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.
Generally, Fidelity funds have a $0 min. Likewise, Schwab offers 60 house funds (Schwab and Laudus) with no mins. In addition, Schwab offers nearly 3K outside funds at a $100 min, including 110 from T. Rowe Price. (All figures are for open, NTF f…
Before I start sounding like a Vanguard apologist, let me say that in my experience Vanguard's human service is inferior to that of other providers including Fidelity, Schwab, and T. Rowe Price (where I've been helped not only with fund investments …
To one extent or another, several of the larger fund companies started offering brokerage services a couple of decades ago or more (Fidelity, Vanguard, T. Rowe Price, American Century).
These days, people think of Fidelity not so much as a fund …
The simple way of computing an average credit rating would be to score AA's as 1, BB's as 2, etc. (with fractional adjustments for AAA, A, etc.). That's what many sources do.
M* instead weights each grade by the risk it represents. BBB bonds …
Hi guys,
Yes, have owned PONAX even before it was that and the ER increase. ...
God bless
the Pudd
PONAX's ER bounces around quite a bit because the SEC requires it to include the costs of traditional leveraging. These are genuine costs: borrowi…
The PIMIX assessment was based solely on PIMIX previous years. In 2018 it was at 18% in its category but making 0.6% is pretty low when PTIAX made 2% and SEMMX made 3.9%.
Possibly the comparison with PTIAX alone was deemed not sufficiently persuasi…
Looking for usenet files that I've got scattered all over the place in backups of backups of backups, I ran across a posting of Ed's that I saved, from mid 1999. We can reasonably figure that I moved to FundAlarm some time early this century.
Tha…
For me it was misc.invest.mutual-funds (with a hyphen :-)) to FundAlarm to MFO. I believe I followed Ed to FundAlarm when nonmoderated Usenet groups became nothing but spam.
PIMIX was a great fund until the beginning of 2018. PIMIX is still a decent fund
I would go with PTIAX. LT good record + good downside protection. 2 more option are TSIIX and ADVNX
2018 returns:
PTIAX: 2.01%
TSIIX: 0.68%
PIMIX: 0.58% (still top qu…
@msf Thanks, your questions have helped greatly in my thought process
I am concerned about my category selection rather than my fund selection.
I purchased an active bond fund because I think active management can add value over passive …
I considered investing in PIMIX a while ago. In the multi-sector bond category, PIMIX had generated top-decile trailing returns with below average volatility. The fund's non-agency mortgage sector investments accounted for much of the strong perform…
I've been curious about this. Independent of the 2005 change in the bankruptcy law (which qualifies as something new since the 80s), the bankruptcy code has a clawback provision. This allows the bankruptcy trustee to go after payments the company…
Are you concerned about your fund selection or your category selection? PIMIX is matching its category average YTD (-0.81% vs -0.78% category) That's not to say you couldn't easily find a multisector fund that's done better short term.
Why di…
In the chart "The Front Line: Visualizing the Occupations with the Highest COVID-19 Risk", they use a numerical scale to measure least to highest risk occupations. Not a percentile. And these are relative numbers not absolutes.
Not percentile of oc…
Latest email update. It sounds like people will be forced to move from mutual fund platform to brokerage platform no later than 2022.We're working toward the retirement of our old investment platform, which supports accounts that only hold Vanguar…
The last line quoted doesn't say that herd immunity may not be possible. It just says that the studies suggest natural herd immunity for SARS-COV-2 can't happen.
The sentence in the CNN piece immediately following the one quoted calls attentio…
@LewisBraham has a good post, but I think it misses another point. @davidrmoran gets closer with his observation "wait, you did the OP and now want someone else to do the work for you?"
More broadly, posts like these containing numbers purporting…
Helen Young Hayes, manager of JAOSX and its older sibling JAWWX (Worldwide) was a headliner in the 90s. The once-vaunted Janus Worldwide has seen a remarkable reversal of fortune. It was once one of the most well-known growth funds around, and wit…
This fund appears to be a short term core plus fund, if not a multisector fund:
The fund may invest up to 35% of its net assets in corporate bonds, bank loans, and other debt instruments that are rated below investment grade (below BBB-, or an equiv…
FWIW, there are a few remaining free Usenet (nntp) servers (for text groups, not binaries). I still find misc.taxes.moderated one of the best places to go for arcane and not so arcane tax issues.
As rono said, many of the unmoderated groups li…
Ford gave the unindicted co-conspirator a "full, free and absolute" pardon for crimes he might have committed.
https://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/ford-pardons-nixon
Even though US is not yet official in recession,
The official definition, such as it is, is whatever the National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER) says is a recession. And NBER said last month:
in deciding whether to identify a recession, the …
Ask and ye shall receive. The first step, anyway ...
WaPo: New York judge gives Trump deadline in lawsuit over tax returns following major Supreme Court ruling
A federal judge in Manhattan has given lawyers for President Trump a Wednesday deadlin…
On its web page (at Wasatch) the Availability line reads:
Closed to most new investors through third party intermediaries
So it ought to be the same as these three other funds - available through direct purchase but not through third parties. Exc…
Doctors can still prescribe the drug for covid-19 because it is approved for other illnesses. But Navarro said the FDA’s safety warning and withdrawal of the emergency authorization had effectively killed demand.
What's the problem? Anyone who wan…
But it seems that Covid-19 isn’t an equal opportunity infector—minorities have suffered more.
I don’t agree with that. It is an equal opportunity infector. It is not an equal opportunity killer. If you are old, you are going to have a reduced immu…
It's hard to see how much value active management could add to treasury funds. There's essentially zero credit risk. The only dimension to play with would seem to be duration.
The short end of the yield curve is usually the steepest, so perhap…
While I generally try to take a longer view rather than be unduly influenced by (relatively) recent experiences, I admit upfront to being biased here by the 2008 collapse of the muni bond insurers.
ISTM that insurers can provide a valuable service…
The reason I linked to the 2015 DOD report rather than the 2019 report is that the former makes reference to more than fortifying its fortresses.The report finds that climate change is a security risk, Pentagon officials said, because it degrades li…
What's the saying? Treasuries are the last refuge of a scoundrel? Nope, that's not quite right. :-)
Still, Treasuries are the last refuge of lots of people. So they tend to hold up better than higher credit risk securities. And when the whol…
@MikeM - thanks for reminding me. Recently I noticed this discrepancy at Fidelity, that you had to dig for the really current yields. I only noticed it by accident.
Fidelity's propensity for quoting old rates means that you have to be carefu…
Money market funds, not bond funds (short term or otherwise). Now offering yields, not what they paid the trailing twelve months.
This piece likewise extrapolated on past performance. It gave current (SEC??) yields, but did not comment on them.…
One of us is misreading this. "ESG managers maintain that environmental and social concerns pose material risks." To invest without consideration of environmental and social impacts is to ignore business risks. (The DOD has declared climate ch…
Why own T-bills when one can own no-penalty CDs, similar maturity, 1% APY, federally insured, fully liquid, and guaranteed not to lose value unlike a T-bill or a corporate bond?
Longer term bonds are another matter. Though as pointed out in the ar…
The funds will still be open via direct investments. So if one should later decide to start a position and hold them through a third party (e.g. a brokerage), one should be able to buy shares directly and then transfer the position.
I did this yea…
John Rekenthaler (M*), The Department of Labor Attempts to Throttle ESG Investing
https://www.morningstar.com/articles/990580/the-department-of-labor-attempts-to-throttle-esg-investing
Would [an ESG fund] be legally protected if it removes all sugg…
