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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.
  • Debate Over 60/40 Allocation Continues …
    It's easy to beat PRWCX on a raw return basis. VOO/VFIAX will do. The question is whether you can do it with an only moderately volatile investment.
    VOO beats BRK.A over ten years with less volatility. Thus a better Sharpe ratio (higher returns divided by lower volatility).
    PRWCX beats both of them on risk adjusted return (as measured by Sharpe ratio or Sotrino ratio).
    Comparison at Portfolio Visualizer
  • Debate Over 60/40 Allocation Continues …
    Someone on Big Bang! recently started a thread titled "How can we match or beat PRWCX?"
    .
    Looks like Berkshire has managed to beat it. I’m getting average annual returns for 10 years as follow: +11.53% for BRK.A / +11.43% for BRK.B / +10.79% for PRWCX. Double-check my numbers before buying. They’re from different sources and could be based on somewhat different time spans or criteria. Each has a unique set of risks of course. With the former you could move in and out pretty much at will (tax deferred accounts anyway), possibly skimming profits on the high end. With the latter you get much broader diversification but are limited to an extent by TRP’s prohibitions against frequent trading as well as any restrictions / fees your brokerage may impose in that regard.
  • TCAF, an ETF Cousin of Closed Price PRWCX
    I haven't opened a position in TCAF as of yet, though I had fully intended to. Doesn't mean I won't, but with us coming to within 5 years or less until retirement I find myself not wanting to add to risk assets and am considering adding to our fixed income holdings to bring our equity allocation down from its current ~57%---even though inflation is still an issue eating away at purchasing power.
  • Debate Over 60/40 Allocation Continues …
    My Roth IRA is mostly with T Rowe Price but I’ve gradually been moving from TRP to Fidelity funds. I’m ticked at TRP for not letting me invest in PRWCX even though I’ve invested with them for 30+ years.
    A very long time ago (more than 30+ years), there was a Winston cigarette jingle: It's not how long you make it (30+ years), it's how you make it long (building assets in T. Rowe Price).
    PRWCX is open to investors who have more than $250K invested with T. Rowe Price.
    https://www.troweprice.com/personal-investing/about/client-benefits/index.html
  • Debate Over 60/40 Allocation Continues …
    This isn't the only board where folks are fond of PRWCX.
    Someone on Big Bang! recently started a thread titled "How can we match or beat PRWCX?".
    Link
  • Larry Summers and the Crisis of Economic Orthodoxy
    ”If the Federal Reserve follows Summers’s advice and keeps raising interest rates until the economy hits “five years of unemployment above 5 percent,” then millions of people will suffer for absolutely no reason other than as human sacrifices to a discredited economic theory.”
    Yes. I’ve long felt that way (”Federal Reserve Wrecking Crew”). Somewhat surprisingly, the overly restrictive stance hasn’t yet thrown us into a deep recession. Summers? Uhh! / I have a lot of trouble stomaching both him and Er-Erian. Both sound like a wet rag (financially speaking) 90% the time.
    I have a hunch that a part of the inflation issue is the bundle of savings amassed by the boomers over decades of economic growth and market outperformance. In a sense. inflation may “taking back” much of what has been given over those years. Would help explain why the economy stays hot despite the efforts of the Fed to cool it. As I said, just a hunch and haven’t found anyone who agrees with me on that point.
  • Buy Sell Why: ad infinitum.
    Trap door market coming soon? AI bubblicious? Tax receipts way down. Ukraine Russia war getting even bloodier? Waaaaay overvalued stonk market? Hmm
    @Baseball_Fan - You made a wise call start of 2022 in choosing HSGFX. Hussie’s not doing so well this year with HSGFX down 9.75% YTD (Reversion to the Mean?) I don’t know where equities are going from here. Your guess at least as good as mine (probably better). I’ve carried a 2-2.5% short position on the S&P for several months and intend to keep it. Of course it hurts a little. My thinking, however, is that it allows me to take additional market risk in other areas.
    One (independent) article in Barron’s this week suggests that the VIX might be the most undervalued / potentially profitable investment going presently. (To be clear, that’s not the position of Barron’s.)
    Best of luck to you and all.
  • Buy Sell Why: ad infinitum.
    @WABAC - I’m with ya on that front. It’s challenging to part with 5%+ in mmkt and t-bills, with Mad Magazine’s “what, me worry?” investing tactic.
  • Buy Sell Why: ad infinitum.
    My preference is to look for buys when sentiment is negative and hardly ever when bullish unless we're coming off a blowup to the downside.
    I agree @Mark. I suspect however the bullish sentiment is still in the early stages. Hell, Barron’s just went bullish one week ago.
    Like Yogi & some others here, I’ve lightened up a bit on risk assets the past month or so - from overweight to just slightly underweight. But with 75% now in a static “hands-off” portfolio there’s not a lot of digression afforded me anymore. That said, there’s a couple stocks and 1 CEF in the static portfolio which are nice to play around with, adding a few shares on dips and selling small amounts on rips.
  • Larry Summers and the Crisis of Economic Orthodoxy
    Worth reading: https://thenation.com/article/economy/summers-weber-economic-orthodoxy/
    But inflation proved the perfect issue to enable Summers to regain the spotlight. Intellectually, Summers had been deeply formed by the monetarist revolution instigated by Milton Friedman in the 1970s—which held that a key way to hold down inflation was to raise interest rates in order to increase unemployment (and thereby keep wages in check). In early 2021, Summers began sounding the alarm that the stimulus spending Biden and the Democrats had used to keep the economy afloat during Covid was going to lead to a sharp rise in inflation. When inflation did in fact rise, Summers basked in the role of the prophet vindicated.
    But Summers’s rehabilitation rested on an illusion. As Eric Levitz notes in a recent New York magazine article, all evidence suggests that while Summers was right to predict inflation, he was completely wrong about both the causes of that inflation and the best means to fight it. Speaking at the London School of Economics in June 2022, Summers said that “we need five years of unemployment above 5 percent to contain inflation—in other words, we need two years of 7.5 percent unemployment or five years of 6 percent unemployment or one year of 10 percent unemployment.” This is the standard Friedman prescription of a short, sharp shock of unemployment to defeat inflation—the same remedy followed by Paul Volcker in the late 1970s and early ’80s. Those policies, of course, led to the long-term defeat of American labor unions and the rise of Reaganite neoliberalism.
    But that scenario was not repeated under Biden. As Levitz reports, Summers’s "call for austerity was premised on the notion that only a sharp increase in unemployment could prevent a ruinous wage-price spiral. In reality, both wage and price growth have been slowing for months, even as unemployment has remained near historic lows. Summers’s failure to anticipate this outcome should lead us to reconsider just how prescient his analysis of the post-Covid economy ever was."
    The core problem, Levitz adds, is that from the beginning, [Summers’s] analysis was predicated on the idea that excessive stimulus would lead to unsustainably low unemployment and thus wage-driven inflation. There has never much reason to believe that the labor market was the primary driver of post-Covid price growth. And at this point, it’s abundantly clear that, in 2023 America, a tight labor market will not inevitably trigger a wage-price spiral.
    If the Federal Reserve follows Summers’s advice and keeps raising interest rates until the economy hits “five years of unemployment above 5 percent,” then millions of people will suffer for absolutely no reason other than as human sacrifices to a discredited economic theory.
    Far from vindicating Summers, inflation is yet another case where he got a big issue wrong. It joins a long list of such errors. As Binyamin Appelbaum documented in his fine book The Economists’ Hour (2015), while serving as deputy Treasury secretary in 1998, Summers took it upon himself to bully staffers who were pushing for the regulation of credit derivatives—the banking practice that led to the housing bubble and 2008 crash. Summers even called one staffer, Brooksley Born, the head of the Commodity Futures Trading Commission, into his office to scream, “I have 13 bankers in my office who tell me you’re going to cause the worst financial crisis since the end of World War II.” Ironically, it was Summers’s own failure to heed Born’s advice that caused that very crisis. In 2005, Summers derided critics of the deregulated credit default swap market as “slightly Luddites.”
  • Profound implications: China's birth rate
    That is one of the consequences of China’s one child policy, even after it ended back in 2016.
    https://npr.org/2021/06/21/1008656293/the-legacy-of-the-lasting-effects-of-chinas-1-child-policy
    Not having enough younger demographic push the country to face Japan’s graying population , except China don’t have the equivalent of social security support comparing to the developed countries.
  • Buy Sell Why: ad infinitum.
    I know I'm very happy about 5%+ for zero risk.
    I'm glad I bought tech last summer.
    Sold generic S&P 600 and 400 funds and partly replaced them with SYLD and RWJ in the taxable. I have Vanguard value funds in small and midcap that ought to be labelled as blends. Started a small position in SPGP, a popular buy last week.
    Added FMIMX to the IRA. Current theory is this will be a boring smid for the long term in the IRA as I slowly trim my collection.
    Small and mid cap remains cheap. FMIMX is still at 13.68 PE.
    The return of value didn't last long.
    Summer has been mild so far in Maricopa county.
    I expect buying opportunities in the fall. Sufficient unto the day is the evil thereof.
  • Buy Sell Why: ad infinitum.
    My personal observation of posts at this and other forums is that the forum moods correlate well with the AAII Sentiment Survey (posted weekly here), but not so much with institutional or professional sentiment surveys.
    The AAII Sentiment has improved significantly. So have the other quantitative (sentiment) measures such as %Above 50-dMA.
  • Profound implications: China's birth rate
    Larry Summers, WSW. 16 June, 2023:
    In the past 6 years the number of births in China has dropped -50%. Holy Jeepers .
  • Debate Over 60/40 Allocation Continues …
    Though not a traditional 60/40 fund, returns for PRWCX are:
    YTD 10.49, 1 YR 16.16, 3 YR 10.32, 5 YR 10.56, 10 YR 10.79
    Returns for VBINX, a traditional 60/40 index fund are:
    YTD 9.81, 1 YR 12.70, 3 YR 6.12, 5 YR 6.84, 10 YR 7.77
    Compared to SP 500 fund, VFINX:
    YTD 15.71, 1 YR 22.17, 3 YR 13.80, 5 YR 11.45, 10 YR 12.46
    SD for PRWCX is 13.01 vs VBINX 12.58 vs VFINX 17.91
    With PRWCX you get just a bit south of 90% of the SP 500 return for 10 years with less volatility. For 5 years you get 92% of the SP 500 return. The people who constantly claim 60/40 is dead and useless don't invest in a moderate way and frankly don't know what they are talking about.
  • Debate Over 60/40 Allocation Continues …
    Some follow on comments...
    *Nice article in Barron's by Lewis B..I'm invested in PVCMX and have recently invested in MRFOX...also noted that MAFIX, managed funds are in the article...BLNDX similar to MAFIX who knows maybe there is some magic in blending futures with Stocks?
    *Would be interesting to see number of funds who beat a 50/50 stock/bond index combo the past two years? I'm going to check if TSUMX has (I am invested in it)
    * I loaded Tbil onto the chart that Catch 22 noted...lot smoother ride without the ups/downs, no returns...makes you wonder if these experts can't figure it out did the others in LB's article just get lucky or skill involved?
    * Such a dichotomy going on right now...Biden spouting how economy is great, but tax receipts way down even though he increased corp tax, seat of the pants view, folks traveling bigly, airports full, restaurants are full, some companies still hiring, some letting folks go, maybe rolling recession, car dealers still charging list plus for new cars...strange, no? Makes you think the markets could go up another 20% and just as easy go down 20% plus...
  • Debate Over 60/40 Allocation Continues …
    The 3 noted with 1 year chart.
    Side note: Although a totally funky 1 year for a broad U.S. bond fund, a current real return for a total U.S. equity index and and total U.S. bond fund, each with about 3,000 + holdings; and these two within a 529 account at a 50/50 have a combined total 1 year return of 11.1%. So, not getting the big equity bump from the averaging down of the bond fund, which has a 1 year return of +.36%; but bonds have tempered equity draw downs since 2006. I expect the bond portion to perform better going forward. For 15 years, this 50/50 has provided a decent tax sheltered return.
  • Debate Over 60/40 Allocation Continues …
    Investors keen to keep an eye on their own investment portfolio can still rely on the basic wisdom of a 60/40 weighting to equities and bonds despite the recent souring of sentiment towards it, industry participants say. BlackRock warned at the end of April that, despite the recent rebound for this classic investment approach, investors should now buy a wider range of assets, but its biggest rival provider of exchange traded funds insists the traditional portfolio still has good long-term prospects.
    “Research from Vanguard dating back to 1977 shows last year was a historical anomaly for the 60/40 portfolio in that it was the only year in which both equities and bonds sank in value — delivering double-digit losses.In every other year, either both were in positive territory or gains in one offset losses in another. Roger Aliaga-Diaz, Vanguard’s chief economist for the Americas and head of portfolio construction, maintains that knee-jerk responses to market upsets are unwise. He points out that over the 10 years to the end of December a classic 60/40 portfolio would have delivered an annualised return of 6 per cent. Over the past four years that figure would still have been 5.9 per cent and the Vanguard Capital Markets Model projection for the next 10 years as of the end of December was for returns of 6.1 per cent.”

    Above excerpted from The Financial Times - June 17, 2023
    https://www-ft-com.ezp.lib.cam.ac.uk/content/8b6221f8-daa4-4cd9-8c76-58c8e0f7fff0
    (May require subscription to access)
    I checked the recent performance of three funds sometimes viewed as “safer” alternatives to a traditional 60/40 mix. (I’ve owned each of these in the past.) Returns going back to 3 years aren’t encouraging:
    TMSRX 3-year annualized +1.22% / YTD +1.49%
    BAMBX 3-year annualized +0.42% / YTD -0.31%
    CCOR 3-year annualized +0.91% / YTD -10.51%
    (Numbers from M*)
    Three years could be viewed as ”short-term”, but we live in a world where many view it as ”longer-term” - for better or worse. Did not check for 60/40 balanced funds. Would not expect near-term results to be much better. Balanced funds pretty much got “clocked” in 2022. More questions than answers here for conservative investors designing a portfolio with both growth potential and a risk profile they can cope with.
  • Low-Road Capitalism 5: Private Equity Edition
    In December 2021, the American Academy of Emergency Medicine Physician Group (A.A.E.M.P.G.), part of an association of doctors, residents and medical students, filed a lawsuit accusing Envision Healthcare, a private-equity-backed provider, of violating a California statute that prohibits nonmedical corporations from controlling the delivery of health services. Private-equity firms often circumvent these restrictions by transferring ownership, on paper, to doctors, even as the companies retain control over everything, including the terms of the physicians’ employment and the rates that patients are charged for care, according to the lawsuit. A.A.E.M.P.G.’s aim in bringing the suit is not to punish one company but rather to prohibit such arrangements altogether.
    From Envision's recent (May 15) press release:
    Envision Healthcare Corp. (“Envision”) today announced it and certain of its wholly owned subsidiaries have filed voluntary petitions for reorganization under Chapter 11 of the U.S. Bankruptcy Code. Envision has entered into a Restructuring Support Agreement (RSA) with its key stakeholders supported by more than 60 percent of the company’s approximately $7.7 billion in debt obligations and expects that support will continue to grow in the coming days. The terms of the RSA establish the framework for a consensual and comprehensive restructuring that will position Envision and AMSURG for future growth as two separate businesses.
    ...
    Under the terms of the RSA, the AMSURG and Envision Physician Services businesses will be separately owned by certain of their respective lenders. AMSURG will purchase the surgery centers held by Envision for $300 million plus a waiver of intercompany loans held by AMSURG LLC. All of Envision’s debt, with the exception of a revolving credit facility for working capital, will be equitized or cancelled, deleveraging approximately $5.6 billion.
    ...
    2018 acquisition by KKR & Co.,
    https://www.envisionhealth.com/news/2023/envision-healthcare-reaches-restructuring-agreement
    It looks like that restructuring will create problems for the suit: who are the defendants now?
    The private-equity backer is KKR, best known for its RJR Nabisco leveraged buyout. (See Barbarians at the Gate.)
    The bankruptcy wipes out private equity firm KKR’s investment in Envision. In 2018, the PE firm shelled out over $5 billion in 2018 to take Envision private, in a deal valued at $9.9 billion including debt. Last week, The Wall Street Journal reported that an Envision bankruptcy filing would be one of the steepest losses in KKR’s history.
    https://www.healthcaredive.com/news/envision-chapter-11-bankruptcy/650277/
    Interesting that these two deals serve as KKR bookends, with cofounders Henry Kravis and George Roberts having stepped down not too long ago.
    Repeating the Gretchen Morgenson quote in my earlier post:"Private equity firms are what used to be called leveraged buyout funds and firms."
  • TCAF, an ETF Cousin of Closed Price PRWCX
    wow and huh
    Seems typical, yes, and yes about the platform. Prohibiting divo, ccor, cape, and now tcaf?? Seriously?
    the ML guy who helped me was better than enthusiastic, and when I called a few days ago about something else the notes to the xfer guy were right there in front of the second guy.
    Anent Fido, I was frankly more than surprised, possibly shocked, that they were as cavalier as they were, and cavalier may not be the right word. I foolishly did not consult them beforehand (xfer of perhaps $400k) and, when I did, promptly after, was told, Sorry etc. I harrumphed that I had been w Fido for 55y, they could check (true, more including adolescence) and some millions of dollars (meaning >1) over time, and the response was Sorry.
    I did get an invite to an in-person consult about planning and allocation and whatnot.
    There really seems an opp here for a rival to do it all, for boomers down to </=millennials, concierge-style or at least the appearance and vibe of same. Moderate promos and incentives, maybe 2-3% credit cards, prompt person pickup and service, competitive rates including margin, low or no fees on outside funds, etc.