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Here's a statement of the obvious: The opinions expressed here are those of the participants, not those of the Mutual Fund Observer. We cannot vouch for the accuracy or appropriateness of any of it, though we do encourage civility and good humor.
  • PRWCX disappoints today
    Nobody here suggested that the fund is not a good one. It's just ridiculous that you care to even mention about a 1-day return unless it was absolutely mind boggling.
    SMFH = Shaking my ****ing head
  • PRWCX disappoints today
    PRWCX Covered call strategy:
    PRWCX has employed a covered call overwriting strategy consistently since 2008. This involves buying an equity security and writing a call option that becomes exercisable at a higher price in return for an upfront premium. In the first half of 2018, our covered call program generated 133% of the market’s return while taking on only 55% of the market’s risk. While the underlying derivatives detracted from performance in the last six months, the underlying equities were material positive contributors to performance and the combined portfolio of equities and the calls written against them produced good absolute and risk-adjusted returns.
  • Plain Vanilla Foreign Funds
    Not that it makes any difference to me, but M* says that Ferguson, Accenture, Schlumberger, and Millicom are US companies, whereas FMIJX says the companies are from Jersey, Ireland, Curacao, and Luxemburg respectively. So I believe FMIJX claims to be 100% exUS
  • JP Morgan To Unveil New Investing App With An Eye-Catching, Disruptive Price: Free
    I haven't (yet) tried Chase, though I have tried the other three majors, and have been rather underwhelmed. I've used them primarily to meet mins for other services (e.g. getting bonus cash back on BofA credit cards with my Merrill Edge account), so my demands on them are minimal, and yet they still manage to disappoint.
    Better luck with Chase. Try them out before moving much of anything there. At least that way if/when you don't like them you'll be able to liquidate and not incur an ACAT (transfer) fee. (FWIW Schwab charges $25 for a partial transfer; the $50 is only for a full transfer.)
    Chase already sells all the funds it offers without a transaction fee. While that does include Vanguard (Investor shares only) and Fidelity, for the most part it's a limited offering. Just 30 families, and no institutional shares - just retail NL shares or load-waved A shares. A link to the list of funds and families is below, as is a copy of the families they sell.
    I think that consolidating institutions is more important in making it easier for your wife than finding a place she can walk into. It's really not hard doing must stuff over the phone. Though you do get to the point where a death certificate needs to be mailed in.
    It'ss not a big deal to send the paperwork via certified mail. Even if beneficiaries walk in with the paperwork, they won't get the money immediately.
    Gary Pilgrim and Harold Baxter were both crooks. (Remember Christine?)
    https://www.sec.gov/news/press/2004-157.htm
    As was William J . Nasgovitz
    https://www.twincities.com/2008/01/29/heartland-advisors-agrees-to-3-5-million-settlement-of-sec-suit/
    Alliance Bernstein
    Allianz
    American Century
    American Funds (Capital Group)
    BlackRock
    Delaware
    Dreyfus
    Eaton Vance
    Federated
    Fidelity
    First Eagle
    Franklin Templeton
    Hartford
    Invesco
    Ivy
    John Hancock
    J.P. Morgan
    Legg Mason
    Lord Abbett
    MFS
    Natixis
    Nuveen
    Oppenheimer
    Pacific Life
    PIMCO
    Principal
    Putnam
    T.Rowe Price
    Transamerica
    Vanguard
    https://www.chase.com/content/dam/chase-ux/documents/personal/investments/jpm-mutual-fund-list-for-sdi.pdf
  • Free mutual fund trades
    No mins, no ups, no extras (anyone else remember Earle Scheib?)
    Firstrade Moves To Free Online Trading – Stocks, ETFs, Options, Mutual Funds
    New York, August 23, 2018 - Firstrade Securities, Inc., a leading online brokerage firm, has eliminated its commissions for all stocks, exchange-traded funds (ETFs), options, and mutual funds, effective today. Firstrade customers will now be able to trade for free with no time restrictions, no limits on the number of trades allowed and no minimum account requirements. ...
    https://www.firstrade.com/content/en-us/aboutus/press?page=pr180823
  • M* Says Investors Favored Passive, Defensive Funds In July
    FYI: U.S. ETF and mutual fund investors favored bonds over stocks and domestic over international while continuing a long-term trend towards passive management in July.
    According to Chicago-based Morningstar, $32.1 billion flowed into U.S. open-ended, long-only funds in July, compared to $22.1 billion in outflows during June.
    Regards,
    Ted
    https://www.fa-mag.com/news/investors-favored-passive--defensive-funds-as-they-returned-to-the-markets-in-july-40458.html?print
  • JP Morgan To Unveil New Investing App With An Eye-Catching, Disruptive Price: Free
    Does anyone have experience with JPMorgan Chase? I see they charge $75 if you want to move out an asset. (Schwab wants $60 each to move an IRA, by the way.)
    I had a nice wrap account with Wells Fargo with 100 free trades. I still have the 100 free trades, but there is little other reason to stay with them.
    I started "collecting" mutual funds back when you pretty much bought them direct from the fund itself. Funds have come and gone (remember PBHG Growth? Heartland Value?), but I now have accounts at WF, Fido, TDA, Schwab, Fidelity, Vanguard, plus those pesky individual fund companies. Which is fine. For the time being. But eventually, it won't be fine. Particularly if I got hit by a bus tomorrow.
    I have been aggregating at Vanguard, but they are not really the place for stock trading, and they are not local. (But Vanguard waives my Transaction Fees on mutual funds ...)
    So the advantage I could see with JPM Chase is that lacking me, my wife could consolidate there and expect to walk to the Chase branch and receive money. Period.
  • 15 U.S. companies, largest R & D spending
    R & D spending is generally considered a positive sign for a company's future growth. The list may help provide more insight into where you choose to place your investment monies going forward, if you're not already in place.
    15 U.S. companies largest R & D spending
  • PRWCX disappoints today
    Missed in all the brickbats here is that PRWCX is a top-notch fund from a top-notch fund family. I’ve owned it nearly since inception. @Crash has owned it for close to a decade. Many others in the discussion either own it or wish they did.
    A penny’s variation in a fund’s NAV on a single day is short-term focus for sure. I don’t know why @Crash singled the fund out for attention on Tuesday. But, considering the number of threads here that often have little / nothing to do with mutual funds, his sin appears slight.
    Some of us just enjoy discussing the workings of funds - particularly the ones we own. To me, saying something like “the fund has outperformed every year for 15 years” adds little to an understanding of the fund or of investing. Anyone can go to M*, Lipper, or another data base, list funds by category, and quickly learn how various funds in different categories have performed. And I suspect that’s about all some think there is to investing ... buy those funds that have done better than their peers over time. If that’s all you as an investor want / need, it’s fine with me. But to some of us the game is infinitely more interesting if we dissect the fund - looking for the reasons the fund has worked so well (or, sometimes, why it hasn’t).
    No one needed to read this thread. There’s plenty of other options to persue here. Ted, alone, generously initiates more threads most every day than @Crash and many others do over the course of a year. (And I’m sure he doesn’t mean to dismiss this single thread as totally irrelevant as compared to all those he posts.)
  • Plain Vanilla Foreign Funds
    Right, the lay terms get squishy (rightly or wrongly) in the real world of mfunds, that's all.
    As for merit, I tend to align with this analysis myself:
    https://www.usatoday.com/story/money/2015/01/16/investing-international-funds/21825245/
    SP500 is plenty of foreign exposure, he says (using the word international :) )
  • Plain Vanilla Foreign Funds
    If one is going to take an absolute position, there's no point in agonizing over how much a supposedly foreign fund has invested in Amazon, or in any other domestic company.
    Would you say that because 0.32% of SGOVX is NEM (Newmont Mining); that must mean that First Eagle Overseas isn't all overseas after all - that it is a global fund? Perhaps we should call it First Eagle Global? Nope, that's been taken :-)
    Best of luck in finding a "pure" domestic fund (Samsung represents 9% of YAFFX), or an international fund, or a stock fund (with no bonds or cash), or ...
    You may be more bothered by the fact that the "impurity" is concentrated than by the magnitude of the impurity. (One infers that from the fact that you highlighted the Amazon ranking after stating the total domestic percentage. It was superfluous information.)
    In terms of classifying, it shouldn't matter if the 8.1% impurity is all Amazon (or Samsung), or a dash of a dozen different companies.
  • Plain Vanilla Foreign Funds
    As for names, sort of
    VWIGX is also ~11% USA.
    DODFX just under 8%, while per M* its benchmark, FLB, is around 1%. So strict.
    FSIVX is 0% USA (Fido) or 1.5% (M*).
    So sweating the small stuff is, well, just sweating.
  • PRWCX disappoints today
    I understand a new TRP Capital Appreciation Income fund being discussed. Income (from higher allocation of bond and other instruments) is the primary focus similar to that of Vanguard's Wellesleye Income fund, VWIAX.
    TCAPX. Still pending. STILL!!!
    https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/1689311/000168931117000021/canpta-may35.htm
  • Plain Vanilla Foreign Funds
    Plain vanilla and <1% US stock: VTIAX
  • Plain Vanilla Foreign Funds
    People sure like to quibble around here. A mutual fund with a name suggesting that it focuses on a particular type of investment must invest at least 80% of its assets in accordance with its name.
    To the original question, VWIGX is one of my favorites. I also have FMIJX, but it has not really been tested, yet. It is 17% US if that bothers you. OAKIX is around 11% US.
  • Plain Vanilla Foreign Funds
    Well. If y'all are going to try and be strict as to diction, you probably (as I tried to suggest) will have to do individual entity parsing, because even those committed to being ex-USA / ex-US (one data descriptor in the etf world; see e.g. http://etfdb.com/type/region/global-ex-us/) may have some US companies. A small amount, under 10% (guessing here, based on skimming).
    Mfunds, anyway.
    In a global world (how's that for diction comedy), little of this matters enormously, given how everyone sneezes together during cold season, mostly, or whatever the apt image used to be.
  • T. Rowe Price, Top Tesla Funds Offer Split Views: Spencer vs. Puglia

    IMO I am with Spencer on this. Good call culling it from PRGTX (I own) as and when he did. I started trimming PRGTX when 12% was in TSLA and Musk started Ambien-tweeting .. but will be adding back as appropriate.
  • Plain Vanilla Foreign Funds
    It was pretty clear what Ben meant. That said, I've never seen "international" fund used to mean a fund with substantial (say, over 20%) domestic holdings.
    But I have seen "global" or "world" applied to funds that are "international", i.e. strictly foreign. Morningstar defines its World Bond category to include international bond funds. For example, VTABX.
    "In the English language, "global" and "international" tend to be used interchangeably—hence the confusion in the investing world when we are told that global and international funds have completely different investment goals and provide investors with different kinds of investing opportunities."
    https://www.investopedia.com/ask/answers/03/071103.asp
  • BlackRock: How To Rev Up Your Idle Cash
    >> Do you have account with Merrill Lynch? You HAVE to call.
    ?? one can do a lot of stuff online, including all trading
    did I miss a particular transaction or operation?
    Apparently you did miss the memo:
    Merrill Lynch said it will stop automatically sweeping customers’ uninvested cash into money market funds starting in September and instead move it into lower-yielding deposits at affiliated banks. Brokers will still be able to manually move the funds into money market accounts.”
    https://www.americanbanker.com/morning-scan/jpm-breaks-free-merrill-to-sweep-uninvested-funds-away-from-mmfs
    That's part of a summary of Jason Zweig's Aug 21 WSJ article, Merrill Lynch Joins Brigade Downplaying Money-Market Mutual Funds:
    Merrill’s brokers will still be able to place their customers’ cash in higher-yielding money-market funds, but only by purchasing them manually.
    https://www.wsj.com/articles/merrill-lynch-joins-brigade-downplaying-money-market-mutual-funds-1534880179 (google search or subscription required)
    Vanguard is currently paying 1.9% (7 day yield) on VMFXX, which is the settlement account for VBS accounts. So unlike most brokerages, there isn't the need to move money to a higher yielding MMF. Though VMMXX is yielding about 1/4% more.
    https://investor.vanguard.com/mutual-funds/list?filterAllAssetClasses=false&filterMoneyMarket=true&filterFiftyThousandAndUp=true&filterLowCostInvestor=true#/mutual-funds/asset-class/month-end-returns
    At Fidelity, the default core account is SPAXX, currently yielding 1.53%. You can boost that by about 1/3% by moving the money into SPRXX/FZDXX. While you have to explicitly move the money into the higher yielding fund, Fidelity will automatically pull from that fund to cover purchases/withdrawals if there isn't enough in your core account.
    https://www.fidelity.com/fund-screener/evaluator.shtml#!&amp;ft=MM_all&amp;mgdBy=F&amp;ntf=Y&amp;expand=$FundType&amp;tab=ic
    Chuck doesn't give you the option of a MMF for your settlement account:
    Schwab no longer allows new enrollments into sweep money market funds (MMFs), with the exception of international accounts, Schwab Managed Accounts, Schwab Charitable accounts, and certain existing ERISA plans. Existing accounts with sweep MMFs will be migrated to the Bank Sweep feature over a period of years
    So you have to move the money yourself into one of its "purchased" MMFs to get a decent yield:
    https://www.schwab.com/public/schwab/investing/accounts_products/investment/money_markets_funds/purchased_money_funds
    Getting back to Merrill Lynch. Here's their list of bank deposit accounts and MMFs available as "Cash management solutions". (When I download it, it gives me a date of 8/21/18).
    https://olui2.fs.ml.com/Publish/Content/application/pdf/GWMOL/ICCRateSheet.pdf
    As it notes, not all funds are available for all Merrill investors. Some of the "tickers" don't end in XX, and the Merrill Edge quote box doesn't recognize them. While the trade form does recognize standard symbols like GOFXX, when I enter one of them I get the message: "The symbol you entered is invalid. Please try again."
    It looks like the only funds on Merrill's list that would be available to someone not investing through a managed account (that might be able to get an institutional share class) are the Blackrock Money Funds (BBIF). Tier 1 is paying 0.53%. Still I can't see how to buy that without calling a broker. Are there any MMFs you can buy online at Merrill Lynch or Merrill Edge?
    https://www.blackrock.com/cash/en-us/products/282859/bbif-money-fund-1-usd
    This exercise is confirming my expectations: Vanguard lowest cost/highest yield, Fidelity good yield, a bit easier to use, Schwab sticking you with low paying bank sweeps but offering options; Merrill Lynch sticking you with low paying sweeps and hiding alternatives if they even exist.