@Catch22- Hello there. Actually, the revokable living trust has been set up for years, and in CA is a very common alternative to other variations for holding property in common with a married partner. It has to do with establishing a the step-up in property value for tax purposes at the death of the first partner, and avoiding probate after the death of the second partner. Because it is revokable, it does not have the complexities of more traditional types of trust.
So the trust itself has nothing to do with selecting Vanguard for an account. I'm just looking at the possibility of some VWINX, and don't want to pay Schwab every time I add a little or move something.
I did download Vanguard's standard trust form, and it is twelve pages long, very legalistic, and very intimidating. An exercise in absurdity compared to setting up similar accounts at American Funds or Schwab, for instance.
Thanks- hope all is well at your end.
OJ

Junk Sovereigns ?? A Real Reach?
Markets | Thu Apr 7, 2016 4:46pm EDT
After 15 years, Argentina set for bond market return
By Joy Wiltermuth
Now it will hold a five-day roadshow in the UK and the US as it preps a new bond expected to raise $12 billion - or more - to help pay off holdouts who had rejected a debt restructuring.
Finance Secretary Luis Caputo and Undersecretary Santiago Bausili will each lead teams meeting with investors in London, Boston, New York, Washington and Los Angeles.
Deutsche Bank, HSBC, JP Morgan and Santander are arranging the meetings, but few other details were immediately available.
"The dealers on it are keeping it hush-hush until they are ready to come to market," said Sean Newman, a senior portfolio manager at Invesco Fixed Income.
One of the lead banks told IFR that investors had not yet been given any information about the ultimate size of the deal or the potential currencies of issuance.
At US$12bn, the transaction would be the largest ever from an emerging markets borrower, according to Thomson Reuters data.
"It does mean something really huge for Argentina," said Bianca Taylor, a senior sovereign emerging markets analyst at investment management firm Loomis, Sayles & Company.
"They are back in the game with the curing of this longstanding issue with the holdouts, and they once again have access to the foreign capital markets."
One trader in New York said he had heard yields whispered in the 7.5 percent range, but said 8.5 percent on a 10-year bond was a more feasible target given the current climate.
But Taylor said a useful comparable would be a Brazil 10-year currently trading at 6.13 percent.
"The talk of 7.5 percent seems rich for a country still in a balance-of-payments crisis and just coming out of default."
In addition, after being unable to raise debt abroad for so long, Argentina might well come to market with a debt sale larger than US$12 billion in order to replenish its coffers and plug at least some of its fiscal deficit.
http://www.reuters.com/article/us-argentina-bonds-idUSKCN0X42O6
@DanHardy You're not the only one expecting low rates to remain for some time.
Yield Curve Madness
Posted on April 6, 2016 by David Ott Acropolis Investment Management
,,yield on the 10-year US Treasury hit 1.73 percent. After starting the year at 2.24 percent, the benchmark yield dropped to 1.63 percent when the stock market bottomed out on February 11th and then climbed to 1.98 percent before falling again.
As low as your yields are today, they are among the highest in the developed world, as the chart below shows. The chart includes the G7 countries (with the benchmark eurozone rate representing Germany, France and Italy), Switzerland and Australia (each representing the highest and lowest rates in the developed world).

This chart is striking for at least three reasons. First, the overall level of rates is just appallingly low across the world. The idea that the highest rates are still a paltry 2.5 percent is troubling.
Second, and even more bothersome, is that three of the curves are negative all the way out to 10 years. There are other countries with negative yields like Denmark, but the idea that the euro benchmark curve is negative is striking.
Finally, there are only three ‘normal’ yield curves, where rates rise as the maturity goes out further into the future. The US has the steepest curve, although it’s far flatter now than it was six months ago.
http://acrinv.com/yield-curve-madness/

A curious juxtaposition - a completely liquid MMF (even more liquid than a savings account) and a CD with a redemption fee (except at maturity).
Personally, I prefer I-bonds to 1 year CDs. What I give up in short term liquidity (no redemptions in the first year) I gain in a better rate, inflation protection, state tax exemption, potential to defer taxes for years (until redeemed), and greater safety (theoretical only) than an FDIC-insured CD.
- I bonds have no redemption fee once held for 5 years, so if one is expecting to roll over CDs, holding the I bond is slightly easier and more liquid over the long term.
- The FDIC is not officially backed by the full faith and credit of the US government; savings bonds are treasury securities that have this backing.
One can purchase $15K of I bonds/year per SSN. Current yield is 1.64%.

@Junkster thanks for the reply. I was watching munis (and have a position in them) since you and another poster Dox? mentioned them. I think most types of interest paying bonds will do well over the coming years. I just don't see where inflation will come from. Yes there will be areas of inflation - housing - but workers will not have power to demand higher wages. There was an article on Marketwatch.com about silicone valley tech workers fear of losing their jobs, low pay and increases. Also, as baby boomers retire, they will be looking for interest and dividends. That is something I don't see mentioned in the news media.
High yield corps highly correlate with stocks - I'll watch them.
High Yield foreign bonds correlate with the US dollar - I'll watch them.

I've read several threads here about high yield corps being hot right now. But high yield munis have been chugging along and looking like they are gaining some momentum. Are they a buying opportunity now? I am in the camp that inflation will not be an issue for years.

FYI: It's been a hard few years, but we think John Roth will be able to right the ship at New Millennium.
Regards,
Ted
http://www.kiplinger.com/article/investing/T033-C009-S002-fidelity-contrafund-or-new-millennium.html
Returns: FCNTX vs. FMILX:
http://www.marketwatch.com/tools/mutual-fund/compare?Tickers=FCNTX+FMILX&Compare=Returns

Thanks for the info. Now I guess the key question is: does anyone know anything about the new manager? It appears he has been at TRP for 6 years. Nothing was said in the annual report about any experience in health care stocks.

I've owned this fund for several years - you have to have a strong stomach for it since it's a concentrated fund and has huge up and down swings - it'll go a year or two as the top ranked fund in its category, then it'll have a year or two where it's the worst. It was ranked 96th in 2014 and 98th in 2015; year to date 2016 it is 1st - go figure!

Some mutual funds have done well in the 90's, but it's been just plain hard outperforming the Russell 2000 index ( IWM = ETF equiv. ). Maybe it's because they get too big, their management style stops working, or the market "complexion" has changed over the last 15 years ? Try plugging symbols mentioned in commentary here ( https://portfoliovisualizer.com/backtest-portfolio#analysisResults ) and select the Russell 2000 as "benchmark". I like to use 2002 and 2008 as dumb luck / Murphy;s law starting points ...
even BRK-A loses out.

That is why I have owned SCHD for past 3 years and most comfortable with it.
Schwab U.S. Dividend Equity is a suitable core holding for investors who want a high dividend yield without tilting toward distressed and deep-value stocks. The fund market cap weights 100 high-yielding U.S. stocks with solid fundamentals and a consistent track record of paying dividends. While the resulting fund holds high-quality stocks with strong profitability, it should be paired with other funds for complete market coverage. The 0.07% expense ratio makes this the lowest-cost strategic-beta fund available and allows investors to keep a greater share of the fund's returns.

I'll have some comments in the main thread on this month's commentary. Since you asked about MMFs, I'll provide a few notes here.
No MMF, not even one containing only Treasuries, is guaranteed not to break a buck. That's true now and will always be true (unless the Treasury does something extraordinary as it did in 2008 and step in to guarantee MMFs).
One of the rules going into effect later this year says that prime and muni MMFs must have floating NAVs if they are offered to institutional investors. So there are (at least) two types of non-Treasury MMFs that are not required to have a floating NAV:

1. Federal-government security MMFs (these are allowed to hold federally backed paper aside from Treasuries), e.g. SPAXX, whose holdings you can find here.
   
2. Retail MMFs, regardless of what they hold.

Many brokerages have for years offered sweep accounts into FDIC-insured bank accounts. So there are, and will be, options for sweeps that will not break a buck.
Fidelity (since the commentary spoke directly about this brokerage) has converted some of its prime MMFs (e.g. FDRXX) into government securities MMFs. Fidelity requires new accounts to use a government MMF or FDIC-insured sweep account as your core (transaction) account (old accounts are grandfathered), it continues to offer a full suite of "position" MMFs that you can own and trade explictly.
Here's Fidelity's page on the rules along with links to all its MMFs.
Further, as a courtesy, Fidelity will allow you to purchase securities in your brokerage account automatically using cash directly from your "position" MMFs. So to a certain extent any MMF can function as your core account. While there's this sweep out of the position account, there's no automatic sweep in. You have to explicitly move cash into the position MMFs.

Read this before Ted posted it (pretty rare!). I thought the article a bit shoddy. 5 & 10 years (to my thinking) are too short of time frames to draw big assumptions. If I recall, they compared gold's performance to the S&P 500, REITS, and international and EM markets over the past 5 & 10 years. All of these are subject to substantial deviations over short periods. But I do think the overall point being made is valid: Investing regularly over time in a broad basket equities can be very profitable. Hard to disagree on that. But the time frames used are very short.
Re gold, I sold all of my small speculative position in OPGSX last week. It was up 37% YTD and 44% since I bought it around Labor Day last fall. Still exposed a bit through other funds; but pure plays on this stuff (or miners) are bit like snacking on nails. Not for everyone.

The article indicates if one had put the money in REITS, rather than the S&P, one could have done even better.
The problem with these types of articles is there is they are based on a single "end-point". --- With stocks near all-time highs, and gold 4-5 years into its bear market, the case to avoid gold is a easy --- but fallacious argument to make. It could just as well been made in Dec 1999 -- but would have proven a lousy argument to have made over the ensuring decade.

I agree that asset bloat is a potential problem, but more to watch out for than a reason to rule out MWTRX now - especially in a tax-sheltered account where switching funds is painless.
As a reference point, posts here have had only positive words about DBLTX (OP holds it, PRESSmUP wound up with it, Samuel spoke of it as a fine fund). It now holds $57.6B, with DoubleLine as a whole taking in $10B in the past quarter (total $95B AUM).
http://www.mutualfundobserver.com/discuss/discussion/26816/gundlach-s-doubleline-capital-grew-to-95-billion-in-march
Which raises another fact. A few years ago, the MetWest team took on managing the TCW funds when MetWest was acquired by TCW. IMHO that was the time to have been concerned about asset bloat at MetWest. Big percentage jump in assets while also having to deal with significant outflows.

FYI: Another quarter, another lesson in long-term investing.
Economic uncertainty around the world and a brutal start to the year for stocks helped send the price of gold surging to its best quarter in 30 years. But an analysis of 10 common investments by the Associated Press shows that regular investors who put a steady amount of money every month into an account like a 401(k) would have been far better off in stocks or bonds.
Regards,
Ted
http://www.bigstory.ap.org/article/9e6749ab7e694bf3b95cb56be104cbe4/investor-derby-gold-won-first-quarter-stocks-win-long-term

FYI: It may sound strange, but my wife and I live nowhere and everywhere. We’re Digital Nomads. That means we can make our living from a hammock, as long as we have Wi-Fi and a laptop. We often watch global currency rates and travel to countries where our dollars go the furthest. That’s why we flew to Canada instead of Costa Rica..
Three years ago, Canada’s dollar was valued higher than the U.S. dollar.
By January 2016, it was 30 percent lower. Two weeks ago, I took U.S. dollars and bought a condo in Victoria, B.C. I also bought a Canadian stock market ETF
Regards,
Ted
https://assetbuilder.com/knowledge-center/articles/why-bargain-hunting-investors-should-take-a-look-at-canada

BIV/VBILX/VBIIX also has noticeably more treasury exposure than AGG. It's basically AGG if you restrict in two ways: 1) limit to intermediate term bonds (those with maturities in 5-10 years), and 2) remove securitized bonds (about 1/4 of AGG).
The government and corporate portions increase proportionately, so there is more government bond and more corporate bond exposure. The latter resulting in an increase in credit exposure (relative to the MBS's it is replacing).
However, an MBS will generally yield more than a comparably rated corporate bond. That's because the MBS has extension/prepayment risk (which I view as a variant of interest rate risk). "To quote a Wall Street adage, a mortgage-backed security 'goes up like a two-year bond' when rates fall and 'goes down like a six-year bond' when rates rise." See negative convexity.
So if one swaps MBS for corporate, it is necessary to go down the credit ladder just to maintain yield. To put it another way, just because the credit rating has gone down doesn't mean that the yield has gone up - the rating may have dropped just enough to compensate for the inherently lower-yield of corporates.
The bottom line is that while it is true that there's more credit risk than AGG, without quantifying that difference it isn't clear that this is a factor that's increasing the yield. Even if the credit rating difference is large enough to increase yield, the resulting yield increase isn't as sizeable as the credit difference would seem to make it at first blush.

BIV is not a very credit sensitive fund, but it has noticeably more credit exposure than the Barclays Agg. During the financial crisis the mutual fund lost more than the Agg and fell about as much as DODIX in the Q4 2008. The fund currently has about 39% in Baa bonds v. 26% for the Barclays Agg and has a lower government bond stake.

Maybe we are looking at different websites but *M shows BIV as currently having 57% in AAA rated bonds, 16% with A rating and and 23% in BBB rated bonds. Based on these numbers, the fund does not appear to be credit sensitive overall. The duration is on the high end for an intermediate fund (6.5 years) so I do believe it has more risk on the interest rate side.

And of course interest rates can fall even from here. And anything less than investment grade might get crushed. The argument you made re interest rates is the same one that has been made for years now, and it's been a very bad bet.