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.
Non tradable REITS are a disaster. Even tradable ones are a problem to me as I have not spent enough time to understand their unusual accounting. Seeking Alpha seems to be gaga over them. Now the issue is have they hit bottom?
I would only go wi…
I think it is interesting that McCarthy "choked" and put up a bill he knew he would pass only with Dems support.
The question this week will be will Dems support him when Geetz moves to replace him.
IF they do, they will clearly have a list of dem…
I avoided traditional bond funds ( the 40%) when interest rates were so low, and have been glad to avoid their decimating losses.
I don think bonds, esp those with long duration, with their current high correlation to stocks provide much diversi…
@msf
Have you used the Schwab WEG group for anything?
The example in the spreadsheet shows without the conversions their tax rate is 22% but in retirement with RMDS rises to 28% and eventually to 33%
With the conversion they start out at 24 to 25…
Thanks for update. I too am far overweight energy as it is such a small amount of the SP it is clearly a value play.
I am still trying to decide when to buy long bonds. Many of the professional bond folks, even those who think we are in a prolonge…
Sometimes you can get them to work with you. Years ago my wife had over $3000 in a growth fund that badly underperformed both the market and it's peers, to the point she was below the $3000 minimum for any stock fund.
I got the rep to allow us to b…
Very useful discussion but I think the key is how they programmed their robos.
If their models only look at historical data since the beginning of the Bond Bull Market, they may vastly under preform since the era of "free money" is over and bonds …
@msf
Yep that is the same spreadsheet I saw. How did you get a copy?
I got a bunch of Morningstar reports on their portfolios and am going over them. Will report back as soon as I have finished.
So far for the 65% Equity income oriented portfoli…
@Derf
Funny you should ask. After asking my Schwab rep if he had some way to help me calculate Roth conversions amounts, he suggested talking to the "Wealth Enhancement Group" for a no commitment plan. WEG guy says they are the 6th largest indepe…
Thanks for the link. It seems that you will still pay the 3.8% if the conversion pushes your AGI over $200,000 or $250,000, but only on your "investment income".
While complicated, it is still just math. My problem with building spreadsheets is tr…
Don't forget the 3.8% Medicare surcharge that kicks in over $250,000
You would think there would be a nice spreadsheet to calculate the long term outcomes of various conversion amounts.
I can't find one. My daughter and I tried to write one but …
@lynnbolin2021
All depends on what interest rates do which depends on hard or soft landing or "no landing". Long term muni funds like VWLTX are down 3% or so this year. They pay about the same so if interest rates don't go up you may be whole in a…
I checked Schwab’s website but could find no other method of authorization than text and a phone call, or a notification to your mobile app. The first two are vulnerable to this SIM spoofing, as eevn if they send the code by voice, it will still go …
More on Kroll a "cyber security firm" that has itself gotten hacked
Krebs on Security has posted a new item.
Security consulting giant Kroll disclosed today that a SIM-swapping attack
against one of its employees led to the theft of user informati…
Tuttle says they "tried to engage with Mr Cramer" so it sounds like he hoped Jim would call him up on the phone and argue on CNBC or something. With only 41.3 million in assets it wasn't going anywhere fast. I hope they keep the short one open …
What bothers me most is seeing people with low wage jobs spend gobs of money on overpriced trucks, cars and even coffee.
One of our desk clerks drove a custom painted Ford F-150. Even back then with low interest rates, I cannot imagine how she aff…
@catch22
My father and his sisters kicked themselves because starting in 1965, there was at least one cousin at UT for 20 plus years, and then my sister was teaching school. Then in the 2000's the grandkids started at UT. So far there have been fo…
@ Anna
I am sorry your husband passed. It seems most of the posters here seem to be men, and women have less interest in trading/investing.
My wife is similar and rivals Buffett, as she would never sell anything, (including CSCO in the 80s in 20…
@Anna
My wife and I just signed up at Kroll the monitoring service pbi uses. The letter had a Membership number that you need to sign up, which was in the letter.
I don't know if you could get a response from either pbi or Kroll without it, but K…
I owned a lot of ZEOIX and was bothered when the NAV dropped by more than a couple of %. I called them and their explanation was that several of their sort term high yield bonds were "re-priced" by mark to market, while previously they had been "e…
I also have a password protected word file on my computer and no where else ( except hard copy in Safe Deposit box for financial passwords. I copy and paste them into the web page login.
Less important stuff I use 1Password which works OK. There …
Wife has small TIAA account that was affected. We got a letter well over two weeks ago, although the letter says they discovered in May 31!
I am glad I put credit freezes on ALL of our families credit accounts.
Is PIA at time but worth piece of mi…
Unfortunately I think that this "political issue" will have profound financial and investment implications, none of them good, unless the US demonstrates that it remains committed free and fair elections, the Rule of Law and the principle that no on…
@lynnbolin2021
Thanks again for the hard work on all this.
Am I correct that you have advisory accounts at both Fido and Vang?
Do you still have significant % in the other fund strategies you have written so much about? If so I assume those acc…
I just put in a dummy trade at Vanguard for additional shares of RPHIX and their system wants to charge $20 transaction fee.
They also continue to list it as closed to new investors.
FWIW
I looked into Fidelity's service. I am sure Lynn knows more about it than I found in an hour or so of searching around, and I would be interested in his experience.
Using what appears to be their fee schedule, Fido is much more expensive than…
David I hope Chip is getting better, but please don't over exert yourselves just to publish MFO! there are many capable other people who wrote great articles this month and while there is probably no data that pushing yourself during Covid recovery…
I saw the real OJ buying Orange Juice in a grocery store near my folks house in Buffalo years ago. This was well before he divorced his first wife.
I should asked him to autograph my Orange Juice carton, but respected his privacy!
We bought a retirement home on Cape Cod in a spur of the moment decision, but we were smart enough to buy one less than 20 years old, built by a guy who over engineered everything ( It was his fifth personal build). BR on first floor, etc. IF we t…
@BenWP
Maybe I have gotten it wrong, but I think they can earn enough on treasuries( 5%) to make up the money required for all the options they use. So even if all options expire worthless, they are still made whole.
@old_Joe
I agree the lack of a sweep account is a very big negative for Schwab. I just forgot to move a large T bill redemption to a MMF for a month and figure it really cost me
Vanguard is a disaster, Schwab is cheap and costing me money, but I h…
