Is Davis New York Venture A (NYVTX) too expensive?

Question

It's available in my 401k.

Total expense ratio: 0.84%

Max 12b1 fee: 0.25%

Max Front End Sales Load: 4.75%

Max Deferred Sales Load: 0.00%

http://finance.yahoo.com/q/pr?s=NYVTX

Answer 1

Davis NY Venture is run by Christopher Davis.  Davis also runs the Selected American funds which are no load funds.  There may be a comparable no load fund to NY Venture in the Selected American family.  No sense paying a load when you can find a no load fund.

Davis has won awards for portfolio manager of the year.  However, he bought huge amounts of the stock MBIA earlier in the year and I'm wondering why he bought that stock since it is in trouble and their business model is in trouble.  Makes me wonder about some of these mutual fund managers.

Answer 2

It depends what else is available to you. It's a 'large blend' fund - is there an S & P 500 index fund available or a total stock market fund?

The annual turnover for NYVTX is only 5% which is very good. Stock tunover within a fund adds 'hidden expense' that is not reported in the expense ratio.

Here's a comparison between this fund and Vanguard's s & p 500 index fund:

http://quicktake.morningstar.com/FundNet...

http://quicktake.morningstar.com/FundNet...