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.
If you're planning to buy and then sell after 12 months, you can compare your choices:
If you buy now, you'll get 3.56% (six months) + 4.81% (six months) - 1/2 x 4.81% (3 mo. penalty) ≈
1.0356 x 1.024 ≈ 1.060 or 6%
If inflation over the next six …
Neither Roth nor I-Bond is taxed at the federal level. There might, however, be some state tax on the I-Bond
Other way around. Treasury (and related) securities are exempt from state taxes, but with some exceptions are federally taxable.
"*The Fund will not be available for purchase until the closing of the reorganization on or about July 18, 2022."
For anyone still with questions about the Mairs and Power funds' reorganization (creating shell investment companies as series in an e…
My point was one of asset reallocation. If one is thinking of using savings bonds in lieu of other bonds (but not of equity), then one must have bonds in a taxable account to swap. Or in the alternative, rearrange taxable and tax-sheltered holdin…
Not to be too picky here, but the sole assumption in the hypothetical is that the dollar limit is removed. Left in place would be the requirement that savings bonds be purchased directly in a taxable account.
If one would consider trading bond fu…
They provide different levels of human service. The two earlier packages, and likely this new one, are based on Vanguard's robo-advisor.
The Digital Advisor is pure robo. It costs 20 basis pts/year, but that is reduced by the revenue Vanguard ge…
While technically correct, Fido shows monthly distributions for FIPDX at $0.000000001-0.000000002/shr and M* just calls it $0/shr (it tracks dividends to 4 decimal places only). There is a noticeable yearend distribution (from tiny coupon and inflat…
IMHO too much is made of the way mutual funds handle TIPS. (Though for some, it's these details that makes it interesting :-))
In a sense, TIPS funds are no different from other funds. A typical coupon bond fund, e.g. VBTLX, stays fully invested.…
Of course. I checked each fund's availability against that threshold. $1,000,000 will just get you in the door at CMFIX.
You don't think I'd go posting funds with a $100M min?
The M* bank loan category lost money YTD.
By category return, M* means "simply the average of the returns for all the funds in a given category. The standard category average calculation is based on constituents of the category at the end of the …
I wouldn't hold out high hopes that Vanguard will do anything.
I sent secure email to Vanguard on March 29, informing them that a Flagship Select pricing figure on their website was wrong. Two days later I get a response back saying that I had wr…
For those taking RMD's, one could take $5K more at end of year & have all forwarded to IRS as tax payment. Then it is received back as a refund .
You may mean for those over 59½, i.e. for those not subject to early withdrawal penalties. It d…
Don’t like selling at the bottom. ... Umm ... PRIHX is due for a nice bounce ISTM. All it needs to do is finish 2022 at “break even” (0% return) and I’d achieve a 6+% tax free gain between now and year’s end.
Why is the fund due for a nice bounc…
Same investment adviser (Mairs & Power, Inc.), no "change to the ... investment objectives, strategies, or investment policies". What more are you looking for? To compare the prospectus of the current funds and of the new funds?
Current: htt…
One generally has until Jan 15th to make estimated payments for the previous year. For example, one could make estimated payments for 2021 taxes through Jan 18, 2022. (It's the 18th because the 15th is a Saturday, and the following Monday, the …
Savings bonds don't have to be held for years. One can cash them out after a year if one wants. At current rates they'll still net 5%+, which is still "kind of like giving candy away".
"Withdrawals, both the anticipated and the unexpected, come…
I wasn't paying enough attention to your link. My error. I just assumed (without reading the results) that this was the page selected for T. Rowe Price funds.
But I don't think it is something other than a glitch, else one would expect the same…
Nothing sinister here. You'll find a slew of pages describing procedures for converting California corps into Delaware corps. One of the common techniques is to merge the Calif. corp. into a new (shell) Delaware corp. Restructuring mutual fund…
As I and others have written, index funds do not have the ability to take defensive positions; they must attempt to track their index. Case in point, ERUS. Current AUM is $1M ($945K in cash equivalents), current NAV is $0.07.
Blackrock suspend…
A common way to change the legal structure of a company (including an investment company, i.e. mutual fund), is to create a shell company with the desired structure, and then do an M&A. The old company is "moved" into the new structure, and exi…
Yes, I bonds. One can eek out another $5K in savings bond purchases by overpaying on one's Jan 15th tax estimate. Add enough to create a $5K refund to buy the bonds.
The paper bonds are in my name, and I'll send them right back to the Treasur…
You can only "Buy", "Redeem", or "Replace/Reissue" (if lost or stolen).
Going off on a tangent: In addition to lost or stolen savings bonds, one may need to replace a savings bond because it was never received. Last week I received 11 out of 12 …
Yogi offered an excellent estimate of the upcoming I bond rate. I don't know how much of this was done seat of the pants and how much analysis was involved, but here's how the figure can be computed:
8.8% annual rate means 4.31% semi annually: (1…
I view savings bonds as most closely comparable to 1 year CDs, because the savings bonds are locked up for 12 months (actually as little as 11+ 1 day).
After that, while it is true that like longer term CDs, savings bonds may be redeemed early w…
An informative compilation, though one might organize it differently.
The list has multiple share classes for funds (e.g. CWMAX, CWMCX, CWMEX, CWMFX, AWSHX) for (American) Washington Mutual Investors Fund. What, no WSHFX? :-)
On the one hand, i…
If something is truly free, there may be no commercial reason to promote it. And if it isn't really free, there's every reason (aside from a small matter of possible fraud) to promote it as such. Worth keeping in mind when investing in NTF funds…
The Balance page says that the 1952 inflation was 0.8% (not 8%). That was the Y/Y rate for December 1952 as I noted above. In all other months of 1952, e.g. Nov 1951 - Nov 1952, the Y/Y inflation rate was higher. But always 4.3% or less for th…
You heard wrong. Y/Y inflation for 1952 (70 years ago) ranged from a high of 4.3% (Jan) to a low of 0.8% (Dec). Not a year of high inflation.
Y/Y inflation remained below 5% until the spring of 1969. The only double digit Y/Y figures come from…
Between 12/10/2007 and 4/1/2022:
UTF w/div: +185.15% (cumulative)
UTF price: -0.14% (cumulative)
Figures are from M*'s interactive chart for UTF.
Price return is from chart, after setting start date and frequency to "daily".
w/Div comes from chart…
M* finally downgraded ARKK from neutral to negative.
Manager Cathie Wood has since doubled down on her perilous approach in hopes of a repeat of 2020 ... [nearly halving the number of holdings]. ...
[No successor with prior management experience; …
As much as I like John Oliver and feel his pieces including this one are excellent, it is nevertheless dated. As noted in the Nuveen excerpt above, and in the NBC News page (NBC video/AP text) below, about half ($34.3B) of the $70B debt described …
On the legacy RIsk & Return page for a fund, you can click on "Compare". The "Benchmark" select box offers choices including Primary and Secondary Prospectus Benchmarks. Those selections will tell you the benchmark values.
Substitute your fu…
Thanks for that information. Unfortunately, there are a couple of features at Fidelity that one can't be sure work without either trying them out or asking. One is buying a fund with a reduced min in an IRA, and then there's this one - automatic…
If you're buying it in an IRA, the min appears to be $0.00. Still, holding an open position means that you can add to it for $5 instead of having to pay $49.95 to reopen one.
It's not just free, it's "free, free, free, free, free, free, free". Did I forget to mention, it's free?
What I find disturbing is that the disclaimer is written in hidden legalise that is easy to miss or misunderstand. That's especially true fo…
