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.
That fund has an additional 2.2% in HK. Is that all in HK companies, or does some of that reflect indirect investment in mainland China? The Reuters commentary below says that mainland China companies account for 78% of HK's stock market cap. …
>Heavy volume is slowing our response time to calls on the phone and cases sent by mail. You can call us from 8 a.m. to 5 p.m. ET, Monday through Friday. Please expect long wait times if you need an agent.
Estimated processing times for cases yo…
Several years ago I did a little volunteer work the Homeless Advocacy Project in your city. With a clear mind and sufficient training and education, "the system" can be navigated. Unfortunately, that help or training is too often needed.
The Ho…
Last year when I mailed the tax refund savings bonds I actually did receive, I didn't send them certified. My thinking was:
- if the USPS loses the mail, handing them a tracking number will not locate it (I've gone through that process); or
- if…
No one needs to give you permission to ignore the distinction(s) I have made. Surely, you don't intend to take the side of criminals over the victims of crime? And I'm still against redlining. larryB
*******
crash. Your post rues the day redlining w…
For those without a Bloomberg subscription, the piece is syndicated and can be read here;
https://www.fa-mag.com/news/wall-street-s-mutual-fund-to-etf-magic-trick-is-failing-to-wow-71984.html
By converting an existing fund, issuers hope to bring an…
Great sketch from David. Sure resembles the classic ‘57 Chevy, prettiest car I ever owned.
Which model? Even without seeing the sketch (blocked), I can tell from the URL that it is the high end Bel Air. There were two other models, the 150 and…
The site comes up as potentially compromised in my security software.
No matter. I mispoke. What I was thinking of was front wheel drive.
Rear wheel drive cars have better balance than front wheel drive cars. Because the balance is better, the…
. In western New England, Jim Crow was a thing that never entered our minds.
That was the problem.
Powerful maps: Groundbreaking report exposes ‘redlining’ in Pittsfield’s past that kept Black citizens in poverty cycle
'Jim Crow in everything but …
We each have different memories. Vehicles w/o mirrors are before my time:
The National Traffic and Motor Vehicle Safety Act of 1966 addressed safety standards, including rear visibility, and although it did not specifically require [rear or side] …
msf : Thanks again for covering all the bases. At this time I'm looking at an amended 2021 return.
It occurred to me that I may have been a little loose in saying that divs = qualified divs + nonqualified divs. That's somewhat of a tautology, r…
To add to the skepticism, the timing of the post is curious. "Indicators triggered a sell in early Feb.", yet this sell wasn't posted until the last week of February, right after the worst market decline of the year.
To OJ: if the timing had been…
msf : You mentioned VUSXX in above post. What % is tax exempt from state taxation ?
Another question while I have your ear. Tax info from Van Guard shows % of treasury dividend from a fund. If I take qualified & non qualified dividends & a…
I'm following a similar allocation strategy, though with VUSXX (yielding 4.52%, insignificantly safer [Treasury assets]), and short term T-bills (similar yield to CDs); both fund and T-bills are state and local tax exempt.
The situation with MMFs i…
Everyone's taxonomy is different. For me, cash equivalents are vehicles that I can cash out on relatively short notice (high liquidity) with virtually no credit risk and zero interest rate risk.
FDIC insured checking accounts check all the boxes.…
Large brokerages such as Fidelity offers one-yr non-callable brokered CDs yielding 4.85%. ... Bank CDs are not competitive for my $
Depends on the month and the bank.
Capital One - 5.00% 11 mo online CD
Ally Bank - 5.00% 18 mo online CD
BMO Harr…
The article singles VEDTX out for having a large cap gains distribution. Modest cap gains distributions are not all that unusual. Here's a piece on Vanguard's 2012 ETF distributions, reporting that all but one of Vanguard's bond ETFs distributed…
No access to NYT
(The link is to a subscriber-only newsletter.)
Courtesy of Google:
Cached copy
If that link doesn't work, try doing a Google search on:
warshawsky TIAA annuity
Mark Warshawsky worked for TIAA and wrote a paper about this 20 years…
I first tried instant X-ray before "rolling my own". I couldn't ignore the fact that M* only shows larger holdings.
Two of SCHD's top ten holdings, Lockheed Martin (LMT) and Blackrock (BLK), are not shown to overlap with the S&P 500. (They'r…
msf
I am sure I am not alone in dying to know what (7.) ff is.
The next step follows from my last sentence: "Of course the weightings of each company are completely different in SCHD and S&P 500."
The percentage of holding overlap, independe…
Specifically, if you exclude SCHD's last 25 or so holdings (out of ~100), which contribute a minuscule amount to performance, you do see that the remainder appear to be in SP500 (I'm not 100% positive about this, as I got tired searching within the …
Thank you Lewis. Despite my apparently long winded posts, I have been trying to be somewhat terse. In doing so, I jettisoned nuance.
We're not even in a once in a century pandemic; we're in the middle of at least two. But that's not popular i…
Global hybrids are difficult to find. Two good ones are SGENX & TIBAX, both no-load/NTF at Fido & Schwab. TIBAX also has an unleveraged CEF cousin TBLD that can be bought anywhere.The cheaper TIBIX share class can be purchased (with a TF) in…
Some things can appear so obvious that they become difficult to explain, yet be so unclear to others. I watched an economics teacher struggle to explain something having to do with averages, I forget what. As a 3rd party observer, these differen…
>> what have you done lately
? SCHD longterm performance shows this is, again, a rather misleading way to put it.
>> Had you looked at the same figures at another point in time,
sure, cherrypick away
You pick one trading day out of…
You're proving my point - it's all about "what have you done lately".
Had you looked at the same figures at another point in time, say on SCHD's 10 year anniversary (10/31/2021), SCHD's cumulative performance would have underwhelmed:
10 year: 309.…
I guess I could try switching to physical NYT and Washington Post but the amount of paper we would have to take to the landfill weekly is overwhelming
It's not like the old days, when a Sunday paper could clock in at 12 pounds. These days it seems…
Your cynicism is not unjustified, though the process of introducing streamlined reports was a bit more neutral than that.
From the SEC proposal:
We request comment on the proposed scope of disclosure for the annual report, including the following: …
Over the long term they do slightly better than FXAIX
Do they do any better, or are you just looking relative to a particular moment in time (i.e. now)? Comparing their three year rolling cumulative returns by calendar years (e.g. Jan 2019-Dec 2…
Can’t read Morningstar’s “analyst ratings” because I don’t subscribe.
Try your local library. As I'm typing this, I have the M* analyst (AI) report open from my library.
Here’s the lead-in from Morningstar’s site …
”A middling Parent Pillar rati…
The SEC allows funds a 60 day lag in filing their annual and semiannual reports (also their quarterlies).
https://www.sec.gov/rules/final/33-8393.htm
Worse (or better, depending on your perspective), funds will be phasing in the annual report equiv…
I agree with Yogi that TIAA annuities are solid, low cost investment options. Except for TIAA Traditional, the fact that they are annuities is essentially a non-issue; what matters is the all-in cost.
Prior to SECURE 2.0, annuitized contracts (wh…
@msf, K&LGates link is a good in that it collects various IRA related changes by Secure 2.0.
I think that QLAC, being DIA from retirement accounts, solved one RMD issue in 2014; prior to 2014 change, the DIAs from retirement accounts involved c…
The other new twist is you can convert up to $200,000 ( used to be $160,000 I think) or 25% of your IRA into a QLAC tax free, so you can lower your RMD. I have not dug into it yet, but I think you can pick an annuity date at anytime in the future, …
Let me add : "
Account Service Fee Per Year
(for certain fund account balances below $1,000,000)
$20"
"Certain" means (except for Flagship customers) funds that one holds on Vanguard's legacy mutual fund platform. Not a concern for new Vangua…
I haven't looked, but I'm sure Schwab's .34 ER on MMFs doesn't reflect any discount, so it'll probably go up, too.
As with Vanguard, Schwab's waiver is peanuts; 1 basis point. Not worth a moment's thought.
https://www.schwabassetmanagement.com/pro…
Whether conversions, having the up front tax hit, make sense … that’s a different matter and msf for one has effectively, I think, cast that into doubt. Still, conversions at lower market valuations seem a good idea to me.
Assuming no change in ta…
A few observations about this fund:The fund modified its objective (region) on March 1, 2012. Prior to that, it was the Emerging Europe & Mediterranean Fund. (Summary Prospectus, March 1, 2012)
Russia was always the 800 lb gorilla in the fund,…
I was looking at the 5498 that someone over age 73 received from Fidelity. It mistakenly read:
Our records indicate that you will be 72 or older in 2023. Once you reach age 72, the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) requires that you take a required m…
