Are You A Schwab Client? Gosh BobC, am I sensing a little hostility here? You used to say (correctly) that TIAA Traditional (what you called the "
traditional bucket") provided "limited options to make changes". But now here you are saying that they
always "treat client dollars as TIAA-CREF dollars and put up all kinds of roadblocks to retain them."
That's a rather curious observation in a thread ostensibly addressing retail customers, and discussing
nonTIAA funds that one might invest in through them. If I invested in, say, TWEIX through a TIAA DIY brokerage account, how would they treat my client dollars as their own?
When I look at their retail after tax VA (Intelligent Life), I see a product that
Kitces praised as being clear and flexible when it came out a decade ago. As far as putting up roadblocks to getting dollars out is concerned, I see TIAA doing just the opposite. With most annuities, at death (if not annuitized), it's possible to keep the money there for years. With this annuity, if it doesn't go to the spouse, the entire annuity must be cashed out immediately.
It is true that the annuity discourages people from leaving (while alive) by dropping the annuity fees to a mere 10 basis points after a decade. If that's the kind of roadblock you were talking about, give me more roadblocks :-)
Looking For a Good Mid-Cap Growth Fund Hi, Simon. I would not get terribly hung up on whether a fund is style-box pure. We use Scout UMBMX. Long-time manager Pat Dunkerley. Great 1, 3, 5, and 10-yr rankings. Strong Sortino. You might also look at Parnassus PARMX. This ESG fund is really quite good. For many client accounts, we use VIMAX as a core, then add active as the "explore" piece.
Gundlach Makes Bearish Call On Stock Market As S&P 500, Nasdaq Hit Records
Nouriel Roubini: Why Are Markets Ignoring The Black Swans?
Macron, France, Euro$, ECB...a few related observations. HEDJ etf
Looking For a Good Mid-Cap Growth Fund Thanks for all the suggestions, much appreciated. I've read a few critical comments about BUFTX and wondered why. It has stable management with a proven track record and expenses are Okayish. I know it used to be a tech fund but that's down to 27% now. I like what I see with AKREX, except it's over 50% large growth.
Are You A Schwab Client? Thanks for the praise, though rather overstated. Thanks also for the reminder that the biggest problem (at least for me) with the BofA cards has been their simultaneous paranoia on card use (e.g. refusing a $
500 car repair charge 1
5 miles from home) and frequent issuing of new numbers (due to security breaches on their end).
To protect against problems abroad, I try to always carry cards from two different issuers. Capital One is an excellent card for that, with 1.
5% and no foreign transaction fee.
Rather surprisingly, Discover Card is also becoming a reasonable alternative (1% and no foreign transaction fee), since it's been
working hard at expanding its
overseas presence in the last couple of years.. The current Fidelity VISA card's also reasonable (2% rewards reduced by a 1% foreign transaction fee).
Are You A Schwab Client? @msf: Thanks for reminding me why I am no longer a BoA credit card customer. Never have we had a card that was compromised more often, requiring issuance of a new card. Worst experience was the day we arrived in Vienna to find the card refused; believe me, you don't want to have to contact customer service from overseas on a hotel line charging you big Euros.
Pretty happy with Jennifer Garner and Capital One, 1.
5% reward in $
50 increments. I'm too dumb to figure out cards with airline miles; or maybe I just don't trust the b€|£¥s.
We could not do without your knowledge, msf. Back in the days when "Car Talk" was live, Tom and Ray used to say that Ray Suarez (PBS) knew everything. They didn't know our guru.
Are You A Schwab Client? I despise "Bank of 34 States" (You can't call yourself "Bank of America" until you are located in all
50 states).
The last thing anyone should strive for is maintaining various account balances with "Bof34" as a strategy to multiply credit card rewards.
I have a lot of respect for most of what
@msf shares here..."Bof34" is not one of them.
Are You A Schwab Client? @BenWP Interesting about the 2% cash back VISA at Schwab being dropped. Fidelity had a simple 2% cash back card offer through AmEx. I think it was in 2014 or 201
5, they negotiated a deal with VISA for the same offer, and upon implementation dropped AmEx.
The Schwab card wasn't exactly dropped; it remained a VISA card, but most of the terms were changed.
Its affiliation with Schwab was dropped. Instead of dealing with FIA Card Services (a subsidiary of BofA), you now deal with BofA. Instead of it being a straight 2% rebate, it's a BofA Cash Rewards card (1%, 2% on supermarkets and warehouse clubs, and 3% on gas). The higher rebates only apply to the first $2
500 per quarter.
While all that may sound worse than the Fidelity card (or Citibank's Double Cash), it added one benefit and retained one legacy benefit from the Schwab card. If you've got various combined balances with BofA/Merrill (including Merrill Edge), the rebates
will be multiplied by 1.2
5, 1.
5, or 1.7
5.
For foreign travel, the card retains the Schwab VISA 0% foreign transaction fee. ("Real" BofA Cash Rewards cards carry a 3% fee.)
Are You A Schwab Client? I've been with Schwab since 1997 and love it. I had a brief dalliance with VG a few years ago with part of my portfolio, but did not care for them. Among other reasons, you can call Schwab 24/7, not so with VG.
Schwab people on the phone are probably the most polite people you will ever talk to. In the 20 years I've been with them, the only time I've been to one of their offices was last fall. I was encouraged by the local rep to come in so I did, but aside from a good conversation it was a waste of time. Everything I need to do is available on the website, or is a quick phone call away with a very nice person (who speaks English).
Their website and its portfolio tools are pretty good. They have a huge selection of NL funds (they don't have everything, nor does anyone else). ETFs are now $4.95 per trade (not really relevant to me, I'm not a trader).
Bogle Says If Everybody Indexed, Markets Would Fail Under Chaos Mind game...
Everyone moves into all index funds, presumably spread out over the whole market. Funds that hold all of the components of an index would skyrocket with their valuations dependent only on how much money was allocated to that index. But the relative value of each stock to the other would remain the same forever, until the SP500 for example delisted a company. Then it's price would drop to close to zero unless it was immediately added to another index
Indexes that rely on a "random" sample of larger universes would jockey to pick the best sampling process because if their returns were better they would get more money. If were truly random then we would really have a "random walk".
But if a company's value was only determined by what index it was in, then there would be no incentive for mangers to improve the bottom line as the stock price would only be determined by popularity of it's index. Large companies wold have access to almost unlimited amounts of capital small companies almost none. More of the smaller ones would go private further exacerbating the situation.
MFO would go dark.
