“For a 'gambler at heart', who likes NEAR and is concerned about inflation, why not VTAPX? It seems to correlate pretty strongly with NEAR over the recent cycle w a bit more volatility and a good bit higher return. Plus, you get bonus inflation protection…”
Thanks, I’ll stay where I am. My cash allocation (mainly NEAR) is currently just 14% of portfolio. 86% is already invested in assets designed to provide “inflation protection”. That includes equities, commodities, REITs, multi-asset and tactical allocation funds - plus a few leveraged income-focused CEFs.
In 2022 VTAPX lost nearly 3% while NEAR gained a little. To me the latter is a better cash substitute. Cash should not experience down-years. Certainly VTAPX is a great fund and may meet your needs. For a very conservative investor who wanted to throw a whole lot at it, it might provide adequate inflation protection - but don’t count on it. And you are correct that over 10 years VTAPX has outperformed NEAR (by about 0.34% on an annual return basis).
A gambler isn’t reckless. What he does is weigh probabilities and attempt to derive intelligent decisions based on them. Investing is a lot like that.

“Since the early 2000s, pension funds have increasingly added private assets to their investments.”
“Private assets didn’t measurably improve pensions’ returns, says JP Aubry, associate director
of research at the Center for Retirement Research at Boston College, who conducted a study on them.
Before the financial crisis of 2008-09, they outperformed broad market, passive strategies slightly,
while they underperformed after.”
“Private assets might have a certain cachet, but public markets work just fine,
says Jason Kephart, senior principal, multi-asset manager research at Morningstar.
'People who have invested in public markets over the last 15 years have done well.'”
https://www.msn.com/en-us/money/economy/bitcoin-private-equity-and-other-alt-investments-are-coming-for-your-401-k-what-could-go-wrong/ar-AA1K77IJ

A firm I read believes that if DJT fires Powell, and forces the fed rate down to 1.5, ALL deficit funding will be short term with disastrous consequences for LT debt. While there will be a surge in economic activity, inflation will soon blow up, stocks crater and only Gold and hard assets will out preform
" The Bond Market will Riot"

But do we have proof that long term rates will go up? TNX has mostly sat under 4% for 20 years. If employers don’t raise prices, but stop hiring, maybe little inflation and long rates stay same? Tariffs could be used to encourage bond buying?

Hank,
Thanks for detailed breakdown, never had enough time to research CEFs, seemed opaque. The affable billionaire Mario seems to have done ok last few years. But seems to trade like a convertible fund. But correlation with SPY is low, so a good metric:
* 1-Year Correlation: 0.28
* 3-Year Correlation: 0.41
* 5-Year Correlation: 0.46

FD1000,
I said crypto is very risky, probably 5-10% max in portfolio. Just pointing out like you implied that politics should not factor into investing decision. Many people have missed out on biggest gains of last year because (maybe in part at least) they don’t like politics of people in the space (crypto, Palantir, Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac).
I have advocated more than 12 years ago that Treasury should take very small amount from bond sales and put into S&P 500 - very radical at the time but President just this year is talking about setting up a sovereign wealth fund.

Gemini won’t reveal source for data, but
https://www.tiingo.com/products/end-of-day-stock-price-data
$30/month
Claims to have data from 1970s, then can have AI write Python code to generate output needed.

They offer a pretty generous free subscription as well. Access to all of their data (all stocks, funds, 30+ years of historical data), but limited in quantity: 500 unique symbols per month, 50 queries per hour, 1000 queries per day.
Quality of data looks very good. I ran a query on VFIAX between 2/19/20 and 3/23/20 inclusive (max drawdown dates) to compare with M* and the Gemini figure given above (-33.72%).
M* chart gives -33.80%, exactly what one gets using Tingo's (10 digit precision) adjusted prices. Tingo also gives a more precise div figure for March 9 ($1.1794/share) than I've been able to find elsewhere. Using that div figure I was able to validate Tingo's adjusted price for March 9th.
In contrast, Yahoo's adjusted price for that date seemed off a little. And using Yahoo's (two decimal place) adjusted price figures for the drawdown endpoints produced a drawdown of -33.83%, vs. Tingo's and M*'s -33.80%. (We already knew that Yahoo's rounding results in inaccuracies.)
I also found that if one compounded the daily gains (after accounting for the div on March 9) the result is also -33.80% so long as one uses at least five decimal places of precision. Rounding each day's gain (or loss) to 4 decimal places resulted in a perceived loss of -33.82%.
All in all, Tingo seems to be both very accurate (not giving wrong values) and very precise (lots of decimal places). Easy to use - output in JSON and csv format.

Smart people buy Toyota vehicles and hold them for 15+ years.

Has been easy in California to keep cars for long term. Don’t know about newer cars.
We had Camry V6 250,000 miles but totaled in accident. Body shop guy did minor fix and gave to his mom.
Another Toyota we had for 18 years with 175,000 miles and sold for $3,000 this year. We have another 22 year old Lexus V8 still running strong with 235,000 miles.
Had coworker who retired with same car he drive on in first day of work - 1990 Sentra with 300,000 miles. Another guy’s Corolla only lasted 400,000 miles.
But the pièce de résistance goes to guy who has 800,000 plus miles on his 1999 Tundra 4.7 L V8 - I rode it in a few years back and rode well. Of course everything but engine and transmission were replaced - axles, etc.

https://www.foxbusiness.com/economy/young-americans-drowning-credit-card-debt-delinquency-rates-climb-near-10-q2
"New York Fed researchers said credit card delinquency rates for Americans under 40 have been "unusually elevated," adding they are keeping a "close eye" on the trend. The rate of balances transitioning into serious delinquency for 18-29-year-olds has hovered around the 10% mark since 2023."
I almost feel bad for the younger gens. I don't think they have a clue as to what we are up against these next few years. Elevated car prices won't even be the worst of it.
The American dream might become a nightmare.

It's all in SNAXX at 4.29%
SUTXX nets more after accounting for state income taxes. And it's safer as it is a pure Treasuries fund.
SNAXX yield drops to 4.067% after subtracting off state taxes. SUTXX yields 4.13%. It's been like this for a few years now.
Even better than SUTXX are funds outside of Schwab, including VUSXX (4.24%, $3K min) and FSIXX (4.16% and $1 min).

Why not mention the biggest cause...
The highest inflation in the last 4 decades by the previous administration.
Smart people buy Toyota vehicles and hold them for 15+ years.

Thanks for the notification!
"The executive order is part of a broad deregulatory push under the Trump administration,
which has rolled back restrictions on cryptocurrency investments,
closed regulatory probes into the industry and loosened banking industry rules."
"The private equity industry has in recent years struggled to raise money
from the pension funds and endowments that it has relied on historically.
Groups such as Blackstone and Apollo predict that accessing 401k plans
could deliver hundreds of billions of dollars in new industry assets."
https://archive.ph/nE6xK

Great pics. Reminded us of being there many years ago. Especially remember the gorgeous fjords.

AKRIX was a suggestion from an advisor several years back and I've been generally happy with its moderate, consistent performance. The CGs have been consistent as well for the past 5 years.
Question for anyone who has experienced an MF to ETF conversion: Are the divs distributed over the year anything compared to the prior EOY CGs?
I guess we'll see. The board seems overwhelmingly supportive of the ETF conversion.

crash

The Repugnant Party, as has repeatedly been noted, stopped being a political Party years ago. It is no longer operating in good faith with regard to the workings of government and the separation of powers.

Is DEI actual implementation based on merit/qualifications?
Was the coup against Trump in his first term (the fake Russia collusion) in good faith?
Is an open border a good faith operation?

Saw a quip today, don't rightly remember where but possibly SA which stated that institutional investors are selling in the afternoon what the retail investors are buying in the morning. Anyone else noticing this?

Interesting observation @Mark. Don’t know. Whacky markets for sure. GDL which I sold this morning seemed to fit that pattern recently. Steady or rising most of the day than sharp pull-backs at day’s end. But my more diversified CEF collection has been flat-lining recently. Not much excitement no matter time of day.
I follow Fleckenstein - have for years. He’s of the “bubble” school of thought, but thinks the insanity could go on for years before a break. Market’s too dangerous in his view to short. Still likes the miners even at these levels as they lagged the metal on the way up. In general, I want nothing to do with either. A couple of my funds, however, hold 5-10% of the glittery stuff.

Good to see the funicular in Bergen is still going. A month in Norway, with skis, at the end of winter/beginning of spring 20 years ago is still the best foreign trip ever for this kid.

I have the fax machine story beat by a country mile. I once submitted order for a cd labeler and duplicator. Six months went by and order was lost. I resubmitted and months later a boss was asked by IT (their answer is always no) why couldn’t I just use a sharpie? Needed to print over 300 characters on CD so magic sharpie was a no go. Order was held up because IT was under infamous audit. 6 months later new IT resubmitted and things looked like they were moving along. 3 months later order rejected because machine was not assembled in “right” place. End of year budget was used up, so another delay till fiscal year budget. IT found another machine and machine showed up few months later. However, couldn’t use machine because IT rules required support contract, which took another 6 months. Then went to use machine but software to make labels was not approved or was having problems being installed. IT made a workaround and made first CD over 2 years after my initial request for this $3,000 machine.
Guess what type of industry I worked in.

I feel confident in saying that car payments might be the #1 wealth killer for middle class americans. and I made that declaration 7-8 years ago!

A very close friend of our family back when I was still in high school (60s) held a pretty good job at Ford in Dearborn. A service rep who handled in field problems for the corp. Smart cookie. I’ll never forget his telling us one day that buying a new car was “the worst investment you can ever make.”
We all have our indulgences I suppose. If I had to finance or lease (I don’t) my autos would be bare bones basic. Good used ones are an alternative, but I’ve been burned enough times with “crème-puffs” that I stick with new.
https://www.wsj.com/business/autos/ford-courts-riskier-borrowers-with-lower-rates-for-f-150-pickups-5fb81965?st=jKSLfa&reflink=article_copyURL_share

Indeed. I've turned to ETFs for all new investments for the past few years. My basis in these "surprise" mutual funds goes back decades. RYPNX has alway been right on the edge of my personal "efficient frontier" (return vs volatility) map, so I've always considered the tax inefficiency to be a sign that the fund managers are doing their job :-)
Morningstar published a "Potential Capital Gains Exposure" figure but it ranges from zero to low 70 percent even for SP500 index funds (and minus 3% for SPY??). It's 26% for RYPNX, but much higher for funds with lower turnovers, which is sort of consistent, but my guess is that these stats are all over the map since the market's been seeing record highs since the start of the year.
It will be fun to see if Copilot or ChatGPT have any insights. They aren't afraid to tell you your numbers are meaningless. But they are very good at making plots, you just paste in some CSV-format data and boom you get a PNG image of your graph. Copilot even posts a code fragment so I can regenerate the graph myself with Matlib.