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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.
  • Any limits to how far a fund can fall in a single day? Old Thread / New Question / Same Fund
    Can’t read Morningstar’s “analyst ratings” because I don’t subscribe.
    Try your local library. As I'm typing this, I have the M* analyst (AI) report open from my library.
    Here’s the lead-in from Morningstar’s site …
    ”A middling Parent Pillar rating and a subpar People Pillar limit Invesco Gold & Special Minerals A to a Morningstar Quantitative Rating of Neutral.”
    But when you look at their overall rating for the fund, displayed more prominently at the top of the same page, it shows 5 stars.
    This turkey aside, what is it about Morningstar’s methodology that causes a “middling” fund, in their own words, to receive a 5-star rating?
    As others have commented, star ratings are objective, retrospective. Analyst ratings are subjective, prospective. And worse if done by machine.
    Beyond that, I'm rather skeptical of the value of the parent pillar. That pillar encompasses a variety of attributes, some of which IMHO don't contribute to forecasting accuracy. (I've been meaning to do some more research here and write something up; may still get to it.) Here, the middling rating appears to be because the family's funds are all over the map, not showing many areas of strength.
    The weak people pillar comes in part from the computer's assertion that the sole manager, Li, has not yet shown "themself" good at running this strategy. One wonders what a machine "thinks" it needs to recognize good performance beyond a 5* rating from someone who's managed a fund for a quarter century. A great example of why I pay little attention to M*'s 'Q' ratings.
    ISTM Invesco already had an (inferior) gold fund when they bought out Oppenheimer. Did they essentially “axe” the superior Oppenheimer fund and its management and then apply that name to their own inferior fund - moving the invested assets into it as well?
    Yogi answered this. To complete the details: Invesco merged Invesco Gold & Precious Metals (FGLDX) into Invesco Oppenheimer Gold & Special Minerals Fund (OPGSX), not the other way around, near the end of 2019.
    https://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/invesco-announces-changes-to-its-us-etf-and-mutual-fund-product-lines-300974616.html
    fork over additional $$ to see what their analysts really think about a fund.
    Fork over money and you still won't get to see what their analysts think about this fund (or many others). You'll just get to see what their computers "think". For the very little that is often worth.
  • Any limits to how far a fund can fall in a single day? Old Thread / New Question / Same Fund
    ”Same manager since 1997” Thanks for the follow through Yogi. Very interesting.
    Somewhere I heard this fund was more volatile than most but also more profitable. I’ll confess to often reading a forum that’s quite focused on gold / miners. And while I’m strictly an amateur observer there, it appears from what I read that there are stark differences in how different p/c mining companies have fared in recent years. Apparently this relates to the “sporadic” quality of various mines they own. Some have prospered while others have lost tons. Possibly OPGSX is intentionally investing in the under-performers as a longer term play.
    I guess it bothers me that M* allows fund houses to post its “4 and 5 star” ratings (I’d imagine in return for compensation) as testimony / advertisement for their funds on their websites and than undermines that very rating in publishing critical reviews for readers willing to fork over additional $$ to see what their analysts really think about a fund. ISTM they’re making $$ on both ends here.
  • M* Portfolio Will be Around Through 2023
    M* Bill Baranyk has posted on a very long M* thread that the old M* Portfolio will be around at least through 2023.
    "An update on our plans: We will not retire legacy Portfolio Manager in 2023. As we continue to build and release more enhancements to Investor, legacy Portfolio Manager will still remain available. We will not retire the legacy version until Investor’s portfolio features are successfully up and running, and we’ll continue to update you on our progress."
    Very long M* thread that requires lots of clicks to get to the recent post page, https://community.morningstar.com/s/question/0D53o000066YnacCAC/does-anyone-else-feel-like-the-new-morningstar-investor-is-a-huge-downgrade-compared-with-the-legacy-portfolio-manager
  • Any limits to how far a fund can fall in a single day? Old Thread / New Question / Same Fund
    I would say ignore Morningstar and compare OPGSX with other gold funds using Fidelity's screener. SGGDX compares favorably to OPGSX with a standard deviation 25% lower. SGGDX also has the highest 3 year Sharpe Ratio in the category as well. I'm not recommending these funds-just providing a bit more info.
    Words from the wise. ...Although I'm too lazy to do it. Morningstar has become too convenient for me. I recognize their marker "Q" which tells you that some A.I or quant formula has been used to MECHANICALLY rate that stock or fund.... I get the Morningstar subscription via TRP. Sometimes, the text is helpful.
    And @MikeM: hilarious! Thank you.
  • Any limits to how far a fund can fall in a single day? Old Thread / New Question / Same Fund
    @hank, I believe ratings are based on a peer group comparison. M* says 5* compared to 68 funds. If all the funds in that group sucked, someone had to be less sucky than the rest.
    @ carew388, I believe SGGDX may be the only PM/miner fund that actually holds gold too, not all equities. I think it holds about 20% of the actual yellow stuff. That will smooth out volatility.
    If I were to hold one of these funds it would be SGGDX - but I won't :)
    As G.W. Bush infamously said:
    “There's an old saying in Tennessee — I know it's in Texas, probably in Tennessee — that says, fool me once, shame on — shame on you. Fool me — you can't get fooled again.”
  • What to do?
    Yes, COWZ is up already by 7.5% YTD on saturday, 11 feb, '23.
    SCHP= TIPS. (Schwab.)
    FCBFX. 58% in triple B. (Fidelity corporate.)
    HYMU. Munis. (Blackrock.)
    Balanced: DODBX. Over 15 years, it's in top 7 percent of category. +7.63%.
    Global stocks: YTD +8.42%. (TRP.) PRGSX . Over 15 years: +7.82%, top 18% of category.
    52 USA. 43 foreign, presently.
    Maybe SCHP is an Indexer. None of the others.
    VMIAX. Basic Materials/Chemicals. (Vanguard. Stinky service.). YTD +6.49%. Over 15 years: +7.47, top 22 percent in category.
    Single stocks for steady dividends: BHB. (I own it.) Regional bank in Northern New England. HQ in Bar Harbor, Maine. That's where Acadia National Park is. Branches in ME, NH, VT.
    O is the mother of all REITS. Over 15 years, it's up by +10.45%. Dividends to reinvest. But I don't know how they keep doing it. The payout ratio is a huge, out of line number... But REITS are different animals, too. Since 1994, the stock is up by +730%. That's not a typo.
    (Among REITs, I own PSTL. But it's still rather young.)
    "Happy Motoring!"
    "No, No, NO! Don't open that closet!"
  • Any limits to how far a fund can fall in a single day? Old Thread / New Question / Same Fund
    Same manager since 1997.
    Gold-mining has been terrible for B&H and being top performer in category for 3,5,10 years doesn't mean much. * ratings are based on past performance only within the category, and overall * rating is a weighted average of *s for 3, 5, 10 years.
    Analyst ratings take into account several factors besides the past performance. However, Analyst ratingsQ are computer-generated and are hard to read or make sense out of. It's NeutralQ here. May be M* can train ChatGPT to do a better job.
  • Any limits to how far a fund can fall in a single day? Old Thread / New Question / Same Fund
    I would say ignore Morningstar and compare OPGSX with other gold funds using Fidelity's screener. SGGDX compares favorably to OPGSX with a standard deviation 25% lower. SGGDX also has the highest 3 year Sharpe Ratio in the category as well. I'm not recommending these funds-just providing a bit more info.
  • Any limits to how far a fund can fall in a single day? Old Thread / New Question / Same Fund

    Morningstar Ratings 101: What You Need to Know
    "A 5-star risk rating indicates that a fund has been among the market's top performers in terms of risk-adjusted return over the past three, five, or ten-year period."
  • Any limits to how far a fund can fall in a single day? Old Thread / New Question / Same Fund
    Resurrecting very old thread … Sorry for any confusion. Consider this “an oldie goldie”.
    Can’t read Morningstar’s “analyst ratings” because I don’t subscribe. But they offer a tantalizing opening bit of their write-up for free. Here’s the lead-in from Morningstar’s site …
    ”A middling Parent Pillar rating and a subpar People Pillar limit Invesco Gold & Special Minerals A to a Morningstar Quantitative Rating of Neutral.”
    But when you look at their overall rating for the fund, displayed more prominently at the top of the same page, it shows 5 stars.
    This turkey aside, what is it about Morningstar’s methodology that causes a “middling” fund, in their own words, to receive a 5-star rating? Also, if anyone knows, I’d be interested in whether anything about this fund’s management changed after Invesco assumed control of the former Oppenheimer funds? Wondering to what extent those 5 stars represent a legacy from the days when Oppenheimer ran the fund?
    ISTM Invesco already had an (inferior) gold fund when they bought out Oppenheimer. Did they essentially “axe” the superior Oppenheimer fund and its management and then apply that name to their own inferior fund - moving the invested assets into it as well?
  • Why Are You Seeing So Many Bad Digital Ads Now?
    Surprisingly relevant to big tech investing:
    https://nytimes.com/2023/02/11/technology/bad-digital-ads.html
    Advancements in digital advertising technology were meant to improve users’ experience. People interested in shoes are intended to get ads for sneakers and loafers, and not repeated pitches for courses teaching seduction techniques. And the technology is supposed to filter out misleading or dangerous pitches.
    But lately, on several platforms, the opposite seems to be happening for a variety of reasons, including a slowdown in the overall digital ad market. As numerous deep-pocketed marketers have pulled back, and the softer market has led several digital platforms to lower their ad pricing, opportunities have opened up for less exacting advertisers….
    ….But advertising experts agree that crummy ads — some just irritating, others malicious — appear to be proliferating. They point to a variety of potential causes: internal turmoil at tech companies, weak content moderation and higher-tier advertisers exploring alternatives. In addition, privacy changes by Apple and other tech companies have affected the availability of users’ data and advertisers’ ability to track it to better tailor their ads.
    Then, there’s the economy: A survey of 43 multinational companies representing more than $44 billion in advertising spending, conducted last fall by the World Federation of Advertisers, found that nearly 30 percent planned to shrink their marketing budgets this year. Clorox, which budgets hundreds of millions of dollars a year to advertising and promoting products like Burt’s Bees lotions, Brita filters and Pine-Sol cleaners, said this month that it was beginning to streamline its marketing, which included cutting back on spending.
    Digital ad spending, while still growing overall, “has decelerated precipitously,” according to an analysis last month by the research firm Insider Intelligence.
    Twitter seems to be faring the worst. The company has struggled to retain top-flight advertisers since Mr. Musk took over as owner in October, amid fears of a proliferation of hate speech and misinformation on the platform. Its 10 largest advertisers last year spent 55 percent less during Mr. Musk’s tenure than they did a year earlier, with six of them spending nothing so far in 2023, according to estimates from the research firm Sensor Tower. Twitter has offered buy-one-get-one-free deals, discounts and bonus incentives to lure back advertisers, media buyers said.
    But advertising troubles have hit the biggest publicly traded social networks, too. Snapchat’s parent company last month posted its slowest-ever rate of quarterly growth and projected a sales drop for the current quarter. Google’s parent company, Alphabet, said ad sales at YouTube slipped nearly 8 percent in the latest quarter.
    Last year, Meta, which owns Facebook and Instagram, reported its first decline ever in quarterly revenue (it fell again last quarter). Ad prices on Facebook and Instagram fell 24 percent in the last quarter of 2022 from a year earlier, according to the investment bank Piper Sandler.
  • 0DTE
    There are already VIX for 9 days (VIX9D), 3 mo (VIX3M), 6 mo (VIX6M), 1 yr (VIX1Y).
    Just as the regular VIX (for 30 days) uses SP500 options that bracket 30 days +/- 7 days, VIX9D brackets 9 days options (unclear by how many days +/-).
    These symbols are also recognized by Yahoo Finance as ^VIX9D (with very limited History), etc, but not by StockCharts (only $VIX is recognized among these). Both have quite a bit of History for regular ^VIX or $VIX.
    Yahoo Charts for 1 mo for ^VIX and ^VIX9D look similar although ^VIX9D values are slightly higher. For ^VIX9D, the Yahoo Summary page chart is good for 1D, 5D, 1M, YTD, but nothing else. The Yahoo Chart and History tabs doesn't pull any data.
    My guess is that CBOE is looking into even shorter-term VIXnD whose brackets may include 0DTE.
    VIX9D
    https://www.cboe.com/us/indices/dashboard/vix9d/
    https://finance.yahoo.com/quote/^VIX9D?p=^VIX9D&.tsrc=fin-srch
  • Rondure Global's 4Q22 commentary
    Geritz and Foster write with candor. But their records are less than great.
    What? They are both 5 star funds and great owls, I believe. Less than great may pertain to the category, but not these managers.
    Agree though if you aren't comfortable on EM you should stay away. Domestic has been the winner for a long time. I believe this is changing, or already has, but comfortable is important.
  • 0DTE
    Article has a Good explanation of 0DTE; there are 1DTE,..., NDTE, etc too. There is nothing new here as all options near expiry will go through these phases. But no-commission trading makes this trading possible for retail (in the old days, $5-10 commissions per options contract (100 shares) didn't make this worthwhile except for dealers).
    Concern is that this options activity is outside of formal measurements like VIX that are options-based but use options with 30 +/- 7 days left to maturity. I suppose new real-time options measurements may develop to capture NDTE in future, but all we can do for now is watch their huge volumes.
    Forsyth in last week's Barron's also had a warning on them.
  • 0DTE
    0DTE - “Zero Days to Expiration (0DTE) Options and How They Work”
    ARTICLE - How "0DTE" Options Will Cause the Next Black Monday
    image
  • No conviction in this Market
    Glad to hear from you all. I've had to cancel a small exchange between funds, 2 days in a row, now. I suppose what's behind my original thought above is: "what GOOD are the Futures numbers, then???" Was it Ben Graham who first said the Market, short-term, is a voting machine; long-term, it's a weighing machine." The past two days have not changed my life, exactly. I admit I'm the sort of guy who prefers a neat, clutter-free picture. But life, and the Markets, are messy. Still, when you open so far to the positive and then tumble, by the end of the day, by over 450 points from the starting high point---- that's VOLATILITY. And of course, you have the day-traders doing their old "in-out, in-out, in-out" thing. (Reference "Clockwork Orange.")
    Martin Zweig, yes. I watched WSW quite a bit, back then. Still just learning, with no money to invest. His droopy, sad manner was characteristic, always. And I recall the Flash-Crash of '87. I was in Spokane. I recall the very ROOM I was standing in, and my "holy cow!" reaction. Meanwhile, in 2023, I am beset by good fortune and a comfortable life, with the chance to do some good things for other people. Many of them are in-laws. It's a nice problem to have.
    ...MORE lay-offs in the big firms, lots of them in Tech. Were they all really so bloated with humans, until now? Good thing I don't foresee needing their Customer "Service" anytime soon. Still watching my "off the radar" smaller, lesser known companies. Still quite a bit ahead of the game in 2023. Finally, I note that JRSH, almost my smallest holding, zoomed up over +7% in a single day, today. And so, WTF is up with THAT? Talk about yer outliers, eh? Are people buying the 5 cent dividend???
  • Secure Act 2.0 rewind, Age 72 b-day in 2023 receives a one year RMD deferral
    I agree with Yogi that TIAA annuities are solid, low cost investment options. Except for TIAA Traditional, the fact that they are annuities is essentially a non-issue; what matters is the all-in cost.
    Prior to SECURE 2.0, annuitized contracts (where you exchanged cash value for a promised income stream starting either "now" or "deferred" to some time in the future) were treated as separate from the remainder of your 403(b) or IRA. This is called "bifurcation".
    Traditionally under bifurcation, the RMD requirement for the annuitized portion of a plan was automatically satisfied so long as payments began by age 73. QLACs were created to allow payments to begin later (up to age 85).
    Here's the way Kiplinger describes it:
    A DIA [deferred income annuity] can work well as an IRA, but make sure your income payments begin no later than age 72 [now 73] to comply with required minimum distribution (RMD) rules. If you want to defer income payments past that age, consider a qualified longevity annuity contract (QLAC).
    https://www.kiplinger.com/retirement/annuities/604392/its-ira-season-ensure-your-assets-are-optimally-invested
    This isn't changed by SECURE 2.0. What SECURE 2.0 does is allow you to disregard bifurcation. If the annuity's monthly payment exceeds the RMD of the annuity portion (I've no idea how that is calculated), then the excess can be applied towards satisfying the RMD of the remainder (non-annuitized portion) of the 403(b) or IRA.
    That seems to address the "age old" question - what happens in the first year you annuitize a non-QLAC contract within a 403(b) or IRA? For a description of this question, see:
    https://www.irahelp.com/slottreport/what-happens-my-rmds-if-i-annuitize-my-ira-annuity
    As to whether, when one annuitizes in TIAA, the annuity contract remains within the original 403(b) plan or TIAA creates a separate plan (which would prevent applying any excess monthly payments toward the RMD of the rest of the 403(b) plan), I have no idea. TIAA does an excellent job of hiding that contract altogether. It's not listed under any 403(b) plan, and the first time I looked for it, it took me over an hour to find on the TIAA site.
    FWIW, here's another M* community thread, this one specifically on Section 204 of SECURE 2.0 (the part dealing with excess monthly payments).
    https://community.morningstar.com/s/question/0D53o00006PByU7CAL/section-204-excess-annuity-payment
  • No conviction in this Market
    SP500 4,100 was an important level. Market has to be comfortable there, and so far in Feb, all closings have been above 4,100 (although it has been breached intraday). Then, the next hill is at 4,325.
    You may have seen nearby that the AAII Bull-Bear Spread has turned positive after a negative streak of record 44 weeks. Some fireworks are already being seen in trashy stocks. Golden-cross also happened in Feb.
    https://stockcharts.com/h-sc/ui?s=$SPX&p=D&yr=1&mn=0&dy=0&id=p51599677386