Going....going....almost gone.
On the main "Quote" page of every fund covered by Morningstar is a chart showing the growth of $10,000 over the last 10 years (for funds that are 10 years or older). In 18 days the return figure for 2009 will disappear. For many funds, especially in the technology and growth sectors, this will make an enormous difference to their headline 10 year total return.
For example, FSELX returned an astonishing 85% in 2009. Yet in the decade since it has frequently lagged its category. Its standout performance in 2009 clearly contributed massively to its 10 year total return of almost $102,000.
https://www.morningstar.com/funds/xnas/fselx/quote
Personally, I'll be glad to see the figures for 2009 disappear. They have distorted the performance of many, if not most, mutual funds and ETFs. Hopefully, a more accurate picture will emerge from 2020 onward.
Wishing everyone here a very happy holiday season.

I have owned the Fidelity Real Estate Income Fund (FRINX) for about seven years with it being a member of my hybrid income sleeve. Thus far my total return in the fund has averaged a little better than 9% per year with an income yield of a litte better than 4%. With this, I've had some capital appreciation in this position during my seven year holding period as well as the production of income in the form of dividends and capital gain distributions pusing my income distribution yield upwards and north of 5%.
According to Xray this fund's asset allocation is listed at 7% cash, 30% US stocks, 1% foreign stocks, 38% bonds and 8% other (most likely convertibles and preferreds). I'm thinking that the referenced stocks are actually reits. As I write, according to M*, it is off its 52 week high by 1.42%.
In checking this fund at MFO it carries a MFO rating of 5 (best), a risk rating of 2 (conserative) and a bear market rating of 1 (best).
For me, this is a nice income generating fund and one that I plan to add to my position over time as I grow the income area of my portfolio.

If you open and read this, there is an image of the guy that wrote this blog and he looks like he may have been about 15 years old when REITS crashed in 2007-2009, so I don't think he understands the pain REIT investors felt at that time. I don't know how he can make this summary statement below. If I look at the Vanguard ETF for REITS, VNQ, it lost 70%+ peak to trough during the great recession. Would that be considered a bond alternative with less risk for retirees?

REITs are a viable alternative to retirees and other income investors who desire greater income without having to take significantly more risk.

" And we know what happened to the ACA"
I wonder. Every time I look at provisions of the ACA, I go, oh yeah, I'd forgotten about that. For example, the tax on insurers. No one knows what's going on with that:

The health insurance tax was in effect from 2014 through 2016. Congress approved a one-year moratorium for 2017, and the tax resumed in 2018 at a cost of about $14.3 billion. Congress suspended the tax once again in 2019. If not further delayed, it will be collected again beginning in 2020.

https://www.healthaffairs.org/do/10.1377/hblog20190910.985809/full/
Regarding who owns munis: Munis were never great investments for much of the middle class. Most of the time, if you were below the 31% tax bracket, you'd have been better off investing in taxable bonds. This is reflected in the statistic that even 30 years ago (1989) fewer than 1 in 20 owned munis.
Rational middle class investors have been getting pushed further out of munis for a long time. Obama made the Bush tax cuts permanent for the middle and lower classes, making munis less attractive. Then the GOP moved even more middle class taxpayers into a 24% or below tax bracket (ordinary taxable income below $160K [single] / $321K [MFJ]).
One can't have it both ways - advocating lower middle class marginal rates and simultaneously bemoaning the fact that munis consequently become less attractive. So long as taxpayers in the highest brackets keep buying munis, states will continue to be able to borrow at lower rates and fund needed work on century-old infrastructure systems.

pipes can range from 15 to 100 years old depending on conditions, although some older northeastern cities operate with pipes that are 200 years old.

America's Aging Water Infrastructure

Point taken @msf. And we know what happened to the ACA. The following numbers are a bit dated (2013), but I think they’re still relatively valid today and serve to make my point:
“ A smaller fraction of Americans owns state and local government bonds today than 25 years ago (2.4% in 2013 vs. 4.6% in 1989), and that ownership is more heavily concentrated among the very rich (the top 0.5% of Americans by wealth held 42.0% of all municipal bonds in 2013 vs. 23.8% in 1989) ...” . https://www.brookings.edu/blog/up-front/2016/08/18/a-smaller-share-of-americans-owns-municipal-bonds-does-that-matter/
The substantial majority of hired-guns occupying Senate seats have no incentive to take away the tax break on munis - or remove the tax-free status of Roths, for that matter. Many would disown their own mother first. Some day, after enough jello hits the fan, the tune might change - but not in the foreseeable future.

An Ad for T. Rowe Price. Basically filling the page. Title may be misleading. While the funds may be appropriate for long term investing, they are not designed for those in retirement as title seems to suggest. (Examples: TRBCX, PRHSX).
The recommendation for their 2030 fund seems especially out of place, since it’s geared for someone 10 years from retirement. Doesn’t seem to fit with their long-term focus; but it isn’t designed for someone already in retirement either. They recommend PRWCX without noting it’s closed to new investors. One of their stated criteria is cost. Yet there are much lower cost providers than T. Rowe if that’s what you’re seeking.
A sham job by U.S. News .
@JohnN - Why did you think it imperative to bump this over to the Discussions+ section of the board? Are you normally accustomed to “discussing” matters with yourself? Kindly refrain from doing so here.

*Like*

An Ad for T. Rowe Price. Basically filling the page. Title may be misleading. While the funds may be appropriate for long term investing, they are not designed for those in retirement as title seems to suggest. (Examples: TRBCX, PRHSX).
The recommendation for their 2030 fund seems especially out of place, since it’s geared for someone 10 years from retirement. Doesn’t seem to fit with their long-term focus; but it isn’t designed for someone already in retirement either. They recommend PRWCX without noting it’s closed to new investors. One of their stated criteria is cost. Yet there are much lower cost providers than T. Rowe if that’s what you’re seeking.
A sham job by U.S. News .
@JohnN - Why did you think it imperative to bump this over to the Discussions+ section of the board? Are you normally accustomed to “discussing” matters with yourself? Kindly refrain from doing so here.

Hi @johnN.
John, I want you to know, as a member of the board, I appreciate your endevors to find related investing articles, posting them, thus keeping the board supplied with good reading material.
I'm not sure what has happen to @Ted and the reason for his unannounced absence. However, he remains in my thoughts, often. A good number on the board may remember Ted has been dealing with some illness over the past few years.
Please keep him in your thoughts. And, if you are the praying type ... Prey for him!
Old_Skeet

I have a question, and maybe @msf you know the answer, but I've always heard muni bonds are better suited for a taxable account. My question is, doesn't a mutual fund get tax exemption returns for holding muni's also? And in turn those mutual funds held in a tax-deferred account get the tax exempt return passed on to them, us?
I've held a muni ETF for a couple years now in my IRA, PZA. I've often wondered if the tax exemption is part of total return.

There’s a huge risk in the room with muni bonds: at any moment Congress or the president could decide to make their interest taxable. There has been talk about this in the past few years. I used to think muni bond income would be a significant part of my income in my dotage, but not anymore

I also have had positions in brokerages with less than the required minimum amount for years with no notice; however, I have had some MF positions with less than the required minimum amount when they eventually caught up with me after several years and forced me to liquidate my position or buy more.
Unfortunately, it is hard to buy more shares when the fund is hard closed or you transfer existing position from one brokerage to a new brokerage that does not have an agreement on file to purchase more shares in that particular fund.

I have just over 1 share of SIGIX in two different accounts at Vanguard. It has been this way for a number of years now.

https://finance.yahoo.com/news/ladder-select-bond-fund-receives-211500859.html
Ladder Select Bond Fund Receives ‘4 Stars’ From Morningstar Upon 3 Year Anniversary
Business WireDecember 5, 2019, 3:15 PM CST
The Ladder Select Bond Fund (Institutional Class: LSBIX) Receives '4 Stars' Overall from Morningstar®, out of 491 Funds, respectively, in the US Fund Short-Term Bond Category, based on 3-years of historical risk-adjusted returns as of 10/31/2019.

A milk man delivered milk next door to me until the woman, age 93, died a couple of years ago. So there was milk delivery still available. We still have a postman that puts a pack across his back and walks door to door to house mounted mail boxes. The paper still delivers but I haven't seen any being delivered around me.

roger all of this ... was not recalling sufficiently the days only ~20y ago when local papers had an editorial staff of more than one, with beat stringers who were savvy and experienced
outside boston as local papers have been glommed together or turned into adsheets chiefly, we have not had anything resembling thorough local coverage for many many years
there are newsy forums (yahoo, now moving to io) and email chains that do this with the most substantive and important and divisive issues

I would argue that people lose far more in terms of depth and diversity of knowledge of their communities than what they gain in speed from information disseminated via social media. Aside from misinformation on social media, there is also the echo chamber effect on Facebook where only like-minded people are communicating with each other. Also, having a neighbor tell you such and such is going on locally on Facebook is not the same as having a group of people at a paper whose full-time job it is to get to the bottom of what's happening in your community, informing you about ideas, events, risks, machinations and coverups a neighbor would never discover. What it meant to pick up a newspaper I think 30 to 40 years ago was to serendipitously discover something perhaps you never even considered about your hometown and hear opinions different from your own. I think part of the divisiveness we see today is from that lack of exposure to alternative voices outside one's social media self-reinforcing feedback loop or bubble.
More to the point, there is research that indicates communities that have lost newspapers vote less on average and have more political corruption on average because people are just less engaged and less in the know as to what's going on:
https://pen.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/11/Losing-the-News_Executive-Summary.pdf
Yet there is no question that news spreads faster on Facebook. Whether it is useful news or thoughtful in depth analysis is another question entirely.

Pondering FAMEX, DFDPX, and YAFFX which I would buy on their distribution dates later this month. However, YAFFX has over 25% in cash and 2.5% in Macy's which has fallen 50% year to date, so I can't help but to question their judgement. I do not believe the market is overvalued by any measure whatsoever and I do believe the bull will continue for many more years, so a fund with 25% in cash is probably not for me. Yet the long term history of YAFFX is compelling.
I'm realling looking for a fund which scores highly on ESG and low on carbon. I already have Brown Advisory Sustainable Growth and am looking at the Parnassus lineup. Many tech funds qualify on ESG as well. Any other suggestions would be gratefully received.

Hi David,
If I were prone to conspiracy theory I would be doing a head scratch with this from September 18, in Reuters (I did read the article linked below twice and scratched my head then. I thought I posted this at MFO...did not).
From the article:
More information is needed to assess whether the moves are a sign of a broader problem, other investors said.
“It’s probably nothing,” said Willie Delwiche, investment strategist for Baird. “But there is a risk that there is some trouble in the monetary plumbing in the economy.”

Complicating matters is the recent departure of two key markets experts, leaving vacancies at the New York Fed that some worry may have slowed down the U.S. central bank’s response to the volatility this week.
The two market-focused officials abruptly departed in June: Simon Potter, who oversaw the New York Fed’s trading desk, and Richard Dzina, who ran the bank’s financial services group. To date, neither has been replaced, leaving the central bank without permanent leadership in a key part of its operations.
>>>Abruptly, being a key word with the above statement. I've witnessed several abrupt departures over many years at a corporate level and knew the problem was an operational disagreement between individuals, a how to run the business problem.
Perhaps there exists an operational disagreement at the NY Fed. Perhaps the large banks are attempting to have rule changes made for reserve requirements, and then they'll rejoin the repo party. Perhaps there exists a serious problem in the monetary system that is way past my understanding.
Full Reuters story HERE.
Lastly, aside from the normal written story search, Youtube offers some videos discussing the REPO markets; as well at Khan Academy.com.
Regards,
Catch

Oh, I pay for the WSJ, WaPo, and NYT ... but prefer to pay for a quality viewing experience with less distractions and better 'flow' of articles. Ergo, I pay to provide that desired experience I use my geek-fu to deconstruct/reconstruct pages/page sections and block/enable scripts to ensure that. :) But each to our own! (I don't like reading news in apps personally)

- Add-free. I wouldn’t mind if online papers included static “print-type” ads that didn’t detract from my reading (as hard copy newspapers did for a century or more). However, invariably these ads flash, blink, flicker, change color and dance about. I cannot read text with such distractions.

Neither can I. Which is easily solved for the web using various ad- and script-blocking plugins for browsers. You can get really granular in the control ... I haven't seen a distracting ad on a news site in YEARS, and can even customize the view so that I can block entire sections of a page -- ie, 'visual' stories or large video blocks I have no desire to watch, etc. Makes life much nicer that way!

@rforno, Glad it works for you. I’ve tried assorted ad-blockers with only limited success. Currently have at least 3 on my ipads in addition to what Apple builds-in as their standard blocker. It was clear from my brief subscription directly with the NYT couple months ago that the

Times did not want me blocking their ads and was trying to circumvent the blockers. That’s a no-win for publisher and reader alike. https://www.mutualfundobserver.com/discuss/discussion/53366/best-way-to-subscribe-to-newspapers
The Kindle edition NYT is costs about $5 more monthly ($20 vs $15). Not only the distracting ads, but a smoother layout/format and less data consumed on downloads are appealing, since I’m still on a data-capped internet plan. I’m happy to pay the added cost in exchange for a better reading experience. And the higher subscription fee should allow Amazon to compensate publishers fairly.
Overall, I believe Amazon increases circulation numbers for many publications above what they would otherwise be in this day and age. Let’s face it: Newspapers face intense competitive pressures from the likes of cable news and free websites, albeit the quality of these pales in comparison. Amazon’s Kindle site serves essentially as a free marketing forum for hundreds, if not thousands, of quality publications, both domestically and globally.

- Add-free. I wouldn’t mind if online papers included static “print-type” ads that didn’t detract from my reading (as hard copy newspapers did for a century or more). However, invariably these ads flash, blink, flicker, change color and dance about. I cannot read text with such distractions.

Neither can I. Which is easily solved for the web using various ad- and script-blocking plugins for browsers. You can get really granular in the control ... I haven't seen a distracting ad on a news site in YEARS, and can even customize the view so that I can block entire sections of a page -- ie, 'visual' stories or large video blocks I have no desire to watch, etc. Makes life much nicer that way!

@rforno, Glad it works for you. I’ve tried assorted ad-blockers with only limited success. Currently have at least 3 on my ipads in addition to what Apple builds-in as their standard blocker. They work with a lot of free websites - but ineffective with major publications. It was clear from my brief subscription directly with the NYT couple months ago that the Times did not want me blocking their ads and was trying to circumvent the blockers. That’s a no-win for publisher and reader alike. https://www.mutualfundobserver.com/discuss/discussion/53366/best-way-to-subscribe-to-newspapers.
The Kindle edition NYT costs about $5 more monthly ($20 vs $15). Not only the absence of distracting ads, but smoother layout / format and less data consumed on downloads are appealing. (I’m still on a data-capped internet plan.) Willing to pay the added cost in exchange for convenience and a better reading experience. The higher subscription fee should allow Amazon to compensate publishers fairly.
Overall, I believe Amazon increases circulation for many publications above what they would otherwise enjoy in this day and age. Let’s face it: Newspapers face intense competitive pressures from the likes of cable news and free websites, albeit the quality of these pales in comparison. Amazon’s Kindle site serves essentially as a top-notch marketing platform for hundreds, if not thousands, of quality publications, both domestic and global.