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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
Sneakflation is here and guess who is paying them?
Through June, US consumers had absorbed 22% of tariff costs, but that share was expected to rise to 67% by October, according to an August 10 estimation from Goldman Sachs economists. That assess…
Buying European stocks is about diversifying the portfolio risk from the over-valued US stocks. Will AI propels the market in the future? No one knows for sure, but AI stocks are trading at high multiples. European market is still growing but at a…
@msf said:
Reiterating what I said at the outset - the fewer funds one has, the more difficult it is to get a desired allocation, especially as one changes the target over time.
I agree that a single fund would be challenging during de-accumulating…
Before Bolton published his tell-all book, the WH wants to stop him on the ground that it contains classified information bur offers no evidence of such. WH then back downed and the book iwas published this year. We will see how this drama plays out…
Canada and Mexico are major food importers to US. Now the tariffs is making things more expensive. Below is a 2024 USDA report on food.
https://ers.usda.gov/sites/default/files/_laserfiche/DataFiles/53736/FoodImports.xlsx?v=66673
Read earlier th…
It would be a good idea to examine drawdown periods as @Obervant1 noted with various multi-sector funds and ETFs for their risk. Using MFO Premium, one can compare these funds for their MFO rating and Risk over 3 years and 5 years period. In gener…
Thanks @msf for the update. Two years ago there were fewer Vanguard funds available. There must be additional agreement made to be on Fidelity shelf space.
All the discussion about robotic and AI will solve the labor shortage. Going to U-Pick farms such as strawberry would help one to appreciate the back-breaking labor and skills required.
Just look at it took several decades to transform car manuf…
@Mark is correct with D&C at Fidelity’s mutual fund supermarket. Years ago they were listed.
Vanguard is listed today, although it limited only to a handful of OEFs and not the entire lineup.
We consolidated to Fidelity several years ago. F…
Thanks @bee for the math.
Food produced domestically also went up even though the main ingredients are produced domestically, i.e. pasta. What other factors could contribute to that?
Produces also went out considerably. In many cases, the pri…
In my honest opinion, it may has passed that point already. TRP analyst support cannot be under-estimated as PRWCX continues to lead in the allocation fund category. Giroux is well aware the overvaluation issue, yet he maintains the tech exposure …
Pretty soon we will be eating saw dust to add bulk to ground meat. I observe these days people are overwhelming buying food rather than big screen TVs at Costco. And that is a bad sign of financial stress.
Cannot imagine the low income families s…
I recall someone who has boxes government files in his home, some of which are classified. https://apnews.com/article/trump-justice-department-indictment-classified-documents-miami-8315a5b23c18f27083ed64eef21efff3
Is this a case of the pot calling …
Don’t forget where coffee are grown and global warming contributes to smaller areas. This has been observed for some time. Tariffs adds another layer of cost to the consumer.
I switched to tea but still their prices have gone up too.
Gee, I wonder if the value of Trmp's bonds might increase if the Fed lowered interest rates
That is my exact thinking. The true motivation of cutting rate from 4-4.25% to 1%, is to goose the bond prices and his pocket substantially. Wonder who e…
@msf, yes, i would place several bids with lower prices for stocks where the prices fluctuate more throughout the days while bonds vary by a few cents. In down days, the price momentum may strike one or more of the lower bids. If not, the order ge…
I recognize that BS1000 has been a troll who contributes nothing but chaos. Thus, it would be more constructive for the board members to not answer his posting, i.e. don’t feed the trolls.
A brighter investment is from Japan’s Softbank, and they have deep pocket to get into semiconductor foundry business. If the investment stabilizes Intel, Softbank will continue to their investment. This is analogous to Warren Buffet’s investment in …
I posted previously the falling dollar since late last year (see link) by the Dollar Index.. The dollar has fallen over 10% in value against major currencies.
https://barchart.com/stocks/quotes/$DXY/interactive-chart
Many factors contributed to the…
The report mentioned pharmaceutical are the smoke-free products (vaping, nicotine patch and chewing gum), but without saying they are for treating nicotine addiction.
Medical marijuana makes a better case as a medicine than that of nicotine.
Prior to Putin’s meeting, he showed another sign of cognitive decline and dementia. Even high school kids know that the name Leningrad no longer exists today.
https://msn.com/en-us/news/world/trump-suffers-another-geography-fail-after-calling-alas…
He is doing everything he can as a diversion away from the Epstein files. DOJ is working hard to redact his name from many pages. Also heard that Bill Barr is being asked about his early investigation when Epstein was found dead.
Here is an interview from Fiona Hill, the former senior director for European and Russian affairs on the National Security Council. Her view on Putin is spot on.
https://cbsnews.com/news/fiona-hill-face-the-nation-transcript-8-17-2025/
In my limited experience, the answer really depends on several factors. For example, securities traded in high volume, >10M shares or higher, have narrow ask and bid prices while these values fluctuate throughout the day as they are being traded.…
I’m fairly new in using real-time tracking. Mainly to teach myself that prices move up and down throughout the days, and (sometime) it falls in my favor. Still majority of the time we use OEFs.
Warfare has evolved today as showed in Russia-Ukraine war. Despite the large advantages Russia have in terms of manpower and armament, they have lost heavily in battle fronts time and time again. Weapons and tactics have changed in favor of Ukraine…
Except from article:
Special Envoy Steve Witkoff said security guarantees could be modeled on Article V of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization treaty, which says that an enemy attack against one member would be viewed as an attack against all. B…
All great suggestions on Europe. We double our international exposure, particularly Europe since January for the same reason. If Ukraine fall, the east Europe countries are next. As @Crash states, EU can no longer rely on US to help the NATO.
I like to use a real-time stock app in order to set better pricing on stock ETFs. I use limited orders on stocks and market orders on bonds (small ask and bid).
Generally i set several orders with progressively lower bid prices. Goal here is buy …
Let’s try this link to the one posted by @catch22 above. It should work.
https://msn.com/en-us/money/companies/intel-shares-rise-on-report-of-possible-us-government-stake/ar-AA1KAypH
It is too little and too late to catch up to TSMC. Intel failed …
Are we approaching China’s model on private companies, state-run companies?
The Chip Act was passed in 2022 to encourage domestic investment on semiconductor manufacturing. Results is mixed after 3 years that shows re-sourcing manufacturing is n…
It is all about painting a narrative of a robust economy and lower rate would make it even better. Musk said about Bessent being a two time loser as a money manager, and perhaps there some truth to it.
Cannot imagine to deploy our military on our very own citizens and cities under the pretense of civic unrest. Notice that he is doing it now in the BLUE states.
Thank you @yogibb for the data. The full impact of tariffs has been delayed due to front-loading of imported goods. In coming months, the full effect will show up in goods price as well as higher CPI. This morning the wholesale prices was reported t…
I concur with @crash that we are also at a modest exposure to US stocks. Even though the emotion behind FOMO persists, bonds are more compelling for us. For once, our are over-weighing to oversea exposure on stocks and bonds have benefited our cons…
