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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.
  • NYT: Russia’s War Could Make It India’s World
    Another excerpt:
    The Ukraine war, compounding the effects of the Covid-19 pandemic, has fueled the country’s ascent. Together they have pushed corporations to make global supply chains less risky by diversifying toward an open India and away from China’s surveillance state. They have accentuated global economic turbulence from which India is relatively insulated by its huge domestic market.
    Those factors have contributed to buoyant projections that India, now No. 5, will be the world’s third-largest economy by 2030, behind only the United States and China.
    On a recent visit to India, Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen said that the United States wanted to “diversify away from countries that present geopolitical and security risks to our supply chain,” singling out India as among “trusted trading partners.”….
    …. If the Biden administration has been unhappy with India’s business-as-usual approach to Mr. Putin since Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, it has also been accepting of it — American realpolitik, as China rises, demands that Mr. Modi not be alienated.
    At the end of my stay, I traveled down to Chennai on the southeastern coast.
    The atmosphere is softer there. The economy is booming. The electronics manufacturer Foxconn is rapidly expanding production capacity for Apple devices, building a hostel for 60,000 workers on a 20-acre site near the city.
  • NYT: Russia’s War Could Make It India’s World
    The article is by no means a recommendation to buy Indian stocks, but an exploration of a potential new world economic order and its implications. 1.4 billion people and India’s increasingly scary nationalism can’t be simply ignored. This is especially so as the U.S.’s relationship with China has frayed recently. U.S. businesses such as Apple are already beginning to substitute Chinese manufacturing facilities with Indian ones.
  • I bonds
    Thank you, @Observant1.
    Just read it. Really good shit! I'm convinced. I rather think I might go with SCHP, instead of his recommendation: LTPZ. Yes, the Schwab etf is a diverse basket of maturities, it's true...
  • I bonds
    @crash,
    Devesh's TIPS article is now available.
    It's a good read.
    Link
  • Is 2023 the time to wade back into bond funds? Thoughts?
    In my circumstances, munis don't make sense. For a few different reasons, I'll be adding bonds to my taxable account. I've already got a slug of bonds in the IRA. I want to track the new TUHYX twin, the new ETF: it's THYF, before throwing money at it. Lots of options available. There's a strange contradiction about TUHYX, when I look at what Morningstar offers. Granted, Morningstar is not gospel, and there are many other sources to turn to. Anyhow, Morningstar rates it with 2 stars and with a SILVER decoration. On the surface, it looks not bad.... HIGH marks for the "Process/People/Parent" wonky categories, too. But then they show it at the bottom for '22 among peers. 2018 was some sort of watershed for the fund, probably a change in style or mandate. Since then, there have been three pretty good years, bookended by two awful years. Still, the dividends remain juicy. Can the share price still be falling much? Are we at the nadir? Different opinions about that sort of thing are what makes a Market........ At the moment, I'm looking at Schwab's TIPS ETF. (SCHP.)
  • Is 2023 the time to wade back into bond funds? Thoughts?
    I would think of floating-rate loans as a potential equity substitute at this point. I think Giroux sees them similarly--that their risk adjusted return profile offering similar upside but less downside than stocks makes them appealing currently. That said, they will not function defensively as well as conventional high quality bonds. If we enter a severe recession, the risks are significant.
    One bond fund I think that isn't discussed enough here is FPNIX. Here is what they had to say about bonds recently:
    https://fpa.com/docs/default-source/funds/fpa-new-income/literature/fpa-new-income-inc-2022-q3-commentary.pdf?sfvrsn=d1cf909d_6
    That leads us to the exciting part: we believe this is the most attractive bond market we have seen in at least a decade! For reference, the charts below show the yield and spread on the Bloomberg U.S. Aggregate Bond Index and Bloomberg 1-3 year U.S. Aggregate Bond Index. Yields on investment grade bonds are now at levels we haven’t seen since 2007. Most of the increase in yield through September 2022 has been due to higher risk-free rates, with a smaller component due to higher spreads.
    Click on the link to see the charts. One significant event that occurred in 2022 by the way was it was the first calendar year since 1984 that FPNIX lost money. That is some record, and shows you just how difficult 2022 was for bond investors. It is admittedly a very conservative fund.
  • Is 2023 the time to wade back into bond funds? Thoughts?
    @LarryB - I took no offense at your “couched” suggestion. As I said earlier I think it’s “a bit too darkly suggestive.” Sometimes it feels like walking on eggs around here. :)
    I sold PRWCX mid-year after owning it since the 90s. Not because I don’t like the fund. Just because as I’ve aged I’ve grown more conservative. Rather than holding on to both DODBX and PRWCX in my growth sleeve in relatively small amounts I opted just to hang with DODBX. I think the ride with DODBX will be smoother (in part due to the short position @Yogibearbull outlined.) But I’d guess longer term PRWCX will perform better - as it has in the past. Their short position (on the S&P 500) started at 5% and over the past year or so has fallen to just 2% of portfolio. What they have said (paraphrasing here) is that overall they view(ed) the S&P as overvalued, but that they have found bargains in other areas of the market. Makes perfect sense to me.
    I can’t help wondering whether increased “limelight” (public attention) on a manager might lead them to make more mistakes than they would otherwise, whether because they feel somehow compelled to produce outsized returns to go along with that increased attention - or whether they said something in an interview (ie “the 10-year doesn’t get above 2.5% in the next year.”) and are therefore more reluctant to admit their miscalculation and alter the approach that statement supports?
    Giroux is a proven winner. Rough year last year ( -12%), but PRWCX will do fine longer term. And, absolutely, I feel both he and TRP have the highest integrity.
    I’ve never provided my return stats (not that they’re that great) for various reasons, but in part because I don’t want to feel like I’m competing with other posters when making buy-sell decisions. I suspect that it would cause me to take on more risk than prudent and also be more reluctant to admit error and alter course. Thanks to all those who do provide such information, including @MikeM. It adds to the discussions immeasurably.
  • Is 2023 the time to wade back into bond funds? Thoughts?
    Here are some snippets from the DODBX Morningstar Analyst Report dated 06/16/2022.
    "In May 2022, a newly formed balanced fund
    committee, which features a well-rounded mix of the
    firm’s equity, fixed-income, and quantitative veterans,
    officially took over management of the fund. The
    committee started as a working group following the
    fund’s sharp losses during the 2020 coronavirus-driven
    bear market."

    "In 2021, it no longer forced the underlying
    stock and bond sleeves to fully mimic Gold-rated Dodge
    & Cox Stock DODGX and Gold-rated Dodge & Cox
    Income DODIX."

    "Other changes the new committee enacted since 2020
    include allowing a small short position in the S&P 500 to
    counter potential market selloffs. They can also sell
    covered-calls on some stocks the analysts believe are
    at or near full value."

    "The increased focus on managing risk is a welcome
    improvement, but a longer track record of execution
    would increase our confidence that the changes will
    lead to a smoother ride going forward."
  • Riverpark Short Term High Yield - divs and availability
    Thanks @msf.
    If I take the data from Portfolio Visualizer, from Jan 1 to Dec 31, 2022, RPHYX returned 2.71%. To echo your point, there were no 1 year CD's, MM or Treasuries to buy on Jan 1, 2022 that would have paid that. In betting on which will return more in 2023, RPHYX total return in the 4th quarter was 1.7%. Always a risky venture, but if you extrapolate that for 1 year you might say RPHYX is on trend to return 1.7x4 = 6.8% moving forward. Obvious risk and no sure bet to saying that, but that might be more comparable to the 1 year treasuries and CD's available now.
    In any case, comparing last year's RPHYX's 1 year return is not a representative comparison to future CD/treasury rates available now. You can only make that comparison 1 year from now. I'm betting and hoping for higher total return with RPHYX.
    So, my answer to your question @Mav123, I'm going to play both. I'll separate my eggs to both baskets :)
  • The PCE index, an inflation measure closely watched by the Fed, slowed to 5.5% in November
    PK twitter thread today (historical-facing):
    ... one way to think about inflation is that it's like a sports event where everyone stands up to get a better view of the action — which is collectively self-defeating.
    Controlling inflation by inducing a recession is like stopping the action on the field until everyone sits down again. It works, but at a cost.
    Much better if we could get collective agreement by everyone to sit down without stopping the game. That's hard to achieve but not always impossible.
    The more or less painless 1985 Bruno disinflation in Israel was pretty much exactly that: all the major parties agreed to stop trying to leapfrog each other, and inflation came down right away.

    Some commenters point out problems with some sectors' having greater ability to stand up than others, and then there are always tall people in front, or at least the advantage of being taller than the person behind you ....
  • NYT: Russia’s War Could Make It India’s World
    An important article you can interpret as an investor or 1,001 other ways:
    https://nytimes.com/2022/12/31/world/asia/india-ukraine-russia.html
    An excerpt:
    A “world order which is still very, very deeply Western,” as he put it in an interview, is being hurried out of existence by the impact of the war in Ukraine, to be replaced by a world of “multi-alignment” where countries will choose their own “particular policies and preferences and interests.”
    Certainly, that is what India has done since the war in Ukraine began on Feb. 24. It has rejected American and European pressure at the United Nations to condemn the Russian invasion, turned Moscow into its largest oil supplier and dismissed the perceived hypocrisy of the West. Far from apologetic, its tone has been unabashed and its self-interest broadly naked.…
    ….In other words, with its almost 1.4 billion inhabitants, soon to overtake China as the world’s most populous country, India has a need for cheap Russian oil to sustain its 7 percent annual growth and lift millions out of poverty. That need is nonnegotiable. India gobbles up all the Russian oil it requires, even some extra for export. For Mr. Jaishankar, time is up on the mind-set that “Europe’s problems are the world’s problems, but the world’s problems are not Europe’s,” as he put it in June.
    The Ukraine war, which has provoked moral outrage in the West over Russian atrocities, has caused a different anger elsewhere, one focused on a skewed and outdated global distribution of power. As Western sanctions against Russia have driven up energy, food and fertilizer costs, causing acute economic difficulties in poorer countries, resentment of the United States and Europe has stirred in Asia and Africa….Grinding trench warfare on European soil seems the distant affair of others. Its economic cost feels immediate and palpable.
    “Since February, Europe has imported six times the fossil fuel energy from Russia that India has done,” Mr. Jaishankar said. “So if a $60,000-per-capita society feels it needs to look after itself, and I accept that as legitimate, they should not expect a $2,000-per-capita society to take a hit.”
    Here comes Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s India, pursuing its own interests with a new assertiveness, throwing off any sense of inferiority and rejecting unalloyed alignment with the West. But which India will strut the 21st-century global stage, and how will its influence be felt?
    The country is at a crossroads, poised between the vibrant plurality of its democracy since independence in 1947 and a turn toward illiberalism under Mr. Modi. His “Hindu Renaissance” has threatened some of the core pillars of India’s democracy: equal treatment of all citizens, the right to dissent, the independence of courts and the media.
  • Gambling in 2022
    Maybe 50/50 HSGFX/BRK.B? Dunno
    HSGFX +17.3% 1 YR
    BRK.B +2.7% 1 YR
    Combined: Performance +10%
    Nice going @BaseballFan
    Now - Please advise on where to put our money in 2023 :)
  • Is 2023 the time to wade back into bond funds? Thoughts?
    Recall that DODBX has changed investment policy recently to include some shorting. Its idea was to tame its high volatility. This is quite unusual for allocation/balanced funds, and DODBX may have had beginner's luck just as this bear was arriving.
    Among the oldest allocation funds are VWELX (1929), LOMMX (1929-2022; liquidated), DODBX (1931). Not so old FPURX (1947) is also old enough.
  • Gambling in 2022
    I ended up down -11.41% in 2022, but that includes IRA withdrawals and some rearranging through the year. By that I mean exchanges between funds. I put a hefty amount into junk. I should have waited longer to do it. My favorite baby, PRWCX, ended-up just within the top 25% in its category, but still lost a bunch for the year. Still managed a goodly year-end pay-out. That's a GOOD thing, in a T-IRA.
    I did not want to be out of the Market. I am very well aware that a big bunch of money is either made or missed on just several days per year, when irrational run-ups happen. PRISX disappointed. I'm holding it on a vastly reduced basis. Going to let my 5-stock stable run, in the brokerage acct. TRP won't allow buys into OEFs in a different fund company for less than $5k. That sucks wet dog fur, by the way.
  • Is 2023 the time to wade back into bond funds? Thoughts?
    I had an investment with Dodge a number of years ago, but left when they carried a heavy load of financial & got toasted in 07-08 .
    Yes @Derf. I remember it well.
    The last thing I would ever do is try to steer anyone into any particular fund. But I like to note that DODBX’s track record extends clear back to the 1930s. Longevity - if not consistent performance!
    Thanks for the comments.
  • BONDS, HIATUS ..... March 24, 2023
    Thanks for the chart! Rough year for balanced funds for sure.
    Many of my colleagues invested in target date funds and they were surprised by the level of loss they are having. They thought simply everything into one fund would be easier to manage. Some of them are near retirement. Ironically, stable value fund is available in our 401(k) plan.
  • 2023 to be a tough year: IMF
    +1. @hank
    It pays to be informed. Yet huge, big macro predictions like that one from the IMF must indeed be taken with a 50-pound bag of salt. There are so many variables. So many surprises can happen. What if the war against Ukraine by the Poot-bag comes to an end? What if we could suddenly begin to actually trust the cooked information coming out of China re: covid (and everything else?) What if Africa became educated, stable and on a path to sustained development, without the corruption and political instability which makes so many of them "shit-hole" countries? Same goes for Philippines and elsewhere. What if humanity as a whole (with a "w") suddenly woke up and saw the benefits of long-term thinking instead of short-term profits as the primary driver for decisions? What if we could finally manage to see each other in each other's face?
    From The Vatican, lately. @LewisBraham wrote about it:
    "No investment of money is morally neutral; “either God’s kingdom is being advanced by the assets we deploy, or it is being neglected and undermined,” said a new Vatican document."
    Don't like the term, "God's Kingdom?" Think of it as The Common Good or Human Progress or Human Ethical Evolution.