Hand caught in the cookie jar
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A few bond and assett allocation funds got burned reaching for yield when the bottom fell out of the bond market last year. Several very respectable managers got their hand caught in the cookie jar. Here's a few that some of my clients own that have really dropped the ball....
Bond fund of America Capital Income Builder Franklin Income Oppenheimer Rochester National My guess is that these same funds will put up some of the better numbers going forward. I'm curious if anyone else is a little pissed, or if they noticed any other prominant funds that were stretching for yield.Bond Fund of America - pissed (don’t use American Funds too much though)
Cap Income Builder & Franklin Income - they have equities so not as pissed
Oppenheimer - Don’t really use it so no opinion.
My guess is that these same funds will put up some of the better numbers going forward.
There was an article in the NY Times on Sunday that talked about this, not specific to bond funds but to funds in general, if i recall correctly
I’ve used all of those funds you mentioned and BFA was one of the most used bond funds in my asset allocation strategy. The other was Pimco Total Return. Obviously I’m disappointed with how it performed last year but I’m not going to make the mistake of ditching it because of 1 bad year. Same goes for the other funds you mentioned. Tell you clients to hold tight and I bet they will see nice returns.
Don’t even get me starting on bank loan funds…
XLACX. Highland Floating Rate Advantage. It pays libor plus 2-3% unless the entire world falls apart, then it gets cut in half.
I’m disappointed with Loomis Strat Income. Thought he would have sidestepped a little better than he did.
Bond Fund of America - sort of my fault. Most traditional bond funds have a high % of govies and/or mortgage-backed bonds. Bond Fund is primarily corp's. I didn't pay enough attention to that, and thought I had a higher % of govies.. Franklin Income - Equity and High Yield - you have to be aware of what you're getting. It's basically an equity fund with a real good yield. CAIBX. Not sure WTF they did wrong. But I really lost some faith in American's "downside" protection thesis this past year. I faired much better with First Eagle Global and Blackrock Global. And to make matters worse, CAIBX had equity-like market drops last 12 months, but I have been noticing their recovery the past month has not been nearly that of most equity funds.