Got too much money to manage all by myself anymore. Stock picking and newsletter reading is taking too much time. Usually don’t do mutual funds, but I would consider an equity fund specializes in VALUE equities as opposed to growth stocks.
Would be interested in some recommendations, but not interested in Vanguard, Blackrock’s, or State Street funds.
One of my favorites is SCHD. Its a 5-star rated large cap value fund with a nice yield that invests in a lot of dividend growth stocks.
Fidelity Blue Chip Value - FBCVX
Look under index funds from Fidelity. They have large, mid, and small cap value.
Take a look at Artisan, ValueLine, and Oakmark or T Rowe Price if cost is less of a concern
Depending on your needs (such as wanting a small mutual fund provider) will depend high
Henrius,
If you “usually don’t do mutual funds”, that explains a lot of why you spend too much time newsletter reading and stock picking. Why do you do that? Why torture yourself? Large mutual funds are great places to invest. They are managed by a staff of professional stock pickers, with all sorts of research tools, computers, advisors, and insider information from the companies they invest in. A person is unlikely to ever match their results, so why bother? The expense ratio of many good funds is less than 1/2% (0.5%), so small that you will never miss the cost. This is the greatest bargain for most investors. I am surprised that Clark does not shout this from his rooftop! Wait! He does!
There are so many mutual funds and Exchange Traded Funds (ETFs) to pick from, that you can find any possible type of investment that suits your fancy. Why make life hard? Buy into a good fund, then go do what you want, enjoy your life, and leave the investing to the professionals who are paid to do it.
Thanks but I do not want to confine my value investment universe to large cap. Issuance of dividends is only one factor in selecting value stocks.
Thanks for the tip. I have a couple of Fidelity accounts and will investigate what value funds Fidelity offers.
In actual fact, only 20% of these intelligent managers with their sophisticated tools manage to beat the market. With enough time and effort, I can usually beat most, but the trouble is I don’t have the time or interest in investment research that I used to.
Another motive for individual stock selection is to avoid investing in companies that championed evil social policies. It sure is nice to vote on those proxies, instead of having a mutual fund company do it.
Clark himself has advocated owning some individual stocks as portfolio value and investing acumen increase. Buying some stocks like BLX and CAKE at good times has netted me good profits. Mutual fund managers are often not willing to take such bets.
It’s weird because you usually hear that 80% don’t beat the market but that’s probably more a matter of market timing then it is about stock selection
Are you referring to 10-Ks or other tools?
The other issue I can see with buying mutual funds is that you may get stuck with owning a stock that has went from large cap to mid cap to small cap and miss out owning a stock from small cap to mid cap to large cap - aka inability to follow a stock thru it’s stages. An example was getting stuck owning GE, GM, BAC, AIG, or C during the financial crash
My game is to buy on limit orders and obtain stocks at lower average prices. This works most of the time. Mutual fund managers cannot do this effectively.
Another thing mutual fund managers have against them is they must sell with fund redemption requests, no matter how bad a time it is to sell. Conversely, they must buy when there is money coming in, no matter how pricey stocks are at the time. Bigness often results in a certain degree of clumsiness.
Another clumsy thing about mutual funds is managrers often have to sell near the end of quarters to avoid holding stocks in their reports which have become unfashionable. Although convenient, there are downsides to mutual funds.
Part of my problem is my patience or lack of patience pursuing a value strategy and having the capital to deploy when a stock or a sector is at its 52 week low or when my thesis says it makes sense to buy a stock as not all the factors are being considered
I’ve gotten killed in biotech by missing the low after just a couple of days. It’s hard to buy something that just went up 4-5% in a day while funds were getting settled
Of course then it’s more frustrating when the gain you lost when from 5% to 20% such as if IBB goes from $118 to $136
Just have a list of “wanna buy” stocks. Look at the charts, and set limit orders for prices that would be a good deal. You go for months without an order filling, then something happens and a bunch fill at once.
Only trouble is it is getting too time consuming for me with all the portfolios I manage.
That’s helpful. Thanks Henrius.
I caution anyone that will listen about timing the market. This chart shows the impact of missing out on some of the biggest days each year:
I am not concerned about managers not beating the market, as long as they succeed in matching the market average. If you enjoy the task of collecting and remembering huge amounts of statistical data, then go for it. Some people do enjoy this challenge. A few selected individual stocks is all I want, allowing me a foot in both camps, with most assets in stock mutual funds, no fuss, nothing to remember.
I agree. The Vanguard Wellington has been a great fund to own for the past 20 years.
Most of my retirement funds are there.
Who was talking about timing the market? Don’t know anyone who is successful with that.
I am talking about nailing down good stocks on lower prices rather than higher using limit orders.
Two points:
Large funds like this are less nimble than smaller ones. What was that fund managed by Peter Lynch a long way back that grew so large it was hard to trade without affecting the market?
If you have no trouble in Vanguard, Blackrock, and State Street using your investments to push ESG goals on corporate management, go ahead and buy their funds.
If that is all you desire, just buy a total market index fund like POMIX and save yourself most management fees.
