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Hi Bee,
It seems to be in a range - every time it dips below $40, buyers appear.
It may be good to keep an eye on it (I am), but I seriously doubt the last shoe has fallen on euro banks, and it could get ugly. Plus the austerity approach by the …
The funds in question are largely, in effect, a leveraged bet on emerging markets. The strategy will work sometimes, and won't work sometimes. Individual investors can decide themselves if that's what they want in their portfolios, and if they do, i…
Msf - Just fyi, the figures I quoted were currency positions, from the most recent fund report, as of Aug. 31. I see now that M* has a news tidbit with the Oct 31 data, so apparently the portfolio has changed little in those two months.
Yes, it di…
I was curious about GIM, the cef near-cousin of Tgbax, and its rare fall to a discounted price from NAV recently, and found in the most recent report that Asia Pacific constituted 61% of the long positions in the portfolio, with a 23% short on the y…
In the linked article, Jakobsen is writing about the euro vs. the dollar, not the dollar vs. other currencies. I agree with him on that count, for, say, the mid-term, at least.
Any financial panic sends people running to U.S. Treasuries, and it doe…
So many ways to value the U.S. stock market - the Shiller P/E 10 is just below 20, or about 20% above its long-term mean of 16.4.
Only buying in this house lately is around the edges: added to both the S&P 500 index & total bond index in t…
Reply to @johnN: John, no one gets unemployment compensation if they haven't worked at a job and been laid off. If that was a key point in the logic of your, um, exposition, as it appears to be, you might want to rethink/reword it.
12% N. America stock
2% Europe stock
8% Asia-Oz-Lat. Amer. stock
3% highest-beta bond & commodities
15% core-plus bond
40% core bond, including ~15% munis
10% short-term bond
10% sideline cash, available for investment
Largest stock posit…
Max, just to be clear, my earlier comment assumed that you've done the DD, understand what Maptx is, and are willing to take on some risk for long-term Asian growth, which IMHO is still the most compelling investment thesis anywhere.
Maptx has slu…
Hi Max,
If you've studied the country and cap weighting and growth strategy and like it as good Asia diversification, then I'd say go for it - maybe cautiously at first so you don't get too much caught in a downdraft if one comes about. Maptx proba…
The DBL core FI fund (Dlfnx and Dblfx are the investor and inst'l share classes, respectively) is indeed a diversified, intermediate-ish bond fund - currently holding 25% agency mortgages, 22% CMOs, 19% treasuries, 18% U.S. corporates, and 11% forei…
Also, you can get the cheaper Pimco I-shares at Vanguard for $25k minimum and a TF: $20 (both ways, to buy and to sell) if you have $50k or more at Vang. - $35, I think it is, if you have less $ there.
I've trial-owned three OEFs and an ETF of Pim…
Reply to @msf: Interesting that you bring up Rpsix in connection with Vwinx, msf. Rpsix is kind of a clandestine conservative allocation fund; if you count the high-yield and EM bonds toward an 'equity-correlated' percentage of the fund, it has roug…
Reply to @Old_Joe: I almost had my credit card number entered on OldJoe.com, and then I saw that the act now! gift wasn't the Vegamatic I crave (slices! dices! vegetables! French (er, Freedom) fries! Fingers!). I already have several scars and a mis…
Burt,
Fsicx isn't really a go-anywhere fund; it's more of a diversified fund with a default allocation that it sticks pretty close to. It's a pretty palatable (lower risk) way to own some high yield and developed and emerging foreign bonds. Here's…
Reply to @Kaspa: Arivx and Arvix are different share classes; former = investor, latter = institutional. If you buy Arivx the investor shares from the fund company directly, minimums are $2,500 taxable and $500 IRA.
Which brings up a pet peeve: I w…
Reply to @scott: Ah, Scott, but you missed the excitement of the great plunge. I see from the M* chart that $10k invested at Tramx inception would be $7,100 today. Prmsx, the TRP general EM fund, would be $8,600, and W'Tree EM Eq Inc (Dem) $12,600.
Reply to @CathyG:
U.S. market's been range-bound between (in very round numbers) 1100 and 1200 on the S&P5c since the selloff in late July-early August; this (so far) top of the latest bounce is just a tad higher than the past 3 bounces. And t…
Reply to @Investor:
Yeah, those TBTF bankers & traders are sure fickle; you have to be with them 100%, every minute, can't even dole out a single insincere criticism for public consumption while you're shoveling cash out the back door for them…
The link Ken posted refers to the "MetWest Unconstrained Bond Fund (MWCRX, MWCIX) ...." The SEC site has a filing for a fund specifically named "TCW Global Bond Fund," so they're apparently different funds.
T. Rowe Price Global Stock (Prgsx), a bad fund that probably needs no introduction. I had hopes at one point of owning 2-3 no-load, low-minimum global stock funds as the stock part of the portfolio, but gave up on that idea and decided to go the rou…
VF, I've done the same thing all year with Vbltx, Vanguard's long term index. I own a tiny bit, but never ramped it up, while it's racked up huge gains maybe not to be repeated for the next century or so.
Looks to me like the big win for indexes recently is about as much of an artifact of index construction - the winners have happened to be the sector that is the largest by percentage in the index - as it is about the difficulty of running a successf…
There was also a risk score from +2 to -2, I think it was. As a snapshot for a fund you weren't familiar with, the alarm pages were really useful.
The benchmark miss I remember most was that global funds were compared to a foreign-only index. Also…
Saw an article today (at Yahoo, don't recall the real source, sorry) that the Euro 'authorities' have already publicly agreed on a 21% haircut for holders of Greek bonds. The figure I've seen for the ultimate buzz cut of default is between 50 and 9…
Looks expensive for a short-term bond fund, the N shares at least; same as Core and Total Return, but the same E.R. will take a big bite out of the (presumably) lower yield of short duration bonds. Not to mention that TR already has the std. dev. of…
Reply to @CathyG: Re: Consumer Staples stocks, nothing was spared entirely in '08, although at -17% for Vdc vs. -37% for the S&P5c, they probably looked pretty good by comparison. And they beat bond funds like Lsbrx.
Yep, what's attracting me is the collection of seemingly great businesses, a lot of consumer focus, long history, & price/return history vs. Asian funds. I like the conglomerate/fund-in-itself nature of it - conglomerates are the only individual…
Reply to @scott: I think you hit it with the reference to 2008, Scott: fear of another 2008. As in, Greece/Euro:2011 = Lehman/CMBS: 2008. Hard to believe, Greece being unique in the euro-zone and so small a part of the continent's economy as a whole…
