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Here's a statement of the obvious: The opinions expressed here are those of the participants, not those of the Mutual Fund Observer. We cannot vouch for the accuracy or appropriateness of any of it, though we do encourage civility and good humor.

I'm Not Sure Wood at ARK ETF Knows What "Soul Searching" Really Is
https://www.nationandstate.com/2022/01/10/arkks-investors-have-in-aggregate-lost-money/
Excerpt from above: “Morningstar doesn’t help. Even now, with a lifetime negative P&L, ARKK has four stars and is the #1 ranked fund over five years. Morningstar’s rankings are all based on quantitative data, presumably to eliminate any analyst judgment. But you might think that the trajectory of ARKK’s cumulative profits would be worth considering. It’s hard to identify much useful for investors here, although Morningstar rankings do drive fund flows which generally benefits managers.”
What I’m wondering about is litigation? This is beginning to approach or exceed the disaster of Oppenheimer’s Champion Income Fund in 2008. There was successful litigation against Oppenheimer Funds following that fiasco. An internet search turned up nothing. If Wood has made positive public pronouncements unwittingly, however, it could strengthen a case.

hank January 2022 in Fund Discussions
I'm Not Sure Wood at ARK ETF Knows What "Soul Searching" Really Is
I guess we'll know in 5 years. Right now her largest position in ARKW (what I own along with ARKG) is coin base just moving past Tesla. Coin is down 23% just like ARKW. I can easily see big gains for Coin if Crypto is a real thing, and I think it is. Josh Brown (who I think is terrific) is all in. I am buying BITQ every dip, so far, no good, but 5 years is a long time.

wxman123 January 2022 in Fund Discussions
I'm Not Sure Wood at ARK ETF Knows What "Soul Searching" Really Is
I agree with @wxman123 to the extent than the early investors in ARKK did very well. Wonder how many piled in a year ago, however?
I believe WSJ’s Zweig did a story on this and as is often the case most people get into speculative funds after the initial surge and then lose money. Surely, this is not the first speculative investment fund to lose a lot so it doesn’t deserve that criticism. However, one difference here is the manager publicly boasting the portfolio is set to deliver 40% annualized over the next five years even as investors were already hurting this December 9. Since that date, I believe the fund is down another 25%. So anyone who listened just lost a quarter of their investment in a few weeks. It is those shareholders I feel for and the reason for the initial link. Performance chasing should be discouraged and encouraging unrealistic future performance expectations—40% a year for five years is unrealistic—deserves some response.

LewisBraham January 2022 in Fund Discussions
RLSFX
I have fiddled around with L?S funds off and on for years, but never had much success. I usually sell them if they loose 10 to 15%
LSOFX did pretty well last year and is more consistent
David reviewed LSOFX a couple of years ago
https://www.mutualfundobserver.com/2018/07/ls-opportunity-fund-lsofx/#more-11890

sma3 January 2022 in Fund Discussions
GMO: Let the Wild Rumpus Begin - Superbubble
To your point, Mr. Grantham is very knowledgeable and articulate.
However, his market prognostications have been wrong for many years now.
I don't make investment decisions based on statements from "experts" or "market gurus."

Observant1 January 2022 in Fund Discussions
In times like this,
Interesting fund is SFHYX but after so many years it’s assets under management are minuscule. Both Marketwatch and CNBC report AUM of 9.7 m. M* shows 278m. You would think more people would have discovered it. Perhaps the fees and turnover are turnoffs?

larryB January 2022 in Fund Discussions
TRP ridiculousness
I moved our TRP accounts to Fidelity last year due to declining customer service. We had invested with TRP for about 30 years. I would have moved sooner but was holding out on the chance that PRWCX would open to new investors again, but finally decided it was wasn’t worth it. We still have money invested in a number of TRP funds, but they are housed in my Fidelity account and I may switch some of the TRP funds to other options.
+1. I quite understand!

Crash January 2022 in Other Investing
TRP ridiculousness
NOTE: perhaps I do not understand the meaning of your statement.
I would like to have the freedom to buy and sell in small bunches for profit without triggering additional IRA withdrawals
If one has a large enough positive total return(s) in an IRA during a calendar year, then the total increased value of the IRA would cause your required RMD to be larger. You can have 20 trades or whatever in an IRA and may or may not have any profit in a calendar year. The trades would NOT trigger a withdrawal; as this activity is within a tax sheltered account.
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Hey, @catch22
I wasn't very clear. I just meant to say that I like the system I've come up with: take a habitual, annual, single chunk from the T-IRA, making sure to keep it small enough so that I will continue not to have to owe any federal tax at all. It's been that way for several years. And Hawaii will give me a pretty decent renter's credit, too. In addition, just to keep things separate and neat and trim and segregated, I want the freedom to play with some money in a taxable account----- even though I will owe no tax, since the amounts will be miniscule.
@hank, that's great to know, too.
@stayCalm, glad for that assurance, also!
I see @tarwheel has chimed in. I'll go read that one now.

Crash January 2022 in Other Investing
TRP ridiculousness
I moved our TRP accounts to Fidelity last year due to declining customer service. We had invested with TRP for about 30 years. I would have moved sooner but was holding out on the chance that PRWCX would open to new investors again, but finally decided it was wasn’t worth it. We still have money invested in a number of TRP funds, but they are housed in my Fidelity account and I may switch some of the TRP funds to other options.

Tarwheel January 2022 in Other Investing
TRP ridiculousness
Crash, you've likely read here over the years the discussions about Fido, Schwab, TRP, Vanguard, etc.
I'm biased with Fido, as our investment accounts started with them in 1978. Fully our decision after investigation. We also have some experience with Schwab (now closed) that was offered via an employee plan.
Once the account is set-up online, I'd be free to get into and out of a bunch of mutual funds from a bunch of different Houses--- even in a T-IRA, yes?
YES !!!
--- How many funds does Fidelity offer?
Over 10,000 funds from Fidelity & other companies. Well, I suppose; if one includes all of the share classes offered. BUT, needless to say; you'll have an overwhelming choice of funds from different houses, as well as just about any individual stock or bond you'd like to purchase.
Is $200+K too small for them to worry about? Is that amount so small that it would restrict my options if I used a brokerage?
NO!!! I've helped several over the years set up Roth accts. for them and their kids. Start with $100...........cool, no problem.
--- A Fido account (IRA in your case) for buy/sell of funds, etf's, stocks, etc. has a cash account attached. The cash acct. Not knowing your circumstance for money going into a new acct.; the monies generally would "land" in the cash area of your IRA acct. From there you may buy whatever, with the transaction being inside of the IRA. This in itself is a form of "brokerage" within the IRA acct. Buys and sells move from/to the core cash acct. in the IRA........the core cash acct. EX: $10,000 setting in the core cash and you buy $5,000 of fund, etf, or stock of "X". You now have $5K remaining in core cash (for future buys) and $5K in whatever you purchased. The reverse would take place upon the sale of investment "X"........the proceeds of the sale would move back into the core cash area of your IRA.
NOTE: Fido funds have no minimum purchase...........so, $100 or whatever with get you into the door. This does not apply to other fund houses you may want to buy.
NOTE 2: We have a Fido brokerage acct. (taxable acct.), but it has little use over many years. This taxable brokerage acct. is what we will use when the big LOTTO win happens. :)
Small summary: A stand-alone brokerage is NOT mandatory to have a full functioning IRA account for all buy/sell with Fido; as noted in the example.
FIDO, HONO. I would expect a full knowledge team in place at this office. Make a list of questions and be patient, eh?
FIDO house overview This page has several "blue" tabs for selecting a Fido funds investment area....click a few for a view of offerings.
Lastly, over the many years here; you have seen many ticker symbols. With a few exceptions, you'd likely be able to buy any one of those via your IRA account.
MFO folks........please revise, as needed; any info I have provided here. TY.
Time to go exploring, eh?
Catch

catch22 January 2022 in Other Investing
7 bear market funds
SPD is one of the new Simplify ETFs with complicated strategies. The web page has little information but the theory should work and is very quantitatively documented. I have not tried calling them to get a little better description of potential ups an downs (Barrons ( Sept 6 2021) said SPD's "protection would be minimal until there is a selloff of 30 to 40% " although the author had no data to back her up. It depends on the structure of the puts which also change as they get closer to exploration.
Unfortunately it is hard to find specific goals in any of the material from these funds. TAIL has been running for several years, but there is little description of what to expect
The "Buffered ETFs " seem to be more specific, as they have a specific month in their name and focus on the next 12 months.
IT taks a lot of work to sort these things out

sma3 January 2022 in Fund Discussions
TRP ridiculousness
A simple question. Non-account specific. A question that anyone at their end should be able to answer. If you could GET THROUGH to anyone. At last, in desperation, I did. He was no help. Human, alright--- but prevented by his system and protocols from doing anything for me. Wrong department. And apparently prevented by the rules he must follow from simply THINKING.
TRP has very well hidden their corporate phone lines, too. NO ONE IS HOME. Why would I attempt to call CORPORATE? Because "customer service" is not servicing customers.
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I've read here on the board about references to the fact that TRP must have farmed out the Customer Rage and Aggravation lines to some Call Center somewhere. I don't doubt it. ... Clearly they are too big for their britches, these days. I see that they've just acquired some other investment outfit too, by the way. The culture has changed. No shareholder deserves this kind of treatment.
I'm aware that customer "service" at Vanguard is equally as bad, so I won't go THERE. Years ago, some guy at Matthews got up on the wrong side of the bed, and very quickly, they found themselves without my money.
...I could--- as most of the rest of you do--- use a brokerage. There are offices for all the famous ones here in this city. But unless I NEEDED to do it, there'd be normally no reason to have to do things in person. Transferring via a direct rollover involves some basic paperwork by remote-control between offices. I've done THAT before. The TRP brokerage? In which I have a tiny amount invested? I'll just wait for my stock to climb out of its hole. Today is a good day, despite the rest of the Markets.
This is a serious question: I'm hoping to get input from any of you others about Fund Houses you are HAPPY with in terms of customer service. And if you wouldn't mind: how do the people get paid at those brokers like Schwab or Fidelity? Is $200+K too small for them to worry about? Is that amount so small that it would restrict my options if I used a brokerage? I'm grateful ahead of time for replies. Thanks. Who's got the skinny?
I'll wait, and choose my moment to exit TRP when it's more advantageous.
*I just got a call-back from them! That's funny: when that previous fellow disconnected me, there was no indication that such a thing would happen. And of course, she wanted name and address. OK.
...Oh, but wait: I need your investor number or account number.
How about my Social? How DIFFICULT does this need to BE? I gave her my shoe size, hat size and physical location on the WEST side of the street, too. Jesus H. Christ.
Well, then... can you verify your account balance? I recalled the approx. total and gave it to her.... OK, yes: they must verify identity. But my question did not even involve any particulars about my account. I offered to give her my SS. But that wasn't good enough, either. What a cluster-fuck. And after 25 minutes and multiple attempts to get to a human who was empowered and willing to listen and give me an answer, she was able to answer my question. In three seconds.
NOTHING should be THIS difficult.
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Crash January 2022 in Other Investing
TIPS,,,,, can anyone explain price decline YTD
I think that OP @larryB is now more puzzled about TIPS.
BTW, the Fincash site you quote shows wrong denominator for Macaulay Duration - it should the the sum of the cash flows (not the bond price), so the weighting is indeed by the present values of cash flows, not by times. The result is duration in years (or whatever periods used) and weights are dimensionless fractions of PVs of cash flows. I have checked this with some finance books and also the Wiki,
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bond_duration
Interest rate sensitivity is a good and practical approximation of Macaulay Duration, and there isn't much difference between the two.
Anyway, TIPS are rather complex in how they behave when held individually vs through funds (OEFs, ETFs). Most people holding those don't appreciate those complexity and are often surprised by results.

yogibearbull January 2022 in Fund Discussions
TIPS,,,,, can anyone explain price decline YTD
(Macaulay) duration is the time weighted sum of cash flow present values normalized by dividing by the bond price.

https://www.fincash.com/l/basic/macaulay-duration
What you were using was modified duration (or effective duration), i.e. sensitivity to interest rates:
TIPS have higher durations than Treasuries of comparable maturities, so they are hit worse from rising rates.
Modified duration is the derivative of present value (PV) with respect to rates (again, normalized by dividing by bond price, i.e. PV). That turns out to be Macaulay duration divided by (1+r) where r is the discount rate per coupon period.
This is easy to see. Start with the PV formula:

After dividing by the bond price, differentiating with respect to i (rate) gives:
{[(-1 x PMT1/(1+i)¹) + (-2 x PMT2 /(1+i)²) + ...)] / BondPrice} / (1 + i) =
- ( timeWeightedCashFlowPVs / BondPrice ) / (1+i)
- MacaulayDuration / (1 + i)
Related to, but not the same thing as Macaulay duration.
Still, that doesn't address your more significant assertion that TIPS' duration (whatever the form) is longer because cash isn't paid out until maturity. IOW, that TIPS are effectively zero coupon bonds.
With a traditional CD, interest compounds at a fixed rate. So calculating APY and YTM is easy. In fact, all that really matters (except for tax purposes) is the final value of that CD. You could call it a zero since you don't get the cash flows until maturity.
Still, there are interest payments; you can see it in the balance reported for your CD. The risk with fixed rate CDs (as with zero coupon bonds) is that interest rates may rise and you can't deposit those interest payments at the new higher rates.
If the bank did allow you to draw the interest payments and redeposit them at higher rates, that CD would be more valuable to you. It's not that you're literally getting your hands on the cash, it's that you're able to get current (higher) market rates on the interest as it is credited.
Same with TIPS. You don't get your hands on the inflation adjustments. But you see them in your balance (i.e. "principal amount"). And if inflation rates go up, that new balance benefits from the higher rates.
In this regard, TIPS work even better than redepositing the CD interest or reinvesting bond coupon payments. With the CD or the fixed rate coupon bond, only the interest payments receive higher rates going forward. With the TIPS, the original principal (as well as the inflation "adjustments") receive the benefit of higher rates.
With respect to inflation, TIPS are floating rate bonds, and as such have zero duration.
I started with the statement: "The relationship between inflation adjusted (real) durations and nominal durations is somewhat complex." This may help (or further confuse):
Nominal bonds are generally considered to have one duration (the sensitivity of the bond's price to a change in its nominal yield or interest rate), but inflation-indexed bonds, such as Treasury Inflation-Indexed Securities (formerly, Treasury Inflation-Protected Securities, TIPS), may be regarded as having two durations: Di, the sensitivity of the bond's price to a change in inflation, and Dr, the sensitivity of the bond's price to a change in real interest rates.
For a nominal bond, whether a change in yield was caused by a change in inflation expectations or a change in the real interest rate does not matter; the effect on the bond's price is essentially the same either way. But for a TIPS bond, an increase in inflation does not affect the bond's price because the change in the cash flows in the numerator (of the equation for discounted cash flow analysis) is indexed to inflation and the discount rate in the denominator has also been increased by the same change in the expected inflation rate. Thus, the TIPS bond has an "inflation duration" of zero. A change in real interest rates, however, affects the price of a TIPS bond much as it does the price of a nominal bond, so a long-term TIPS bond has a long real-interest-rate duration—say, 15 years.
https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.2469/faj.v60.n5.2656
That is why Vanguard moved to short term TIPS.

msf January 2022 in Fund Discussions
What is COVID-19? Two years ago at MFO.....
Two years ago: I don't know where at this forum, but I too, noted Covid on Jan. 21, 2020. I still have pics in my phone from the John Hopkins site when they began posting global Covid data. Anyway, you may choose to read some of the posts in this thread.
NOTE: the MFO link below contains 3 sections. The link goes to page 3, and I can't adjust this fact. Click the number 1 (1,2,3; just to the top right of the text area ) to go to the beginning of the post.
From the original post:
I wrote on Jan. 21:
As to a "black swan" or what could also be named as an excuse to take some profits by the big market players; IS IF.......and likely a much to do about nothing, is the monitoring of the corona virus in China and other countries in the area.
If this virus were to become very wide spread and deadly; well, who knows, eh?
Market reports (of course) are already headlining that this virus could trigger a markets sell-off.
I can not disagree that if a global problem with any virus became serious enough; markets would be affected.
Of concern to the CDC, WHO and other health organizations at this time, is the beginning of the lunar new year period; which always involves escalated travel volumes by millions of Chinese, both domestic and foreign travel.

MFO February 2020
Remain curious,
Catch

catch22 January 2022 in Other Investing
FIVE GEE
The FCC surely knows exactly what kinds of services are assigned to use every part of the radio frequency spectrum, from the lowest frequencies (just below the AM broadcast band) to the highest. (I'm not certain what that high limit is these days, as I've been retired as a radio tech for some years now, and they keep finding uses for higher and higher frequencies.)
The point here is that the FCC certainly knew well before the 5G C-Band was auctioned/assigned to the telcos that some of those frequencies were already in use for aviation purposes. That's their job. It's incomprehensible to me how all of this was allowed to happen, presumably without coordination between the FCC and the FAA.
Evidently this was dealt with properly in at least some European countries, since we're being told that France, for example, is using 5G near airports with no problems.
Something is really smelly here.

Old_Joe January 2022 in Other Investing
GMO: Let the Wild Rumpus Begin - Superbubble
If he says it enough times (and he has) one of these days he is bound to be right. Personally, I'm glad I didn't listen to him seven or ten years ago.

sfnative January 2022 in Fund Discussions
TIPS,,,,, can anyone explain price decline YTD
TIPS have higher durations than Treasuries of comparable maturities, so they are hit worse from rising rates. Almost 25% of TIPS are held by the Fed, a price-insensitive buyer. And TIPS funds behave quite differently from individually held TIPS to maturity There is confusion on how the TIPS funds report 30-day SEC yield - some report only real 30-day yield, others add CPI to it.
Many TDFs do include TIPS. Vanguard TDFs switched from IT-TIPS (too volatile) to ST-TIPS (to capture most of the inflation effects) years ago.
(Edited post from another MFO thread)

yogibearbull January 2022 in Fund Discussions
PING CATCH
Hi Puddnhead,
Ya want me to get naked in front of everyone with my portfolio, eh? :)
A few notes: At this time, all of our market holdings are either T-IRA or Roth accounts, so any position changes do not involve taxation considerations. We generally do not hold more that 5 investments at any given time, with 10 being a maximum; as beyond this number tends to not have a meaningful impact (positive or negative) upon a portfolio. An EXCEPTION would be: if one wants 25% of a portfolio to be in health related; and can find 3-5 funds/etf's that don't have a lot of overlap; this would be okay.
Our house continues to favor health and technology. FSMEX, IMHO; is a fund that favors both of these areas. FSPHX, FHLC and similar funds are more broad based health funds. Although the ARK funds, ARKK in particular; has a lot of rocky performance and bad press at this time; the ARKG etf has become fairly inexpensive at this time and travels into another favorable long term area (IMHO) of medicine/health/tech. (genomics and related). Some of these companies will fail, but others will prosper and/or become the targets of M&A.
Generally, one can expect decent distributions (div's, cap gains) from the healthcare area. So, a bonus, eh?
AND YES, health care funds have taken a hit with much else, for 2022.
Now: We no longer have FSPHX, which was replaced several years ago with FHLC.
FHLC is 21% of the total portfolio
FSMEX is 15% of the total portfolio
You mentioned a poor year....2021....for health. I'm okay with the 2021 total returns shown in the below chart.
CHART of FSPHX, FSMEX and FHLC (Fido health etf) for 2021.
I've sure as heck forgotten something to jabber about, for this post.
Remain curious,
Catch

catch22 January 2022 in Fund Discussions
I'm Not Sure Wood at ARK ETF Knows What "Soul Searching" Really Is
@MikeM - They don’t loose the match (as I recall from family member 30 years back). But they loose the potential invested growth of that $$ - albeit the “borrower” does pay interest on the loan. I don’t know how the government can force the individual to repay it. Slapping on penalties for failure to repay (or placing a lien on his home) would make the individual’s situation more dire.
I can’t prove that any 401K participants have ever taken unreasonable risk with their invested money. (There are of course antidotal accounts.) Logic alone would suggest that:
(1) We know a large number of working age population suffer from gambling addiction.
(2) That shows these people do not manage their available cash / lines of credit responsibly.
(3) It would be illogical to assume that these people who can’t manage day to day finance effectively somehow behave more responsibly managing funds earmarked for 30 or 40 years into the future.
I did find that TIAA-CREF puts the % of workers who borrow at least once from their plan at nearly 30%.
Thanks for joining in Mike.

hank January 2022 in Fund Discussions