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 have been using Firstrade for years and happy with service overall. I can confirm that they do charge loads for load funds, but I still find they have the best selection of funds being offered at NTF AND institutional shares at low minimums in s…
Just received from TDA...
However, the transaction fee for your purchases of funds from certain fund families that do not pay TD Ameritrade for record keeping, shareholder, and other administrative services on the shares purchased will increase to…
Firstrade:
A Short Term Redemption Fee of $19.95 will be applied to redemptions of mutual fund shares held less than 90 days. Broker-Assisted redemptions will incur a charge of $19.95. Redemptions of less than $500 will incur a $19.95 fee, unless th…
That says that Moodys is sticking to its guns, having predicted 4.5% based on last month's data (CPI-W through June). However, unless you expect deflation in the next couple of months (Aug, Sept figures), the Moody's figure is too low.
Assumin…
Here's SSAs summary of ways to make social security solvent. 22 out of the 33 pages are tables with bullet items and brief descriptions of different changes that could be made.
https://www.ssa.gov/OACT/solvency/provisions/summary.pdf
For the gory…
IMHO the headline is clickbait.
The column that is the source of these findings includes the paragraph:
And not just impulsive, but sometimes inebriated: 32% of investors admit they’ve traded stocks while drunk. ... younger investors admit to fa…
I'ves seen an increase in the use of harmonic average, because it supposedly eliminates outliers, is that correct?
Since no data points are excluded in calculating a harmonic average, outliers are not being eliminated. The formula doesn't even i…
I can't say how much BG is getting per dollar under management. But I can address the capacity question.
As of August 31, 2020, the two BG fund managers at the time (Anderson and Coutts) were managing a bit less than $110B, including four mutua…
The two Schroeder managers on VWILX comprise the management for SCIEX. The three B-G managers on VWILX are the three longest tenure (of five) managing BGESX. One of those, Anderson, also co-managed BSGLX from inception until a year ago.
So if I…
In another Bogleheads thread, there is the observation that negative earnings may not be that big a factor in S&P index funds. That is because the S&P indexing methodology excludes nonprofitable companies. Though there would still be a la…
Nice piece by GMO. It's basic enough that at most all one needs is Econ 101, not macro, to follow. But by the same token, it may be glossing over some things.
For example:
The impact of fiscal deficits on the economy is complicated and requires…
Yes, it's just supposed to keep us even-steven. But I can choose NOT to spend that 6.2% and INVEST it! Yaba daba doo.
Which means that the value of the remaining portion of your SS check, i.e. what you're spending, is 6.2% less than last year. …
Here's the relevant data presented in the opinion column:
"consumer prices rose a lot less in July than they did in June."
At least that's two data points (July and June inflation figures) as opposed to the single data point that the Senior Citizen…
Why would any current shareholder continue to own this fund (ARLSX / ALSIX / ARLZX)? It's being changed from a long-short fund (with nearly all assets in US equities or cash) to an international value fund. And it's going to make a huge taxable …
Not to be too much of a wet blanket here, but the point of the COLA adjustment is for SS payments to keep pace with inflation, not to put recipients in a better position. Large adjustment, small adjustment, doesn't matter; the adjustment in real d…
Firstrade offers several actively managed funds' admiral shares e.g. Vanguard Equity Income Admiral VEIRX. NTF.
Though like Vanguard, Firstrade doesn't have a fund screener (just a lookup tool by family or ticker) and offers no cash management se…
Having just spent 1.5 hrs on the phone with Vanguard (a hefty percentage of that on hold), I really do appreciate and share people's frustrations with its customer service. That is still a matter distinct from the website or the ease of fund inves…
When I enter a trade, whether for a Vanguard or non-Vanguard fund, I see:
"Once you've submitted this transaction, you may not be able to cancel or change it."
You're correct about the difference being the nature of the account. I was writing ab…
From personal experience then ...
I was a co-executor for an estate that owned an investment co-op unit. We went to a real estate agent who did a lot of sales in the co-op and asked for a written comp. Six months later (more on that below) we g…
Here I was all set to go with CBO scoring, PAYGO, ten year deficit neutral budgets, how waivers circumvent that (e.g. allowing the 2017 tax cuts despite their soaring deficits). And how there's a fundamental disconnect between the debt ceiling and …
The issue with credit card companies and race seems not to be one currently of gouging with higher interest rates like payday lenders but who companies are offering credit to at all. My reading indicates that many minorities and African Americans es…
In a broad sense, it doesn't matter why the cancellation went through. The fact that any order can be cancelled is enough to disprove the assertion that no orders can be cancelled.
To address your speculation, I just cancelled another order 1/…
I think we're largely in agreement, that "their website could be improved". It's adequate for the essential stuff (buying/selling funds) but there are significant areas for improvement on the nice-to-haves. I certainly wouldn't use it as my prim…
Thanks for giving examples of what bothers you. Some I agree with, some are beyond Vanguard's control, and some don't fall under the rubric "poorly designed and inefficient".
Going one by one, and recognizing that what matters to some doesn't mat…
Vanguard's website for brokerage clients is poorly designed and inefficient.
The "look and feel" reminds me of websites from the late '90s or early aughts!
Do you mean like this one (link is to a capture of Scottrade's login page from June 25, 2004)…
They are too busy paying their employees $1,000 each to get vaccinated
If the concern is about the amount of time expended ("too busy"), ISTM that having a computer cut a one-time check for an employee when a "vaccinated" box is checked off consume…
How to Be Proactive With Your Medicare Options:
planning-for-medicare
A very good piece that mentions many of the gotchas often omitted. For example, articles often note that HSA account money can be used to pay for Medicare premiums, but they don…
ISTM that it's fairly common for fund families to gradually make subsidiary names disappear, unless those names continue to retain significant value.
Nuveen acquired the investment management companies NWQ in 2002 and Santa Barbara in 2005. I don…
Brandywine Global is an investment management company. It provides management services to institutions and high net worth individuals. Its website speaks of investment strategies, not of funds. Looking for funds there would be like going to th…
With the pending acquisition by Virtus, existing shareholders of MERFX will be exempt from the paying load that Virtus is planning to imposed as the investor class will be converted to "A" class shares.
Generally, the A class shares of Virtus fund…
If one is investing from an income stream, dollar cost averaging is about the only way to do it. You can't invest the money before you have it. But if one is sitting on a pile of cash, on average (meaning if one is in this situation multiple time…
From the PR:
Multi-Sector Income Bond will offer exposure primarily to U.S. investment-grade securities, U.S. high-yield corporate securities, and emerging markets debt of all credit quality ratings.
This mirrors the prospectus text:
the Fund w…
I started a position in ATPAX at Vanguard (ntf, $1,000 minimum) For me the fund seems to have similar risk characteristics to OSTIX with the advantage of being sold ntf.
If you're not expecting to hold for an extended period of time, and you're inve…
FWIW, Zack's summary on OSTIX, with the last excerpted statement perhaps being the most important:
https://finance.yahoo.com/news/ostix-strong-bond-fund-now-110011455.htmlIt might be, if the text in Zacks' column preceding the excerpted conclusion …
A fund company is not the same thing as a management company. A fund company is a brand, a distributor. A management company is, well, a company that manages investments. Saying that Vanguard has "a good HY bond fund" (managed by Wellington) m…
It's not quite clear what you mean by "traditional passive investing firm dependent on very low management fees". Vanguard's Primecap funds come with lower management fees than Primecap Odyssey funds, yet they are managed similarly (after allowing …
When Krugman wrote nine years ago that all they need to do is ensure that debt grows more slowly than their tax base, he was talking about solvency. That's also the subject of this thread - raising the debt ceiling so the government doesn't default…
Except for leveraged and inverse ETFs and ETNs, which aren't available at Vanguard.
On January 22, 2019, Vanguard stopped accepting purchases in leveraged or inverse mutual funds, ETFs (exchange-traded funds), or ETNs (exchange-traded notes). If you…
The Krug quote was from 9y ago, as noted, just making the general point, and over long spans. ...
Agreed. Blips over short periods, say one year or even five years, can be the result of so many one-off events that they should generally be disreg…
