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LewisBraham
Hi Hank,
Your satire came across very well. Don't worry about the user name.
Best,
Lewis
Part IV: There is a more striking contrast: in Why Globalization Works, he argued that most of the charges of the antimarket critics—whom he called, quoting the economist David Henderson, “new millennium collectivists” and who included people rangin…
Part III: The deeper possibility, unthinkable to Wolf, is that free-market capitalism and liberal democracy may have nothing to do with each other—or may even contradict each other. Wolf calls economics and politics “symbiotic twins,” which shows a …
Part II:
Some of his other ideas are at least as utopian as a campaign speech by Bernie Sanders or Jeremy Corbyn. Take this one, intended to address the problem of tax havens: “If, for example, the US told its tech companies that the price of locat…
@FD1000 In other threads haven't you also advocated for owning IOFIX at times, a bond fund with an extraordinarily high for bonds 1.50% expense ratio? You've also suggested PRWCX, which, while an excellent fund, isn't cheap but average expense ratio…
There hasn't been a requirement to invest with a financial advisor or to pay a load to buy American Funds for about a decade now. Most big brokers like Schwab waive their front end loads for A shares or "F-1" shares, and there are other share classe…
Although the ETFs strategies are similar to existing American mutual funds, the execution is different as the ETFs hold fewer stocks and have fewer managers. I believe not as many teams are working on the ETFs. That could be a good thing or bad thin…
Thanks, everyone, for your kind words. It may interest you to know that Primecap was founded many years ago by folks from American Funds and they built a similar multi-manager structure for POAGX, POGRX, POSKX as well as Vanguard Primecap funds wher…
A lot depends on whether you want a fixed allocation balanced fund or a true asset allocation fund that shifts between asset classes. VBIAX is a simple very low cost 60/40 stock/bond balanced fund—a good fund for beginners. But I don’t think of it a…
Some out of context exaggeration about cars if quoting that 42k bill. That’s specifically for one electric vehicle in a region where mechanics aren’t trained to repair them: https://nytimes.com/2023/07/03/business/car-repairs-electric-vehicles.html
…
Pay off the student loan. Think of it as a guaranteed 7% return on investment. You can’t find that in the Treasury bond market today. The only reason not to pay it off would be if your grandson has unsteady income and needs an emergency fund. And ev…
Depends on the interest rate on the debt, but the higher the rate is, the more it makes sense to sell the stocks and pay off the debt. Also, since the valuations on these particular stocks are high currently, it may make sense to sell them anyway.
The cost of a new car should matter less than this, but we have a Congress unwilling to let it continue, and people obviously measure economic success in different ways: https://npr.org/2022/01/27/1075299510/the-expanded-child-tax-credit-briefly-sla…
First, Biden was not president on 1/20, not for another year. Second, your repeating qualified subjective statements regarding what’s most important to people economically over and over again doesn’t make them true. Third, the whole fascism bit and …
Not a wage-price spiral but a profit-price spiral or "greedflation" perhaps: https://cnbc.com/2023/04/21/why-economists-are-no-longer-so-worried-about-a-wage-price-spiral.html
Profit-price spiral
There has also been increased discussion about how …
My thinking is the more concentrated a fund is in a few stocks, the more managers need a forensic accountant to go over the financial documents of their companies with a fine tooth comb looking for fraud or problematic areas. But for funds with 100…
I worry about the future, too. Everybody does. But I’ll take this inflation over the hard landing Summers seems to want or mistakenly thinks we need any day of the week.
Asking people to see the economic forest instead of just the one inflation tree is not preaching revolution. Larry Summers is fixated on the inflation tree and is comfortable with millions of people losing their jobs to chop it down. If retirees ha…
@Old_Joe
It is evident that a number of media outlets focus more on the inflation numbers than the employment numbers, and it is evident here, too. That's despite the fact that many Americans may care more about having a job than whether or not th…
No matter what the retirees who are the majority of posters here think, economic well being in the U.S. is not just about the inflation rate. Jobs matter too: https://nytimes.com/2023/07/03/opinion/biden-economy-inflation-unemployment.html
Back in t…
Good that you put “free” in quotes. Nothing on the Internet is truly free—shipping, content, etc. Only perhaps Wikipedia as it is a collaborative volunteer effort but it depends on donations. I would argue Wikipedia may be the Internet’s greatest cr…
@FD1000 First, real wages make adjustments for the costs of housing and other objects subject to inflation. Without comparing the increase in wages to the increase in the cost of housing and vehicles, simply saying housing/vehicles have increased x%…
The links I provided had the decades of those numbers. But if you’re serious about looking at economic performance instead of anecdotes, here’s a detailed look: https://factcheck.org/2021/10/trumps-final-numbers/
Personal anecdotes are not the same as broad statistical trends. I don't think "a lot of people are saying" should fly here as evidence like it does in presidential debates. Do the math, show your homework. Subpoena duces tecum.
Real wages are still higher than they were in three out of the four years of the previous administration prior to the Covid outbreak, and it's false to say every month. They just started to rise this year:
https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/LES125…
@FD1000 I was referring in the first part of my comment to the remark "bpkis...spy much better over all periods" not written by you. I agree that PRWCX has been a better performer than LCORX and that is a fairer comparison than to SPY.
According to LCORX's Fact Sheet, its investment objective is: "Capital appreciation and income while maintaining prudence in terms of managing exposure to risk. Investment guidelines are 30%-70% equity exposure and 30%-70% fixed income." What is the…
My impression of Wagner is many of the troops are ex-convicts, including Prigozhin himself. Some I imagine were political prisoners, but others are hardened violent criminals who may not like to follow orders. One can see the problems with creating …
No question, fees are high and assets are small on LSLTX. The mainstay here is LCORX, but that is much harder to compare against anything as it holds different asset classes and moves around them tactically. If anything, a somewhat fair comparison w…
It's too bad CCOR is stinking up the place this year as I've been interested in this fund for a while. Admittedly, some of my interest faded when short-term Treasuries started yielding over 4% and now 5%. High quality bonds are far more attractive t…
To leave out an entire decade of a fund’s performance when it’s particular style was in favor and it was having its brightest moments is cherry-picking. It would be like leaving out Babe Ruth’s home runs and saying he was only a so-so player. It’s a…
Interesting history, worth reading for some of it, but it also perpetuates some false mythology about the democratization of the stock market and “everybody getting rich” off it. The vast majority of Americans who own stocks or stock mutual funds, o…
Looks like they're giving him Belarus: https://reuters.com/world/europe/belarus-says-russian-mercenary-boss-prigozhin-has-agreed-de-escalate-situation-2023-06-24/
Interestingly, Leuthold Select Industries, LSLTX, has beaten VFINX, the Vanguard S&P 500 fund, since its inception but lagged VIMAX, the Vanguard mid-cap index fund. Depending on how you want to define the Leuthold fund, you could call that succ…
