Mutual Funds

Media: TRB in Crain's NY Business

Crain’s New York Business is one of my favorite resouces around to catch up with local industry.  No one covers NYC’s advertising, media and real estate biz quite like they do. I got a few calls when last week’s print version came out for something I did on mutual fund names and what they mean…

Decoding Fund Brochures

Fund Brochure Says: Balanced.

What it Really Means: “We Will Underperform Both the Stock market AND The Bond Market. You’re Welcome.

SEC Looking at 12b-1 Fees from Mutual Funds

Are 12b-1 fees an anachronism that should be done away with?  The SEC seems to be leaning that way and I tend to agree with them on the issue: From Reuters: The top U.S. securities regulator pushed on Thursday to reform mutual fund fees that traditionally used to stimulate fund growth and help cut shareholder…

Hot Links: The New King of Wall Street

Stuff I’m Reading this Morning… Ending second worst decade for US stocks in history, The Dow has lost 9.2% over the last 10 years.  (Bespoke) No stranger to scandal himself, Larry Kudlow has some advice for Tiger Woods.  (CNBC) BlackRock passes $3.2 trillion in assets, CEO Larry Fink is the new King of Wall Street. …

Mutual Fund B Shares Face Extinction

The demonization of “B Shares” continues as even more mutual fund families drop this share class from the roster. From the Wall Street Journal: Lately, Goldman Sachs Group Inc., Allianz SE’s Pacific Investment Management Co. and American Century announced they would exit B shares. This accelerates a trend that has been gathering force since mid-decade….

A Letter From 2019

Dear Josh, It’s me: Josh…the You from 10 years from now, using the latest technology from Google to send an email to you from the future.  Don’t freak out. Anyway, I’m just writing to let you know that the next ten years will be wacky, but everything turns out ok.  For regulatory reasons, I obviously…

Blaming Retail Investors for Commodity Prices

“Commodity index rolls have little futures price impact, and inflows and outflows from commodity index investment do not cause futures prices to change” I haven’t come out strongly on either side of this issue because my job presents me with a dilemma. On the one hand, I believe that individual investors have played at least…