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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Sven
Lynn,
Thank you so much. I am planning on a 3-year ladder since I am a year away from retirement. Lots of spreadsheet work to calculate the income replacement needed. This ladder will create a steady income stream. So thank you for all your help.
I moved back to high quality bond funds this year. Some of which you covered in the SA article. For now, I will stay with agency bonds to the bond ladder. I will pick active managers for corporate bonds.
Sven
Other sources reveal there is little growth across all sectors, except for health care. Manufacturing sector is negative so there is no re-shoring of good paying manufacturing jobs. Hard to find good news pointing to sustained job growth.
That stable genius does not see all these connections and their impact on the global economy. Think @rforno is spot on that Trump got played by Netanyahoo! (and the Saudis, to a lesser extent) to start this war.
By the way, top Pentagon official…
We pulled back quite a bit before the Iran war. Having large cash position enables “selective” buying. For now i stay put and be of where we are.
Several observations:
1. The dollar index has been up and down, and many oversea stocks and bonds …
Excerpt From “The Dangerous Munitions Mismatch Between America and Iran”.
“This is not idle speculation: The Department of Defense has warned that Chinese President Xi Jinping is preparing his military to be ready to successfully invade Taiwan by …
Thanks for the update. Like Buffet used to say “when the tide goes out, you get to see what you are wearing.” Blackrock is the largest AUM, and Vanguard is second. Both signed on to private equity late last year. And they want to get access to 401…
@larryB,
Since 2012 (14 year period), BOND out-performed BND. See chart from M* below.
https://morningstar.com/etfs/xnys/bond/chart
You can compare them in 5 yrs, 3 yrs, and 1 yr period.
BOND is active managed and its risk is comparable to BND.…
At least you don’t own leveraged (2X or higher) products. The loss would magnified accordingly. Money flows back to dollar as the safe heaven during stress tome. Even previous metals tanked.
Stocks and bonds mostly recovered from their height o…
this?"
"American intelligence officials say Iran has not tried to rebuild its main nuclear sites
since the U.S. attack in June. Iran’s stockpiles of enriched uranium are still buried deep under rubble.
The head of the International Atomic Energy A…
Hope this is not a tip of an iceberg. I recalled mortgage companies such as Countrywide and Washington Mutual started to collapse, then came banks who own lots of subprime mortgage packages. One failed sector spread to another before the entire fina…
Think AI will save their asses? Strategic planning takes exhaustive analysis of many scenarios and their possible outcomes before executing one of the plan.
Operation Overload Overlord during WWII took many months of detailed planning and it went …
Reality finally hit. Iran is closing the Strait of Hormuz where major oil and LNG flow through. Going around that region adds 10 days and 30% cost. Math would say higher cost for everything including inflation. The US dollar is the safe heaven dur…
That is one reason China tries to steal its trade secret by hiring former ASML engineers and reverse engineering of their tools. They may be several years behind the west in advanced semiconductor manufacturing.
In my opinion, the huge AUM of PRWCX has reduced its flexibility to navigate the market it once had. The concentration around the Mag 7 stocks made stock picking challenging; the top 10 holdings show that well. Starting last year, the fund trailed…
I have posted previously before it was lost due to the interruption.
We hold several individual stocks in our portfolio; some have gone back several decades. Few tech stocks have grown well while others are evolving with time. They are part of th…
The US market recovered most of the loss by end of the day. The week is still young until something unexpected happened. Beware of noise and disinformation out there.
Will trim energy stocks when oil strikes $100 a barrel. Also notice junk and…
Thank you. Always informative to hear from Jamie Dimon’s perspective on many topics.
Oil price is rising fast with the Iran war spreading in that region. Straits of Hormuz, a key control point of oil and LNG shipment is impacted directly. Will …
It is all about business of convenience. This war is nothing more than a distraction from the Epstein files.
Why are so many pages missing ? The government found another Epstein house in New Mexico.
https://nytimes.com/2026/03/01/us/jeffrey-e…
Thank you @davidsnowball and @chip,
2:50 pm.Pacific standard time. MFO has returned. It is okay to lose one day content, March 1st. Most importantly that we get back online.
Enclosed please find the ALLW commentary dated 4th quarter, 2025. On page 4 it indicated the ETF invested in 10% gold and 23% broad communities.
https://ssga.com/library-content/products/fund-docs/etfs/us/insights-investment-ideas/spdr-allw-quarter…
@crash, you have a great opportunity to visit the N. M. KECK Observatory atop Maunakea in Hawaii. We have visited several observatories in the States and they are fantastic !
Like you said, what is not spoken is more important on the actual safeguards. Evaluation on AI models (OpenAI, Claude, Gemini, and Grok) has shown Claude to have superior accuracy over the others. Claude is widey used in classified work now. The or…
Trump ordered to remove Claude AI from DOD work. The rest AI companies are submitting whatever Trump wants, a dangerous move to enable ICE to terrorize American citizens.
The scope of the air and sea operations was not immediately clear.
The campaign is expected to last for multiple days, said a U.S. official."
Earlier this week, US embassy employees in Israel were ordered to leave the country suggested the war is …
Who really think he is above “God”? Anthropic held its ground and Trump ordered to move on to other AI. Excerpt from NPR:
Whatever happens at the end of today, this fight is probably far from over
The Pentagon's contract with Anthropic is worth a…
Don’t forget the movie, iRobot. Quite amazing that robots developed a higher level of thinking - AI or consciousness ?
In 2035, a technophobic cop investigates a crime that may have been perpetrated by a robot, which leads to a larger threat to h…
The GOP wants to privatize social security and Medicare forever so to enrich their buddies to operate these business. So what so bad about universal healthcare plan with the middle men, the insurance companies ?
So this administration talk about…
Our health plan cover prescription, doctor visit and hospitalization. You ask the PPO the reduced amount when you have Medicare as the primary insurer. BlueCross offers over $400-500 reduction for our family plan (2 adults and 2 dependents).
Best…
Here is the M* report on ALLW:
22% Stocks (8% US, 14% int’l, 10% China)
55% fixed income
10% cash
0% derivatives
https://morningstar.com/etfs/xnas/allw/portfolio
New fund started this year. YTD 8.8%.
Will do more research on ALLW. We are consolidating our many holdings. We like to get to a 10 or less and having broadly diversified funds/ETFs would help. We will be doing in-plan Roth conversion in our 401(K) plan,
@DrVenture, our family plan cover our kids until they reach 26. It is very comprehensive while they are in college. The university’s health plan is costly. Our private insurance is through our employer. Most large companies and universities offer…
We are fortunate to qualify for our private insurance as a group plan in retirement. The company will reimburse several hundred dollars when we use them as a supplement (incur less cost to the insurance company). I have few colleagues who forgo Med…
We had a long discussion with our HR department on health benefits in retirement. I will enroll in Medicare Part B and forgo Part C and D, since we will keep our private insurance family in retirement to supplement the co-pay and other out-of-pock…
Everyone’s circumstance and risk tolerance are different. Once we figure out your living expense (for several years), we will explore more investment options. On taxable account, we do stock picking while balance the risk with many T bills. On our …
