If it's an IRA I agree but if the total amount of taxable income in a taxable account is below a specific amount (around $78,750 for joint account) capital gains are zero.

A bunch of news outlets reported today or yesterday that "The Federal Reserve Bank of New York added $95.56 billion in temporary liquidity to financial markets Tuesday. The intervention came in two parts. One was via overnight repurchase agreements, or repos, that totaled $77.8 billion, and the other was via 14-day repos totaling $17.76 billion." Wall Street Journal in that case.
Two thoughts: (1) this might resonate with the concerns we reflected in our December liquidity story. (2) If you Ecosia "fed adds liquidity" - I'm experimenting with the Ecosia web search engine and figured that if that other search engine can be turned into a verb, so can these guys - it appears that a quick hundred billion is becoming a near-monthly event. Same thing was needed in November.
David

https://www.municipalbonds.com/investing-strategies/case-passive-muni-bond-funds/?utm_source=Municipal+Bonds&utm_campaign=9d27a1e944-ExpTrial_Weekly_Bulletin_Engage_05_12_2019&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_d7427882c9-9d27a1e944-48657085&goal=0_d7427882c9-9d27a1e944-48657085
The case for passive muni bond funds
Maybe another couch_ potatoes Portfolios ideas

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.

I agree with everything @LewisBraham says above and thank him for the presentation. I’ll add that our marvelous free press and its investigative reporting is imperiled by factors both financial and political. Every time I curl up with a fresh copy of the NYT or other great publication, I’m reminded that we may not be so blessed in the future.
If you’re still with me ... I’m reminded of a short story, “The Portable Phonograph” by Walter VanTilberg Clark I used to use with students back in the 70s. The story depicts the existence of a few “post-civilization” survivors holed up in a cave following a devastating war. Each clings to some great literary masterpiece or other relic from the past. The title is a reference to an old man who treasures a collection of aging phonograph records:
“The records, though,” said the old man when he had finished winding, “are a different matter. Already they are very worn. I do not play them more than once a week. One, once a week, that is what I allow myself. ...More than a week I cannot stand it; not to hear them,” he apologized.
Link to brief summary of story: https://www.enotes.com/homework-help/short-story-portable-phonograph-why-author-634741
Link to complete story (5 pages):
http://www.mscruz.yolasite.com/resources/The Portable Phonograph.pdf
-
Some added thoughts re the points Lewis made so articulately.
I obtain / read all my subscription periodicals through Amazon’s Kindle service. I’d feel better sending my money directly to publishers. On the other hand, I assume they are being adequately compensated (big assumption) by Amazon or they wouldn’t agree to have their publications re-sourced. Here’s why I use the Kindle editions:
- 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.
- Ease of starting and stopping subscriptions. Amazon allows you to cancel a subscription at any time and refunds the unused portion of any subscription amount paid. By contrast, I’ve encountered much difficulty cancelling online subscriptions from Barron’s. Once, I had to have my bank pull my charge card and issue a new one as it was the only way I could keep from being charged monthly after repeated attempts to cancel through the publisher.
- Formatting. In my opinion nobody does this better. Amazon pioneered the e-reader and remains miles ahead in providing a format (suitable for many different devices) that’s easy to access, fine-tune, read and navigate.
- One-stop billing and ease of accessing / changing account settings,
Just a few thoughts. I’d say Amazon ranks relatively low on the list of factors damaging the free press. I’d cite a continued dumbing down of the populace, addiction to internet, TV and electronic media, free-loaders who pay nothing, and attacks from the far right as more influential causes of journalism’s plight.

@Mark
I recall I'd read last year that, that December was the best time to own stocks; EXCEPT ONLY after Dec. 25.

Yahoo Finance articles have become a joke ...

Yahoo has become a joke. I recently ordered some pricey theater tickets. Rather than going through the trouble of changing my old “ymail” address with Telecharge, I left the old email standing. Guess what? Tickets were emailed, but yahoo mail has been completely off-line since some time late yesterday. Tried about 50 times. Finally phoned Telecharge today and got them sent to a more up-to-date email. :)
Yahoo was a pioneer in internet search in the 90s. How far they’ve fallen.

A few things I would note are:
1. There wouldn't be much click-bait journalism if Google/Facebook/Amazon hadn't killed journalism and basically bankrupted many publications.
2. Publications are now desperate for clicks to sustain their remaining ad revenue.
3. Readers, including--at least in the past--many on this site, assume news should be "free" with the implicit assumption that journalists don't deserve to get paid. They happily cut and paste entire articles and show other readers various means around paywalls.
4. Many pubs are now so broke they pay journalists pennies per word.
5. Shoddy click-bait journalism often exists because pubs are so broke/greedy--both, really--they hire writers who are really professionals in another industry seeking to promote their own businesses and journalism is really an advertisement for their businesses, be it financial planning or money management. Those writers come cheap because journalism really isn't their end goal when they write an article. It is self-promotion.
6. Journalists at mainstream publications generally don't write their own headlines. I know I don't. Headlines are written by a team at the pub seeking "search engine optimization" or SEO to generate clicks.
7. Investigative journalism is expensive, time consuming and often draws negative backlash from powerful interests, be they corporate or government, or both. It rarely leads to additional ad revenue for a publication. Pubs are thus less interested in doing it.
And so good journalism is dying.

Just an ironic aside from the reaction to our December issue.
I used a click-bait style headline for our article denouncing click-bait journalism. Yesterday I pulled the readership stats for the first 36 hours (basically, Saturday and Sunday) after launch.
Most-viewed article (in MFO history): Reduce your 2020 risks by 50% with this one move! 27,000 views
Second-most viewed article in the issue: the issue's homepage, 3,000 views.
I'm guessing that bots, Russian or otherwise, are involved. I'm guessing that there's an algorithm that trawls the internet looking for a certain style of headline, then scrapes it. Where the scrapings go, I know not.
Or, more optimistically, we're sparked a revolution in online media literacy and people by the tens of thousands are holding reprints of the article close to their hearts.
Yup, that's what I'm guessing. Yes indeedy.
David

https://www.investors.com/etfs-and-funds/sectors/sp-500-top-stocks-own-in-years-best-time-december/
Now's The Best Time To Own Stocks (Especially These Eight)
MATT KRANTZ 08:00 AM ET 12/03/2019
December is the best time to own S&P 500 stocks. But some stocks are a bit better to own than the rest.

T. Rowe Price has two series of target date funds: the original series now called Retirement Funds and its newer more conservative series that it calls Target Funds.
Price describes the latter as "offer[ing] lower volatility -- and lower potential long-term growth -- than Retirement Funds by emphasizing bonds near the target date."
M* shows the glide path of the former as having a high, but not the highest, equity allocation as seen in the graph on this page:
https://news.morningstar.com/pdfs/STUSA04OMN.pdf
Fidelity has so many lineups it's difficult to keep track of them. Its Simplicity RMD funds were formerly Income Replacment Funds that were overhauled in 2017. It has Managed Retirement Funds, Freedom Funds, and Freedom Index Funds.
Regarding the latter, M* observed that "Despite the notable cost advantage, each Freedom Index fund lagged its Freedom series counterpart since the Freedom Index series' late-2009 launch through December 2018 .... The absence of active management and certain subasset classes, like high-yield bonds, from Freedom Index contributed to these results."
Then they've got a series I'd never heard of: Freedom Blend Funds. In case you can't decide between active (Freedom) and passive (Freedom Index) management, these "blend" funds use both. Did I mention that Fidelity also has Fidelity Advisor (load) versions of these funds as well?

Just to add to syzygy's mention of MICPX, it is more than just bonds. Per one of David's commentaries:

Our July 2017 profile of Matthews Asia Credit Opportunities (MCRDX/MICPX) described it as investing in high-yield bonds. That’s correct but incomplete. Manager Satya Patel reminded us that the fund’s core investments can include “convertibles, hybrids and derivatives with fixed income characteristics.” Indeed, since inception convertible bonds have represented 20-25% of the portfolio.

Might be a bit more risk in this one.

Hi @hank
The repo market circumstance is still in play.
The link below will have 3 articles from yesterday, Dec. 2. They are just down the page a wee bit from the top.
REPO MARKET
Stay warm and wish that snow away, please !
Catch

Kudos, David, for discussing liquidity risk. It seems like the one risk I don't see discussed enough in the press. It also isn't analyzed particularly well or often enough in funds. It's funny to me no one else has complimented you on that part of your commentary yet. Understanding that risk I believe will become critical at some point.

I enjoyed / appreciated that portion as well. Possibly the most thorough look at market risk @DavidSnowball has ever put together (focused on fixed-income, but I’d expect spill-over to equity funds as well). Hadn’t yet read that part when I initially bumped the commentary over.
If you’re 10 or younger you’ve never lived through a real bear market. I hope there’s no one under 25 managing any fund. He / she would have been in high school when the last bear ended. Not clever enough to understand all the intricacies of the repo market. But it struck me as odd the need for massive infusions of cash in September. Article attempts to explain the implications. https://www.globalresearch.ca/federal-reserve-panic-september-2019-solutions-crisis/5693700

As a time-kill, I chose the "target date 2040" category at random.
37 funds. Five year returns range from 5.0 - 7.9% a year. Maximum drawdown from 9.0 - 14.4%. Standard deviation from 7 - 11%. That strikes me as pretty vast differences for funds with such a similar goal.
That's especially striking in light of the funds correlation. I rank a matrix for all 2040, sorted by Sharpe and then chose every third fund (12 total) to analyze. That gaves me a equal sample to top, middle and bottom performers. The vast majority of funds had correlations to each other of 98 or 99. The biggest outlier was one fund-to-fund correlation of 91. The correlation suggests, to me anyway, that they've all in the same markets with small but cumulative differences in expenses, valuations and so on.
Back to my students,
David

The Matthews fund is pretty much sui generis. In the US market, I can find only two other funds that are vaguely comparable, Harvest Asia Bond and Aberdeen Asia-Pacific Income. One other Asia bond fund liquidated a couple years ago. That makes it hard to construct a meaningful peer comparison. Morningstar had it as "world bond," where it was a four-star fund then moved it to "emerging markets bond," where it is a four-star fund.
That said, it's a poor fit - for purposes of benchmarking - with the group. I checked the correlations between the six Great Owl EM bond funds, looking at both their correlations with one another and their correlation with Matthews. Their inter-group correlation is in the mid-90s, their correlation with Matthews is in the mid-70s.
I own shares and have since launch. I'm impressed with Ms. Kong and am persuaded by her argument about the shift in the world financial capitals from New York and London to Asia. Modest correlation to the US bond market, about .53.
"Strategic" was all the rage in fund naming once. Not so much now. These things come and go.
David

JP Morgan ETFs:
https://am.jpmorgan.com/blob-gim/1383650763805/83456/2019 Exchange-Traded Funds Capital Gains Estimates.pdf

Yes, TRRIX looks good to me, apart from the paltry dividends. I still am enjoying my own mix. In order of size: PRWCX RPSIX PRSNX PTIAX PRIDX VEIRX (wife's 403b soon to be moved to TRP as a rollover IRA.) and lastly, PRDSX. .....In full retirement, and wife will commence work again in 2020. I'm paying monthly rent. Nobody wants to still be doing that in retirement, but it simplifies everything, with water and electric included. And I'm rid of a house the family had owned since 1959--- which I've hated for as long as I can remember. And snow is now a thing of the past for us. ...Though I did get caught in the rain on my walk today. 5 mins. from the house. The little guy here just lights up your heart when he smiles at you. We're sharing with cousins. It really feels like FAMILY. :)

Jeffrey Gundlach: The US stock market ‘will get crushed’ in the next recession
Julia La Roche
Yahoo FinanceDecember 2, 2019, 6:14 PM CST
Influential bond investor Jeffrey Gundlach, the CEO of $150 billion DoubleLine Capital, sees a scenario where U.S. stocks get crushed in the next recession — and likely won't recover for quite some time to come.
https://finance.yahoo.com/news/gundlach-the-us-will-get-crushed-in-the-next-recession-001139205.html
What else is new?...last time lost 55% dows to 5.5k
This time dows 10k to 15k bottom in 12 or 24 or to 36 months?