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.
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LewisBraham
Hi Hank,
Your satire came across very well. Don't worry about the user name.
Best,
Lewis
@rono
I consider all of that crap to be not only disrespectful but illegal.
If you have to make disrespecting the flag a crime, you have already lost the war.
Sounds like you've already lost the war from those two paradoxical statements.
From Wi…
It is just as patriotic to criticize America for its failings and try to improve it as slavishly saluting the flag no matter what the public and private sectors are currently doing ostensibly in our names. In fact there is a long tradition of gadfli…
Bolsonaro quotes: https://france24.com/en/20180930-brazil-presidential-candidate-bolsonaros-most-controversial-quotesAhead of the October 7 election first round, AFP takes a look at some of 63-year-old's most eye-catching comments.
- Torture -
-- …
Bolsanaro makes our nut wannabe dictator of a president seem sane by comparison. Bolsanaro's a real dictator in the making. Ours is just a reality TV version.
Good article, although you can sum up all of its complexity with the simple maxim that has applied to both the last financial crisis and this one: socialism for the rich and capitalism for everyone else. Interestingly and predictably, the CEO of Col…
@Starchild Sure, sure, mf board, etc., but allow me to say this--and I'm from New York and grew up near them and know so I can--KISS sucks. Worst band ever. Could never hold a candle to the Stones, Beatles, Kinks, Hendrix, Dolls, Zeppelin, Bowie, Pi…
@JohnN You don't know the meaning of the word "dictatorship." If Clinton had been a dictator, Ken Starr would not be alive today. Obama created the Affordable Care Act after intense negotiations with the healthcare industry and Republicans who sough…
What is wrong with this man?: https://aol.com/article/news/2020/06/05/trump-says-he-hopes-george-floyd-is-looking-down-and-celebrating-jobs-report-this-is-a-great-day-for-him/24513169/
The president said he hoped Floyd, an unarmed black man who was …
The only potential rationale I can offer for it in addition to the Fed's stimulus is an almost complete disconnect between Wall Street and Main Street. The belief that this president has and previous ones had that the stock market is an indicator o…
Hi David,
Regarding this about active mutual funds versus passive ETFs, I have a few quibbles: They have not been repeatedly defamed by self-interested marketers and lazy financial journalists looking for cheap stories. “80% of mutual funds failed…
@royal4 We still have bread, but currently no circuses to pacify the masses. Without sports and/or work, all of the hormones of the angry young men--of every race, color and creed--explode in violent ways. Occassionally, when there aren't enough wor…
What the basic message is the rich will get bailed out no matter what. Capitalism on the way up and socialism for them on the way down. The question is how far can these out-of-touch rentiers pull the rubber band before it snaps? Note: As I write t…
There is ample evidence that liquidity risks and a premium return for taking those risks exist in the bond market. Even if FDk-dude assumes he is avoiding illquidity by buying, say, the typical open-end high yield corporate bond or high yield munici…
I wonder if there's a language barrier for the author or if he's just being facetious by using "white" instead of "whitelisted":
"Joining the White Countries Club
It is extremely difficult to anticipate US security strategies from the outside. Whe…
https://google.com/amp/s/www.businessinsider.com/republican-politician-waits-week-to-reveal-positive-covid-19-test-2020-5%3famp
Lewis received his positive test result on May 20, according to the statement. A critic of the shelter-in-place order fr…
You are right that it isn't John Bogle's Vanguard anymore, and there are many problems. Yet they still are generally the low-cost provider in the fund world, especially in the actively managed fund world. Interval funds need to be "Vanguard-ed."
@sma3 For most managers, unfortunately. There's a reason I think why investors called John Bogle St. Jack. He was far from perfect, but he took the term "fiduciary" seriously, and really meant it when he said he wanted to put clients first. But most…
CE funds can do the same thing, but the problem for some investors is they don't like the discounts they trade at to NAV. There is also an agency problem with CEs in that investors' capital is permanent and thus "trapped" in the fund unless investor…
While I prefer the structure of interval funds for illiquid bonds and other securities, unfortunately the fees and the leverage employed on the funds that currently exist are too high in my opinion. What this investment cateory needs is more competi…
One interesting cost comparison to make is between the Davis mutual funds and the actively managed Davis ETFs such as this: https://davisfunds.com/funds/global_fund/
and this: https://davisetfs.com/etfs/worldwide
The strategies aren't identical, bu…
I’ve seen open end mutual funds convert to tradable closed-end ones— – Highland Global Allocation Fund (NYSE: HGLB)—before so I wonder how much of a difference there is here between a tradable ETF and a closed-end. I imagine one important difference…
Although it is more common in closed-end funds, return of capital also occurs in open-end ones:
https://investmentnews.com/funds-featuring-managed-payouts-off-to-rocky-start-19815
https://investornews.vanguard/updated-distribution-estimates-for-v…
You can’t fake, manipulate or fudge a dividend payment by hiring a talented CPA.
Ask any fund manager about "return of capital" as a dividend and you'll see manipulation/fudging is exactly what can be done.
From the NYT piece: “The ‘too big to fail’ that existed for banks has now extended to a lot of other firms,” said Luigi Zingales, a University of Chicago professor of finance who has long studied the interplay of government, regulation and the priva…
@JoJo26 How can we have any "progress" when ignorant citizens of red states complain their taxes are too high and there are too many "freeloaders" while blue states are paying for all of the red states' government services:
@JoJo26 The welfare queen, seriously in 2020? Oldest stereotype and innacurate cliche in the book. What's next, trot out a few anecdotes of waste to contradict the mass of legitimate need from the unemployed? Just enjoy the trillions of dollars of f…
Given that there is a buyer and seller on every trade and generally one wins and one loses, to say "fortunes are going to be made" is well duh. Here's a followup question--fortunes are going to be made off whose backs? In every crisis throughout his…
Difference between justifiable skepticism and cynicism. Who watches this watcher? For instance, when it comes to things like climate change, facts have a liberal bias. And measuring the politics of the readership of climate change articles in the Ne…
