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.
All true, which is why one is usually better off sticking with vanilla annuities. However, page count is a somewhat misleading metric.
Fixed annuity contracts are self-contained. Unlike mutual fund documentation, they are not broken into multip…
Even intermediate duration bond funds (like SNIDX) normally keep average portfolio duration at 10 years or less.
It's easy to mix up duration and maturity. A 10 year bond with 5% coupon has a duration under seven years.
SNIDX "seeks to mainta…
I haven't thoroughly thought through the ramifications, but a battle over SALT deductions may be looming.
NBC News: Republicans clash over 'SALT' deductions as they seek to extend Trump's tax law
If a cap is maintained, even if raised say to $20K, …
I accidentally snorted out whisky at reading half of these ... I was only trying to find the quote that no one has yet devised, concocted, imagined, or plausibly advocated a use case
https://www.cryptoaltruism.org/blog/15-quotes-about-the-potentia…
I made a lengthy post this morning regarding callable CDs. If anyone is interested in responding to that, I would appreciate it.
Hey, it takes time to compose :-) Done.
At Schwab, major banks are offering long term callable CDs (18 month, 2 year, …
An insurer can "fail" without ever being insolvent.
Never underestimate the ignorance of the investing public.
In 1991, Executive Life Insurance Company of New York (ELNY), the stressed but solvent subsidiary of its insolvent parent, Executive L…
If the only guarantee is from their credit rating, why not look at their or other corporate bonds as well or do annuity products come with some other credit enhancement features that make them better?
I wrote:
In the case of an insurer (the issuer…
Fixed rate deferred annuities, if used as savings vehicles (and not annuitized) are very much like CDs. Like CDs, and unlike funds, stocks, etc., their value cannot go down.
https://www.blueprintincome.com/fixed-annuities-cd-comparison
There is th…
Another observation. Do Fidelity, Schwab, and Vanguard have their own Dow Jones funds? No, they don't. Do they have the SP500? YES.
Years ago, back when Vanguard was providing free financial plans, my mother had them work up a plan. Several years…
I've invested in so many cash, short term, and fixed rate vehicles that I've lost count. The ones that come to mind are: prime MMFs, government MMFs, Treasury only MMFs, national tax free MMFs, single state MMFs, ultra short bond funds, short term …
I appreciate your interest in low stress places to put cash for 2-3 years. Different people have different objectives and that leads to different choices - as you said, that is okay.
2-3 year brokered CDs (callable) paying no more than 4.6%. …
PAAA. Per it's last distributions, it's close to 4.7% on an annual basis
That's about right when one takes the last monthly distribution yield and compounds 12 times (12 months/year). The figure is as of the end of Nov (record date 11/29, ex date …
alarm set for about 10 years
Now just 9½ years.
The public perception may have changed too about their fairness or unfairness.
It seems to me that it did, and in a rather curious way. Despite current antipathy toward "freeloading" government wor…
@Sven, for FRN funds (USFR, TFLO), approx yield = 4.296% + spread - ER.
I am sticking with USFR too.
One can get better yields with Treasury only MMFs, but only through a limited number of brokerages (those offering access to institutional class sha…
Short term yields seem to have anticipated the Fed move. The 1 month yield dropped significantly between Dec 2 (4.75%) and Dec 12 (4.43%), but has been relatively flat since (now 4.43%).
OTOH, the 2 and 10 year rates started their most recent rise…
Nice posts by @Anna. As her citations show, (a) without some adjustment, workers with some income from non-covered jobs will receive an unfair windfall, and (b) the formula used to make this adjustment (the best that could be done at the time it wa…
And he avoids jail time.
As president to be,
He doth go free.
Remember OJ (If it doesn't fit, you must acquit.) He still lost money ($33.5M) in civil court.
Le Grande Orange (with apologies to Rusty Staub) is not absolutely immune to civil p…
#1b (upstream giving) looks like a pretty big loophole for mass affluent/high net worth investors (with significant assets but under roughly half the estate tax exemption limit). This one never occurred to me.
As a loophole, it works with appreci…
M* Grandeur Peak family page:
https://www.morningstar.com/asset-management-companies/grandeur-peak-BN00000E0Z
Average 3 year fund rating: 1.9*
Lost 12% of AUM in past year
Book gains and fund DAF with those gains
I'm confused about what you mean by "book gains". Also, it doesn't look like net effect on taxes comes out to zero.
I'll make this concrete. $40K cost for stock, $64K present value, 15%/22% tax bracket …
msf, here is the key statement from my Original Thread Post regarding CDs that are maturing:
"I am wrestling with renewing at the 4.3% rate, with almost no stress, or jumping back into the more active investing options. Anyone else in a similar si…
I'm not sure who you are suggesting are idiots. If it's the Justices, I might agree:
“It’s less and less clear why we took this case and why you [Nvidia] should win it,” Justice Elena Kagan said at another point during arguments.
This was not a …
When it comes to diversions like this, we are not amused.
There are alternatives other than "he or she" that one can use. Though a substitution may be inexact if one replaces a definite pronoun with an indefinite pronoun.
With AI supposedly bec…
If your total withholding and estimates are at least 100% (or 110%) of last year's taxes, including January's estimates, then you're set. Otherwise you need to pay in at least 90% of what you'll owe this year in order to avoid penalties.
(The hig…
Assume that the market will go up during the year (that happens more years than not). Then if one doesn't need the cash flow from RMDs, one wants to take RMDs late when it's a smaller percentage of an IRA. Conversely, one wants to make Roth convers…
... I also moved a large percentage of my "taxable" Schwab account, in 2023, to CDs in a local Bank account--those Bank Account CDs can be sold before maturity, with a less "painful" early redemption fee. Also, with all of my Schwab brokerage acco…
If you're willing to hold cash-ish (CDs in this case) for a couple of years, then why not take a closer look at RPHIX? If you wait it out a year or two, its minor volatility doesn't matter and it "always" does better than cash.
Portfolio Visualiz…
I guess Elon will be on line applying for food stamps now.
The $110 billion budget for food stamps (SNAP) should just about cover him. Unless he pushes to eliminate SNAP as part of improving government "efficiency".
OTOH, if he does get the opti…
If one is investing directly with a fund, as one can still do at TRP, it doesn't seem that a brokerage clearing house would be involved. After all, these funds and their associated sales/bookkeeping existed long before fund families branched into …
You can cancel any time you like but you can never leave :-)
Anyone remember old mail order record clubs? My vague recollection is that you could cancel any time you wanted (even right after getting those dozen records for a penny). But you were s…
Fidelity ... offers the institutional share class BAFWX (ER 0.61) for $1M.
FWIW (the million dollar question), so does Schwab.
I know some mutual funds allow you to purchase the institutional class shares for about $1000 or $2000, such as Pimco at…
https://client.schwab.com/Trade/MutualFunds/AIPFunds.aspx (login required)
No eligible mutual funds in this account
There aren't any eligible mutual funds in this account for automatic investing.
It seems that not every fund qualifies for automatic …
All you got to do is try it. What is the chance you can't cancel anytime...about zero?
Vanguard explicitly states that in order to get its $3 fee for automatic investments, you must make at least two periodic investments. Though I have never tested…
There's an irony in firms moving to ETFs. When fund supermarkets were taking off, many firms balked at participating. They said that they didn't want to lose information about their investors that they had through direct sales.
Now, by pushing a…
it is assumed that people realize the MF is not updated daily
Likewise, M* does not update etf holdings daily. The TCAF portfolio page says: "Holdings as of Sep 30, 2024". That's the same portfolio date as M* shows for PRWCX.
Their MMF competitors would be Treasury MMFs, both for security quality (Treasuries backed by the US government) and IMHO more importantly, for state income tax exemption.
If you can't find a very cheap Treasury only MMF (e.g. no low min cheap fund…
Old draft - added a bit on Strong Advantage (historical ultra-short fund illustrating the need to look beyond monthly returns if one takes on a little risk). Other than that, text is as drafted. Too much to go back and reedit.
I was a bit surp…
A couple of months ago I drafted up bits and pieces to an older thread on this. Never posted (we were on an extended foreign trip at the time and didn't have a chance to organize). I will dig that up when I've a little more time.
Here's @Junk…
Comparisons are what software tools are for.
Build a M* portfolio with $10,000 worth of PRWCX and around $6,000 worth of TCAF. That is to account for the fact that only about 60% of PRWCX is in equity. So $6K of equity in this portfolio comes …
