In the world of bond funds, one major underappreciated risk is the liquidity imbalance that exists between funds and their shareholders. Traditional bond mutual funds and ETFs must provide their shareholders with daily liquidity—in other words, investors must be able to withdraw any part or all of their investment on any day. That’s a mismatch to what the funds own, such as bonds that can have maturities of up to 30 years, or bonds that don’t trade daily. The average high-yield bond trades...

What can you say of a mutual fund category where the best-performing fund in 2020 is up 45% while the worst is down 60%? With such disparities, can Morningstar’s “Long-Short Equity” even be considered a “category” at all? While long-short funds can short, or bet against, securities to hedge their portfolios, how they hedge can vary immensely. “Even though it’s probably the most homogenous category among the liquid-alternative asset classes, Long-Short Equity still has a lot of heterogeneity...

Guinness Atkinson Dividend Builder is a solid mutual fund with modest fees that has beaten its world-stock-fund peers in the past five years, yet no one seems to care. The fund has only $15 million in assets. The question is: Would you take notice of it were an exchange-traded fund instead? If all goes as planned, investors will find out as the fund (ticker: GAINX) and a sister fund—Guinness Atkinson Asia-Pacific Dividend Builder (GAADX)—will be the first mutual funds to convert to an ETF...

Here’s a letter you don’t expect to get from your fund company in 2020: On April 30, USAA Mutual Funds filed a supplement to its prospectus with the Securities and Exchange Commission and mailed it to shareholders stating that the firm would be “redesignating” each fund’s “Adviser” share class so it would now carry a load, or sales charge, of up to 5.75%. For years, fund companies have been moving in the opposite direction, offering no-load or waiving loads, the financial advisory model...

In the midst of the coronavirus crisis, news in the money management business that would normally be considered startling largely goes virtually unnoticed. Consider that TIAA, the parent company of the $1 trillion Nuveen, announced on May 11 that it is offering a buyout package to 75% of its U.S. employees. About half of Nuveen’s assets are in bond funds or institutional accounts, many of which are highly specialized, niche municipal bond products such as the $18 billion Nuveen High Yield...