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.
I've seen things like this suggested before. As the writer points out, there are two concerns.
The first is volatility, which he addresses by purchasing a ladder at time t0 that mature in 1 year, 2 years, 3 years, and so on.
The second concer…
The ACA pre-existing condition requirement covers ALL health insurance plans unless it’s a grandfathered plan: https://www.hhs.gov/healthcare/about-the-aca/pre-existing-conditions/index.html
The information there is at best poorly written. If it …
Here in California, ARCO has perhaps the lowest cost gasoline. Since the composition of the profit margin for fuel from any gas station is a "black box", it's pointless to wonder what part of the price may be ascribed to anything.
...
ARCO's price d…
"The retailer pays for the card service by incorporating its cost into the price of merchandise."
No, it doesn't have to be that way. A decision has to be made.
I thought it was beyond question that a merchant's costs, all its costs, were covered b…
The retailer pays for the card service by incorporating its cost into the price of merchandise. Everybody pays, regardless of whether they charge their purchase or not. The retailer pockets the excess when a customer pays with cash. That's gr…
CUSIP is correct. See
https://www.farmcreditfunding.com/ffcb_live/debtSecurities/fixedRateBonds.html
Rating by Moody's is AAA. "The Aaa long-term senior unsecured rating on systemwide debt securities issued by the Federal Farm Credit Banks ...…
This seems somewhat like a non-event, given that China is "the largest importer of gas in the world". China is not like Qatar, a major exporter.
In terms of world demand, it doesn't matter whether China exports some LNG and imports more, or exp…
"transactions had been inadvertently omitted from his financial disclosures."
Note use of passive tense to deflect responsibility.
“I take very seriously my responsibility to be transparent about my financial transactions and to avoid any actual or…
Schwab seems to require a brokerage account to have checkwriting in order to use its bill pay feature. (At least it did in 2018, which is the date on this Schwab One bill pay enrollment form.)
It's interesting that Schwab is actively removing cash…
Many brokerages provide cash management services as if they were real banks. For example, Fidelity accounts offer checking ant debit card services. But those services are provided by UMB Bank (routing number 101205681is associated with UMB Bank,…
Until 2013, Visa's and MC's contracts with US merchants forbade them from adding a credit surcharge. However they were permitted to provide a discount for cash payments. That's still the law in NY, and this is how the Supreme Court described it …
No it actually doesn't. For the purpose of calculating the inflation adjustment, only the endpoints are used.
This is much the same as many equity-linked securities work. See, e.g. the point-to-point payout description in Fidelity's descript…
Given that the price of a barrel of oil (WTI) dropped 22.3% in the six months from March through Sept, and that overall energy prices dropped slightly (0.3%) in the same period of time, an overall positive increase in prices over the same six months…
This is because the CPI-W rose only 0.077% M/M. Had it risen as much as the CPI-U (0.04%) then the cost of living adjustment would have been 8.9% (at least according to my arithmetic).
This seems to be a little different than 2012. According to Morningstar, Vanguard switched the benchmark index " on 22 index funds and exchange-traded funds in 2012."
In contrast, VINEX is an actively managed fund. The internals (components) o…
SPRXX = 2.84% 7 day yield (no min)
If you can gather together $100K for FZDXX, you can immediately pull $90K back out. It requires only $10K to maintain. And in an IRA, its min is $10K to open.
The next 3 month T-bill has an anticipated yield of…
Sources please. The cut and paste section came from:
https://smartasset.com/financial-advisor/michigan-inheritance-laws
Its inheritance and estate taxes were created in 1899, but the state repealed them in 2019.
Its estate tax technically remains …
QLAC is just a version of a Deferred Income Annuity, and it has [additional] limitations... It has to be used in a qualified account, has premium limitations, et cetera. But on the other hand, a Deferred Income Annuity pretty much has no limitations…
ISTM the difference between a life estate and a life estate deed is the difference between a piece of real estate and the real estate deed. One is the property, the other is the legal document describing the property.
A little bit of terminology …
@Anna - that's a nice table there on the 2023 brackets. It makes the numbers concrete. Some people work better that way, some people prefer the abstract "Standard", "Standard * 1.4", etc.
Regardless of how one looks at it, the ratios between br…
MAGI calculation for IRMAA includes only the taxable portion of Social Security. The entire amount of SS is included in other MAGI calculations, e.g. for Medicaid. Below is the major part (but not all) of a table from a Congressional Research Rep…
There are various factors that affect net Part B premiums. IRMAA is just one of them. It is almost impossible for IRMAA alone to cause the premium to triple when filing status changes from MFJ to single.
Part B Premium 2022 Coverage (2020 Income…
For the most part I agree and have been incremental Roth conversions for years. But there are also reasons to retain some traditional pre-tax funds. Two charitable issues come to mind:
- It is much more tax efficient to leave T-IRAs to chariti…
It is too bad that funds that liquidate can't just transfer the positions to the sharehoders.
They can, unless they have promised not to (see below). While redemption in kind works for Authorized Participants who arbitrage huge slugs of equities,…
How many of those Vanguard defined contribution accounts are held by people who have only worked for their employer a few years? How many of those participants have other DC accounts at former employers or have additional retirement savings in IRAs…
I agree with your observation. So many posters on this board seem to assert American financial exceptionalism - why invest overseas when the US market is superior? Just go along with Bogle and Buffett. Yet no objection has been raised to using…
Normal annual purchase limits (without special tricks) for individuals for #IBonds has varied:
10/2002 Limit raised to $30K
01/2008 Limit reduced to $5K
01/2012 Limit raised to $10K
https://treasurydirect.gov/indiv/research/history/histtime/histti…
This is just conceptual and largely off the top of my head, so take it for what it's worth. Also, I'm discussing taxable bonds with (original) maturities of more than one year that are not zeros. So this excludes T-bills and STRIPS. In additio…
The rules are different for each fund. I believe that when Core was closed previously, Flagship customers were allowed to invest an unlimited amount, unlike the other Primecaps.
From the prospectus:
The Fund is closed to new accounts for invest…
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…
