Just wondering if it’s time to pick up some investment grade intermediates thru a fund (4-7 year duration) as a short or intermediate term hold? At last look the 10 year had risen to nearly 1.8%. Wasn’t it below 1% only a year ago? Things don’t normally move in a straight line. Unlike cash, there’s the possibility of some cap gain with intermediate bonds should equities decide to do a deep dive.
Yet, looking at what I might add, the selloff YTD really doesn’t look very severe (reason not to jump).
YTD returns (all negative): PRGMX -0.95%, PBDIX -3.14%, DODIX - 2.6%
My guess is that it’s probably too early. But closer to 2% I’d be willing to move a bit in.

https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.marketwatch.com/amp/story/this-warning-label-gives-you-a-dose-of-reality-about-mutual-funds-on-a-hot-streak-11617052090
https://ottotrading.live/opinion-this-warning-label-gives-you-a-dose-of-reality-about-mutual-funds-on-a-roll/
This warning label gives you a dose of reality about mutual funds on a hot streak
Published: March 29, 2021 at 5:08 p.m. ET
By Mark Hulbert
‘Past performance does not guarantee future results’ is a poor disclaimer
Which of the following two caveats would do the best job of preventing investors from paying too much attention to an investment’s recent performance? The first caveat is what is currently required in all investment advertising. The second is a proposal that the Securities and Exchange Commission is considering adding to the first.
In fact, both warning labels malfunction. According to a recently published study, neither of them effectively deters investors from believing that an investment adviser on a hot streak will be able to continue to do so. This widely held belief is known as the hot hand bias or the hot hand fallacy. The culprits believe that, among two funds with the same long-term performance, the one whose most recent performance is superior is the best bet for future performance. This new study appeared in the Journal of Public Policy & Marketing.
Maybe better to have a diversified plans and may need hold several assets in a basket to reap investment returns

Vanguard’s first quarter dividend for 2021 is in the amount of $0.65640, up 18.4%. ...
Vanguard's first quarter dividend for 2021 is in the amount of $0.65640. This is far superior to the first quarter for 2020, which had the amount of $0.55440. ...
Do you see what % of an increase that equates to? We are talking about 18.4% baby!

We are talking about an 18.9% decline Q/Q, a dividend far inferior to the fourth quarter of 2020 which had the amount of $0.8096. Not to mention a 0.65% quarterly yield vs. a 0.72% quarterly yield in 1Q20.

Volkswagen commitment to an electric vehicle-centric future, with the company rebranding its United States operations to “Voltswagen of America,”

volkswagen-is-really-serious-about-ev-foray-to-make-that-clear-its-renaming-us-entity-to-voltswagen

The votes on whether to form a union at Amazon.com Inc’s sprawling Alabama fulfillment center are set to be reviewed starting on Tuesday, with momentum for future labor organizing at America’s second-largest private employer hanging in the balance.

amazon-union-vote-enters-final-stretch-in-watershed-moment-for-u-s-labor

For Lipper, it is an "equity income" fund. That struck me as an objective ("generate income while investing in equities"), consistent with the fund's objective ("long-term appreciation while providing high current income"). The strategy is investing "in dividend-paying equity securities" with the note, a couple sentences later, that normally 65% of the portfolio will be in energy or energy-related companies.
"Equity income" is one of the few categories (along with S&P 500 Index) to survive from the old objectives-based Lipper system ("growth and income") to the new portfolio-based one.
As I scanned the 200 or so equity income funds, I didn't notice any others that advertised a particular sector bias. Still, I'm not sure that Lipper is wrong to classify it as equity income given the clear objective and strategy statements.
And, regardless, it's a deadster.

A newsletter I receive that I thought might encourage comments and discussion:
Newsletter Topic:

When you shift risk from individuals to the government (or anyone else, as what happens every day in financial markets) one of three things can happen:
1. The risk still exists, but it’s smaller because of the power of diversification.
2. The risk stays the same size and is transferred from one party to another.
3. The risk increases, because you’ve created a new systematic risk, moral hazard, or some distortion in which prices and incentives don’t make sense anymore.

Welcome to Known Unknowns, a newsletter that’s here to remind you that although you can shift risk onto someone else, it never really disappears.

known-unknowns

https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/105563/000168386321001656/f8307d1.htm
497 1 f8307d1.htm VANGUARD WELLINGTON FUND 497
 
Vanguard Wellington™ Fund
Supplement Dated March 29, 2021, to the Prospectus and Summary Prospectus Dated March 29, 2021
Important Change to Vanguard Wellington Fund
 
Effective at the close of business on June 30, 2021, Michael E. Stack will retire from Wellington Management Company LLP and will no longer serve as a portfolio manager for Vanguard Wellington Fund.
Loren L. Moran and Daniel J. Pozen, who currently serve as portfolio managers with Mr. Stack, will remain as portfolio managers of the Fund upon Mr. Stack’s retirement. The Fund’s investment objective, strategies, and policies will remain unchanged.
© 2021 The Vanguard Group, Inc. All rights reserved.
Vanguard Marketing Corporation, Distributor.PS 21G 032021
 
Vanguard Wellington™ Fund
 
Supplement Dated March 29, 2021, to the Statement of Additional Information Dated March 29, 2021
Important Change to Vanguard Wellington Fund
Effective at the close of business on June 30, 2021, Michael E. Stack will retire from Wellington Management Company LLP and will no longer serve as a portfolio manager for Vanguard Wellington Fund.
Loren L. Moran and Daniel J. Pozen, who currently serve as portfolio managers with Mr. Stack, will remain as portfolio managers of the Fund upon Mr. Stack’s retirement. The Fund's investment objective, strategies, and policies will remain unchanged.
© 2021 The Vanguard Group, Inc. All rights reserved.
Vanguard Marketing Corporation, Distributor.
SAI 21H 032021

https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/105563/000168386321001655/f8340d1.htm
497 1 f8340d1.htm VANGUARD WELLINGTON FUND 497
Vanguard Wellington™ Fund
Supplement to the Prospectus and Summary Prospectus
Important Note Regarding Vanguard Wellington Fund
Vanguard Wellington Fund will be closed to all prospective financial advisory, institutional, and intermediary clients (other than clients who invest through a Vanguard brokerage account).
The Fund will remain closed until further notice and there is no specific time frame for when the Fund will reopen. During the Fund's closed period, all current shareholders may continue to purchase, exchange, or redeem shares of the Fund online, by telephone, or by mail.
The Fund may modify these transaction policies at any time and without prior notice to shareholders. You may call Vanguard for more detailed information about the Fund's transaction policies. Participants in employer-sponsored plans may call Vanguard Participant Services at 800-523-1188. Investors in nonretirement accounts and IRAs may call Vanguard's Investor Information Department at 800-662-7447.
© 2019 The Vanguard Group, Inc. All rights reserved.
Vanguard Marketing Corporation, Distributor.
PS 21 032019

FWIW. For Informational purposes only.
The big kids are still playing the games.........surprise, surprise, eh?

$20 billion stock dump last Friday (Mar. 26).
NOTE: select the "X" to close the first link page to view the article
Related to the above and the block trades, has some traders watching carefully.
LINK

At a tad more than FD1000’s hypothetical 3% inflation rate, inflation at 3.25% yearly would result in a 10% increase in the cost of living in 3 years (Inflation compounds in a manner similar to compound interest.) Not to say that would be good or bad - just to demonstrate the cumulative effect a seemingly small level of inflation can have over time.
While I’m disappointed at the shallow depth of the T. Rowe Price article I linked, the real news here is that this conservative outfit chose to mention the possibility of significant inflation at all. For a number of years their take was that price inflation would remain subdued (largely correct). So for them to acknowledge the possibility at all is worthy of note.
Always best to think about an issue before it arises - “To the early bird goes the worm ...”

Certainly the two classification systems - Morningstar and Refinitiv Lipper - are different. But the Lipper classification system familiar to users is, like M*'s, composition based not investment objective based (except for sectors; see below).
Until the 1990s, funds were typically classified according to their stated objectives such as Equity Income, Growth and Income, Growth, and Capital Appreciation.

By the early 1990s, advancements in technology permitted a new approach. Armed with funds' portfolio holdings and the computational power to evaluate them, Morningstar jettisoned fund companies' definitions, opting instead to impose its own [portfolio based] structure.

https://www.morningstar.com/articles/931013/about-morningstars-fund-classifications
Lipper took a different path, maintaining the old system while promulgating its portfolio-based system:

Refinitiv Lipper originally grouped all funds by their prospectus-based objective. The introduction of Refinitiv Lipper's holdings-based classification model and the demand for more granular peer groups paved the way for the creation of a classification scheme. ...
OPEN-END [Domestic] EQUITY FUNDS
Prospectus-based [classification]
    Capital Appreciation Funds
    Equity Income Funds
    Equity Leverage Funds
    Growth & Income Funds
    Growth Funds
    Micro-Cap Funds
    Mid-Cap Funds
    Options Arbitrage/Option Strategies
    S&P 500 Index Objective Funds
    Small-Cap Funds
Portfolio-based [classification]
    Equity Income Funds
    Large-Cap Core Funds
    Large-Cap Growth Funds
    Large-Cap Value Funds
    Mid-Cap Core Funds
    Mid-Cap Growth Funds
    Mid-Cap Value Funds
    Multi-Cap Core Funds
    Multi-Cap Growth Funds
    Multi-Cap Value Funds
    S&P 500 Index Funds
    S&P Midcap 400 Index Funds
    Small-Cap Core Funds
    Small-Cap Growth Funds
    Small-Cap Value Funds
    Specialty Diversified Equity Funds

Refinitiv Lipper U.S. Fund Classifications, Aug 15, 2020
It's this latter group of categories of diversified domestic equity funds that one finds in Lipper-based screeners. One doesn't see the objective-based categories like G&I funds.
With respect to sector funds, Refinitiv Lipper classifies them according to their stated objectives, not according to their holdings. So what Prof. Snowball wrote about Lipper classifying NRGDX by its stated objective, not its holdings, is correct because this is a sector fund. With 95% AUM invested in energy stocks, it's hard to say otherwise.
But if Lipper is regarding it as a sector fund (and thus classifying it according to its objective), then given its stated 25%+ concentration in energy, not to mention its 95% actual concentration, IMHO Lipper still misclassified it.

Hi guys,
This was a good little fund.....that was its problem. It was small......$15 million. So they closed it and rolled it into the bigger growth fund. It's all about money for the company, nothing else.
God bless
the Pudd

Not to be too incredibly derivative, and this was from a post from the great Chowder, of Seeking Alpha (and the “Chowder Number,” or dividend yield plus growth) fame, and its slightly dated (especially after a run up in utilities over last few weeks) dated 2/28, but its related to discussion:
[Quote] On the dividend front, I have declared tomorrow as Utility Monday. I will be adding to the following utility companies.
AWK .. BEPC .. NEP .. WEC .. RNRG .. XEL.
Most of the focus here is on clean energy.
Utilities seem to be undervalued to me and they can almost be considered growth assets going forward just to achieve new price highs. Although D is a favorite best-in-class at JP Morgan, I already own a large amount of them and would prefer building the other utilities up in size.
A news blurb from Barron's:
Utility company stocks ( XLU, VPU) and funds are a cheap way to plug into the seismic shift away from coal and toward wind and solar power over the next 15 years, providing a potential boon to both the environment and investors, according to the latest Barron's cover feature.
"Utilities are a stealth green energy play, with much lower valuations than most alternative-energy providers and less risk," says Hugh Wynne, co-head of utilities and renewable energy research at SSR.
The conventional view is to buy tech or renewable companies as a way to participate in the energy transition, but the "most efficient and optimal risk-adjusted manner to participate in the energy transition is through well-run electric utilities," says George Bilicic, vice chairman of investment banking at Lazard.
Barron's identifies companies that offer attractive yields and inexpensive valuations, including Alliant Energy (NASDAQ: LNT), American Electric Power (NASDAQ: AEP), CMS Energy (NYSE: CMS), Dominion Energy (NYSE: D), Entergy (NYSE: ETR), Exelon (NASDAQ: EXC), NextEra Energy (NYSE: NEE), Pinnacle West Capital (NYSE: PNW) and Xcel Energy (NASDAQ: XEL).
Morgan Stanley analyst Stephen Byrd favors American Electric Power, which he calls a "coal-heavy company that is moving away from that in a big way" and thinks the stock, which is down 20% in the past year, could rise as its transformation continues.
Reaves Asset Management's John Bartlett says CMS Energy is "cleaning up its emissions, while holding increases in electric bills to around the rate of inflation."J.P. Morgan's Jeremy Tonet likes Dominion as a "best-in-class, pure-play regulated utility with attractive green growth plans," and Entergy, which has one of the best hydrogen logistics networks on the Gulf Coast. [End quote]
BEPC (Brookfield Renewable Resources, not K-1 issuing)....NEP (yieldco like AY)....CWEN/CWEN.A (another yieldco)....NEE (utility sponsor of NEP, and the leader in renewable utilities). Also HASI, a REIT that serves renewable energy projects. These are some other ideas. NEE has a yield around 2%, BEPC and HASI about 2.5-3%, NEP about 3.5%, and CWEN almost 5%. May be getting a little far afield for @Crash :)

March 27th Episode:

Bank the Banks
Rotate away from Growth
Rotate into Value
Emerging Market Value
2019 MFO Review:
emerging-market-value-investing-revisited

I have read so many inflation/rate scary stories in the last several weeks. Let me know when inflation is high (over 3%) for several months.
Inflation will be higher in the next 2-4 months on annual basis because they compare it to the same month of 2020 when we had a black swan. Let's see if inflation will be over 3% after August and stay high for months.
Inflation is a rate of change. It may be up 2% in one month and if in the second month there is no inflation than it equals zero.
Remember, the Fed wants inflation at 2-2.5%.
And then rates will go to sky, let me know when the 10 year treasury is going to be over 2.5% in the next 6 months, after all so many scream it's coming any minute.
The usual, scary stories sell better.
What funds I would own? The ones that are going up. SP500 was up very nicely in 2020 and it's up 6.2% in 2021. Bonds: plenty of Munis + Multi/Non Trad funds are up YTD.

But there is good stuff in there - admittedly you have read it before:
“Whereas valuations explain very little of returns over the next one to two years, they have explained 60-90% of subsequent returns over a 10-year time horizon,” the firm noted. “We have yet to find any factor with such strong predictive power for the market over the short term.”
Looking ahead Subramanian envisions more muted returns, or about 2% per year for the S&P 500 over the next decade. Including dividends, returns stand at 4%. The forecast is based on a historical regression looking at today’s price relative to normalized earnings ratio.“

Some recent thoughts fromTRP on the subject ...
T. Rowe Price
As mentioned earlier, a better buying opportunity existed 6-12 months back. I’m not certain this is the best time to dive into these funds after a big run-up.

The TD Ameritrade pricing page confirms that it charges $6.95 for online OTC (pink sheet) transactions in both foreign and domestic stocks. (Schwab charges $50 for online OTC transactions in foreign stocks.) Fidelity charges $0 (aside from a nominal Section 31 fee) for online pink sheet transactions, including foreign stocks.
Though if you want to trade online directly on TSX at Fidelity it will cost you Can$19 plus a currency exchange fee (1% or less depending on amount).
See pp. 3-4 of Fidelity's Fee Schedule
https://www.fidelity.com/bin-public/060_www_fidelity_com/documents/Brokerage_Commissions_Fee_Schedule.pdf

I think the problem is, unless it has an “Americanized” ticker, it only trades on a foreign market (TSX in this case), and therefore would be more expensive to trade (probably the same price as investing in a Croatian internet stock? Ha). I don’t mean to assume, but I believe that rono probably invests in Canadian mining stocks that have a Pink Sheets stock ticker: because they don’t want to pay for the costs/requirements of being listed on a US Exchange, but there is US investor demand for such stocks, they get a ticker (usually more letters than most stocks and ending with an F) and can be traded. However, at least at TDA, the old commission of $7 applies, but it’s cheaper than a foreign exchange transaction at Fidelity ($30-$50 I think...never tried this on TDA). Some of this is off the top of my head, so forgive any inaccuracies.