Author Archives: David Snowball

About David Snowball

David Snowball, PhD (Massachusetts). Cofounder, lead writer. David is a Professor of Communication Studies at Augustana College, Rock Island, Illinois, a nationally-recognized college of the liberal arts and sciences, founded in 1860. For a quarter century, David competed in academic debate and coached college debate teams to over 1500 individual victories and 50 tournament championships. When he retired from that research-intensive endeavor, his interest turned to researching fund investing and fund communication strategies. He served as the closing moderator of Brill’s Mutual Funds Interactive (a Forbes “Best of the Web” site), was the Senior Fund Analyst at FundAlarm and author of over 120 fund profiles.

Artisan and the Emerging Markets Debt Universe

By David Snowball

My colleague Devesh Shah sat down with Artisan’s Michael Cirami for a long conversation. Mr. Cirami is a managing director of Artisan Partners, a portfolio manager on the EMsights Capital Group, and lead portfolio manager for the Artisan Emerging Markets Debt Opportunities, Global Unconstrained, and Emerging Markets Local Opportunities Strategies. Two of those three strategies, Debt Opportunities and Global Unconstrained, are manifested in mutual funds.

Prior to joining Artisan Partners in Continue reading →

November 1, 2023

By David Snowball

Dear friends,

Happy New Year! And oíche Shamhna shona duit!

November 1st is Samhain (pronounced “sow-in” in case you’re curious), the traditional beginning of the new year in Gaelic culture. It’s proceeded not only by Samhain Eve but also by … well, three days of drinking. And then followed by three days of regretting it, at least a little.

Samhain marked the end of the harvest season and the onset of “the darker half” of the year, a time of increasing isolation and decreasing food stocks. It made all the sense in the world to do what people do in the face of adversity: throw a big communal gathering, feast, and dress up in scary costumes, and tell the agents of darkness to go Continue reading →

Investing Beyond The Great Distortion

By David Snowball

Devesh Shah and David Sherman engaged in a free-range conversation that touched on benchmark-free investing over hot drinks and fresh pastries. Benchmark-free investing starts with the question, “If you simply didn’t care about ‘the conventional wisdom’ concerning which assets you were supposed to own, what assets would you own?”

Mr. Sherman and Oaktree’s Howard Marks seem to endorse the same conclusion: “likely high-yield bond, surely not stocks.” That’s certainly contrary to conventional wisdom, which is centered on Continue reading →

Fire-and-Forget Gone Wrong: First Foundation Total Return

By David Snowball

In the military realm, “fire and forget” designates a weapon that you don’t need to think about once it’s been launched. In investing, “fire and forget” could be used to describe several sorts of mistakes centering on our impulse to look away once we’ve made a decision. One of those mistakes is to buy a fund (presumably for a good reason), then sell it (presumably for a good reason), and then never re-examine your decision.

Managers – both corporate and fund – make mistakes. You can’t avoid it. They can’t. The best of them realize it, learn from it, correct it, and return to doing fine work. After inheriting Continue reading →

October 1, 2023

By David Snowball

Welcome to October, a fierce month!

It’s a month of apple harvests and Atlantic hurricanes (214 of them). Of a temperature roller coaster and of market crashes (1907, 1929, and 1987 – days with the word “Black” attached to their names, stand out). Of bonfires and of Great Fires (Mrs. O’Leary and her cow were framed, I tell ya). Of wars (from the Battle of Hastings in 1066 through the Second World War, October was always seen as your last chance for a quick land grab before wintry weather closed you down for the season) and rumors of wars (the Cuban Missile Crisis which, happily, didn’t trigger a global war in part because of President Kennedy’s familiarity with the political intransigence and misunderstanding that triggered the First World War). Of a thinning wall between the Here and the There and of Continue reading →

The 25 Year Tempest: Emerging market investing through three cataclysms

By David Snowball

Who now remembers Long-Term Capital Management, the failure of genius, the price of hubris, and the lesson that the innocents bear the cost of their elders’ folly?

Too few, judging from investor behavior.

The collapse of LTCM was the first of three global financial crises over the past 25 years that erupted primarily in the developed world, but whose consequences were primarily borne by emerging markets economies and Continue reading →

Funds worth watching for

By David Snowball

The Securities and Exchange Commission, by law, gets between 60 and 75 days to review proposed new funds before they can be offered for sale to the public. Each month, we survey actively managed funds and ETFs in the pipeline. Summer’s trickle of new funds becomes autumn’s torrent as advisers rush to have new products on the market by December 31. That’s because a fund launched after that date won’t get to report annual or year-to-date results for 2024, which is a serious marketing problem.

Many new funds, like many existing funds, are bad ideas. (Really, you want the latest “anti-woke” ETF or a new way to invest with Bill Miller’s son?) Most will flounder in rightful obscurity. That said, each month brings some promising options that investors might choose to track.

Two, or perhaps two point five, to add Continue reading →

September 1, 2023

By David Snowball

Dear friends,

Welcome to the end of the summer. And to the beginning of … the weakest month of the year for the stock market, with an average monthly loss of about 0.7%. And the threshold of the most volatile month of the year, October, which sees an intramonth movement of 8.3%; that is, since 1928, the record says that your portfolio will bounce 8.3% in October (but only 5.2% in February). My inbox overflows with apocalyptic forecasts and also of celebrations of The New Bull. Recognizing that it’s all bull of a sort, I move on.

Augustana welcomes the largest first-year class in its 163-year history, materially (and disconcertingly) fed by the Augustana Possible scholarships that Continue reading →

Artisan International Explorer (ARDBX/ARHBX)

By David Snowball

Objective and strategy

The investment team seeks to invest in high-quality, undervalued businesses with the potential for superior risk/reward outcomes. The investment universe is generally non-US equities with market caps below $5 billion. The portfolio is typically 25-50 holdings, with individual holdings capped at about 10% and cash generally under 15%.

Adviser

Artisan Partners, L.P. Artisan is a remarkable Continue reading →

August 2023

By David Snowball

Dear friends,

Thanks so much for your patience. Chip and I spent a couple of weeks in the Scottish Highlands and Shetland Islands, and we knew in advance that that would slightly delay our August launch. Little did we understand the depth of Scottish generosity, as our hosts shared a case of COVID with us as we left the country. (It felt just like 2021 again!) The illness left us completely drained and endlessly exhausted, respectively. But we’ve now rallied and are delighted to share August with you. Continue reading →