Just placed an order for a small position in HOBEX ntf at Schwab with $100 minimum.I'll see if it gets filled on 5/21.

@Old_Joe - I was looking at the THOPX chart for 2015-16 and thought it showed some credit weakness for a ST bond fund. It recovered nicely, however, as circumstances changed. Just my opinion.

FYI: The legislative representative to the League of California Cities urged the CalPERS Investment Committee Monday to think “out of the box” in finding a way to exceed its 7% investment return projections, saying that cities won’t be able to pay their monthly contributions to the pension plan if returns are that low.
Dane Hutchings cited a CalPERS September 2017 report, which showed that 180 of the 449 cities and towns that participate in CalPERS had an individual funding ratio of between 60% and 70%. Sounding a warning alarm, Hutchings said a significant number of those communities could fall between the 50% and 60% funded when new CalPERS data come out in August.
I don’t even know where to begin on this one.
Regards,
Ted
http://awealthofcommonsense.com/2018/05/thinking-outside-the-box/

FYI: Amazon isn’t going anywhere, so shops that would rather not shut down are adapting, resulting in a somewhat surprising retail renaissance.
Regards,
Ted
https://www.thecut.com/2018/05/retail-success-in-the-age-of-amazon.html

Josh Brown's take on the idea ...
http://thereformedbroker.com/2018/05/17/endless-work-and-i-love-it/

@Maurice- Only 85?? What else would you expect from a right-wing propaganda sheet? Try reading some real newspapers for a change!
:)

Hi @Old_Skeet
Per stockcharts info; all distributions in whatever form are included in their chart indicating a "total return" for a period used (unless the time frame is too short to have a distribution included during the period).
Stockcharts total return calculation methods
You may right click on the "2615 days" block and select several default time periods.
I've added AGG to the original chart.
@Derf
Didn't you have a problem with a previous chart I posted, too?
Are you using an Apple device or ???
I've had a few times when a chart I was building did not display after the build. The page only indicated which symbols I was using. While staying at the page, I had to right click and "select reload" a few times. I don't think this was a problem at my end, but either with the site being too busy or too much internet traffic at the time. But, I've never had a continued problem with loading the graphic.
Let me know, please.
http://stockcharts.com/freecharts/perf.php?NEFZX,LBNDX,TSIAX,CTFAX,SPY,AGG&p=6&O=011000

@Old_Skeet Not sure when you purchased CTFAX. My 2 cents, this is classic example of when you buy being more important than what you buy. With a DD of 42% I would rather just invest in the S&P 500

I am a fan of Dan Fuss and crew.
My largest position in a core bond fund is NEFZX. Over the past ten years it has served me well.
Another core bond fund that I'm happy with is LBNDX.
And, yet another one is TSIAX.
These three funds combined make up about 50% of my income sleeve. The other three funds held within this sleeve are BAICX, CTFAX & GIFAX.
I've been thinking of adding to NEFZX & CTFAX.

Kenneth Weiss coined the term, but two factor authentication goes back at least as far as the mid 60s, when James Goodfellow patented the combined use of "what you know" (a PIN) and "what you have" (a physical object) to conduct secure financial transactions. Aka ATM machines.
https://www.theguardian.com/money/2016/apr/29/who-invented-cash-machine-james-goodfellow-first-atm-pin

This token took the form of a plastic card with holes punched in it. The patent documents proposed a system incorporating a card reader and buttons mounted in an external wall of the bank, and stated: “When the customer wishes to withdraw a pack of banknotes from the system he simply inserts his punched card in the card reader of the system, and operates the set of 10 push-buttons in accordance with his personal identification number.” Aside from the cards with punched holes, that pretty much describes today’s ATM.

Arguably, even earlier examples (that use an alternative factor: "what you are") include charge cards (the card itself, and your signature as a prehistoric biometric) and passbook bank accounts (the passbook, and your signature or perhaps facial recognition by the banker).
Multifactor authentication has been grasped intuitively by people for many decades. It is interesting to think about how how readily it was discarded for the sake of electronic convenience (or for getting gasoline at the pump).
Here's an interesting site that will tell you what websites support what types of two factor authentication:
https://twofactorauth.org/

As mentioned above, a really ugly year for bond funds. The next domino to drop may be junk corporates. About all that has worked are non agency rmbs and bank loan bond funds. The latter worry me if junk corporates get hit. Going into today I am 75% IOFIX and 25% EIFAX.

I suggest that consumer staples is a defensive equity area, too, yes? Not that there are not fine companies within this sector....but
The money is running to other places right now, IMHO.
One may view the money travels from the sell down in late Jan./early Feb.
http://stockcharts.com/freecharts/perf.php?XLP,FDGRX,SPY&p=5&O=011000

I am still holding RHS although I did reduce it a bit, and each day I watch it go down I fight hard not to do anything. It's not easy, it has always done well in the past, have had it for 5 years and it does hold up in bad times, lets hope people start buying soup and soda again :)

What do you use as a core bond fund? I'm looking for options that help serve as ballast against equity downturns, not something that has big exposure to high yield. Many multi-sector and core plus bond funds ramp up their exposure to high yield (10-20%) as a means of boosting returns and yield. Other funds seems to use the mortgage sector as a way of sidestepping interest rate hikes, but what happens when those sectors go south? I guess I'm looking for something that successfully spreads its bets between corporates, treasuries and MBS without dipping heavily into high yield.

Everything I own in fixed income is off this year. Not big time - but down. Makes me wonder if stocks are setting up for a big tumble?
-
@Willmatt72 nailed the questions re bonds pretty well. Who knows? Here the questions come a lot easier than the answers. Downside protection comes at a price. The “downier” the degree of protection, the more you give up in yield.
I think Price’s RPSIX is grossly underrated. M* and the others rate it generally “fair-middling”.
But it’s a nice diversified one-stop income fund (not strictly a bond fund). You won’t get rich with it and you won’t go broke either. Pulls from a stable of nearly a dozen TRP funds and is run by forks who are generally ahead of the allocation game - sometimes so far out in front they look stupid. The generally 10-15% dose of an income producing equity fund (PRFDX) will boost returns longer term.
The above would constitute my largest fixed income holding at present (excluding cash). And DODLX would be my second largest hold.

I agree staples are well worth watching for a turnaround. I won't consider buying, though, till there's some evidence of it. The sector index is in death-cross territory, with the price and the 50d ma still headed down, down, down.

DODIX.
30 corporates
25 agency mbs pass through
16 treasuries
5 agency mbs arm
5 asset-backed.
TTM 2.78%

FYI: Within the broader equity market these days, there probably isn’t a sector that is more out of favor than Consumer Staples. As consumers have shifted their tastes away from brands that dominated the economy of their parent’s generation, the stocks in the sector have been big market laggards. The chart below shows the relative strength of the Consumer Staples sector versus the S&P 500 since 1980. A rising line indicates outperformance on the part of the Consumer Staples sector, while a falling line indicates underperformance. After dominating the market in the 1980s, Consumer Staples performed inline with the market throughout most of the 1990s until the Tech bubble where they fell out of bed on a relative basis. By March 2000, there wasn’t a lonelier place to be in the market than Consumer Staples
Regards,
Ted
https://www.bespokepremium.com/think-big-blog/consumer-staples-an-epic-underperformer/
M* Snapshot XLP:
http://www.morningstar.com/etfs/ARCX/XLP/quote.html

Yup. And apparently w/o notice, thus freaking out many of their customers who saw massive losses on their positions heading into the weekend. Not cool, or customer friendly! ;/
The M* discussion of this item is @
http://socialize.morningstar.com/NewSocialize/forums/p/383436/3931553.aspx#3931553
MFO thread @
https://www.mutualfundobserver.com/discuss/discussion/40977/instant-heart-attack-fselx-has-10-1-split#latest

FYI: This week, we speak with famed short seller Jim Chanos, founder and president of Kynikos Associates LP, the world’s largest exclusive short-selling investment firm.
Chanos has identified — and sold short — many of the past 3 decades best-known corporate disasters. His celebrated short-sale of Enron shares was dubbed by Barron’s as “the market call of the decade, if not the past 50 years.” He also made bets against Baldwin-United, Commodore International, Coleco, Integrated Resources, Boston Chicken, Sunbeam, Conseco, Tyco International, and most recently, Valeant Pharmaceuticals.
He explains why he believes Elon Musk’s first love is SpaceX, and that “Tesla is a zero.”
Chanos said that when he launched Kynikos, there were a few 100 hedge funds, only 20 or 30 of which generating alpha. He presently sits on a number of boards where he helps to allocate capital. Market participants have gotten better, the landscape has become more competitive, and the funds have turned into large 300-person businesses. Despite 11,000 hedge fund choices, today there are even fewer hedge funds outperforming.
He asks, via Julian Robertson, the all important question “What is your edge.” Most managers lack a sustainable edge — trading, research, deviant perception — as reversion to mean is such a powerful process.
Regards,
Ted
http://ritholtz.com/2018/05/mib-jim-chanos-edge/

In 1999, commission schedules were all over the map, but few charged extra for odd lots. (See survey cited below.)
My own recollection of Schwab and Fidelity is that they charged a flat rate up to 100 shares, and prices went up from there (though I don't recall their formulae).
For the lowest price, one could have used Brown & Co. It apparently charged a flat $5 rate for market orders, regardless of the number of shares or dollar value of the order.
That's like today's flat rate model. With either model (flat to 100 shares or flat, period), odd lots (under 100 shares) cost more per share than a round lot of 100 shares. Simply because you pay the same flat rate for fewer shares traded. Same arithmetic then and now.
AAII Journal, The 1999 Discount Broker Survey: A Guide to Commissions and Services
http://www.aaii.com/journal/article/the-1999-discount-broker-survey-a-guide-to-commissions-and-services
Surprisingly, restricting mutual fund transactions to whole shares is not just a thing of the past. Last year I converted a position at Merrill Edge from a traditional to a Roth IRA, and Merrill was unable to convert the fractional share. It converted the whole shares only. Then a few days later, it liquidated the fractional shares and converted the cash.
Clearly a system stuck, as you described, back in the '90s.