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.
Commodity dance moves:
Backwardation
https://investopedia.com/terms/b/backwardation.asp
Contango
https://investopedia.com/terms/c/contango.asp
Can I find a fund manager who does this for me?
I didn't understand any of that. And it came up in co…
Robert Louis Stevenson, along with Lloyd Osborne, wrote a black comedy titled The Wrong Box whose subject and plot is the tontine. Free online read on a number of sites.
Here's one review from Faith Jones, 2018.
https://medium.com/@havingfaith/b…
I think the problem with the U.S. Senate prioritizing land and geographic rights--really property rights when you think about why "states' rights" exist--over individual rights is far more significant. There's no good reason if democracy is the aim …
Politico leans right and seems to give a forum for every GOP conspiracy possible !
Not my experience in general since Trump came into office. They were mildly center-right during the Obama era. RINO right one might say.
The penultimate graf of this…
In Chicago, they're 199.99999% confident :-)
https://strong.academic.wlu.edu/humor/the-dead-vote-in-chicago-elections/ (humor)
Thanks for the reminder. My local BOE system shows that the post office received my ballot 1.5 weeks ago, but that it …
Dunno if it's a dead cat bounce or not. I sold my gold miners into the bounce today though.
I've got a long way to go before I do much better than break even with USAGX. Initiated my first position at 41.63 per share on 8/12/2011.
Bought again at 2…
IIRC, the gamble at the time was that Congress would make sure the increases never went through. I have to assume that the GOP was operating on the assumption that they would remain in the majority.
On less firm ground, I think the machinations had…
@sven: Everyone has to start somewhere. And Forbes offers good standard advice. The Wired article provides some practical how-to's to address some of the basic issues in #6 in the Forbes article.
The information at CISA is easy to read for the m…
@msf. Been working on the house. So dodging the internet. Sorry I missed your post re DODIX.
At the time I wrote about DODIX I could swear it was BBB, and that the duration had crept up to five years. That's why I read their report, and discovered …
@sven: That article is the garden variety advice for beginners. But weak on how-to's.
I think they missed one obvious issue: Do you store bank card information at places where you regularly shop? Totalwine.com would love to store my bank card infor…
VMVFX is on my list to sell. Too much movement chasing whatever seems to be low volatility at the moment. I was leery of the thesis to begin with. Bought it as sort of an experiment.
Per the article cited, I don't feel like I've lost out on much by…
Thinking about selling DODIX. They are now averaging BBB. And duration has crept up to five years. According to the last report I read they bought a lot of carbon energy during the down turn.
If I'm going to hold bonds at all I want them to be bori…
My advice to youngsters is to save as much as they can because they will be facing the perils of lay-offs after 50. If not before. We never went into long-term debt for anything but a house.
We certainly intend to spend down our retirement saving…
There are ESG style bond funds that might be more acceptable to your non-profit. TIAA-CREF has at least one. Parnassus has one. There are probably others.
It really depends on how much risk your non-profit wants to take. What the money is being set…
I figure it's hard enough to pick stocks to stay invested in. So I naturally distrust the stock funds with rapid turnover. At that point you've got to be pretty much of a genius to overcome the expenses.
That being said, most bond funds seem to tur…
U.S. Wind and Solar Installations-Trend May Not Last-I doubt that. Trillion $ companies are trying to become carbon neutral in 15-20 years. They don't rely on subsidies. Electric cars for the masses (Million Mile Battery) & new kid on the block …
@WABAC PNW is expanding it solar footprint. But, yes, Arizona regulators appear to be committed to centralized projects. Per M*'s writeup on PNW:
They certainly used to spend enough money to elect the regulators they wanted.
We shall see what t…
My wife has to have a dog. Hard to have those in an apartment building. So, we had to find flats that allowed a dog. Which usually meant dealing with family owner issues. And when things happened . . . Oh you need to move out, Aunt Sally passed away…
I wish utilities in Arizona could figure out how to be solar friendly. We use most of our energy down here when the sun is shining. They seem slightly more sympathetic to centralized generation projects. Less so to decentralized, i.e., roof top inst…
Recently the air here in the North has been worse than I have ever seen it in the LA area. Much worse.
Talked to some friends in Bezerkeley over the weekend. They said the pictures of orange days didn't really do it justice. They said it was really …
The link was behind a paywall for me. But I was able to google a little more information about Mr, Housel. Seems like the sort of guy I would recommend to my wife when she says we ought to pay someone to manage our investments.
There's just not eno…
Yes it is, Mark. But, at my age, I lived through much of the timeline (too young to remember life under Truman) and I couldn't help thinking that sometimes, though, the devils in the details. And "we the people" have had more than one considers to d…
There are time and places for everything, including ETFs, index funds, active managed mutual funds, and others. Investors need to decide for themselves what work for them.
Or figure out how to find, or hire, good advice. Betterment's advice sale…
Interesting that they put so much emphasis on value in their IRA portfolio. After browsing around a little I never found much info on why they emphasize it now, or if that could change later.
So beware that the bonds in the fund are consisted of lower quality, i.e. junk bonds. In the longer term the risk-reward tilts in his favor. The drawdown in March 2020 was -13.7%. The fund recovered in 6 months and keeps on moving upward.
And th…
