In December 2024, we forecast chaotic markets. Even if you were broadly supportive of Mr. Trump’s policy direction, the fact remains that he has announced, altered, suspended, or cancelled tariffs more than 28 times in 2025, including pausing some tariffs within 24 hours of announcing that the suggestion he might pause tariffs was “fake news.” His desire to reduce federal spending was manifested in the decision to turn Elon Musk loose to ransack the government in search of a promised $1 trillion in savings. Bloomberg’s assessment: “100 days of DOGE: lots of chaos, not so much efficiency.” Continue reading
Launch Alert: T Rowe Price Capital Appreciation Premium Income ETF
On March 26, 2025, T Rowe Price launched T Rowe Price Capital Appreciation Premium Income ETF (TCAL), the latest addition to its capital appreciation suite of funds and ETFs. The fund is managed by a six-person team with David Giroux in the lead. It posts an expense ratio of 0.34%.
The fund’s unique niche within the Capital Appreciation suite is its focus on “regular” income payouts. It will normally invest in equities with a covered call options strategy overlay. The equities will be Continue reading
Dynamic Alpha Macro (DYMIX)
Objective and strategy
The managers aspire to outperform the S&P 500 over meaningful time periods, while managing risk by blending non-correlated assets such as a discretionary global macro strategy with a portfolio of US equities. The portfolio has two components: a US equity component, which is executed by buying low-cost ETFs, and a macro-driven Futures Trading Strategy. Through rebalancing between these approaches, they hope to harness divergent performance drivers to create what they term “Dynamic Alpha.” The equity strategy divides its investments between growth, high-dividend, and broad market stocks. The Future Trading Strategy, executed by a trading adviser, provides exposure to over Continue reading
Braham’s Chaos-Resistant Fund Portfolio
Friend Lewis Braham, writing in Barron’s, offered “The Chaos-Resistant Fund Portfolio” on April 7, 2025. For those who have not seen Lewis’s essay, here’s a recap. He begins with a fairly stark warning that parallels ours:
Voters elected Trump specifically as a populist disrupter. He’s doing what they asked. While Democrats call Trump an autocrat for consolidating power in the executive branch, that’s largely irrelevant to Wall Street, as money managers have happily invested billions in authoritarian or quasi-authoritarian regimes … The problem now is Continue reading
Briefly Noted
Updates
After 35 years with Ariel Investments, effective May 1, 2025, John P. Miller is retiring from his role as portfolio manager for the Ariel Fund.
RiverNorth/Oaktree High Income Fund (RNHIX) won the 2025 LSEG Lipper Fund Award for Best General Bond Fund for the five-year period ended November 30, 2024. RiverNorth is a closed-end fund specialist that has collaborated with other “A” managers on several funds. The fund embodies three strategies. RiverNorth manages Continue reading
April 1, 2025
Welcome to the April Mutual Fund Observer!
My mom used to say, “March sometimes comes in like a lion.” She never added, “and then it eats you.”
March, named for the God of War, strikes me for two reasons. First, it is the month that has encompassed a whole series of catastrophes in the financial markets and Continue reading
Equity Fund Ratings
The typical response from someone when they find out that I have retired is, “Congratulations! What do you do in your spare time?” To which I reply, “I volunteer at Habitat For Humanity and Neighbor To Neighbor, go to the gym, visit family, take day trips, and write financial articles.” I would get a more excited response if I replied that I go paragliding in Costa Rica. I do occasionally get a response from people wanting to know more about investing.
This article summarizes how Continue reading
Ghost in the Machine: AI’s Verdict on AI Investing
AI has a presence in almost every aspect of modern life, from summarizing buyer responses on Amazon to working with radiologists to discover incipient tumors on scans. Few industries have been as anxiously vigilant on the subject as investment management. Increasingly, managers are relying on AI to do part of their work and, increasingly, they wonder if it could eventually replace them entirely. (Spoiler: quite possibly.)
Artificial intelligence (AI) has Continue reading
Overview of Secular Markets
A young lady where I volunteer asked me when I started saving. I started saving as a child, but had no money saved until nearly thirty years later when I started down a “stable” career path after graduating with an engineering degree and an MBA. I described to her that Fidelity’s guideline is to have one year’s income saved by age 30 and 10 times your income by the time you retire. The next question was, “How do you protect your savings from severe corrections in retirement?” I explained that inflation is the silent risk of being too conservative and described target date funds as perhaps being ideal for someone starting out in savings when the daily challenges of home and work life weigh heavy on time requirements. Continue reading
The Dry Powder Gang, 2025
“Put your trust in God, my boys, and keep your powder dry!”
Advice attributed to Oliver Cromwell, in the poem “Oliver’s Advice” (1834)
Here are three simple truths Continue reading
