue reading
Since the number of funds we can cover in-depth is smaller than the number of funds worthy of in-depth coverage, we’ve decided to offer one or two managers each month the opportunity to make a 200 or 300 word pitch to you. That’s about the number of words a slightly-manic elevator companion could share in a minute and a half. In each case, I’ve promised to offer a quick capsule of the fund and a link back to the fund’s site. Other than that, they’ve got 200 words and precisely as much of your time and attention as you’re willing to share. These aren’t endorsements; they’re opportunities to learn more.
Donald Porter leads the team which manages the Continue reading
In October, we offered a Launch Alert for RiverNorth’s latest fund, RMPLX. It’s a closed-end interval fund which offers institutional investors access to the quickly evolving marketplace lending sphere. The fund has a million dollar minimum initial investment and, structurally, has some similarities to a hedge fund.
In mid-November, RiverNorth will host a webcast helping investors understand the potential risks, returns and distinctive characteristics of this slice of the market. They’ve done good work with their webcasts before, so folks with the interest and wherewithal might Continue reading
In a February 2012 Wall Street Journal piece, I nominated MASNX as one of the three most-promising new funds released in 2011. In normal times, investors might be looking at a moderate stock/bond hybrid for the core of their portfolio. In extraordinary times, there was a strong argument for looking here as they consider the central building blocks for their strategy. Our profile of the fund that year argued
these really do represent the “A” team in the “alternatives without idiocy” space. That is, these folks pursue sensible, comprehensible strategies that have worked over time. Many of their competitors in the “multi-alternative” category pursue bizarre and opaque strategies (“hedge fund index replicant” strategies using derivatives) where the managers mostly say “trust us” and “pay us.” On whole, this collection is far more reassuring.