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A message from David:
Why on earth would any reasonable person want to look at, much less invest, in new mutual funds? After all, they’re generally expensive, untested, and unnecessary. Do we really think the world needs to be alerted to another fund whose strategy is pretty much limited to declaring “we’re contrarian all-cap investors who look for ‘blood in the streets’”? Much less a manager who thinks that your financial life won’t be complete until you’re able to allocate 10% of your portfolio to doubling the inverse of the Botswanan bourse? We (I) think there are at least two good reasons for a new-fund service (three, if you count “keeping Snowball off the streets at night”). First, many investors need to know there are alternatives to the generation of beached whales that dominate many personal portfolios. For example, in the past twelve months, investors have poured buckets of money into Fidelity’s Contrafund, which has grown by about $20 billion in that period. While Contrafund's manager, Will Danoff, is a brilliant investor, it seems delusional to cast your lot as one of the last two or three billion straws to land on the camel’s back. Which is still far better than the fate of the investors in the 300+ funds that Roy regularly identifies as his “most alarming three-alarm funds” –- a list that includes some stunningly consistent losers, their multi-billion dollar asset bases notwithstanding. Second, you might benefit from the opportunity to think about what you’ve been doing. Even if you’re not dissatisfied with the investment choices you’ve made, we hope you’ll find that looking at new opportunities, and (occasionally) the new ways of thinking that they represent, will help give you a better perspective on the choices you’ve already made. We won’t write about every new fund. For now, mostly interesting no-load retail funds -- or uninteresting ones that are apt to attract a boatload of money nonetheless. We’ll try to help you keep track of three types of funds: Interesting newcomers ("Open for business"), new funds just over the horizon ("Coming attractions"), and some of the outstanding small funds, some open for quite a while, that seem to go out of their way to avoid attention ("Stars in the shadows"). Roy has graciously designated our little experiment the FundAlarm Annex (though I suspect that it may be closer to Filene’s Basement). In any case, we’ll try hard. Let us know what you think. Below, you'll find our three new-fund categories, and this month's fund commentary. |