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.
Also covidtests.gov
https://www.pbs.org/newshour/health/the-federal-website-for-free-virus-tests-is-here-how-does-it-work
This is a rollout that leaves me scratching my head. The current limit is four test per home, regardless of number of people…
I do my one 60-day transfer a year
Be aware that 60 day IRA transfers are restricted to one within a 365 day period, not within a calendar year. One could not, e.g. do a transfer 2/2/22 and then another on 1/12/23.
https://www.irahelp.com/slott…
Junk bonds are somewhat like hybrids - they rise and fall with stocks as well as with bonds. Here's Portfolio Visualizer's correlation matrix of USHY vs. AGG vs. SPY vs SPDO (IG corporate). USHY correlates much more closely with the S&P 500 …
The once and future rules are different for institutional (both prime and muni) MMFs and retail prime and muni MMFs.
Was:
Institutional - floating NAV required, gating and redemption fees with thresholds
Retail - floating NAV not required, gating a…
The original economic impact payments (aka "stimulus checks") were part of the CARES Act that passed Congress by votes of 419-6 in the House and 96 to 0 in the Senate before being signed into law by the Donald.
https://www.congress.gov/bill/116th-co…
This will be a bit painful to do but I will be selling most of my position in MIOPX. I really like the manager -- Kristian Heugh. But there is too much downside risk in his portfolio.
If you like the manager and want to dial down the risk a bit, y…
Perhaps I read a little too much into the comment that "I guess the business is geared to gather AUM". For brokerages, AUM usually means total assets in the brokerage accounts. So gathering AUM would mean pulling money into the brokerage account…
Some [brokerages] may allow scheduling one-time purchase on a later date beyond the common automatic investment plans (AIPs), but that is not triggered by prices.
I suspected as much. Interesting that they would allow pre-set buying but not sellin…
Rather than starting a new thread - a related personal question if I may. I have just one fund outside my IRAs, PRIHX. Having transferred that from TRP to Fido last year “in kind”, I’m curious which will provide tax information? Will a stateme…
I'll say it again: I find Vanguard to be the most ridiculously difficult firm to deal with of all fund shops my wife and I use. I tend not to deal much with financial institutions in their role as fund shops. To the extent that I do, my interact…
I was surprised to find out that Vanguard participates in while Fidelity and Merrill do not participate in payment for order flows.
[and]
To be consistent with Fidelity and Schwab, did Vanguard stop charging commission on sale of transaction fee…
how does one use that information?That's an excellent question. Regardless of the quality of the data, how does a retail investor make use of an IIV? Only an authorized participant (AP) can trade on the difference between the actual NAV (or IIV) …
That's basically it. In addition to the brokerage being willing, the fund itself must assist with the class conversion. FWIW, I held the fund at Fidelity which was willing to do its part, but the fund company would not allow the conversion.
What happened was that investors sold retail fund holdings and purchased institutional fund holdings. Such a move would have been a taxable event had it been done in taxable accounts, but employer plans (e.g. 401(k)s, 403(b)s) are tax sheltered.
…
MyMoneyBlog, citing Bogleheads, has a good explanation of what happened.
https://www.mymoneyblog.com/vanguard-target-retirement-funds-nav-drop-cap-gains-distribution.html
In brief, in early 2021 Vanguard enabled lots of employer plans move money f…
That 15 second delay was enough for the SEC to reject Precidian's original (2014) application for nontransparent ETFs:
The IIV is stale data. Unlike market maker proprietary algorithms, which rely on portfolio transparency and provide market makers …
The IIV (intraday indiciative NAV) is just that, indicative, not necessarily an accurate calculation of the current NAV. First, because it is usually calculated only four times a minute, so the value can be somewhat stale. More interestingly, it…
If a tree falls in a forest but nobody hears it, does it make a sound?
I would think etf NAV's change continually like SPY or QQQ.
If an ETF's holdings have instantaneous values but nobody adds them together moment by moment, does it have intra-day…
M* charts show that MSEGX (Morgan Stanley Inst Growth fund) is down nearly 30% but stock charts show it is down 25% from its recent high on November 16.
To no great surprise, the discrepancy dates to Dec 15, when a cap gain of $18.005 (per Yahoo) …
You are correct, I inadvertently read off YTD rather than 2021 numbers in some cases. Thanks for spotting my errors!
SNGVX really did lose almost a full percent, but you have the correct figure for BBBMX.
GILPX did eek out a 0.02% gain (still effe…
added a conservative allocation fund TAIFX to taxable (really like its holdings, muni’s along with strong underlying equity funds).
A similar fund (the only similar fund I'm aware of) is VTMFX. Cheaper and has outperformed in almost all calendar…
Ave Maria funds were started by Tom Monaghan of Domino Pizza fame. He is a very conservative Catholic who is comfortable with the Dominionist/Integralism belief that religion should be the basis of public law and policy-discussion better suited for …
AVEFX is available NTF at Merrill Edge and at Firstrade (which sells all funds w/o TFs).
At Ave Maria Funds, "Investments are made only in companies that do not violate core teachings of the Catholic Church as set by our distinguished Catholic Advi…
Along those lines, if one of the requirements is just that the fund hold some bonds, one could pick a top performing 85%+ allocation fund. Like GWPFX.
Or even better, pick a fund that tracks a pure equity index using derivatives, with most of i…
But since I use MERFX as a cash substitute, 2%-3% per year is fine with me
The problem is for me a cash substitute fund cannot have sustained a loss greater than 2% in a year, and preferably no loss ever. Why take the risk with such meager returns…
She does NOT like to pay TFs so any non-VG AA funds suggested should be NTF at VG
With $5M in this account alone, she gets 100 free trades (aside from the normally NTF funds) per year. Frenetic trader?
https://investor.vanguard.com/investing/tran…
What ever happened to indexes that actually measured something as opposed to defining investable portfolios? Oh well.
Saying that the AO* series just invest in various combinations of IVV, IJH, IJR, IDEV, IEMG, IUSB, and IAGG doesn't answer the q…
Fair point about the foreign allocation. A drag over the past decade, could be a plus going forward.
I did notice the cash component which is odd. One of the benefits of ETFs (including CEFs) is that unlike OEFs they don't need to keep cash arou…
VSCGX did have a hard 2008. It was a different fund then, with 25% in an asset allocation fund (VAAPX) that could shift between 100% stocks and 100% bonds.
In 2008, VAAPX was (judging from its performance) completely allocated to stocks. It r…
See my concluding sentence in the thread Seeking Suggestions for Vanguard Asset Allocation Funds: "Or even push it to a 30/70 fund (VTINX)."
This vanilla Vanguard fund of funds returned more than AOK over one day (YTD), one year (5.03% vs 4.37%), …
I think you meant: Your job, should you decide to accept it ... This portfolio will self destruct in five years :-)
While active management (I'm a big fan of Wellington) can add some value its impact is marginal compared with the effect of allocat…
Is the object is to get the maximum return for the minimum volatility (which IMHO is not the same as risk, but a subject for another day) with a traditional fixed allocation? That seems to be what's implied by the observation that a 20/80 allocati…
I believe the unnamed article referenced is one from Prof. Snowball:
Investing in 2022: The Indolent Portfolio (Jan 2022), citing
The case for a stock-light portfolio, version 4.0 (April 2021), or
Mutual Fund Commentary Nov 1, 2014
They all referen…
FWIW, the investment manager, IndexIQ appears to have thrown in the towel with respect to index construction.
This fund currently tracks the IQ Real Return Index, developed by IndexIQ LLC. This index targeted a positive real return. The index is…
It is complicated. I am not sure why there is so much focus on the "4%" rule when the IRS forces people over 75 to remove 4.07% of your retirement accounts. By 80 it is up to almost 5%.
This conflates 4% of starting amount (inflation adjusted) wit…
M* makes it easy to look up recent performance of the top 25 holdings. Or in the case of LLPFX, all 17 equity holdings. One can go to the M* legacy holdings page for a fund, get links for each of the top 25 holdings, click on those links and from…
While I have a slight personal preference for Fidelity, Schwab is an excellent brokerage and currently shows 3,164 funds there that are open to new investors with a min of $100 or less. Good for starting out.
Though a good approach might also …
Conservative-allocation (CA2) 30-50% VTMFX +12.63%.
VTMFX looks even better when one considers that the income side is federally tax-exempt.
Interesting factoid I wasn't aware of from M*'s writeup of the fund:
"they have to maintain at least 50% …
ytd VONE + STIP 50-50 = ½ x 25.48% + ½ x 5.38% = 15.43%.
That would not be the best way to do the calculation since the lack of rebalancing implicit in the arithmetic would see the equity allocation drift up toward:1.2548/(1.2548 + 1.0538) = 54%. …
I feel that the perceived decline in fund fees is largely illusory once one controls for: payment to advisors (which has been externalized, moving the source from 12b-1 fees and loads out of the funds to separate wrap fees); the increase in the rela…
