@hank: at the gym I was surprised to find the KN95 mask easier to use than a cloth or "blue" one that clings to the face and impedes breathing.

“India’s coronavirus crisis is deepening, with hospitals buckling under increasing pressure from the second wave of infections. The South Asian country reported 259,170 new cases and 1,761 deaths over a 24-hour period on Tuesday, according to government data. It is the sixth straight day that India’s daily case count exceeded 200,000 while the daily death toll — still comparatively low — is inching higher. ”
Sad any way you cut it. (Could belong in off topic.) Just trying to get my head around how Covid is playing into investment returns.
- Is it a good time to buy Asia, EM or global funds because Covid-19 has depressed those prices relative to the U.S.? Or - maybe a bad time if you think this trend will continue?
- Is the U.S. currently ahead of other countries in the Covid (infection rate) game because of (A) better governance? (B) more money and resources? or (C) a population more receptive to vaccines along with cultural differences?
- Are investors overestimating the economic rebound from Covid-19 and bidding up some prices recklessly? If so, which ones?
CNBC

Interview with Jeffery Gundlach:
Nov 2020

The Value of Investing Mistakes
Time Horizon
Concentrated Bets
Risk Management
Beta Trades are rare and requires raising funds for such situations
His outlook for the next 18 months ahead from Nov 2020:
-US Stocks are in the late stage of the momentum trade
-PRPFX looks like a good option right now... since Nov 2020 its up 14%

When Mr. Roubini (aka Dr. Doom and a fierce critic of all things crypto) wrote that piece for project syndicate, Bitcoin was $6,300 per coin. It's now around $57,000. Blockchain has the potential to disrupt banking in a similar way in which mobile phones did to the telephone pole. I just don't agree with the liberterian fantasy slant... but yes I do agree that central banks could provide alternatives that eliminate intemediaries and reduce energy ... but why didn't they? It's no coincidence that blockchain/bitcoin was launched approximately 6 weeks after the financial crisis.
All that said, I'm not very interested in the idealogy of blockchain. At present, it doesn't violate a moral code of mine. I just want to profit from investments in it. So far, so good.

We don't need Bitcoin to have a digital currency without the crazy Bitcoin mining energy costs, and libertarian ideology is an essential part of the movement:
https://ft.com/content/eeeacd7c-2e0e-11e9-ba00-0251022932c8
https://marketwatch.com/story/roubini-calls-out-the-big-blockchain-lie-2018-10-17
https://theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2017/05/blockchain-of-command/528543/
In fact, the elimination of a "third party intermediary" from transactions is part of the libertarian fantasy. While that third party can include greedy banks, it can also include government regulators that ensure transactions are legitimate, not in illegal goods and appropriately taxed. Bitcoin and crypto initially were means for people to trade in illicit goods--see Silk Road--and to avoid paying taxes. That is evolving now with large institutional investors and regulator interest, but still problematic.
There is also this false notion of liberation and equal access to Bitcoin instead of Central Banks--the idea that anyone can have access to mining it and trading it. But what is happening in practice is very wealthy people and institutions are cornering the market in Bitcoin. About half of all Bitcoin is controlled by a few Chinese and Russian mining pools: https://fortune.com/2021/04/20/bitcoin-mining-coal-china-environment-pollution/. So basically instead of a democratically elected central government controlling currency, Bitcoin puts control in the hands of the wealthiest private enterprises, and potentially, hostile foreign governments. It's funny, but we live in the country with the world reserve currency. To actually celebrate Bitcoin's acscent is in a way celebrating the demise of the dollar.
And meanwhile there are alternatives from central banks gearing up that don't need to be a libertarian fantasy, yet could eliminate the need for for-profit banks as intermediaries and eliminate energy waste from paper currency. From the first FT article:

One of the most important potential innovations in the broad area of digital money is potentially the opposite of cryptocurrency: central bank digital money, perhaps as a substitute for cash and possibly as something more radical than that. Analysis at the IMF and the Bank of England demonstrates that we need to be clear about what central bank digital money is to achieve, how it relates to cash or bank deposits, and whether it could be a substitute for central bank reserves, which at present can only be owned by commercial banks.
Replacing cash with digital tokens of some kind would be relatively simple. It would mainly raise questions about the degree of anonymity of such replacements. Far more potentially revolutionary and destabilising possibilities would arise if the public at large were able to switch from deposits at commercial banks to absolutely safe accounts at the central bank. This radical idea has obvious attractions since it would remove the privileged access of one class of businesses, banks, to the monetary services of the state’s bank. But it would also transform (and surely destabilise) today’s monetary system, in which the state seeks to guarantee and regulate a money supply largely created by private banks and backed by private debts. Yet the revolutionary fact is that it would now be easy for everybody to hold an account at the central bank. Technology is eliminating the historic difficulties over such access.

Disclaimer: Cryptoassets is a tiny interest of mine in terms of investing but an area I want to learn more about solely for investment / profit purposes. I'm not an official defender of BTC or crypto. In the future, I think I'll leave rebuttals to experts or others better informed than I.
You present some good points. I've been a long term skeptic and even critic of crypto... That said, before you define bitcoin and crypto as the term imaginary (btw bitcoin mining is as "real" as mining for gold) ... Imagine this:
For the first time in history there is now a system where you can send "value" from one person to another or from point A to point B without the physical exchange of an item AND without using a 3rd party intermediary. The last part being the most important and intrinsic to the story of bitcoin/blockchain. There is no administrator that can be influenced. This is an electronic payment system that goes uncensored and payments are delivered without going through a financial institution and without the need to ID people further than a hashtag. Yet all of these transactions are visible and transparent to anyone on an open ledger.
"its supply and demand of something no one really needs and it's scarcity is manufactured" - the same could be said of gold and diamonds. Intrinsic value is a faulty concept. The value of something really comes down to the demand for it.
Re: Bitcoin and Energy required to mine. Is it less energy efficient than mining for gold or printing modern currencies/fiat? The vast majority of bitcoin is currently mined in areas of the world (CN) with an extremely low electric cost. Many of these miners are converting to geothermal and the CEO of Square notes that "eventually" BTC will be powered completely by clean energy or renewables. Here's the whitepaper on it: https://assets.ctfassets.net/2d5q1td6cyxq/5mRjc9X5LTXFFihIlTt7QK/e7bcba47217b60423a01a357e036105e/BCEI_White_Paper.pdf
The last paragraph 'Bitcoin feeds...' - I don't subscribe to that as the intention or intended purpose and outcome of BTC and I'd bet those CEOS and companies dumping 100's of millions into it subscribe to a different theory as well. Best investing fortunes to all!

One of their portfolio managers is interviewed in this week’s Barron’s.
Since they like gold, I ran a comparison of their Global fund SGENX with PRPFX. At the 3 and 5 year point, PRPFX has the better performance record. At 10 years out they’re tied (8.5% annually). To a considerable extent this is comparing apples & oranges. But, considering the substantial difference in ER, I wouldn’t be encouraged to send First Eagle my money.

At the top of the M* home page:

The site is experiencing issues with Portfolio Manager displaying duplicated holdings for funds. We are working on resolving the problem.

Regarding the funky symbols - M* has internal symbols that it uses for, among other things, variable annuity "funds". If one puts them into Portfolio Manager or Instant X-Ray, one can get analytic information about the portfolios, even though there aren't fund pages for them.
Instant X-Ray doesn't recognize STUSA05VHT, so I'm wondering if you transcribed it correctly.

Right. M* has (or had) a message posted today regarding the technical issue. I don’t run their portfolio analyzer - so can’t address that. But as for the basic (archaic) portfolio tracker, it’s proven highly reliable for me, despite today’s problem.
I always maintain a backup tracker. (“Active Portfolio With Alerts”) I’ll link the Apple app for anyone interested. While it occasionally gets one NAV a bit off (usually citing the previous day’s close), I still love it for the way you can lay out several different portfolio sleeves - if that’s how you invest.
I have their Ad-free Premium Plan for $29.99 yearly. Hard to complain.
https://apps.apple.com/us/app/active-portfolio-with-alerts/id840058059

The Digital Dollar Project (Project) is a partnership between the Digital Dollar Foundation (Foundation), a not-for-profit organization, and Accenture (NYSE: ACN) to advance the exploration of a central bank digital currency (CBDC)—or a “digital dollar.” The purpose of the Project is to encourage research and public discussion on the potential advantages of a tokenized dollar, convene private sector thought leaders and actors, and propose possible models to support the public sector as it considers development, testing, and adoption of a CBDC. The Project seeks to advance the public interest by future-proofing the dollar for consumers and institutions across both domestic and global economies. Given the US dollar‘s status as the world’s primary reserve currency and exploration of CBDC by other national governments and stakeholder organizations, the Digital Dollar Project sees piloting a US digital dollar across a range of use cases as a critical and prudent initiative for the United States to begin now. The Project views the infrastructure underpinning the US dollar as a critically important public good and believes that upgrading this infrastructure will provide current and future generations enhanced flexibility, optionality, stability, and prosperity.

Digital-Dollar-Project-Whitepaper

Will check with other brokerages to see if this policy holds. Unless there is special arrangement to waive the 5.25% load, A shares carries load as indicated in the prospectus.

Three classes offered in this fund:
A share -for brokerages and advisors
I share - for brokerages and advisors
R5 shares - for tax-deferred accounts
As I understand, First Eagle funds carry front-end load for individual investors. The load is waived or reduced when investment is done through an advisors. Does anyone know if there is another way to gain access as these funds as no-load fund?

Another day another Glitch
Trying to combine to watch list portfolios at M*
It duplicated all of the positions, doubling my new worth!
And some of them have gibberish symbols STUSA05VHT
I wonder what they did in the back office that caused this? Obviously their budget for retail investors has been gutted

I agree with Sven that posts would be more helpful if they included some comment about why the poster found an article or fund interesting.
carew388 identifies one of the first two questions I ask specifically about CEFs. The other is the amount of leverage, since CEFs are often highly leveraged. This information is easy to find ...
Leverage is 20% (CEF Connect), and DLY started its short life with a nearly 10% premium before plunging in fall 2020 to a 10.5% discount (per M*) and then settling in to a "not substantial[]" discount still greater than any of the dozen other leveraged multisector funds in the CEF Connect database.
Regarding Crash's concern about the frequency and certainty of dividends: there is little special about CEFs in this regard. OEF bond funds may declare dividends annually (e.g. LSGLX), quarterly (e.g. BEGBX), monthly (e.g. VTABX), or even oddly (e.g. FBIIX in April, June, Oct, Dec).
With OEFs you are left "waiting around to see IF a quarterly dividend were declared." BEGBX "generally expects to pay distributions of substantially all of its income, if any, quarterly, but may pay less frequently" (per prospectus). In reality, it has paid income dividends only three times in the past five years!
According to CEF Connect, DLY pays monthly, and is a managed payout fund that has paid the identical amount in each of the 11 months of its short lifetime.
Little of this raw data says why one might be interested in this fund.

" In theory, negative yields could translate into returns if inflation climbs persistently in coming years."
Those negative real yields are still going to be negative. If inflation runs at 2% so you get 2% added to the value of your TIPS annually, you have a security that's grown an extra 2%/year in nominal terms, but 0% extra in real terms. Your real return is unchanged. Same at 5% or any inflation rate.
TIPS "win" with higher inflation primarily in the sense that they protect you against loss of value due to inflation, while "regular" (nominal rate) Treasuries lose value faster and faster as inflation climbs.
If inflation runs exactly as priced into the market, TIPS should slightly underperform "regular" Treasuries, since you're paying a little for that inflation insurance. If inflation runs higher than is priced into the market, you win, but only relative to the "regular" Treasuries.

A concern arises, however, when the [regular Treasury bond] investment earns 4% and inflation is running at 3%. This means that the real rate of return – the stated return minus inflation – is only 1%. A bond investor locks in the money for a period of time and commits to a specific income stream, but if he underestimates inflation, future proceeds from his investment may have less purchasing power.
Unlike nominal bonds, TIPS are designed to offer a real rate of return and, hence, provide investors a certain amount of protection against inflation. By investing in TIPS, investors give up the certainty of a predictable income stream for the assurance that their investment will maintain its purchasing power in case of rising inflation. For that assurance, TIPS pay slightly lower interest rates than comparable maturity Treasury securities.

https://www.raymondjames.com/wealth-management/advice-products-and-services/investment-solutions/fixed-income/taxable-bonds/tips-treasury-inflation-protected-securities
Again, the negative real rate comes from buying a bond for $105 that has a current face value of $100 and after a decade and inflation still has a real purchasing power of $100. The inflation adjustment protects against declining purchasing power of the $100; it doesn't protect against the $5 loss of value from buying at a premium.

@msf - You belong in the fixed income department at TRP or some other big player. :) Suspect your knowledge exceeds that of some who deal with these issues daily. Thanks. I’ll confess to a little “click-baiting” with my question about having negative interest subtracted from one’s TIPS fund. As you suggest, I think, it’s a possibility - though unlikely. More likely, I suspect, the “negative interest” might simply translate into a lower NAV. I wonder too whether some of the bigger players might “cover” negatively accrued interest should it be necessary in the same way they’ve propped up teetering money market funds in the past?
The tax repercussions are fascinating. As I’m only using TIPS in a sheltered account, that’s not an issue for me. Like millions of others, I was drawn in the direction of TIPS earlier this year for the same reasons mentioned in the Barron’s excerpt below. Unlike some, I realized that not all TIPS are the same and that with longer dated TIPS there was a strong likelihood one could loose money as Treasury rates surged. Price’s longer duration TIPS fund, PRIPX, is off 0.61% YTD. Fortunately, the limited-term TIPS index fund I went with is slightly positive - but “nothing to write home about.” While on the subject, TLDTX carries a 0.22% ER, making it a decent choice for idle funds you don’t want to commit to equities or other riskier holdings.
As the post has generated some interest among board members, I’m taking the liberty of quoting a longer (but abbreviated / edited) passage from the April 19 issue of Barrons :
“Investors in search of ways to protect their income against inflation may need to look further than they think: The market created for that purpose may not be a great choice, for either income or returns ... Treasury inflation-protected securities, or TIPS, have attracted investor cash this year as investors bet that a mix of economic reopening and U.S. government stimulus will drive prices higher in the U.S. Funds investing in TIPS have seen 25 consecutive weeks of inflows from investors since October of last year ...
“Their current yields should be a reason for caution among income investors in particular. At the moment, all TIPS maturities other than the 30-year offer negative yields. The 10-year TIPS note yields nearly minus 0.8%, the five-year note yields about minus 1.7%, and the two-year note yields minus 2.6% ... In theory, negative yields could translate into returns if inflation climbs persistently in coming years. But the trade isn’t a simple one. For it to pay off, there needs to be more inflation than the levels that are already priced into the market today.”
https://www.barrons.com/articles/tips-for-investors-look-elsewhere-for-inflation-protection-51618572606
Link may not work. Sometimes doing a search for the exact words in the excerpt will.

The biggest challenge for any investor involves aligning their tolerance for risk with the cyclical nature of the markets. Too many investors fail to balance their actual perception of risk with the way that the business cycle evolves as relative asset class risks change. A Counter-cyclical Indexing strategy can help us be er align the way investors perceive risk with the way we actually manage portfolios.

Interesting approach to managing risk assets as their relative risk changes with the business cycle:
Countercyclical-Indexing.pdf

"Anybody ever had their negative interest rate subtracted from a TIPS fund at the end of a month, quarter, year?"
There's likely more wrapped up in that question than many realize. First a few basic attributes of TIPS:

• They accumulate interest rather than pay it out (like a CD that only pays interest at maturity);
  
• They accumulate interest at a rate fixed at issue (not less than 0.125%) plus an inflation (or deflation) adjustment;
  
• At maturity they are guaranteed to pay at least the initial principal (even if accumulated deflation has reduced their value)

Even though TIPS are guaranteed to accumulate interest at a real rate of at least 1/8% (1/8% plus inflation adjustment), one can still buy TIPS yielding negative real rates. That's because TIPS can be sold above face value. For example, one might buy a 10 year TIPS at auction for $105. In 10 years, aside from inflation adjustments, it would pay 1.25% (10 x 0.125%) ignoring compounding but decline 5% in value - for a net negative real return.
The key here is that the negative rates are YTM, not just interest. If a fund owned only the single TIPS described, its share price would decline over a decade from $105 to $101.25, ignoring tax quirks (more below). No magic, no interest subtracted.
So far, I've been describing real rates and real returns. That's why I could simply disregard the inflation adjustment. It's that adjustment that "eliminates" the effect of inflation and leaves one with real rates. When we add in those adjustments, we usually get nominal rates that are positive.
February's 12 month CPI increase was 1.7%, the March figure is 2.6%. Based on these figures, all TIPS currently have nominal positive yields. With that, most concerns about the mechanics of negative rates go away.
Taxation of TIPS funds is where things get tricky. Even though TIPS don't pay out interest, they just accumulate it, the nominal interest is imputed. That means that somehow, a TIPS fund has to show that interest on your 1099-DIV. It does this by declaring dividends equal to the imputed interest. Remember, we're talking nominal interest, so this is generally a positive amount, even though the real return is negative.
For investors who reinvest dividends, this is largely an exercise on paper. Like dividends of any fund, the share price of the fund drops when it goes ex-div, investors are credited with extra shares at the lower price, the IRS is happy, and no real money changes hands.
For investors who take their dividends, the fund has to come up with real cash. That cash may come from dividends and interest of other securities, or in the case of a pure TIPS fund, the fund may have to sell off some securities to raise cash. Again, this is not really different from what any other fund does when it declares divs.
The more interesting question, for which I still don't have an answer, is the one I think hank had in mind - what happens when the nominal, imputed interest is negative. That happens when the fixed rate (positive) plus a deflation adjustment comes out negative.
For individual TIPS, you actually get to subtract that negative imputed interest from your income - but only to the extent that you'd previously imputed positive interest. (You get to carry over the remainder to use against future imputed interest.) See p. 3 of this paper on TIPS:
https://www.wintrustwealth.com/sites/default/files/Wintrust Wealth Management/Treasury Inflation-Protected Securities_2018_0.pdf
I have no idea what a fund is expected to report for negative imputed interest on your 1099, let alone what magic it could perform to create negative dividends.
Correction TIPS do pay out their fixed rate amount, it is only the inflation adjustment that is accrued. The amount of fixed interest gradually increases, since is is based on a growing (in nominal terms) principal amount.

Bill Miller - Founder, Miller Value Funds
“Some of the great investors of our time, Stanley Druckenmiller, Paul Tudor Jones, are gold bulls. Many people, if they're not gold bulls, they at least believe that it's possible inflation comes back with the Fed gunning the money supply here, and with more fiscal stimulus. I think it's reasonable to own gold.
With respect to bitcoin...it's been a great month for bitcoin, but it's also been a great year, year to date, 3 years, 5 years, 10 years, and then inception, bitcoin's inception was 12 years ago, and it's been the single best performing asset category in every one of those periods. Not that it hasn't had a bad time, it went from nearly $20,000 down to the $3000-$4000 range, so it's been very volatile. But I think right now it's staying power gets better every day. I think the risks of bitcoin going to zero are much much lower than they've ever been before. And you're getting greater adoption. I mean, you know, MicroStrategy put half their cash, $400mm into bitcoin. Paypal announced that people can buy bitcoin. Square had blow out numbers yesterday due to their sales and demand for bitcoin. And the bitcoin story is very easy, which is that its supply demand it's it's economics, not 101, point 01, which is that bitcoin's supply is growing at about 2.5% per year, and the demand is growing faster than that. And there's gonna be a fixed number of them. So I think every major bank, every major investment bank, every major high net worth firm is gonna eventually have some exposure to bitcoin or what's like it.”
6 Nov 2020