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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.
  • Is Fidelity hiding something (Dodge and Cox funds)
    Regarding Nuveen/TIAA - According to M* (see "Parent" section under TIAA funds), the rebranding of its entire asset/investment management to Nuveen was more than cosmetic. TIAA centralized virtually all its investment teams as well as all its operations, technology, and sales functions. Its investment management really is just one entity now.
    It wasn't just TIAA and Nuveen, but also other units that were integrated. In 2016, TIAA described its plans for managing real assets:
    The new standalone division will wrap in many of TIAA-CREF’s largest units, including global real estate, agriculture, timber, infrastructure, and energy. In addition, the real assets group is to take over subsidiaries TH Real Estate, Westchester Group Investment Management, GreenWood Resources, and Churchill Asset Management.
    All told, TIAA-CREF expected the real assets business to comprise roughly 900 staff members in 16 countries.
    https://www.ai-cio.com/news/tiaa-cref-reveals-reorganization/
    Regarding Fidelity's fund screener missing fund families - it's not just D&C that is missing (though that's arguably the most egregious). The screener has an option to include ETFs in its search but it doesn't include ETFs from fund families that don't sell OEFs.
    You won't find WisdomTree in its list of fund families or its funds in the search results. With Blackrock, you'll find Blackrock branded ETFs like BRLN, but no iShares by Blackrock branded ETFs. OTOH, you'll find all of Vanguard's ETFs.
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    On the fund screener, Fidelity writes:
    "For more detailed information, including intraday pricing, please visit the ETF Screener"
    The message is not that you should use the ETF screener to find ETFs. Rather, just use the ETF screener if you want additional details about ETFs that are already found.
  • Vanguard International Dividend Growth fund in registration
    From M* VDIGX / People:
    Peter C. Fisher Senior Managing Director, Partner, and Equity Portfolio Manager Peter is a portfolio manager on the Dividend Growth Team. He manages equity assets on behalf of our clients, drawing on research from Wellington Management’s global industry analysts, equity portfolio managers, and team analysts. He manages the Global Dividend Growth approach and works closely with Don Kilbride on other Dividend Growth approaches. He works in our London office. Prior to joining Wellington Management in 2005, Peter worked as an equity research analyst at MFS Investment Management, where his coverage included the consumer staples, energy, and technology sectors (2000 – 2005). Peter earned his MBA from the University of Chicago (2000) and his BA in economics from Davidson College (1993).
    Gender: Male
    M.B.A. University of Chicago, 2000
    B.A. Davidson College, 1993
    Current Investments Managed
    Jul 2022— Vanguard Dividend Growth Inv
    Apr 2021— Brighthouse/Wellington Core Eq Opps A
    Apr 2021— Brighthouse/Wellington Core Eq Opps B
    Apr 2021— Brighthouse/Wellington Core Eq Opps E
    Apr 2021— Bridge Builder Large Cap Value
    Aug 2020— MassMutual International Eq A
    Aug 2020— MassMutual International Eq Adm
    Aug 2020— MassMutual International Eq I
    Aug 2020— MassMutual International Eq R3
    Aug 2020— MassMutual International Eq R4
    Aug 2020— MassMutual International Eq R5
    Aug 2020— MassMutual International Eq Svc
    Aug 2020— MassMutual International Eq Y
    May 2020— Hartford Stock HLS IA
    May 2020— Hartford Stock HLS IB
  • What is the highest percentage you’d ever allocate to a single stock?
    Many Enron employees regretted holding mostly Enron stock in their 401(k) plan.
  • Vanguard International Dividend Growth fund in registration
    Here is some background info on Peter Fisher at Wellington.
    https://hartfordfunds.com/fund-managers/peter-fisher.html
    Guess he will be succeeding Donald Kilbride as Kibride manages solely on the new Vanguard Advice Select Dividend Growth. Noted that VDIGX lags the passively managed Dividend Appreciation fund this year and added Microsoft as its #1 holding.
    Going forward, it would be interesting to see what stocks International Dividend Growth would holds.
  • What is the highest percentage you’d ever allocate to a single stock?
    @msf made me think back to being young and 'probably' foolish. Our company's original 401k plan had only 4 options, one of them being the companies stock (Kodak). Being a DOW blue-chip stock for so long, I and many of my coworkers typically had 50% or more in the stock all through the 70's and 80's and even into the 90's.
    Today any individual stocks I buy are only with my "play" money, no more than 2-5% of my self managed portfolio. Today, the only 2 stocks I own are ASML and MSFT.
  • What is the highest percentage you’d ever allocate to a single stock?
    To skew the data a bit further, my largest single stock holding constituted somewhere between 30% and 40% of my portfolio (including cash, which was a large percentage).
    That was when I was young and foolish, working at my second company - a startup that had recently gone public and offered an ESPP with a 15% discount. My records going back that far are sketchy so all I can give is a ballpark estimate (from tax filings, mortgage application, etc.).
    I was very lucky. Conventional wisdom is not to hold (much) stock in the company you work for - they can both go bust at the same time.
  • Treasury FRNs
    I am familiar with MINT, Pimco's ACTIVE ultra-ST "black box". "Enhanced" means that it has little Treasuries, but lots of corporates and securitized stuff. Only 41.28% is AAA. Some maturities are 7-10 yrs, some have unknown maturities (?), so these may be floating-rate stuff (then, the duration is just the reset period). Anyway, it isn't a simple T-Bill ETF with under 3m maturities - as BIL, SGOV, TBIL are, and one wouldn't expect any Pimco fund to be simple. I never warmed up to MINT.
    There are also ultra-ST ETFs that have T-Bills under 1y and some that have non-Treasury stuff too (MINT would be in that group). ETFdb shows 28 ultra-ST ETFs; newer TBIL is not included.
    https://etfdb.com/etfs/bond-duration/ultra-short-term/
    MINT AUM $9.2 billion, ER 36 bps, inception 11/16/09
  • Updated MFO Ratings and Flows Thru April ... MTD and FLOW Thru 2 May
    All ratings have been updated on MFO Premium site through July using Refinitiv's data drop dated 11 August. Tools include MultiSearch, Great Owls, Fund Alarm (Three Alarm and Honor Roll), Averages, Dashboard of Profiled Funds, Dashboard of Launch Alerts, Portfolios, Quick Search, Fund Family Scorecard. The site now includes several analytics, including Charts, Compare, Correlation, Rolling Averages, Trend, Ferguson Metrics, Calendar Year and Period Performance.
    Hope to have ratings updated through 18 August tomorrow!
  • Treasury FRNs
    SGOV, TBIL, BIL and MINT..........YTD chart. Not identical critters. Only for one's viewing pleasure.
  • Treasury FRNs
    Among the T-Bill ETFs with < 3m maturity, what is the attraction (besides a catchy name) of smallish TBIL with a higher ER and from a relatively new firm (with 10 ETFs, all 2022- ) ?
    BIL AUM $28.43 billion, ER 14 bps, inception 5/25/07
    SGOV AUM $13.14 billion, ER 7 bps, inception 5/26/20
    TBIL AUM $1.51 billion, ER 15 bps, inception 8/8/22
    TBIL did have the advantage of starting in rising T-Bill rate environment, but a more detailed look at StockCharts shows that advantage was gone in 7 months after the inception.
  • What is the highest percentage you’d ever allocate to a single stock?
    @hank- consensus- a general agreement. Not an "average".
    Got it. Thanks @Old_Joe. I’d guess the consensus from my 10-15 web searches also falls around that 5% number.
    Call it ”conventional wisdom”.
  • Bonds: Why you should invest in short-term bonds over longer-term securities.
    T-Bills are currently very compelling.
    Owning longer duration government bonds may be more profitable in the not-too-distant future.
    Agreed. 2y and 3y notes are getting more interesting, especially assuming rates will peak in 2024.
  • What is the highest percentage you’d ever allocate to a single stock?
    So far it seems like the consensus is something around 5% for the high limit on an individual stock.
    Umm … There’s one poster who reports having 65% in one stock. Another has 1 stock @ 14%. That would skew the “average” above 5% methinks.
    Most interesting. Appreciate all the comments. There is, of course, no “right” answer, although a lot of online gurus suggest 5% as a “high water” mark. A few say up to 10%. One went so far as to suggest an ideal allocation would consist of just 10 stocks at 10% each. But that last one is an outlier and not the norm.
    Agree with @PRESSmUP on the Fido point. I should make clear that only when you go into their (optional) portfolio screener and hit “scan” does it flag the concentration and explain the risks inherent in such a concentration. So, it’s more of an informal advisory than any policy or rule.
  • Investing in mutual funds directly vs through a brokerage.
    After many bad experiences with Vanguard from top to bottom, I left a dozen years ago for Fidelity and have not regretted the choice once.

    Literally or figuratively a dozen years ago? The reason for the question is that around 14 years ago (2009) Vanguard dropped Pershing as its clearing house and started self clearing. Virtually all the comments I read said that this was a major improvement.
    https://www.investmentnews.com/vanguard-to-leave-pershing-and-self-clear-19277
    This was after the switch from Pershing. Customer service was the primary problem.
  • What is the highest percentage you’d ever allocate to a single stock?
    52% of my portfolio are individual stocks, currently 14 companies. I generally subscribe to a target of about 3.5-4% or so, but it depends on what's happening within the business. As an example, I see no reason to trim Broadcom, which is about 5%. So...I would view FIDO's concentration "warning" purely as an advisory notification. My largest position overall is a clinical stage bio-tech, at 14% of the total portfolio. Most likely not wise, but so be it.
  • On posting new discussions
    May be not the MFO monitors, but the site hosting (Vanilla) monitors? I didn't notice it before, but if it is only 2 immediate views, that isn't bad.
    When I started posting on Facebook, I noticed that immediately there were about 15 views. At first, I thought, wow, I got a lot of dedicated viewers for a newbie poster. But then I saw the pattern - those views are by about 15 internal Facebook monitors. But then Facebook is much larger than Vanilla.
    Wonder how the sites keep track of what is posted by individuals or in boards/forums? How else will they flag site term violations? Well, this is how. They probably use automated software for this continuous monitoring. They may take their time in acting on user complaints, but site term violations are quite different.
  • On posting new discussions
    +1 old joe I see what you did there !
  • What is the highest percentage you’d ever allocate to a single stock?
    I hold between 12-15 individual stocks at any one time and usually aim for 3-5% each. At present most are sitting at the 5% mark.
  • What is the highest percentage you’d ever allocate to a single stock?
    Thoughts on the subject from T. Rowe Price:
    There is no set definition for what makes a concentrated position. When an investment in a single stock represents more than 5% of a portfolio, T. Rowe Price advisors consider it to be worth addressing. Once a holding exceeds 10%, however, it represents a greater risk that requires more immediate planning. “Most situations we see aren’t in a gray area, however,” says Daniel Tafoya, CFP®, a financial planner with T. Rowe Price. “Clients with concentrated positions often have 20% or more of their portfolio invested in a single company. This level of concentration is clearly a concern.”
    Source: https://www.troweprice.com/personal-investing/resources/insights/actions-can-take-if-your-portfolio-is-too-concentrated-in-one-equity.html