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.
Magnets get lumped with rare-earths category. There are news reports of potential slowdowns in auto production in the US, Germany and India due to Chinese export restrictions on magnets.
This problem may be more immediate than that for some esoteri…
Unicorns are global phenomena. So, don't overlook Asian unicorns. When economic growth is high, as in Asia, unicorns also grow like weeds.
Unicorn by countries:
US 656, China 168, India 71, UK 53, Germany 30.....
From the link, I counted 160 for …
WisdomTree/WT earnings-weighted ETFs do use several screening criteria to narrow the list - market-cap (to separate LC, MC, SC), profitability, etc, but in the last weighting step, it applies earnings-weights using 4 quarters of earnings data and do…
Some observations after going through MFO, June 1, 2025.
@David_Snowball: My TIAA 403b does include some non-TIAA funds, but the only Pimco fund available is PIMIX. When my plan changed about 4 years ago, some options were frozen - so, I could keep…
I was surprised by the data - current international exposure only 12%, recommendation 15-20%.
Now look at international exposures (stocks and bonds) in some allocation funds/models & TDFs.
Morningstar Allocation Models https://mp.morningstar.c…
LinkedIn has changed a lot. It's way beyond a job site although that is a tab within it now. Discussions there are quite wide ranging but there is less noise because people are posting under their real identities. What I like most is that links are …
LBJ was so mad at Fed Chair Martin that people at the ranch reported the Big Guy pushing & shoving the Little Guy. Little Guy was a bit shaken, but not stirred - he held the line on rates.
The most contrasting Fed Chairs may be Burns and Volcke…
Within the US market, SP500 is in the middle of M* Value - Growth scale. Inflows are from indexing being popular. Traders & foreigners also find it easy to buy SPY / IVV/ VOO for US exposure.
https://www.morningstar.com/etfs/arcx/spy/portfolio
US Constitution 1.8.2 provides the power to issue debt to Congress. That literally meant that each Treasury debt issuance had to go through Congress. That was OK early on, but to simplify matters later, Congress DELEGATED the power to issue debt to …
DIVO has a different covered-call strategy. It has a concentrated equity portfolio and writes calls only on a handful of holdings. JEPI on the other hand uses SP500 index for call-writing.
DIVO has a slightly higher volatility (Relative SD 0.6861) …
Barron's article simply mentioned that "...JEPI has about two-thirds the volatility of the market...", but didn't offer any explanation.
True, the equity portfolio of JEPI has more conservative, dividend-paying stocks. And Morningstar shows 86.49% …
I took another look at JEPI. While it hasn't been exposed to a bear market, 2022 and 2025YTD have been tough years. JEPI is consistently superior to OEF GATEX (that also uses protective puts) and equivalent allocation 65%SPY + 35%BND; note that Rela…
All classes of funds (including the etf class) will have similar CG distributions. This surprised some when several Vanguard ETFs had CG distributions when comparable stand-alone ETFs didn't.
So, some advantages of the etf structure may be compromi…
That's early access (1-2 days) to direct deposits by your bank or credit union. Not all banks do this. For SSA payments, my wife has gotten them early for several months (on Mondays instead of Wednesdays).
My bank doesn't do this. So, I "inquired" …
My understanding is that Watchlist now is a feature within Morningstar Portfolio (Legacy or New) that is a subscription product.
If you have alternate access to M* Portfolio via Rowe Price, etc, that's fine. But if not, you would lose access if yo…
This info in OP link is false:
"Starting this May, the Social Security Administration (SSA) is updating its payment schedule, and millions of Americans are going to notice the difference..."
There is no change by SSA - the schedule is similar for …
It's clear that info in the OP link isn't correct. SSA website publishes SSA payment calendar on the 1st of the prior year, and there hasn't been any changes to that (2024, 2025, 2026 calendars).
https://www.ssa.gov/pubs/calendar.htm
Then, I search…
@JPtak (MFO) is Morningstar Managing Director of Research. He posts at Morningstar (see link below), LinkedIn, X/Twitter, Substack, etc.
https://www.morningstar.com/people/jeffrey-ptak
TRs use geometric-average of annual returns, so it's easy to incorporate annual CPIs, and applying an overall inflation factor to overall TR would also work.
Additions/withdrawals will make it more complicated.
Prospectuses report the max ERs.
Websites and quarterly reports may report actual ERs that may be slightly lower. These may also show any fee waivers.
Morningstar does its own thing as it isn't regulated as funds are. In its current reporting, M* …
"On Monday, Moody’s Ratings announced a downgrade in the long-term ratings for several major U.S. banks, including JPMorgan Chase & Co, Bank of America"
News from Thailand https://www.kaohooninternational.com/markets/558008
https://www.tradingv…
TestFol is a good alternative for PV.
Additional benefits of TestFol are use of daily returns (vs monthly for PV, M*, etc), no run time limits and rolling metrics. TestFol SD values are higher due to daily data.
TestFol can be more useful for newe…
which corporates have same rating as the U.S. from any agency?
is this # @ all-time high?
S&P
AAA JNJ, MSFT
AA+ (same as US) GOOGL, AAPL, Fannie Mae
Fitch
AAA Fannie Mae (go figure that!)
AA+ (same as US) MSFT
Moody's
Aaa JNJ, MSFT, Fannie M…
Fitch kept TIAA at AAA in 09/2024 even though it downgraded US to AA+ in 08/2023. So, not all agencies follow this max-sovereign-rating-limit policy.
Moody's also didn't issue a general downgrade for US financials following its downgrade of US to A…
Keep in mind another rule that only S&P applies - US financials cannot have better credit rating than the US government. So, when US was downgraded to AA+ in 2011, top US financials were also downgraded to AA+ regardless of their own financial s…
In charts at StockCharts, Portfolio Visualizer, TestFol, Morningstar, Yahoo Finance, the date ranges can set and performance assessed.
Popular CEFs like PDI didn't exist in 2007-09.
Morningstar DBRS still has US at AAA.
https://dbrs.morningstar.com/research/451559/morningstar-dbrs-confirms-the-united-states-of-america-at-aaa-stable-trend
Moody's downgrade came after the market close on Friday, so any impact would be seen in Su…
Here comes Empower (a large 401k provider) with private-equity within its advisor-managed 401k - several private-equity/credit/real-estate CITs will offered through advisors.
https://www.empower.com/press-center/empower-offer-private-markets-investm…
Much of the Morningstar fee data are up to 12/31/24.
Additional fee data to 12/31/24 can also be found in ICI Fact Book, 2025, Ch 6.
https://www.icifactbook.org/pdf/2025-factbook-ch6.pdf
That + CEO quits & company withdraws guidance,
https://finance.yahoo.com/news/unitedhealth-group-stock-sinks-as-ceo-steps-down-company-suspends-guidance-135257453.html
There was a new executive order about a coming executive order - on drug prices.
Using M*, I see negative UNH, CI; moreover, LLY, NVO didn't participate in the rally as much. https://finance.yahoo.com/quotes/LLY,NVO,UNH,CI/
Yahoo Finance has quote…
Discover/DFS is a financial with $50+ billion market cap. Looks like DJ/S&P Committee decided that a modern financial replacement with a similar market-cap is Coinbase/COIN.
At 0.10% weight, the nature of SP500 won't change. But this is great …
