Good Morning Class,
I'm thinking when we look back at the "markets" (casino?) at the end of the year, we're going to realize that in late January we were facing a very binary outcome...either the majority of us get the jab in the arm (key could be JNJ vaccine (?), there is a antidote by Merck or with the new admin, taxes go up, regulations go up, socialistic spending ramps up and markets (casino?) craters....look at the nonsense with GME Gamestop...you wanna put your life savings into this sheet show?
so...
1) Is it time for Hussman, HSGFX or HSAFX...go ahead and call me crazee but don't call me Shirley but I'm going to step into the Huss with a noticeable investment today.
2) Is it time for high grade rubies? I recall a passionate discussion during the "Financial Crisis" (housing bubble scam) with my CFO and others by the water cooler how you could shove a million dollars of high grade rubies in your sock and no one would know they were there...shared stories from my Grandma how her wealth was confiscated by the democratic socialists under Tito...she was lucky to escape with her life as they usually popped the wealthy
I recall The Gundlach stated he "likes real assets that he can put in the trunk of his car" (paraphrasing)
3) On the other half, I'm thinking the markets might be up 30-40% if the vaccines take effect, we don't have the nutty tweeties anymore and things calm down, economy and jobs pick up etc..so slowly adding to ARTTX on down days
4) I'd rather myself play the "bro-investor" approach by buying stocks like Penn Gaming than Bitcoin...
Like I said, binary, place your bets? Of course, posting for entertainment purposes only, I have no idea what will happen this year, etc.
Best and good health to all,
Baseball Fan

Can't really answer that question without more information regarding investment goals and financial situation. Is this money for retirement or to pay for college for instance? If it's for the former it should be invested aggressively, the latter conservatively as the child is 18 and will need the money right away. Is this 18 year old on his/her own and this is all the money he/she has or is it play money his/her parents can give him? The former should be conservative despite his/her age, the latter aggressive. Does this child have any debts he/she should pay off first? Just because someone is young is not a strong indication of how money is to be invested.

It's not always easy to gauge a fund's style from its sectors, or its countries for that matter. For example, while companies in the financial sector tend to be value investments, that doesn't make something like Robinhood's anticipated IPO a value play.
In any case, according to the FSEAX's latest monthly fact sheet (Dec 31), just 9.19% of the portfolio is in financials, down from 11.07% at the end of November. In comparison, technology accounts for about 1/3 of the fund.
Zhao says that he has "reduced some positions ... that have done well and added to those that are more exposed to the value side [i.e. those that have not done well]. ... it only makes sense to take some profits off the table and begin to plan what might come next."
That sounds more like rebalancing than a change it target weighting. The interview is dated Oct 31. M*'s factor analysis based on the fund's Nov 30th portfolio shows the fund to be more toward the growth side of the value/growth spectrum than in any time over the past five years, and also more growth focused than the category average.
Regarding countries: FSEAX counts the 12% of its portfolio in Korea as EM. Most index providers consider Korea a developed country. MSCI is the laggard, still calling Korea an EM country - because the won isn't traded 24 hours/day, not because its gross national income is too low or its stock market too small (they're not).
Some investors posit that separate international funds are not needed because so many domestic countries derive much of their revenue globally. By that reasoning, what are we to say about TSMC (6% of the fund)? Is it really an EM company? Based in Taiwan, it gets 60% of its revenue from the US.
None of this is meant to suggest that FSEAX isn't good at what it does. Rather it's to suggest taking a closer look at this, or any fund, to understand what it's really doing.

Front Row , Bloomberg, Jeremy Grantham interview video, about 28 minutes

Much of what Grantham says appeals to my old fashioned mind. BUT. The Fed at this point appears to be fully committed to managing the economy. It clearly accepts the inefficiencies that result from the "artificially low interest rates" (per Grantham) it engineers. If the stock market bubble does burst, it will not surprise me if the Fed and Treasury figure out a way justify purchasing stocks. Managing the stock market could be deemed necessary to stabilize the financial system and the economy as well as to minimize hardship among vulnerable labor force participants and those still seeking employment.
https://thestreet.com/opinion/federal-reserve-buy-stocks

There is also a (partially transparent) TRPrice ETF that is equivalent (more or less) to PRDGX (mentioned by Crash, above). The ETF symbol is TDVG. Link below.
https://www.troweprice.com/financial-intermediary/us/en/investments/etfs/dividend-growth-etf.html

The high turnover appears to be more for making profit than protecting against loss. For example:

A funds turnover ratio can vary and rise due to a plethora of causes. Pastor, Stambaugh, and Taylor (2016) suggest that turnover ratios are higher when the market environment falls within certain parameters. Their findings suggest that turnover ratios are higher in an environment where investor sentiment is high, stock volatility is high, and stock market liquidity is low. These market characteristics allow for more profitable opportunities for fund managers, as well as an increase in flows in to the funds as investor sentiment rises. These parameters are similar to that of the recovery period following the time period one which is the time period analyzed in the research by Li, Klein, and Zhao (2012) who find that the highest turnover ratios are found during the time following a financial crisis. Following a time when markets are severely down it is not unexpected that many old positions would be sold off in order to replace them with new more promising positions that arise as the market begins to see positive returns again.

https://scholarsarchive.library.albany.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1013&context=honorscollege_finance
SEC yield is based on the idea of constant yield to maturity. Think about a yield curve where 2 year bonds pay 2% to maturity and one year bonds pay 1%. If you buy a two year bond with 2% YTM, you're getting a total of 4% interest. After a year, the market says that it will pay 1% interest.
The price adjusts accordingly though effectively you're getting 3% for that first year and 1% for the second year. If a fund continually buys two year bonds and sells them off after a year, it achieves a 3% yield. That comes at a cost. The average maturity of that fund is 1.5 years (bonds are all between one and two years from maturity). If the fund held the bonds to maturity, the fund's average maturity would be one year. Shorter maturity and less risk.
Here's a brief paper explaining this phenomenon:
https://www.northerntrust.com/documents/commentary/investment-commentary/maturity-bond-funds-vs-individual-bonds.pdf

The thing I really don’t like about brokers and most financial institutions as far as I can tell is the agreement they make you sign to use arbitration instead of the courts if there are any problems. I could imagine in a hacking or theft situation that could be really problematic because arbitration in the U.S. generally sucks for consumers.

I'll first reiterate that if there's a specific fund that you want, there's a good chance that Firstrade has it with no brokerage-charged commission and that it may have a lower min than one would find elsewhere.
That said, there are a lot of other statements that seem to be misunderstandings or misleading; or I don't understand.
Every MF on the platform is NTF.
If NTF means "no commission", that's true. But if it means no fee including no load, that doesn't appear to be the case. (Note that load funds are generally commission-free everywhere even though you may still have to pay the load.)
Consider Praxis Genesis Growth Fund. It has only one share class, MGAFX. When I log in to Firstrade, go to the customer fund screener, check Fund Family (Praxis), and check Load Type (Load), this fund along with a few others shows up. (It does not show up if I select no load instead of load to screen.)
FWIW, it appears to be NTF (really NTF, i.e. load-waived) at TD Ameritrade.
Firstrade does sell this fund: I go to my mutual fund trading page (from the "Trading" drop down, select "Mutual Funds") and enter MGAFX. It says that at Firstrade the fund has a $1K min and three day settlement. Since I closed my account years ago I can't actually test a trade.
The site is quirky in that the M* info page shows the normal 50,000 minimum [for VWIAX] but on the buy ticket the minimums change to $500
Same as for me, so that's evidence that I'm looking at the same page when looking up VWIAX or MGAFX. Note that if one enters VWELX or VWENX one sees that Wellington is not open to new investors at Firstrade. But if you could open VWENX at Firstrade, you'd only need $500.
Old joke: Customer - the guy down the street is selling the same thing at half the price
Shopkeeper - why don't you go down the street and buy it there?
Customer - he doesn't have any left
after becoming a customer and opening an account (no minimum) that number became 11,090 no load NTF funds when you are signed into the site and click on the no load fund list and they are all listed as such.
Yet the customer screener shows "just" 9,903 no load share classes. In addition, it shows 6,316 load share classes. To borrow from Graeme Edge of the Moody Blues: which is right and which is an illusion?. Buffalo Springfield also comes to mind.
I re-balance twice yearly. Also I prefer to reapportion monthly dividends/gains to positions of my own choice based on the economy, my current financial and tax situation or cash needs. Typically I would do about 40 buys/sells a year. At Fidelity about $800-1000/yr
At Fidelity, I can add to a TF position for $5 and sell for $0. 20 buys and 20 sells would run me $100 bucks.
I'm glad you mentioned tax situation. Fidelity has had online cost basis services - specific lot identification and changing default disposal method - down pat for decades. These days, most other brokerages make it easy as well. All I've found so far at Firstrade is: "Please contact your broker if you wish to change the default tax-relief method for your account or specify different tax lots for liquidation".
https://www.firstrade.com/content/en-us/accounts/taxcenter/?h=costbasis
Though few in number, Firstrade does have some nickel and dime fees. It charges $15 (or $50) for check printing. It doesn't appear to provide ATM rebates and charges 3% for foreign transactions after the first one each month. (BTW, Fidelity's debit card is provided by PNC bank, not UMB.)
Lewis asked about security against hacking. A question worth thinking about considering that I was able to log in years after closing my account by just looking up my old login/passwd/pin in my home files. The system didn't suggest that I might want to change my password (no password aging).
It doesn't seem to offer two factor authentication, though it claims that a PIN constitutes "an additional factor". It does not.

there are three generally recognized factors for authentication: something you know (such as a password), something you have (such as a hardware token or cell phone), and something you are (such as your fingerprint). Two-factor means the system is using two of these options."

https://www.pcmag.com/how-to/two-factor-authentication-who-has-it-and-how-to-set-it-up
As near as I can tell, Firstrade doesn't provide secure email.
https://www.firstrade.com/content/en-us/customerservice/contactus
(The internal contact page has a different URL but the same info.)
Firstrade does meet legal requirements on security but doesn't seem to go beyond that.

We maintain physical, electronic, and procedural safeguards that comply with federal standards to guard your personal information. We protect your account information by placing it on the secure portion of our website and use industrial strength firewalls and encryption technology to protect personal information on our computer systems.

https://www.firstrade.com/content/en-us/customerservice/onlinesecurity/onlineprotectionguarantee
Note that SIPC insurance (or excess insurance) only kicks in when a brokerage is in financial trouble or filing bankruptcy. It doesn't cover run of the mill hacking or identity theft.
Firstrade, as with other brokerages (e.g. Fidelity), guarantees to cover your direct losses. This guarantee "does not include any tax consequences, legal fees and expenses, or any consequential, lost opportunity, special, indirect, incidental, punitive, exemplary or non-monetary damages."

The amount of federal debt held by the public totals more than $21 trillion, magnitudes above the $5.3 trillion debt carried by the country in the fourth quarter of 2008. Almost $4 trillion was added to the debt following the Trump administration’s efforts on the Coronavirus Aid, Relief, and Economic Security (CARES) Act.
But the former Fed chair commented that because of near-zero short-term interest rates, the total interest burden as a share of GDP is lower now than it was before the financial crisis in 2008.
It looks t me , a fine line to walk .
https://finance.yahoo.com/news/treasury-nominee-janet-yellen-outlines-priorities-under-biden-administration-185327249.html
Stay Safe, Derf

Think of it this way: Inflation can be good for the seller and bad for the buyer. Investors, most of whom are high net worth, are the buyers of financial assets. But who is the seller in this case--the issuers of stocks and bonds. In the case of securitized assets for say credit cards, homes or auto loans, the sellers backing the issuers are people taking out loans and the more expensive the financial asset is for the buyer, the cheaper it is for the seller or issuer or in this case the debtor to finance their car or house or purchases or even their new businesses. Although sellers of equity are only corporations, there are advantages to having asset inflation there too, but to a lesser degree. High priced equity can be used to finance R&D or various other forms of growth in the right executive hands. Unfortunately, most CEOs haven't proven to be good long-term capital allocators and too often use their expensive equity to make equally expensive acquisitions, or to pay themselves rich bonuses.

Except it is not the inflation most people care about or should care about: https://financialpost.com/investing/how-americas-1-came-to-dominate-stock-ownership

The richest 1 per cent of Americans now account for more than half the value of equities owned by U.S. households, according to Goldman Sachs....As of September 2019, the bottom 90 per cent owned US$4.6 trillion of equities, or 12 per cent of the total, the analysts noted.

Moreover, asset price inflation in bonds one could argue is good for the bottom 90% who more often have outstanding debt than own financial securities in any significant amount. Debt with low interest rates saves them money. The people low yielding high priced debt hurts the most are bankers, i.e., creditors.

Same posters, same distractions for years, nothing new. Expect it to continue.
BT2020 or BigTom have been following my posts for years over 3 different sites where he tries to find anything(even one word) wrong and/or one number out of order and claim...haha, this time I got you...just, laughable.
stillers claimed years ago that I will never retire, I will never have enough, and I will never make it...the fun continues.
All I did is presented a fund and its performance and SD. I don't owe you anything more. I'm not anybody's financial advisor or get paid by anyone. It's common sense to do your own due diligence regardless if I mentioned it or not. This is a message board where we post ideas. It doesn't matter if I made the warning in the first post or third post. Of course, I knew about the leverage, it's the first thing you see when you look at M* holdings(link) but as usual, you look at any word I post for anything for a gotcha...again, old news...mmm...maybe jealousy, after all, your predictions were far from the truth.

Recently read a Forbes article about this ETF. Curious if others are familiar. I’m going to start doing a little research. Stated goal is to provide a ‘steady’ 7% return utilizing a mixture of financial instruments. I realize the ETF doesn’t not have a long track record.

For anyone with an interest, here are a couple more links:
1. Spectrum Investment Advisors - archive of links to quarterly Newsletters:
https://client.spectruminvestor.com/189/quarterly-newsletters/2020-newsletters
2. Spectrum Financial Inc. - Archive of links to the quarter Full Spectrum newsletter. Scroll down the page to get to the archived links:
https://investspectrum.com/newsletter.cshtml

I re-balance twice yearly. Also I prefer to reapportion monthly dividends/gains to positions of my own choice based on the economy, my current financial and tax situation or cash needs. Typically I would do about 40 buys/sells a year. At Wellstrade that would have been $1,600/yr. At Fidelity about $800-1000/yr. Same at Vanguard. A free cash management account with checks/ATM card is available with 25K or more in the account, which I have. With the greater availability of cheaper institutional/advisor class funds and all no load funds (over 12,000) being NTF this was a no brainer for me. As always ,each to his/her own. I realized great cost savings and I wanted to share this ,with those who might be interested.

I like Firstrade for the access it provides to some institutional/advisor class shares, especially without charging a transaction fee. I used it for this purpose several years ago; I'll wager I'm the only one here to have walked into its office, both before and after it moved.
But it is a barebones operation. Ultimately I found that even as a buy-and-hold investor the access to a small incremental number of funds unavailable elsewhere wasn't worth the hassle of having one more account to deal with.
Firstrade labels only some of its funds NTF. I'm guessing that means that like other brokerages (e.g. Schwab) it receives fees from these funds for servicing accounts. You'll find links to its separate lists of Load Funds, No Load Funds, and NTF funds next to the fund search box near the top of this page.
True, it currently charges no commission (transaction fee) for any of them. But I can't find a statement that it waives loads on any fund in its load list. Take PIMCO for example.
All the PIMCO A shares such as PIMAX are on the load fund list (Type = LOAD). It at least appears that one would pay a load for these shares, just as one would at Fidelity. Unfortunately, Firstrade does not sell PIMCO Institutional class shares such as PIMIX.
Speaking of WellsTrade, it looks like PIMIX is available there with no transaction fee and no minimum. I walked away from WT years ago for a variety of reasons and have never looked back. So this is not a recommendation to consider them.

The input thus far is very much appreciated. Additional thoughts are welcomed. FTEC is an excellent choice, too; as we also invest in this etf. @Old_Joe , yes; Ted would state that QQQ is the one. @davidrmoran , yes, perhaps Ted would also suggest these. If there were a larger dollar amount available, I would also be tempted to suggest some of the money be split into FSMEX or IHI (an eft twin) for direct exposure to medical tech.
SPY and most related indexes that track the SP-500 are a blended U.S. equity position. I do not consider this a poor choice for many portfolios; but consider an investment in QQQ or similar to be a better fit for a young investor. SPY type funds do represent a much larger sample of U.S. equity; but one also finds sectors of this area that can be a drag on performance, too. Over the past several years, financials and energy have been brakes on performance. But, the recent inclusion of TESLA and other ongoing changes will continue to affect this mix.
SPY

Sectors	Fund %	Cat %
Basic Materials	2.42	2.61
Consumer Cyclical	12.66	11.17
Financial Services	13.90	13.42
Real Estate	2.29	2.47
Communication Services	10.26	10.21
Energy	2.60	1.90
Industrials	8.83	10.11
Technology	23.82	22.81
Consumer Defensive	6.78	7.99
Healthcare	13.77	14.76
Utilities	2.67	2.54

QQQ
With this is a much smaller sampling of U.S. equity (100 companies), but oriented to growth; but using market capitalization size to establish the holdings and percent. The prospectus indicates that the holdings percentage may be and are adjusted throughout any given time period.

Information Technology	47.90%
Consumer Discretionary	19.29%
Communication Services	18.22%
Health Care	6.39%
Consumer Staples	5.15%
Industrials	1.88%
Utilities	0.96%

Industry exposure:

Software	15.27%
Semiconductors & Semiconductor Equipment	13.96%
Technology Hardware, Storage & Peripherals	12.37%
Internet & Direct Marketing Retail	11.95%
Interactive Media & Services	10.35%
IT Services	4.59%
Automobiles	4.43%
Biotechnology	3.98%
Media	3.39%
Entertainment	3.11%

Okay, lots of investment choices these days.
Overview: two late 30's siblings have been provided with starter money ($2,000) for a Roth IRA. This was done to get their arse's out of the barn about investments. Neither have had thought patterns about why it may be of future benefit to invest even $100 a month into an available 401k plan. We all know these stories.
They both have solid employment, so they may use this free money for an investment.
I was contacted today that these two finally opened a Roth account at Fidelity, after seven months of sitting on the free money in a bank account.
An initial discussion 7 months ago offered my suggestion of the initial monies going into QQQ, as a starting point.
QQQ:

The Index is a modified capitalization-weighted index of securities issued by100 of the largest non-financial companies listed on the NASDAQ Global Select orNASDAQ Global Market tier of NASDAQ (see “The Index”).

QQQ is also as inexpensive as one may have for this sector, at .20 ER.
Have you another parking place to suggest for this money?
Thank you and take care,
Catch

"Finance is a minefield that few navigate without getting maimed. It’s replete with mirages—what you see is often not what you get. Our instincts hurt us more often than they protect us. Actions that are sensible in every other realm of life lead us astray in finance." Link

Yeah, I know. Been kicking myself for taking a quick 5K profit and running. That's why I never post financial advice here. Anyone following my advice would likely come looking to kill me.