Howdy, Stranger!

It looks like you're new here. If you want to get involved, click one of these buttons!

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.
  • "Take Deposits Elsewhere": What is money really worth if banks don't want it?
    But we're really not discussing the thing that I find most worrisome: if banks in major Western democracies have no use for cash, what does that imply about the viability of cash as a trading medium? I believe that never before in my 81 years has such a situation existed, certainly not here in the US.
    Isn't there a distinct danger that at some point other financial entities would begin to feel the same way? And if something like that gets started, wouldn't there be an almost immediate run-for-the-door panic? And actually, where would anyone run to?
    It seems to me that the entire financial value system as we have known it is tottering on a very dangerous balance point.
    I know that many of you are much more financially astute that me, and I'd really appreciate your comments on all of this.
    OJ
  • Tom Madell, PhD Mutual Fund/ETF Research Newsletter
    Thanks for a good share. I have FBNDX and barely holding PONAX. It feels like a contrarian view to hold bonds these days/years.
  • 10-Year Closing in on 1.5% (OP) - Blows Right Past - Near 5% (30 months later) - Whee!
    These-bond-funds-and-bond-etfs-are-now-among-your-best-choices
    the most widely owned bond fund category, intermediate term funds, often called "core" funds, have generally averaged more than 6% annualized over the last two years. Not bad, especially as compared to money market funds which barely returned more than 1%.
    But just as for stocks, future bond fund performance is very hard to predict. Therefore, rather than trying to guess which way interest rates will now be headed, it makes sense to merely try to invest in the best bond funds one can find based on a variety of important criteria. But searching out such bond funds can be tedious. So, in this article, I have done my best to simply the process for investors.
  • "Take Deposits Elsewhere": What is money really worth if banks don't want it?

    Banks in Germany Tell Customers to Take Deposits Elsewhere
    Below are a few edited excerpts from a current article in the Wall Street Journal:
    Interest rates have been negative in Europe for years. But it took the flood of savings unleashed in the pandemic for banks finally to charge depositors in earnest.
    Germany’s biggest lenders have told new customers since last year to pay a 0.5% annual rate to keep large sums of money with them. That is creating an unusual incentive, where banks that usually want deposits as an inexpensive form of financing, are essentially telling customers to go away.
    The pandemic has changed the equation. Savings rates skyrocketed with consumers at home. And huge relief programs from the ECB have flooded banks with excess deposits. Banks also have used the economic dislocation of the pandemic to make operational changes they have long resisted.
    According to price-comparison portal Verivox, 237 banks in Germany currently charge negative interest rates to private customers, up from 57 before the pandemic hit in March of last year. Charges range between 0.4% and 0.6% for deposits beginning anywhere from €25,000 to €100,000.
    The ECB’s deposit rate, which it charges banks, is minus 0.5%. The central bank has signaled it is unlikely to change that level anytime soon.
    Banks in Germany are particularly hit by negative rates because Germans are big savers. About 30% of all household deposits in the eurozone are in Germany, according to the ECB. Last year, deposits in the country rose 6% to a record €2.55 trillion as people became wary of spending under the pandemic or simply had nowhere to spend, with restaurants closed and travel restricted.
    In Denmark, where interest rates were cut to below zero two years before the eurozone, banks have gone from charging wealthier clients to smaller ones over the past year. The Danish central bank estimates about a quarter of the country’s depositors are currently being affected.
    Nordea Bank Abp recently lowered the deposit threshold for a 0.75% charge to 250,000 danish krone, equivalent to $41,000, from 750,000 danish krone as the pandemic will likely prolong the era of negative rates.
    The flip side for customers there, is that in some cases, while they pay to deposit money, they don’t have to pay anything to borrow. Nordea in January started offering 20-year mortgages at 0%.
  • Gold down / Settles below the key $1,800 mark in 2nd day of losses
    Linking some analysis from today. (Published before the price turned and headed south again.)
    LINK
    Hard to figure out. It’s a rocky investment most of the time and hasn’t done as well as equities over the years. Still, some find it appealing as a small holding in a diversified portfolio. Others have an almost spiritual fascination with it and have loaded up mightily.
    - Rising interest rates tend to spook metals markets.
    - Perceptions the Fed will keep rates very low tend to support metals markets.
    - The bitcoin craze has, as others noted, impacted the metals markets for the worse.
    It should be noted that metals & miners did very well during 2019-20. Some mining funds sported one year gains of around 50%. To some extent, dues are being paid today for that immense run-up.
    LINK to miners ETF (shows current price)
  • Buffett says 'never bet against America' in letter noting company's U.S. assets
    There is a lot more information in Buffett's interview with respect to bonds in general.
    “Bonds are not the place to be these days,” Buffett said. “Fixed-income investors worldwide – whether pension funds, insurance companies or retirees – face a bleak future.”
    Buffett noted that the benchmark 10-year Treasury yield had fallen drastically to 0.93% at the end of 2020 from 15.8% in September 1981. Meanwhile, investors earn a negative return on trillions of dollars of sovereign debt in Germany and Japan, he added.
    If US investment opportunties are so great, why is he buying back $9 billion worth of Berkshire Hathaway stock? The answer is that he have had hard time buying them within his metrics and this is consistent with his investment pattern for a number of years. Recent purchase in drug and telecommunication stocks is a reflection of his forward looking view in post-pandemic scenario.
    In addition, Buffet also made many mistakes just like other investors or fund managers. His value investment approach exposes him to the value-trap stocks. At least he owed up to his mistakes and moved on.
    https://reuters.com/article/us-berkshire-buffett-precisioncastparts/warren-buffetts-10-billion-mistake-precision-castparts-idUSKCN2AR0MZ
  • 10-Year Closing in on 1.5% (OP) - Blows Right Past - Near 5% (30 months later) - Whee!
    “Whoa. A lot to unpack there” - Not really. It’s just one of a half-dozen different market takes Barron’s typically presents from a variety of different sources in a small section of the magazine each week. More, I think, to give a flavor of the kinds of questions advisors are batting around (to borrow your spring training metaphor) than to provide any definitive or accurate point of view.
    “But I hear the GOP wants to position itself ... ” - OK
    Oh, I get that.
    Among other things I was thinking about putting Reagan and Volker in the same basket after packing the 50's and 60's into the same bear market as the 70's. And that whole four decade bull was pretty much treading water for 13-14 years after the dot com bust. At some point the market became Friedman's, and now seems to be a wholly owned subsidiary of the Fed.
    Took my brain a while to boil it down to a paragraph.
    Rest assured that my opinions are neither definitive nor accurate. ;-)
    Spring training game today. First Moderna shot on Monday morning.
  • IQDAX- If it's opaque, just maybe there's a reason?
    Article in WSJ today by Zweig, "Safe, Sometimes Isn't Safe"...IQDAX....
    "The fund's prospectus says that when pricing service "provides a valuation that in the judgement of the adviser does not represent the security's fair value," the manager may override that number - a standard warning in such disclosures.
    Reference @sma3 mention prior of the notated "fair value pricing"
    Zweig's article mentions "an investor"...who thinks fund holders could lose 20% or more of their monies...
    Article speaks to reach for chocolate cake instead of broccoli...alternatives to high priced stocks, high priced bonds, uncorrelated investments with smoother rides...maybe better to go with less spending, save more.....mentions "jolt of heartbreak" over the years by investors thinking they have found the ideal low risk, uncorrelated strategy/fund.
    Got it, lesson learnted.
    Good Luck to all,
    Baseball Fan
  • IQDAX- If it's opaque, just maybe there's a reason?
    @Baseball_Fan
    I want to know what the young man who was running the fund was exactly doing? Was there malfeasance? Or did he really believe the 3rd party model was incorrect and there was a "tweaking" for good reason? He's obviously lawyered up. Who else knew and who challenged him on his actions? Wasn't there a compliance/risk officer? What was he doing/not doing/getting paid for?
    Good questions. To those I would add what was it that finally did bring this to the SEC's attention?
    Regarding the audit question, I was referring to the annual reports.
    This is from their August 2020 annual report:
    REPORT OF INDEPENDENT REGISTERED PUBLIC ACCOUNTING FIRM
    To the Board of Trustees of Trust for Advised Portfolios and the
    Shareholders of Infinity Q Diversified Alpha Fund
    Opinion on the Financial Statements
    We have audited the accompanying consolidated statement of assets and liabilities of Infinity Q Diversified Alpha Fund, a series of shares of beneficial interest in Trust for Advised Portfolios, and Subsidiary (the "Fund"), including the consolidated schedule of investments as of August 31, 2020, and the related consolidated statement of operations for the year then ended, the statements of changes in net assets for each of the years in the two-year period then ended, the statement of cash flows for the year then ended, and the financial highlights for each of the years in the three-year period then ended, and the related notes (collectively referred to as the "financial statements"). The consolidated financial highlights for the years ended August 31, 2017 and August 31, 2016 were audited by another independent registered public accounting firm whose report, dated February 1, 2018, expressed an unqualified opinion on those consolidated financial highlights. In our opinion, the financial statements present fairly, in all material respects, the consolidated financial position of the Fund as of August 31, 2020, the consolidated results of their operations for the year then ended, their cash flows for the year then ended, the changes in their net assets for each of the years in the two-year period then ended, and financial highlights for each of the years in the three-year period then ended, in conformity with accounting principles generally accepted in the United States of America.
    Basis for Opinion
    These financial statements are the responsibility of the Fund's management. Our responsibility is to express an opinion on the Fund's financial statements based on our audits. We are a public accounting firm registered with the Public Company Accounting Oversight Board (United States) ("PCAOB") and are required to be independent with respect to the Fund in accordance with the U.S. federal securities laws and the applicable rules and regulations of the Securities and Exchange Commission and the PCAOB.
    We conducted our audits in accordance with the standards of the PCAOB. Those standards require that we plan and perform the audit to obtain reasonable assurance about whether the financial statements are free of material misstatement, whether due to error or fraud. The Fund is not required to have, nor were we engaged to perform, an audit of its internal control over financial reporting. As part of our audits, we are required to obtain an understanding of internal control over financial reporting but not for the purpose of expressing an opinion on the effectiveness of the Fund's internal control over financial reporting. Accordingly, we express no such opinion.
    Our audits included performing procedures to assess the risks of material misstatement of the financial statements, whether due to error or fraud, and performing procedures that respond to those risks. Such procedures included examining, on a test basis, evidence regarding the amounts and disclosures in the financial statements. Our procedures included confirmation of securities owned as of August 31, 2020, by correspondence with the custodian, prime broker and third-party counterparties. Our audits also included evaluating the accounting principles used and significant estimates made by management, as well as evaluating the overall presentation of the financial statements. We believe that our audits provide a reasonable basis for our opinion.
    Bold emphasis my own.
    To answer my own question. My interpretation is that the audit just makes sure that there are no irregularities in the numbers or accounting in the financial reports but not an assessment of the validity of how the asset values are obtained or the actual pricing of the assets themselves. But I'm no expert on financial reports.
    I also think the comparison of Infinity Q and T. Rowe Price is like comparing apples & oranges, even concerning TMSRX. Especially as Infinity Q was essentially a one man operation. Anything is possible & I definitely understand the concern.
    @Sma3
    Regarding IOFIX, my impression was they were not disclosing to shareholders the risks involved with some of their holdings- their method of buying & valuing odd lots not widely traded which during times of stress (ie last March) might become difficult to unload.
    @Derf
    I have no idea what a "reasonable" amount would be but for me, in general, I tend to limit any one holding to no more than 5-7%. TMSRX is currently around 6.5%. The main exception to that is PRWCX which I started investing in back in the 1990s. It sits around 16%.
  • 10-Year Closing in on 1.5% (OP) - Blows Right Past - Near 5% (30 months later) - Whee!
    1.47% right now. STILL very low. I'd not buy Treasuries at that rate. After all these years, I'm going to start my cash pile so I can buy some favorites, when those darlings fall far enough. I'm VERY glad I took a scheduled annual slug from the IRA BEFORE this current (brief?) "hit." Will it become an actual downturn? Who can say.
  • Buy on Rumor, Sell on Fact
    @Mark I got rid of all bonds except a very small position in FXNAX. My FNBGX was up quite a bit in 2020 (not sure why and it still trailed S&P index), thankfully I sold before 2021. Why? It’s down 10% YTD. I’m having a very hard time justifying any bond exposure right now. Actually, when I look back at the last 10-15 years, I held too many bonds (in case of?) and at the expense of many years of equity superiority. The crash(s) where bonds outperformed and helped me were few and far between. But I’m still learning and don’t know what I don’t know.
  • IQDAX- If it's opaque, just maybe there's a reason?
    I am sorry you are stuck in this situation. After IOFIX we found out that "fair value pricing" was fair until it was not. I posted several years ago about selling MXBIX at one NAV and receiving another when the cash arrived.
    This seems like fraud, not mistaken assumptions.
    I think T Rowe Price is unlikely to allow things like this to happen and would be relatively comfortable with their methodology, but not so much so that I would put in big bucks.
    While I don't fully agree with Buffet, "never invest in things you don't completely understand" doing due diligence and depending on reliable partners will help.
  • PRWCX Annual Report
    Having a large cash allows him to be tactical when opportunities present themselves. He talked about the stressful time in March when the team vetted through new companies in shorter timeframe and to build positions quickly. When one can buy companies with solid balance sheets at depressed prices, downside risk is greatly reduced. Utility stocks and GE are such examples. His mindfulness on risk management is under appreciated. Kinda like what Buffet did with BOA in 2008 and paid out nicely years later. In a 10 years period the fund was able to out-performed S&P500 while having lower drawdown. What more can you ask for?
  • PRWCX Annual Report
    12% cash???? That might very well account for the lagging performance.
    Doubt it. He typically carries a lot of cash. Was up around 30% cash just before the mini-crash last February. And paid off handsomly. But I suspect he’s way over that 12% at this time. If so, that would explain the performance.
    FWIW - D&C has overweighted financials for years. Paid a big price too in subpar performance, But this year DODBX is stomping PRWCX. I don’t think this proves anything except that investment trends come and go. With rising rates financials are doing better.
    Disclosure: I own both funds, but have more in DODBX.
  • Small Caps
    Circling back to this topic. @BenWP you make a good point regarding the fact that FSMAX is an index fund with 3200. If I ignore that for the moment, MFO Premium really doesn't like the fund (in it's category) - rating the fund a 2 BUT MFO Premium categorizes it in Small Cap Growth which pits it agains WAMCX and that doesn't seem fair. @Observant1 has the summary of what FSMAX should be categorized as.
    In the past 5 years, it's handily beat the S&P 500 and even last year by 19.4 - so why such a low rating of 2? It's one of the better options in a 401k I'm managing which is why I'm interested in opinions on it.
  • PRWCX Annual Report
    Same here - really enjoy reading his report. His stock picking in utility sector way exceeded utility funds and ETFs. My Vanguard utility fund was flat for 2020 even though it provided a healthy yield. Ventured out to floating rate and short term high yield funds this year for higher yields. Also rotated more into value and small value funds earlier this year. Yacktman fund, YACKX, has recovered quickly after March last year and managed to out-performed the value index. The fund now holds 30% oversea stocks.
    We also got a new iPads this year since our 7 years old iPad can no longer updated. They are lighter, run faster and with a larger capacity. We will upgrade our 6 years old iMac in fall while the Window 10 PC is use for work.
  • Anyone having trouble acessing accounts at Schwab ?
    Whatever you folks are experiencing is something quite new. I've used Schwab for many years and never had any issues until recently, when logging in became flaky. It's been better, at least from here, in the last couple of weeks.
    I experienced similar problems recently in attempting to obtain an additional CD from First Republic Bank, which is normally very responsive. It took several weeks to get a reply from the local branch two blocks from our home. Finally the branch manager replied, apologizing for the situation, which she attributed to issues associated with the staff working from home because of the Covid situation.
    Additionally, Hartford renewed our auto coverage and homeowner's coverage on our weekend place, but failed to renew coverage on the SF home. Upon inquiry we were told that because of technical problems involved with working remotely they had been unable to renew the SF coverage, and needed to re-write a new policy (with the same coverage and costs), which they did within a few weeks. Sounds like maybe some computer data sort of disappeared.
    So perhaps patience is indicated here, at least to some extent.
  • Gold down / Settles below the key $1,800 mark in 2nd day of losses
    Actually, despite today’s date, the article appears to be addressing yesterday’s close. Gold is erratic. I doubt it will do very well as long as the bitcoin craze continues. Normally the miners get jerked around harder than the metal. But, today the miners are holding up better. At this time the VanEck Vectors Gold Miners ETF is ahead 1% while gold’s been down anywhere from $5-$15 most of the day.
    Story
    Miners ETF
    I have very little in the miners. Decent exposure to the precious metals, however, through PRPFX and commodity and alternative type funds. PRPFX tends to own the metal rather than the miners. As such, it’s a bit more stable day to day. At around $1800 gold is still elevated compared to 2-3 years ago (but off its recent highs).
  • IQDAX- If it's opaque, just maybe there's a reason?
    I've was intrigued with this fund as an alternative type approach a few years ago & purchased into it (though admittedly didn't actually understand it). Note to self- lesson learned.
    About a month ago, they stopped taking any further purchases- either new or from existing shareholders. I got uneasy as their website didn't mention this closure and over the past year, they really stopped updating any information. I redeemed all except a very tiny foothold. Today I went to their website & found this:
    infinityqfunds.com/
    Which also included this link:
    https://sec.gov/rules/ic/2021/ic-34198.pdf
    At least
    The Chief Investment Officer of Infinity Q has been relieved of his duties, effective February 21, 2021.
    because
    According to the SEC’s Order, the Fund learned on Thursday, February 18 that the Chief Investment Officer of Infinity Q had been adjusting the methodology for obtaining certain asset valuations, and that the resulting valuations may not have accurately reflected the fair value of those assets.
    That makes me feel better!
  • PRWCX Annual Report
    Thanks @rforno
    At the end of of 2020 cash was at 12%. I’m thinking he’s raised that over the past 1-2 months just looking at the lagging performance. However, Lipper still puts it at that modest 12% figure. Reads like an encyclopedia of investing. Perhaps a bit too much horn blowing. One has to be pleased with the amount of information and analysis contained.
    And he’s unloaded Wells Fargo! :)
    One interesting blurb: “Our biggest miss in 2019 was Apple and it was once again in 2020, as the stock rose 82% during the year ... The outperformance of Apple for the last two years has been a big detractor from our relative performance and a big disappointment for me personally. We continue to spend considerable time on Apple and have had multiple team members look at the stock, and yet we all come to the same conclusion: There is no reason a company with a long-term 6% EPS growth rate should trade for 30x earnings with two of its fastest-growing and most profitable revenue streams facing increasing regulatory scrutiny.”
    Geez - Have a new Mac Air on order. Love Apple’s ecosystem, product support, etc. More important to me than the hardware. FWIW