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So far the overall muni market has managed to avoid contagion from Puerto Rico and Chicago. This is partially due to a supply shortage which has trumped the potential credit risk. Hard to say whether this will change.
Pimco and Alliance Bernstein are now bullish on junk, but Bill Gross and Doubleline (Gundlach and Bonnie Baha) are still negative:
bloomberg.com/news/articles/2016-03-03/pimco-wades-into-junk-as-doubleline-warns-danger-still-lurks
Here is link to an article on February 8 where Gundlach predicted a collapse in the junk bond market.
So far he has been completely wrong. Junk bonds had another strong day today.
I'll believe junkster's opinion over Gundlach any day of the we…
Sentiment on oil is extremely negative now- Check out this article from Bloomberg:
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2016-02-12/the-oil-industry-got-together-and-agreed-things-may-never-get-better
A few years from now, people will laugh when …
Another bearish article saying the whole world is going to cash :>)
Could be signalling a bottom.
businessinsider.com/bank-of-america-flow-show-going-to-cash-2016-1
The Chinese carry trade has been obscuring the real demand for years. A Bloomberg article from a few months ago. Estimates are that 70% of the demand in 2013/2014 was fake.
http://www.bloomberg.com/professional/blog/unwinding-of-carry-trade-may-unm…
gurufocus.com gives you the Piotroski F-Score, Altman Z-Score and Beneish M-score for any stock under "Financial Strength". I just typed in AAPL and got back:
F-Score: 7 Z-Score: 4.71 M-Score: -3.03
Click on "Definitions" at the top for more …
The blame goes to Larry Kotlikoff. His book "Get What's Yours:The Secrets to Maxing out your Social Security" became too popular. If he never wrote the book, the loophole would have stayed in place,
That is why high frequency trading companies are v…
Not surprising given their lousy performance this year. Another example of survivorship bias in action. Royce wants to remove this fund from their track record.
Index funds generally own very little cash. Since indexing has been growing, it is not surprising that cash levels overall would be lower. A more relevant statistic would be the cash level of only actively managed funds.
Blame it on Goldman Sachs. Greece was not qualified to belong in the EU. Goldman Sachs devised a series of currency swaps to help Greece get around the EU Deficit rules.
spiegel.de/international/europe/greek-debt-crisis-how-goldman-sachs-helped-gre…
I get 2% cash back across the board from my Fidelity Amex card. I haven't seen any Visa, MasterCard or Discover cards that can match the 2% cash back across the board. Because of this, I probably use my Amex card for about 80% of my spending. I use …
PDT is only 68% preferreds. They have about 30% in straight equities- with a large allocation to utilities. FFC is a good fund, but only trades at a -2% discount. There are some other preferred CEFs trading at double digit discounts- JTP, JHP, JPC,…
Here is an interesting article on people 100 years and older. There are five times as many women as men in this group:
http://money.usnews.com/money/retirement/articles/2013/01/07/what-people-who-live-to-100-have-in-common
A big warning sign in 1987 was the bond market. The 10 year bond yielded 7.19% at the end of February and went to 9.63% by the end of September.
In 1987, I worked for Salomon Brothers in their IT department. They layed off about 20% of the firm in …
The Bruce Fund is definitely not an index hugger. In some ways, they use a bar bell risk management approach, combining large allocations to US Treasuries with highly distressed investments. At least three of their holdings were in bankruptcy, and s…
I think he is mainly managing his own family money plus some funds from close friends.
It is ironic that his MF Global leveraged bets on European bonds would have worked out very well longer term, but he was forced to sell early because of margin c…
Scott-
I took a look at Dolphin over the weekend. Yes, it does look cheap, but there are some good reasons for this:
1) Management fees are very high: 2% management fee + 20% performance fee, although performance has been pretty abysmal.
2) The 66% …
Some computer algorithms fell for an April Fools story on TSLA:
http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2015-04-01/market-hits-new-low-algos-fall-april-fools-joke-send-tsla-surging-massive-volume
Here's another amazing story about a couple that has been married 82 years:
http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2015/02/26/husband-108-wife-105-celebrate-82-years-married/24094901/
Actually the other "Bruce" fund (BRUFX) has outperformed FAIRX significantly over the last 15 years with much less volatility (16.56% annualized). I invested some Roth IRA money in BRUFX about 10 years ago and sort of forgot about it. Surprised at h…
Morgan Stanley Wealth Advisors was a huge client of Bill Gross's funds at Pimco. One hand washes the other. I would imagine Morgan Stanley will also buy other Janus Funds.