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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.
  • CAPD and CAPE Trading Symbols
    Any time I see a post about DSEEX or CAPE I think of poster @davidmoran, who from my memory was the first to bring attention to these funds years ago. I don't catch everything here, but I haven't seen David post lately. Hope all is ok.
  • CAPD and CAPE Trading Symbols
    Maybe, though recognize that correlation is not causation.
    DoubleLine has not especially impressed with its enhanced version of CAPE (DSEEX). It has generated negative "enhancement" relative to CAPD over the past five years (11.13% vs. 12.50%), three years (11.35% vs. 13.50%), and one year (-8.01% vs. -5.86%).
    No matter, they've both underperformed the S&P 500 over the past five years (13.09% return), three years (14.62%), one year (-1.23%). All figures from M*, through June 8th. At least through the last quarter (March 31st), CAPD has outperformed the S&P 500 over the past five, three, and one year periods, though DSEEX remains the worst of the three.
    http://performance.morningstar.com/fund/performance-return.action?t=DSEEX
    (Add CAPD for performance comparisons)
    FWIW, M* reclassified DSEEX as large cap blend in 2019. Until then it had considered the fund to be a large cap value fund. In contrast, CAPD (formerly CAPE) maintains its classification as large cap value.
    https://www.morningstar.com/etfs/arcx/capd/performance
    DoubleLine could be taking a reputational risk as a bond house by starting a CAPE ETF that might outperform the bond-enhanced DSEEX, just as CAPD has outperformed DSEEX. Or perhaps not, since its CAPE ETF is not going to track the CAPE index (unlike the equity portion of DSEEX).
    The ETF's stated "objective is to seek total return which exceeds the total return of the S&P 500 index." (One might ask why then is it using the Schiller CAPE index as a reference, since that's underperformed the S&P 500 for years; but that's a separate question.)
    The ETF merely "considers the underlying constituents of the Shiller Barclays CAPE® US TR USD index ... Because the Fund is actively managed, the Adviser has the discretion to invest in securities not included in the index and may over or underweight a particular sector as it deems appropriate in seeking the Fund's investment objective."
    In short, "the Fund does not seek to track or replicate the Index."
    CAPE ETF Summary Prospectus
  • CAPD and CAPE Trading Symbols
    It appears that DoubleLine, which manages the CAPE-Shiller strategy in a new ETF, got the desirable trading symbol away from Barclays. From my observations, Barclays ran the ETN under the symbol CAPE for several years, but it had to change its symbol to CAPD when the Gundlach team got into the ETF game. DoubleLine has run the MF versions of the strategy since inception, I believe. No idea how this played out behind the scenes. Maybe Barclays isn’t as big a gorilla as the US firm.
  • Stagflation
    If you lived through it you know what it is. This is not it. The term was coined at the time to describe a uniquely troubled economic landscape.
    Not to beg the question @Sven asks, which is a good one. For what I suspect lies ahead …..
    Good companies reasonably priced is one thing I would want to own. I’d want some exposure to foreign currencies either through my fixed income or equity holdings in case the dollar turns south. I’d want a bit in precious metals (5-7%) as a hedge against the unexpected - but I wouldn’t overdo it because they’re very volatile. And of course, I’d want a cash cushion suitable to my risk appetite (or the equivalent in short to intermediate term high quality bonds).
    The above make sense to me in just about any period, but especially as we come off the huge bubble in many assets that has developed and perhaps enter into the end of years of easy money and stimulative monetary policy.
  • Sell JHQAX?? Buy LCORX?
    After I posted my query, trading volume did step up. When CAPE (now CAPD) began trading a few years ago, watching the volume was like waiting for grass seed to sprout. Now it trades robustly. On another thread, I commented on anemic volume of shares in HAPY. That’s still true. Bid and ask prices often are far apart and can lag the market. I am really surprised at the number of transparent and semi-transparent, apparently active, ETFs on offer these days. It’s surprising because an article I read this AM said most ETF volume are goes into passive strategies.
  • Cathie Wood’s Flagship Fund is Down … Money is Still Flowing. WSJ
    Or in the words of David Clayton-Thomas, what goes up must come down ...

    “What goes up, must come down. Right?
    Umm. No. Not necessarily.
    If an object is thrown upward fast enough it will go up and never come down. The minimum speed needed to do this is called the escape velocity.
    No human has ever traveled faster than the escape velocity of the Earth. The Apollo astronauts got very close, but they were headed to the moon, which is trapped by Earth's gravity into a closed orbit. In some sense they didn't really want to escape the Earth. They did manage to travel faster than the escape velocity of the moon, however, which is why they were able to return to the Earth.
    Any spacecraft that has ever traveled to another planet or asteroid has managed to exceed the escape velocity of the Earth. Counting them all is too much work. It's somewhere in the low hundreds. Five space probes are currently on trajectories that will take them out of the solar system, which means they have exceeded the escape velocity of the Sun”

    https://physics.info/gravitation-energy/
  • Proposed HSSA - Health Savings for Seniors Act
    There has to be an escape clause for people putting too much money into HSAs. (Use it or lose it as with FSAs would have made HSAs toxic.) This was always a feature - and always one that came with taxes. Non-medical withdrawals were never triple tax free. The only change being made here is whether a withdrawal penalty is added.
    It's not just Congress saying that IRAs were intended for retirement (though Congress did make that clear in its original legislation). It is the Supreme Court saying the same thing as well, in ruling that inherited IRAs are not retirement accounts deserving of bankruptcy protection.
    In any case, changes involving stretch IRAs did not make formerly tax-free money taxable. They did affect the timing and arguably size of the tax - a quantitative, not qualitative change. Likewise adding a penalty to non-medical withdrawals from HSAs would not make formerly tax-free money taxable since the non-medical withdrawals were never tax-free.
  • NETFLIX
    A root cause is defined as a factor that caused a nonconformance and should be permanently eliminated through process improvement. The root cause is the core issue—the highest-level cause—that sets in motion the entire cause-and-effect reaction that ultimately leads to the problem(s).
    Here's the NYT article on the topic that provides a slightly different take on the causes. I did not see a mention of "the legalization of online sports betting across much of the country" but may have missed it?
    https://www.nytimes.com/2022/04/19/business/netflix-earnings-q1.html#:~:text=In a letter to shareholders,and other emerging streaming services.
    Excerpt:
    ...In a letter to shareholders, Netflix attributed its subscriber loss to a number of factors, including a slowdown in the adoption of broadband and smart TVs; password sharing among households; and increased competition from both traditional cable and broadcast TV and other emerging streaming services. It also cited macroeconomic factors including increased inflation and Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, which prompted Netflix to shut down its service in Russia, reversing the modest subscriber growth in the European region by a loss of 700,000 Russian accounts.
    But a changing landscape in streaming may also be at play...
  • DoubleLine launched two new ETFs

    DoubleLine Shiller CAPE® U.S. Equities ETF (DCPE)
    DoubleLine Opportunistic Bond ETF (DBND)
    https://www.etf.com/sections/daily-etf-watch/doubleline-launches-its-own-etfs?nopaging=1
    Doubleline Funds website is not yet updated to list any ETFs
  • Golden Dragon China PGJ
    Golden Dragon China ETF PGJ is focused on the US-listed Chinese companies that is being affected by several issues:
    1. Potential US delisting. The SEC has now started to list companies that face high delisting risks. This issue has been simmering for a while but is getting hot again.
    2. Russia-Ukraine war has sensitized investors to risks in Chinese stocks if China-Taiwan issue flares up, or Russia relies/leans on China to escape some Western sanctions.
    3. Covid-19 is spreading again in China and some cities have reimposed partial restrictions. The old Chinese policy of zero-tolerance for Covid-19 is also not working.
    These issue have been mentioned within several threads, but this thread is started to collect related information in one place. There are several China funds, but PGJ may uniquely capture multiple China risks in one fund. It peaked in mid-February 2021 when many US speculative stocks also peaked.
    PGJ at ETF.db https://etfdb.com/etf/PGJ/#etf-ticker-profile
    PGJ at Stockcharts (2-yr, reset if defaults to 1-yr; bottom panels show $VXEEM (that is EM "VIX"), $SPX) https://stockcharts.com/h-sc/ui?s=PGJ&p=D&yr=2&mn=0&dy=0&id=p52602404535
    News1 https://finance.yahoo.com/news/china-tech-rout-deepens-amid-020459036.html
    News2 https://www.cnbc.com/2022/03/14/asia-markets-russia-ukraine-war-covid-omicron-wave-in-china-currencies-oil.html
  • Forsyth’s in top form this week …. :) Plus - Recession Approaching & 70s Style Inflation …
    Thanks @Sven. All is well other than being perpetually mired in 15-30 degree temperatures with treacherous ice & snow still covering the landscape of northern Michigan. I’m of the view we who post regularly are an inquisitive and independent thinking bunch. ISTM, however, there are many “lurkers” who rarely if ever post and who are therefore more interested in seeking answers. You can get a rough idea by the number of “views” that appear next to each thread. So I try to be cognizant of a larger community, to be as accurate and circumspect as I can be, and to not mislead anyone.
    Haven’t found a good way to link full Barron’s or WSJ. articles. Always best to get the info right from the source of course.. However, by Googling a few key words from a posted quotation, it is sometimes possible to pull up the entire article online with enough perseverance. What I have done in the past is clip passages on my Fire device from Kindle based WSJ / Barron’s subscriptions; than email them to myself; than do another cut and paste from my computer to the board. Actually a time consuming process involving two different devices.
    Thanks for the link. Saunders is excellent. Remember her from the old Rukeyser show. Unlike me, she hasn’t aged much. I haven’t yet seen anything bad that Schwab puts out. Will view the linked video.
    Regards
    PS - @Sven said: “Also MFO helped me to pick few great funds that I wouldn’t know about.”
    Yes. About half of my funds were first mentioned on either Fund Alarm or MFO over the couple decades I’ve participated in those forums. And a select handful I own were first mentioned at MFO within the last year. Very grateful.
  • Do any of your funds own Dish ?
    Cape Cod where unless you can run your internet off your phone ( hard to do with movies etc) yo have one choice Comcast.
    Verizon shows DSL speeds of around 3Mb in Cape Cod. I've managed to watch television on 1Mb DSL, so in theory you should have enough speed. But I agree, it's not something to use unless there are no alternatives. Xfinity/Comcast seems to have 300Mb (lowest speed) for $29.99 first year, $59.99 2nd year. Plus taxes that's likely the $65 you're hearing about.
    For that money, I'm getting a "free" landline with Verizon FiOS (not an option available to you) as well as internet.
    Consumer Reports just put up a page (for subscribers) describing various streaming services, including what they cost, and what they lack:
    https://www.consumerreports.org/streaming-video/guide-to-streaming-video-services-a4517732799/
    Excerpts of that piece can be found at the link below. It includes the writeups of DirecTV Stream, Fubo TV, Hulu + Live TV, Sling, and YouTube TV. It omits other services covered in the full CR piece including Acorn, Amazon Prime, AMC+, AppleTV+, BritBox, CNN+, Criterion, Discovery+, Disney+, etc.
    https://www.msn.com/en-us/lifestyle/shopping/video-streaming-services-that-let-you-cut-cable-tv/ar-AAV05N6?ocid=msedgntp
    FWIW, I use Sling Blue. $35, streams to up to three devices simultaneously. As opposed to Orange, has more news, less sports, no Disney. It doesn't include CBS or ABC, but in my market it includes the local NBC and Fox affiliates. For the rest, if you're near local broadcast stations, it integrates with AirTV2, a device that will pick up local channels and stream it through your intranet to the Sling app. $49 promo. Once positioned for optimal reception, one doesn't have to worry about getting those rabbit ears near the TV to work well. Doesn't help if you can't pick up local channels, though.
    To tie this back to Dish, Sling is owned by Dish. And since DISH is in the S&P 500, there's a good chance that if you own a broad-based index fund, you own a piece of the company.
  • Do any of your funds own Dish ?
    “We live on Cape Cod where unless you can run your internet off your phone ( hard to do with movies etc) yo have one choice Comcast.”
    I’ve had Starlink for about 18 months and it’s terrific internet at $99 monthly plus a one-time $500 for the equipment. From there you can subscribe to any number of internet TV packages as low as $40 - and on up to the moon. Also some free content.
    BTW - Before getting Starlink I relied for internet on 4G from Visible (owned by Verizon) which had dropped their data caps. By running the 4G streaming feed first into a MacBook (than to a TV) I actually managed to stream movies off of 4G. Less than ideal, but did work reasonably well with the buffering. (Would not work for live TV)
    Just a thought …..
  • Do any of your funds own Dish ?
    We live on Cape Cod where unless you can run your internet off your phone ( hard to do with movies etc) yo have one choice Comcast.
    The recently jacked up prices $30 a month just because they could. We have the basic package for $ 120 ( Little sports, no CNN) to essentially watch local broadcast TV NBC CBS etc, because the nearest station is 80 mile away in Boston.
    I am going to try Sling again for news but in the past when we recorded NBC news they dropped episodes. Rumor is internet only at Comcast costs $65, so we would have $60 to spend on other stuff and still come out ahead.
    Who says America has a competitive market?
  • My Commodities Basket got clobbered today - DBC
    You are right about water funds, @sma3. I own FIW and its industrial tilt has not escaped the market downturn. I have been in and out of KROP (AgTech and Food Innovation), a more indirect play on food price increases. I'm back in now, along with PDBC which also has ag exposure. KROP owns some conventional food companies, but Nutrien and Corteva are its largest holdings.
  • Russian Ruble and Interest Rates: news link
    See some talk about Bitcoin and rubles here
    Some running to Bitcoin to hide assets, escape the collapse in the ruble, some to make it easier to cross borders as a refugee
    Do remember my post from 2 years ago regarding high grade rubies. Don't be surprised if market for high grade gem stones takes off. Inflation is weakening all currencies in real terms, real threat of Cyber warfare crippling financial network
    What happens if Russia escalates, demands removal of NATO weapons back to old borders etc with threats of nuclear war?
    Many more refugees?
    Like I said then you could shove a million bucks of gem stones into your sock and no one would know
    Crazy
    Baseball Fan
  • CAPE is now CAPD
    love that bf cap tm
    someone somewhere tomorrow is going to trade CAPETM
  • CAPE is now CAPD
    Found this press release
    https://www.marketwatch.com/press-release/barclays-announces-the-upcoming-ticker-change-for-the-ipath-shiller-cape-tm-etns-2022-02-17?siteid=bigcharts&dist=bigcharts&tesla=y
    regarding change of symbol, effective tomorrow. What I don’t get is why I could not get a price or bid/ask today at either Schwab or TDA. I do own some CAPE, but today it felt as though someone had walked off with my dough. We’ll see what gives Friday. Très weird if you ask me.
  • I'm Not Sure Wood at ARK ETF Knows What "Soul Searching" Really Is
    Sure. From 18mos ago:
    'It’s very hard to escape the sense that there’s mania now, that this is a FOMO market. When you look at the way that people have piled into the stocks of bankrupt companies like Hertz ....'
  • Seeking Suggestions for Vanguard Asset Allocation Funds
    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 its assets in bonds as an added kicker. That would meet the window dressing bond requirement while providing equity-like returns for better or worse.
    (AA may be the simplest way but it's not the only way to get bonds into the portfolio.)
    For tracking the S&P 500, there's PSPAX, or if one is willing to eat the $8 (max) TF to get better performance, there's PSTKX or MWATX. If one prefers to track CAPE, there's DSENX (or the better performing DSEEX for an extra $8).