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.
I have about 2.5% of my portfolio in various commodity funds, mostly general commodity mutual funds. You need to look under the hood, as a number of the general funds are heavily weighted to energy, esp oil. That has been great this year, but not l…
A charitable reason is people are worried about what is coming, ie a recession, and the rapid increase in the household wealth of the bottom 20% is yesterday's news.
However, this does not explain why over a thousand vehicles and their drivers will…
Bloomberg says Russia will pay interest in rubles (ie TP) and "sanctions will determine if foreign bondholders get paid"
I assume this means that most western owners will get squat.
At the rate things are going, unless Pootin is overthrown, it wil…
@yogibearbull
Interesting article. You mention PDI ( 6% premium today) and TBLD (6% discount)
TBLD liquidates in 2033 so at least the discount will disappear.
If it pays a high distribution, and therefore returns capital, what would that do to yo…
It is always said that CEFs do not have to deal with outflows forcing them to sell into a declining market. That is true but i have never seen a study comparing OEF and CEFs on this point.
Unless you buy a discounted fund before it's liquidation is…
Most of the talking financial heads on CNN and PBS say it will take weeks to months for the Russian economy to collapse, esp if Europe has to continue buying millions of nat gas and oil
Having shut down their nuclear plants ( what were they thinki…
I find his overall review of the market very useful. He is essentially trying to time the market, but with proprietary models and formulas that he has used to good effect for years. However he is not "All in or all out" and has a model ETF portfol…
Of course Hunt has been saying that for years. If you want to just read his views in six pages go to the Hoisington Investment Management Company website economic reports 4th quarterly outlook
https://hoisington.com/pdf/HIM2021Q4NP.pdf
For a contrary and apocalyptic view Lacy Hunt is always worth listening to. He has believed that the debt burden of the US and the world is so huge that it will strangle the economy and create a massive depression.
This is a pretty technical inte…
Baron has in general run very good funds and has been able to attract and keep good employees
I am kinda surprised the SEC lets him get away with it in a fund under the 1940s law. I haven't read the law specifically but I thought it required "diver…
@hank
I don't see DFND on Simplify website and M* says is from SRN advisors.
Simplify has many hedged ETFs but their descriptions of what they are designed to do is rather vague unless you understand options better than I do.
Bassman is quite …
I have a chunk of my daughter's account in BPTRX since 2003. Needless to say she thinks I am a genius, although her suggestions to buy APPL and AMZN in 2012 and 2014 have actually done better.
We have been cutting back. I think APPL and AMZN are …
Well, just to F/U. To fix issue we called Vanguard, got a rep within 5 min, but she couldn't fix it so sent us to Transfers department, waited on hold for 20 min. They had to call somebody else to remove hold on account, then transferred us to brok…
This is a Vanguard Treasury Money Market. I am sure it cannot be held at Fidelity, but I am stuck in limbo, because Vanguard online will still not let me sell it, nor have they responded to my two daily messages, going on day three now.
Will have …
It will matter a lot more when interest rates on the debt go up, as that bill has to be paid every year.
China is in almost as bad a situation as US re total debt vs GDP, unless you think they can grow their GDP faster. The lack of rule of law in …
I agree VWINX is a conservative choice that has been hard to beat, but with stocks at an all time high (VWINX PE is 15) and interest rates so low ( VWINX duration is 8) , both of these allocations may be bad places to be in the near future. In the p…
I have fiddled around with L?S funds off and on for years, but never had much success. I usually sell them if they loose 10 to 15%
LSOFX did pretty well last year and is more consistent
David reviewed LSOFX a couple of years ago
https://www.mutua…
noteSimplify could do a much better job of detailing how their various ETFs are designed to work.
The article I quoted above is here
https://www.barrons.com/articles/option-etfs-51630661401?mod=md_funds_news
But weirdly, the current online ver…
SPD is one of the new Simplify ETFs with complicated strategies. The web page has little information but the theory should work and is very quantitatively documented. I have not tried calling them to get a little better description of potential up…
Much more information on PFIX is available from it's creator, Harvery Bassman, whose commentaries and musings on interest rates, money creation and the economy are really worth reading in detail.
https://www.convexitymaven.com/
He has a very enter…
I would rather use ETFs unleveraged such as SH as you can set stop losses so don't loose your shirt.
while it doesn't make sense to use them in Retirement account as there are no capital gains, in a taxable account they can protect you from gen…
I have had sig Commodities esp energy since last year's oil crash. A lot of the ETFs are too heavy in Oil to be a diversifier, so I added DBA for agriculture and GMET for "green metals" REMX for "strategic metals"
For broad based funds, I still …
I have owned VTMFX for several years and think it is a "file away and forget it" fund, although I am not sure it is really "defensive"
1) it is 50% equities and 14% FAANG and their sibs. A day like today with the Nasdaq down 3% will hit this fund …
I appreciate all the hard work and thought that you have put into this, but I am always leery of any "System" that claims a better return based on publicly available data.
If rotating thru sectors based on an idea of "where" the economy is works so…
I too am perplexed by positioning in my fixed income sector. I planned for higher interest rates in 2021, and shortened duration. But the shortest stuff JCPB,VUSB, loss money ( although not much, but I would have been better off in cash) and core …
Will read the article but it is a rather odd title. I was alive in 1970-1981 when the federal funds rate hit what? 12 14%? My first mortgage in 1984 was at 11.5%
Somehow all the humans I knew then seemed pretty ingenuous.
It is complicated. I am not sure why there is so much focus on the "4%" rule when the IRS forces people over 75 to remove 4.07% of your retirement accounts. By 80 it is up to almost 5%.
While I am irritated by a lot of the smugness at American As…
That is the only site I know of, but doesn't really tell you all of what you would like to know.
I saw LLPFX jumped up 8% in a week recently, and even though it has less than 30 positions, without looking up each one, I could not figure out why.
…
Update.
There are still bugs. The double entry accounting persists, but is a minor irritant as one line is just blank. Most of my Schwab transactions download, but several from over a week ago are missing. Why who knows? The only way I knew was I …
Same thing here. The download continues to work, but all of the dividend and cap gains reinvestments are labled "bought" and there is a separate line with a transaction labeled "ReinvestInt" for int, st div, st and lt cap gains.
On my Schwab accoun…
I have been lucky in that when I re-established my download capability, all the transactions came through OK. A lot of people on the Quicken discussion boards report the same problem though. Look for "Schwab CC_501 Loop" or other Schwab transaction…
Interesting and useful discussion.
there are a lot of option hedged vehicles available. I have been satisfied with JHQAX and GATEX; both are close in preformance.
Simplify Asset management has a number of relatively new option based ETFs that clo…
If people are interested I seem to have fixed the Quicken issue using @gsundel suggestions on the Quicken Community board.
IT is lengthy but in sum
deactivate all your Schwab accounts, especially hidden ones. Then Erase the account numbers and f…
Both of the lawyers I talked to over several years, told me that 401ks are protected, but did not mention contributory IRAs are more vulnerable.
An Umbrella policy increases the liability limit on your current homeowner's and auto insurance. Good t…
