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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.
  • BlackRock Total Factor Fund to be liquidated
    https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/844779/000119312523155494/d496198d497.htm
    497 1 d496198d497.htm BLACKROCK TOTAL FACTOR FUND
    BLACKROCK FUNDSSM
    BlackRock Total Factor Fund
    Supplement dated May 26, 2023 to the
    Summary Prospectuses, Prospectuses and Statement of Additional Information of the Fund,
    each dated November 28, 2022
    On May 23, 2023, the Board of Trustees of BlackRock FundsSM (the “Trust”), on behalf of its series, BlackRock Total Factor Fund (the “Fund”), approved a proposal to close the Fund to new and subsequent investments and thereafter to liquidate the Fund. Accordingly, effective 4:00 p.m. (Eastern time) on September 22, 2023, the Fund will no longer accept orders from new investors or existing shareholders to purchase Fund shares. On or about September 29, 2023 (the “Liquidation Date”), all of the assets of the Fund will have been liquidated completely, the shares of any shareholders holding shares on the Liquidation Date will be redeemed at the net asset value per share and the Fund will then be terminated as a series of the Trust. Shareholders may redeem their Fund shares or exchange their shares into shares of another mutual fund advised by BlackRock Advisors, LLC or its affiliates at any time prior to the Liquidation Date. In preparation for the liquidation, the Fund may deviate from its investment objective and principal investment strategies.
    Shareholders should consult their personal tax advisers concerning their tax situation and the impact of the liquidation and/or exchanging to a different fund on their tax situation.
    Shareholders should retain this Supplement for future reference.
    PR2SAI-TFF-0523SUP
  • BlackRock U.S. Impact and International Impact Funds to be liquidated
    https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/844779/000119312523155496/d511521d497.htm
    97 1 d511521d497.htm BLACKROCK U.S. IMPACT & INTERNATIONAL IMPACT FUNDS
    BLACKROCK FUNDSSM
    BlackRock U.S. Impact Fund
    BlackRock International Impact Fund
    Supplement dated May 26, 2023 to the Summary Prospectuses,
    Prospectuses and Statement of Additional Information of the Funds,
    each dated August 26, 2022
    On May 23, 2023, the Board of Trustees of BlackRock FundsSM (the “Trust”), on behalf of its series, BlackRock U.S. Impact Fund and BlackRock International Impact Fund (each, a “Fund”), approved a proposal to close each Fund to new and subsequent investments and thereafter to liquidate each Fund. Accordingly, effective 4:00 p.m. (Eastern time) on August 24, 2023, the Funds will no longer accept orders from new investors or existing shareholders to purchase Fund shares. On or about August 31, 2023 (the “Liquidation Date”), all of the assets of each Fund will have been liquidated completely, the shares of any shareholders holding shares on the Liquidation Date will be redeemed at the net asset value per share and each Fund will then be terminated as a series of the Trust. Shareholders may redeem their Fund shares or exchange their shares into shares of another mutual fund advised by BlackRock Advisors, LLC or its affiliates at any time prior to the Liquidation Date. In preparation for the liquidation, a Fund may deviate from its investment objective and principal investment strategies.
    Shareholders should consult their personal tax advisers concerning their tax situation and the impact of the liquidation and/or exchanging to a different fund on their tax situation.
    Shareholders should retain this Supplement for future reference.
    PR2SAI-IMPF-0523SUP
  • UVA Dividend Value ETF will be liquidated
    https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/1484018/000148401823000029/r497e0523.htm
    497 1 r497e0523.htm UVA DIVIDEND VALUE ETF
    SPINNAKER ETF SERIES
    UVA Dividend Value ETF
    Supplement dated May 26, 2023
    to the Summary Prospectus, Prospectus, and Statement of Additional Information
    each dated November 1, 2022, as amended
    The information in this Supplement should be read in conjunction with the Summary Prospectus, Prospectus, and Statement of Additional Information for the UVA Dividend Value ETF.
    NOTICE OF LIQUIDATION OF THE UVA DIVIDEND VALUE ETF. The Board of Trustees (the “Board”) of the UVA Dividend Value ETF (the “Fund”) approved the liquidation and dissolution of the Fund on or about June 26, 2023 (the “Liquidation Date”). In connection with the liquidation and dissolution, the Fund may depart from its stated investment objective as it increases its cash holdings in preparation for liquidation. On the Liquidation Date (for settlement the date after the Liquidation Date), the Fund shall distribute pro rata to its shareholders of record all of the assets of the Fund in complete cancellation and redemption of all of the outstanding shares of beneficial interest, cash, bank deposits or cash equivalents in an estimated amount necessary to (i) discharge any unpaid liabilities and obligations of the Fund on the Fund’s books on the Liquidation Date, including but not limited to, income dividends and capital gains distributions, if any, payable through the Liquidation Date, and (ii) pay such contingent liabilities as the officers of the Fund deem appropriate subject to ratification by the Board. Capital gain distributions, if any, may be paid on or prior to the Liquidation Date.
    After the close of business on June 20, 2023, the Fund will no longer accept creation orders or redemption orders. This is also expected to be the last day of trading of shares of on the Fund on NYSE Arca, Inc. (“NYSE Arca”). Shareholders should be aware that as of and after the close of business on June 20, 2023, the Fund will no longer pursue its stated investment objective or engage in any business activities except for the purpose of selling and converting into cash all of the assets of the Fund, paying its liabilities and distributing its remaining proceeds or assets to shareholders (the “Liquidating Distribution”). During the time between market close on June 20, 2023 and the Liquidation Date, shareholders will be unable to dispose of their shares on NYSE Arca.
    Shareholders may sell their holdings of the Fund, incurring typical transaction fees from their broker-dealer, on NYSE Arca until market close on June 20, 2023, at which point the Fund’s shares will no longer trade on NYSE Arca and the shares will be subsequently delisted. Shareholders who continue to hold shares of the Fund on the Liquidation Date will receive a Liquidating Distribution (if any) with a value equal to their proportionate ownership interest in the Fund on that date. Such Liquidating Distribution received by a shareholder, if any, may be in an amount that is greater or less than the amount a shareholder might receive if they dispose of their shares on NYSE Arca prior to the market close on June 20, 2023. The Fund’s liquidation and payment of a Liquidating Distribution may occur prior to or later than the dates listed above.
    Shareholders who receive a Liquidating Distribution generally will recognize a capital gain or loss equal to the amount received for their shares over their adjusted basis in such shares. Please consult your personal tax advisor about the potential tax consequences.
    For further information, please contact the Fund toll-free at 1-800-773-3863. You may obtain copies of the Prospectus, Summary Prospectus, and Statement of Additional Information, free of charge, by writing to the Fund at Post Office Box 4365, Rocky Mount, North Carolina 27803 or calling the Fund toll-free at the number above.
    Investors Should Retain This Supplement for Future Reference
  • ETFs being liquidated
    https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/1587982/000139834423010827/fp0083662-1_497.htm
    497 1 fp0083662-1_497.htm
    AXS 2X NKE Bear Daily ETF
    Ticker: NKEQ
    AXS 2X NKE Bull Daily ETF
    Ticker: NKEL
    AXS 2X PFE Bear Daily ETF
    Ticker: PFES
    AXS 2X PFE Bull Daily ETF
    Ticker: PFEL
    AXS 1.5X PYPL Bear Daily ETF
    Ticker: PYPS
    AXS Short China Internet ETF
    Ticker: SWEB
    AXS Short De-SPAC Daily ETF
    Ticker: SOGU
    Each a series of Investment Managers Series Trust II (the “Trust”)
    Supplement dated May 26, 2023 to each currently effective
    Prospectus, Summary Prospectus and Statement of Additional Information (“SAI”).
    The Board of Trustees of the Trust has approved a Plan of Liquidation for each of the AXS 2X NKE Bear Daily ETF, AXS 2X NKE Bull Daily ETF, AXS 2X PFE Bear Daily ETF, AXS 2X PFE Bull Daily ETF, AXS 1.5X PYPL Bear Daily ETF, AXS Short China Internet ETF, and AXS Short De-SPAC Daily ETF, (each a “Fund”). Each Plan of Liquidation authorizes the termination, liquidation and dissolution of the respective Fund.
    Each Fund will create and redeem creation units through June 16, 2023 (the “Closing Date”), which will also be the last day of trading on The NASDAQ Stock Market LLC, each Fund’s principal U.S. listing exchange. On or about June 26, 2023 (the “Liquidation Date”), each Fund will cease operations, liquidate its assets, and prepare to distribute proceeds to shareholders of record as of the Liquidation Date. Shareholders of record on the Liquidation Date will receive cash at the net asset value of their shares as of such date. While Fund shareholders remaining on the Liquidation Date will not incur transaction fees, any liquidation proceeds paid to a shareholder should generally be treated as received in exchange for shares and will therefore generally give rise to a capital gain or loss depending on the shareholder’s tax basis. Shareholders (including but not limited to shareholders holding shares through tax-deferred accounts) should contact their tax advisers to discuss the income tax consequences of the liquidation. Under certain circumstances, liquidation proceeds may be subject to withholding taxes.
    In anticipation of the liquidation of each Fund, AXS Investments LLC, the Funds’ advisor, may manage each Fund in a manner intended to facilitate its orderly liquidation, such as by raising cash or making investments in other highly liquid assets. As a result, during this time, all or a portion of each Fund may not be invested in a manner consistent with its stated investment strategies, which may prevent each Fund from achieving its investment objective. Shareholders of each Fund may sell their holdings on The NASDAQ Stock Market LLC on or prior to the Closing Date. Customary brokerage charges may apply to such transactions. After the Closing Date, we cannot assure you that there will be a market for your shares.
    Please contact the Funds at 1-303-623-2577 if you have any questions or need assistance.
    Please file this Supplement with your records.
  • Sam Zell, RIP
    Barron's has a tribute to late Sam ZELL by Oscar SCHAFER, Rivulet Capital (2012- ). Sam passed away at 81 on 5/18/23. He was fun loving, fiercely independent, generous, loyal, courageous, and a mentor. In investing, he liked distressed situations and complex structures; he could take control of bad businesses, restructure and grow them and then sell them. He didn’t take himself too seriously, dressed nonconformally, sometimes even writing email poems during business negotiations. (He was a real estate tycoon and was a tough business negotiator – he was called “the grave-dancer” for good reasons) He threw big parties and could talk dirty too. He loved motorcycles (because they were fun, fast, dangerous) and had annual bike tours with friends who called themselves Zell’s Angels.
    Schafer provides the personal side in Barron’s Op-Ed. More formal information can be found on the Wiki.
    https://www.barrons.com/articles/sam-zell-markets-real-estate-life-lessons-8b6fa7d6?mod=past_editions
    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sam_Zell
  • Wellesley . Government and Agency Obligations 12.3 % Note rate & maturity
    All the bonds will gradually converge on their face value at maturity. So the 0.625% bonds, with a current price below face value, will continue to gain value as you said.
    The 4.25% bonds are currently priced slightly above par. So their market price will gradually decline toward par. But the coupon payments until maturity will more than make up for the slight decline in price.
    The "face value" or "principal" is what a bond pays at maturity. If these were physical paper bonds, this amount would be printed on their face. Hence the term face value.
    I believe that what you are looking at is the fund's latest semi-annual report, Form N-CSRS.
    https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/105544/000110465923065152/tm239404d2_ncsrs.htm
    N-PORT forms are much less readable. Here's the fund's latest one.
    Neither reports the purchase price - just current and maturity values.
    Fidelity shows a current asking price of $94.280, i.e. 94.28% of face value. The semi-annual (March 31) report valued the bonds at 473,758/501,000 or 94.56% of face value. This decline is due to market interest rates rising. Offsetting that decline, but only partially, was the bond's gradual appreciation, heading toward face value at maturity.
    If you have a login at Fidelity, you can see the quote here.
  • Wellesley . Government and Agency Obligations 12.3 % Note rate & maturity
    @msf If I understand what you said, then the .625 % & 1 % bonds will continue to gain value as they get closer to maturity. I take that "face amount" is total purchase of that particular bond or note ,etc. ?
    Thanks for your time, Derf
  • Anybody Investing in bond funds?
    Still 35% bonds in the portfolio here. Of that, 63% = junk.
  • Making the switch to Fidelity this week
    @MikeM If you're thinking about doing a full transfer of an account to Fidelity, it would be better to wait until the account is officially a Schwab account. TDA charges $75 for a full transfer, Schwab "only" $50. At Fidelity full transfers are free. (Partial account transfers are free at all three brokerages).
    https://www.tdameritrade.com/pricing/brokerage-fees.html
    https://www.schwab.com/legal/schwab-pricing-guide-for-individual-investors
    https://www.fidelity.com/trading/commissions-margin-rates
    Generally, fees at Fidelity are the same or slightly less than at Schwab. And Fidelity offers a relatively high paying government MMF as a transaction account, while Schwab requires you to use a bank sweep paying 0.45%.
    Of interest to mutual fund investors, Schwab charges its short term trading fee on NTF funds if you trade in under 90 days. At Fidelity it is only 60 days. And Fidelity enables you to add shares to a TF position for $5, while Schwab charges the full $49.95. OTOH, at least a couple of posters have said they've been able to get Schwab to waive its fund transaction fees altogether.
    Also, some funds offer multiple institutional share classes and Schwab may give you access to the cheaper share class than Fidelity does. For example, you can buy PIMIX at Schwab (TF), while at Fidelity you're stuck with the higher ER class PIPNX (TF).
    I think the service is excellent at both brokerages. In this regard one could not go wrong either way.
    WIth respect to brokerage acquisitions: I've not seen a company pay its customers when it was acquired. And I've rarely seen customers complain about that. Certainly Tweeters have complained about Twitter service since Musk bought it. But at the time he purchased the company I didn't see them saying they should get a share of his payment.
    FWIW, Schwab advertises that it has more locations than Fidelity. Of course what matters is whether it has a brokerage location near you, not how many it has elsewhere.
    https://www.schwab.com/compare-us
  • In case of DEFAULT
    @hank Yep but anything (or most things) that go beyond a few pages head off page in some way or the other even if it's just a bond discussion turning into oil stock on page 5.
  • In case of DEFAULT
    Democrats are losing the PR battle and the actual battle on this. Striking that a GOP House majority of 5 seats can call the shots over a Democrat controlled Senate and WH. What were the Dems smoking when they intentionally chose to not take any action on the debt ceiling between Nov and January when Dems controlled all of DC. Dems are the party of stupid when it comes to political maneuvering.
    Dems are looking pretty stupid here ---> negotiating hard after months of clean debt ceiling raise stance and now reportedly agreeing to more military spending, reducing IRS budgets and cuts to other programs to make way for increased military spend.
    McCarthy, McHenry, Graves are all out there giving daily press talks and Dems have nobody prominent doing the same. GOP pulled their s##t together and Dems are literally giving away the chips.
    I don't share your opinion, based on a wide array of news sources I follow.
  • Barrons article on How to Sneak into Closed Funds
    Vanguard Health Care had an annualized 16.4% return during Ed Owens'
    long tenure (05/23/1984 - 12/31/2012) compared to the the S&P 500 index's 10.7% return. This fund has not performed as well since Jean Hynes became the sole named manager in 2013. Note: Today it was announced that longtime analyst Rebecca Sykes
    was promoted to comanager on Vanguard Health Care.
    Jean Hynes performance hasn't beaten the Morningstar US Health index since she took over. I am pleasantly surprised that they named a comanager. Jean Hynes is also the CEO of Wellington, so not exactly an easy person to remove from a fund against her will.
  • In case of DEFAULT
    Democrats are losing the PR battle and the actual battle on this. Striking that a GOP House majority of 5 seats can call the shots over a Democrat controlled Senate and WH. What were the Dems smoking when they intentionally chose to not take any action on the debt ceiling between Nov and January when Dems controlled all of DC. Dems are the party of stupid when it comes to political maneuvering.
    Dems are looking pretty stupid here ---> negotiating hard after months of clean debt ceiling raise stance and now reportedly agreeing to more military spending, reducing IRS budgets and cuts to other programs to make way for increased military spend.
    McCarthy, McHenry, Graves are all out there giving daily press talks and Dems have nobody prominent doing the same. GOP pulled their s##t together and Dems are literally giving away the chips.
  • Barrons article on How to Sneak into Closed Funds
    That ability of a fund to request information is a direct result of the market trading scandal:
    The market timing and late trading issues of the mid 2000’s were caused, in certain cases, by the lack of transparency regarding beneficial mutual fund owners invested through omnibus accounts. Rule 22c-2 under the 1940 Act, which the SEC adopted in response to those scandals, requires a fund to enter into written agreements with financial intermediaries, including those maintaining omnibus account positions with the fund, in which the intermediary agrees to provide the fund with certain shareholder information upon request and to implement any fund-imposed trading restrictions on investors identified by the fund as having violated the fund’s frequent trading policy
    https://www.perkinscoie.com/images/content/1/1/v2/115211/IL-0712-Williamson.pdf
    Still, as you said, this only goes so far:
    Although these policies are designed to deter frequent trading, none of these measures alone, nor all of them taken together, eliminate the possibility that frequent trading will occur in these funds, particularly with respect to trades placed by shareholders who invest in these funds through omnibus accounts maintained by brokers, retirement plan accounts, and other financial intermediaries. The Funds’ access to information about individual shareholder transactions made through such omnibus arrangements is often unavailable or severely limited. As a result, the Funds cannot ensure that their policies will be enforced with regard to those fund shares held through such omnibus arrangements (which may represent a majority of fund shares), so frequent trading could adversely affect these funds and their long-term shareholders as discussed above.
    Guggenheim Funds frequent trading policy
    Sometimes (though probably not with this), enforcement is effected through intimidation, being told something like: "we can get you if you break our rules", even if that's not true.
  • Wellesley . Government and Agency Obligations 12.3 % Note rate & maturity
    Even with no change in market rates, bond prices change. This is most obvious with zero coupon bonds. They are sold at a discount and one gets yield from price appreciation.
    As bonds get closer to maturity, their prices gradually converge to par. If the coupon is below current market rate based a bond's remaining maturity, a bond will be priced below par. If the coupon is above current market rate a bond will be priced above par. This is true regardless of when a bond was sold or why it was sold with a particular coupon rate.
    The 0.625% bond is a discount bond. That coupon is so low, it's almost like a zero, that trades below par for its entire lifetime. You need to know Wellesley's acquisition price before you can say whether the fund has a mark-to-market loss or gain. All one can tell from the current price and coupon is the YTM.
    The march toward par is not linear. A disproportionate amount of price gain of a discount bond comes early. If a 10 year bond is sold at a discount, then five years later the bond price will have gone up more than half (assuming no change in market rates). That's because it is now a 5 year bond and 5 year bonds yield less than 10 year bonds (usually).
    So one can pick up some yield by continually selling bonds and buying longer term bonds rather than holding bonds to maturity. This strategy is often called "rolling down the yield curve".
    https://corporatefinanceinstitute.com/resources/fixed-income/rolling-down-the-yield-curve/
    The 0.625% bond
  • Wellesley . Government and Agency Obligations 12.3 % Note rate & maturity
    @yogibearbull : Yes sir I got all of that. If only they had more $ to throw at the higher rate. Note also .625 rate shows a loss !! Go figure ?!