Recent Fund performance
18 RepliesJump to last post
For you brokers that have books. Any Funds bite you in the past 12 months or so, that have performed below expectations. It seems Franklin Templeton was a little overweight financials. Vankampen stank, especially as Comstock was rocked. Lord Abbett was generally subpar. American Funds did well. Hartford performed well. Putnam obviously sucked. MFS seemed to hold its own.
Gartmore had a great small cap fund that was bought by Nationwide. Still has the same managers, but has really lagged. The NFJ Allianz small cap fund was recently re-opened, so I’m going to move into that.
I've been pleased with ING, Ivy, MFS, and Touchstone's Large Cap fund. As far as cores that I use, Alliance Bernstein has done better than Russell funds.12 month numbers don’t matter much. You have to look at longer term performance to judge a manager. Bob Baker on Comstock is out of Energy and commodities, he says there is too much deep value available out there and doesn’t want to touch some of the overvalued sectors (same as in 1999 when he underperformed, only to kill it in 2000).
American will do average or better every year because the majority of their funds are global asset allocation funds, you can built a portfolio mirroring CAIBX using 4 or 5 funds in any fund family and do as well or potentially better. Those advisors who chase the hot fund manager every year do the exact same as the do-it-yourselfer investor that chases the hot manager or sector every year. You must judge the long term stock-calling ability of the manager, not just the 12 month number.On vacation this week - ordinarily wouldn’t post during the day.
We’ve got loads of KSCVX in our models. Great fund… very positive for the year. Also Columbia funds faired well.
C
First Eagle Global and Blackrock Global are hanging in there. I hear everyone is buying Ivy, hopefully they keep on doing what they’ve done in the past.
Ivy is a classic example of advisors chasing returns. It did 40% in 2007 because the managers just happened to get 3 things right: overweighting gold, getting into international currency, and shorting the market in August. Advisors are using the fund thinking that it's their alpha, when it's not meant for that at all. They will be upset if they think it's there for high returns. Another interesting fund is JP Morgan's Market Neutral fund (HSKCX).First Eagle Global and Blackrock Global are hanging in there. I hear everyone is buying Ivy, hopefully they keep on doing what they’ve done in the past.
It’s not an alpha fund, it’s really a market-neutral, total-return fund. I actually like the fund for what it does in the BAD years, not the good years. Look at their long-term record. Same with Blackrock Global and First Eagle Global (I also like CAIBX for this, but a little more traditional asset classes). All are good core fund holdings. They all incorporate non-correlated assets which helps with downside. I tend to use these funds as cores for smaller portfolios where I cannot buy funds to cover all asset classes. But yes, Ivy saw the light shine on them last year. Probably not a good thing, as it showed up on too many radars.
Alpha does not mean high returns. +1 on the rest of your post.It’s not an alpha fund, it’s really a market-neutral, total-return fund. I actually like the fund for what it does in the BAD years, not the good years. Look at their long-term record. Same with Blackrock Global and First Eagle Global (I also like CAIBX for this, but a little more traditional asset classes). All are good core fund holdings. They all incorporate non-correlated assets which helps with downside. I tend to use these funds as cores for smaller portfolios where I cannot buy funds to cover all asset classes. But yes, Ivy saw the light shine on them last year. Probably not a good thing, as it showed up on too many radars.
-First Eagle global changed managers last year and reopened if I'm not mistaken, what's the new manager's resume? Used to use a ton of it back in the day.
-Alpha is an interesting measurement. With all the style drift, hybrid funds, and asset allocations going on with funds anymore, it is difficult to get a true measure of Alpha.First Eagle has an orignal manager back (Jean Marie) but he won’t be there too long. The management round robin is somewhat concerning but the performance continues to buck the trend. Gateway Fund is another interesting fund as they use options to limit the volatility.
I don’t know if anyone noticed but Ivy was up about 1% in the last two days with the Dow off 400+ points. Being able to short the market can be a beautiful thing! First Eagle and Blackrock hung in there pretty good too.
Met with the Ivy wholesaler last week. Tues before the 400+ drop he said they’ve gone to up to over 40% cash in the past 6 weeks, highest they’d ever been in the past was 25%. They basically see rough times for next 6-18 months and think they buy back in at lower prices.
I heard 30% cash but it was the shorting the S&P that got my attention. I am sure that coupled with gold is how they made money last week.
I’m still a little unsure of how a mutual fund can short stocks/indexes without opening up the shareholder to a cash call. Is the fund company buying calls to hedge their position?
Ivy is buying futures on the indexes to hedge their pretty agressive long positons, or at least that is what I am told by Ivy.