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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
@Max, you can get institutional share with $5k minimum for tax deferred account plus a transaction fee in most brokerages. Fidelity charges $50 whereas it costs $20 at Vanguard. Wish more companies would lower the $minimum for IRA accounts.
The article forgot to mention that Vanguard also offers a fine array of actively managed funds.
Quietly, T. Rowe Price is also doing very well in attracting new asset this year.
@Andy, I think DBLTX has a slightly better downside protection (3 years) than DBLFX according to M*.
http://performance.morningstar.com/fund/ratings-risk.action?t=DBLFX®ion=usa&culture=en-US
@Charles, thank you for the detailed report. Particularly,
He know what it takes to advance technology, not financial engineering. Take a look at IBM, HP, Cisco, and other old tech firms who fail to understand what "innovation" requires. Soon…
In recent years Amazon is became less relevant for us as consumers. We now shopped less than 10% than we used to.
Hardware they made, Kindle Fire and Fire phone, are barely competitive both in price and functionality. We have both Android and i…
@Kaspa,
Still driving a 1992 Honda Civic with 200K miles - remarkable reliability! Before we bought 2011 Odyssey minivan, we did fair amount of research on both crash test and mechanical reliability and came back to Honda again. European cars are…
Agree! Very informative. Have been reading his las test book.
"Reducing the Risk of Black Swans: Using the Science of Investing to Capture Returns with Less Volatility Paperback"
Totally agree. Fear is a powerful motivator for selling newspapers. It is particularly troubling to see the decline of financial journalism among major papers including WSJ and Barrons.
High valuation of smaller caps make this asset class less attractive rather to the larger caps. In today's slow growth environment, it is better to own blue chip stocks with global exposure.
When the daily trading volume is light on sector or narrowly focus ETFs, the ask-bid spreads tend to be large. The converse is true for broad based ETFS with healthy daily trading volume. In addition, the market price may be trading at a premium …
Vanguard index funds have 6 months holding period while the ETFs have none. However, there are limits of how many trading one can have in one year. My account is limited to 6. Other larger accounts may have greater flexibility. I use index funds…
Thank you. Cash position at over 20% is the highest in recent years. Dan Fuss is preparing for the worst scenario since geopolitical riisk can spread into other markets.
Going forward interest rates will likely be higher, and bond returns will nowhere near what they have been delivering. I would pick EVBAX (multi-sectors) and MWTRX (intermediate term), and keep the total bond/cash allocation in the range 30-40%. A…
@kevindow, thank for the clarification. One would think Fidelity treats all retirement accounts the same. I will talk with the rep and they are really good with that. Thanks again.
Yes, I do remember Lou and his shows are entertaining. There were many excellent guests (as discussed above) and some "not so great" such as Jeffrey Vinik who exercised the old trick of pump-and-dump on stock recommendation.
Haven't watch CNBC f…
@kevindow, don't know when you please a trade at Fidelity on EVBIX. Maybe thing has changed a bit since you posted. It now required $250K for IRA account in addition to $49.95 transaction fee.
I have a neighbor who worked his 40 years as a federal employees. Yet his knowledge of saving for retirement is lacking to say the least. It is all too common that many do not wish to be informed and the are easy prey by these brokers.
If history is an indicator of how Russia resolves conflict with the former Soviet bloc countries, take a look at Chechnya and Georgia as recent examples since the cold war ended. Neither ones ended well.
Came across this piece from WSJ that stat…
I am confused. Ted was listed as who initiated this posting, but Rono is listed instead. Also MJG is addressing Jlev who is nowhere to be find on this posting. Very confusing...
That is why it is so important to start saving college the day they are born, and that is only the half of the equation including a considerable change of spending and saving habits.
@Scott, Talking about pre-PC days,I used to program my HP 14c calculator to do physics homework. These days Excel can do all these tasks and much more. I also started with Apple Classic as my first PC and it costed over $4,000 - no joking.
@Bee, Read that good article a while back. There was another WealthTrack interview with Dan Fuss earlier this year (I believe) that he explained the terrible loss in 2008 (-22% versus LB Agg Bond Index has a +5% gain). During the crisis, risky a…
One would think that China have learned from West on air pollution and its impact on health.
http://telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/asia/china/10646593/Toxic-smog-threatens-millions-of-Chinese-lives.html
Saw another report that China want to go a…
@rjb112,
Here is an interview with Dan Fuss who shared his investment process.
morningstar.com/cover/videocenter.aspx?id=643979
Dan and his co-managers have been saying that few opportunities exist in high yield bonds, i.e. expensive. I do thin…
