Howdy, Stranger!

It looks like you're new here. If you want to get involved, click one of these buttons!

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.
  • MFLDX and AUM
    Similar concerns and uncertainty about PAUDX led me to sell it and invest the proceeds in index funds.
    PAUDX and index funds are really apples/oranges, but right decision short-term, at least. I do think that PAUDX was disappointing last year, but it's a highly conservative fund (I believe the benchmark is CPI + 6.5%?) and anyone expecting home runs from it in general is absolutely going to be disappointed.
  • FInra Examining Trading In New Puerto Rico Bonds
    A very confusing (and confused) article.
    The bonds are CUSIP 74514LE86, with an 8.00% coupon, issued with OID (issue price of 93) for a YTM of 8.727%.
    The requirement is that the face value of bonds in a trade not be less than $100K; not that the value traded be less than $100K. So if bonds trade at issue price (93), you can have a $100K denomination trade where only $93K of money is exchanged.
    Nearly all the trades were above the issue price (i.e. at a premium). None reached 100 (which would be a premium of over 7%). The 10:47 trade on 3/12 the article gave as the highest price of 100 would thus have represented a premium. Calling this "100 cents on the dollar" is at best confusing.
    In any case, that trade was not for $25K face value, but for $400K face value. The price was 96 5/8 (not 100) for a yield of 8.339% (i.e. below the issue yield).
    The decline mentioned at the end of the article was just to 92 (vs the issue price of 93). This resulted in a yield of 8.838%, not "about 8.73%" as reported in the article. That latter rate was the rate at issue, i.e. you'd need a price of 93 for that yield.
    Maybe some of the 75 trades mentioned in the article in denomination (not transaction) amounts under $100K were cancelled, because I count only 48.
    The point of the article (about improper trades because of the small lot size) may be correct; but most of the figures are wrong. My data are from EMMA http://emma.msrb.org
  • Lipper Awards: The Moving Target Of Target-Date Funds
    I've often thought there are really two target dates, one targeting retirement from "work" and one targeting retirement from "earth".
    Fully funding a retirement date fund makes perfect sense. As it glides towards your retirement date it provides a smooth landing at retirement. Effectively, at that retirement date, an investor would effectively have 100% of their assets in a very low risk retirement fund. This is helpful if markets happen to severely correct in those early retirement years, but this portfolio will have longevity risk (may not survive as long as you do). So my thought is to reallocate a portion of this portfolio into more aggressive retirement fund(s) which attempt to achieve portfolio longevity.
    If I was 30 years old today I would be fully fund a 2050 fund. At retirement, a percentage of this low risk retirement fund would be reallocated into a more aggressive retirement fund(s) targeting "earthly retirement". One approach would be to hold one additional fund targeting an earthly retirement date (2085 fund) or it could ladder into a number of retirement funds much like cds or bonds using a 5 year increment (by rolling equal portions of 2050, 2055, 2060, 2065, etc.).
    Your thoughts?
  • Harry Dent Bear Market forcast
    Hi Guys,
    Harry Dent is extremely successful at promoting himself; he is far less successful at promoting wealth accumulation based on his often flawed forecasts.
    Overall, Dent suffers from an abysmal forecasting record. He has a few random successes to his credit, but those few lucky projections have been overpowered by more than a few really dismal calls.
    His basic approach in the past has been grounded in demographics. To oversimplify, from his perspective, more folks equate to a rising GDP growth rate and better market performance. His demographic analyses incorporate a lagging factor based on age. His data show that sometime around age a little North of 50, a person peaks in his spending and productivity levels. His modeling includes this age dependency adjustment. All his analyses seem to incorporate heavy weighting to population changes.
    He has published numerous books that are closely coupled to this simplistic concept. I own a few of them. They are good reading and logically presented. I believe he is just too focused on a single market parameter. Investing is not that easy.
    Dent captures a lot of media attention because of his outlandish, outlier-like predictions. I suspect he purposely adopts this marketing tactic. I imagine that he has earned far more from his book sales than from his personal investments. It is dubious that his clients profit from his outsized predictions.
    Dent ran a mutual fund in the early 2000s. It was called Demographic Trends Fund. He abandoned that venture in 2005.after dissipating over half of the fund’s assets.
    More recently, he projected severe equity market downturns in both 2012 and 2013. These failed predictions give further evidence of his checkered (mostly black) forecasting follies. He is surely consistent, again projecting painful downturns in 2014 and beyond. I suppose mostly because of stagnant population growth worldwide. At some point, he is likely to be randomly right.
    I personally do not trust his forecasts whatsoever. These days I’m more amused than worried when he makes his usual negative prediction. His track record is surely not inspiring great confidence. In my opinion, accepting and acting on his advice and forecasts puts your portfolio at high risk. Once again, buyer beware.
    Best Wishes.
  • DLN or VIG
    ~15% is the max. drop down difference during the great recession, while ~6% is the 2008 drop down difference. Pick your preference for your analysis:-).
  • MFLDX and AUM
    According to the fund report on this site from 2012, the AUM for MFLDX was under 100 million at the end of 2009, and increased 20 times to 2 billion in mid-2012. According to Morningstar, it is now 21.3 billion, which would be an increase of more than 10 times in less than 2 years. The performance of MFLDX has been underwhelming of late. At least compared to the long-short category, according to Morningstar, it is in the 95th percentile for the last 1 month trailing period, 80th percentile for last 3 months, and 60th percentile for last 12 months. The S&P 500 is up 1.45, ytd, whereas MFLDX is down 1.89. It still might not be a long enough time period to judge, but do any of you who follow this fund think the increase in AUM is weighing on its performance, or is it simply going through a rough patch? I have owned this fund for about 3 years, and am wondering if it is now doomed to mediocrity, or worse.
  • DLN or VIG
    Go here and compare VIG. Then hit expand. 2008 performance was FPACX -20.55% VIG -26.65%. That's all you need to know about 2008 returns. That's 6.07%. Ok so I was off .07%. Sue me. :)
    http://performance.morningstar.com/fund/performance-return.action?t=FPACX&region=USA&culture=en-US
  • DLN or VIG
    No offense. I frequently use Yahoo history data to confirm what I learn from MFO discussions. When I find inconsistency, I bring it up to your attention.
    The difference of Max. Drop Down between VIG and FPACX is ~15% based on Yahoo Adjust Price history data.
    VIG: 071009-090309 -46.82%
    FPACX: 080605-081120 -31.63%
  • WealthTrack: Q&A With Ed Perks, Manager, Franklin Income Fund
    I have owned this fund for a good long while … since childhood ... and, I am now sixty six years in age as I write. In 1954, I invested some money in it that my late great grandfather gave me. He told me that he felt this would be a good long term investment vehicle ... and, thus far, it has been. The fund now accounts for about 6.5% of my overall portfolio which consist of fifty two funds and is the portfolio’s single largest holding other than cash. It use to pay a distribution yield of better than eight percent, at one time, and its yield has now dropped back of five percent as more and more investors discover and invest in it. Thus far, I have been a happy camper with it; but, I have not been growing my position in it for a long time now. I feel five percent of most any single investment is plenty to own within my portfolio.
    Through the years I adopted the sleeve system within my portfolio and with this I divided the portfolio into twelve sleeves. There are two cash sleeves (one investment cash consisting of time deposits and one demand cash) ... two income sleeves (one fixed income the other hybrid income) ... four growth and income sleeves (global equity, global hybrid, domestic equity and domestic hybrid) ... and, four growth sleeves (global/foreign & emerging, domestic large/mid, domestic small/mid and a specialty sleeve that can hold just about anything).
    Franklin Income Fund (FKINX) is one of six funds held within my hybrid income sleeve. The others are, listed by their ticker symbols, CAPAX, ISFAX, PGBAX, AZNAX and PASAX. This sleeve is currently the largest sleeve within my portfolio at a little better than twenty one percent.
  • Fund Manager Focus: David Rolfe, Manager, River Park/Wedgewood Retail Fund
    Just doing some early morning checking on my funds and noticed that the ER for RWGFX at Schwab is 1.05, down from 1.14 I think earlier. RWGFX just got better.
  • Risk For A $1M Portfolio

    Ok, so you are saying that I could use a larger portion of my paycheck to fund my 401K and use my inheritance money to pay my bills normally funded by my paycheck. Interesting. I never thought of this concept. Can you think of any downside to using this method?
    Yes, that's what I'm proposing but you'd have to figure in your tax situation to see if it makes sense.
    The downside is that you'd owe taxes on the money you pulled out of your inheritance however that should be offset, if not more so, by the savings incurred by your increased 401k.
    Say you need to put an extra $10k in your 401k to max it out but don't have it. Take $10k out of the inheritance over the year as needed so you can put the $10k in the 401k. On that you'll either pay your nominal tax rate but a on stepped-up cost basis (if the inheritance was in equities or mutual funds) but you'll also reduce your taxable income by the same amount. If you have long-term capital gains on the withdrawals then you may only pay 15% taxes on those while possibly getting a 25% "tax reduction" on the money contributed to the 401k. All depending on your tax brackets.
    Granted you may have to pay more than the long-term rate (15% if its still that) when you withdrawal the money from the 401k since it'll then be taxed at your nominal rate and not as long-term gains as you would be able to do if it was out of the inheritance but in the meantime the money is growing tax-deferred.
    Again, just something to think about.
  • Seeking Alpha Needs To Take Stock Of Its Policies
    cman said; It is just a blogging platform for anybody to write anything even if the attention is negative as in readers blasting the authors for stupid analysis.
    Charles Barkley says(Watch the full 1:18)
    http://www.cbssports.com/video/player/collegebasketball/202593347533/0/buzz-williams-reportedly-signs-deal-with-virginia-tech
    Seriously,This is what I use Seeking Alpha for.The site does not exactly break any headline news but it is an excellent source of financial/investment news/trends throughout most M-F time frames. I use it to track portfolios and I subscribe to Energy/Dividend/Global/and Macro newsletter e-mails.The http://seekingalpha.com/author/michael-filloon/articles and http://seekingalpha.com/author/bdc-buzz/articles are always worth a peek.I seldom look at the site's Investment Ideas tab.I find the site a starting point for possible future investments or watch list candidates.
    Aggregator - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
    en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aggregator Cached
    Aggregator refers to a web site or computer software that aggregates a specific type of information from multiple online sources: Data aggregator, an organization ...
  • DLN or VIG
    I recently learned about SCHD whick is also a good looking choice. I'd be replacing FPACX in my taxable account if I ever decide to go this route. VIG only lost 6% more than FPACX in '08 which is pretty darn impressive considering FPACX only invest %50-60% in stks. At least I think so and I'd be the one taking the risk.
  • Latin America Funds
    "One of the most telltale signs of whether it's a competitive jurisdiction is looking at the scoreboard," Reid Bigland, Chrysler Group LLC's head of U.S. sales, said in a Feb. 12 interview.
    Canada received less than 5 percent of the $42 billion invested in the North American automotive industry in the last five years, Bigland said. IHS Automotive estimates that Mexico will top Canada as the biggest exporter of cars to the U.S. by 2015.
    ‘More Competitive'
    "Some of these other jurisdictions, Mexico in particular, and the U.S., have become significantly more competitive," he said.
    http://finance.yahoo.com/news/buffett-closing-plant-shows-loonie-110001440.html;_ylt=A0LEVjVOryxTCDMA2lgPxQt.;_ylu=X3oDMTBybnV2cXQwBHNlYwNzcgRwb3MDMgRjb2xvA2JmMQR2dGlkAw--
    I bought a little of MXF in the last 10 days
    http://www.themexicofund.com/pdfs/p201402.pdf
  • Latin America Funds
    No. I wouldn't want to go near Brazil/Mexico. If I was, I'd only be interested in Femsa (FMX), Cielo (CIOXY), Ambev (ABEV) and maybe Wal-Mart De Mexico.
    Bill Comes Due For Brazil's Middle Class (WSJ)
    http://online.wsj.com/news/articles/SB10001424052702304795804579097412611960306
    "Part of the problem, some economists say, is that Brazil focused too heavily on policies designed to increase consumption instead of completing ports and roads to help economic production in the long term. Brazilians bought a lot of flat screens during the boom, but the country's ports are still so clogged some ships turn away instead of waiting."