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.
Folks (not just @hank), when you quote something, or even just state a figure, please give the source. The quote above seems to have come from here:
https://lplresearch.com/2022/05/24/how-do-bonds-perform-during-and-after-equity-bear-markets/
I g…
Generally, falling equities are good news for bonds.
Out of 94 years (1928-2021 inclusive), bonds rose over 80% of the time: 76 years (80.8%). Stocks fell in 25 of those years. Random chance would suggest that bonds would rise in 20 of those ye…
One can avoid CG distributions by selling around the distribution. Sell by the record date and repurchase on or after the ex-date. In most years the size of gain one realizes when selling exceeds the size of the potential CG distribution renderi…
Certainly this ETF has underlying assets - JPM bank accounts. In contrast, an iPath ETN has no underlying assets; it is itself an IOU of Barclays.
Think about those ETF assets. They are bank accounts, just general liability IOUs of the bank. A…
Have you considered holding pounds sterling in a US bank account? TIAA (formerly Everbank) is the best known provider, but I believe Cathay Bank and perhaps others offer this type of account as well.
Of course you would pay to exchange dollars fo…
One fund to report - According to CNBC, ARKK is off -57.35%YTD and -65.56% for 1 year. Posted not to dump on Cathie, but to provide some perspective - ie: to show how much highly speculative, highly leveraged stocks have lost this year.
Highly spe…
Real rates to rise across the board
Are you talking about rates for all maturity Treasuries, or various Fed rates (discount rate, Fed funds, ...), or something else? Certainly real rates will rise as inflation declines, unless the cure is worse th…
I've done that and then transferred the shares to a brokerage for convenience. I have seen soft closes where the fund says that shares purchased directly in a new account cannot be transferred for some period of time. But even then, the time lim…
While I won't say that there's never any need for human intervention, ISTM you are stretching the point in raising the task of fund redemptions.
Of course "phone" redemptions can't be done via the web interface, but redemptions can. At least un…
Relating "The Jungle" to the RR workers situation is apt. While people often think of the novel as a critique of the meat packing industry, Sinclair wrote it to illustrate the exploitation of immigrants and laborers.
As he later observed, “I aim…
There were several views but no comments on a previous post on this,
https://www.mutualfundobserver.com/discuss/discussion/60008/m-on-iofix
That was one of several threads I had comments on, but little time now. Quick post ...
Whatever happens, …
According to VBS, the five Treasuries you see at Fidelity is the full list of open auctions. For auctions that are not yet open, there are no indicative yields available for them.
VBS shows the nearest offering for each Treasury maturity period …
Yogi explained things very well. It looks like the only thing you're missing is the definition of YTM (yield to maturity). That's an annualized yield.
So for a bond maturing in 135 days, a 4.08% annual yield translates into approximately 4.0…
JPMorgan is only the latest bank to be raided.
From four months ago:
The German branch of Morgan Stanley was searched by prosecutors in Frankfurt in relation to "past activity" on Tuesday, a spokesperson for the U.S. bank said.
...
A large number o…
Nothing else is required
Something rather important is required. The assumption that active management costs more than passive management. If I manage my portfolio myself, I am actively managing my assets with 0.00% assessed management costs. …
Perhaps M* read the prospectus.
The amounts shown in the table are 0.00% to reflect the fact that the Fund does not pay any advisory, administration or distribution and service fees, and that Loomis, Sayles & Company, L.P. (“Loomis Sayles” or th…
explains that street whores make way more than whorehouse employees, trading wages for risk reduction.
Not here in Ecuador, where ladies of the night work the streets when they can't get employment in the clubs. They make less due to both lower ra…
I believe that the credit union is required to publish a blended APY, combining 4% for 4 months and 1.65% (the current rate for the remainder) for the final 12 months.
See Reg DD Appendix A. This is a stepped rate CD. Section B talks about bl…
the threatened penalty for keeping VG mutual fund account is $20/yr/fund holding. [...]
[...] people also got notices to switch to electronic statements to avoid $20 annual fee. [...] the previous threshold to avoid that fee was $50K in household …
For Vanguard bashers, I believe (not going to check now) that Vanguard will not cancel a Vanguard mutual fund order that has been submitted on its legacy Vanguard fund platform (even hours before closing). It will cancel orders for Vanguard or oth…
Exxon doesn't care who its owners are.
That's a pretty good definition of poor governance - ignoring your shareholders. Ultimately that comes with consequences.
A year ago this month [May], a small hedge fund won an unlikely victory against Exxon…
Making alcoholic beverages is morally wrong
Certainly some ratings penalize (or exclude) the manufacture of alcoholic beverages for moral reasons. However, M*'s Sustainalytics concerns are not moral but (surprise) sustainability:
Based on assess…
Follow the money. M* needs to show these metrics have value:
CHICAGO and AMSTERDAM, April 21, 2020 /PRNewswire/ -- Morningstar, Inc. (Nasdaq: MORN), a leading provider of independent investment research, today announced it has reached an agreement …
In a sense, the mark-to-market prices are not much different from the redemption with early withdrawal penalty. Each represents the price one could get today for offloading a CD. It's just that in one case one is offloading to an arbitrary buyer…
These are features of legacy pages from two iterations ago. M* hid them many months ago, though it has only recently completely disabled them.
In its current iteration (at morningstar.com) one can still compare fund performance by using interacti…
Not directly on point but worth keeping in mind is that active share is only a measure of how many stocks held by a fund are not identical to stocks in its benchmark index. So a 100% active fund could hold Pepsi instead of Coke, UMC instead of TSM…
As one digs a little, it just keeps getting better.
It seems that the 10% performance fee used to be 11%:
https://prdistribution.com/news/tbo-capital-announces-reduction-of-performance-fees-for-all-balances-2.html
The application form lets you sen…
Unexpected large mutual fund year end distribution is where it get sticky.
True enough. Though Uncle Sam doesn't require you to pay taxes on money earned faster than you make it. If you have large YE distributions, Uncle Sam is fine with your pa…
Call me paranoid, but when a "fund" manager says how extensive his experience is but won't detail it in writing (i.e. on the fund site, let alone in the prospectus), that suggests to me that he's worried about putting something dodgy into a legal do…
FWIW, my wife and I both receive pensions and withhold more than enough to cover our taxes from those payments.
That's all you need. If withholdings cover taxes, you do not have to make any estimated payments.
Generally, most taxpayers will a…
Historically, MMFs paid higher rates than bank/CU MMAs. They have to. Why would anyone use a lower yielding, uninsured product that can, and thanks to the Reserve Fund has, lose money?
The GFC and ZIRP turned things upside down. MMF yields wou…
If that late spring conversion was in June (summer began June 21st this year), then the taxes would come under the third quarter (Sept) estimate not the second quarter (June) estimate.
If without the estimated payment you'll still have paid in enou…
Oodles of red flags. Starting with performance that would make Bernie Madoff blush. Not a single losing month from January 2016 through June 2022. (I can hardly wait to see it post July results.) Smooth as silk. Just look at the graph.
htt…
Most credit unions are insured by NCUA, a federal agency.
One of the NCUA’s responsibilities is managing the National Credit Union Share Insurance Fund. It is the NCUSIF that guarantees money in credit union accounts is backed with the full faith…
From the Science piece:
scientists on both sides of the fracking debate agree that it is very unlikely that microfracturing of rock formation itself contributes to the vertical migration of gases. The problem, they say, is with a minority of badly …
Instead of SMVFX (C shares), one could buy the less expensive A shares SAMVX (NTF at Fidelity) or the even better I shares SMVTX (NTF at Schwab). Are you limited to the high ER shares through your workplace or broker? If you still like the fund,…
that there is only one company in the world presently capable of supplying the most advanced chip-manufacturing equipment
A minor point - ASML is the clear leader in lithography, but the manufacture of semiconductors, broadly speaking encompasses …
