The Steep Price Of Bond Flight One of the reasons that I own the number of mutual funds within my portfolio that I do (currently forty seven) ... (emphasis mine)
Nice number 'Ol Skeet. 47 turns out to be both a
safe prime an
Einstein prime and is of considerable importance to mathematicians, astronomers, film makers, and many others.
--- Forty-seven has been the favorite number of Pomona College, California, USA, since
1964. A mathematical proof, written in
1964 by Professor Donald Bentley, supposedly demonstrates that all numbers are equal to 47.
--- The 47-year cycle of Mars: after 47 years - 22 synodic periods of 780 days each - Mars returns to the same position among the stars and is in the same relationship to the Earth and Sun. The ancient Mesopotamians discovered this cycle.
--- In the 2009 film Star Trek, the Enterprise was built in Sector 47 of the Riverside Shipyards, and 47 Klingon ships are said to have been destroyed by Nero's ship, the Narada.
--- During the 20
12 election, Republican candidate Mitt Romney made a comment claiming that 47 percent of Americans do not pay any income tax.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/47_ (On line
1, click related link.
"This article is about the year 47. For the number, see 47 (number).")
Where to Invest $10K right now..5 Experts Chime in "...we asked five leading investors to share their best ideas on where to invest $10,000 right now. (It makes sense for smaller sums, too.) We first quizzed them back in June, when we also asked exchange-traded-fund analyst Eric Balchunas of Bloomberg Intelligence to choose ETFs that came closest to the strategies and themes they highlighted. Some of the experts also run mutual funds that employ their strategies.
Among their summer favorites were out-of-favor emerging markets, and many ETFs tracking those markets have seen double-digit gains. How did our panel of experts do last quarter, exactly? Very well, thank you. Check out the results that follow each new entry below. For comparison, the Standard & Poor’s 500-stock index was up 3.3 percent from June 30 to Sept. 30."how-to-invest-10kExperts and Tickers mentioned in Article:
Barry Ritholtz:
-DFCEX - IEMG or EEMV
-VEMAX - VWO
Sarah Ketterer
-CIVIX - TDIV or DXJ
Mark Mobius:
-MCHI, EWZ
Rob Arnott:
-PXH, VGK, BKLN, EMLC, FEM or FNDE
Francis Kinniry:
-Use this $
10K to re-balance your losers (re-balance your portfolio).
-Consider replacing high costs funds with low cost etfs to lowering investment fee costs.
-AOR
Parnassus Statement on Wells Fargo (x-posted to M*)
After much thought, I closed my sizable multiyear position in PRBLX last night at approx breakeven.
Reasons:
- Waiting for the WFC thing to settle, it's their newest #1 holding. (For an ESG fund, let alone on trust issues I'm not sure I even want them to hold it anyway, especially as largest holding in that concentrated fund)
- Slightly restructuring my equity allocations in the OEF portion of that portfolio, and will keep me from using other $$$ already allocated to market purchases to pay for new car when it arrives next month.
I may well go back into it down the road ... WFC aside, it's been a fine fund and has excellent long term record.
The Steep Price Of Bond Flight
How do I delete fund symbols or entire line of symbols line 1 in my risk profile ---ffrhx rphyx PRFRX whgix rsivx dlfrx DBLTX ostix gabcx WSHNX
-- Thanks Charles for your reply.
How would I delete one or more of the above symbols or the entire line from the Risk Profile tool to avoid duplication with other lines or clutter? I have several lines of fund symbols.
Thanks
Ralph
Warren Buffett's Decades Long Advice Hi Hank, Hi msf,
Thanks for your comments, especially those most recently made.
The active vs. passive management debate will remain a hot topic. While the overwhelming academic research concludes that passive is the winner on average and in the long haul, limited evidence suggests that active management can deliver superior returns and/or reduced risk over some periods. The secret sauce is to discover the right manager for the right timeframe.
That's not an easy task; what worked in the past need not work in the future. Fund manager Bill Miller is a great example. He outperformed his benchmark for 15 consecutive years and just a few years later scored in the bottom 1% of all active managers. Things change.
A successful active manager wins over some timeframe using a specific methodology that reflects his knowledge and his biases. Once again things like macroeconomic conditions change and the active manager is not flexible enough to either recognize the changes or to adjust his methods. That was Bill Miller.
If you favor active fund management, you must actively evaluate active managers. That's tough work, but necessary to capture the small percentage of fund managers who do beat their benchmarks. It's a changing group since persistence is not one of their basic characteristics.
Benchmarks are needed to challenge and test the quality of active fund management. For lhose funds that specialize in large companies, the S&P 500 Index seems to provide a respectable, albeit an imperfect measure.
I did know that a committee controlled the firms represented by the Index, and that a few changes were made annually based on rules and judgments. I am not aware of the weightings given to the formulaic portion of the decision process and the heuristic portion.
I am not adverse to having a human heuristic segment. For something as uncertain as company assessment and the stock markets, equations alone will never be perfect. But too much emotional heuristics can ruin a useful market tool. The balance is a difficult target, but the S&P 500 committee seems to have done an acceptable job. By rule, they must maintain a proper weighting in the 11 major sector categories. Nothing is ever perfect in the marketplace; a satisficing strategy must do.
Best Wishes.
Warren Buffett's Decades Long Advice This is a bit of a sidetrack, but is spurred by jstr's use of S&P as a prototypical index provider.
S&P's "indexes" do not have "systematic selection criteria", at least the way I would use that phrase: "entirely rules-based and containing no judgment".
See, e.g. "What Is an Index"
http://alo.mit.edu/wp-content/uploads/2015/10/index_5.pdfUnlike other index providers such as Russell, Wilshire, etc., Standard and Poor's has a human index committee that applies judgment in selecting securities for index inclusion. Notable is its criterion for removal: "lack of representation". This potential for subjective tinkering was out in full force at the peak of the dot com bubble:
The S&P 500 is often mischaracterized as a passively managed index of large stocks, but in 2000, its managers became seriously aggressive -- adding (and subtracting) four new stocks each month, on average. In the process, the index was systematically stripped of small and mid-sized value stocks from Jan. 28 to Dec. 11 in favor of large-cap growth stocks -- largely from the technology sector, and at exactly the wrong moment.
https://www.thestreet.com/story/1305526/1/make-a-bundle-on-the-sps-rejects.htmlMore recently, S&P made rule changes not to improve how well its index represented the market or the index's investability, but to improve S&P's bottom line:
In 2008 and 2009, S&P . . . tossed nine companies off the 500 for inverting. But four years ago [June 2010], S&P changed course, for business reasons. Companies were angry at being excluded, and index investors wanted to own some of the excluded companies. Moreover, S&P feared that a competitor would set up a more inclusive, rival index.
http://fortune.com/2015/11/23/pfizer-dow-jones/Systematic selection criteria? Yeah, right.
Warren Buffett's Decades Long Advice The advent and growth of ETFs / index funds and the availability of funds that can focus on specific stock universe attributes in the 2
1st century, has validated / shed light on that ( Buffet's ) advice. Further improvement in computing power and growth of quantitative finance has also streamlined and improved the management process.
Take the S&P Mid Cap growth index / ETF for example. The MDY ( S&P Mid Cap 400 growth ETF ) was launched when Buffet / BRK-A started to become noticed in the mainstream ( mid
1990's ). ( It appears that ) the Mid Cap index has specific, systematic selection criteria for management of the index. Reading literature ( shareholder letters, anecdotal evidence contained in books and articles ) on Buffet's methods seems to belie a somewhat idiosyncratic and haphazard process in position sizings and weightings, asset holding periods, and the occasional use of sophisticated "derivative" products ( this can be said for Icahn also ). If Buffet's "genius / greatness" has been reflected in BRK-A's share price, then a buy & hold of the "diversified index fund" ( Mid Cap 400 ) definitely has had an edge for a couple of decades and from different starting points.
https://docs.google.com/document/d/1Kv2UtpBp7OIK56ZzrkthnV1PDRUA9AmGS6hAmr3Tl6A/edit?usp=sharingApplication of this simple quantitative tactical strategy for example, has produced further excess, risk adjusted returns vs. buy & hold
https://docs.google.com/document/d/1WLB4hOP8P15O8b10_P4VgHuuBQHHke_c3XjwAjiFqio/edit?usp=sharing As the management industry migrates towards "passive" indexing, perhaps gone is the discretionary and esoteric based management style that once reigned in the 20th century ?
John Waggoner: Looking For Yield At A Fair Price? Try Preferred Stock From Closed-End Funds
Ben Carlson: When Market Signals Look Too Good To Be True FYI: Interest rates are a huge driving force behind many investment decisions. You can call them discount rates, hurdle rates, lending rates, borrowing rates or whatever, but their level definitely has an affect on risk appetites.
But I also think it’s possible for investors to put too much faith into the almighty interest rate. For instance, there’s a huge difference between credit and interest rate levels. Rates were much higher in the mid-2000s but credit was much looser so people borrowed like crazy, something they’re not doing as much today.
Regards,
Ted
http://awealthofcommonsense.com/2016/10/when-market-signals-look-too-good-to-be-true/
Warren Buffett's Decades Long Advice Nice catch, Catch! :)
I hope folks take a look at that thread from March 2014. (In particular, Ted hasn't aged a bit over those two and a half years!)
Thanks.
MFO Ratings Posted Thru September '16 ... 3rd Quarter Lost confident on Mark Hockey since 2000 and never look back. Large stake in banks took much longer to fully recover. His international fund did well when he can move around with much small asset base. Think he reached his maximum capacity long ago. Today all his funds lagged considerably to the indexes. Artisan International fund is one of the choice in my 401k and I stay away from it.
FInd Your Funds' Dirty Secrets With This New Tool
Warren Buffett's Decades Long Advice Hank asked, "In other words, do the instructions to his trustees also represent prudent advice on how all of us should invest?"
Everyone that invests will have to pave their own road to riches but I believe that Mr. Buffett's advice is a solid bed on which to apply the final layer. In my own plan I disregard the bond fund advice and substitute that portion with my SS account. My stock holdings are roughly 85% US (half & half S&P 500 and others) and 15% foreign. We should remember that Warren's advice was a general recommendation for most (not all) investors. I venture to guess that over 50% of folks who contribute to a 401k or similar have no idea what they own or why they own it.
