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Notes On The SEC’s Proposal On Mutual Fund Liquidity

I’m still working through the SEC’s proposal on Mutual Fund Liquidity, which I mentioned at the end of this article : Q: Are you going to write anything regarding the SEC’s proposal on open end mutual funds and ETFs regarding liquidity ? A: …my main question to myself is whether I have enough time to do it justice. There’s their white paper on liquidity and mutual funds . The proposed rule is a monster at 415 pages , and I may have better things to do. If I do anything with it, you’ll see it here first. These are just notes on the proposal so far. Here goes: 1) It’s a solution in search of a problem. After the financial crisis, regulators got one message strongly – focus on liquidity. Good point with respect to banks and other depositary financials, useless with respect to everything else. Insurers and asset managers pose no systemic risk, unless like AIG they have a derivatives counterparty. Even money market funds weren’t that big of a problem – halt withdrawals for a short amount of time, and hand out losses to withdrawing unitholders. The problem the SEC is trying to deal with seems to be that in a crisis, mutual fund holders who do not sell lose value from those who are selling because the Net Asset Value at the end of the day does not go low enough. In the short run, mutual fund managers tend to sell liquid assets when redemptions are spiking; the prices of illiquid assets don’t move as much as they should, and so the NAV is artificially high post-redemptions, until the prices of illiquid assets adjust. The proposal allows for “swing pricing.” From the SEC release : The Commission will consider proposed amendments to Investment Company Act rule 22c-1 that would permit, but not require, open-end funds (except money market funds or ETFs) to use “swing pricing.” Swing pricing is the process of reflecting in a fund’s NAV the costs associated with shareholders’ trading activity in order to pass those costs on to the purchasing and redeeming shareholders. It is designed to protect existing shareholders from dilution associated with shareholder purchases and redemptions and would be another tool to help funds manage liquidity risks. Pooled investment vehicles in certain foreign jurisdictions currently use forms of swing pricing. A fund that chooses to use swing pricing would reflect in its NAV a specified amount, the swing factor, once the level of net purchases into or net redemptions from the fund exceeds a specified percentage of the fund’s NAV known as the swing threshold. The proposed amendments include factors that funds would be required to consider to determine the swing threshold and swing factor, and to annually review the swing threshold. The fund’s board, including the independent directors, would be required to approve the fund’s swing pricing policies and procedures. But there are simpler ways to do this. In the wake of the mutual fund timing scandal, mutual funds were allowed to estimate the NAV to reflect the underlying value of assets that don’t adjust rapidly. This just needs to be followed more aggressively in a crisis, and peg the NAV lower than they otherwise would, for the sake of those that hold on. Perhaps better still would be provisions where exit loads are paid back to the funds, not the fund companies. Those are frequently used for funds where the underlying assets are less liquid. Those would more than compensate for any losses. 2) This disproportionately affects fixed income funds. One size does not fit all here. Fixed income funds already use matrix pricing extensively – the NAV is always an estimate because not only do the grand majority of fixed income instruments not trade each day, most of them do not have anyone publicly posting a bid or ask. In order to get a decent yield, you have to accept some amount of lesser liquidity. Do you want to force bond managers to start buying instruments that are nominally more liquid, but carry more risk of loss? Dividend-paying common stocks are more liquid than bonds, but it is far easier to lose money in stocks than in bonds. Liquidity risk in bonds is important, but it is not the only risk that managers face. it should not be made a high priority relative to credit or interest rate risks. 3) One could argue that every order affects market pricing – nothing is truly liquid. The calculations behind the analyses will be fraught with unprovable assumptions, and merely replace a known risk with an unknown risk. 4) Liquidity is not as constant as you might imagine. Raising your bid to buy, or lowering your ask to sell are normal activities. Particularly with illiquid stocks and bonds, volume only picks up when someone arrives wanting to buy or sell, and then the rest of the holders and potential holders react to what he wants to do. It is very easy to underestimate the amount of potential liquidity in a given asset. As with any asset, it comes at a cost. I spent a lot of time trading illiquid bonds. If I liked the creditworthiness, during times of market stress, I would buy bonds that others wanted to get rid of. What surprised me was how easy it was to source the bonds and sell the bonds if you weren’t in a hurry. Just be diffident, say you want to pick up or pose one or two million of par value in the right context, say it to the right broker who knows the bond, and you can begin the negotiation. I actually found it to be a lot of fun, and it made good money for my insurance client. 5) It affects good things about mutual funds. Really, this regulation should have to go through a benefit-cost analysis to show that it does more good than harm. Illiquid assets, properly chosen, can add significant value. As Jason Zweig of the Wall Street Journal said : The bad news is that the new regulations might well make most fund managers even more chicken-hearted than they already are – and a rare few into bigger risk-takers than ever. You want to kill off active managers, or make them even more index-like? This proposal will help do that. 6) Do you want funds to limit their size to comply with the rules, while the fund firm rolls out “clone” fund 2, 3, 4, 5, etc? You will never fully get rid of pricing issues with mutual funds, but the problems are largely self-correcting, and they are not systemic. It would be better if the SEC just withdrew these proposed rules. My guess is that the costs outweigh the benefits, and by a wide margin. Disclosure: None

This Biotech ETF Has Thus Far Delivered On Its Potential

Summary The ALPS Medical Breakthroughs ETF – a fund focused on companies in late stage clinical trials – has jumped over 20% YTD, far outperforming small cap & biotech counterparts. This ETF looks for companies with at least one drug in stage II or stage III clinical trial. The fund’s managers have demonstrated a solid albeit short track record over the ETF’s nine month history outperforming small cap, biotech and pharma indices. This ETF was hit especially hard during this week’s rout in biotech. At the beginning of the year, I profiled the ALPS Medical Breakthroughs ETF (NYSEARCA: SBIO ). It’s a fund that is trying to carve out a unique niche in the biotechnology space by investing in those companies engaged in late stage clinical trials. By their very nature, these companies and the ETF itself are a high risk, high reward proposition but in its brief nine month history the fund has been able to deliver on its potential. First off, let’s review the investment criteria of the fund… To qualify for this ETF the company must have at least one drug in either stage II or stage III clinical trial. Often times these companies are very small (currently about 70% of fund assets are devoted to either small cap or micro cap businesses) and generate little if any revenue. Their upside is captured in either the success of the drug in trial or the possibility of being acquired by a larger company. Since its inception at the beginning of the year the fund has delivered against just about any benchmark you can think of. While the fund has whipsawed around and experienced the high degree of volatility that one would expect from a small cap biotech ETF the fund has managed to deliver outsized returns in its short existence. Consider its performance against the biotech indices… SBIO Total Return Price data by YCharts Biotechs in general have performed well this year beating the iShares Nasdaq Biotechnology ETF (NASDAQ: IBB ) by a large margin and more than doubling up on the SPDR Biotech ETF (NYSEARCA: XBI ). The ALPS ETF does have a roughly 50-50 weighting of both biotechs and pharmaceutical companies but this chart demonstrates how this ETF is handily beating both the SPDR S&P Pharmaceuticals ETF (NYSEARCA: XPH ) and the iShares U.S. Pharmaceuticals ETF (NYSEARCA: IHE ) for the pharma sector as well. SBIO Total Return Price data by YCharts Measuring against the small cap ETFs (the iShares Core S&P Small-Cap ETF (NYSEARCA: IJR ) and the Vanguard Small Cap ETF (NYSEARCA: VB )) yields similar results. SBIO Total Return Price data by YCharts Perhaps a fairer comparison comes when you look at this ETF against the ETF that debuted just a couple of weeks earlier – the BioShares Biotechnology Clinical Trials ETF (NASDAQ: BBC ). SBIO Total Return Price data by YCharts I say a fairer comparison instead of a good comparison because while the two ETFs share a similar strategy of going after clinical trial companies the stocks they target are quite different. For example, the ALPS ETF typically invests in nothing with a market cap greater than $5B. In comparison, the BioShares ETF has over half of its assets in companies with market caps greater than $10B. Perhaps it’s not surprising that the BioShares ETF has performed much more in line with its counterparts. It’s not all smooth sailing though with biotechs though. Biotechs in general lost roughly 10% of their value this past week alone giving shareholders a first hand look at the risks involved in these emerging companies. Putting further pressure on biotechs was the news that Hillary Clinton is looking to rein in prescription drug costs and place a monthly cap on some premiums. This is campaign season and everything we hear from politicians at this point should probably be taken with a whole shaker of salt but potential revenue limits could be a consideration going forward. Conclusion Nine months is a very short time to be judging performance but it’s encouraging to see how well the fund managers have been able to outperform in such a challenging environment. The short track record has done wonders in attracting investment to the fund as it already has $160M in AUM – far more than the roughly $28M managed by the BioShares ETF. An overall expense ratio of just 0.50% also helps its cause. The focus on companies engaged in later stage clinical trials offers greater intrigue. By stage II or III, the drug has cleared its initial hurdles and stands a much better chance of making it to market and that helps remove a level of risk and uncertainty. However, we have many examples of what happens to a company’s stock if its drug fails in trial. While the home run potential is there with many of these companies there’s also a huge downside risk if the drug fails to get approved. So far, the initial results are encouraging as the managers have had an albeit small degree of success in picking the right stocks. I like the promise of this ETF, although I’m also waiting to see how the managers perform over a longer time frame.

Fidelity Magellan Fund: Getting Better In A Good Market And Coasting On Past Successes

FMAGX is a storied name in the world of mutual funds. But the fund hasn’t been what it once was in a long time. It’s hardly a bad fund, and it may be turning itself around, but there may also be better options for you. The Fidelity Magellan Fund (MUTF: FMAGX ) has a hallowed place in the history of mutual funds. Former manager and mutual fund icon Peter Lynch is probably the name most associated with the fund. And while he led it to great success, he hasn’t been the manager for a long time… and performance has been less than inspiring for a long time, too. What’s it do? Fidelity Magellan’s objective is capital appreciation. It achieves this by investing in stocks. That may sound a bit simple, but that’s really what Fidelity puts out there. What this is basically explaining is that the fund owns stocks and doesn’t have specific style, region, or sector preferences. So it will own both growth and value names, invest in domestic and foreign stocks, and basically go where it thinks it can find opportunity. With an asset base of around $15 billion, however, you’ll want to keep in mind that it isn’t likely investing in too many small companies. So FMAGX is really a large cap style agnostic stock fund. Current manager Jeffrey Feingold is looking for companies with, “…accelerating earnings, improving fundamentals and a low valuation.” He believes these are the main drivers of performance, but admits that finding all three in one investment can be hard. So he works to find stocks with at least two of these factors going for them. Broadly speaking he also tries to diversify the holdings across aspects like type of company (fast growers, higher-quality growers, and cheap with improving fundamentals) and risk profile (for example, stocks with different leverage levels and earnings predictably). In the end, he explains, “…because of the way I manage the fund, security selection is typically going to be the primary driver of the fund’s performance relative to its benchmark.” How’s it done? Feingold has been at the helm of the fund since late 2011, putting his tenure at a little over three years. And in that span he’s proven pretty capable. For example, over the trailing three year period through August, the fund’s annualized total return was roughly 16.4%. The S&P 500’s annualized total return over that span was 14.3%. Assuming there was a bit of a transition period as he took over, that three period is probably a fair time frame over which to look at his performance. And its a big difference from longer periods. Despite the recent solid showing, the fund’s five-, 10-, and 15-year trailing returns all lag the index and similarly managed funds. Often by wide margins. So Feingold has been doing something right at a fund that’s been missing the mark for some time. However, there’s more to the story. The manager’s tenure has coincided with a mostly positive market. In fact, 2012 (the S&P advanced around 16%), 2013 (the S&P was up 32%), and 2014 (the S&P was up nearly 14%) were all fairly good for the market based on historical average returns. In other words, the manager has had a good backdrop in which to work. Looking to the future, however, it’s fair to say that he hasn’t been stress tested at this fund yet. So I wouldn’t get too excited by the recent performance. That said, so far this year, the fund has held up reasonably well. It’s lost less than the S&P and similarly managed funds. But I’d argue that this isn’t enough of a test to get a real feel for how the fund will handle a major market correction with Feingold at the helm. But it is at least encouraging. Not too expensive, lots of trading Looking a little closer at owning Fidelity Magellan, it’s got a reasonable expense ratio of 0.7%. Although you could argue that a fund with around $15 billion in assets could probably be run with a lower expense ratio, 70 basis points isn’t out of line with the broader fund industry. If you take the time to look at the fund’s annual report, though, you’ll notice that expenses have increased from around 0.5% in the last couple of fiscal years. But that’s really a statement to the improving performance. Magellan’s expense ratio is based on the cost of running the fund plus a performance adjustment. In other words, the expense ratio is going up because Magellan has been doing better. I think most would agree that this is reasonable. That said, Magellan’s 70% turnover looks fairly high to me based on the large cap names it’s pretty much forced into because of its large asset base. That number has been fairly constant over the manager’s tenure, as well, so this looks like a reasonable rate to expect year in and year out. There are a number of very good funds that manage to do well with turnovers in the 20% range, so the 70% figure is something I’d watch. For example, that level of trading in a falling market, as noted above, has yet to be tested at the fund. I make that comparison because a fund with a 20% turnover is clearly buying and holding companies it likes and knows well. Companies that it believes have solid long-term prospects. A fund that turns over 70% of its holdings in a year looks like it’s investing with a shorter time period in mind. You may be OK with that, but if you aren’t, then this may not be the right fund for you. If you’ve gone for the ride… Investors often buy funds and then forget they own them. If you have been in FMAGX for a long time it has probably served you reasonably well, overall. That said, you have also lived through some periods where management hasn’t lived up to the fund’s storied past. That appears to be turning a corner with a new manager running the show. However, the new manager has so far been running things in a good market. There are few solid clues as to what you might expect in a real downdraft. So improved performance is nice to see, but it’s too early to call an all clear-especially with the market turning so turbulent of late. In fact, Feingold might be on the verge of a true test of his abilities in a falling market. Only time will tell. In the end, if you own Magellan I wouldn’t be rushing for the exits. However, if complacency is what’s kept you in the fund I’d suggest looking around at other large cap funds. Magellan is hardly a stand out performer, despite the fund’s impressive history, and based on the management changes over time it may no longer be the fund you bought. So a little perspective on your options wouldn’t hurt, even if you decide to stick around.