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.
There's a difference between complexity and transparency. Transparency calls for, at a minimum, the availability of information. Complexity impedes transparency (if something is there but hard to find, it's less transparent). But the alternati…
@Sven - they're "probably" designed "properly" :-)
Robo (and to a lesser extent hybrid) advisors are designed for simpler situations - asset allocation, growing (or spending down) portfolios, tax loss harvesting, maybe targeting specific goals (amo…
It may depend on the fund. I had two VG Admiral funds that dipped below their min balance requirements (market movement) around the same time. VG converted one (a popular fund) back to Investor shares; the other one it ignored.
I don't recall wh…
Schwab & Wealth Enhancement Group:
Partnering for a Superior Client Experience
https://network.wealthenhancement.com/
From there, follow the full services link to:
https://network.wealthenhancement.com/services
Then to Financial Planning:
ht…
@Observant1 - point noted. Though treating the investments as cash seems to conflict with building goal forecasts by scaling the managed portion of your portfolio to your total portfolio size. The former would lead to a lower projected return ov…
I just got off the call with this guy [at Wealth Enhancement Group]. I was generally impressed. ( While he was not calling form his yacht, he was calling from second home in Maine!) They have a model which will calculate Roth Conversions and expe…
Critics say that many funds may move to more generic names or the rule may limit fund managers' flexibility.
To the extent that this rule change has any effect, I would tend to agree with the critics on the former (move toward generic names). But…
The difference between the individual recommendation and glide paths of various TDFs is likely due to the low (3.03%) withdrawal rate requested. That's quite low compared with the "rule of thumb" 4% or the base case of 4.7% used in this Vanguard p…
SSGA might have a point about SPY appealing to institutional investors.
If it were primarily a matter of cost, then why is SPY still so large? Its ER is more than triple that of IVV ($353B AUM) and of VOO ($334B AUM including all share classes)…
To get compound interest (or cumulative returns) - multiply by each period's (1 + rate).
Here: (1 - 11.94%) x (1 + 12.55%) = 99.11153%, meaning that an investor's got "just" 99% of what they started with at the beginning of 2022.
Shares outstanding (as of Sept 15): 8,450,000
NAV (as of Sept 15): $25.66
=> AUM = $216.827,000
https://www.troweprice.com/personal-investing/tools/fund-research/etf/TCAF
There are people posting here who have or are running funds; they are much…
Rather than the Fed "promising" rate changes, it "expects" or "predicts". That said, even before "early 2022", i.e. in December 2021, it "predicted" three interest rate hikes for 2022.
"The Federal Reserve said [on Dec 15, 2021] it would ... pave…
M* piece on floating rate funds, from mid 2022. It mistakenly says there are only two "medalist" floating rate funds. Fidelity's FFRHX is also a silver medalist.
In addition to the types of floating rate securities Yogi mentioned, there is also …
I'm inclined to think that with respect to advisory services, there are two major axes: degree of assistance desired (ranging from DIY to fully discretionary accounts) and degree of financial complexity involved.
M* suggests that as a first appro…
What is "enhanced" is M*'s revenue stream, as it continues to move features from low/no cost retail investor services to high cost institutional services.
According to M*, "Vanguard and Fidelity Go stood out as the best options, although [it] also assigned above-average scores to Schwab Intelligent Portfolios, Betterment, and Wealthfront." Vanguard scored 4.8 out of 5, Fidelity Go 4.0, Schwab 3.6, B…
Slightly shorter: the grass is always greener ..., and YMMV.
One more anecdote on the former ... A long time ago I opened an account (at Columbia) in an Acorn family fund that was closed except when investing directly with the fund - one of the met…
While Prof. Snowball's suggestions are all worth consideration, the situation is, as he wrote above, more nuanced.
Sometimes getting a gifted share does not enable you to invest more in the fund The Artisan Funds prospectus say that
You may open …
To be clear, the WSJ piece is not about the shopworn lament that retail bond investors, and more specifically retail muni bond investors, pay high transaction costs.
The Hidden Costs of Retail Purchases in Municipal Bonds, S&P Global, June 2022…
Fidelity has a search tool that allows you to search individual Muni bonds by state and category
Be aware that market discount (the difference between the "correct", often par price and the market price) is generally treated as ordinary, taxable in…
The green bonds piece is solid, and the 10 minutes to watch it are well spent.
The Lebenthal ads are mostly for amusement, though he did a good job of getting across the point that munis support infrastructure. Unfortunately, I had a hard time fi…
For decades, Jim Lebenthal sold muni bonds as investments in public works - power plants, sewers, parks, transit, etc. IOW, infrastructure.
But infrastructure ≠ ESG. (Hard to see how a Yankee Stadium muni bond is ESG.)
Here's a 1932 ad for mun…
BTW, MFO isn't user-friendly for tabular materials; often, the URLs have to be reposted/redone; as noted above, colors aren't supported
To preserve spacing, for tabular materials or other text, you can tell the browser that the material is preforma…
As with most other income-based taxes aside from IRMAA, muni bonds are exempt from the Medicare surcharge. That makes the case for munis somewhat stronger.
However, conversion amounts are not directly subject to the Medicare surcharge. Though t…
Lots to comment on here.
- RMDs now begin at age 73, giving an extra "golden year".
- Several states give capped exclusions for retirement income including conversions; this is a consideration in deciding whether to exhaust the Trad IRA (via co…
That's correct, muni income is included in the IRMAA calculation.
However, if you get the same net income (after taxes) from a taxable fund and a muni fund, the muni fund looks better from an IRMAA perspective.
For example, and to simplify arithme…
Getting pushed into a higher tax bracket itself (without other effects like triggering IRMAA) is often not a good enough reason to use munis instead of taxable bonds.
Say you're at the top of the 12% tax bracket. By assumption any extra taxable do…
42-day Auction is a CMB, so it isn't on the regular Treasury Auction Schedule. Some brokers may not offer them.
FWIW, they are also not available through TreasuryDirect. (In reference to another thread, I agree that there is usually little point i…
3rd paragraph - I think you mean Ariel (not Artisan) International. (Fixed! Thanks!)
The next sentence leaves me confused: " Given that Morningstar doesn't track growth and value separately, and Bhansali is a distinctly contrarian, value investor,…
why not buy at brokerage (at Auction or in the secondary market) in the first place?
A rhetorical question but one with a real answer. While many brokerages let you buy and sell Treasuries (at auction or in the secondary market) with no commissio…
Forget that it's called an auction - that's just the way the Treasury sets the offering price of its bills, notes, and bonds. All retail investors get the same price at the auction; they don't bid.
Conceptually, the difference between buying "at a…
Today's auction shows the price for a 13 week T-bill (CUSIP 912796ZD4), maturing 11/30/23 was $98.650167. That seems to exactly match what you wrote you bought.
Auction result:
https://www.treasurydirect.gov/instit/annceresult/press/preanre/202…
I use Fidelity's Full View (eMoney). I'm comfortable handing over some external account information to Fideltiy. If you're not, then as The Finance Buff notes, "You can also choose to always add your account manually if you aren’t comfortable en…
Sometimes you just get lucky. I wouldn't have known about the Internal Revenue rule except that it was in the news just last month. The NASDAQ 100 was "rebalanced" ostensibly to be more diversified. Since this was triggered by large holdings app…
TRBCX has 7.49% of its assets invested in Alphabet stock (6.192% in class C, 1.297% in class A).
This matters because in order to be taxed as a passthrough entity (i.e. the fund itself doesn't pay taxes), it must limit the size of its positions in …
I use it on a computer (downloaded from Symantec, not from App store). No problems.
Looking at the complaints for the mobile phone app, they seem to be concentrated on failure to install correctly (a one-time event, I didn't have a problem), tran…
Multifactor authentication uses two or more different types of authentication, e.g. (1) what you know (login/password), (2) what you have (a physical token), or (3) what you are (biometrics).
https://csrc.nist.gov/glossary/term/multi_factor_authenti…
Krebs' piece observes that "Countless websites and online services use SMS text messages for both password resets and multi-factor authentication." That said, he warns about the risk of using a mobile phone for password resets.
Lose the phone (…
According to the fund page at Northern Trust, ARK was removed on Aug 22, 2022, with responsibility for managing the assets reallocated among the remaining five subadvisors on or about Aug 31, 2022.
https://www.northerntrust.com/united-states/what-we…
That's a false dichotomy.
There are various perspectives including the pragmatic and the principled. Pragmatically, you most likely won't get caught. I take a pragmatic perspective on a daily basis when I jaywalk. I will not be cited. Rudy is…
