@rforno … it was really interesting with a lot of good information. Examining the heatmap, personally, I’m hoping for a rebound for REITs, and have a big bet on RQI for a down payment in 2 years to buy out my auto lease.
One item was not helpful…on the “Taxable Equivalent Yield Comparison” table, they used an example for a married couple with combined W-2 income of 1MM+…since my tax status is “single“, that was of no help.

Same for me. Just divide the numbers by 2 and you can get a rough idea for yourself. :)

I've been pretty active in the CEF space over the years but very hard to be CEFS. Fantastic skill and their interest rate hedging has been spot on.

@rforno … it was really interesting with a lot of good information. Examining the heatmap, personally, I’m hoping for a rebound for REITs, and have a big bet on RQI for a down payment in 2 years to buy out my auto lease.
One item was not helpful…on the “Taxable Equivalent Yield Comparison” table, they used an example for a married couple with combined W-2 income of 1MM+…since my tax status is “single“, that was of no help.

There's a certain "fun element" in knocking Vanguard. While it's hard to find any upside to Vanguard's latest announcement, in itself it's not that big a deal. Most of the changes won't affect most people, as noted in the video Yogi linked to. It's more the idea these are more small steps in the wrong direction for Vanguard.
@randynevin wrote that Vanguard provides excellent products at competitive prices. True enough, and the main reason to have an account at Vanguard. All the brokerages have been pushing people toward digital "solutions" and away from human interaction. It used to be that a Flagship customer at Vanguard was assigned a specific rep. But it also used to be that a Private Client customer at Fidelity was assigned a specific rep. No more at either brokerage.
Fidelity can't even seem to assign me a "team" at its closest location any more. It used to be that a Fidelity team (formerly an individual rep) stayed with you for several years. These days, the turnover there is much quicker. Everyone seems to be moving in the wrong direction, even if Vanguard seems to be moving that way a little faster.
High Net Worth? Years ago, Vanguard introduced 8 free trades/year for Flagship customers. Both stock and TF fund trades were counted against those 8 trades. Then it upped the free trade allotment to 25/year. Then it eliminated stock commissions, so Flagship customers got 25 free TF fund trades/year regardless of any stock/ETF trades they make. A nice little perk moving in the right direction. A number of people have said that Schwab will cut some deals here, but you have to negotiate this.
Quality of execution ought to be high on the list of cost concerns. Vanguard, like Fidelity and Merrill does not receive payment for order flow - so it gets good price improvement. That's not changing.
Admiral shares? A long time ago, Vanguard treated index funds the same as actively managed funds - the entry level share class was Investor shares. Once Vanguard lowered the min for the Admiral share class of index funds to $3K, index fund Admiral shares became Investor shares in all but name. Consequently, restrictions on Admiral shares now apply only to actively managed funds' Admiral shares. One can usually transfer them to other brokerages but not buy additional shares.
ADR fees charged by a custodian are part of the ADR product and as Vanguard clearly states: "Banks that custody ADRs are permitted to charge ADR holders certain fees, as detailed in the ADR prospectuses." Vanguard is not trying to grab part of this any more than it is trying to grab part of the management fees of third party funds. Rather, it is adding a fee for processing divs from ADRs held in VBS accounts.
A feature Vanguard added recently is a bank sweep yielding 4.7% APY. That's still about 1/2% below what it pays on MMFs, but if one wants FDIC-insured cash at a brokerage, that may be better than anyone else is offering. Schwab? Not even worth looking up. Fidelity? 2.72%. Merrill? 4.71%, but that's non-sweep and requires a $100K min. Otherwise it's 3.54%. SoFi? 4.60%, but only if you have direct deposit, else 1.2%.
Not every change at Vanguard is in the wrong direction. Though unfortunately, most of them are.

also as i ~3 decade flagship user, dropping integrated banking services was when i noticed the steep decline in vanguard :
- vanguard themselves added the burden of tens of millions of small accounts by relentless promotion of index products, lower minimums, and lower ER.
they need to cover this burden, in addition to their generous 'not-for-profit' salaries, perks, and campus expansions.
- vanguard services\tools\fees have gotten worse for all clients.
i would say the impact is more for HNW , since some of these were never free for small accounts in the first place.
so i guess it is a form of democratization of the investing experience, but not one of pride.
on a side note, peter zeihan predicts a massive decline in employment in the financial services sector for ~10 years as retirees draw down and shift to lower risk non-equity vehicles. this will not reverse until the greatest wealth inheritance transfer in history slowly begins.
so expect the worst companies to get much worse.

I'm sorry some of you have had poor experiences with Vanguard. Our experiences have been exactly the opposite. We have had accounts with Vanguard for 30+ years and have received excellent support. I don't want newbies reading this thread to think Vanguard is uniformly bad. They deliver excellent products for extremely competitive prices. Their fee structure may be designed to discourage millions of tiny little accounts, but those are the bane of any mutual fund / etf company.

Agree, we do not want any newbies reading this thread to be misdirected.
I stayed away from participating on this and other threads discussing about Vanguard's negative virtues but your post prompted me to share my experience. I have a 7 figure account with Vanguard, which is my first investment account opened 30 years ago. While all brokerages' service quality has dropped since beginning of Covid, many are slowly recovering. Vanguard service quality stunk for more than 5 years and does not show any promise of abating. Rich folk do not care about costs of their investments but they care about total returns and quality of service is why they put their money in venture capital, private equity, and other structured products. Costs are important to the tiny investors that presumably (according to you) Vanguard is trying to restrict / kick out. I do not mind paying to encourage the tiny investor. Over the years, I sent many written suggestions to Vanguard to improve their service quality and then decided to keep my silence. Vanguard has a culture problem and has become the Boeing of investment firms.
Please see my previous post for what I am doing now.

@yogibb and @msf, thanks for your comments.
I am not buying I bond either. The $10K limit per year is too small for us, including the $2.5K from tax refund. The other challenge is navigating through TreasuryDirect that requires lots of patience. Will hold what we have until they reach 5 years.
Since the yield curve remains inverted, we continue to buy T bill every month as part of a ladder in our taxable account. USFR is a good vehicle I learned from this board. The yields are very competitive to I bond. Moreover, they can be bought and sold readily at many brokerages.

I'm sorry some of you have had poor experiences with Vanguard. Our experiences have been exactly the opposite. We have had accounts with Vanguard for 30+ years and have received excellent support. I don't want newbies reading this thread to think Vanguard is uniformly bad. They deliver excellent products for extremely competitive prices. Their fee structure may be designed to discourage millions of tiny little accounts, but those are the bane of any mutual fund / etf company.

Comparison should be with 5-yr T-Note (4.64%) and 5-yr TIPS (2.25% + inflation).
I suppose that's as good a reference as any. I can infer the rationale for five years - that after five years one can cash out an I bond w/o penalty. But an argument can be made for comparing with 30 year T-bonds. They, like I-bonds, have a rate locked for 30 years.
I view I-bonds as cash, much as one might view a 5 year CD with a 90 day early withdrawal penalty as cash. No interest rate risk. And that may be the biggest flaw in comparing I-bonds with 30 year T-bonds. The latter is extremely sensitive to interest rates.
At current rates, one will do better with a five year TIPS (2.25% + inflation) vs an I-bond cashed out after five years (1.3% + inflation). That's true (though a closer call) after accounting for the fact that you'll pay taxes annually on the TIPS, bleeding returns. I-bonds are tax deferred until you cash out.
(To do an apples-to-apples comparison, I'm looking at taxable accounts, since I-bonds can't be held in tax-sheltered accounts.)
It's the classic trade-off. Certainty vs. expected return. In normal environments, yield goes up as the length of the debt instrument increases. I bonds are like cash, while Treasuries, especially multi-year or multi-decade ones, have uncertain mark-to-market (cash out) value.
And I-bonds have no reinvestment risk (risk of reinvesting divs after rates drop). With I-bond's greater certainty (ability to cash out w/o loss, no reinvestment risk) and more favorable tax treatment (deferred), they should normally yield less than Treasuries.
As I noted in the OP, one can hold and still improve one's position by swapping older, lower fixed-rate I-bonds for new, 1.3% fixed-rate issues. Though there is a tax cost in cashing out those old I-bonds.

@davidrmoran,
i hope you recover soon.
I have my car insurance through AmFam for sometime and I do not shop around. Many, many years ago when I took their auto insurance, they were quite expensive for home insurance but they no longer underwrite home insurance in my State, at least not new policies. They have good customer satisfaction scores.

For many years now we have used Costco's American Family Connect for all three types of coverage, umbrella through some subsidiary. While I often feel I should shop around and compare premiums in detail, I've been very happy with their cost, their service, and their payouts. Even or especially when on "opposite" sides now, as I got hit by a car in January in our no-fault state and so AmFam, which is in Wisconsin, is among the insurers "paying" me and covering the v large medical expenses, approaching $200k. (Medicare rightly attaches some of the payout, being public moneys.)

Another market neutral fund, VMNFX (down -.14% today) has actually outperformed QDSNX by approx. 3% annualized over the past 3 years (15.6% vs. 12.6%) with same SD (7.3). Looks like Vanguard had changed up the Portfolio Mgr around 3 years ago.
Happy with QDSNX, it has performed admirably. One of these funds feels like enough.

@junkster,
Two years ago, I would not have expected floating rate stuff to do well for this long. JBBB and JAAA are green today.

Most of my monies is in CLOs (floating rate) and my complacency there worries me. Even Barron’s is extolling the virtues of CLOs. - never a good sign.
Maybe Powell will ignite another long duration rally tomorrow ala November 1.

CLOs / CDOs / CDS / etc always give me the queasies. The GFC was caused by their systemic risk and not long after the crisis ended, they were back under a different name as I recall. Bottom line, I avoid any investment I can't understand or has too much complexity.

@junkster,
Two years ago, I would not have expected floating rate stuff to do well for this long. JBBB and JAAA are green today.

Most of my monies is in CLOs (floating rate) and my complacency there worries me. Even Barron’s is extolling the virtues of CLOs. - never a good sign.
Maybe Powell will ignite another long duration rally tomorrow ala November 1.

@junkster,
In my universe of watch lists, managed futures ETFs, MMM, SNAP, HC, and utilities are doing alright today. Even nuclear based stuff is seeing big red.
Two years ago, I would not have expected floating rate stuff to do well for this long. JBBB and JAAA are green today.

Just a heads-up … GDX (gold miners index) is down near 4% on the day. Gold is off $50 to just above $2300 after peaking over $2400 2 weeks ago. Is it a good buy? I don’t know. If I had some spare cash lying around, I’d take a small position (but I don’t). Have pretty much side-stepped the metals this year because of the combined volatility + age issues. I do keep 10% of portfolio in PRPFX, and have for about 20 years. It maintains a 30-35% exposure to metals + miners.
FWIW - While most observers think the miners are underpriced relative to the metal, investing in the miners is a lot more risky. For a conservative small play, I’d stick with something tied to the price of the metal itself rather than going out on a limb with the miners. Lots of such funds. I’ve used precious metals (mix) GLTR before. But there are cheaper ones.

In one of my first posts in this thread, I reported approaching my insurance co re increasing deductible by 2,500 to $7,500. The premium would go down by $80 on a $1,800 renewal which was not much of a decrease. The choices I have are stay with current Co. which does not feature among the best companies for customer satisfaction and the alternative I could find (because not too many are writing new policies) is Mercury at $1500 with below average customer satisfaction.
One of my family members has been with the same insurance company for 30 years. When he bought a 4 unit rental 5 years ago, his agent’s quote was materially higher than another agent’s quote for the same insurance company. His original agent could not match the second agent’s quote. So he has all his policies with the same insurance co. but through two different agencies. That is how strange insurance market is.

@Crash, may be it's different now.
When I first tried to trade after-hours years ago, I was directed to call a number. When the Rep started going over the typical risks, I said I was familiar with all that. The Rep insisted that he must still read through it.
May be it's just a click now.

Many many years ago I was a property and casualty insurance agent. In California we were required to notify the carrier of any accident the insured mentioned to us,,, even if their intention not to file a claim. When writing new business we were required to report anything we were aware of that might impact the risk,,, even if the applicant didn’t disclose it on the application. So when applying for a new policy watch what you say to the agent,,,

PIMIX outperformance was largely due to MBS acquistions in the aftermath of the Global Financial Crisis.
Messrs. Ivascyn and Murata backed up the proverbial truck. Kudos to them!
This may have been a once-in-a-generation opportunity.
PIMIX returns have generally been decent the past five calendar years but they pale compared to the past.
The fund's 5 Yr and 10 Yr trailing returns were in the top 1% of the Multisector Bond category as of 10/31/2017.
PIMIX returned 6.87% and 9.33% during these periods which exceeded the BBgBarc US Universal
benchmark's return by 4.38% and 4.85% respectively.