Our 5 Favorite Mutual Fund Managers @Kiplinger

Check out this article from Kiplinger:
We obviously think highly of all the managers who run the funds in the Kiplinger 25 -- otherwise the funds wouldn't be on our list. Among these managers, we've singled out five for special attention. It should come as no surprise that all five have posted outstanding results over extended periods that span several market cycles. In fact, four of the five have been at the helm of their funds for at least 20 years.

Steve Romick
Age: 47
Education: BA, Northwestern University
Investment Style: Value

Shareholders of Steve Romick's FPA Crescent (symbol FPACX) really should sleep well at night. Romick is proof that playing a strong game of defense in managing a mutual fund can also be a sound offense. The reason for this is the humble math of compounding: If you limit downside losses, the upside seems to take care of itself.

Romick's chief objective is to match or beat the return of Standard & Poor's 500-stock index while taking less risk than the index. In this endeavor he has succeeded brilliantly. From Crescent's inception in June 1993 through April 8, the fund returned 11.3% annualized, compared with 8.3% for the S&P 500, and did so with nearly one-third less volatility than the index. Two numbers explain why Romick's numbers have compounded so nicely with limited commotion: Crescent has enjoyed nearly 80% of the S&P's gains in up months while suffering just over half of the losses in the index's down months.

To be sure, Romick's portfolio doesn't resemble the S&P. He has the freedom to roam the spectrum of stocks, bonds, convertible securities, bank loans, and so forth -- wherever he perceives the most attractive return potential relative to risk. For instance, in 2009 he loaded up on bonds when, he says, "debt markets had priced in a depression." From a 31% weighting in bonds in 2009, Crescent is now down to 9% in bonds, he says. He's been raising his fund's allocation to stocks, particularly to companies tied to commodities. "We're worried about inflation," Romick says. A born worrier and risk manager, Romick is always fretting about something -- to the benefit of Crescent shareholders.

Dan Fuss
Age: 77
Education: BS, MBA Marquette University
Investment Style: Go anywhere

You can't accuse us of age discrimination. Dan Fuss, co-manager of Loomis Sayles Bond (LSBRX), is 77. But his mind is still young. The worldly Fuss, who buys bonds issued all over the globe, is as likely to discuss the investment implications of demography in Japan and drug wars in Mexico as he is the U.S.'s budget woes.

Moreover, his rich experience in the bond markets is a big advantage. Fuss has been involved with bonds since 1958 (he started managing Loomis Sayles Bond in 1991). He notes that the first 23 years of his career (1958-1981) were essentially a cycle of rising interest rates. This was followed by nearly 30 years of declining rates, which Fuss thinks came to an end in 2010. He now expects another long period of rising rates. "I've seen this movie before," he says. Fuss expects the yield on ten-year Treasury bonds to climb to 6.25% over the next several years, from the current 3.5%. So to cut risk, he has shortened the average maturity of the holdings in Loomis Sayles Bond from the typical 14 to 15 years to less than 11 years.

After more than half a century as a professional bond investor, Fuss still gets charged up every day. "I don't need video games for excitement," he says. "I've never had a day that's exactly like the previous day in this business. That's the attraction."

Rick Aster
Age: 70
Education: BA, MA, UC Santa Barbara
Investment Style: Growth at a reasonable price

Speaking of septuagenarians, Rick Aster has quietly posted dazzling numbers (13% annualized) in the mid-cap growth category since launching Meridian Growth (MERDX) in 1984. In the Kiplinger 25, we use a number of funds from industry giants such as Fidelity and Vanguard. But we always have room for outstanding independent houses such as Meridian, based in Larkspur, Cal.

Meridian Growth's assets are a substantial $2.5 billion, but there are no analysts on the fund, only Aster and co-manager William Tao. "I don't want a big bureaucracy making investment decisions," says Aster, who notes that he's the biggest shareholder of the fund, which does not engage in any marketing.

Fortunately, Aster himself is a fine analyst of businesses ranging in market value from $1 billion to $7 billion. He looks for growing companies with high profitability and low debt, but refuses to overpay for the stocks. Buying financially solid businesses at a discount is one reason Meridian tends to hold up well in bear markets. Over the past ten years, the fund returned an annualized 10.8%, an average of nearly five percentage points better than a basket of mid-cap growth funds -- and with much less volatility than the typical fund.

Preston Athey
Age: 61
Education: BA, Yale University; MBA, Stanford University
Investment Style: Value

Preston Athey, manager of T. Rowe Price Small Cap Value (PRSVX), embodies what we look for in a Kiplinger 25 fund. Athey has a stellar long-term track record: Since he took the reins of Small Cap Value in August 1991, it has returned an annualized 13.0%, more than three points per year better, on average, than the Russell 2000 index, a benchmark of small-company stocks.

Moreover, Athey has achieved that feat while taking less risk than the index. He holds his stocks for nine to ten years on average, which is an eternity by fund-industry standards. As Athey puts it: "The average institutional investor is a frenetic day-trader who jumps at every little piece of information coming across his screen. I think of myself as a frog on a lily pad waiting patiently for a dragonfly to go by."

Early in his long career at Price, Athey focused, as both a stock analyst and fund manager, on growth companies. Today he's very much a value manager, but one who understands the characteristics of growth companies and growth-stock investors. An ideal stock, he says, is an out-of-favor growth stock with a blemish that has led to a decline in its share price. Athey will buy it and hold on as it enters the “process of moving from an ugly duckling to a beautiful swan." When it's pretty again, it's time to sell the stock to a growth investor, he says.

Will Danoff
Age: 50
Education: BA, Harvard; MA, MBA University of Pennsylvania
Investment Style: Growth

Last but far from least is Will Danoff, the peerless manager of Fidelity Contrafund (FCNTX), a large-cap growth fund with $80 billion in assets. Danoff is about as common as a black swan in the fund industry. Over the past 20 years, Contrafund has returned an annualized 12.0%, an average of 3.2 percentage points ahead of the S&P 500 index -- a remarkable feat.

Danoff makes the most of Fidelity's enormous resources and access to corporate chiefs. He pays tribute to the "small army of analysts who cast a wide net" that he can tap. Gregarious by nature, Danoff himself chats up hundreds of chief executives and other top corporate brass every year. The goal, he says, is to identify companies that are multiyear growth stories. These firms are often run by exceptional businesspeople.

Nor is Danoff shy about promoting Contrafund. "Over time," he says, "I've beaten the S&P. I think of my fund as a building block for everyone’s portfolio."

Read more: http://www.kiplinger.com/columns/fundwatch/archive/our-5-favorite-mutual-fund-managers-2011.html#ixzz1K094soZl
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Everything You Know About Fitness is a Lie

Everything You Know About Fitness is a Lie

Amazing article, here are some blurbs:

Cardio machines are innocent enough, as they won’t actually make you any less fit, but maintaining cardiovascular fitness doesn’t really take much more than breathing uncomfortably hard for about 20 minutes, three times a week. And we all know that swimming, hoops, bike riding, and even Ultimate Frisbee can get the job done, and that treadmills or elliptical trainers are a pale substitute.

Weight machines, on the other hand, are far more insidious because they appear to be a huge technological advance over free weights. But quite the opposite is true: Weight machines train individual muscles in isolation, while the rest of you sits completely inert. This works okay for physical therapy and injury rehab, and it’s passable for bodybuilding, but every serious strength-and-conditioning coach in America will tell you that muscle-isolation machines don’t create real-world strength for life and sport.

YOU NEED TO BREAK YOURSELF DOWN BEFORE YOU REBUILD.
LIFT
Front Squat 1.5x BW
Dead Lift 2.0x BW
Bench Press 1.5x BW

ONCE YOU “GET IT,” YOU’LL LOVE IT.
Shaul’s guys out in Wyoming get massively strong and powerful on precisely three gym sessions a week, each lasting an hour and no more. Louie Simmons, the single biggest name in gorilla-style competitive power lifting, will tell you that 45 minutes is the max length of any smart training session.

But you can’t spend the first 15 minutes watching CNN from the treadmill and the last 15 “warming down.” Every second has to count, and it all starts with understanding the four basic muscular aptitudes: strength, power, muscle mass, and muscular endurance.

Strength means how much you can lift once, and it’s the backbone of every sport on Earth, from the crouch-holding power of a skier to the one-finger pull-up of a climber. Power is a more slippery term that means “speed strength,” or how much you can lift very, very quickly, and it gives you the explosive paddling speed to catch a big wave or the pedaling burst to fire your mountain bike up a grade. Muscle mass can be a liability in sports like climbing, where it’s all about strength-to-weight ratio, but mass helps enormously with games like rugby and football, and it can support strength and power — not to mention make you look better in a T-shirt. Muscular endurance means how many times you can lift a given weight in a row without stopping, and it’s the essence of running, swimming, and even a kayaker’s long-haul paddling.

As for your training sessions themselves, the number one thing to remember is that each of the Fundamental Four responds to a different number of repetitions per set. Lift a weight so heavy you can lift it only once, you’re building strength (and, oddly, not much mass); lift a weight you can move six to 12 times, you’re building mass (and, oddly, a little less pure strength); ease up to a weight you can lift 50 times, and you’re working muscular endurance (which is great for endurance sports but tends to undermine the first three, shrinking your strength, power, and muscle size).

It can be hard to believe a true strength coach the first time he tells you that by pressing and dead-lifting on even days, squatting and doing chin-ups on odd days, avoiding all other exercises, and adding a little to the bar each time, you’ll be stronger than you’ve ever been in only a month’s time. Thanks to the fitness industry, we’re so conditioned to equate sophistication with complexity — and to think we’ve got to “work each body part” — that our gut just says, No way; that can’t work. But it works like magic, and the entire body hardens up in unison.

Finally, keep it simple; understand that variety is overrated. Variety does stave off boredom — it’s fun to mix in new exercises all the time — but a guy who hasn’t trained in a long time, if ever, will get stronger faster on the simplest program of squats, dead lifts, and presses, three times a week. It’s true that you cannot do the same workout forever; you’ll go stale, and then you’ll go crazy, and 2010then you’ll quit. It’s also true that the stronger you get, and the closer to your genetic potential, the more you have to mix in new lifts and switch up the numbers of sets and reps you’re doing, just to make a little gain each week, or even each month. But I’ve learned the hard way that you’ve got to be careful about adding variety. If you constantly screw around with endless new exercises, you have no way of adding the precisely calibrated weight increases that actually make you stronger. To get it just right, keep meticulous records, writing down every rep and every lift so your targets for each workout are easy to spot and your gains are easy to measure.

Android App - Multicon

[App Of The Week] Multicon – Reclaim Your Home Screen Real Estate

Even though I have 7 home screens on my EVO 4G, I still sometimes find myself cramped for space. I have a whole bunch of apps and shortcuts that I would like to have instant access to. Enter Multicon.

The function of Multicon is to make widgets that pack in a number of downsized icons in the space that would normally be occupied by only single ones. This enables you to pack a large number of app shortcuts onto a home screen that only fits 16 by default (on most handsets).

Multicon is especially useful for devices with larger screens, such as the 4.3" EVO 4G, Droid X and the 5" Dell Streak because it’s much easier to click on icons several times smaller in size on those devices than on ones with smaller screens.

Now let’s cover the basics.
The Basics

The app itself is used just like any other widget. Install it from the market and long-press on a blank section of your home screen. Right off the bat, you are presented with some options to configure your widget:

You can choose one of several options to configure exactly how much space you would like to fill with your mini-shortcuts. For my purposes, I am going to choose the 1×4 size, which will create a single widget occupying 4 regular Android rows and 1 column, by default fitting 16 mini-shortcuts in total. After you choose the size you want, you will be taken back to your home screen which, in my case, looked like this:

To begin configuring the widget with custom values and shortcuts, simply click anywhere on the widget you just made. This is where the magic happens. Upon clicking the widget, you will be taken to the configuration screen. From here, you can do all kinds of fun things – you could leave the column and row settings at their default, or you could max the values out.

Using the 1×4 widget as an example, with the values maxed out (3×12) you have the potential to achieve an INSANE 144 (3x12x4) SHORTCUTS on a single home screen panel. I’m not sure I would recommend that, however, unless you have tiny-tiny hands.

Since Multicon doesn’t display application titles, you need to make sure you know what your apps’ icons look like. For example the Mail icon looks very similar to the SMS icon, so it would be wise to place them on the opposite sides of the home screen or quickly learn their exact positions.

Once you decide on your row and column counts, the rest is as simple as clicking the Android icons and choosing the apps, shortcuts, or actions you would like to use. One cool feature built into Multicon is this set of system settings toggle widgets:

To edit the number of columns and rows or change the shortcuts later on down the line, just fire up the Multicon app itself and click the "Edit widgets" button.

For my setup, I didn’t have 36 icons that I needed in the place of 4, so I went with 2 columns and 6 rows. Doing this allowed my icons to be a bit larger, which I like. My final setup ended up looking like this:

Conclusion

This app is extremely handy. With my 7 home screens, I have the potential to allocate a grand total of 1008 shortcuts (even more if you pack 3×12 mini-icons into smaller sized widgets – in which case you’ll need a microscope).

Multicon is extremely versatile and useful to people like me who have a lot of apps and want them accessible with one click. If you, too, are constantly fighting for real estate on your home screens, this app is a gift from above.
Download

If you would like to download Multicon, you can scan the barcode below with your Android phone or visit its Appbrain page here:

QR code for market://details?id=com.h9kdroid.multicon

Android App - Calibrate Your Battery Stats The Easy Way To Improve Battery Life

Calibrate Your Battery Stats The Easy Way To Improve Battery Life

If you’re a rooted user, chances are that you flash new ROMs fairly often. What you may not know, however, is that your phone saves the battery statistics from old ROMs, and if you’ve never recalibrated your battery before, then your time away from the charger may not be as good as it could be.

This is for rooted users only.

Resetting battery stats can be an intimidating task for those who don’t spend a lot of time in recovery (or who have never even booted into recovery). Fortunately, XDA member marosige has created an app that makes battery calibration a snap.

It’s really simple (the instructions are even clearly stated within the app) – launch the app, charge your phone to 100%, unplug it, and tap the "Battery Calibration" button. The recalibration process will begin at this point, and generally takes a few days to complete. Use your phone normally and enjoy the additional battery life!

As always, check out the support thread in the XDA Forums if you have any questions.

Android App - SD Maid Cleans Up The Mess Left Behind By Old Apps

SD Maid Cleans Up The Mess Left Behind By Old Apps, Leaves Your Phone And Your SD Card Minty Fresh

We have all been there before – you’re running low on space and want to get rid of some apps. Or perhaps you just want to do your device a favor and remove old apps that you no longer use. Sure, the app is gone, but most leave behind unwanted data, taking up precious room on the /data partition, your SD card, or both. Fortunately, XDA member Dark3n has created a app to address such a situation, aptly titled SD Maid.

This app is for rooted users only.

SD Maid is a simple, yet much needed app that searches your device for anything left behind by apps that have been uninstalled. It does this by comparing the list of currently installed apps to the list of data found in /data/data and /mnt/sdcard/Android/data, which is where most Android devices store this type of information. The main exception to this rule is Samsung, which stores its data in /dbdata/databases, but SD Maid has that covered, too.

Note: While the name suggests that SD Maid only cleans up your SD card, it’s actually not true – it looks at internal storage as well. Confusing, I know.

It’s very, very easy to use. Fire it up, tap refresh, and it will show you the amount of "corpses in your basement". Tap clean all, and you’re done. Really, that’s it. It goes one step further than that, too, offering a full system cleanup, which covers log files, Dropbox cache, system cache, and tombstones, which is where the system dump goes when an app force closes.

This app is still in early development, and the creator notes that because there are so many different devices out there, it may not work 100% correctly on every single device. If you give it a shot and experience issues with it, hop over the XDA support thread and let him know about it.

Kia Naimo Electric Concept Debuts

Kia Naimo Electric Concept Debuts: 2011 Seoul Auto Show
Published Mar 31, 2011

The Kia Naimo, an electric concept car that combines high-tech and traditional Korean arts-and-crafts materials, debuted on Thursday at the 2011 Seoul Auto Show.
It is equipped with a 107-horsepower permanent magnet synchronous motor and a twin-pack battery that uses lithium-ion polymer technology.
The Naimo has a top speed of 93 mph and a driving range of 124 miles on a single charge, says Kia.

SEOUL, South Korea — The chunky-looking Kia Naimo, an electric concept car that combines high-tech and traditional Korean arts-and-crafts materials, debuted on Thursday at the 2011 Seoul Auto Show.

Kia would not confirm any production plans for the car, saying in a statement that it "explores the practicalities of introducing a zero-emissions, five-door, four-seater city car into a future niche market."

Naimo, pronounced "ne-mo," means "square shape" in Korean, said Kia in a statement. It bears a passing resemblance to the Kia Soul, but is more low-slung and substantial-looking.

Key design details include a wraparound windshield, an asymmetric sunroof, headlights that use a dot pattern and 20-inch alloy wheels. Designers skipped the conventional windshield wiper and instead use a high-intensity air jet at the base of the windshield that wipes it clean.

The Naimo is equipped with a 107-horsepower permanent magnet synchronous motor and a twin-pack battery that uses lithium-ion polymer technology. It has a top speed of 93 mph and a driving range of 124 miles on a single charge, according to the Korean automaker.

The cabin gets Korean oak door panels and floor, while Korean han-ji paper is used for the headliner.

"Naimo is a perfect balance of innovation, high-tech and Korean tradition," said Peter Schreyer, Kia Motors' chief design officer, in a statement.

Inside Line says: The Holy Grail for auto designers is being able to successfully weave cultural elements into a vehicle. Looks like the Kia Naimo is a valiant effort in that regard. — Anita Lienert, Correspondent

First Look: Kia KV7 Concept

Kia KV7 Crossover Concept - 2011 Detroit Auto Show - Motor Trend
December 27, 2010
By Andrew Peterson

Kia's Soul -- the funky box-on-wheels that hamsters love to drive -- was one of the Korean automaker's first manifestations of its new design philosophy, spearheaded by its Southern California design studio. Consider its KV7 Concept for the 2011 Detroit show a riff on the Soul aesthetic, with more room and the usual array of concept-style touches thrown into the mix.

The KV7 is adorned with cues similar to that of the 2007 Soul auto show concept, applied to a vehicle slightly smaller than a Ford Flex. It features an elongated version of the two-box Soul design and a new take on Kia's familial face.

"From the outset, we felt the [van] category was in need of an honest reassessment due to the fact that everyone seems so desperate to attach the word 'sporty' to their minivan, even though vans, at their very core, are simply a box," said Tom Kearns, chief designer at Kia Motors America. "Rather than reject the box, we chose to celebrate it, just like we did with the Soul, and the result is a straightforward, yet sophisticated vehicle that retains the functionality vans are known for and meets the changing and diverse needs of today's consumers."

Kia KV7 Concept Front Three Quarters Static
Click to view Gallery
Like the Soul concept before it, the KV7 features a rounded hood and flared fenders, but the flares flow all the way across the front fascia. The grille and headlights are similar in scope to modern Kias and look as if they were pulled from a 2011 Optima. Kia's designers shortened the grille and hid the headlights, coloring both black but surrounding the cluster with an aluminum accent.

The windshield doesn't wrap around, but the lines from the windshield to the side windows appear to flow across the A-pillar and the side windows and feature the same tapered styling. The doors are the most interesting design element, as they appear to be the same suicide style as the Soul Concept, but with an added twist: the rear passenger door is a gullwing variety.

LizaMoon Virus hits alot of websites

'LizaMoon' Mass SQL Injection Attack Escalates Out of Control - eWeek.com

A mass SQL
injection attack that initially compromised 28,000 Websites has spiraled out of
control. At the last count, more than a million sites have been compromised,
with no end in sight.
Security firm
Websense has been tracking the "LizaMoon" attack since it started March 29. The
company's malware researchers dubbed the attack LizaMoon after the first domain
that victims were redirected to. At the redirected site, users saw a warning
dialog that they had been infected with malware and a link to download a fake
antivirus.
The users are
shown a number of threats supposedly on their computer, but the fake AV,
Windows Stability Center, won't remove them until the user pays up, in a "very
traditional rogue AV scam," wrote Patrik Runald, the Websense researcher who
has been following the attack over the past few days.
The list of
redirect URLs has ballooned in the days since, as Websense updated its list
March 31 with 20 additional sites, making this one of the biggest mass-injection
attacks ever.
More than
500,000 URLs have been injected with LizaMoon, according to Runald. If all the
domains used in the attack are considered, eWEEK found about 2.9 million
results on Google Search that have been compromised.
"Google Search
results aren't always great indicators of how prevalent or widespread an attack
is as it counts each unique URL, not domain or site," Runald said. It is safe
to consider hundreds of thousands of domains have been hit, he said.
Websense
researchers are still trying to figure out how the SQL injection attack is
happening. Somehow, legitimate Websites have been compromised in a way that one
line of code has been embedded on the site. That code is a simple redirect, and
executes when the user loads the page. The bulk of the action happens on the
redirected page, where a script containing Javascript code kicks off the fake
AV scam.
Commenters
asked Websense why researchers were so convinced it was a SQL injection on
multiple Websites and not a mass cross-site-scripting attack. The researchers
said they'd been contacted by people who have seen the code in their Microsoft
SQL Server 2003 and 2005 databases. The vulnerabilities weren't within the
database software, but "most likely in the Web systems used by these sites,
such as outdated CMS and blog systems," Runald said.
Considering
the large number of sites infected, users all around the world are affected,
with victims in the United Kingdom, Kuwait, India, Australia, Turkey, Brazil,
Israel, Mexico, Taiwan and Chile, among others, according to figures from
Websense Threatseeker Network. The bulk of the victims, at 47 percent, appear
to be from the United States.
The domains
used in this attack, including the redirect URLs and the server where the
malware is hosted, are all associated with one of four IP addresses, according
to Dancho Danchev, an independent security expert.
While the 20 or so domains being used as the redirect URL rotate between two IP
addresses, Danchev has identified more than 120 India-based or Cocos Island-based
domains all pointing to one malware host server, and 50 India-based domains
going to another.
The domains
have all been registered using automatically registered accounts at Gmail,
Danchev said. The first domain on the list was registered as far back as
October 2010, and new domains have been added since LizaMoon exploded,
according to Runald.
First, the
good news: Users are hit with the Windows Stability Center scam only once, so
visiting the site repeatedly doesn't repeat the attack.
The bad news:
Not many antivirus programs seem to be able to detect the Windows Stability
Center. VirusTotal is a service that checks malware samples against 43 major
antivirus products to see which products can detect it. As of April 1, only 17 out of the 43 tested block Windows Stability
Scanner. At least, security companies are moving on this threat: It was only 13 out of 43 March 31.

BuyWithMe - 54% off at AMC Theatres®

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Best Options for Convenience-Store Food - Men's Fitness

Best Options for Convenience-Store Food - Men's Fitness

Best Options for Convenience-Store Food
You can still eat smart on the go—even when your options are limited
by Brian Dalek

Any road trip leads to the unavoidable stop at the QuikTrip, 7-Eleven, or one of thousands of other convenience stores across America. If you’re not watching what you eat, that can spell trouble. Lauren Antonucci, R.D., a nutritionist and the owner/director of Nutrition Energy in New York City, suggests looking for something with protein or fiber to keep you awake, plus a drink to keep you hydrated behind the wheel. If the store doesn’t have any of those options, hit the road immediately and look for a smarter choice next time you pull over.

Breakfast Bests
No time to pack a breakfast? Antonucci suggests a protein-packed Greek yogurt like Chobani. If you need something heartier, some stores have eggwhite wrap sandwiches. “Just try to avoid the ones with sausage, cheese, and bacon,” she says.

Hydrate
Skip the fountain cappuccino, even if you think the jolt of caffeine might help you stay awake. Anything low calorie, like Propel or sparkling water, is the smarter choice. Those liquids will help keep your muscles and brain operating at their peak. “Since most of us aren’t race car drivers, we don’t need to worry about replacing calories,” Antonucci says.

Search for Fruit
Sure, it’s not Whole Foods, but sometimes you can find an apple or banana by the counter. “As long as it’s edible,” she says, “you can’t pick a better option.”

Snack Smart
Craving something sweet? Ditch the candy bar and opt for an energy bar with at least 10 grams of protein, instead. (We like the Carb Conscious bars from Supreme Protein.) Feeling more savory? Avoid crackers and go for canned nuts or a bag of low-sodium jerky instead.

Never Supersize
When you’re stuck in a car with an entire bag of chips or candy, no good can come of it, says Antonucci. In fact, studies show the longer you’re near junk food, the more likely you are to stick your hand into it. If you have to buy it, get a single-serving pack.