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.
@Devo
what state has constant pensions? from retirement day 1?
@davidrmoran
North Carolina has no automatic inflation adjustments in its pension program for retired teachers and state employees. The state legislature has the authority to incre…
@Devo - Retirees who are drawing Social Security get annual increases in benefits equivalent to to inflation rate (CPI). That’s much better than my state pension which has no inflation adjustments
I’ve been buying longer term CDs (3-5 years) lately based on my presumption that rates were peaking. I was able to buy a number of call protected issues with yields all exceeding 5%, but available yields have dropped to 4.5-4.7% over the past couple…
I don’t know why so many seem to assume that investors are selling stocks to put in money markets. I’ve been holding steady on stock allocations but selling bonds funds to invest in MMs, Treasuries and CDs. What are often called “plain vanilla bond …
I’m highly skeptical of this report. It’s hard for me to believe that “an unknown number” of wealthy Californians would have a significant effect on stock prices that are essentially a global market these days.
You’ve been able to buy cars, many different makes, through Costco for a while. I looked into it the last time I was car shopping, but didn’t bite because I would have had to go through a dealer about 100 miles away. Not worth the trouble for me.
The Fidelity site now has no CDs available for terms 2 years or longer. This is probably just a temporary repricing in the market, but I expect available yields will drop. Fortunately, I purchased my latest 5-year ladder just before the changes. Unf…
I’ve been expecting CD rates to drop at some point. However, what surprised me yesterday was that it was just the 2-year CDs that were suddenly hard to find. I had no trouble buying 1, 3, 4 and 5-year issues.
Set up a new 5-year CD ladder in our taxable account, with an issue maturing in November each year — enough to cover our property taxes each year. The overall yield on the ladder is 5.3%. One less thing to worry about.
Curious development with regard to new issue CDs available at Fidelity today. I’m setting up another 5-year CD ladder in our taxable account so we’ll have cash available to pay property taxes near the end of each year. Yesterday, there were a bunch …
Sold the I-Bonds I bought a couple of years ago, now that the combined yield is less than 4%. Although newly issued I-Bonds are yielding about 5.3%, I’m going to reinvest the money in my CD-Treasury ladder due to its greater flexibility.
I’ve been laddering CDs to minimize the risk of selling before maturity. So I’ve got CDs maturing about every 3 months on the short end and 6-12 months on the long end. When I first started buying CDs last winter, I didn’t realize the distinction be…
We bought our two homes when interest rates were 10.5% and 8%. We refinanced the second mortgage when rates dropped to 6% and eventually paid it off at that rate. We survived.
I guess it’s time to sell the I-bonds I bought a couple years ago. The fixed rate was 0.0% at that time, so they are now yielding considerably less than CDs and Treasuries.
@hank — The way I am addressing the potential for more rate increases is to ladder my CDs and Treasuries. I’ve got CDs and Treasuries maturing roughly every three months on the short end, and every 6-12 months on the long end. My longest term CD is …
@stillers
As far as I’m concerned, this is a great investing time for retirees. I’m perfectly satisfied with guaranteed 5% returns, particularly with bond funds losing value every day
I’m not trying to convince anyone to buy CDs and Treasuries, just trying to wrap my head around investing in them. For most of my investing history, cash investments have yielded next to nothing. Treasuries and short term bonds fared little better.
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I switched from a VW Golf to a Toyota RAV4 hybrid a few years ago. I would have gotten another Golf, but I needed more space for my dog and VW quit importing their wagon (and the Golf).
I had resisted getting an SUV for years due to their terrible…
The 20y is a pretty interesting outlier at 5%. Bought at that rate, could be a future cap gain opportunity.
I doubt if I will live 20 more years, but it’s good to be optimistic.
I place little confidence in market predictions. However, if someone is always bearish, their predictions serve no value at all. Likewise, if they’re always bearish, how can someone claim that they correctly predicted the bear markets of 2000, 1988,…
Hank,
I’m open to opposing views, but journalists promoting those views should also do a little fact checking of the track record of so-called experts. My investments in CDs are irrelevant because they comprise a small percentage of my overall ass…
Why does Jeremy Grantham continue to get press? He has been consistently wrong for years, if not decades. He has been predicting underperformance by US stocks for years, while promoting foreign stocks and emerging markets. And he has been wrong, yea…
I believe your numbers for tax thresholds are off. According to my sources, the upper limit for the 12% bracket is $89,450 and 22% bracket is $190,750. Other brackets also off. Perhaps these numbers were from a previous year.
I sold all of my muni funds earlier this year because their yields were so low compared to other income investments— CDs, Treasuries, money markets, taxable bond funds, etc. They make no sense at current yields unless you are in a high tax bracket. …
One only needs to consider GE to see the risk of only holding one or a few stocks. This was the only stock we owned for many years, a gift from my wife’s grandfather.Twenty-five years ago, it was the largest company in the world by stock value. Now,…
I used to deal with fund companies directly, and it was a huge hassle. It was much more trouble making changes, and I was continually bombarded with mailings and paperwork. My life has been much simpler since we moved all of our accounts to Fidelity…
I bought 26 and 52-week T-bills this week. I had a lot of cash from liquidating my muni funds. I’ve also got a number of CDs and T-bills that will be maturing between now and December, as part of ladders. Hopefully, there will still be some good opt…
I’m noticing many price drops at the grocery store. Things like eggs, bread and yogurt have dropped a lot at my store. However, prices are still high for sodas, cereal, meats, beer, etc. I have no qualms about buying generic brands or skipping items…
Thanks for the link. Good analysis. I bought this for my Roth IRA, which has the longest investing horizon. I wasn’t expecting a clone of PRWCX but respect Giroux’s record. My Roth is value heavy in stocks, so this should add some growth.
I’ve heard it said, and agree, that diversification is a risk management strategy— not a way to achieve high performance. Face it, nobody really knows which markets or sectors will perform better or worse in the future. By diversifying, you are cove…
To me, the point isn’t that CD yields can be marginally higher than money markets. It’s that interest rates will start dropping at some point, and then MM yields will drop quickly. With CDs, you can lock in high yields for as long as 10 years, and y…
Personally, I’m optimistic about balanced funds going forward. Bond and cash yields are higher than they have been in years, so they could contribute a lot to performance, rather than mainly providing ballast. My largest holdings are balanced funds.…
@msf — I agree with you that the next 5-10 years could be very different. That’s why I’m maintaining significant holdings in bond and stock funds. However, in my lifetime as an investor, I haven’t seen cash yields this high and I doubt that it will …
BTW, Fidelity’s bond listings showed a bunch of new Treasury offerings today. This morning, the expected yield on the one-year Treasury zeros was 5.05% By this afternoon, the expected yield had risen to 5.35%. I’m going to jump on this. Unlike CDs, …
This downgrade might be a good thing if it convinces certain congressmen from threatening to shut down the federal government every time they don’t get their way
