Howdy, Stranger!

It looks like you're new here. If you want to get involved, click one of these buttons!

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.

    Support MFO

  • Donate through PayPal

msf

About

Users name
msf
Joined
Visits
33,417
Last Active
Roles
Member

Comments

  • I have a question or two for them, also, about THAT: foreign stocks incur a FEE? Even if they trade on US exchanges???? "Foreign stocks." That's what the footnote says. I just posted a fair amount of info on foreign stock trading (in response to Yog…
  • I don't think that T Rowe Price offers genuine fractional trading for stocks/ETFs (that one can enter as orders; Fido & Schwab allow that, but a different order screen may be needed). But there are fractional shares for mutual funds and dividend…
  • SIPC coverage is up to $500K with a $250K limit for cash. The cash coverage limit does not apply to MMF shares (those are securities), nor to bank sweep balances (that's in the bank not the brokerage and is covered by FDIC). It applies strictly t…
  • I'm sorry but not surprised to hear about these latest problems (execution of a transfer, online access) with T. Rowe Price. While I'm hardly defending them - incompetency is different from strict procedures - TRP could have underlying procedures …
  • Firstrade - $1K min, $100 additional. Fund Symbol: MRFOX View Prospectus Fund Type: No Load Open for Investment: Yes Settlement Period: 1 day NAV*: $29.65 Initial Minimum Amount: $1,000.00 Cut-Off Time: 4:00 PM NAV Change: -$0.04 Subsequent Amou…
    in MRFOX Comment by msf February 2024
  • Alternatively, you could buy it directly on the London Exchange (PSH:GB). But not in a retirement account. Fidelity charges £9 for the London Exchange transaction. At the current exchange rate of $1.26, that's around $11.35 - a lot cheaper than…
  • Here are my respective allocations (Note: I only have one OEF that does NOT have at least one Mag 7 holding), but I'm still about 3% UNDER the VTSAX Total: AAPL 3.5% AMZN 3.0% GOOGL 3.8% META 1.0% MSFT 6.0% NVDA 3.3% TSLA …
  • Is there not an extra charge for over the phone transactions? I've never been charged. Maybe they just like me :-) Realistically, it's because a same day, cross-family transaction is something that cannot be done online and Fidelity doesn't penali…
  • This should eliminate the confusion that is possible now with T+1 for mutual funds/OEFs, but T+2 for others. Most but not all OEFs trade T+1. Some still trade T+2. I ran into this problem a couple of months ago at Fidelity. Fidelity will let y…
  • In your initial example, the person hypothetically tipping an outsider "of course ... could not share the news ... until it was publicly available." Regarding the tippee, "Unless [the tippee] knew someone and got inside information, it would have b…
  • Someone I help with financial stuff has an account with a brokerage that uses Pershing as its clearing house. The latest problem (can you say esoteric?): In 2023, Puerto Rico swapped a bond held in the account for shares of a Delaware grantor tru…
  • For completeness ... The cash transfer completed yesterday. The first check was issued on Jan 4. The stop payment was issued on Jan 24. The money was credited back to the brokerage on Jan 25. The brokerage took seven calendar days (5 business…
  • "Portfolio" as opposed to "fund" in a name is often a signal that the vehicle is designed for annuities. Nevertheless, aside from their names, they are still referred to as "funds", as in "AMT Funds". From the SAI: "Shares of the Funds are sold t…
  • Unless you knew someone and got inside information, it would have been hard to take advantage of it before the news hit. Since 1997, it has been illegal to trade on inside information even if you have no connection to the company aside from gettin…
  • This doesn't show the tables but it preserved the M* text (and lists all 15 "wealth destroyers") as a sidebar. https://web.archive.org/web/20240131091956/https://www.morningstar.com/funds/15-funds-that-have-destroyed-most-wealth-over-past-decade
  • an unprecedented refusal Rare, but not unprecedented. The NYTimes article at the time said only that The decision [was] extremely unusual for Medicare, which almost always automatically pays for drugs that the F.D.A. has approved, at least for t…
  • Here and Now broadcast a worthwhile report on Biogen and Aduhelm, the Alzheimer’s drug. https://www.wbur.org/news/2021/12/10/biogen-aduhelm-reckoning-alzheimers-drug It’s not surprising that the whole biotech sector is under pressure when one its…
  • I chose not do do an in-kind transfer on that first one that hit the “snag.” I felt there might be a big difference between the sale price (NAV) at TRP and the “buy price” when completed. A transfer "in-kind" means that the security itself is being…
  • Good piece. Like others, I write very few checks a year. One for in-office copays to a medical specialist who charges extra for credit cards. I hand the other checks to service providers in my home - for heater repairs and the like. Nothing …
  • The account numbers look like: 0123456789-4. Except that the "-4" in this example is not considered part of the account number. Here's the mutual fund transfer in kind form I used (see section 1 asking for account numbers). T Rowe Price adds an…
  • Clearly it's important to know the precise definition of terms when reading statistics. Even back when M* was using 1 year maturities as the cutoff for cash equivalents for analyzing portfolios (i.e. before 2017), it also used the 3 month definitio…
  • Apparently what M* considers cash depends on the context: Questions & Answers | Methodology Traditionally Morningstar has treated bonds with short terms to maturity, less than 1 year, as a cash equivalent, will these holdings be included in the…
  • While the Treasury yield-curve is weird. It has an unusual dip in the belly. It seems that an inverted yield-curve is trying to normalize (to up-sloping), but the Fed has literally fixed the short end. https://www.ustreasuryyieldcurve.com/ This does…
  • TFLO invests in floating rate treasury similar to that of USFR, WisdomTree treasury floating rate ETF. Here's a comparison of TFLO and USFR: https://portfolioslab.com/tools/stock-comparison/TFLO/USFR Similar with at least a couple of curious quir…
    in CD Question Comment by msf January 2024
  • For accounts at Fidelity, FSIXX has a minimum of $1M. FRSXX is the Institutional class of the Treasury Only MM fund and pays slightly higher than FSIXX. To be clear, both share classes are institutional classes; one is labeled "I", while the ot…
    in CD Question Comment by msf January 2024
  • SNOXX will likely be fully state-taxable to you, because (at least at as of Sept 30th) only 10% of its portfolio is in Treasuries. The rest consists of repurchase agreements which makes the entire fund state-taxable for a few states (and mostly st…
    in CD Question Comment by msf January 2024
  • I can appreciate the simplicity of having all T-IRAs in one place if one is of a "certain age" :-) I'm not, but I have likewise moved my T-IRA to one house. Though that's largely because after having done Roth conversions for 15 years (income …
    in CD Question Comment by msf January 2024
  • It's not just the past month. My impression is that this has been going on for the better part of a year. I may have even commented on this before - it seems that people here look primarily at brokered CDs perhaps because they are already using …
    in CD Question Comment by msf January 2024
  • The effect on duration is also different (higher coupon = shorter duration). We can try this another way, using the Socratic method. 1. Suppose you buy a bond at $102 with a 5% coupon. Do you have enough information to calculate current yield?…
  • The effect on duration is also different (higher coupon = shorter duration). We can try this another way, using the Socratic method. 1. Suppose you buy a bond at $102 with a 5% coupon. Do you have enough information to calculate current yield?…
  • My tax liability fluctuates significantly from year to year. Every other year I minimize ordinary income (e.g. limit Roth conversions, use tax-free MMFs) so that I can harvest cap gains at 0% tax rate. In the off years, I minimize cap gains and i…
  • So long as withholding (plus any estimated taxes paid) cover your 2023 taxes, there's no need to do more. The source of your income (e.g. Roth conversion) doesn't matter - just that you paid in enough to cover taxes. FWIW, I usually make payments…
  • I have a hard time paying a computer even 0.3% for advice. Computer-only service at Vanguard costs 0.15%. All these programs and options do get rather confusing. At 0.30% a real human being at Vanguard will help you with some planning issues lik…
  • There are periods when actively managed funds beat "the market" (aka S&P 500 in this thread). For example, in the 11 years from 1999 through 2009 S&P 500 index funds beat actively managed LC blend funds only once. Given a period when sto…
  • I couldn't find reinvested SP500 TR for that period NYU/Stern spreadsheet: https://pages.stern.nyu.edu/~adamodar/New_Home_Page/datafile/histretSP.html https://www.stern.nyu.edu/~adamodar/pc/datasets/histretSP.xls From the spreadsheet (it uses S&…
  • Market has good times and bad times. Indeed. Another venerable balanced fund, PGEOX, outperformed FPURX for 8.5 years starting 12/31/64, before falling behind in the last 1.5 years of that 10 year span. Funds are not static, they evolve and ada…
  • \\\FPURX from Jan '73 to summer '82, Ray Gun era, way more than doubles. Granted the end period was a time of 15% inflation \\\ Inflation in 1974 (the era of Watergate and Whip Inflation Now) was about the same as inflation in 1980 - a shade over 1…
  • FPURX from Jan '73 to summer '82, Ray Gun era, way more than doubles. Granted the end period was a time of 15% inflation Inflation in 1974 (the era of Watergate and Whip Inflation Now) was about the same as inflation in 1980 - a shade over 12%. T…
  • Or ... we can see now (sort of). Using the conventional 30 year horizon and the usual 4%/year (inflation adjusted) assumed spend down amount, a 20 year cash cushion would result in 80% in cash, 20% invested. Setting aside 5 years of cash would r…
  • But if you look at how long it has taken the SP500 to get back to a previous high permanently, it is 13 years in recent memory, and it took 25 years after September 1929. According to Mark Hulbert, On a dividend- and inflation-adjusted basis, the b…