On Wednesday, 6 October, all fund risk and return metrics, ratings, and analytics were uploaded to MFO Premium, reflecting performance through September 2021, the year’s 3rd quarter.

 

Concurrent with the ratings update, two new evaluation periods were added to MultiSearch, nicknamed “Super Bull 1 & 2.” These bulls don’t acknowledge that the steep declines of Black Monday (October 1987) and CV-19 (March 2020) were bears. Both retractions were so short, they just get lumped-in with the long-term gains the bulls delivered, ex post, of course.

 

The first Super Bull, which began late 1974, returned 17.2% annualized for the S&P 500 across 26 years. 26 years! Can you believe that? The second, which began early 2009, has returned about the same at 17.4% annualized across these past 13 years. It’s still going.

 

The Tech Bubble finally took down the first Super Bull in 2000. Survivors of that bubble (Amazon, Apple, Microsoft) have helped propel the current Super Bull, which just a decade ago many considered the most hated ever. Last month Morningstar’s CEO Kunal Kapoor called it “one of the greatest bull markets.” One reason perhaps? The excess return (over risk free) of the current Super Bull is 17.0% annualized versus “just” 10.3% for the previous one.

 

Yesterday we went live with several new features that derived from an enjoyable Zoom session with premium subscriber Devesh Shah. The former Goldman Sachs partner, resides in New York and publishes the YouTube Channel Understanding Personal Finance. He also happens to be a co-inventor of the stock market’s barometer of fear, the Cboe’s Volatility Index (VIX). His most recent interview (“Video 81”) is outstanding.

 

Thanks to his suggestions, the site’s main tool MultiSearch now includes:

 

• • Decadal Returns, Ratings, and Display Periods. Both absolute (calendar decade) and relative (10-year periods, stepping back from today). Most screeners available today provide risk and performance metrics on past 10 years. But how did the funds you’re considering perform in the previous decade? Now, it’s easy to find out.

 

• • After Tax Returns and Ratings. With help from Tom Roseen, Refinitiv’s Head of Research Services, we’ve derived these after-tax metrics for 1, 3, 5, and 10-year periods, both pre-liquidation and post-liquidation, from the Tax Cost Ratio (TCR), which we introduced last July. You will find these new screenable metrics in the Purchase & Taxes group, along with TCRs and TCR Ratings, the financing management is essential and important to avoid the top accounting mistakes when running your business. Devesh believes taxes can “erode out almost any long term competitive outperformance of actively mutual funds.”

 

• Adjustable Columns. Thanks to a recent development by Allan Jardine of SpryMedia and associate Daniel Hobi, users can now adjust the width of any column in the results table. Just place the cursor between column headers and pull left or right. (To incorporate this very cool addition, we had to alter the table appearance a bit. Hope you will like!)

 

The table below (click to enlarge) illustrates the new calendar decade period metrics for three indexes (SP500, LGovBnd, and TBill), along with the equity/long bond allocation indices from the Allocation Pre-set Screen. All date back to 1926. The table reveals that rarely in the past 100 years have excess returns been as high as those since 2009, start of current Super Bull. They came close in the 1950s.

 

Refinitiv will drop the month ending October data Saturday, 6 November. Ratings should post the next day.

 

As always, if you see anything amiss or have suggestions for improvement, let us know and we will respond soonest.

 

Please enjoy the latest features.

 

PS. We just went live (Thursday, 4 November) with month ending October ratings. Going forward, we should now be able to post month ending ratings within 2-3 days of month close, thanks to Refinitiv including latest month ending data in their daily drop.