Dodge & Cox Income Fund (DODIX)

Kiplinger is a well known financial magazine. Any long term investor will know this magazine in a heart beat. Every year, the magazine provides a list of top 25 mutual funds which is known as Kiplinger 25 (in short Kip 25) around spring time. I’ll provide one of this best fund every couple days, I'll review the funds in details. The following article will look into the first fund, Dodge & Cox Income.

I’ll proceed from bond fund and then move to stock funds, international funds, etc. All of these funds are no load funds. This means the funds don’t charge any sales fee such as front end sales load fee or deferred sales load fee.

Dodge & Cox Income Fund (DODIX)

This Dodge & Cox Income fund (Ticker: DODIX) investment objective is to seek a high & stable rate of current income with consistent long term capital preservation. It also will try to take advantage of opportunities to realize capital appreciation. The fund invest majority of its assets in a high quality bond (i.e. investment grade bond) and other fixed income debts diversified portfolio.

These fixed income securities include U.S. Government bonds, mortgage and asset backed securities, corporate bond, collateralized mortgage bonds and other rated A or better bonds rated by credit rating agencies (Moody’s, Standard & Poor’s, Fitch, etc). This Dodge & Cox fund may invest small part of its assets (<20%) in non investment grade fixed income securities. These below investment grade bonds are known as high yield bonds or junk bonds.

DODIX Fund Facts

• Fund Inception Date: January 1989
• Ticker Symbol: DODIX
• CUSIP: 256210105
• Distribution: Dividend are paid every quarters in March, June, September, & December
• Capital gains: If any, they will be distributed in December and March
• Net Assets: $ 48.9 Billion
• Fund Manager: Dodge & Cox Management
• Beta (3yr): 0.94
• Category: Intermediate-Term Bond
• Yield: 1.28%
• Expense Fee: 0.43%
• Min to Invest: $2,500
• Capital Gains: N/A
• Turnover rate: 25%

The fund lead manager is Peter C. Lambert since 1989. The fund is also managed by variety of managers. To invest in this fund, you will need to open an account either with your brokerage or IRA account (Roth IRA, traditional IRA, and 401k).
The initial investment is $2,500 for regular brokerage account and $ 1,000 for IRA account. Subsequent minimum investment will be $100.

This DODIX fund can be purchased through 85 brokerages like E*Trade financial, TD Ameritrade, SunAmerica Securities Premier, Scottrade TF, TIAA-CREF Brokerage Services, JPMorgan INVEST, Fidelity Retail FundsNetwork, etc. Please check your brokerage for details.
new: Best Performer Diversified Bond Mutual Funds 2012

For year to date, this diversified bond fund has returned 1.13%. This fund has returned 6.98% over the past year and 6.59% over the past five years. The fund has the best 1 year total return on 2009 (16.05%) and worst 1 year total return on 1999 (-0.81%). This Dodge & Cox fund has a yield of 4.82% per year. It also has 4 stars rating from Morningstar.

• Year 2017: 1.85% (YTD)
• Year 2016: 5.61%
• Year 2015: -0.59%
• Year 2014: 5.48%
• Year 2013: 0.64%

Investor will be charge an annual expense ratio of 0.43%. As explained before, there is no 12b1 fee, no front end sales load, and no deferred sales load for this fund. There are no other classes for this fund. The fund portfolio turnover rate is 28%.

As of January 2011, the fund has 629 number of fixed income securities. The fund effective maturity is 6.9 years and the fund effective duration is 3.9 years. The fund asset allocation is as follows 96.7% fixed income debts and 3.3% cash equivalent. The top 5 fund sectors diversification are corporate bonds (46.5%), mortgage related debt (42.7%), government related bonds (5.4%), cash equivalents (3.3%), and U.S. Treasury (2%). Top five largest corporate issuers are Ford Motor Credit Co, Ally Financial Inc, Bank of America Corp, HCA Inc, and Macy’s Inc. Disclosure: No Position

Related Article:

• Metropolitan West Total Return Bond M MWRTX
• DoubleLine Total Return Bond
• Payden GNMA Fund PYGNX

updated on 5/12/2012 This intermediate term bond fund has a yield of 4%. The sales load is 0%. Its total net assets are $25.3 billion. The holdings turnover rate is 27%. Its effective duration is 3.90 years. Morningstar analysrs have rated this bond fund with gold rating.

As of April 2012, the top 3 sectors in its holding are corporate bond (45%), agency MBS pass-through (33.48%), and agency MBS CMO (2.24%).

Note: This Dodge & Cox Income Fund (DODIX) was part of Kip 25, Kiplinger's best mutual funds before.