Welcome to October, the time of pumpkins.

October’s a month of surprises, from the first morning that you see frost on the grass to the appearance of ghosts and ghouls at month’s end.  It’s a month famous of market crashes – 1929, 1987, 2008 – and for being the least hospitable to stocks. And now it promises to be a month famous for government showdowns and shutdowns, when the sales of scary Halloween masks (Barackula, anyone?) take off.

It’s the month of golden leaves, apple cider, backyard fires and weekend football.  (Except possibly back home in Pittsburgh, where some suspect a zombie takeover of the beloved Steelers backfield.)  It’s the month that the danged lawnmower gets put away but the snowblower doesn’t need to be dragged out.

It’s the month where we discover the Octoberfest actually takes place in September, and we’ve missed it. 

In short, it’s a good month to be alive and to share with you.

Better make that “The Fantastic 48,” Russ

Russel Kinnel, Morningstar’s chief fund guy, sent out an email on September 16^th, touting his “Fantastic 51,” described as “51 Funds You Should Know About.”  And if you’ll just pony up the $125 for a Fund Investor subscription, it’s yours!

 Uhhh … might have to pare that back to the Fantastic 48, Russ.  It turns out that a couple of the funds hyped in the email underwent critical changes between the time Mr. Kinnel published that article in May and the time Morningstar’s marketers began pushing it in September.

Let’s start by looking at Mr. K’s criteria, then talking about the flubbed funds and finish by figuring out what we might learn from the list as a whole.

Here are the criteria for being Fantastic this year:

Last year I shared the “Fantastic 46” with you. This year I raised the bar on my tests and still reached 51 funds. Here’s what I want:

1. A fund with expenses in the cheapest quintile
2. Returns that beat the benchmark over the course of the manager’s tenure (minimum five years)
3. Manager investment of at least $500,000
4. A Positive Parent rating
5. A medalist Morningstar Analyst Rating

Sub-text: Fantastic funds are large or come from large fund complexes.  Of the 1150 medalist funds, only 53 have assets under $100 million.  Of those 53, only five or six are the products of independent or boutique firms.  The others are from Fido, MFS, PIMCO or another large firm.  Typically an entire target-date series gets medalized, including the Retirement 2075 fund with $500,003 in it.  By way of comparison, there are 2433 funds with under $100 million in assets.

And it’s certainly the case that the Fantastic 51 is The Corporate Collection: 10 American Funds, 10 Price and nine Vanguard.  Russel holds out the LKCM funds as examples of off-the-radar families, which would be more credible if LKCM Small Cap Equity (LKSCX) didn’t already have $1.1 billion in assets.

And what about the funds touted in the promotional email.  Two stand out: FPA Paramount and Janus Triton.

Morningstar’s take on FPA Paramount

The Mutual Fund Observer’s reply:

Great recommendation, except that the managers you’re touting left the fund and its strategy has substantially changed.  Eric and Steve’s unnamed and unrecognized co-managers are now in charge of the fund and are working to transition it from a quality-growth to an absolute-value portfolio.  Both of those took place in August 2013. 

The MFO recommendation: if you like Eric and Steve’s work, invest in FPA Perennial (FPPFX) which is a fund they actually run, using the strategy that Mr. Kinnel celebrates.

Morningstar’s take on Janus Triton

The Observer’s reply:

Uhhh … a bigger worry here is that Chad and Brian left in early May, 2013. The new manager’s tenure is 14 weeks.  Morningstar’s analysts promptly downgraded the fund to “neutral.” And Greg Carlson fretted that the “manager change leaves Janus Triton with uncertain prospects” because Mr. Coleman has not done a consistently excellent job in his other charges. That would be four months before the distribution of this email promo.

The MFO recommendation: if you’re impressed by Chad and Brian’s work (an entirely reasonable conclusion) check Meridian Growth Legacy Fund (MERDX), or wait until November and invest in their new Meridian Small Cap Growth Fund.

The email did not highlight, but the Fantastic 51 does include, T. Rowe Price New America Growth (PRWAX), whose manager resigned in May 2013.   Presumably these funds ended up in the letter because, contrary to appearances, Mr. Kinnel neither wrote, read nor approved its content (his smiling face and first-personal singular style notwithstanding).  That work was likely all done by a marketer who wouldn’t know Triton from Trident.

The bigger picture should give you pause about the value of such lists.   Twenty-six percent of the funds that were “fantastic” last year are absent this year, including the entire contingent of Fidelity funds.  Thirty-three percent of the currently fantastic funds were not so distinguished twelve months ago.  If you systematically exclude large chunks of the fund universe from consideration (those not medalized) and have a list that’s both prosaic (“tape the names of all of the Price funds to the wall, throw a dart, find your fantasy fund!”) and unstable, you wonder how much insight you’re being offered.

Interested parties might choose to compare last year’s Fantastic 46 list with 2013’s new and improved Fantastic 51. 

About the lack of index funds in the Fantastic 51

Good index funds – ones with little tracking error – can’t beat their benchmarks over time because their return is the benchmark minus expenses.  A few bad index funds – ones with high tracking error, so they’re sometimes out of step with their benchmark – might beat it from time to time, and Gus Sauter was pretty sure that microscopic expenses and canny trade execution might allow him to eke out the occasional win.  But the current 51 has no passive funds.

The authors of S&P Indices Versus Active Funds (SPIVA®) Scorecard would argue that’s a foolish bias.  They track the percentage of funds in each equity category which manage to outperform their benchmark, controlling for survivorship bias.  The results aren’t pretty.  In 17 of 17 domestic equity categories they analyzed, active funds trailed passive.  Not just “most active funds.”  No, no.  The vast majority of active funds.  Over the past five years, 64.08% of large value funds trailed their benchmark and that’s the best performance by any of the 17 groups.  Overall, 72.01% trailed.  Your poorest odds came in the large cap growth, midcap growth and multicap growth categories, where 88% of funds lagged. 

In general, active funds lag passive ones by 150-200 basis points year.  That’s a problem, since that loss is greater than what the fund’s expense ratios could explain.  Put another way: even if actively managed funds had an expense ratio of zero, they’d still modestly trail their passive peers.

There is one and only one bright spot in the picture for active managers: international small cap funds, nearly 90% of which outperform a comparable index. Which international small caps qualify as Fantastic you might ask? That would be, none.

If you were looking for great prospects in the international small cap arena, the Observer recommends that you check Grandeur Peak Global Reach (GPROX) or wait for the launch of one of their next generation of purely international funds. Oberweis International Opportunities (OBIOX), profiled this month, would surely be on the list. Fans of thrill rides might consider Driehaus International Small Cap Growth (DRIOX). Those more interested in restrained, high-probability bets might look at the new Artisan Global Small Cap Fund (ARTWX), a profile of which is forthcoming.

How much can you actually gain by picking a good manager?

It’s hard to find a good manager. It takes time and effort and it would be nice to believe that you might receive a reward commensurate with all your hard work. That is, spending dozens of hours in research makes a lot more sense if a good pick actually has a noticeably pay-off. One way of measuring that pay-off is by looking at the performance difference between purely average managers and those who are well above average. 

The chart below, derived from data in the S&P 2013 SPIVA analysis shows how much additional reward a manager in the top 25% of funds provides compared to a purely average manager.

What might this suggest about where to put your energy?  First and foremost, a good emerging markets manager makes a real difference – the average manager lost money for you, the top tier of guys kept you in the black. Likewise with diversified international funds.  The poorest investment of your time might be in looking for a large cap and especially large cap value manager. Not only do they rarely beat an index fund when they do, the margin of victory is slim. 

The group where good active manager appears to have the biggest payoff – small caps across the board –  is muddied a bit by the fact that the average return was so high to begin with. The seemingly huge 231 bps advantage held by top managers represents just a 28% premium over the work of mediocre managers. In international small caps, the good-manager premium is far higher at 41%.  Likewise, top global managers returned about 42% more than average ones.

The bottom line: invest your intellectual resources where your likeliest to see the greatest reward.  In particular, managers who invest largely or exclusively overseas seem to have the prospect of making a substantial difference in your returns and probably warrant the most careful selection.  Managers in what’s traditionally the safest corner of the equity style box – large core, large  value, midcap value – don’t have a huge capacity to outperform either indexes or peers.  In those areas, cheap and simple might be your mantra.

The one consensus pick: Dodge & Cox International (DODFX)

There are three lists of “best funds” in wide circulation now: the Kiplinger 25, the Fantastic 51, and the Money 70.  You’d think that if all of these publications shared the same sensible goal – good risk-adjusted returns and shareholder-friendly practices – they’d also be stumbling across the same funds.

You’d be wrong. There’s actually just one fund that they all agree on: Dodge & Cox International (DODFX). The fund is managed by the same team that handles all of Dodge & Cox. It’s dragging around $45 billion in assets but, despite consistently elevated volatility, it’s done beautifully. It has trailed its peers only twice in the past decade, including 2008 when all of the D&C funds made a mistimed bet that the market couldn’t get much cheaper.  They were wrong, by about six months and 25% of their assets.

The fund has 94% of its assets in large cap stocks, but a surprisingly high exposure to the emerging markets – 17% to its peers 7%.

My colleague Charles is, even as you read this, analyzing the overlap – and lack of overlap – between such “best funds” lists.  He’ll share his findings with us in November.

Tealeaf Long/Short Deep Value Fund?

Really guys?

Really?

You’ve got a business model that’s predicated upon being ridiculed before you even launch?

The fate of the Palantir (“mystical far-seeing eye”) Fund (PALIX) didn’t raise a red flag?  Nor the Oracle Fund (ORGAX – the jokes there were too dangerous), or the Eye of Zohar Fund (okay, I made that one up)?  It’s hard to imagine investment advisors wanting to deal with their clients’ incredulity at being placed in a fund that sounds like a parody, and it’s harder to imagine that folks like Chuck Jaffe (and, well, me) won’t be waiting for you to do something ridiculous.

In any case, the fund’s in registration now and will eventually ask you for 2.62 – 3.62% of your money each year.

The art of reading tea leaves is referred to as tasseography.  Thought you’d like to know.

A new Fidelity fund is doing okay!

Yeah, I’m surprised to hear me saying that, too.  It’s a rarity.  Still FidelityTotal Emerging Markets (FTEMX) has made a really solid start.  FTEMX is one of the new generation of emerging markets balanced or hybrid funds.  It launched on November 1, 2011 and is managed by a seven-person team.  The team is led by John Carlson, who has been running Fidelity New Markets Income (FNMIX), an emerging markets bond fund, since 1995.  Mr. Carlson’s co-managers in general are young managers with only one other fund responsibility (for most, Fidelity Series Emerging Markets, a fund open only to other Fidelity funds).

The fund has allocated between 60-73% of its portfolio to equities and its equity allocation is currently at a historic high.

Since there’s no “emerging markets balanced” peer group or benchmark, the best we can do is compare it to the handful of other comparable funds we could find.  Below we report the fund’s expense ratios and the amount of money you’d have in September 2013 if you’d invested $10,000 in each on the day that FTEMX launched.

The only fund with even modestly better returns is the closed-end First Trust Aberdeen Emerging Opportunities, about which we wrote a short, positive profile.  That fund’s shares are selling, as of October 1, at a 9.2% discount to its actual net asset value which is a bit more than its 8.9% average discount over the past five years and substantially more than its 7.4% discount over the past three.

Microscopic by Fidelity standard, the fund has just $80 million in assets.  The minimum initial investment is $2500, reduced to $500 for IRAs.

Observer Fund Profiles:

Each month the Observer provides in-depth profiles of between two and four funds.  Our “Most Intriguing New Funds” are funds launched within the past couple years that most frequently feature experienced managers leading innovative newer funds.  “Stars in the Shadows” are older funds that have attracted far less attention than they deserve.

Frank Value Fund (FRNKX) is not “that other Frank Fund” (John Buckingham’s Al Frank fund VALUX). It’s a concentrated, all-cap value fund that’s approaching its 10^th anniversary. It’s entirely plausible that it will celebrate its 10^thanniversary with returns in the top 10% of its peer group.

Oberweis International Opportunities (OBIOX) brings a unique strategy grounded in the tenets of behavioral finance to the world of international small- and mid-cap growth investing.  The results (top decile returns in three of the past four years) and the firm’s increasingly sophisticated approach to risk management are both striking.

Elevator Talk #9: Bashar Qasem of Wise Capital (WISEX)

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 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.

Wise Capital (WISEX) provides investors with an opportunity for diversification in a fund category (short term bonds) mostly distinguished by bland uniformity: 10% cash, one equity security thrown in for its thrill-value, about 90% of the bond portfolio would be US with a dribble of Canadian and British issues, 90% A-AAA rated and little distance between the fund and its peers. 

We began searching, late last year, from short-term income funds that offered some prospect of offering atypical returns in a bad environment: negative real short-term rates for now and the prospect of a market overreaction when US rates finally began to rise.  Our touchstones were stable management, a distinctive strategy, and a record of success.  A tiny handful of funds survived the cull.  Among them, PIMCO Short Asset (PAUIX ), Payden Global Low Duration (PYGSX), RiverPark Short Term High Yield (RPHYX), Scout Low Duration (SCLDX) … and Azzad Wise Capital.

WISEX draws on a fundamentally different asset set than any other US fixed-income fund.  Much of the fund’s portfolio is invested in the Islamic world, in a special class of bank deposits and bond-equivalents called Sukuks.  The fund is not constrained to invest solely in either asset class, but its investments are ethically-screened, Shariah-compliant and offers ethical exposure to emerging markets such as Turkey, Indonesia, Malaysia and the Gulf.

Azzad was founded in 1997 by Bashar Qasem, a computer engineer who immigrated to the United States from Jordan at the age of 23.  Here’s Mr. Qasem’s 200 words making his case:

I started Azzad Asset Management back 1997 because I was disappointed with the lack of investment options that aligned with my socially responsible worldview. For similar reasons, I traveled across the globe to consult with scholars and earned licenses to teach and consult on compliance with Islamic finance. I later trained and became licensed to work in the investment industry.

We launched the Azzad Wise Capital Fund in 2010 as a response to calls from clients asking for a fund that respects the Islamic prohibition on interest but still offers a revenue stream and risk/return profile similar to a short-term bond fund. WISEX invests in a variety of Sukuk (Islamic bonds) and Islamic bank deposits involved in overseas development projects. Of course, it’s SEC-registered and governed by the Investment Company Act of 1940. Although it doesn’t deal with debt instruments created from interest-based lending, WISEX shares in the profits from its ventures.

And I’m particularly pleased that it appeals to conservative, income-oriented investors of all backgrounds, Muslim or not. We hear from financial advisors and individual shareholders of all stripes who own WISEX for exposure to countries like Turkey, Malaysia, and Indonesia, as well as access to an alternative asset class like Sukuk.

The fund has a single share class. The minimum initial investment is $4,000, reduced to $300 for accounts established with an automatic investing plan (always a good idea with cash management accounts). Expenses are capped at 1.49% through December, 2018.

For those unfamiliar with the risk/return profile of these sorts of investments, Azzad offers two resources.  First, on the Azzad Funds website, they’ve got an okay (not but great) white paper on Sukuks.  It’s under Investor Education, then White Papers.  Second, on October 23^rd, Mr. Quesam and portfolio manager Jamal Elbarmil will host a free webinar on Fed Tapering and Sukuk Investing.  Azzad shared the announcement with us but I can’t, for the life of me, find it on either of their websites so here’s a .pdf explaining the call.

Our earlier Elevator Talks were:

1. February 2013: Tom Kerr, Rocky Peak Small Cap Value (RPCSX), whose manager has a 14 year track record in small cap investing and a passion for discovering “value” in the intersection of many measures: discounted cash flows, LBO models, M&A valuations and traditional relative valuation metrics.
2. March 2013: Dale Harvey, Poplar Forest Partners (PFPFX and IPFPX), a concentrated, contrarian value stock fund that offers “a once-in-a-generation opportunity to invest with a successful American Funds manager who went out on his own.”
3. April 2013: Bayard Closser, Vertical Capital Income Fund (VCAPX), “a closed-end interval fund, VCAPX invests in whole mortgage loans and first deeds of trust. We purchase the loans from lenders at a deep discount and service them ourselves.”
4. May 2013: Jim Hillary, LS Opportunity Fund (LSOFX), a co-founder of Marsico Capital Management whose worry that “the quality of research on Wall Street continues to decline and investors are becoming increasingly concerned about short-term performance” led to his faith in “in-depth research and long-term orientation in our high conviction ideas.”
5. July 2013: Casey Frazier, Versus Capital Multi-Manager Real Estate Income Fund (VCMRX), a second closed-end interval fund whose portfolio “includes real estate private equity and debt, public equity and debt, and broad exposure across asset types and geographies. We target a mix of 70% private real estate with 30% public real estate to enhance liquidity, and our objective is to produce total returns in the 7 – 9% range net of fees.”
6. August 2013: Brian Frank, Frank Value Fund (FRNKX), a truly all-cap value fund with a simple, successful discipline: if one part of the market is overpriced, shop elsewhere.
7. August 2013: Ian Mortimer and Matthew Page of Guinness Atkinson Inflation Managed Dividend (GAINX), a global equity fund that pursues firms with “sustainable and potentially rising dividends,” which also translates to firms with robust business models and consistently high return on capital.
8. September 2013: Steven Vannelli of GaveKal Knowledge Leaders (GAVAX), which looks to invest in “the best among global companies that are tapping a deep reservoir of intangible capital to generate earnings growth,” where “R&D, design, brand and channel” are markers of robust intangible capital. From launch through the end of June, 2013, the fund modestly outperformed the MSCI World Index and did so with two-thirds less volatility

During the summer hiatus on Observer conference calls, my colleague Charles Boccadoro and I have been listening-in on calls sponsored by some of the more interesting fund companies.  We report this month on the highlights of the calls concerning the reopening of RiverNorth/DoubleLine Strategic Income (David) and the evolution of the intriguing Whitebox Tactical Opportunities (Charles) funds.

Conference Call Highlights: RiverNorth/DoubleLine Strategic Income (RNDLX)

Strategic Income was launched on December 30, 2010 and our profile of the fund described it as “compelling.”  We speculated that if an investor were planning to hold only three funds over the long haul, “given its reasonable expenses, the managers’ sustained successes, innovative design and risk-consciousness, this might well be one of those three.”  Both popular ($1.1 billion in the portfolio) and successful (it has outperformed its “multisector bond” peers since inception and in seven of 10 quarters), the fund closed to new investors at the end of March. 2012.  Faced with a substantial expansion in their opportunity set, RiverNorth decided to reopen the fund to new investors 17 months later, at the end of August 2013, with the understanding that it was subject to re-closure if there was a pressing mismatch between the fund’s resources and the opportunities available.

On September 18, 2013, co-managers Jeffrey Gundlach of DoubleLine and Patrick Galley of RiverNorth spoke with interested parties about their decision to re-open the fund and its likely evolution.

By happenstance, the call coincided with the fed’s announcement that they’d put plans to reduce stimulus on hold, an event which led Mr. Gundlach to describe it as “a pivotal day for investor attitudes.” The call addressed three issues:

• The fund’s strategy and positioning.  The fund was launched as an answer to the question, how do income-oriented investors manage in a zero-rate environment?  The answer was, by taking an eclectic and opportunistic approach to exploiting income-producing investments.  The portfolio has three sleeves: core income, modeled after Doubleline’s Core Income Fund, opportunistic income, a mortgage-backed securities strategy which is Doubleline’s signature strength, and RiverNorth’s tactical closed-end income sleeve which seeks to profit from both tactical asset choices and the opportunities for arbitrage gains when the discounts on CEFs become unsustainably large.

  The original allocation was 50% core, 25% opportunistic and 25% tactical CEF.  RiverNorth’s strategy is to change weightings between the sleeves to help the portfolio manage changes in interest rates and volatility; in a highly volatile market, they might reallocate toward the more conservative core strategy while a rising interest rate regime might move them toward their opportunistic and tactical sleeves.  Before closing, much of the tactical CEF money was held in cash because opportunities were so few. 

• The rationale for reopening. Asset prices often bear some vague relation to reality.  But not always.  Opportunistic investors look to exploit other investors’ irrationality.  In 2009, people loathed many asset classes and in 2010 they loathed them more selectively.  As the memory of the crash faded, greed began to supplant fear and CEFs began selling at historic premiums to their NAVs.  That is, investors were willing to pay $110 for the privilege of owning $100 in equities.  Mr. Galley reported that 60% of CEFs sold at a premium to their NAVs in 2012.  2013 brought renewed anxiety, an anxious departure from the bond market by many and the replacement of historic premiums on CEFs with substantial discounts.  As of mid-September, 60% of CEFs were selling at discounts of 5% or more.  That is, investors were willing to sell $100 worth of securities for $95.

  As a whole, CEFs were selling at a 6.5% discount to NAV.  That compared to a premium the year before, an average 1% discount over the preceding three years and an average 3% discount over the preceding decade.

  

  The lack of opportunities in the fixed-income CEF space, a relatively small place, forced the fund’s closure.  The dramatic expansion of those opportunities justified its reopening.  The strategy might be able to accommodate as much as $1.5 billion in assets, but the question of re-closing the fund would arise well before then.

• Listener concerns.  Listeners were able to submit questions electronically to a RiverNorth moderator, an approach rather more cautious than the Observer’s strategy of having callers speak directly to the managers.  Some of the questions submitted were categorized as “repetitive or not worth answering” (yikes), but three issues did make it through. CEFs are traded using an algorithmic trading system developed by RiverNorth. It is not a black box, but rather a proprietary execution system used to efficiently trade closed-end funds based off of discount, instead of price. The size of the fund’s investable CEF universe is about 300 funds, out of 400 extant closed-end fixed-income funds. The extent of leverage in the portfolio’s CEFs was about 20%.

Bottom Line: the record of the managers and the fund deserves considerable respect, as does the advisor’s clear commitment to closing funds when doing so is in their investors’ best interest. The available data clearly supports the conclusion that, even with dislocations in the CEF space in 2013, active management has added considerable value here. 

The data-rich slides are already available by contacting RiverNorth. A transcript of the broadcast will be available on the RiverNorthFunds.com website sometime in October. 

Update: The webcast is now available at https://event.webcasts.com/viewer/event.jsp?ei=1021309 You will be required to register, but you’ll gain access immediately.

Conference Call Highlights: Whitebox Tactical Opportunities Fund (WBMAX and WBMIX)

Portfolio managers Andrew Redleaf and Dr. Jason Cross, along with Whitebox Funds’ President Bruce Nordin, hosted the 2^nd quarter conference call for their Tactical Opportunities Fund (WBMIX) on September 10. Robert Vogel, the fund’s third manager, did not participate. The call provided an opportunity to take a closer look at the fund, which is becoming hard to ignore.

Background

WBMIX is the more directionally oriented sibling of Whitebox’s market-neutral Long Short Equity Fund (WBLFX), which David profiled in April. Whitebox is preparing to launch a third mutual fund, named Enhanced Convertible Fund (WBNIX), although no target date has been established.

Whitebox Advisors, founded by Mr. Redleaf in 1999, manages its mutual funds with similar staff and strategies as its hedge funds. Mr. Redleaf is a deep contrarian of efficient market theory. He works to exploit market irrationalities and inefficiencies, like “mispriced securities that have a relationship to each other.” He received considerable attention for successfully betting against mortgages in 2008.

The Tactical Opportunities Fund seeks to provide “a combination of capital appreciation and income that is consistent with prudent investment management.” It employs the full spectrum of security classes, including stocks, bonds, and options. Its managers reject the notion that investors are rewarded for accepting more risk. “We believe risk does not create wealth, it destroys wealth.” Instead, they identify salient risks and adjust their portfolio “to perform at least tolerably well in multiple likely scenarios.”

The fund has attracted $205M AUM since its inception in December 2011 ­– on the day of the conference call, Morningstar showed AUM at $171M, an increase of $34M in less than three weeks. All three managers are also partners and owners in the firm, which manages about $2.4B in various types of investment accounts, but the SAI filed February 2013 showed none invested in the fund proper. Since this filing, Whitebox reports Mr. Redleaf has become a “significant owner” and that most of its partners and employees are invested in its funds through the company’s 401k program.

Morningstar recently re-categorized WBMIX from aggressive allocation to long-short after Whitebox management successfully appealed to the editorial board. While long-short is currently more appropriate, the fund’s versatility makes it an awkward fit in any category. It maintains two disparate benchmarks, S&P 500 Price Index SPX (excludes dividends) and Barclay’s Aggregate U.S. Bond Total Return Index. Going forward, Whitebox reports it will add S&P 500 Total Return Index as a benchmark.

Ideally, Mr. Redleaf would prefer the fund’s performance be measured against the nation’s best endowment funds, like Yale’s or Havard’s. He received multiple degrees from Yale in 1978. Dr. Cross holds an MBA from University of Chicago and a Ph.D. in Statistics from Yale.

Call Highlights

Most of its portfolio themes were positive or flat for the quarter, resulting in a 1.3% gain versus 2.9% for SP500 Total Return, 2.4% SP500 Price Return, 0.7% for Vanguard’s Balanced Index , and -2.3% for US Aggregate Bonds. In short, WBMIX had a good quarter.

Short Bonds. Whitebox has been sounding warning bells for sometime about overbought fixed income markets. Consequently, it has been shorting 20+ year Treasuries and high-yield bond ETFs, while being long blue-chip equities. If 1Q was “status quo” for investors, 2Q saw more of an orderly rotation out of low yielding bonds and into quality stocks. WBMIX was positioned to take advantage.

Worst-Case Hedge. It continues to hold out-of-money option straddles, which hedge against sudden moves up or down, in addition to its bond shorts. Both plays help in the less probable scenario that “credit markets crack” due to total loss of confidence in bonds, rapid rate increase and mass exodus, taking equities down with them.

Bullish Industrials. Dr. Cross explained that in 2Q they remained bullish on industrials and automakers. After healthy appreciation, they pared back on airlines and large financials, focusing instead on smaller banks, life insurers, and specialty financials. They’ve also been shorting lower yielding apartment REITS, but are beginning to see dislocations in higher yielding REITs and CEFs.

Gold Miner Value. Their one misstep was gold miners, at just under 5% of portfolio; it detracted 150 basis points from 2Q returns. Long a proxy for gold, miners have been displaced by gold ETFs and will no longer be able to mask poor business performance with commodity pricing. Mr. Redleaf believes increased scrutiny on these miners will lead to improved operations and a closure in the spread, reaping significant upside. He cited that six CEOs have retired or been replaced recently. This play is signature Whitebox. The portfolio managers do not see similar inefficiencies in base metal miners.

Large vs Small. Like its miss with gold miners, its large cap versus small cap play has yet to pan-out. It believes small caps are systematically overpriced, so they have been long on large caps while short on small caps. Again, “value arbitrage” Whitebox. The market agreed last quarter, but this theme has worked against the fund since 2Q12.

Heading into 3Q, Whitebox believes equities are becoming overbought, if temporarily, given their extended ascent since 2009. Consequently, WBMIX beta was cut to 0.35 from 0.70. This move appears more tactical than strategic, as they remain bullish on industrials longer term. Mr. Redleaf explains that this is a “game with no called strikes…you never have to swing.” Better instead to wait for your pitch, like winners of baseball’s Home Run Derby invariably do.

Whitebox has been considering an increase to European exposure, if it can find special situations, but during the call Mr. Redleaf stated that “emerging markets is a bit out of our comfort zone.”

Performance To-Date

The table below summaries WBMIX’s return/risk metrics over its 20-month lifetime. The comparative funds were suggested by MFO reader and prolific board contributor “Scott.” (He also brought WBMIX to community attention with his post back in August 2012, entitled “Somewhat Interesting Tiny Fund.”) Most if not all of the funds listed here, at some point and level (except VBINX), tout the ability to deliver balanced-like returns with less risk than the 60/40 fixed balanced portfolio.

While Whitebox has delivered superior returns (besting VBINX, Mr. Aronstein’s Marketfield and Mr. Romick’s Crescent, while trouncing Mr. Arnott’s All Asset and AQR’s Risk Parity), it’s generally done so with higher volatility. But the S&P 500 has had few drawdowns and low downside over this period, so it’s difficult to conclude if the fund is managing risk more effectively. That said, it has certainly played bonds correctly.

Other Considerations

When asked about the fund’s quickly increasing AUM, Dr. Cross stated that their portfolio contains large sector plays, so liquidity is not an issue. He believes that the fund’s capacity is “immense.”

Whitebox provides timely and thoughtful quarterly commentaries, both macro and security specific, both qualitative and quantitative. These commentaries reflect well on the firm, whose very name was selected to highlight a “culture of transparency and integrity.” Whitebox also sponsors an annual award for best financial research. The $25K prize this year went to authors of the paper “Time Series Momentum,” published in the Journal of Financial Economics.

Whitebox Mutual Funds offers Tactical Opportunities in three share classes. (This unfortunate practice is embraced by some houses, like American Funds and PIMCO, but not others, like Dodge & Cox and FPA.) Investor shares carry an indefensible front-load for purchases below $1M. Both Investor and Advisor shares carry a 12b-1 fee. Some brokerages, like Fidelity and Schwab, offer Advisor shares with No Transaction Fee. (As is common in the fund industry, but not well publicized, Whitebox pays these brokerages to do so – an expensive borne by the Advisor and not fund shareholders.) Its Institutional shares WBMIX are competitive currently at 1.35 ER, if not inexpensive, and are available at some brokerages for accounts with $100,000 minimum.

During the call, Mr. Redleaf stated that its mutual funds are cheaper than its hedge funds, but the latter “can hold illiquid and obscure securities, so it kind of balances out.” Perhaps so, but as Whitebox Mutual Funds continues to grow through thoughtful risk and portfolio management, it should adopt a simpler and less expensive fee structure: single share class, no loads or 12b-1 fees, reasonable minimums, and lowest ER possible. That would make this already promising fund impossible to ignore.

Bottom Line

At the end of the day, continued success with the fund will depend on whether investors believe its portfolio managers “have behaved reasonably in preparing for the good and bad possibilities in the current environment.” The fund proper is still young and yet to be truly tested, but it has the potential to be one of an elite group of funds that moderate investors could consider holding singularly – on the short list, if you will, for those who simply want to hold one all-weather fund.

A transcript of the 2Q call should be posted shortly at Whitebox Tactical Opportunities Fund.

27Sept2013/Charles

Conference Call Upcoming: Zachary Wydra, Beck, Mack & Oliver Partners (BMPEX), October 16, 7:00 – 8:00 Eastern

On October 16, Observer readers will have the opportunity to hear from, and speak to Zachary Wydra, manager of Beck, Mack & Oliver Partners (BMPEX).  After review of a lot of written materials on the fund and its investment discipline, we were impressed and intrigued.  After a long conversation with Zac, we were delighted.  Not to put pressure on the poor guy, but he came across as smart, insightful, reflective, animated and funny, often in a self-deprecating way.  We were more delighted when he agreed to spend an hour talking with our readers and other folks interested in the fund.

Mr. Wydra will celebrate having survived both the sojourn to Nebraska and participation in The Last Blast Triathlon by opening with a discussion of the  structure, portfolio management approach and stock selection criteria that distinguish BMPEX from the run-of-the-mill large cap fund, and then we’ll settle in to questions (yours and mine).

Our conference call will be Wednesday, October 16, from 7:00 – 8:00 Eastern.  It’s free.  It’s a phone call.

How can you join in?

If you’d like to join in, just click on register and you’ll be taken to the Chorus Call site.  In exchange for your name and email, you’ll receive a toll-free number, a PIN and instructions on joining the call.  If you register, I’ll send you a reminder email on the morning of the call.

Remember: registering for one call does not automatically register you for another.  You need to click each separately.  Likewise, registering for the conference call mailing list doesn’t register you for a call; it just lets you know when an opportunity comes up. 

WOULD AN ADDITIONAL HEADS UP HELP?

Nearly two hundred readers have signed up for a conference call mailing list.  About a week ahead of each call, I write to everyone on the list to remind them of what might make the call special and how to register.  If you’d like to be added to the conference call list, just drop me a line.

The Conference Call Queue

We have two other calls on tap.  On Monday, November 18, from 7:00 – 8:00 Eastern, you’ll have a chance to meet John Park and Greg Jackson, co-managers of Oakseed Opportunity (SEEDX and SEDEX).  John and Greg have really first-rate experience as mutual fund managers and in private equity, as well.  Oakseed is a focused equity fund that invests in high quality businesses whose managers interests are aligned with their shareholders.  As we note in the Updates section below, they’re beginning to draw both high-quality investors and a greater range of media attention.  If you’d like to get ahead of the curve, you can register for the call with John and Greg though I will highlight their call in next month’s issue.

In early December we’ll give you a chance to speak with the inimitable duo of Sherman and Schaja on the genesis and early performance of RiverPark Strategic Income, the focus of this month’s Launch Alert.

Launch Alert: RiverPark Strategic Income (RSIVX, RSIIX)

There are two things particularly worth knowing about RiverPark Short-Term High Yield (RPHYX): (1) it’s splendid and (2) it’s closed.  Tragically mischaracterized as a high-yield bond fund by Morningstar, it’s actually a cash management fund that has posted 3-4% annual returns and negligible volatility, which eventually drew almost a billion to the fund and triggered its soft close in June.  Two weeks later, RiverPark placed its sibling in registration. That fund went live on September 30, 2013.

Strategic Income will be managed by David Sherman of Cohanzick Management, LLC.  David spent ten years at Leucadia National Corporation where he was actively involved high yield and distressed securities and rose to the rank of vice president.  He founded Cohanzick in 1996 and Leucadia became his first client.  Cohanzick is now a $1.3 billion dollar investment adviser to high net worth individuals and corporations.   

Ed Studzinski and I had a chance to talk with Mr. Sherman and Morty Schaja, RiverPark’s president, for an hour on September 18^th.  We wanted to pursue three topics: the relation of the new fund to the older one, his portfolio strategy, and how much risk he was willing to court. 

RPHYX represented the strategies that Cohanzick uses for dealing with in-house cash.  It targets returns of 3-4% with negligible volatility.  RSIVX represents the next step out on the risk-return continuum.  David believes that this strategy might be reasonably expected to double the returns of RPHYX.  While volatility will be higher, David is absolutely adamant about risk-management.  He intends this to be a “sleep well at night” fund in which his mother will be invested.  He refuses to be driven by the temptation to shoot for “the best” total returns; he would far rather sacrifice returns to protect against loss of principal.  Morty Schaja affirms the commitment to “a very conservative credit posture.”

The strategy snapshot is this.  He will use the same security selection discipline here that he uses at RPHYX, but will apply that discipline to a wider opportunity set.  Broadly speaking, the fund’s investments fall into a half dozen categories:

1. RPHYX overlap holdings – some of the longer-dated securities (1-3 year maturities) in the RPHYX portfolio will appear here and might make up 20-40% of the portfolio.
2. Buy and hold securities – money good bonds that he’s prepared to hold to maturity. 
3. Priority-based debt – which he describes as “above the fray securities of [firms with] dented credit.”  These are firms that “have issue” but are unlikely to file for bankruptcy any time soon.  David will buy higher-order debt “if it’s cheap enough,” confident that even in bankruptcy or reorganization the margin of safety provided by buying debt at the right price at the peak of the creditor priority pyramid should be money good.
4. Off-the-beaten-path debt – issues with limited markets and limited liquidity, possibly small issues of high quality credits or the debt of firms that has solid business prospects but only modestly-talented management teams.  As raters like S&P contract their coverage universe, it’s likely that more folks are off the major firm’s radar.
5. Interest rate resets – uhhh … my ears started ringing during this part of the interview; I had one of those “Charlie Brown’s teacher” moments.  I’m confident that the “cushion bonds” of the RPHYX portfolio, where the coupon rate is greater than the yield-to maturity, would fall into this category.  Beyond that, you’re going to need to call and see if you’re better at following the explanation than I was.
6. And other stuff – always my favorite category.  He’s found some interesting asset-backed securities, fixed income issues with equity-like characteristics and distressed securities, which end up in the “miscellaneous” basket.

Mr. Sherman reiterates that he’s not looking for the highest possible return here; he wants a reasonable, safe return.  As such, he anticipates underperforming in silly markets and outperforming in normal ones.

The minimum initial investment in the retail class is $1,000.  The expense ratio is capped at 1.25%.  The fund is available today at TD and Fidelity and is expected to be available within the next few days at Schwab. More information is available at RiverPark’s website.  As I noted in September’s review of my portfolio, this is one of two funds that I’m almost certain to purchase before year’s end.

Funds in Registration

New mutual funds must be registered with the Securities and Exchange Commission before they can be offered for sale to the public. The SEC has a 75-day window during which to call for revisions of a prospectus; fund companies sometimes use that same time to tweak a fund’s fee structure or operating details.

Every day David Welsch, firefighter/EMT/fund researcher, scours new SEC filings to see what opportunities might be about to present themselves.  This month he tracked down 10 no-load funds in registration, one of the lowest levels in a year (compare it to 26 last month), but it does contain three offerings from first-rate, veteran teams:

361 Multi-Strategy Fund, 361’s fourth alternatives fund, guided by Brian Cunningham (a hedge fund guy), Thomas Florence (ex-Morningstar Investment Management), Blaine Rollins (ex-Janus) and Jeremy Frank.

Croft Focus, which transplants the discipline that’s guided Croft Value for 18 years into a far more concentrated global portfolio.

RSQ International Equity, which marks the re-emergence of Rudolph Riad-Younes and Richard Pell from the ashes of the Artio International crash.

In addition, two first-tier firms (Brookfield and First Eagle) have new funds managed by experienced teams.

Funds in registration this month won’t be available for sale until, typically, the end of November or early December 2013.

Manager Changes

On a related note, we also tracked down 39 fund manager changes.

Updates

The good folks at Oakseed Opportunity (SEEDX and SEDEX) are getting their share of favorable notice.  The folks at Bloomberg featured them in A Fund’s Value: Having Skin in the Game (Sept 6, 2013) while, something called Institutional Imperative made them one of Two Funds on which to Build a Portfolio (Sept 10, 2013).  At last report, they were holding more cash, more international exposure and smaller firms than their peers, none of which has been positive in this year’s market. Somehow the fact that the managers have $10 million of their own money in the fund, and that two phenomenally talented international investors (David Herro of Oakmark and David Samra of Artisan) are also invested in the fund does rather make “weak relative returns in 2013” sound rather like background noise.  Thanks to the indefatigable Denny Baran for sharing both of those links and do consider the opportunity to speak with the Oakseed managers during our November conference call.

Morningstar declared Poplar Forest Partners Fund (PFPFX and IPFPX) to be an Undiscovered Manager (uhhh … okay) and featured them in a Morningstar Advisor Magazine article, “Greener Pastures” (August/September, 2013).  Rob Wherry makes the argument that manager Dale Harvey walked away from managing a $20 billion fund because it was – for reasons he couldn’t control – a $20 billion fund.  “I had to put the money to work. I was managing $20 billion, but I didn’t have $20 billion [worth of] good ideas . . . I had 80 investments, but I only wanted 30.”  It’s a good piece.

Briefly Noted . . .

Since DundeeWealth US, LP, has opted to get out of the US mutual fund business they’re looking for a buyer for their Dynamic Energy Income Fund (DWEIX/DWEJX/DWEKX), Dynamic U.S. Growth Fund (DWUGX/DWUHX/DWUIX) and Mount Lucas U.S. Focused Equity Fund (BMLEX) funds. Failing that, they’re likely to liquidate them. My suggestion for eBaying them was not received warmly (hey, it worked for William Shatner’s $25,000 kidney stone!). If you’re looking for a handful of $50 million funds – one of which, US Growth, is remarkably good – you might give them a call.

Fidelity Global Balanced Fund (FGBLX) manager Ruben Calderon has taken a leave of absence for an unspecified reason.  His co-manager, Geoff Stein, will take sole control.   A chunk of my retirement accounts are, and have for a long time been, invested in the fund and I wish Mr. Calderon all the best with whatever has called him away.

JPMorgan Value Opportunities Fund (JVOAX) isn’t dead yet.  The Board is appalled.  The Board convened a meeting on September 10, 2013, for the purpose of merged Value Opps into JPMorgan Large Cap Value.  Unfortunately, they have not received enough ballots to meet their quorum requirement and the meeting dissolved.  They’ve resolved to try again with the following stern warning to non-voting shareholders:

However, recognizing that it is neither feasible nor legally permitted for the Value Opportunities Fund to conduct a proxy solicitation indefinitely, the Board approved in principle the liquidation of the Value Opportunities Fund if shareholders do not approve the merger when the Meeting is reconvened on October 10, 2013. If the Value Opportunities Fund is liquidated, the Fund’s liquidation may be taxable to a shareholder depending on the shareholder’s tax situation; as a result, the tax-free nature of the merger may be more beneficial to shareholders.

Translation: (a) vote (b) the way we want you to, or we’ll liquidate your fund and jack up your taxes.

Litman Gregory giveth and Litman Gregory taketh away.  The firm has eliminated the redemption fee on its Institutional Class shares, but then increased the minimum investment for Institutional shares of their Equity (MSEFX) and International (MSILX) funds from $10,000 to $100,000.

Vanguard 500 Index Fund ETF Shares (VOO) has announced an odd reverse share split.  As of October 24, 2013, the fund will issue one new share for every two current ones.  Good news: Vanguard expects somewhat lower transaction costs as a result, savings which they’ll pass along to investors.  Bad news: “As a result of the split, VOO shareholders could potentially hold fractional shares. These will be redeemed for cash and sent to the broker of record, which may result in the realization of modest taxable gains or deductible losses for some shareholders.”

Virtus Dynamic AlphaSector Fund (EMNAX), on the other hand, mostly taketh away.  Virtus discontinued the voluntary limit on “Other Expenses” of the fund.  The fund, categorized as a long/short fund though it currently has no reported short positions, charges a lot for modest achievement: Class A Shares, 2.56%; Class B Shares, 3.31%; Class C Shares, 3.31%; and Class I Shares, 2.31%.   Virtus may also recapture fees previously waived. 

SMALL WINS FOR INVESTORS

The Board for Altegris Equity Long Short Fund (ELSAX) voted to reduce Altegris’s management fee from 2.75% to 2.25% of assets.   This qualifies as a small win since that’s still about 50% higher than reasonable.  Aston River Road Long/Short (ARLSX) investors, for example, pays a management fee of 1.20% for considerably stronger performance.  Wasatch Long/Short (FMLSX) investors pay 1.10%.

Altegris Futures Evolution Strategy Fund  (EVOAX) has capped its management fee at 1.50%.

Calamos Convertible Fund (CCVIX) reopened to new investors on September 6^th.

CSC Small Cap Value Fund (CSCSX) has been renamed Cove Street Capital Small Cap Value Fund.  They’ve eliminated their sales loads and reduced the minimum initial investment to $1,000 for Investor class shares and $10,000 for Institutional class shares.   The manager here was part of the team that had fair success at the former CNI Charter RCB Small Cap Value Fund.

CLOSINGS (and related inconveniences)

ASTON/Fairpointe Mid Cap Fund (ABMIX) is set to close on October 18, 2013.  About $5 billion in assets.  Consistently solid performance.  I’m still not a fan of announcing a closing four weeks ahead of the actual event, as happened here.

BMO Small-Cap Growth Fund (MRSCX) is closing effective November 1, 2013.  The closure represents an interesting reminder of the role of invisible assets in capacity limits.  The fund has $795 million in it, but the advisor reports that assets in the small-cap growth strategy as a whole are approaching approximately $1.5 billion.

Invesco European Small Company Fund (ESMAX) closes to new investors on October 4, 2013.  Invesco’s to be complimented on their decision to close the fund while it was still small, under a half billion in assets.

Touchstone Sands Capital Select Growth Fund (TSNAX) instituted a soft-close on April 8, 2013.  That barely slowed the inrush of money and the fund is now up to $5.5 billion in assets.  In response, the advisor will institute additional restrictions on October 21, 2013. In particular, existing RIA’s already using the fund can continue to use the fund for both new and existing clients.  They will not be able to accept any new RIA’s after that date.

Virtus Emerging Markets Opportunities Fund (HEMZX), a four-star medalist run by Morningstar’s International Stock Fund Manager of the Year Rajiv Jain, has closed to new investors.

OLD WINE, NEW BOTTLES

FMI Focus (FMIOX) will reorganize itself into Broadview Opportunity Fund in November.  It’s an exceedingly solid small-cap fund (four stars, “silver” rated, nearly a billion in assets) that’s being sold to its managers.

Invesco Disciplined Equity Fund (AWEIX) will, pending shareholder approval on October 17, become AT Disciplined Equity Fund.

Meridian Value (MVALX) is Meridian Contrarian Fund.  Same investment objective, policies, strategies and team. 

Oppenheimer Capital Income Fund (OPPEX) has gained a little flexibility; it can now invest 40% in junk bonds rather than 25%.  The fund was crushed during the meltdown in 2007-09.  Immediately thereafter its managers were discharged and it has been pretty solid since then.

Effective October 1, 2013, Reaves Select Research Fund (RSRAX) became Reaves Utilities and Energy Infrastructure Fund, with all of the predictable fallout in its listed investment strategies and risks.

Smith Group Large Cap Core Growth Fund (BSLGX) will, pending shareholder approval, be reorganized into an identical fund of the same name in early 2014. 

Tilson Dividend Fund (TILDX) has been sold to its long-time subadviser, Centaur Capital Partners, LP, presumably as part of the unwinding of the other Tilson fund.

U.S. Global Investors Government Securities Savings Fund (UGSCX) is being converted from a money market fund to an ultra-short bond fund, right around Christmas.

OFF TO THE DUSTBIN OF HISTORY

American Century announced that it will merge American Century Vista Fund (TWVAX) into American Century Heritage (ATHAX).  Both are multibillion dollar midcap growth funds, with Heritage being far the stronger. The merger will take place Dec. 6, 2013.

EGA Emerging Global ordered the liquidation of a dozen of emerging markets sector funds, all effective October 4, 2013.  The dearly departed:

• EGShares GEMS Composite ETF (AGEM)
• EGShares Basic Materials GEMS ETF (LGEM)
• EGShares Consumer Goods GEMS ETF (GGEM)
• EGShares Consumer Services GEMS ETF (VGEM)
• EGShares Energy GEMS ETF (OGEM)
• EGShares Financials GEMS ETF (FGEM)
• EGShares Health Care GEMS ETF (HGEM)
• EGShares Industrials GEMS ETF (IGEM)
• EGShares Technology GEMS ETF (QGEM)
• EGShares Telecom GEMS ETF (TGEM)
• EGShares Utilities GEMS ETF (UGEM)
• EGShares Emerging Markets Metals & Mining ETF (EMT)

FCI Value Equity Fund (FCIEX) closed September 27, on its way to liquidation.  The Board cited “the Fund’s small size and the increasing costs associated with advising a registered investment company” but might have cited, too, the fact that it trails 97% of its peers over the past five years and tended to post two awful years for every decent one.

Natixis Hansberger International Fund (NEFDX) will liquidate on October 18, 2013, a victim of bad returns, high risk, high expenses, wretched tax efficiency … all your basic causes.

Loomis Sayles Multi-Asset Real Return Fund (MARAX) liquidates at the end of October, 2013.  The fund drew about  $25 million in assets and was in existence for fewer than three years.  “Real return” funds are designed to thrive in a relatively high or rising inflation rate environment.  Pretty much any fund bearing the name has been thwarted by the consistent economic weakness that’s been suppressing prices.

I really like Manning & Napier.  They are killing off three funds that were never a good match for the firm’s core strengths.  Manning & Napier Small Cap (MNSMX), Life Sciences (EXLSX), and Technology (EXTCX) will all cease to exist on or about January 24, 2014.  My affection for them comes to mind because these funds, unlike the vast majority that end up in the trash heap, were all economically viable.  Between them they have over $600 million in assets and were producing $7 million/year in revenue for M&N.  The firm’s great strength is risk-conscious, low-cost, team-managed diversified funds.  Other than a real estate fund, they offer almost no niche products really.  Heck, the tech fund even had a great 10-year record and was no worse than mediocre in shorter time periods.  But, it seems, they didn’t make sense given M&N’s focus. 

Metzler/Payden European Emerging Markets Fund (MPYMX) closed on September 30, 2013.  It actually outperformed the average European equity fund over the past decade but suffered two cataclysm losses – 74% from June 2008 to March 2009 and 33% in 2011 – that surely sealed its fate.  We reviewed the fund favorably as a fascinating Eurozone play about seven years ago. 

Nuveen International (FAIAX) is slated to merge into Nuveen International Select (ISACX), which is a case of a poor fund with few assets joining an almost-as-poor fund with more assets (and, not coincidentally, the same managers). 

PIA Moderate Duration Bond Fund (PIATX) “will be liquidating its assets on October 31, 2013.  You are welcome, however, to redeem your shares before that date.”  As $30 million in assets, it appears that most investors didn’t require the board’s urging before getting out.

U.S. Global Investors Tax Free Fund (USUTX) will merge with a far better fund, Near-Term Tax Free (NEARX) on or about December 13, 2013.

U.S. Global Investors Treasury Securities Cash (USTXX) vanishes on December 27, 2013.

Victoria 1522 Fund (VMDAX) has closed and will liquidate on October 10, 2013.  Nice people, high fees, weak performance, no assets. 

Westcore Small-Cap Opportunity Fund (WTSCX) merges into the Westcore Small-Cap Value Dividend Fund (WTSVX) on or about November 14, 2013.  It’s hard to make a case for the surviving fund (it pays almost no dividend and trails 90% of its peers) except to say it’s better than WTSCX.  Vanguard has an undistinguished SCV index fund that would be a better choice than either.

In Closing . . .

At the beginning of October, we’ll be attending Morningstar’s ETF Invest Conference in Chicago, our first tentative inquiry, made in hopes of understanding better the prospects of actively-managed ETFs.  I don’t tweet (I will never tweet) but I will try to share daily updates and insights on our discussion board.  We’ll offer highlights of the conference presentations in our November issue.

Thanks to all of the folks who bookmarked or clicked on our Amazon link.  There was a gratifyingly sustained uptick in credit from Amazon, on the order of a 7-8% rise from our 2013 average.  Thanks especially to those who’ve supported the Observer directly (Hi, Joe!  It’s a tough balance each month: we try to be enjoyable without being fluffy, informative without being plodding.  Glad you think we make it.) or via our PayPal link (Thanks, Ken!  Thanks, Michelle.  Sorry I didn’t extend thanks sooner.  And thanks, especially, to Deb.  You make a difference).  It does make a difference.

We’ll see you just after Halloween.  If you have little kids who enjoy playing on line, one of Chip’s staff made a little free website that lets kids decorate jack-o-lanterns.  It’s been very popular with the seven-and-under set. 

Take care!

David

Dear friends,

My colleagues in the English department are forever yammering on about this Shakespeare guy.I’m skeptical. First, he didn’t even know how to spell his own name (“Wm Shakspē”? Really?). Second, he clearly didn’t understand seasonality of the markets. If you listen to Gloucester’s famous declamation in Richard III, you’ll see what I mean:

Now is the winter of our discontent
Made glorious summer by this sun of York;
And all the clouds that lour’d upon our house
In the deep bosom of the ocean buried.
Now are our brows bound with victorious wreaths;
Our bruised arms hung up for monuments;
Our stern alarums changed to merry meetings,
Our dreadful marches to delightful measures.

It’s pretty danged clear that we haven’t had anything “made glorious summer by the sun of [New] York.” By Morningstar’s report, every single category of bond and hybrid fund has lost money over the course of the allegedly “glorious summer.” Seven of the nine domestic equity boxes have flopped around, neither noticeably rising nor falling.

And now, the glorious summer passed, we enter what historically are the two worst months for the stock market. To which I can only reply with three observations (The Pirates are on the verge of their first winning season since 1992! The Steelers have no serious injuries looming over them. And Will’s fall baseball practices are upon us.) and one question:

Is it time to loathe the emerging markets? Again?

Yuh, apparently. A quick search in Google News for “emerging markets panic” turns up 3300 stories during the month of August. They look pretty much like this:

With our preeminent journalists contributing:

Many investors have responded as they usually do, by applying a short-term perspective to a long-term decision. Which is to say, they’re fleeing. Emerging market bond funds saw a $2 billion outflow in the last week of August and $24 billion since late May (Emerging Markets Fund Flows Investors Are Dumping Emerging Markets at an Accelerating Pace, Business Insider, 8/30/13). The withdrawals were indiscriminate, affecting all regions and both local currency and hard currency securities. Equity funds saw $4 billion outflows for the week, with ETFs leading the way down (Emerging markets rout has investors saying one word: sell, Marketwatch, 8/30/13).

In a peculiar counterpoint, Jason Kepler of Investment News claims – using slightly older data – that Mom and pop can’t quit emerging-market stocks. And that’s good (8/27/13). He finds “uncharacteristic resiliency” in retail investors’ behavior. I’d like to believe him. (The News allows a limited number of free article views; if you’d exceeded your limit and hit a paywall, you might try Googling the article title. Or subscribing, I guess.)

We’d like to make three points.

• Emerging markets securities are deeply undervalued
• Those securities certainly could become much more deeply undervalued.
• It’s not the time to be running away.

Emerging markets securities are deeply undervalued

Wall Street Ranter, an anonymous blogger from the financial services industry and sometime contributor to the Observer’s discussion board, shared two really striking bits of valuation data from his blog.

The first, “Valuations of Emerging Markets vs US Stocks” (7/20/13) looks at a PIMCO presentation of the Shiller PE for the emerging markets and U.S., then at how such p/e ratios have correlated to future returns. Shiller adjusts the market’s price/earnings ratio to eliminate the effect of atypical profit margins, since those margins relentlessly regress to the mean over time. There’s a fair amount of research that suggests that the Shiller PE has fair predictive validity; that is, abnormally low Shiller PEs are followed by abnormally high market returns and vice versa.

Here, with Ranter’s kind permission, is one of the graphics from that piece:

At June 30, 2013 valuations, this suggests that US equities were priced for 4% nominal returns (2-3% real), on average, over the next five years while e.m. equities were priced to return 19% nominal (17% or so real) over the same period. GMO, at month’s end, reached about the same figure for high quality US equities (3.1% real) but a much lower estimate (6.8%) for emerging equities. By GMO’s calculation, emerging equities were priced to return more than twice as much as any other publicly traded asset class.

Based on recent conversations with the folks at GMO, Ranter concludes that GMO suspects that changes in the structure of the Chinese economy might be leading them to overstate likely emerging equity returns. Even accounting for those changes, they remain the world’s most attractive asset class:

While emerging markets are the highest on their 7 year forecast (approx. 7%/year) they are treating it more like 4%/year in their allocations . . . because they believe they need to account for a longer-term shift in the pace of China’s growth. They believe the last 10 years or so have skewed the mean too far upwards. While this reduces slightly their allocation, it still leaves Emerging Markets has one of their highest forecasts (but very close to International Value … which includes a lot of developed European companies).

Ranter offered a second, equally striking graphic in “Emerging Markets Price-to-Book Ratio and Forward Returns (8/9/13).”

At these levels, he reports, you’d typically expect returns over the following year of around 55%. That data is available in his original article. 

In a singularly unpopular observation, Andrew Foster, manager of Seafarer Overseas Growth & Income (SFGIX/SIGIX), one of the most successful and risk-alert e.m. managers (those two attributes are intimately connected), notes that the most-loathed emerging markets are also the most compelling values:

The BRICs have underperformed to such an extent that their aggregate valuation, when compared to the emerging markets as a whole, is as low as it has been in eight years. In other words, based on a variety of valuation metrics (price-to-book value, price-to-prospective-earnings, and dividend yield), the BRICs are as cheap relative to the rest of the emerging markets as they have been in a long time. I find this interesting. . . for the (rare?) subset of investors contemplating a long-term (10-year) allocation to EM, just as they were better off to avoid the BRICs over the past 5 years when they were “hot,” they are likely to be better off over the next 10 years emphasizing the BRICs now they are “not.”

Those securities certainly could become much more deeply undervalued.

The graphic above illustrates the ugly reality that sometimes (late ’98, all of ’08), but not always (’02, ’03, mid ’11), very cheap markets become sickeningly cheap markets before rebounding. Likewise, Shiller PE for the emerging markets occasionally slip from cheap (10-15PE) to “I don’t want to talk about it” (7 PE). GMO mildly notes, “economic reality and investor behavior cause securities and markets to overshoot their fair value.”

Andrew Foster gently dismisses his own predictive powers (“my record on predicting short-term outcomes is very poor”). At the same time, he finds additional cause for short-term concern:

[M]y thinking on the big picture has changed since [early July] because currencies have gotten into the act. I have been worried about this for two years now — and yet even with some sense it could get ugly, it has been hard to avoid mistakes. In my opinion, currency movements are impossible to predict over the short or long term. The only thing that is predictable is that when currency volatility picks up, is likely to overshoot (to the downside) in the short run.

It’s not the time to be running away.

There are two reasons driving that conclusion. First, you’ve already gotten the timing wrong and you’re apt to double your error. The broad emerging markets index has been bumping along without material gain for five years now. If you were actually good at actively allocating your portfolio, you’d have gotten out in the summer of 2007 instead of thinking that five consecutive years of 25%+ gains would go on forever. And you, like the guys at Cook and Bynum, would have foregone Christmas presents in 2008 in order to plow every penny you had into an irrationally, shockingly cheap market. If you didn’t pull it off then, you’re not going to pull it off this time, either.

Second, there are better options here than elsewhere. These remain, even after you adjust down their earnings and adjust them down again, about the best values you’ll find. Ranter grumbles about the thoughtless domestic dash:

Bottom line is I fail to see, on a relative basis, how the US is more tempting looking 5 years out. People can be scared all they want of catching a falling knife…but it’s a lot easier to catch something which is only 5 feet in the air than something that is 10 feet in the air.

If you’re thinking of your emerging markets stake as something that you’ll be holding or building over the next 10-15 years (as I do), it doesn’t matter whether you buy now or in three months, at this level or 7% up or down from here. It will matter if you panic, leave and then refuse to return until the emerging markets feel “safe” to you – typically around the top of the next market cycle.

It’s certainly possible that you’re systemically over-allocated to equities or emerging equities. The current turbulence might well provide an opportunity to revisit your long-term plan, and I’d salute you for it. My argument here is against actions driven by your gut.

Happily, there are a number of first rate options available for folks seeking risk-conscious exposure to the emerging markets. My own choice, discussed more fully below, is Seafarer. I’ve added to my (small investor-sized) account twice since the market began turning south in late spring. I have no idea of whether those dollars with be worth a dollar or eighty cents or a plugged nickel six months from now. My suspicion is that those dollars will be worth more a decade from now having been invested with a smart manager in the emerging markets than they would have been had I invested them in domestic equities (or hidden them away in a 0.01% bank account). But Seafarer isn’t the only “A” level choice. There are some managers sitting on large war chests (Amana Developing World AMDWX), others with the freedom to invest across asset classes (First Trust/Aberdeen Emerging Opportunities FEO) and even some with both (Lazard Emerging Markets Multi-Strategy EMMOX).

To which Morningstar says, “If you’ve got $50 million to spend, we’ve got a fund for you!”

On August 22^nd, Morningstar’s Fund Spy trumpeted “Medalist Emerging-Markets Funds Open for Business,” in which they reviewed their list of the crème de la crème emerging markets funds. It is, from the average investor’s perspective, a curious list studded with funds you couldn’t get into or wouldn’t want to pay for. Here’s the Big Picture:

Our take on those funds follows.

Our recommendations differ from theirs, given our preference for smaller funds that are actually available to the public. Our shortlist:

Amana Developing World (AMDWX): offers an exceedingly cautious take on an exceedingly risky slice of the world. Readers were openly derisive of Amana’s refusal to buy at any cost, which led the managers to sit on a 50% cash stake while the market’s roared ahead. As those markets began their swoon in 2011, Amana began moving in and disposing of more than half of its cash reserves. Still cash-rich, the fund’s relative performance is picking up and its risks remain very muted.

First Trust/Aberdeen Emerging Opportunity (FEO): one of the first emerging markets balanced funds, it’s performed very well over the long-term and is currently selling at a substantial discount to NAV: 12.6%, about 50% greater than its long-term average. That implies that investors might see something like a 5% arbitrage gain once the current panic abates, above and beyond whatever the market provides.

Grandeur Peak Emerging Markets Opportunities (GPEOX): the Grandeur Peak team has been brilliantly successful both here and at Wasatch. Their intention is to create a single master fund (Global Reach) and six subsidiary funds whose portfolios represent slices of the master profile. Emerging Markets has already cleared the SEC registration procedures but hasn’t launched. The Grandeur Peak folks say two factors are driving the delay. First, the managers want to be able to invest directly in Indian equities which requires registration with that country’s equity regulators. They couldn’t begin the registration until the fund itself was registered in the US. So they’re working through the process. Second, they wanted to be comfortable with the launch of Global Reach before adding another set of tasks. Give or take the market’s current tantrum (one manager describes it as “a taper tantrum”), that’s going well. With luck, but without any guarantees, the fund might be live sometime in Q4.

Seafarer Overseas Growth & Income (SFGIX): hugely talented manager, global portfolio, risk conscious, shareholder-centered and successful.

Wasatch Frontier Emerging Small Countries (WAFMX): one of the very few no-load, retail funds that targets the smaller, more dynamic markets rather than markets with billions of people (India and China) or plausible claim to be developed markets (e.g., Korea). The manager, Laura Geritz, has been exceedingly successful. Frontier markets effectively diversify emerging markets portfolios and the fund has drawn nearly $700 million. The key is that Wasatch is apt to close the fund sooner rather than later.

Snowball’s portfolio

Some number of folks have, reasonably enough, asked whether I invest in all of the funds I profile (uhhh … there have been over 150 of them, so no) or whether I have found The Secret Formula (presumably whatever Nicholas Cage has been looking for in all those movies). The answer is less interesting than the question.

I guess my portfolio construction is driven by three dictums:

1. Don’t pretend to be smarter than you are
2. Don’t pretend to be braver than you are
3. There’s a lot of virtue in doing nothing

Don’t pretend to be smarter than you are. If I knew which asset classes were going to soar and which were going to tank in the next six months or year or two, two things would happen. First, I’d invest in the winners. Second, I’d sell my services to ridiculously rich people and sock them with huge and abusive fees that they’d happily pay. But, I don’t.

As a result, I tend to invest in funds whose managers have a reasonable degree of autonomy about investing across asset classes, rather than ones pigeonholed into a small (style) box. That’s a problem: it makes benchmarking hard, it makes maintaining an asset allocation plan hard and it requires abnormally skilled managers. My focus has been on establishing a strategic objective (“increasing exposure to fast growing economies”) and then spending a lot of time trying to find managers whose strategies I trust, respect and understand.

Don’t pretend to be braver than you are. Stocks have a lot in common with chili peppers. In each case, you get a surprising amount of benefit from a relatively small amount of exposure. In each case, increasing exposure quickly shifts the pleasure/pain balance from pleasantly piquant to moronically painful. Some readers think of my non-retirement asset allocation is surprisingly timid: about 50% stocks, 30% bonds, 20% cash equivalents. They’re not much happier about my 70% equity stake in retirement funds. But, they’re wrong.

T. Rowe Price is one of my favorite fund companies, in part because they treat their investors with unusual respect. I found two Price studies, in 2004 and again in 2010, particularly provocative. Price constructed a series of portfolios representing different levels of stock exposure and looked at how the various portfolios would have played out over the past 50-60 years.

The original study looked at portfolios with 20/40/60/80/100% stocks. The update dropped the 20% portfolio and looked at 0/40/60/80/100%. Below I’ve reproduced partial results for three portfolios. The original 2004 and 2010 studies are available at the T. Rowe Price website.

 Over a 10 year period – reasonable for a non-retirement account – a portfolio that’s 20% stocks would grow from $10,000 to $21,000. A 100% stock portfolio would grow to $28,000. Roughly speaking, the conservative portfolio ends up at 75% of the size of the aggressive one but a pure stock portfolio increases the probability of losing money by 400% (from a 6% chance to 23%), increases the size of your average loss by 2500% (from 0.5% to 12.5%) and triples your volatility. Somewhere in there, it will face the real prospect of a 51% loss, which is the average maximum drawdown for large core stock funds that have been around 20 years or more. Sadly, there’s no way of knowing whether the 51% loss will occur in Year One (where you might have some recovery time) or Year Ten (where you’d be toast).

At 50% equities, I might capture 80% of the market’s gain with 50% of its volatility. If domestic bonds weren’t in such dismal straits, a smaller stock exposure might be justifiable. But they suck so I’m stuck.

There’s a lot of virtue in doing nothing. Our action tends to be a lot more costly than our inaction, so I change my target allocation slowly and change my fund line-up slowly. I’ve held a few retirement plan funds (e.g., Fidelity Low Priced Stock FLPSX) for decades and a number of non-retirement funds since their inception. In general, I’ll only add a fund if it represents an entirely new opportunity set or if it’s replacing an existing fund. On average, I might change out one fund every year or two.

My retirement portfolio is dominated by the providers in Augustana’s 403(b) plan: Fidelity, T. Rowe Price and TIAA-CREF. The college contribution to retirement goes exclusively into TIAA-CREF. CREF Stock accounts for 68%, TIAA Real Estate holds 22% and the rest is in a target-date fund. The Fidelity and Price allocations mirror one another: 33% domestic stock (with a value bias), 33% international stock (with an emerging markets bias) and 33% income (of the eclectic Spectrum Income/Global High Income sort).

My non-retirement portfolio is nine funds and some cash waiting to be deployed.

Is anyone likely to make it into my portfolio in 2013-14? There are two candidates:

ASTON/River Road Long-Short (ARLSX). We’ve both profiled the fund and had a conference call with its manager, both of which are available on the Observer’s ARLSX page. I’m very impressed with the quality and clarity of their risk-management disciplines; they’ve left little to chance and have created a system that forces them to act when it’s time. They’ve performed well since inception and have the prospect of outperforming the stock market with a fraction of its risk. If this enters the portfolio, it would likely be as a substitute for Northern Global Tactical since the two serve the same risk-dampening function.

RiverPark Strategic Income (not yet launched). This fund will come to market in October and represents the next step out on the risk-return spectrum from the very successful RiverPark Short Term High Yield (RPHYX). I’ve been impressed with David Sherman’s intelligence and judgment and with RPHYX’s ability to deliver on its promises. We’ll be doing fairly serious inquiries in the next couple months, but the new fund might become a success to T. Rowe Price Spectrum Income.

Sterling Capital hits Ctrl+Alt+Delete

Sterling Capital Select Equity (BBTGX) has been a determinedly bad fund for years. It’s had three managers since 1993 and it has badly trailed its benchmark under each of them. The strategy is determinedly nondescript. They’ve managed to return 3.2% annually over the past 15 years. That’s better – by about 50 bps – than Vanguard’s money market fund, but not by much. Effective September 3, 2013, they’re hitting “reformat.”

The fund’s name changes, to Sterling Capital Large Cap Value Diversified Fund.

The strategy changes, to a “behavioral financed” based system targeting large cap value stocks.

The benchmark changes, to the Russell 1000 Value

And the management team changes, to Robert W. Bridges and Robert O. Weller. Bridges joined the firm in 2008 and runs the Sterling Behavioral Finance Small Cap Diversified Alpha. Mr. Weller joined in 2012 after 15 years at JPMorgan, much of it with their behavioral finance team.

None of which required shareholders’ agreement since, presumably, all aspects of the fund are “non-fundamental.” 

One change that they should pursue but haven’t: get the manager to put his own money at risk. The departing manager was responsible for five funds since 2009 and managed to find nary a penny to invest in any of them. As a group, Sterling’s bond and asset allocation team seems utterly uninterested in risking their own money in a lineup of mostly one- and two-star funds. Here’s the snapshot of those managers’ holdings in their own funds:

You’ll notice the word “none” appears 32 times. Let’s agree that it would be silly to expect a manager to own tax-free bonds anywhere but in his home jurisdiction. That leaves 26 decisions to avoid their own funds out of a total of 27 opportunities. Most of the equity managers, by contrast, have made substantial personal investments.

Warren Buffett thinks you’ve come to the right place

Fortune recently published a short article which highlighted a letter that Warren Buffett wrote to the publisher of the Washington Post in 1975. Buffett’s an investor in the Post and was concerned about the long-term consequences of the Post’s defined-benefit pension. The letter covers two topics: the economics of pension obligations in general and the challenge of finding competent investment management. There’s also a nice swipe at the financial services industry, which most folks should keep posted somewhere near their phone or monitor to review as you reflect on the inevitable marketing pitch for the next great financial product.

I particularly enjoy the “initially.” Large money managers, whose performance records were generally parlous, “felt obliged to seek improvement or at least the approach of improvement” by hiring groups “with impressive organizational charts, lots of young talent … and a record of recent performance (pg 8).” Unfortunately, he notes, they found it.

The pressure to look like you were earning your keep led to high portfolio turnover (Buffett warns against what would now be laughably low turnover: 25% per annum). By definition, most professionals cannot be above average but “a few will succeed – in a modest way – because of skill” (pg 10). If you’re going to find them, it won’t be by picking past winners though it might be by understanding what they’re doing and why:

The key: abandon all hope ye who invest in behemoths:

For those interested in Buffett’s entire reflection, Chip’s embedded the following:

Warren Buffett Katharine Graham Letter

And now for something completely different …

We can be certain of some things about Ed Studzinski. As an investor and co-manager of Oakmark Equity & Income (OAKBX), he was consistently successful in caring for other people’s money (as much as $17 billion of it), in part because he remained keenly aware that he was also caring for their futures. $10,000 entrusted to Ed and co-manager Clyde McGregor on the day Ed joined the fund (01 March 2000) would have grown to $27,750 on the day of his departure (31 December 2011). His average competitor (I’m purposefully avoiding “peer” as a misnomer) would have managed $13,900.

As a writer and thinker, he minced no words.

The Equity and Income Fund’s managers have both worked in the investment industry for many decades, so we both should be at the point in our careers where dubious financial-industry innovations no longer surprise us. Such an assumption, however, would be incorrect.

For the past few quarters we have repeatedly read that the daily outcomes in the securities markets are the result of the “Risk On/Risk Off” trade, wherein investors (sic?) react to the most recent news by buying equities/selling bonds (Risk On) or the reverse (Risk Off). As value investors we think this is pure nonsense. 

Over the past two years, Ed and I have engaged in monthly conversations that I’ve found consistently provocative and information-rich. It’s clear that he’s been paying active attention for many years to contortions of his industry which he views with equal measures of disdain and alarm. 

I’ve prevailed upon Ed to share a manager’s fuss and fulminations with us, as whim, wife and other obligations permit. His first installment, which might also be phrased as the question “Whose skin in the game?” follows.

“Skin in the Game, Part One”

One of the more favored sayings of fund managers is that they like to invest with managements with “skin in the game.” This is another instance where the early Buffett (as opposed to the later Buffett) had it right. Managements can and should own stock in their firms. But they should purchase it with their own money. That, like the prospect of hanging as Dr. Johnson said, would truly clarify the mind. In hind sight a major error in judgment was made by investment professionals who bought into the argument that awarding stock options would beneficially serve to align the interests of managements and shareholders. Never mind that the corporate officers should have already understood their fiduciary obligations. What resulted, not in all instances but often enough in the largest capitalization companies, was a class of condottieri such as one saw in Renaissance Italy, heading armies that spent their days marching around avoiding each other, all the while being lavishly paid for the risks they were NOT facing. This sub-set of managers became a new entitled class that achieved great personal wealth, often just by being present and fitting in to the culture. Rather than thinking about truly long-term strategic implications and questions raised in running a business, they acted with a short-duration focus, and an ever-present image of the current share price in the background. Creating sustainable long-term business value rarely entered into the equation, often because they had never seen it practiced.

I understood how much of a Frankenstein’s monster had been created when executive compensation proposals ended up often being the greater part of a proxy filing. A particularly bothersome practice was “reloading” options annually. Over time, with much dilution, these programs transferred significant share ownership to management. You knew you were on to something when these compensation proposals started attracting negative vote recommendations. The calls would initially start with the investor relations person inquiring about the proxy voting process. Once it was obvious that best practices governance indicated a “no” vote, the CFO would call and ask for reconsideration.

How do you determine whether a CEO or CFO actually walks the walk of good capital allocation, which is really what this is all about? One tip-off usually comes from discussions about business strategy and what the company will look like in five to ten years. You will have covered metrics and standards for acquisitions, dividends, debt, share repurchase, and other corporate action. Following that, if the CEO or CFO says, “Why do you think our share price is so low?” I would know I was in the wrong place. My usual response was, “Why do you care if you know what the business value of the company is per share? You wouldn’t sell the company for that price. You aren’t going to liquidate the business. If you did, you know it is worth substantially more than the current share price.” Another “tell” is when you see management taking actions that don’t make sense if building long-term value is the goal. Other hints also raise questions – a CFO leaves “because he wants to enjoy more time with his family.” Selling a position contemporaneously with the departure of a CFO that you respected would usually leave your investors better off than doing nothing. And if you see the CEO or CFO selling stock – “our investment bankers have suggested that I need to diversify my portfolio, since all my wealth is tied up in the company.” That usually should raise red flags that indicate something is going on not obvious to the non-insider.

Are things improving? Options have gone out of favor as a compensation vehicle for executives, increasingly replaced by the use of restricted stock. More investors are aware of the potential conflicts that options awards can create and have a greater appreciation of governance. That said, one simple law or regulation would eliminate many of the potential abuses caused by stock options. “All stock acquired by reason of stock option awards to senior corporate officers as part of their compensation MAY NOT BE SOLD OR OTHERWISE DISPOSED OF UNTIL AFTER THE EXPIRATION OF A PERIOD OF THREE YEARS FROM THE INDIVIDUAL’S LAST DATE OF SERVICE.” Then you might actually see the investors having a better chance of getting their own yachts.

Edward A. Studzinski

If you’d like to reach Ed, click here. An artist’s rendering of Messrs. Boccadoro and Studzinski appears below.

Introducing Charles’ Balcony

Since his debut in February 2012, my colleague Charles Boccadoro has produced some exceedingly solid, data-rich analyses for us, including this month’s review of the risk/return profiles of the FundX family of funds. One of his signature contributions was “Timing Method Performance Over Ten Decades,” which was widely reproduced and debated around the web.

We’re pleased to announce that we’ve collected his essays in a single, easy-to-access location. We’ve dubbed it “Charles’ Balcony” and we even stumbled upon this striking likeness of Charles and the shadowy Ed Studzinski in situ. I’m deeply hopeful that from their airy (aerie or eery) perch, they’ll share their sharp-eyed insights with us for years to come.

Observer fund profiles

Each month the Observer provides in-depth profiles of between two and four funds. Our “Most Intriguing New Funds” are funds launched within the past couple years that most frequently feature experienced managers leading innovative newer funds. “Stars in the Shadows” are older funds that have attracted far less attention than they deserve. 

Advisory Research Strategic Income (ADVNX): you’ve got to love a 10 month old fund with a 10 year track record and a portfolio that Morningstar can only describe as 60% “other.” AR converted a successful limited partnership into the only no-load mutual fund offering investors substantial access to preferred securities.

Beck, Mack and Oliver Partners (BMPEX): we think of it as “Dodge and Cox without the $50 billion in baggage.” This is an admirably disciplined, focused equity fund with a remarkable array of safeguards against self-inflicted injuries.

FPA Paramount (FPRAX): some see Paramount as a 60-year-old fund that seeks out only the highest-quality mid-cap growth stocks. With a just-announced change of management and philosophy, it might be moving to become a first-rate global value fund (with enough assets under management to start life as one of the group’s most affordable entries).

FundX Upgrader (FUNDX): all investors struggle with the need to refine their portfolios, dumping losers and adding winners. In a follow-up to his data-rich analysis on the possibility of using a simple moving average as a portfolio signal, associate editor Charles Boccadoro investigated the flagship fund of the Upgrader fleet.

Tributary Balanced (FOBAX): it’s remarkable that a fund this consistently good – in the top tier of all balanced funds over the past five-, ten-, and fifteen-year periods and a Great Owl by my colleague Charles’ risk/return calculations – hasn’t drawn more attention. It will be more remarkable if that neglect continues despite the recent return of the long-time manager who beat pretty much everyone in sight.

Elevator Talk #8: Steven Vannelli of GaveKal Knowledge Leaders (GAVAX)

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 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.

Steven Vannelli, Manager

GaveKal Knowledge Leaders (GAVAX) believes in investing only in firms that are committed to being smart, so where did the dumb name come from? GaveKal is a portmanteau formed from the names of the firm’s founders: Charles Gave, Anatole Kaletsky and Louis-Vincent Gave. Happily it changed the fund’s original name from GaveKal Platform Company Fund (named after its European counterpart) to Knowledge Leaders. 

GaveKal, headquartered in Hong Kong, started in 2001 as a global economics and asset allocation research firm. Their other investment products (the Asian Balanced Fund – a cool idea which was rechristened Asian Absolute Return – and Greater China Fund) are available to non-U.S. investors as, originally, was Knowledge Leaders. They opened a U.S. office in 2006. In 2010 they deepened their Asia expertise by acquiring Dragonomics, a China-focused research and advisory firm.

Knowledge Leaders has generated a remarkable record in its two-plus years of U.S. operation. They look to invest in “the best among global companies that are tapping a deep reservoir of intangible capital to generate earnings growth,” where “R&D, design, brand and channel” are markers of robust intangible capital. From launch through the end of June, 2013, the fund modestly outperformed the MSCI World Index and did so with two-thirds less volatility. Currently, approximately 30% of the portfolio is in cash, down from 40% earlier in summer.

Manager Steven Vannelli researches intangible capital and corporate performance and leads the fund’s investment team. Before joining GaveKal, he spent a decade at Alexander Capital, a Denver-based investment advisor. Here’s Mr. Vannelli’s 200 words making his case:

We invest in the world’s most innovative companies. Decades of academic research show that companies that invest heavily in innovation are structurally undervalued due to lack of information on innovative activities. Our strategy capitalizes on this market inefficiency.

To find investment opportunities, we identify Knowledge Leaders, or companies with large stores of intangible assets. These companies often operate globally across an array of industries from health care to technology, from consumer to capital goods. We have developed a proprietary method to capitalize a company’s intangible investments, revealing an important, invisible layer of value inherent to intangible-rich companies. 

The Knowledge Leaders Strategy employs an active strategy that offers equity-like returns with bond-like risk. Superior risk-adjusted returns with low correlation to market indices make the GaveKal Knowledge Leaders Strategy a good vehicle for investors who seek to maximize their risk and return objectives.

The genesis of the strategy has its origin in the 2005 book, Our Brave New World, by GaveKal Research, which highlights knowledge as a scare asset.

As a validation of our intellectual foundation, in July, the US Bureau of Economic Analysis began to capitalize R&D to measure the contribution of innovation spending on growth of the US economy.

The minimum initial investment on the fund’s retail shares is $2,500. There are also institutional shares (GAVIX) with a $100,000 minimum (though they do let financial advisors aggregate accounts in order to reach that threshold). The fund’s website is clean and easily navigated. It would make a fair amount of sense for you to visit to “Fund Documents” page, which hosts the fund’s factsheet and a thoughtful presentation on intangible capital. 

Our earlier Elevator Talks were:

1. February 2013: Tom Kerr, Rocky Peak Small Cap Value (RPCSX), whose manager has a 14 year track record in small cap investing and a passion for discovering “value” in the intersection of many measures: discounted cash flows, LBO models, M&A valuations and traditional relative valuation metrics.
2. March 2013: Dale Harvey, Poplar Forest Partners (PFPFX and IPFPX), a concentrated, contrarian value stock fund that offers “a once-in-a-generation opportunity to invest with a successful American Funds manager who went out on his own.”
3. April 2013: Bayard Closser, Vertical Capital Income Fund (VCAPX), “a closed-end interval fund, VCAPX invests in whole mortgage loans and first deeds of trust. We purchase the loans from lenders at a deep discount and service them ourselves.”
4. May 2013: Jim Hillary, LS Opportunity Fund (LSOFX), a co-founder of Marsico Capital Management whose worry that “the quality of research on Wall Street continues to decline and investors are becoming increasingly concerned about short-term performance” led to his faith in “in-depth research and long-term orientation in our high conviction ideas.”
5. July 2013: Casey Frazier, Versus Capital Multi-Manager Real Estate Income Fund (VCMRX), a second closed-end interval fund whose portfolio “includes real estate private equity and debt, public equity and debt, and broad exposure across asset types and geographies. We target a mix of 70% private real estate with 30% public real estate to enhance liquidity, and our objective is to produce total returns in the 7 – 9% range net of fees.”
6. August 2013: Brian Frank, Frank Value Fund (FRNKX), a truly all-cap value fund with a simple, successful discipline: if one part of the market is overpriced, shop elsewhere.
7. August 2013: Ian Mortimer and Matthew Page of Guinness Atkinson Inflation Managed Dividend (GAINX), a global equity fund that pursues firms with “sustainable and potentially rising dividends,” which also translates to firms with robust business models and consistently high return on capital.

Upcoming conference call: A discussion of the reopening of RiverNorth Strategy Income (RNDLX)

The folks at RiverNorth will host a conference call between the fund’s two lead managers, Patrick Galley of RiverNorth and Jeffrey Gundlach of DoubleLine, to discuss their decision to reopen the fund to new investors at the end of August and what they see going forward (the phrase “fear and loathing” keeps coming up). 

The call will be: Wednesday, September 18, 3:15pm – 4:15pm CDT

To register, go to www.rivernorthfunds.com/events/

The webcast will feature a Q&A with Messrs. Galley and Gundlach.

RNDLX (RNSIX for the institutional class), which the Observer profiled shortly after launch, has been a very solid fund with a distinctive strategy. Mr. Gundlach manages part of his sleeve of the portfolio in a manner akin to DoubleLine Core Fixed Income (DLFNX) and part with a more opportunistic income strategy. Mr. Galley pursues a tactical fixed-income allocation and an utterly unique closed-end fund arbitrage strategy in his slice. The lack of attractive opportunities in the CEF universe prompted the fund’s initial closure. Emily Deter of RiverNorth reports that the opening “is primarily driven by the current market opportunity in the closed-end fund space. Fixed-income closed-end funds are trading at attractive discounts to their NAVs, which is an opportunity we have not seen in years.” Investment News reported that fixed-income CEFs moved quickly from selling at a 2% premium to selling at a 7% discount. 

That’s led Mr. Galley’s move from CEFs from occupying 17% of the portfolio a year ago to 30% today and, it seems, he believes he could pursue more opportunities if he had more cash on hand.

Given RiverNorth’s ongoing success and clear commitment to closing funds well before they become unmanageable, it’s apt to be a good use of your time.

The Observer’s own series of conference calls with managers who’ve proven to be interesting, sharp, occasionally wry and successful, will resume in October. We’ll share details in our October issue.

Funds in Registration

New mutual funds must be registered with the Securities and Exchange Commission before they can be offered for sale to the public. The SEC has a 75-day window during which to call for revisions of a prospectus; fund companies sometimes use that same time to tweak a fund’s fee structure or operating details.

Every day David Welsch, an exceedingly diligent research assistant at the Observer, scours new SEC filings to see what opportunities might be about to present themselves. David tracked down nearly 100 new funds and ETFs. Many of the proposed funds offer nothing new, distinctive or interesting. Some were downright mystifying. (Puerto Rico Shares? Colombia Capped ETF? The Target Duration 2-month ETF?) There were 26 no-load funds or actively-managed ETFs in registration with the SEC this month. 

Funds in registration this month won’t be available for sale until, typically, the end of October or early November 2013.

There are probably more interesting products in registration this month than at any time in the seven years we’ve been tracking them. Among the standouts:

Brown Advisory Strategic European Equity Fund which will be managed by Dirk Enderlein of Wellington Management. Wellington is indisputably an “A-team” shop (they’ve got about three-quarters of a trillion in assets under management). Mr. Enderlein joined them in 2010 after serving as a manager for RCM – Allianz Global Investors in Frankfurt, Germany (1999-2009). Media reports described him as “one of Europe’s most highly regarded European growth managers.”

DoubleLine Shiller Enhanced CAPE will attempt to beat an index, Shiller Barclays CAPE® US Sector TR USD Index, which was designed based on decades of research by the renowned Robert Shiller. The fund will be managed by Jeffrey Gundlach and Jeffrey Sherman.

Driehaus Micro Cap Growth Fund, a converted 15 year old hedge fund

Harbor Emerging Markets Equity Fund, which will be sub-advised by the emerging markets team at Oaktree Capital Management. Oaktree’s a first-tier institutional manager with a very limited number of advisory relationships (primarily with Vanguard and RiverNorth) in the mutual fund world. 

Meridian Small Cap Growth, which will be the star vehicle for Chad Meade and Brian Schaub, who Meridian’s new owner hired away from Janus. Morningstar’s Greg Carlson described them as “superb managers” who were “consistently successful during their nearly seven years at the helm” of Janus Triton.

Plus some innovative offerings from Northern, PIMCO and T. Rowe Price. Details and the list of all of the funds in registration are available at the Observer’s Funds in Registration page or by clicking “Funds” on the menu atop each page.

Manager Changes

On a related note, we also tracked down a record 85 fund manager changes. Investors should take particular note of Eric Ende and Stephen Geist’s exit from FPA Paramount after a 13 year run. The change is big enough that we’ve got a profile of Paramount as one of the month’s Most Intriguing New Funds.

Updates

Bretton Fund (BRTNX) is now available through Vanguard. Manager Stephen Dodson writes that after our conference call, several listeners asked about the fund’s availability and Stephen encouraged them to speak directly with Vanguard. Mirabile dictu, the Big V was receptive to the idea.

Stephen recently posted his most recent letter to his shareholders. He does a nice job of walking folks through the core of his investing discipline with some current illustrations. The short version is that he’s looking for firms with durable competitive advantages in healthy industries whose stocks are selling at a substantial discount. He writes:

There are a number of relevant and defensible companies out there that are easily identifiable; the hard part is finding the rare ones that are undervalued. The sweet spot for us continues to be relevant, defensible businesses at low prices (“cheap compounders”). I continue to spend my waking hours looking for them.

Q2 2013 presented slim pickin’s for absolute value investors (Bretton “neither initiated nor eliminated any investments during the quarter”). For all of the market’s disconcerting gyrations this summer, Morningstar calculates that valuations for its Wide Moat and Low Business Uncertainty groups (surrogates for “high quality stocks”) remains just about where they were in June: undervalued by about 4% while junkier stocks remain modestly overvalued.

Patience is hard.

Briefly Noted . . .

Calamos loses another president

James Boyne is resigning as president and chief operating officer of Calamos Investments effective Sept. 30, just eight months after being promoted to president. The firm has decided that they need neither a president nor a chief operating officer. Those responsibilities will be assumed “by other senior leaders” at the firm (see: Black, Gary, below). The preceding president, Nick P. Calamos, decided to “step back” from his responsibilities in August 2012 when, by coincidence, Calamos hired former Janus CEO Gary Black. To describe Black as controversial is a bit like described Rush Limbaugh as opinionated.

They’re not dead yet!

Back in July, the Board of Caritas All-Cap Growth (CTSAX): “our fund is tiny, expensive, bad, and pursues a flawed investment strategy (long stocks, short ETFs).” Thereupon they reached a sensible conclusion: euthanasia. Shortly after the fund had liquidated all of its securities, “the Board was presented with and reviewed possible alternatives to the liquidation of the Fund that had arisen since the meeting on July 25, 2013.”

The alternative? Hire Brenda A. Smith, founder of CV Investment Advisors, LLC, to manage the fund. A quick scan of SEC ADV filings shows that Ms. Smith is the principal in a two person firm with 10 or fewer clients and $5,000 in regulated AUM. 

(I don’t know more about the firm because they have a one page website.)

At almost the same moment, the same Board gave Ms. Smith charge of the failing Presidio Multi-Strategy Fund (PMSFX), an overpriced long/short fund that executes its strategy through ETFs. 

I wish Ms. Smith and her new investors all the luck in the world, but it’s hard to see how a Board of Trustees could, with a straight face, decide to hand over one fund and resuscitate another with huge structural impediments on the promise of handing it off to a rookie manager and declare that both moves are in the best interests of long-suffering shareholders.

Diamond Hill goes overseas, a bit

Effective September 1, 2013, Diamond Hill Research Opportunities Fund (DHROX) gains the flexibility to invest internationally (the new prospectus allows that it “may also invest in non-U.S. equity securities, including equity securities in emerging market countries”) and the SEC filing avers that they “will commence investing in foreign securities.” The fund has 15 managers; I’m guessing they got bored. As a hedge fund (2009-2011), it had a reasonably mediocre record which might have spurred the conversion to a ’40 fund. Which has also had a reasonably mediocre lesson, so points to the management for consistency!

Janus gets more bad news

Janus investors pulled $2.2 billion from the firm’s funds in July, the worst outflows in more than three years. A single investor accounted for $1.3 billion of the leakage. The star managers of Triton and Venture left in May. And now this: they’re losing business to Legg Mason.

The Board of Trustees of Met Investors Series Trust has approved a change of subadviser for the Janus Forty Portfolio from Janus Capital Management to ClearBridge Investments to be effective November 1, 2013 . . . Effective November 1, 2013, the name of the Portfolio will change to ClearBridge Aggressive Growth Portfolio II.

Matthews chucks Taiwan

Matthews Asia China (MCHFX), China Dividend (MCDFX) and Matthews and China Small Companies (MCSMX) have changed their Principal Investment Strategy to delete Taiwan. The text for China Dividend shows the template:

Under normal market conditions, the Matthews China Dividend Fund seeks to achieve its investment objective by investing at least 80% of its net assets, which include borrowings for investment purposes, in dividend-paying equity securities of companies located in China and Taiwan.

To:

Under normal market conditions, the Matthews China Dividend Fund seeks to achieve its investment objective by investing at least 80% of its nets assets, which include borrowings for investment purposes, in dividend-paying equity securities of companies located in China.

A reader in the financial services industry, Anonymous Dude, checked with Matthews about the decision. AD reports

T. Rowe tweaks

Long ago, as a college administrator, I was worried about whether the text in a proposed policy statement might one day get us in trouble. I still remember college counsel shaking his head confidently, smiling and saying “Not to worry. We’re going to fuzz it up real good.” One wonders if he works for T. Rowe Price now? Up until now, many of Price’s funds have had relatively detailed and descriptive investment objectives. No more! At least five of Price’s funds propose new language that reduces the statement of investment objectives to an indistinct mumble. T. Rowe Price Growth Stock Fund (PRGFX) goes from

The fund seeks to provide long-term capital growth and, secondarily, increasing dividend income through investments in the common stocks of well-established growth companies.

To

The fund seeks long-term capital growth through investments in stocks.

Similar blandifications are proposed for Dividend Growth, Equity Income, Growth & Income and International Growth & Income.

Wasatch redefines “small cap”

A series of Wasatch funds, Small Growth, Small Value and Emerging Markets Small Cap are upping the size of stocks in their universe from $2.5 billion or less to $3.0 billion or less. The change is effective in November.

Can you say whoa!? Or WOA?

The Board of Trustees of an admittedly obscure little institutional fund, WOA All Asset (WOAIX), has decided that the best way to solve what ails the yearling fund is to get it more aggressive.

The Board approved certain changes to the Fund’s principal investment strategies. The changes will be effective on or about September 3, 2013. . . the changes in the Fund’s strategy will alter the Fund’s risk level from balanced strategy with a moderate risk level to an aggressive risk level.

Here’s the chart of the fund’s performance since inception against conservative and moderate benchmarks. While that might show that the managers just need to fire up the risk machine, I’d also imagine that addressing the ridiculously high expenses (1.75% for an institutional balanced fund) and consistent ability to lag in both up and down months (11 of 16 and counting) might actually be a better move. 

WOA’s Trustees, by the way, are charged with overseeing 24 funds. No Trustee has a dollar invested in any of those funds.

SMALL WINS FOR INVESTORS

The Board of Trustees of the Direxion Funds and Rafferty Asset Management have decided to make it cheaper for you to own a bunch of funds that you really shouldn’t own. They’re removed the 25 bps Shareholder Servicing Fee from

• Direxion Monthly S&P 500® Bull 2X Fund
• Direxion Monthly S&P 500® Bear 2X Fund
• Direxion Monthly NASDAQ-100® Bull 2X Fund
• Direxion Monthly Small Cap Bull 2X Fund
• Direxion Monthly Small Cap Bear 2X Fund
• Direxion Monthly Emerging Markets Bull 2X Fund
• Direxion Monthly Latin America Bull 2X Fund
• Direxion Monthly China Bull 2X Fund
• Direxion Monthly Commodity Bull 2X Fund
• Direxion Monthly 7-10 Year Treasury Bull 2X Fund
• Direxion Monthly 7-10 Year Treasury Bear 2X Fund
• Dynamic HY Bond Fund and
• U.S. Government Money Market Fund.

Because Eaton Vance loves you, they’ve decided to create the opportunity for investors to buy high expense “C” class shares of Eaton Vance Bond (EVBCX). The new shares will add a 1.00% back load for sales held less than a year and a 1.70% expense ratio (compared to 0.7 and 0.95 for Institutional and A, respectively). 

The Fairholme Fund (FAIRX) reopened to new investors on August 19, 2013. The other Fairholme family funds, not so much.

The Advisor Class shares of Forward Select Income Fund (FSIMX) reopened to new investors at the end of August.

The Board of Directors of the Leuthold Global Industries Fund (LGINX) has agreed to reduce the Fund’s expense cap from 1.85% to 1.60%.

JacksonPark Capital reduced the minimum initial investment on Oakseed Opportunity Institutional shares (SEDEX) from $1 million to $10,000. Given the 18% lower fees on the institutional class (capped at 1.15% versus 1.40% for retail shares), reasonably affluent retail investors ought to seriously consider pursuing the institutional share class. That said, Oakseed’s minimum investment for the retail shares, as low as $100 for accounts set up with an AIP, are awfully reasonable.

RiverNorth DoubleLine Strategic Income (RNDLX/RNSIX) reopened to new investors at the end of August. Check the “upcoming conference calls” feature, above, for more details.

Westcore Blue Chip Dividend Fund (WTMVX ) lowered the expense ratio on its no-load retail shares from 1.15% to 0.99%, effective September 1. They also changed from paying distributions annually to paying them quarterly. It’s a perfectly agreeable, mild-mannered little fund: stable management, global diversified, reasonable expenses and very consistently muted volatility. You do give up a fair amount of upside for the opportunity to sleep a bit more quietly at night.

CLOSINGS (and related inconveniences)

American Beacon Stephens Small Cap Growth Fund (STSGX) will close to new investors, effective as of September 16, 2013. The no-class share class has returned 11.8% while its peers made 9.3% and it did so with lower volatility. The fund is closing at a still small $500 million.

Neither high fees nor mediocre performance can dim the appeal of AQR Multi-Strategy Alternative Fund (ASANX/ASAIX). The fund has drawn $1.5 billion and has advertised the opportunity for rich investors (the minimum runs between $1 million and $5 million) to rush in before the doors swing shut at the end of September. It’s almost always a bad sign that a fund feels the need to close and the need to put up a flashing neon sign six weeks ahead.

Morgan Stanley Institutional Global Franchise (MSFAX) will close to new investors on Nov. 29, 2013. The current management team came on board four years ago (June 2009) and have posted very good risk-adjusted returns since then. Investors might wonder why a large cap global fund with a small asset base needs to close. The answer is that the mutual fund represents just the tip of the iceberg; this team actually manages almost $17 billion in this strategy, so the size of the separate accounts is what’s driving the decision.

OLD WINE, NEW BOTTLES

At the end of September Ariel International Equity Fund (AINTX) becomes Ariel International Fund and will no longer be required to invest at least 80% of its assets in equities. At the same time, Ariel Global Equity Fund (AGLOX) becomes Ariel Global Fund. The advisor avers that it’s not planning on changing the funds’ investment strategies, just that it would be nice to have the option to move into other asset classes if conditions dictate.

Effective October 30, Guggenheim U.S. Long Short Momentum Fund (RYAMX) will become plain ol’ Guggenheim Long-Short Fund. In one of those “why bother” changes, the prospectus adds a new first sentence to the Strategy section (“invest, under normal circumstances, at least 80% of its assets in long and short equity or equity-like securities”) but maintains the old “momentum” language in the second and third sentences. They’ll still “respond to the dynamically changing economy by moving its investments among different industries and styles” and “allocates investments to industries and styles according to several measures of momentum. “ Over the past five years, the fund has been modestly more volatile and less profitable than its peers. As a result, they’ve attracted few assets and might have decided, as a marketing matter, that highlighting a momentum approach isn’t winning them friends.

As of October 28, the SCA Absolute Return Fund (SCARX) will become the Granite Harbor Alternative Fund and it will no longer aim to provide “positive absolute returns with less volatility than traditional equity markets.” Instead, it’s going for the wimpier “long-term capital appreciation and income with low correlation” to the markets. SCA Directional Fund (SCADX) will become Granite Harbor Tactical Fund but will no longer seek “returns similar to equities with less volatility.” Instead, it will aspire to “long term capital appreciation with moderate correlation to traditional equity markets.” 

Have you ever heard someone say, “You know, what I’m really looking for is a change for a moderate correlation to the equity markets”? No, me neither.

Thomas Rowe Price, Jr. (the man, 1898-1983) has been called “the father of growth investing.” It’s perhaps then fitting that T. Rowe Price (the company) has decided to graft the word “Growth” into the names of many of its funds effective November 1.

T. Rowe Price Institutional Global Equity Fund becomes T. Rowe Price Institutional Global Focused Growth Equity Fund. Institutional Global Large-Cap Equity Fund will change its name to the T. Rowe Price Institutional Global Growth Equity Fund. T. Rowe Price Global Large-Cap Stock Fund will change its name to the T. Rowe Price Global Growth Stock Fund.

Effective October 28, 2013, USB International Equity Fund (BNIEX) gets a new name (UBS Global Sustainable Equity Fund), new mandate (invest globally in firms that pass a series of ESG screens) and new managers (Bruno Bertocci and Shari Gilfillan). The fund’s been a bit better under the five years of Nick Irish’s leadership than its two-star rating suggests, but not by a lot.

Off to the dustbin of history

There were an exceptionally large number of funds giving up the ghost this month. We’ve tracked 26, the same as the number of new no-load funds in registration and well below the hundred or so new portfolios of all sorts being launched. I’m deeply grateful to The Shadow, one of the longest-tenured members of our discussion board, for helping me to keep ahead of the flood.

American Independence Dynamic Conservative Plus Fund (TBBIX, AABBX) will liquidate on or about September 27, 2012.

Dynamic Canadian Equity Income Fund (DWGIX) and Dynamic Gold & Precious Metals Fund (DWGOX), both series of the DundeeWealth Funds, are slated for liquidation on September 23, 2013. Dundee bumped off Dynamic Contrarian Advantage Fund (DWGVX) and announced that it was divesting itself of three other funds (JOHCM Emerging Markets Opportunities Fund JOEIX, JOHCM International Select Fund JOHIX and JOHCM Global Equity Fund JOGEX), which are being transferred to new owners.

Equinox Commodity Strategy Fund (EQCAX) closed to new investors in mid-August and will liquidate on September 27^th.

The Evolution Funds face extinction! Oh, the cruel irony of it.

Evolution Managed Bond (PEMVX) Evolution All-Cap Equity (PEVEX), Evolution Market Leaders (PEVSX) and Evolution Alternative Investment (PETRX) have closed to all new investment and were scheduled to liquidate by the end of September. Given their disappearance from Morningstar, one suspects the end came more quickly than we knew.

Frontegra HEXAM Emerging Markets Fund (FHEMX) liquidates at the end of September.

The Northern Lights Board of Trustees has concluded that “based on, among other factors, the current and projected level of assets in the Fund and the belief that it would be in the best interests of the Fund and its shareholders to discontinue the Hundredfold Select Global Fund (SFGPX).”

Perhaps the “other factors” would be the fact that Hundredfold trailed 100% of its peers over the past three- and five-year periods? The manager was unpaid and quite possibly the fund’s largest shareholder ($50-100k in a $2M fund). His Hundredfold Select Equity (SFEOX) is almost as woeful as the decedent, but Hundredfold Select Alternative (SFHYX) is in the top 1% of its peer group for the same period that the others are bottom 1%. That raises the spectre that luck, rather than skill, might be involved.

JPMorgan is cleaning house: JPMorgan Credit Opportunities Fund (JOCAX), JPMorgan Global Opportunities Fund (JGFAX) and JPMorgan Russia Fund (JRUAX) are all gone as of October 4.

John Hancock intends to merge John Hancock High Income (JHAQX) into John Hancock High Yield (JHHBX). I’m guessing at the fund tickers because the names in the SEC filing don’t quite line up with the Morningstar ones.

Legg Mason Esemplia Emerging Markets Long-Short Fund (SMKAX) will be terminated on October 1, 2013. Let’s see: hard-to-manage strategy, high risk, high expenses, high front load, no assets . . . sounds like Legg.

Leuthold Asset Allocation Fund (LAALX) is merging into Leuthold Core Investment Fund (LCORX). The Board of Directors approved a proposal for the Leuthold Asset Allocation to be acquired by the Leuthold Core, sometime in October 2013. Curious. LAALX, with a quarter billion in assets, modestly lags LCORX which has about $600 million. Both lag more mild-mannered funds such as Northern Global Tactical Asset Allocation (BBALX) and Vanguard STAR (VGSTX) over the course of LAALX’s lifetime. This might be less a story about LAALX than about the once-legendary Leuthold Core. Leuthold’s funds are all quant-driven, based on an unparalleled dataset. For years Core seemed unstoppable: between 2003 and 2008, it finished in the top 5% of its peer group four times. But for 2009 to now, it has trailed its peers every year and has bled $1 billion in assets. In merging the two, LAALX investors get a modestly less expensive fund with modestly better performance. Leuthold gets a simpler administrative structure. 

I halfway admire the willingness of Leuthold to close products that can’t distinguish themselves in the market. Clean Tech, Hedged Equity, Undervalued & Unloved, Select Equities and now Asset Allocation have been liquidated.

MassMutual Premier Capital Appreciation Fund (MCALX) will be liquidated, but not until January 24, 2014. Why? 

New Frontiers KC India Fund (NFIFX) has closed and began the process of liquidating their portfolio on August 26^th. They point to “difficult market conditions in India.” The fund’s returns were comparable to its India-focused peers, which is to say it lost about 30% in 18 months.

Nomura Partners India Fund (NPIAX), Greater China Fund (NPCAX) and International Equity Fund (NPQAX) will all be liquidated by month’s end.

Nuveen Quantitative Enhanced Core Equity (FQCAX) is slated, pending inevitable shareholder approval, to disappear into Nuveen Symphony Low Volatility Equity Fund (NOPAX, formerly Nuveen Symphony Optimized Alpha Fund)

Oracle Mutual Fund (ORGAX) has “due to the relatively small size of the fund” underwent the process of “orderly dissolution.” Due to the relatively small size? How about, “due to losing 49.5% of our investors’ money over the past 30 months, despite an ongoing bull market in our investment universe”? To his credit, the advisor’s president and portfolio manager went down with the ship: he had something between $500,000 – $1,000,000 left in the fund as of the last SAI.

Quantitative Managed Futures Strategy Fund (QMFAX) will “in the best interests of the Fund and its shareholders” redeem all outstanding shares on September 15^th.

The directors of the United Association S&P 500 Index Fund (UASPX/UAIIX) have determined that it’s in their shareholders’ best interest to liquidate. Uhhh … I don’t know why. $140 million in assets, low expenses, four-star rating …

Okay, so the Oracle Fund didn’t seem particularly oracular but what about the Steadfast Fund? Let’s see: “steadfast: firmly loyal or constant, unswerving, not subject to change.” VFM Steadfast Fund (VFMSX) launched less than one year ago and gone before its first birthday.

In Closing . . .

Interesting stuff’s afoot. We’ve spoken with the folks behind the surprising Oberweis International Opportunities Fund (OBIOX), which was much different and much more interesting that we’d anticipated. Thanks to “Investor” for poking us about a profile. In October we’ll have one. RiverPark Strategic Income is set to launch at the end of the month, which is exciting both because of the success of the other fund (the now-closed RiverPark Short Term High Yield Fund RPHYX) managed by David Sherman and Cohanzick Asset Management and because Sherman comes across as such a consistently sharp and engaging guy. With luck, I’ll lure him into an extended interview with me and a co-conspirator (the gruff but lovable Ed Studzinski, cast in the role of a gruff but lovable curmudgeon who formerly managed a really first-rate mutual fund, which he did).

MFO returns to Morningstar! Morningstar is hosting their annual ETF Invest Conference in Chicago, from October 2 – 4. While, on whole, we’d rather drop by their November conference in Milan, Italy it was a bit pricey and I couldn’t get a dinner reservation at D’O before early February 2014 so we decided to pass it up. While the ETF industry seems to be home to more loony ideas and regrettable business practices than most, it’s clear that the industry’s maturing and a number of ETF products offer low cost access to sensible strategies, some in areas where there are no tested active managers. The slow emergence of active ETFs blurs the distinction with funds and Morningstar does seem do have arranged both interesting panels (skeptical though I am, I’ll go listen to some gold-talk on your behalf) and flashy speakers (Austan Goolsbee among them). With luck, I’ll be able to arrange a couple of face-to-face meetings with Chicago-based fund management teams while I’m in town. If you’re going to be at the conference, feel free to wave. If you’d like to chat, let me know.

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The Sufi poet Attar records the fable of a powerful king who asks assembled wise men to create a ring that will make him happy when he is sad, and vice versa. After deliberation the sages hand him a simple ring with the words “This too will pass.” That’s also true of whatever happens to the market and your portfolio in September and October.

Be brave and we’ll be with you in a month!