We’ve got Coke Zero. We’ve got Pepsi Zero. I guess it’s reasonable to wonder, why not Fidelity Zero?
Wait, we don’t have Coke Zero or Pepsi Zero. They both failed in the marketplace and had to be reformulated, renamed and relaunched.
But we do have Fido Zero.
On August 3, 2018, Fidelity launched two zero/zero index funds sporting zero Continue reading
It’s sensible to think, in advance, about the best responses to a market that is expensive, increasingly volatile and beset by external shocks, from tariffs to rising interest rates and policy instability.
An unauthored piece in ETF Trends recently weighed in with this advice: look at buying inverse or levered inverse ETFs.
With the heightened Continue reading
The most consistently strong analyses of US and world markets come from a shrinking handful of sources, The Financial Times and The Wall Street Journal prominent among them. MFO maintains a paid subscription to each.
Nonetheless, even they produce the occasional bewildering piece. In “If you want to do good, expect to do badly” (6/29/2018), the Journal’s James Mackintosh revives an old canard. “Investors are increasingly convinced that they can buy companies that behave better than the rest and make just as Continue reading
All the developments that are worth knowing but aren’t worth separate stories, including the liquidation of Marsico Flexible Capital and worthy alternatives to it, notes on the other 19 funds slated for termination and the surprising roster of “A” tier firms with “A” tier outflows.
The Morningstar funds Continue reading
Dear friends,
Welcome to July! You shouldn’t be here.
Welcome to the Observer’s annual “summer light” issue in which you point out the obvious: you need some time away from the headlines, the daily howling, the apocalypse, the partisan glee, the certainty of boom, doom or gloom (to borrow from the name of Marc Faber’s thoughtful reports).
Setting aside the overtly political headlines, here’s a Continue reading
All the developments that are worth knowing but aren’t worth separate stories, including 50 funds that just earned headstones rather than headlines. An absolute disaster? 10% of vanishing funds promising “absolute returns.” Wells Fargo promises that you can trust them, just before announcing millions of additional fines. Tadas moves up, a favorite fund closes quick and hard, Monrad celebrates his 58th and the Mathers Fund leaves this veil of tears after 53 eventful years. Continue reading
Dear friends,
Stand back!
Be ready!
Augustana just launched another flight of cheerful, broadly-educated graduates in your direction. Don’t worry too much: it’s the 158th time we’ve done it. Continue reading
With a summertime nod to William Butler Yeats, “Sailing to Byzantium,” and not so much to the movie that cribbed a line from him.
I
That is no country for old men. The young
In one another’s arms, birds in the trees,
—Those dying generations—at their song,
The salmon-falls, the mackerel-crowded seas,
Fish, flesh, or fowl, commend all summer long
Whatever is begotten, born, and dies.
Caught in that sensual music all neglect
Monuments of unageing intellect. Continue reading
You may not know it. You may not want to admit it. But you’d certainly be running one.
How do I know? Because managed futures funds operate exactly the way you do. Managed futures funds are momentum investors; they choose some number of asset classes (US stocks, currencies, EM bonds, commodities, whatever) to include in their portfolios. They then invest in the asset classes that show the greatest upward momentum, avoid assets that are drifting, and short those that are falling. You could also imagine a control panel with eight toggle switches, one for each asset class, and three positions for each switch (positive, neutral, negative). Managers look at relative strength data and might flip Continue reading