My thinking is even if you disagree with an analyst's viewpoint, you should read it to challenge your preconceived notions and see whether your own analysis still holds up. Grantham may be wrong, but I think it's important for investors to understand for themselves why they think he's wrong. His arguments are cogent ones, but worth challenging. For instance, I no longer think he's right about the Fed being oblivious to financial risks, but am more cynical about the Fed seeing its role as being to prop up Wall Street despite knowing about the risks. The so-called--Fed put.

TIPS have higher durations than Treasuries of comparable maturities, so they are hit worse from rising rates.
That seems a little odd. Do you have a source?
The relationship between inflation adjusted (real) durations and nominal durations is somewhat complex. To simplify matters, we can assume the Fisher hypothesis holds literally:

The Fisher hypothesis, which states that nominal interest rates rise point-for-point with expected inflation, leaving the real rate unaffected, is one of the cornerstones of neoclassical monetary theory.

Barsky, The Fisher Hypothesis and the Forcastability and Persistence of Inflation, Journal of Monetary Economics 19 (1987).
That is, real rates don't change; nominal rates change in lock step with inflation. If inflation goes up by 1%, nominal rates go up by 1%. The real rate doesn't change. Since TIPS adjust yield for inflation, their prices should change only as a result of changes in real rates, which by assumption are nonexistent. Thus zero duration.

[Laatsch and Klein] confirm that TIPS bonds have zero sensitivity to changes solely in expected inflation. By changes solely in expected inflation, we mean that the real rate remains unchanged and the nominal rate changes in accordance with the established Fisher [Publ. Am. Econ. Assoc. 11 (1896)] effect. [They] show that the first derivative of the TIPS price [i.e. duration] is zero whenever the real rate is held constant.

Laatch and Klein, The Nominal Duration of TIPS Bonds, Review of Financial Economics Vol 14, Issue 1 (2005)
They go on to say that even relaxing the Fisher hypothesis (so that real rates change) "if expected inflation changes ... zero-coupon TIPS prices ... will change by a smaller percentage than will zero-coupon ordinary Treasury bonds."
Shorter duration for zero TIPS than for ordinary (nominal) zeros.
Here's PIMCO's "translation": TIPS should perform better in a rising interest rate environment than conventional Treasury bonds because their inflation adjustments provide better price protection, but only when rates are rising as a result of increasing inflation.
https://www.pimco.com/en-us/resources/education/understanding-treasury-inflation-protected-securities

I was locked out of @msf’s link on my ipad, but accessed it on smaller screen iphone.
“Leakages come from three sources: cash-outs when participants change jobs, hardship withdrawals, and the failure to repay loans. The government has attempted to discourage leakages by generally imposing a 10% penalty — in addition to regular income taxes — on withdrawals before age 591⁄2. “
Well, these additional taxes and penalties ought to really help with the (likely “maxed-out”) plan participant’s financial situation!
My point - irresponsible money management (including gambling) takes many different forms.

Thank you for confirming the data. Both financial and energy sectors are ahead of S&P 500 by several % so far this year. The short stock is labeled as hedged equities in D&C recent Shareholder Letter.

the Fund holds a short S&P 500 futures position with a notional value of approximately 4.1% of the Fund’s total net assets.

https://dodgeandcox.com/pdf/shareholder_reports/dc_balanced_letter.pdf
D&C Stock fund is also ahead of the VG value index by several %.

Not a strategy. But I’ve uncovered a link to a trove of old Wall Street Week - With Louis Rukeyser shows which, of course, aired on PBS from some time in the 70s until the 90s. We all learn in different ways. For me this was the best “primer” I ever had in finance. What’s fascinating is that many of the programs seem as relevant to investors today as they were 30, 40, 50 years ago. I guess that’s because the basic principals underlying financial markets and good investing practices really don’t change much with time. Your grandson could do worse than to sit back and enjoy a few of these shows.
Best wishes to you and grandson
https://americanarchive.org/catalog?f[special_collections][]=wall-street-week&sort=asset_date+asc&f[access_types][]=online

Thanks, Hank and YBB.
“If the music stops and crypto tanks, there could be a contagion into the stock market. It could set up a good buying opportunity.”
This is the one thing I have been very nervous about. There can be a lot of pain before the buying opportunity. The overlords in DC are completely asleep at the wheel on this. There are multiple simultaneous bubbles in the financial markets; unfortunately, they do not pop at the average investor's desired timing or speed.
Good to know I already own a lot of leveraged loans through Giroux.

@LewisBraham has a piece in Barron's on this. My summary (advance preview):
"FUNDS. Post-Financial-Crisis reforms are not working for some MONEY-MARKET FUNDS. GOVERNMENT money-market funds are doing fine (AUM grew to $4.1 trillion). But PRIME money-market funds have shrunk to $831 billion. These invest in commercial paper and CDs, can have redemption fees and/or gates and/or floating NAVs (institutional prime). When issues developed in 2020, these prime money market funds were reluctant to use their available tools and the FED had to step in with some liquidity backstops. So, now, the SEC has proposed new rules that will ditch redemption fees and gates in favor of SWING-PRICING (a form of floating NAV related to redemption level). The fund industry is opposing these new rules (Fido, Federated Hermes, Blackstone, BNY/Mellon, etc)."
https://www.barrons.com/articles/money-market-funds-sec-regulations-51642183815?mod=hp_DAY_9

This will be a bit painful to do but I will be selling most of my position in MIOPX. I really like the manager -- Kristian Heugh. But there is too much downside risk in his portfolio.

If you like the manager and want to dial down the risk a bit, you could consider MFAPX. The difference between the MS summaries is that MIOPX includes emerging companies, while MFAPX is primarily focused on established companies.
Morgan Stanley MIOPX page
Morgan Stanley MFAPX page
Obviously they have a lot of overlap, but their figures are significantly different.
Portfolio Visualizer comparison
Close performance over 3, 5, 10 years (through year end 2021). A notable distinction is that from 2Q2020 on, MIOPX rose and fell faster. For example, YTD (2022), MIOPX dropped 9.23% and MFAPX dropped 2.83%. PV shows other significant differences (better figures are MAFPX):
std dev: 16.58% vs. 12.99%
max drawdown: 26.18% vs. 17.26%
Sharpe ratio: 0.77 vs. 1.00
Sortino ratio: 1.27 vs 1.71
As one might expect with its higher volatility MIOPX had a much better best year (55.06% vs. 44.18%) and a much worse worst year (down 12.36% vs down 5.48%).
According to M*, the best fit index for MIOPX is US Convertible Bonds!
http://performance.morningstar.com/fund/ratings-risk.action?t=MIOPX
From inception through 2016 MIOPX tracked FISCX pretty closely. (MIOPX even returned less over this period). Then it became more volatile and returned more. But it wasn't until 2020 that it took off like a rocket. And then fell like a stone. In that same period, MFAPX also rose with MIOPX, but not as quickly and with much gentler spikes.

@msf said, “ I tend not to deal much with financial institutions in their role as fund shops. To the extent that I do, my interactions are typically limited to accessing reports/prospectuses, perhaps a little info about the holdings/management, and important to me, capital gains and dividend estimates. Also muni income breakdown by state.”
Rather than starting a new thread - a related personal question, if I may. I have just one fund outside my IRAs, PRIHX. Having transferred that from TRP to Fido last year “in kind”, I’m curious which will provide tax information? Will a statement come from TRP? Fido? Or both? Thanks.
To the broader issue here, I’m of the opinion that the deterioration of service at businesses and institutions is commonplace - driven by cost constraints and profit motives. As consumers we want the lowest prices. As shareholders we want the greatest profitability. Those sometimes clash or lead to ruin of service we once found reliable. I sometimes find my self shouting angrily at Walgreen’s “robo assistant” when calling in or checking on prescriptions. But it’s a lot easier to move your prescriptions elsewhere than to transfer all your retirement money.

I'll say it again: I find Vanguard to be the most ridiculously difficult firm to deal with of all fund shops my wife and I use.

I tend not to deal much with financial institutions in their role as fund shops. To the extent that I do, my interactions are typically limited to accessing reports/prospectuses, perhaps a little info about the holdings/management, and important to me, capital gains and dividend estimates. Also muni income breakdown by state.
Cap gains/div estimates: IMHO Vanguard has been superb here. It provided an initial set of estimates along with a release date for an update. Its final estimates included estimates for divs.
Contrast that with many other fund shops, e.g. Morgan Stanley, which at best provided a single estimate in October (based on Sept 30th figures) and no estimate of divs.
https://www.morganstanley.com/im/publication/forms/tax/2021-estimated-year-end-distributions.pdf
Finding reports/prospectuses/fund info on Vanguard's site is not as streamlined as it could be (there doesn't seem to be a page aggregating all funds). Still, from the personal investor home page one can enter the name or ticker of a fund to go directly to the fund page. That page has a link to prospectuses and reports, and pretty clear information one can tab through for full holdings, management, etc.
Contrast that with Schwab. When I type Schwab 1000 into the search box on its home page it brings me to 3,338 search results. Maybe there's a fund page in there somewhere, but I can't tell.
Instead, one can use the accounts & products drop down (-> investment products-> mutual funds) to get to a generic MF page. The drop down on that page, "Find Mutual Funds" has an "Investor Information" selection. That gets one to a page listing Schwab funds, with links to the fund pages and additional links to their reports, holdings, etc.
"https://www.schwab.com/mutual-funds/find-mutual-funds/investor-information
As a brokerage, Vanguard has recently made it harder to find third party funds. I haven't found any direct way to get to the 3rd party fund page since the website revamp. One can enter another company's fund name or ticker into the home page search box to go to that particular fund. From there one finds a link to "Other companies' funds & ETFs".
That brings you to the old 3rd party page: https://investor.vanguard.com/other-funds/
Still, that's better than brokerages like Merrill or T. Rowe Price, where there doesn't seem to be any way to find out from them what third party funds they offer without opening a brokerage account.
What I've found to be the worst part of dealing with Vanguard is its phone service. Routinely 40 minutes on hold. But no worse than T. Rowe Price in that regard. (I was recently on the phone continually with both in trying to get a simple IRA transfer between the two straightend up.)
Vanguard is not the easiest fund shop to work with. But IMHO it's also far from the worst. (I think TIAA is in a league of its own, but that's a whole 'nuther story.)

Thanks! This statement (or 2) were informative. But also concerning that he sees investing as stocks or bonds not stocks and bonds.
“ How do you assess today’s investment opportunity?
We aren’t market timers, so I have no idea what 2022 returns will look like. But the further out we look, the more returns are based on fundamentals, and the more confident we are in our opinions. We believe that stocks are much more reasonably priced than bonds. The S&P 500 has a dividend yield that matches a 10-year government bond, and unlike a bond, its dividends and earnings are expected to grow. We expect equity investors to perform well relative to bond investors over the next decade. We also believe that our portfolios are more attractively priced than the S&P 500. We don’t own the concept stocks that the financial media spends so much time covering. Most of our portfolios are traditional businesses that have below-average P/E ratios.
One of the best investment strategies over the past decade has been to buy exciting businesses, regardless of price. It isn’t sustainable, in our opinion, and has resulted in an unusually large price gap between growth stocks and low P/E stocks. We believe that a reversal of that performance is warranted and is likely. We are well positioned for a return to normal.
And I have some rocks in my yard that are worth between $0 and $500,000 that I would happily sell for the bargain price of just $50,000!

Rube Goldberg would love it!
BTW - My own theory is that we’ll have both. First, deflation of financial assets that may wipe out much “paper” wealth. That period will be followed sometime later by serious inflation. The worst of both worlds. Be careful folks.
Oddly, it will be the efforts of the Fed to slow inflation that I believe will eventually lead to the asset deflation I’ve mentioned.
PS - If my scenario comes to pass, it doesn’t sound like the fund Catch linked here will help much.

Yes - I’m beginning to feel completely out of touch today - a dinosaur from the mid 20th century. There were predictable business cycles than. Booms and busts. “The Fed” was revered for maintaining a tight grip on the “punch bowl” and we investors dreaded their every move. Bonds provided safety, income and (above all else) stability and commanded our respect. Junk was junk. Few wanted it. And we “dipped” in a small smelt stream every spring. It was a time when conversation centered around P/E ratios, risk analysis and expectant time horizons measured in decades. And, every so often something called a “market correction” occurred.
You got your fund prices from the newspaper. We were absent SPACs, crypto, meme stocks. “Day trading” by moms, pops and teens wasn’t yet in vogue. A manager predicting 40% annual returns for his / her fund would have been branded a “charlatan” - spurned by all but an insane few. Traders clad in suits and ties on Wall Street moved the financial levers. Made the decisions. Not impersonal computers stuffed with A/I and somebody’s “proprietary” algorithms. It’s getting harder and harder to loose money in the markets today - though I guess a few still manage to.

Interesting interview from Nov. https://www.morningstar.com/articles/1063412/these-renowned-stock-pickers-are-taking-change-in-stride
One gets a clear sense of the differences between these two fund managers but some similarities too… and even with dare I say Cathie Wood?
Favorite quotes:
TESLA
“Lynch: I think it’s a tough business. Selling cars that are expensive for the average customer, that require financing, is a little different than selling Internet ads. We did own Tesla for about three years. It was a small, more of a speculative-size position back when the first consumer reports came out around the product, and the company was starting to have a real revenue stream in front of it. But the constant need for capital from the capital markets does put you in a position, potentially, during times of uncertainty of relying on the kindness of strangers to continue the business model. Cathie Wood would say it’s not just about selling cars. There might be more to it than that—energy storage, energy services, and things of that nature. Still, ultimately, it’s a car company, and there are a lot of other big car companies that scale. They do a lot of things differently that are interesting, but ultimately the capital intensity and the constant need for external financing for us became problematic.”
ZOOM
“ Nygren: When we weren’t able to be in the office, we were using Zoom as much as anybody else was, and as a consumer, I loved the product. The concern that we had was that Zoom was being priced as if it were going to be the dominant market leader for a long time. But one conference call would be on Zoom, and then the next one on Google Meet, and then Microsoft (MSFT) Teams and BlueJeans, and they all look just about alike as a user.” <— He’s absolutely right on this point.
BUBBLE? Stocks vs Bonds
Nygren: “ I’m not going to sit here and argue that it’s a generational opportunity to buy equities or anything like that. But given where interest rates are, owning an equity like the S&P that pays almost a 2% dividend yield and has earnings that are growing at 6% or 7% a year, compared to a long-term bond, is an easy choice to make.
Lynch: “ But all things equal, I would rather own smaller companies with smaller market caps that we think could be much bigger over time than some of the larger companies that exist today.”
BITCOIN
Lynch: “ We talked about persistence earlier. Bitcoin’s kind of like Kenny from South Park. It dies every episode, and then it’s back again. As for adoption, it’s almost like bitcoin’s a virus and we’re all a little bit infected. Some people fully have gone there, and some people haven’t, but we all know about it. That’s interesting to me from a viral mechanism.”
BANKING
“Reichart: Bill, you own a lot of financials. How worried are you about disruption in the financial sector?
Nygren: Most of the financial names we own are selling relatively close to stated book value. In a world where they get disrupted and their business goes down every year, they could liquidate for relatively close to the current stock. Brian Moynihan [CEO of Bank of America BAC ] said that the pandemic has pulled forward mobile banking by a decade. If you go into a bank to a teller, it costs them $4 to process your check. If you do it at an ATM, it’s 40 cents. And if you do it on your phone, it’s 4 cents. The big banks are a disruptor there because they are so far ahead in mobilization for their clients. I don’t see a big downside for most of the companies that we own.”

I agree that many in the financial industry "talk their book."
Early in his career, Jack Bogle was told everything you need to know if you're going into the investment business. The advice was short and sweet: Nobody knows nothing.

M* makes it easy to look up recent performance of the top 25 holdings. Or in the case of LLPFX, all 17 equity holdings. One can go to the M* legacy holdings page for a fund, get links for each of the top 25 holdings, click on those links and from thence the link for each security's immediately trailing returns.
Legacy M* holdings page for LLPFX
Figuring on around a half minute per holding, that's around a quarter hour. Still tedious, but manageable. Of course one would have to do this immediately following the period of interest since the easily available data are immediately trailing one week (and one month, etc.) returns.
FWIW, looking at LLPFX, after August (i.e. recently) I don't see an 8% jump in a week. In a month, perhaps.
The fund declined for most of Sept, hitting its nadir on Sept 21, then climbing 3% and giving most of it back by Sept 30th. From that point, the fund generally ascended, reaching an 8% increase on Nov 4th and topping out with a 10% gain in Nov 5th. From there the fund gave everything plus a little more back by Dec 1.
From this new low point, the fund never climbed 8%. It did rise 7% by Dec 27th, where it effectively plateaued. So I took a quick look for holdings that climbed sharply over the month of December.
MGM up 13%, H (Hyatt) up 22%, FFH (Fairfax Financial) up 10%, CNHI (CNH Industrial) up 19%, FDX (FedEx) up 13%.

...ya...so in the past couple weeks I rec'd back about a 1/4 of my investment in IQDAX, Infinity Q fund...hopefully within the next 2 years after the lawyers and their firms get paid I get another 1/4 back...if I do, I'll consider myself lucky.
Done learnt an expensive financial investing lesson as my hard lesson was monitized. Alledged fraud by the fund mgr who was "adjusting" the NAVs as he felt was appropriate. Alledgedly.
I still think at the end of two years our, I will have taken less of a hair cut that this dumpster fire of a fund, ARKK etc. Someone commented several months ago, ya, at least Wood isn't a crook and if you lose money with her you lose it legit. True that but net, net, fraud, inexperience, marketing charlatan...your checking acccount and spending power doesn't know.
If rates do go up, and personally I think Powell might try and then all kinds of volatility will happen, her funds will really get smacked...who sung the song..."you, ain't seen nothing yet"....BTO? Bachman Turner Overdrive...baby. baby....ya ain't seen nothin'yet....
Best,
Baseball Fan

Of the 9 First Eagle mutual funds, only the Fund of America FEFAX is affected by this (as is noted by name in the release without any tickers). None of the other 8 First Eagle mutual funds have Y classes.
https://www.firsteagle.com/our-financial-products

I think it’s worthwhile to keep this thread alive at least until the end of the year. The markets are somewhat schizophrenic today with the NAS down .5% and the Dow ahead by .25%. S&P flat (as of 1:00 PM.). I think a lot of us are anticipating a change in sentiment some time during the new year.
While The Nikkei 225 fell around .25% in Monday’s session, it more than made up for that with a +1.37% jump overnight. FLJP which I’ve owned a few weeks is up a bit today. Hard to beat the .09% ER if you’re looking to diversify away from the U.S. / Europe.
Not mentioned perhaps is that markets are presently trading on very thin volume due to many traders being off. Some days now only a fraction of the shares normally traded change hands. Likely, this impacts / exaggerates movements in both directions so that they may not represent the valuation as determined by the broader investment community. That was the subtle message in my reference to “slow” markets and the lack of really good coverage by some financial media outlets this week - as their staffs are curtailed due to the holidays.
Thanks @Derf for this thread,

Giroux (46) has been with PRWCX since mid-2006 (he was only 31 then). So, he has been through the Great Financial Crisis (2007-09), the Covid selloff (2020) and other minor selloffs in between. He may have 2-3 decades ahead of him unless he gets bored. But his new roles at Price should keep things interesting for him. PRWCX is closed to new investors, but those who hold it don't have to worry about manager change any time soon.