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Yep - I’ve owned funds directly with the various companies dating back to the mid 90s. Slow to change. It does impose a certain discipline.
Most are fine companies. Oppenheimer is a mixed bag. Paid a load in the 90s for their “new” commodities fund - a rarity in the day. Went great guns for a few years until they revamped it. Not sure whether the govt. pushed them to do it or what. But it became a real dog for about a decade after they revamped it until they finally shut it down recently.
Converted everything I had there to a Roth in 2015. Don’t want to mess with it for few more years. Have recovered my losses on the commodities fund - and than some. But exercising a lot of caution with those guys at the current time. Their Macquarie Global Infrastructure Fund has a good track record. Don’t know if you were able to dig up its performance before Oppenheimer acquired it recently. I did before buying and the track record was great. Of course, you can’t buy past performance.
Yes, Macquarie is a great "infrastructure" investment company. I guess I overlooked that part lol.
Sometimes you can get rewarded by Fidelity, TD Ameritrade, etc. to transfer assets to them....and bring things "all under one house." Those two brokers have many load waived A-class funds too! Just something to think about if you ever want to simplify
Concerning American Funds, I'm with @Old_Skeet on this one. They have a good number of reasonably low cost funds. Except for possible gaps in their lineup, I don't see why he should have to look outside, simply because other funds are available.
For the most part, what discount brokers like Schwab and Fidelity will sell you are NTF F-1 shares. No wrap account needed, they're treated like any other NTF fund. If you're looking to start out with American Funds, that's a good thing. But if you already have A shares, that's no good, because F-1 shares have slightly higher ERs than Skeet's A shares.
Generally, if a discount broker sells you American Funds A shares, they sell the shares with the applicable load and no extra brokerage commission (fee). You'd have to verify, but that should mean that you can swap A shares within American funds "for free", since the applicable load on an exchange is zero. There should also be no brokerage fee, e.g. Fidelity writes: "Fidelity does not charge a transaction fee on a load fund." Period.
Depending on which AF fund you want and how much work you're willing to do, you may be able to get even cheaper shares. For example, The HSA Authority will sell you R5 shares of RERFX and RGAFX. In their HSA, of course.
Comments
Yep - I’ve owned funds directly with the various companies dating back to the mid 90s. Slow to change. It does impose a certain discipline.
Most are fine companies. Oppenheimer is a mixed bag. Paid a load in the 90s for their “new” commodities fund - a rarity in the day. Went great guns for a few years until they revamped it. Not sure whether the govt. pushed them to do it or what. But it became a real dog for about a decade after they revamped it until they finally shut it down recently.
Converted everything I had there to a Roth in 2015. Don’t want to mess with it for few more years. Have recovered my losses on the commodities fund - and than some. But exercising a lot of caution with those guys at the current time. Their Macquarie Global Infrastructure Fund has a good track record. Don’t know if you were able to dig up its performance before Oppenheimer acquired it recently. I did before buying and the track record was great. Of course, you can’t buy past performance.
Sometimes you can get rewarded by Fidelity, TD Ameritrade, etc. to transfer assets to them....and bring things "all under one house." Those two brokers have many load waived A-class funds too! Just something to think about if you ever want to simplify
Thanks for responding @hank.
(Semiretired at age 70.5 and 68.5.)
We do count our SS as bondlike, as I say.
For the most part, what discount brokers like Schwab and Fidelity will sell you are NTF F-1 shares. No wrap account needed, they're treated like any other NTF fund. If you're looking to start out with American Funds, that's a good thing. But if you already have A shares, that's no good, because F-1 shares have slightly higher ERs than Skeet's A shares.
Generally, if a discount broker sells you American Funds A shares, they sell the shares with the applicable load and no extra brokerage commission (fee). You'd have to verify, but that should mean that you can swap A shares within American funds "for free", since the applicable load on an exchange is zero. There should also be no brokerage fee, e.g. Fidelity writes: "Fidelity does not charge a transaction fee on a load fund." Period.
You can get AMECX (A shares) at Fidelity but not at Schwab (redemptions only). That's because Schwab got out of the business of selling share classes with loads.
Depending on which AF fund you want and how much work you're willing to do, you may be able to get even cheaper shares. For example, The HSA Authority will sell you R5 shares of RERFX and RGAFX. In their HSA, of course.