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.
@hank, no but people could trade stocks with 5% margin equity then. Pump-&-dump probably comes from that era - buildup excitement to create a rush to buy, then pull the rug to wipeout overleveraged people.
What if?
First, keep in mind that there is no dedicated/separate fund for Social Security.
FICAs go into the general Treasury account, and there is a system to track these Treasury IOUs - the so-called SSA trust fund.
So, that IOU will be exhaust…
Great comments by @msf.
TIAA has been changing with times. It has expanding into corporate 401ks, and as @msf mentioned, opened previously restricted TIAA IRA to all - TIAA Traditional (SVs), private real estate T-REA (not to be confused with REITs…
I use Google Authenticator for many sites - Google, Login.gov (Social Security), social-media.
I continue to use Symantec VIP Access for Schwab and 2FA for several sites.
TIBIX / TIBAX is a mutual fund.
TBLD (7/27/21) is a newer kind of CEF with a limited term. It is not leveraged but is still volatile due to premium/discount.
Many products these days are unrepairable or hard to repair. Some cheap TVs are all sealed and you cannot even open it to check or fix anything.
This is slowly getting to cars too.
I have read that in many car models, to replace the headlights, t…
I recently changed auto insurance because the previous insurer kept raising premiums and was no longer competitive in my state.
So, I shopped around and found a major insurer with much lower premium.
I thought I was pretty smart!
Now, on 6-mo ren…
BXSL is a BDC, has "Fund" in its name, but isn't recognized by ETFdb (so, not an ETF) or CEFConnect (so, not a CEF). BDC is a slightly different structure than ETF or CEF.
Morningstar and Yahoo Finance classify it under Asset Management firms,
htt…
There are many sources that point out that the first withdrawals from T-IRA are assumed to be RMDs. This can create trouble sometimes. For example, it you do Roth Conversion as the 1st transaction, it won't really count as Conversion, but contributi…
@Derf, I checked Schwab Bonds & Fixed Income screens.
For CDs, shown are those that pay interest only on maturity (i.e. interest is accumulated). These effectively act like zeros. I didn't see any click for CD-zeros.
For all bonds except Treas…
Post-FOMC Notes
Rates: Fed funds held at 4.25-4.50%, bank reserves rate at 4.40% (generous), discount rate at 4.50%. Treasury QT continued -$5 billion/mo, MBS QT at -$35 billion/mo.
Inflation-expectations remain high now but should be headed down …
50th G-7, June 15-17, was in Canada (rotating presidency, 2025). Besides the G-7 members (including the EU), invited as guests were the leaders of India, Brazil, South Africa, Mexico, Ukraine, Australia, Indonesia & S Korea, plus NATO, UN & …
Direct link for Morningstar Portfolio. There is a button on the upper-left for switching between old/Legacy and new.
https://www.morningstar.com/portfolio-manager/my-view
Hopefully, what happened to CEFs during the GFC won't be repeated.
At the time time, many CEFs relied on auction-rate preferreds (ARPs) for debt. These preferreds had weekly, biweekly or monthly auctions to reset their floating rates. ARP sponsors …
What trading securities do after ex-div is unpredictable - they may even go up enough to make up for distributions. CEFs are no exceptions.
For GDL (high discount of 20%) that's involved in M&A arbitrage, there could be news related to one of i…
I have seen posts related to estate, trusts, Wills in Other Investing - that is personal finance. So, I will leave it there, but the site moderators are free to move it to Off-Topic if they think it belongs there.
I thought that exemptive-reliefs were almost gone in 2019 SEC ETF Reforms. The SEC grandfathered some exemptive-reliefs due to fund industry lobbying. But why is SEC considering exemptive-reliefs for new applications?
One problem with exemptive-rel…
Vanguard eventually converts Investor shares into Admiral shares, if eligible. But I do it the next day & not wait for Vanguard to get to it.
I assume that with the new ETFs classes of active mutual funds, it would be one-way street, mutual fun…
From prospectus,
Online Disclosure of Complete Portfolio Holdings
Actively managed equity funds, unless otherwise stated, generally will seek to disclose complete portfolio holdings as of the end of the most recent calendar quarter online at vangu…
Several of these companies have issued convertible debt at low/no interest (zero-coupon convertibles). So, their bet is on crypto boom that will eliminate/convert debt to equity and the risk will be for those equity holders, not the company treasuri…
Schwab 1000 Fund SNXFX $129.11. So, after 10 for 1 split, price will be around $13. Still looks like busy work for mutual funds.
Schwab 1000 ETF SCHK $29 won't be affected.
There are better SC indexes - more selective IJR, SPSM & earnings-weighted EES.
IWM is OK for benchmarking. Many funds use it because it may be easier to beat.
There is double-talk by China.
It says that there are no new export restrictions for rare-earths/magnets, but licensing is required and that has been a slow process and hugely backlogged.
SSA site alert https://www.ssa.gov/scam/?oig-redirect
If I get any email, text or letter from my financial sites, I first log in and check.
Lately, I am not even clicking on email links from my card companies that they have sent for years to signu…
TestFol now has limited Safe Withdrawal Rate (SWR) & Perpetual Withdrawal Rate (PWR) runs. Problem with terminal values remain - those are also adjusted for inflation & nominal values aren't provided..
https://ybbpersonalfinance.proboards.co…
@rforno, thanks for Archive Today source.
https://archive.ph/
I am familiar with Internet Archives and WayBack Machine, but those are not as current.
https://archive.org/
https://web.archive.org/
Article requires subscription and I couldn't find an open alternative.
I have done withdrawals from my TIAA 403b and Fidelity 403b. Note that for most part, nonprofit 403b are similar to company 401k.
My TIAA 403b allows online withdrawal and I ca…
SSGA website links for ALLW prospectus don't work for me. So, I found those from Edgar/SEC.
Summary Prospectus https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/1516212/000119312525045861/d872457d497k.htm
Prospectus https://www.sec.gov/ix?doc=/Archives/edgar/…
Many other sites also had reported possible changes in SP500 on 6/6/25, 5:15 PM ET. I was watching too. But S&P Announcement website went down/crashed. Some blamed the overload on the crypto crowd as Robinhood/HOOD was a potential candidate (a h…
Posters here don't need the reminder that sentiment indicators are contrarian.
I used to mention it in 2021-2022, but then skipped it.
But as these posts now are also at Facebook, X/Twitter, Bluesky, LinkedIn, I restored this caution in March 20…
People all over the world are watching this bold strategy with drones - ship parts, use local helpers to assemble, transport & execute. It may be repeatable elsewhere too.
