Mutual Funds - General Discussion

» Normxxx - Ultimate Buy-and-Hold Strategy

The Ultimate Buy-and-Hold Strategy
Click here for link to full article: http://www.soundinvesting.com/

by Paul A. Merriman, Publisher and Editor

In 1992, we decided to seek a Buy-and-Hold strategy worth recommending to our clients. We found a strategy that is so good we decided to call it “The Ultimate Buy-and-Hold Strategy”. In this article I’ll explain why I think what we found is worthy of that name.

We don’t use the word “ultimate” lightly. We would apply it only to something that’s the best we know. We think the term fits here. There’s no question that this strategy has worked very well. I think almost every buy-and-hold investor can use it either to increase returns or reduce risk – or both.

The Ultimate Buy-and-Hold Strategy is suitable for do-it-yourself investors as well as those who want to hire professional money managers. It will work with small portfolios as well as large ones. It’s easy to understand and easy to apply using low-cost, tax-efficient no-load index funds.

By the way, I want to make it clear that we did not invent this strategy. It evolved from the work of many people over a long period, including some winners and nominees of the Nobel Prize in economics.

A “perfect” investment strategy would be cheap, easy to implement, would have no risk and would make you fabulously rich in about a week. Tax-free, of course. We haven’t found that combination, and we don’t expect to. But the Ultimate Buy-and-Hold Strategy comes as close as we have yet found.

The Ultimate Buy-and-Hold Strategy produces higher returns than the investments most people make. It does so at lower risk, with minimal transaction costs. It’s mechanical, so it does not depend on finding the right guru to make the right predictions about an individual company, the market or the economy. You will never again have to rely on “The 10 Funds You Should Buy Now” articles in the popular financial publications.

Even though this strategy is based on the finest academic research available, it’s simple enough that investors can understand it if they can grasp a handful of simple concepts.

THIS STRATEGY IN A NUTSHELL

If I had to sum up this strategy in one sentence, I’d do it this way:

The Ultimate Buy-and-Hold Strategy uses no-load index funds to create a sophisticated asset allocation model with worldwide diversification and the addition of value stocks and small-cap stocks to a traditional large-cap growth stock portfolio.

If you think you already know what that means and you’re tempted to skip the rest of this article, I hope you’ll think twice. The evidence I’m about to show you is compelling, and I hope you’ll let me present it.

If there is a “catch” to this strategy, it’s availability. You can’t buy it in a single mutual fund. You can put it together approximately using Vanguard’s low-cost index funds. But the “ultimate” way to implement the Ultimate Buy-and-Hold Strategy is to hire a money manager (including but certainly not limited to Merriman Capital Management) who has access to the institutional funds offered by Dimensional Fund Advisors. (More about those funds later.)

WHAT REALLY MATTERS

This strategy is based on more than 50 years of research into the question: What really makes a difference to investment results? (Some of the answers may surprise you.) The people behind this research include Merton H. Miller, a 1990 Nobel laureate; Rex A. Sinquefield, who started the very first index mutual fund; Roger G. Ibbotson, a Yale finance professor whose market charts going back to 1926 are a fixture in the offices of most money managers; Kenneth R. French, a professor of finance at the MIT Sloan School of Management; and Eugene Fama, a professor of finance at the University of Chicago.

Their expertise has been pooled in a company Rex Sinquefield started in 1981, Dimensional Fund Advisors, to give institutional investors a practical way to take advantage of their research. Today Dimensional Fund Advisors, or Dimensional, manages $50 billion of investments for major pension funds and large corporations as well as its mutual funds, available to individual investors through a select group of investment advisors.

NOT FOR EVERYBODY

Before I get into the meat of this strategy, I want to issue a few warnings. The Ultimate Buy-and-Hold Strategy is not suitable for every investing need. It has had good returns on a long-term basis, but it won’t necessarily shine in any single week, month, quarter or year.

Like most worthwhile ways to invest money, this strategy requires investors to make a commitment. If you are the kind of investor who dabbles in a strategy to check it out for a quarter or two, don’t even bother with the Ultimate Buy-and-Hold Strategy. You would simply be relying on luck for such short-term results.

Often investors ask me questions like: “How did this do last year? How is it doing so far this year?” Or they tell me they think they (or I) should be in some particular type of asset over the next few months or the next year. These people aren’t likely to succeed with the Ultimate Buy-and-Hold Strategy because their focus is on the short term, not the long term.

I want to make this crystal clear: The Ultimate Buy-and-Hold Strategy is not based on anything that happened last year or last quarter. It’s not based on anything that is expected to happen next quarter or next year. It makes absolutely no attempt to predict what investments will be “hot” in the near future. If that is what you want, you won’t find it here.

But if you want superior long-term performance from a buy-and-hold approach, the Ultimate Buy-and-Hold Strategy is the best way I know of to get it.

The most important building block of the Ultimate Buy-and-Hold Strategy is also the most startling to some investors: Your choice of asset classes has far more impact on your results than any other investment decision you can make. Let me say this another way, because it flies in the face of a lot of conventional wisdom. Your choice of the right kind of assets is far more important than exactly when you buy and sell those assets. And it’s much more important than security selection, your ability to pick the very “best” stocks, bonds or mutual funds.

Here is the heart of the matter: An academic study of 91 large pension plans over 10 years found that it was possible to account for 94 percent of a plan’s returns just by knowing how the plan allocated its assets. Basic allocations are among bonds, stocks and cash. Within each one of those big classifications are various types of bonds, stocks and cash-like investment vehicles.

The researchers found that security selection accounted for 4 percent of a pension fund’s results and that the timing of investments accounted for only 2 percent. Ironically, most investors seem to spend at least 90 percent of their time concentrating on security selection and timing, the things that together make only 6 percent of the difference.

BASIC BUILDING BLOCKS

So how does an investor choose the right asset classes? I’m going to show you exactly how to do that, illustrating it in a series of pie charts. We’ll start with Portfolio 1, a very basic portfolio. Assume that the whole pie represents all the money you have invested. This one has only two slices, one for bonds (labeled the Lehman Govt./Corp. Index) and one for equities (labeled the Standard & Poor’s 500 Index).

This portfolio’s 60/40 split between equities and bonds is the way pension funds, insurance companies and other large institutional investors traditionally allocate their assets. The equities provide growth while the bonds provide stability and income.

We don’t believe 60 percent equity and 40 percent bonds is the right balance for all investors. Many young investors don’t need bonds at all in their portfolios. On the other hand, many older investors may want 70 percent of their portfolios in bonds. But the 60/40 ratio of Portfolio 1 is the industry standard, and that’s what we will use as a benchmark in this article.

For 31 years, from January 1973 through December 2003, this portfolio produced a compound annual return of 10.5 percent. That’s not bad at all, especially considering this period included major bear markets. I believe many investors could achieve their long-term goals with that return.

Therefore, a long-term return of 10.5 percent becomes the benchmark against which we will measure the Ultimate Buy-and-Hold Strategy. We’ll unveil this strategy in more pie charts, splitting the pie into thinner and thinner slices. Each slice will represent an important asset class that I believe you should own.

Another measure we will use for comparison is standard deviation. This is a statistical way to measure risk; to understand the Ultimate Buy-and-Hold Strategy, you need to know that a lower standard deviation is better, indicating a portfolio that is more predictable and less volatile. (For a more detailed discussion of standard deviation, see Appendix 3) The standard deviation of Portfolio 1 was 12.3, so we’ll use that as the benchmark.

Hundreds of thousands of investors would be better off with Portfolio 1 than they are with their current investments, which offer too little diversification and too much risk. If they did nothing more than adopt this simple mix of assets, which is easily duplicated using no-load index funds, these investors would be more likely to achieve their long-term investment goals than they are now.

So it’s important to realize that we are starting from a relatively high standard. At this point we can say that to achieve anything worthy of being called the Ultimate Buy-and-Hold Strategy, we must find a way to improve on two figures: We want a portfolio that can be expected to produce a return higher than 10.5 percent, with a standard deviation lower than 12.3.

You can jump ahead in this article to the section where we lay out exactly how to implement this strategy. But that’s a shortcut that might be counterproductive. Whether you are a do-it-yourself investor or a client of a money manager, you are much more likely to be successful with this strategy if you have a solid understanding of why each piece of it is important.

Most of the Ultimate Buy-and-Hold Strategy is concerned with allocating the equity piece of the pie. That’s where most of our focus is in this article. But this is a good place to say a few things about bonds.

Most people include bonds in a portfolio to provide stability, which can be measured by standard deviation, and to produce current income, which of course is part of a portfolio’s total return. The more bonds you include in a portfolio, the less growth you are likely to have – and the more stability you are likely to have.

The contents of this letter/report does not necessarily reflect the opinions or viewpoint of normxxx. They are provided for informational/educational purposes only.

The content of this message is not to be construed as constituting market or investment advice. It is intended for educational purposes only. Individuals should consult with their own advisors for specific investment advice.

-- posted by Normxxx

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» Normxxx - Re: Ultimate Buy-and-Hold Strategy

In response to message posted by Normxxx:

Try this link to above article series:
http://www.fundadvice.com/FEhtml/BHStrat...

-- posted by Normxxx

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» pbradford6 - Re: Re: Ultimate Buy-and-Hold Strategy

In response to message posted by Normxxx:

Do any of you have Paul Merriman running your account and if so for how long and what has been his results? What is his typical fee arrangement?

Thanks.

-- posted by pbradford6

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» Normxxx -

-- posted by Normxxx

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» Normxxx - Re: Re: Re: Ultimate Buy-and-Hold Strategy

In response to message posted by pbradford6:

I did for a time in the mid '90s let him have a small IRA account for his timing method. But I found that the funds were pretty much whipsawed over about 3 years and much underperformed the market. If I recall, he charges the usual 2% (and 1% for large accounts). His timing method is a trend following method and prone to getting in late, getting out late, and getting whipsawed.

But I believe it has nevertheless outperformed B & H. My best advice would be to use his Ultimate B & H; but then, you don't really need to pay him anything!

However, it was a very friendly operation (in and out), and very professional.

P.S. I increased the fund by about 1/3 on my own, once I got out. Mostly by judiciously investing in the Rydex Precious Metals Fund.

-- posted by Normxxx

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» Normxxx - A System for "Beating the Market"

A System for "Beating the Market"

<img Align="Left" src="http://marketocracy.com/images/homepage/...">Masters 100 Fund (MOFQX, $11.37) has been an outstanding performer. This is a unique fund that seeks out the top 100 best stock pickers in the country, and invests in what they buy. It beat the S&P 500 in every quarter-- except the last two-- since inception at half the risk. It appears to be an above average investment vehicle.

At Marketocracy, Ken Kam's Masters 100 fund constantly tracks 100 of the most successful investors and mirrors their holdings

"If you're consistently following what the best investors are doing, I think you can beat market returns with below-market risk." So says Ken Kam, founder and CEO of Marketocracy, who has devised a system for doing just that. He tracks 70,000 investors and winnows out the top 100 at any one time for performance -- and then their portfolios are mirrored in the Masters 100 fund (MOFQX ).

That fund has been in existence since November, 2001, and Kam says as of Aug. 31, it has returned 16.88%, as opposed to the 5.09% of the Standard & Poor's 500-stock index. The fund now holds 834 stocks, but changes are made daily, and the members of the top 100 are evaluated monthly.

At the moment, the biggest sector represented is energy, and the top holdings in that group are Knightsbridge Tankers (VLCCF ), Petrokazakhstan (PKZ ), and Valero Energy (VLO), which is the stock Kam says the fund is adding to most. In financials, the fund lists at the top California Coastal Communities (CALC ), Arch Capital Group (ACGL ), and First American (FAF ), but it's also high on Bank of America (BAC ).

These were among the points Kam made in an investing chat presented Sept. 16 by BusinessWeek Online on America Online, in response to questions from the audience and from BW Online's Jack Dierdorff and Karyn McCormack. Edited excerpts follow. A complete transcript is available from BusinessWeek Online on AOL at keyword: BW Talk.

Q: Ken, first off, we'd like to know what you think of the broad market. What will get it moving -- and when?
A: Well, actually we don't think right now that there are any clear indicators for market direction, so we're playing it very conservatively. It's not a good time to be aggressive with investments, and we're paying very close attention to the fundamentals of companies -- not trying to hit them out of the park, but trying to find stocks that have a lot of fundamental value in them to buffer the downturn for us.

Also, we think the election is going to be a big event. It's pretty clear that the two candidates have very different economic policies, and different groups of companies will do well depending on who wins. It's difficult to predict that, so until that's resolved, we don't think there's going to be much market production.

Q: Ken, how does your Masters 100 fund (MOFQX ) work?
A: The Masters 100 fund is based on the research of the M100 team, which is composed of the 100 most skilled investors we have available for the parts of the market that are performing well at any one time. If you follow along with what the best investors are doing, you find that's a great strategy for doing well above average, or beating the market.

We also recognize that there isn't anyone who can perform well all the time. So this team is constantly being checked and rechecked to ensure it's composed of the best people. Our fund is constantly trying to buy the holdings of that team. That M100 team is drawn out of a universe of over 70,000 people whose investment decisions we're tracking. These are literally the best people, the best investors from all over the world, based on their track record.

Q: So what are the best investors doing (and buying) right now?
A: I think it's pretty clear that the only part of the market this year that has offered reasonable returns is the energy sector. Our best guys have made the energy sector their No. 1 area. Currently, it's 32% of the M100 portfolio. The thinking behind this is that energy is one of the big risk factors for the market, and being worried about oil-supply disruptions has caused us to focus on companies with sources of production outside the Middle East.

There's also a shortage of refining in the U.S., and we're focusing on companies that are expanding their refinery capacity and have room to grow. Companies that own a good number of existing refineries are also going to see margins improve.

Our second-largest sector is the financials. This is a continuation of a trend that started last year. The benefit here has been from low long-term interest rates, and some of these companies have been phenomenal performers. As interest rates rise, these companies will become less attractive. At 14%, it's still a large allocation, but it will decrease. The reason it has done reasonably well this year is that, even though short-term rates have increased, long-term rates have not, so the cost of refinancing has stayed the same.

In the rest of the portfolio, I would characterize it as a portfolio that's trying to look for growth at a reasonable price.... Some of the other sectors that you generally hear people talk about -- health care and tech, for example -- are sexy sectors and can make you a lot of money over time, but they're not always the right place to be, and we don't think it's the time to be in either. They're the place to be when you want to be aggressive and are confident in the overall environment.

Q: How often are the holdings in the Masters 100 fund changed? Is it based purely on performance of the traders?
A: Well, the members of the M100 are evaluated each month, but the holdings of the portfolio are adjusted a little bit every day, depending on what M100 members are doing in their individual model portfolios on our Web site (http://marketocracy.com).

Q: Has your portfolio, in fact, beaten the market? What are the numbers?
A: We've been operating the fund since Nov. 5, 2001.... As of Aug. 31, we have a return of 16.88%, as opposed to the 5.09% of the S&P 500. That's quite a big difference. One of the ways we gauge whether we can do it consistently is through something we call the success ratio. To get that, we calculate how an investor in our fund would do over one year relative to the S&P 500. If you would do better in our fund, we consider that a success.

Since we started, our success ratio is 90.4%. So over 90% of the time, if you invested in our fund, you would be able to beat the market.

Q: In the sectors you like best, energy and financials, what are your biggest holdings?
A: Well, for energy our single biggest holding is Knightsbridge Tankers (VLCCF ). The second one is Petrokazakhstan (PKZ ), and the third is Valero Energy (VLO ). And although these are the biggest stocks in our biggest sector, the one we've been adding the most to is Valero Energy.... Many of the people we don't track are decreasing their holdings here. So while the broad market is decreasing their holdings here, the best ones [the M100] are increasing their holdings.

In financials, the top three: California Coastal Communities (CALC ). Second highest is Arch Capital Group (ACGL ), then First American (FAF ). We also like Bank of America (BAC ) a lot. It's interesting, because we very nearly tripled our position in Bank of America in the last two weeks. And not only do the best investors like this stock, but almost everyone else we track do as well. We would call this a momentum stock.

What's driving the financials is this attention to dividends, interest rates are still very low, and banks are still making money refinancing people's mortgages at very low rates, despite the recent Fed hikes.

Q: Why are you avoiding technology stocks?
A: Well, we think there's a right time to be in technology...when the economy is soft, you can lose a lot of money there very quickly. We do actually like some tech stocks -- even in bad sectors there are good stocks. Cisco (CSCO ), for example, is a large holding in our portfolio that we're buying (holdings up 30%+ in the last two weeks). However, Microsoft (MSFT ) is one we've been selling. We've reduced our holdings there 26% in the last two weeks.

Q: Your opinion on General Electric (GE )? A buy at 33?
A: Actually, GE is a fairly large holding in our portfolio, but we've sold nearly a third of our holdings in the last two weeks. We still own a lot of it, so we still like it, but we do think it's a good time to lighten up on it a little.

Q: How does your fund compare with the average funds in terms of fees and risk?
A: Well, in terms of risk, it depends on how you define risk. Looking at the beta of the fund, the market's risk would be 1. Our beta is 0.72. So it's below-market risk, even though the returns have been above-market. Our fees are 1.95% a year, and I should mention that the returns calculated are after fees. I'm also told that 1.95% is about the average fee for a fund of our size.

Q: How many stocks does the M100 hold?
A: That has varied over the life of the fund. We've had as many as 1,300 -- right now we have 834 stocks, which is much more diversified than a typical mutual fund would be.

Q: What do you think of airlines? Are your members trading in and out of them lately?
A: The only large one we've added is Continental Airlines (CAL ). We think it makes sense to own a little bit of airline stock as a hedge against oil prices. If oil prices come down, airlines will be a big beneficiary.... But it's overall not an attractive industry to us.

Q: Do you own defense stocks, such as Boeing (BA ) or Northrop Grumman (NOC )?
A: Boeing and Northrop would fall in our industrial sector. We do have a weighting in industrial -- about 9% of our portfolio. We do own a little Boeing, but it's in the bottom half of our portfolio, and we haven't been buying it in the last few weeks. Northrop is a bigger position for us -- it's just outside of the top quartile of our holdings. Since June, we've doubled our position in Northrop.

Q: What's your outlook on earnings? And how much weight do you give valuations?
A: I would say both of those characteristics are much more important now than they were last year, because things are much less clear now. Being able to have clear visibility on earnings when things are uncertain gives investors great comfort, knowing that there's fundamental value to support the price of the stocks.

We think the companies we've invested in have demonstrated earnings power. Over the last five years, our average earnings growth rate is 8% in our holdings, as opposed to 7% in the S&P 500. Our portfolio companies are growing faster than the S&P 500 but trading at lower valuations.

Q: How do you find and select the traders whose portfolios you track?
A: First thing we do is look at all 70,000 people and look over the last three years to find the people who have demonstrated the most excess return -- i.e., beating their benchmarks by the most. Anybody who hasn't beaten their benchmark, we eliminate. Out of whoever's left, we look to see who's doing well, given the current environment.... And we evaluate this every month. We're constantly making adjustments.

Q: What would be your parting thoughts to help investors today?
A: First of all, I think there's no investment style, no investment sector that performs well all the time, but there's almost always some part of the market where good returns are possible, even when the market flattens out. The best way to capitalize on the market is to follow along with what the best investors are doing, and these should be defined by their track records. If you're consistently following what the best investors are doing, I think you can beat market returns with below-market risk.

The contents of this letter/report does not necessarily reflect the opinions or viewpoint of normxxx. They are provided for informational/educational purposes only.

The content of this message is not to be construed as constituting market or investment advice. It is intended for educational purposes only. Individuals should consult with their own advisors for specific investment advice.

-- posted by Normxxx

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» Normxxx - Trouble with mutual funds

Money for Nothing: The real trouble with mutual funds.

By Henry Blodget | Wednesday, Dec. 1, 2004, at 3:36 AM PT

<img Align="Right" src="http://kirk.blogs.com/photos/uncategoriz...">Read Henry Blodget's detailed disclosure statement here. To read previous installments in the Complete Guide to Wall Street Self-Defense, click here.

Used properly, mutual funds are powerful tools. They allow investors with little money and time to pool resources and benefit from the same services, information, clout, expertise, and economies of scale as large institutions. They also provide immediate diversification, without the hassle and cost of acquiring and managing a portfolio of individual securities.

Alas, these benefits come at a price: First, mutual funds often aren't used properly. Second, and more troublingly, the vast majority of funds get paid an aggregate of tens of billions of dollars a year for accomplishing nothing (or worse than nothing).

On the first issue, mutual funds should be used as deliberate elements of a broader investment plan. Unfortunately, many people imagine that fund managers play the same role in the investment process as financial advisers: They invest your money in a way that makes sense for you. Most fund managers don't do anything of the sort, of course, and not because they are shifty or incompetent. Most fund managers do what they are hired to do: trade stocks or bonds according to the tightly proscribed criteria of a given fund. But these criteria may have little or no relevance to you.

As described here, the most important part of money management is asset allocation (how much of your portfolio you place in stocks, bonds, real estate, etc.). Asset allocation is so critical that, according to some studies, it accounts for more than 90 percent of the variability of returns. Appropriate allocation depends to a large extent on your goals, time horizon, and risk tolerance, and fund managers do not make personalized allocation decisions. Instead, they simply offer a vehicle with which to implement them.

If a fund buyer understands how to make allocation decisions, then (some) mutual funds are logical tools to use in a portfolio. Alas, in this age of do-it-yourself finance, many people skip right over the tedious allocation process and head straight for the sexy stuff: fund picking. And, in so doing, they set the table for disaster.

If you put all your eggs in a super-hot technology-fund basket, for example, it doesn't matter whether your fund is the best or worst of the lot: If tech tanks, you're headed for the poorhouse. Similarly, if you bet your daughter's college money on that top-quartile U.S. equity fund, you must hope that the U.S. equity market doesn't stagnate for a decade (because if it does, it's second-mortgage time). Bottom line, the appropriate use of mutual funds requires significant portfolio management expertise, and statistics on fund turnover and money flows suggest that many buyers just don't have it.

But the bigger issue is that active money management—aka stock-picking, the strategy employed by most funds—doesn't usually work. According to study after study, the vast majority of fund managers can't generate enough extra performance from active trading to offset the costs of their efforts (costs that include salaries, bonuses, and fund company profits). This problematic finding doesn't stop fund companies from selling active-management prowess, of course—or from collecting huge active-management fees even when performance stinks. Your odds of picking a market-beating fund are somewhere between one in six and one in 30 (roulette-like); the fund industry's chance of collecting big fees, meanwhile, is 100 percent.

If alternatives didn't exist, active managers could just hide behind the rhetoric about offering small investors a simple way to pool resources and diversify, etc. Alas, alternatives do exist. Passive funds buy all the stocks that meet given criteria and leave stock-picking to folks who hope that they can defy the odds (and to their customers). Because passive management costs less than active management—fewer expensive MBAs, lower trading costs, lower research costs, lower taxes—passive funds generally do better than active funds: What they lose in performance (surprisingly little), they more than make up in costs.

Academics have been wrong before, of course, and perhaps some hidden advantage of active management has been overlooked. (Personally, I hope so; active management is a dream job, and if I hadn't been afforded time to read the studies—by getting tossed out the industry—I'd probably be doing it right now.) If the academics are wrong, however, the fund industry has been awfully quiet about it. Usually, when the value of an entire industry's primary product is questioned, the industry responds to the charge: "The methodology was flawed. … " "The studies failed to account for …" To my knowledge, the fund industry has yet to respond persuasively to this charge. Until it does, we might tentatively conclude that, intentionally or not, most fund customers are being taken to the cleaners. (One obvious remedy would be for fund companies to refund fees when active funds fail to beat their passive benchmarks; fund companies probably know a bad bet when they see one, however.)

Should you care about the near-futility of active management? If your time horizon is only a few years, no. Over this period, the cost drag won't amount to much, and you might as well play a few spins of the active-management roulette wheel (some funds do beat the market, and hope springs eternal). If you're investing for the long term, however, you should care a lot. On average, active funds underperform passive funds by about a percentage point a year (or more). Over 20 years, assuming 10 percent annual appreciation, this difference will eat nearly a fifth of your return. Over 40 years, it will gobble almost a third.

Henry Blodget, a former securities analyst, lives in New York City.

The contents of this letter/report does not necessarily reflect the opinions or viewpoint of normxxx. They are provided for informational/educational purposes only.

The content of this message is not to be construed as constituting market or investment advice. It is intended for educational purposes only. Individuals should consult with their own advisors for specific investment advice.

-- posted by Normxxx

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» Will_L - Re: Trouble with mutual funds

In response to Trouble with mutual funds posted by Normxxx:

Thanks Normx,

Nothing like a reformed drunk or a smoker that quit to thump the table about the vice. Too bad ole Henry didn't get his religion when he was pitching a short list of tech stocks that brought tons of back office bidness to his firm.

-- posted by Will_L

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» honeyoneohone - Re: Trouble with mutual funds

In response to Trouble with mutual funds posted by Normxxx:

.
VERY interesting...thanks for posting it, Norm...

-- posted by honeyoneohone

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» Normxxx - Re: Re: Trouble with mutual funds

In response to Re: Trouble with mutual funds posted by honeyoneohone:

Actually, I kind of like ol' Henry. He was hardly as venal as the ones who put him up to his shenanigans (which were not illegal-- merely unethical), and who got off (as usual) scot free! And, he was an impressionable 20 something year old, fresh out of college and suddenly a 'guru.'

-- posted by Normxxx

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