“plus a year of Disney+ for free”
Paid $70 for a year of Disney plus. About 8-10 good shows. Than ran out of stuff to watch. :)
Several animations are quite good if into that type stuff. Hamilton’s very good. But not as enjoyable as seeing it live, which I did.
Stuck with 4G for internet. Unlimited now. Able to stream movies for first time. Waiting for Musk to get his stats running.

Like Iron Ranger, have a position in IHI as I think Medical Equipment is less exposed to political whims than pharmaceuticals. Similarly, I just initiated in ARKK--other than consistent performance impressed with their quarterly webinar updates and interesting to review the daily trade activity by free subscription. Also have done well with MSEGX and CLIX which I believe is still well-positioned for the retail environment. Most of my bond portfolio in 401(k) managed by Blackrock. Defensively, small positions in FLYT, DFND, and FCTR but would entertain musings of others on the board in this area.

October 16th Episode:
/depressed-global-value-stocks-represent-a-value-investors-dream-says-fund-manager-sarah-ketterer/

Finding compelling reasons to invest when faced with so many unknowns is a daunting challenge — but one that our quarterly panel of veteran investors lives with every day. These money managers now see opportunities that stretch from cyclical stocks — which benefit when the economy runs hot — to battered European banks and the sovereign debt of China.

how-to-invest-10k/

@FD1000 you indicated you Immigrated to the US, what was your country of origin perhaps Canada?

Because it matters: https://barrons.com/articles/blackrock-supports-fewer-shareholder-requests-for-climate-risk-disclosures-51603024200

Thanks for the excellent article @bee. Like several posters here I also use PRWCX and VWINX as my main balanced funds, and they performed well through March drawdown and bounced back in 6 months.
With respect to VMVFX, this global fund has underwent several sizable changes while trailing its benchmark badly this year. YTD -8.1% versus Vanguard total world index, 4.3%. I too invested in this fund since inception but left two years ago to refocus my oversea exposure elsewhere toward growth oriented funds.
1. the top 10 holding of VMVFX has changed considerably. Now it holds Alibaba (#1) and Taiwan Semiconductor (#3) and they are certainly NOT low volatility stocks.
2. a change of fund manager in 2018 (Antonio Picca)
3. an increased of emerging market exposure to 10.1%
4. Currency hedging hurts its performance as USD has been declining this year.
5. Large % of REITs early in the year does not help as REIT is still not doing well. Recent data indicated that REIT holding has reduced to 4%.
My Vanguard total bond market index fund, institutional share, in a target date fund has done a solid job this year and that is good enough for us.
@Ironranger61, bond funds you picked are quite good. One suggestion I have is Vanguard International Total bond index, Admiral share, VTABX - a conservative bond fund. https://investor.vanguard.com/mutual-funds/profile/portfolio/vtabx

Great advices posted here for those who are approaching retirement and in retirement. Maintaining good health is the key so one can enjoy doing all the activities they want during retirement. Another approach is to enjoy life (hiking, traveling or being active) while you are your young because some of these activities may not be physically possible at older ages. Through my college days, I learned car camping and hike as much as possible due to my limited budget. Out west there are ample outdoor opportunities in the local parks and on the coastline. I enjoyed week long backpacking trips on the Pacific Crest trail but today I do more long day hikes while camping with the family. Wildfire and COVID situation now limited our outdoor activities to long hikes on beaches. Traveling abroad provides wonderful experience and appreciation of other culture, and we have our fair share of doing that. When we get through this COVID-19 with effective vaccines, we would like to visit Australia and New Zealand.
Speaking of saving for retirement, one needs to learn to be good investors (from savers) early in the career so the asset will compound until for the next several decades. Each bear market is a learning lesson. Hopefully one gained experience and become better investors. In private industry, lay-offs are inevitable as ones will change jobs several times throughout their careers. None of which is easy and I certainly have experienced that.

@sma3,
Following the definition of maximum drawdown for this year, I come up with similar MAXDD value as you did for VCOBX: -6.8% versus -0.8% (MFO).
NAV = $21.48 on 3/6/20 - peak date
NAV = $20.02 on 3/19/20 - bottom date
The other difference I found was that the recovery to reach the same NAV was 29 days and MFO reported 2 months.
I understand that MFO uses Lipper database to derive their data. It is possible there is a systematic error on how Lipper is calculating the MAXDD.
@charles, can you help with this question? Thanks

Thanks for posting FD. PIMIX has been a thorn in my side. I believe 12/18 was the time the fed began raising rates in which the fund began to get hit, and still hasn't recuperated. Of course, at that time, I lump summed some money into it (who says lump sum is better that DCA?). I know I made money on the dividends (which got reduced), but it still bothers me. I plan on slowly shifting money out of the fund. But getting back to your point, that was the time rising rates impacted a bond fund.

I just googled it and saw this example(link)
The arrival of the Internet and email ?make/?makes communication with family so much easier. The answer is makes (singular) because the subject is arrival
My OP :Why rising rates isn't that bad for bonds. I thought that rising is the subject too ;-)

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FD - Their example (above) utilizes a prepositional phrase (“of the internet and email”) which works as a modifier describing the subject which is “arrival.” So, they do have a singular subject in arrival. The word “rising” in your sentence serves as an adjective describing rates. So “rates” is your subject. However, “rising” is an unusual adjective in that it is derived from the verb “rise.” In English, when you create an adjective out of a verb it is called a “participial.” However, it works in the sentence as any other adjective would. I can certainly understand how that can be confusing
What you appear to have is an independent (main) clause in declarative voice starting with the adverb “why.” An independent clause is considered a sentence. Your subject, than, is “rates.” I think common usage by and large would support that. I’m inclined, however, to think that technically, you may not really have an independent clause at all, but, rather a subordinate clause (technically not a complete sentence).
Here’s what I mean: “Why rising interest rates isn’t that bad for bonds .....” really doesn’t express a complete thought. Starting with “why” leaves us wondering a bit about what complete thought is being expressed, To do that (technically speaking) you would need to add a main verb. The complete sentence might read:
“Why rising interest rates aren’t that bad for bonds is apparent in a number of ways.”
Here it is dissected a bit more: “Why rising interest rates aren’t bad for bonds / is / apparent / in a number of ways.”
In the above 4 word groupings there exist:
(1) an introductory subordinate (adverbial) clause serving as subject
(2) a main verb (is)
(3) a predicate adjective (apparent)
(4) a prepositional phrase which serves to modify the main verb (Some would say the prepositional phrase modifies the predicate adjective.)
Actually, since your statement serves as title of the thread, it need not be a sentence. Most titles aren’t. None of this alters the fact that “rates” is your subject - be it within a main or subordinate clause.
Cheers!

Great comments.
Retirement continues to be good after 15 years. Actively putting attention into maintaining good health makes sense to me as does accepting the aging process as it inevitably occurs. Being close to relatives makes sense in our situation (in some situations it doesn't!). Financially, maintaining a balance between current enjoyment and set asides for the future continues to make sense to me. My simple minded approach for about a decade has been to release income (including some long term gains) from investment accounts to our household account each year. Remaining portfolio balances continue to be set aside for growth, for potential use in extreme emergencies, and for assisting relatives if needed. Any remaining balances will eventually be distributed to heirs and to non-profits.
As my 70th birthday approached last year, I decided to somewhat increase the income being generated by the portfolio for release by beginning to move 25% of the OEF/ETF portfolio balance to a newly created high yield portfolio (an @Junkster thought process led to this decision). That process was recently completed. The new portfolio has been populated with higher yielding stocks (3%+ yields at time of purchase), cefs, bdcs, reits, and commercial mreits. Time will tell if this exercise has been helpful or not!
Income released to the household is used for a variety of general purposes. What remains is mostly used for travel. Unfortunately, an early March return from Hawaii heralded the end to this year's travel. Summer travel plans got cancelled or mothballed. Also, the month in Hawaii scheduled for this coming winter will probably get cancelled soon.
Trips since the pandemic hit have centered around getaways most weeks to our nearby beach cabin (having that has proved to be a real blessing this year). My hope is that a relatively effective vaccine will be fairly widely distributed by next summer. Once that happens, I am hopeful travel risk will be reduced enough that somewhat more normal travel can resume. I am not getting any younger!
After thought: Alway remember life is short! Don't take any day for granted! My wife recently mentioned she could count 19 friends, co-volunteers of hers at the American Legion, and relatives who have passed away during the past year. (We just visited a friend at the coast yesterday who lost his wife to liver cancer during the past month. She was about our age and appeared to be in good health when we last visited them during the winter. The problem was only recently discovered.)

Not sure if the following is referenced behind the WSJ paywall, but several years ago, PIMCO was 'caught' by the SEC doing the same thing with its bond fund ETF::
PIMCO Settles Charges of Misleading Investors About ETF Performance
https://www.sec.gov/news/pressrelease/2016-252.html
Reuters version
https://www.reuters.com/article/us-pimco-sec/pimco-to-pay-20-million-over-misleading-investors-about-etf-performance-idUSKBN13Q5WZ
And Semper Capital was tripped up by the same thing earlier this year.
Barrons:SEC Accuses Mortgage Fund of Overstating Its Returns
https://www.barrons.com/articles/sec-accuses-mortgage-fund-of-overstating-its-returns-51588272533

@caeew388 - OK :)
Quick note to @FD1000 - The error in your thread title is pretty basic - not something most educated readers wouldn’t at least notice.
What I think happened is that you considered “rising rates” to be singular in form. Actually, in conventional use “rising rates” is plural. Therefore, the plural form of the verb (are) is the correct choice. You’re using a contraction here, so the word you need is “aren’t” Sentence reads properly: “Why rising interest rates aren’t that bad for bonds.“
On the other hand, if discussing just one particular interest rate, the singular verb form “is” would be accurate. Example using a singular verb form: “Why the bank’s rising mortgage rate isn’t good for the home-buyer.”
Just trying to help.
On the topic of interest rates:
Certainly folks invested in short duration bonds, money market instruments and the like would welcome rising rates. Banks are one business that are predicted to do better with higher rates because they can lend money at those rates. But longer-dated bonds would not do well - at least not until after the sharply rising rate trend had subsided.
What I’m really wondering is what would happen to the S&P type stocks over a protracted period of rising rates? Has there ever been a period in history during which rates in the U.S. have fallen so far for so long? Longer term rates have fallen from around 20% in the 80s to what? Around 3% now? Regardless of the exact number, that’s been one long steep slide. And it’s persisted for more than 30 years by my count. It’s so unique that there’s not a good deal to go on in trying to assess the impact on many other investments. At some point, if rates rise enough, people may begin to consider bonds a good alternative to equities and begin shifting money away from the stock market.

We love to travel and have done it since the early 80". We did 2 months in the US, then 2 months in the Far East. Immigrated to the US and traveled again to 48 states in the next 15 years several weeks annually.
Since 2007 we traveled to Europe for 3 weeks annually but couldn't do it this year because of COVID-19. So the only thing left is local hiking in GA. We decided a month ago to hike twice a week and treat it like a vacation.
We are using a great site https://www.alltrails.com
Example: we hiked the Raven cliff falls trail (link).

“Then look at Prepositions and particles and my head is spinning“.
Kick in = start
Kick off = start
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FD, Thanks for responding. What you’ve posted above are actually known as prepositional verbs. (To be perfectly honest, I had to look that one up.) You’ve used the verb form of “kick“ and followed it with a preposition. These tend to be mostly colloquial (casual) expressions, not often found in formal writing.
Prepositions are quite easy to comprehend. Think of one as: a “linking word” having a noun or pronoun as an “object“. Examples: in, on, by. Prepositional phrases add additional meaning to other parts of the sentence. Example: “in this post”: In this example the preposition “in” is followed by its object “post“ and explains where the information was presented. If you think you see a preposition standing alone (having no object) it’s probably serving as an adverb.
Regarding your “COME, HOME, TOMB “, with just 26 letters and only 5 vowels in the language, it’s necessary to assign various pronunciations for the same letter or combination thereof. I agree that that aspect of pronunciation would be most difficult to assimilate. I’d imagine some of the hardest for folks to get their heads around would be combinations of letters which produce sounds (neighbor, phantom). However, this issue should not pose a problem in written discourse as we’re dealing with in your “rising interest rates” post.
I respect those like you who are multi-lingual. I don’t know any other languages, but had a couple years of Latin in HS from a very fine teacher. That experience did more to help me understand and enjoy the English language than anything else. Helping teenagers understand the poetry of Shakespeare (during another life) also contributed to my appreciation for the language. Sorry I wasn’t a bit more polite in my original intrusion into your choice of wording. Didn’t realize than that English was a second language. Just trying to be helpful. As I remarked to @Graust, you do communicate quite well. However, I think those three simple worksheets I linked would be helpful to anyone (even @Old_Joe) who might need a bit of added instruction.
Regards
PS - Regarding “Particles”, I assume you intended “participials”. Let’s save that one for another day! :)

Schwartzer makes a good case for mid-stream and the quality pick of EPD makes sense to me. My aversion to EPD relates to the Schedule K-1 they issue (See: https://www.forbes.com/sites/baldwin/2017/02/08/state-filing-requirements-for-mlp-investors/#4c5be8d13751)
Anyone who wants to consider a mid-stream investment without the Sch K-1 hassle might look at WMB or KMI. (I recently purchased some KMI and also own some RTLR which is more speculative. It also avoids the Sch K-1).

the infinitive 'rule' arose because it cannot be done in other languages (ours is perhaps the only where the infinitive is two words)
and yes, it is increasingly ignored, although when gross ('who doesn't want to loudly and enthusiastically and without stopping sing the praises of this site?') it is nicer to rewrite
danglers simply show inattention to what one is saying, but often have fine comic effects: 'having eaten our lunch, the ferry departed for the islands' ... as a thoughtful progressive, Gaetz took strong exception to his opponent's policies ... a girl of 13, my wife found our daughter more and more selfconscious

Thank you! I didn’t think they “ETFified” AKREX haha.
And thanks to you for bringing up the Vanguard Russel 1K ETFs....I hadn’t known of their existence before.
I own ARKK and ARKF (the latter bc I think disruption in financial industry is well underway, but in early innings) in small pieces.....but I try to add to it on drops in the NASDAQ.
Sorry for the “far afield”! :)