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.
@AndyJ: there seem to be all sorts of glitches. One that trips me up constantly is the "chart" function that fails to recognize a fund's symbols for the purpose of running a comparison. The app for iPad is also faulty and won't open on the "quote" …
@ msf, good that the old pages are still alive. I don't have any old links, so thanks, I'll hold onto that one.
I wonder if the old pages will still populate with current data after the first of the month. There's hope: I see there's a current pri…
Is true that the "Purchase" function is no longer a part of fund's profile on M*? I have often relied on this button to show all share classes of a fund. I don't see it these days.
Apparently that's the case. It might work to type the name of the fu…
Just looked at the new M* fund pages for PRSNX, and here I thought they couldn't make the portfolio bond holdings info any less useful than it was in the previous incarnation. Now they show only top level holdings info: government, muni, corporate, …
The only specifically investing subscription I have is with Hedgeye. It fits the style I adopted when I retired and has helped a lot with strategic positioning, and it's very much data-driven, also my style. Of non-subscription sources, Bloomberg se…
From my port and watchlists, munis are losing out to roughly comparable (credit/duration) taxables now on a 3-month basis. Not losing $, just stalling a bit from the earlier torrid pace that's made them pricier on a relative basis. But if the big T …
Don't disagree with the article, but my preference for China / Asia bonds is MAINX. I only have 2 bond funds and that is one of them. Not sure where you would go for a Brazilian bond focus.
MAINX is my pick too for Asia. It's part local, part U.S. …
A friend's just back from Normandy, says it's amazing how alive D-Day and the forward progress afterward still are, from day to day, apparently not just right now at anniversary time, in the local culture. The French helped us gain independence from…
@Derf: Apparently the EM index is 74% Asia. Here's SFGIX, showing its benchmark alongside the fund's holdings (scroll down to "World Regions"):
Benchmark
And here's EEM, the MSCI index, corroborating the 74%:
EEM (EM index fund)
I recall the index …
Realistically speaking are their good alternatives to TurboTax and Quicken?
Yes. I do it on paper in ink after doing a first version in pencil. ... I pay my tax by check. I get my refund by check. I send and receive these via the USPS using env…
I've had the pleasure of work excuses to travel to Victoria, Vancouver, smaller towns and villages on Vancouver Is., Whitehorse, Toronto, Ottawa, and Peterborough (Ontario), and have spent a chunk of free time in B.C. and the Yukon. It's always been…
... the rule change the NCAA may enforce is to require the school receiving the transfer to lose a scholarship.
Got it, thanks; a step in the right direction, at least, since I guess there's no going back.
Are any of these "graduate student athletes" really in search of a Master's degree, after all?
“Graduate Student Athlete” ?
A cynic might term that an oxymoron.
If they graduated and still had eligibility (four years, as it's been forever), becau…
Shouldn't be a big surprise about T-Tech making it to the champ game; they were a top team all year, with a couple of lapses, not sure if injuries played a role in those lapses. I recall a talk segment toward the end of the regular season when one o…
I'm writing about categorization of the allocation within funds, which M* totally overhauled some years ago and wrecked a good system.
By analysis, I meant a general term, in other words, drilling down to give an investor what they need to make de…
I bought back into IOFIX last week with profits I took out of riskier CEfs after the big ytd runup began to slow, and looked at the current asset allocation on the web site before I plunked the $ down. It's still 98% residential MBS, but the legacy …
Thanks for the info on the Lipper category, msf. I was thinking of M*, which uses a cutoff of a duration of 4.5y (not 5y as I thought I remembered) between short and intermediate, shown in their category classification document, and like you said, t…
Munis are issued with long maturities, so < 5 is generally considered short duration in the asset class. Lower credit (but nowhere near the risk of similarly rated corporates, as munis are) with some rate sensitivity isn't a bad setup for an unof…
The classist/classic old phartage Lewis writes about is on display in the comments on the article. The problems are lousy wages and high costs, as Barry R. says.
Kudos for incorporating As You Sow's Fossil Free Funds site/data in the ESG analysis. Besides the fossil fuel holdings info, they also provide fund holdings of the Clean 200, defined as companies "leading the way with solutions for the transition to…
The odds against winning three straight games decided in the final seconds caught up with Duke. If they hadn't tried to force the ball inside to ZW so much in crunch time, it might not have come down to the final seconds.
GREAT to know that, @Old_Joe.
Same thing at Fidelity, and prob'ly some other brokerages too.
@Crash, just wanted to give you a shoutout for getting me to look at PRSNX again. I'd owned it early in its existence, when it did really well right out of…
Good for ID Power.
In contrast, I'm in a neighboring state, with equal if not better renewable potential, where the largest utility convinced the wacky legislature to let it out from under those pesky "regulated monopoly" rules to buy a slug more …
By the way, it's not PONAX I own, it's PTIAX, along with PRSNX. :)
Understood. I was suggesting that if you wanted to add a new fund to the portfolio, as the original question implied, to limit an already large exposure to PRSNX, Pimco Income would …
I'm with @sfnative. Had it on watch for a while after inception, decided it was way out of my risk zone, for just about any category of debt fund. I'd say stick with PRSNX and add some PIMIX/PONAX if you want a roughly complementary (not similar, co…
Her real audience is people who are completely lost at or overwhelmed by basic tasks - financing their lives, overwhelmed by debt, can't decide whether to rent or buy, etc. - and she's actually not bad with that audience. (I'm not saying all those f…
Surprised me that GU was ranked #1 NATIONWIDE. No more, I suppose, after losing the Conference title game.
Right, the last polls (AP and coaches) had Duke #1, and the Zags at 3 and 4.
I was thinking the Zags have an excellent shot at winning it all this year, and then there was that last conference tourney game against the Gaels. A slowdown worked: https://www.sfchronicle.com/collegesports/article/St-Mary-s-stuns-No-1-Gonzaga-in-…
Both funny and sad, yet absurdly relevant to your financial future if he gets in:
https://google.com/amp/nymag.com/intelligencer/amp/2019/03/stephen-moore-federal-reserve-trump.html
Such a moron, for so many years. At least he's been perfectly consi…
@MFO Members: Getting ready to watch my Hawkeyes best the Bearcats.
Regards,
Ted
I've seen Cincy a couple of times this year, but not Iowa until just now. Saw about 1/2 of the first half, and like 'em. They're playing hard on defense, and from what…
I guess "Prairie View" used to be what had been forever called "Texas A&M?"
Crash, not sure what you mean, but Prairie View is a public historically black college, now part of the Tx A&M system, but a separate campus.
>Edit: now I se…
@BrianW: Yes, of course, that immediately occurred to me also. Then I tried imagining such a "governing body" that would be immune from political pressures. Good luck on that.
Certainly not in the USA ... where the common good is, these days, just a…
@OJ, sounds like you've been thru more than one flood there. Hope the cleanup chores aren't too extensive. Haven't been in that neighborhood in a long, long time, but that was and must still be such a beautiful valley.
Wasn't the idea of the tax on SS in fact to tax the "rich"? If I recall the argument, many well-off people with large retirement incomes were (as usual) using loopholes to avoid taxes. Wasn't it the idea that people with lower retirement incomes wou…
Mona,
MAVRX skews more toward smaller cap and is very much value-oriented (trailing P/E = 9.7). MAPIX is all cap-ish, dividend oriented, not so much value oriented (trailing P/E = 14.6). At the moment MAVRX has 22% in cash, versus essentially none…
It would be 6y old at the end of April, and only $7mm in assets. Matthews launched quite a few funds in the past several years that haven't really broken out in popularity. I just hope they don't start dropping more of them, like my fave MAVRX, thei…
I've also never heard of buying a mutual fund at a discount unless like @JoJo26 implied, you are saying you don't have to pay loads on A-shares for certain families. If so, that is not unique. A share loads are waved at many brokerages like Schwab, …
