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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.
  • Janet Yellen supposedly Biden's pick for Treasury Secretary
    >> What sacrifices do we need to make to save that half a degree?
    You write as though you keep up, but it is clear you do not, not really. There is a lot of work out there, hardcore practical effective proposals, a lot of them by your mocked academics, covering what is entailed to effect such a huge course alteration as a half a degree.
    You must have read, while worrying about working coalminers (of whom there are very very few), and about John Kerry's lifestyle indicating what, hypocrisy? seriously? Kerry?, about the temperature point (which is close, meaning not that far off) at which human life becomes nearly impossible.
    >> How about moving north?
    Oh, go for it.
    Eventually, and not so far off either, those forests will burn every summer too.
    Or ... get hep to renewables and feasible policy:
    https://blogs.imf.org/2020/10/07/finding-the-right-policy-mix-to-safeguard-our-climate/
    I am fascinated that someone literate and thoughtful-sounding falls back on the tiredest of Fox editorials:
    \\\ ... causing substantial damage to the environment and people in other respects? This is the real and fair debate among knowledgeable people,

    Yes, there absolutely is real discussion of trades. Moneys for retraining. Serious moneys. Disaster relief. Can you cite the debates you think are most informed or fairminded or interesting or promising?
    \\\ and to deny it makes you the ignorant one.
    You probably had best not go there, honestly, and not just with LB.
    \\\ Some honest and good people do care about an entire industry and its workers being told to shut down. If your brother, son, daughter or best friend made their living as a coal minor or working an oil rig I think you would see this point.
    Again, best not to personalize or go to anecdote.
    There is no helping coalminers or rig workers no matter what anyone does or what policies are adopted. Everybody but you and the most extreme of rightwingers know that --- National Review, the industries themselves, any of the candidates except for the departing pantsloaded infant. 'See this point'? What point would that be? Have you followed (e.g.) coal trends and the data over the last decades ?
    These are old and tired arguments, from the 1970s, as though you are 95yo and just waking up and never read the number-crunching.
    \\\ I doubt you know any of those types.
    oh, here we go. You probably also do not want to turn this into some blue-collar cred thing either, not if you want to present as thoughtful. It's not like a Clifford Odets play from 1934.

    You are one angry man. Retraining? You go for that. Your long drone did not identify a single thing to save that half a degree nor explain how deals drawn up by elite hypocrites in Europe are going to prevent those in the rapidly expanding developing world from spewing smoke and driving in their gas-powered vehicles for years to come, and it's a good thing too or else they might burn up on the spot according to you. It's cool and all to have new age green ideas, even for a probable old white guy like you, but you still haven't explained what should be done that's preferable to what is already being done, like better emission controls, clean coal, etc. I simply don't agree that extreme measures like banning fracking and giving up American energy independence will benefit our country and, despite hopes and dreams, will not even save that half a degree.
  • Janet Yellen supposedly Biden's pick for Treasury Secretary
    How many people did the U.S. coal mining industry employ in 2019? 53,000. https://statista.com/statistics/215790/coal-mining-employment-in-the-us/
    How many people are employed in the retail service sector: 9.8 million.
    https://census.gov/library/stories/2020/09/profile-of-the-retail-workforce.html
    Yet guys like wxman123 and our soon to be ex-president wax poetic about the poor coal miners while millions in retail are struggling to stay afloat because of Amazon and covid. You know what the difference is? This is who the retail sector employs--not the Fox News demographic--according to the Census bureau:
    Retail workers are younger. Over half of all retail workers were ages 16 to 34.
    Women were more likely to work in retail jobs. About 56.5% of retail workers were women, compared with 43.5% who were men.
    Blacks and Hispanics were overrepresented in retail work. Blacks comprised 12.5% of the retail workforce compared to 11.4% of the total workforce; Hispanics were 18.7% and 17.5%, respectively.
    But oh, the poor coal miners! The symbolism is perfect to stoke that tribalistic white nationalist animosity because 91% of coal miners are white males, and only 0.9% are black: https://bls.gov/cps/cpsaat18.htm They are being replaced by technology regardless whether we have a green new deal or not. Meanwhile, the retail workforce is being decimated by Covid: https://cnbc.com/2020/07/22/coronavirus-retail-workforce-faces-permanent-decline.html
  • Janet Yellen supposedly Biden's pick for Treasury Secretary
    >> What sacrifices do we need to make to save that half a degree?
    You write as though you keep up, but it is clear you do not, not really. There is a lot of work out there, hardcore practical effective proposals, a lot of them by your mocked academics, covering what is entailed to effect such a huge course alteration as a half a degree.
    You must have read, while worrying about working coalminers (of whom there are very very few), and about John Kerry's lifestyle indicating what, hypocrisy? seriously? Kerry?, about the temperature point (which is close, meaning not that far off) at which human life becomes nearly impossible.
    >> How about moving north?
    Oh, go for it.
    Eventually, and not so far off either, those forests will burn every summer too.
    Or ... get hep to renewables and feasible policy:
    https://blogs.imf.org/2020/10/07/finding-the-right-policy-mix-to-safeguard-our-climate/
    I am fascinated that someone literate and thoughtful-sounding falls back on the tiredest of Fox editorials:
    \\\ ... causing substantial damage to the environment and people in other respects? This is the real and fair debate among knowledgeable people,

    Yes, there absolutely is real discussion of trades. Moneys for retraining. Serious moneys. Disaster relief. Can you cite the debates you think are most informed or fairminded or interesting or promising?
    \\\ and to deny it makes you the ignorant one.
    You probably had best not go there, honestly, and not just with LB.
    \\\ Some honest and good people do care about an entire industry and its workers being told to shut down. If your brother, son, daughter or best friend made their living as a coal minor or working an oil rig I think you would see this point.
    Again, best not to personalize or go to anecdote.
    There is no helping coalminers or rig workers no matter what anyone does or what policies are adopted. Everybody but you and the most extreme of rightwingers know that --- National Review, the industries themselves, any of the candidates except for the departing pantsloaded infant. 'See this point'? What point would that be? Have you followed (e.g.) coal trends and the data over the last decades ?
    These are old and tired arguments, from the 1970s, as though you are 95yo and just waking up and never read the number-crunching.
    \\\ I doubt you know any of those types.
    oh, here we go. You probably also do not want to turn this into some blue-collar cred thing either, not if you want to present as thoughtful. It's not like a Clifford Odets play from 1934.
  • Janet Yellen supposedly Biden's pick for Treasury Secretary
    @wxman123 The "strawmen" are John Kerry and Al Gore whose individual hypocrisies have nothing to do with the factual accuracy of climate science or the threat level climate change poses. In fact, any hypocrisies they reveal make a stronger case for government regulation to reduce emissions, not a weaker one. Human beings are flawed hypocritical animals that break unwritten rules all the time unless there are laws governing them that are enforced. 80% of evangelicals voted for a president that has broken almost every biblical commandment. And how many rightwing preachers and GOP politicians flout their own religious and government rules all the time, getting divorced, having affairs, cheating on taxes, claiming to hate socialism while accepting government bailouts, etc.? In other words, the planet's rapidly warming climate doesn't care whether John Kerry is a hypocrite or not. Laws must be put in place to make sure that emissions are reduced, including Kerry's.
    Regarding "despite dire predictions the earth's climate has over the past century warmed less than 2 degrees (probably closer to one degree)" You act like these are small numbers, but in the realm of climate science they are huge. From the previous article "We now know that 2 degrees would be calamitous: Major cities in the equatorial band of the planet will become unlivable.” In the Paris Agreement of 2015, 1.5 degrees was deemed a safer limit. At 2 degrees of warming, one study estimates, 150 million more people would die from air pollution alone than they would after 1.5 degrees." And while that is prediction of the future, the current change has already had a major impact, already creating thousands of climate refugees from places with flooding or droughts and famine and in the U.S wildfires: https://npr.org/sections/goatsandsoda/2018/06/20/621782275/the-refugees-that-the-world-barely-pays-attention-to
    But the fact is, I believe you know already the science is true and that the future impact will be major, and not just on "sea otters." You just don't care. This is not new untested science. There are now many decades of proof behind it.
    You keep focusing on the extent of the issue, but what of the solution? What sacrifices do we need to make to save that half a degree? How about moving north? there's a lot of vacant land in the north country. Earlier today I happened upon this piece in a weather-related forum that I frequent https://www.reuters.com/article/us-cities-future-usa/future-cool-minnesota-city-ponders-new-boom-as-a-climate-migrant-destination-idUSKBN1WV1DS
    See, maybe not so bad!
  • The counterintuitive truth about stock market valuations

    Thanks for posting - excellent article.
    "The socialization of debt by the Fed is fundamentally reshaping how the quote 'free market' system works," Scott Minerd, CIO at Guggenheim Partners, told Axios last month.
  • Janet Yellen supposedly Biden's pick for Treasury Secretary
    Nestle's Plan to be emission neutral by 2050.
    I'll be 91 years young in 2050 or I may have already released my personal carbon footprint back into the atmosphere. Things move slowly in this arena:
    Nestlé was responsible for 92 million metric tons of greenhouse gas emissions in 2018, roughly double the amount emitted by all of Switzerland.
    /nestle-efforts-combat-climate-change
  • Pension Funds are Still Struggling
    Bloomberg Opinion Piece:
    Every silver lining has a cloud. Stock markets’ recovery since March has been prodigious. Now the notion of a reflationary 2021 is turning into a new orthodoxy. But the combination of events in the last few months has been toxic for some of the crucial building blocks of the financial system that was already in trouble — pensions.
    image
    Article Link:
    https://bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2020-12-03/there-s-a-toxic-cloud-behind-the-stock-recovery
  • Energy Transition Update: Framing The Investment Universe
    I suppose I could have just linked this article to the other energy investment thread but it seemed deserving of it's own. Ms. Warren is a well respected energy sector analyst. Take it for what it's worth.
    Energy Transition Update: Framing The Investment Universe
  • Janet Yellen supposedly Biden's pick for Treasury Secretary
    Not to get in between a good cat fight, but neither of you have mentioned the use of "credits" or economic incentives. My apologies if you have.
    The EPA mentions this:
    Policy-makers have two broad types of instruments available for changing consumption and production habits in society. They can use traditional regulatory approaches (sometimes referred to as command-and-control approaches) that set specific standards across polluters, or they can use economic incentive or market-based policies that rely on market forces to correct for producer and consumer behavior. Incentives are extensively discussed in several EPA reports:
    Tesla has a page dedicated to economic Electric and Solar incentives (none of which addresses the negative impact lithium mining has on the environment):
    https://tesla.com/support/incentives
    Much of Tesla financial success has been based on credits. Here's a quote from @msf in a different thread,
    "Tesla made more than $1 billion from ... regulatory credits over the past four quarters. ... That is more than double its profits over the past four quarters." So Tesla's profitability at this point is due to its cars being "clean" rather than their selling at a profit.
    I believe technology eventually helps solve natural and man made problems. Tesla may be on the right track.
    The Union of Concerned Scientists did the best and most rigorous assessment of the carbon footprint of Tesla's and other electric vehicles vs internal combustion vehicles including hybrids. They found that the manufacturing of a full-sized Tesla Model S rear-wheel drive car with an 85 KWH battery was equivalent to a full-sized internal combustion car except for the battery, which added 15% or one metric ton of CO2 emissions to the total manufacturing.
    However, they found that this was trivial compared to the emissions avoided due to not burning fossil fuels to move the car. Before anyone says "But electricity is generated from coal!", they took that into account too, and it's included in the 53% overall reduction.
    the-carbon-footprint-of-tesla-manufacturing
    Here's a Opinion piece with regard to global carbon incentives:
    “This is an example of hope,” he said, as we stood behind his office at the Federal University of Acre, a tropical campus carved into the Amazon rain forest. Brown placed his hand on a spindly trunk, ordering me to follow his lead. “There is a flow of water going up that stem, and there is a flow of sap coming down, and when it comes down it has carbon compounds,” he said. “Do you feel that?”
    I couldn’t feel a thing. But that invisible process holds the key to a massive flow of cash into Brazil and an equally pivotal opportunity for countries trying to head off climate change without throwing their economies into turmoil. If the carbon in these trees could be quantified, then Acre could sell credits to polluters emitting clouds of CO₂. Whatever they release theoretically would be offset, or canceled out, by the rain forest.
    Five thousand miles away in California, politicians, scientists, oil tycoons and tree huggers are bursting with excitement over the idea. The state is the second-largest carbon polluter in America, and its oil and gas industry emits about 50 million metric tons of CO₂ a year. What if Chevron or Shell or Phillips 66 could offset some of their damage by paying Brazil not to cut down trees?
    inconvenient-truth-carbon-credits-dont-work-deforestation-redd-acre-cambodia
    Lastly, we all need to come to common ground to find solutions. Something many of our politicians and media outlets choose not to promote.
  • S&P 500 and it's new Addition -Tesla
    Since Tesla's addition to the S&P 500 has no direct effect on its market cap (though an indirect effect by requiring S&P 500 funds to buy it), this should have little impact on its inclusion or exclusion in market-cap based indexes. For example, you won't find Tesla in VO, that tracks the CRSP mid cap index.
    In contrast, VXF, FSMAX, etc. are based on some "completion index" defined as "everything" that the S&P 500 is not. So they are affected. But some extended market indexes defined differently are not affected.
    They may be market-cap based, e.g. FZIPX is based on a "completion index" that excludes the 500 largest companies, not the 500 selected for the S&P 500. Pure market cap standard. Or they may be based on an index where Tesla isn't even part of the investable universe (see below), such as the S&P 1000. (FWIW, OMECX is an enhanced index fund based on the S&P 1000.)
    Tesla is different from a company growing out of one market cap range and into another. Tesla is not being moved from the S&P 400 to the S&P 500. Rather, S&P is only now qualifying it for inclusion in any of its S&P 1500-based indexes (i.e. 1500, 500, 1000, 400, 600). Then based on market cap, Tesla is falling into the 500 index.
    At a minimum, to be considered for inclusion in the S&P 1500, "The sum of the most recent four consecutive quarters’ Generally Accepted Accounting Principles (GAAP) earnings (net income excluding discontinued operations) should be positive as should the most recent quarter."
    S&P U.S. Indices Methodology
    AFAIK, S&P is the only major index provider that has this requirement. It's why the 600 index tends to be a bit conservative relative to its peers like the R2K. Something else distinctive about the S&P methodology is that it is not strictly rule-based; a human committee applies its own judgment to the rules.
    "Tesla made more than $1 billion from ... regulatory credits over the past four quarters. ... That is more than double its profits over the past four quarters." So Tesla's profitability at this point is due to its cars being "clean" rather than their selling at a profit. The committee has the ability to go beyond the numbers and look at the source of a company's profits. Do they meet the spirit as well as the letter of the rule?
    WSJ, Why Tesla Was Left Out of the S&P 500 (in September)
  • S&P 500 and it's new Addition -Tesla
    Top 3 Mutual Fund Holders of Tesla (TSLA)
    4-mutual-funds-hold-tesla-stock
    S&P 500 Forecast: How Will the Addition of Tesla Impact the Index?
    SP-500-Forecast-How-Will-the-Addition-of-Tesla-Impact-the-Index
    @MikeM2,
    ETFs prepare for balancing act as Elon Musk’s Tesla joins S&P 500:
    S&P still hasn’t announced what stock Tesla will be replacing, saying it will release that decision after the market closes Dec. 11.
    The S&P 500 isn’t the only index affected. Several other benchmarks will be rejiggered to accommodate the car maker, as well as any deletions from the S&P 500.
    Tesla, for example, is the largest weighted stock in S&P’s completion index, a benchmark tracking all U.S. stocks except those in S&P 500, and will have to be removed. Any stock taken out of the S&P 500 will trigger its addition back into the completion index, as well as step downs into S&P’s mid and small-cap benchmarks.
    State Street’s Mr. Bartolini said at least five of its exchange-traded funds will have to be rebalanced as a result of Tesla’s addition, including the biggest ETF in the world, the SPDR S&P 500 Trust ETF, and its growth-focused ETF, the SPDR Portfolio S&P 500 Growth ETF.
    Tesla’s inclusion “will require a fairly numerous amount of trades,” said Mr. Bartolini.
    global-investing/2020/12/01/tesla-sp-500-2
  • Janet Yellen supposedly Biden's pick for Treasury Secretary
    @wxman123 The "strawmen" are John Kerry and Al Gore whose individual hypocrisies have nothing to do with the factual accuracy of climate science or the threat level climate change poses. In fact, any hypocrisies they reveal make a stronger case for government regulation to reduce emissions, not a weaker one. Human beings are flawed hypocritical animals that break unwritten rules all the time unless there are laws governing them that are enforced. 80% of evangelicals voted for a president that has broken almost every biblical commandment. And how many rightwing preachers and GOP politicians flout their own religious and government rules all the time, getting divorced, having affairs, cheating on taxes, claiming to hate socialism while accepting government bailouts, etc.? In other words, the planet's rapidly warming climate doesn't care whether John Kerry is a hypocrite or not. Laws must be put in place to make sure that emissions are reduced, including Kerry's.
    Regarding "despite dire predictions the earth's climate has over the past century warmed less than 2 degrees (probably closer to one degree)" You act like these are small numbers, but in the realm of climate science they are huge. From the previous article "We now know that 2 degrees would be calamitous: Major cities in the equatorial band of the planet will become unlivable.” In the Paris Agreement of 2015, 1.5 degrees was deemed a safer limit. At 2 degrees of warming, one study estimates, 150 million more people would die from air pollution alone than they would after 1.5 degrees." And while that is prediction of the future, the current change has already had a major impact, already creating thousands of climate refugees from places with flooding or droughts and famine and in the U.S wildfires: https://npr.org/sections/goatsandsoda/2018/06/20/621782275/the-refugees-that-the-world-barely-pays-attention-to
    But the fact is, I believe you know already the science is true and that the future impact will be major, and not just on "sea otters." You just don't care. This is not new untested science. There are now many decades of proof behind it.
  • Bond mutual funds analysis act 2 !!
    wxman123,
    PIMIX is still a good fund but when I owned it I like the way it was. Since PIMIX is so huge the managers had to compromise and own more HY + EM + lower the distributions and still behind. PIMIX ranked at 78 in category in 2019 and 52 in 2020. The best risk/reward in bond land was in securitized. I'm never concerned about outperformance, it's what I do.
    JAVSX is a small fund where the managers can be flexible and use their best ideas.
    The question as is always what investor you are, goals and style. You need to do your own due diligence to suit your needs
    ==================
    dtconroe,
    I am willing to revisit usage of funds like VCFIX/VCFAX as a fund that was considered one of the safer, less riisky funds, prior to the crash, especially when you look at its relatively smooth performance track since the crash. When a reputable brokerage, like Schwab, is willing to put it on its Select fund list, I tend to give that fund more "benefit of the doubt" than funds like IOFIX, DHEAX, and SEMPX, which had terrible crash performance
    If you look at 3 years prior to the crash and compare VCFIX,IOFIX,SEMMX,PIMIX (link) you see the following:
    1) SEMMX+IOFIX had the best risk/reward with Sharpe+Sortino.
    2) SEMMX had good performance annually over 5% with very low SD=0.9.
    3) IOFIX had double the performance with reasonable SD=2.6
    4) VCFIX had good risk/reward and beat PIMIX
    March 2020 changed is all.
    I don't invest based on crashes just as I didn't after 2008. There are investors who see danger while I see an opportunity (chart).
    But I understand what you do and it suits your style.
    HOBIX is another fund with good risk/reward since March 2020 see (chart).
  • Bond mutual funds analysis act 2 !!
    10 years is too long. PIMIX was great until 01/2018 but its AUM got much bigger than 5-6 years ago, the managers had to look outside their best ideas in securitized and now more HY and EM and the yield is now at 4%.
    For mostly special securitized and still lower SD you can use JASVX. 2 of the managers are from SEMMX but this fund performance was much better in March 2020 than SEMMX,PIMIX,VCFIX and good YTD. I know it's new but the managers aren't. YTD (chart)
    I like and own JASVX but it is not exactly the same type of fund as PIMIX at this point. Also not sure I see PIMIX doing so bad outside of this year (still up 4.6%) and last. Agree that the bloat won't allow "secret sauce" outperformance going forward, but still can be a good fund. Definitely watching closely. My concern with JASVX is it's outsized performance this year. I have a rule that when you see a fund outperform that much you need to expect that it could underperform just as badly, like IOFIX. Put differently, I'd tell my elderly mom it's fine to park a good chunk of her savings in PIMIX, not so sure about JASVX. But being the bond master I'm interested in your take on this.
  • Bond mutual funds analysis act 2 !!
    The March crash has "complicated" SD, as a selection factor. Most of the M* Risk ratings are based on 3 and 5 year SD factors, and you have to look at the March crash impact on these risk ratings. There are all kinds of factors that impacted poor/better March crash performance, including liquidity issues and use of derivatives, for each fund. Many are under the impression that poor performance can simply be correlated with credit risk issues, but you see many funds with lower credit ratings that did better in the March crash than investment grade bond oefs. It is hard to generalize about why each fund did poorly or better in the March crash. I am willing to revisit usage of funds like VCFIX/VCFAX as a fund that was considered one of the safer, less riisky funds, prior to the crash, especially when you look at its relatively smooth performance track since the crash. When a reputable brokerage, like Schwab, is willing to put it on its Select fund list, I tend to give that fund more "benefit of the doubt" than funds like IOFIX, DHEAX, and SEMPX, which had terrible crash performance. Bond oefs like BASIX, have been around for awhile, run by a very respected company, and has achieved a M* Gold star rating, with rather glowing recommendations in the M* Fund Analyst considerations. Each investor has to develop their own criteria for fund selection, and have to decide if their selection is a simple "trade" choice, or is it selected because it has longer term holding potential. I don't recommend funds very often anymore, but I find myself having to deeper due diligence, post crash, in funds I am willing to put on watchlists and worthy of "consideration" as a fund for my portfolio.
  • Bond mutual funds analysis act 2 !!
    10 years is too long. PIMIX was great until 01/2018 but its AUM got much bigger than 5-6 years ago, the managers had to look outside their best ideas in securitized and now more HY and EM and the yield is now at 4%.
    For mostly special securitized and still lower SD you can use JASVX. 2 of the managers are from SEMMX but this fund performance was much better in March 2020 than SEMMX,PIMIX,VCFIX and good YTD. I know it's new but the managers aren't. YTD (chart)
  • VGENX Vanguard Energy
    The upstream segment of energy got hammered this year. Looks like there may well be some daylight ahead for survivors, especially with vaccines on the way. So, attached my seatbelt and bought a little FANG in late October (YOC = 5.61%).