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Excellent suggestions above. Just one comment.
She needs to quickly diversify away from company stock even if it is Apple or Google stock. The paper wealth can whittle down very quickly if that company were to face some problems. This is more impor…
Reply to @lord_nelson: This is probably not what you wanted to hear but with what appears to be your portfolio philosophy, forget about owning any of these for 15+ years. You will likely get a 7 year itch to replace even the ones that has served you…
At least he is honest enough to flag being pregnant unlike the permabull bespoke folks who will only ever talk about male child (oversold) pregnancy, never female child (overbought) pregnancy, no?
:-)
The performance implied in the article for ARBFX and MERFX are not even close. More like 2-3% annualized.
The concept is good but there are many reasons why you should NOT consider these funds.
1. The funds are way too bloated for this investment …
Reply to @STB65: What if they invited fund families in the future to participate in this instrument at 3k levels with allocation or target funds chosen based on the lowest cost? :-)
It will drive both mutual fund industry folks and political ideolo…
Depends on what the rest of your portfolio is like and how much you are allocating to this. For example, if it is a few percent in a collection of funds, this decision has no material impact to spend much time on this. If this decision affects your …
Very interesting article worth a read.
On the rational front, I’ve often defended my change in view from my 1960 FAJ article with this idea: In 1960, we compared a bad index (DJIA) with a good industry—see (a) to (d) above. In 1974, I compared a go…
Bitcoin as a technology reminds me of Napster. Great for users but not for the business models of those who need to participate in the financial side (as in content side for Napster). The problem with Bitcoin is that its legitimacy needed to have pu…
A $2B fund cannot go to cash that quickly nor can they purchase hedges for that kind of asset base unless they paid a lot which is not entirely impossible given its drop this year as a high beta fund.
Daily wigglies don't say anything much. Tech ha…
Clearly the industry guys don't understand the target audience for this. Just think back to the first time you started with a mutual fund, let alone a regular contribution scheme outside of a 401k and imagine now a completely financially naive perso…
Reply to @dryflower: The best interpretation of these inflows/outflows, in my opinion, is market noise to be ignored and not used for any investment decisions.
For people that exploit trends or TA, the optimal sell/buy decisions are made much befor…
Reply to @Ted: My bad, replace wherever I said coffehouse with couch potato. I have been using these two interchangeably. Mind fade.
My comments are all about Scott Burns and his Couch Potato portfolio strategy to be clear.
Reply to @Ted: Perhaps you should read some of the articles/sites you link to. :-)
You are correct that there is an original coffehouse portfolio of half total bonds, half total stock market. Burns adopted that to propose a number of lazy portfolio…
His Coffeehouse Portfolio sucked last year relative to S&P, so he has to find a target to feel good about himself. A bit of class bashing to appeal to the masses will surely help. Those dumb rich deserve to lose.
Never mind that these lazy port…
Confirmation bias, recency bias, every darn bias.. :-)
This is a great fund for momentum players to exploit as long as the manager is hot. Not enough data to judge it for a core fund.
It would be wise to look beyond just the past performance and u…
Good article. People who have been bailing out of bonds and EM (and some of them even read MFO!) because of recency rather than a tactical/momentum plan will benefit those that stayed with a balanced allocation or those that had a tactical allocatio…
Reply to @Kaspa: An interesting thought experiment. Don't think volatility would be any different unless most people also did a buy and hold which is often lumped with indexing but a separate issue.
The stocks within the index would become highly c…
You are mixing up a few things here, buy and hold vs index funds vs diversification. They are all independent dimensions.
Both Ted and you are relatively active managers of your portfolio willing and able to monitor, buy and sell as the climate dic…
From the more than a few anecdotal stories I have heard, it seems hiring a Merrill Lynch advisor is the best way to destroy wealth. Not sure what they drink in their water coolers over there.
These kinds of commission based brokers and advisors are…
Great article with a lousy title (I can just see people running to buy leveraged funds).
When the recency bias can claim even some members on this board as victims (just see some statements of EM allocation in recent times), what chance do less in…
Reply to @hank: Absolutely, the fund managers always love money flowing in when facing redemptions so they don't have to sell anything in their portfolio to meet redemptions when it is trending down and thus have their performance destroyed. This is…
Reply to @Crash: I think that statement is one of those things that seem profound and wise but has very little practical value.
There is nothing magical about 3 or 5 or 10 years. It doesn't correspond to any market cycles, length of bull or bear ma…
Let us see, in the first step down, they said the stocks were solidly oversold, it went down further and now it is extreme oversold. What happens if it goes down further? Catastrophic oversold? Is there a standard scale of adjectives for oversold co…
There are many good reasons to have index funds in a portfolio, but this is the worst article I have ever read from the indexing crowd. Too many logical fallacies, confused train of thought, regurgitation of indexing talking points with no signs of …
These one tonic for all investors is too simplistic because it doesn't customize for individual goals and risk profiles. One can do a better job than this.
For example, if you are passive type of investor (not to be confused with passive funds) tha…
Reply to @MikeM: True. That is a good case assuming the fund or portfolio can deliver consistently.
A bond fund or a fixed income dominated portfolio is more likely to do that then any equity based fund or alternative strategies fund. The latter h…
Reply to @Charles: Pot-ay-to, pot-ah-to. :-) It is up 20%+ since I bought it so keeping tight stop limits. But you are right in the sense that these funds are not for core portfolios. I think the ride up in levered funds once this downdraft is over …
Reply to @MOZART325: Nothing goes up in a straight line, nothing goes down in a straight line. No point in looking at daily wigglies. The trend/momentum currently is down. The next major test will be the 200 day MA at around 1700. If that holds, the…
EEV +5.37%, the only holding currently in my play money portfolio but then compared to the downdraft in the core portfolio, this upside is in the noise.
I don't see how it can. There are no regulations in ACA that will pressure prices or margins down in any of the sectors. That may change with future regulations but not with this.
Insurers can't cancel or decline to renew for people who develop med…
If your goal for a certain % of your portfolio was absolute returns with almost zero probability of loss, how would you construct that portfolio?
Treasuries held to maturity is about the only asset class that can provide a return without capitol los…
Reply to @JimH: Unfortunately, this is very true. Never mind Ted, time seemed to have stopped for him long time ago. :-) He probably meant the left wing hippies protesting capitalistic government.
What is happening in SF is not that different from …
Reply to @JedClampett:
I'll be more specific. I was testing this assertion: "One ought to be careful about comparing day to day results in long/short funds. Being up on both up and down days are very rare exceptions or a coincidence."
That appea…
If you already have a position in FBIOX and have significant gains and you are convinced of longer term fundamentals, it might be worth holding with a stop limit.
Assets sometimes go up and down on fundamentals and sometimes on technicals. Biotech …
Reply to @JedClampett: Tested the wrong assertion. Read what I said again. It is the transitions that are difficult for L/S funds. If you have a stretch of up (or down) days, the fund can be in sync a great portion of that time and so have a better …
One ought to be careful about comparing day to day results in long/short funds. Being up on both up and down days are very rare exceptions or a coincidence. A mutual fund with reasonable assets cannot change its net long/short positions overnight. T…
