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.
Have to agree with @AndyJ about the length of games. I have been taping playoff games and then fast-forwarding between pitches, pitching changes, and between innings. At one point I had David Price taking 30-40 seconds between pitches. I thought MLB…
I like the Red Sox style a lot: fundamentals, two-strike make-contact hitting, running the bases aggressively, etc., vs. the new strikeout-or-homerun offense model that's way too prevalent in the game now. There's a reason Boston had the best record…
* Bank loans and non-agency mortgages are still working, knock on wood.
* U.S. quality equity's doing okay. Health care's done great lately, but may be time for a siesta. Consumer staples have been moving in the right direction, and typically do o…
This is a fine summary of the state of play, and point 4 is worth studying in particular:
http://nymag.com/intelligencer/2018/10/mitch-mcconnell-medicare-social-security-bloomberg-news-entitlements-deficit.html
Excellent, concise; love the bar graph…
I use these two funds to fill in my bond portion of the portfolio along with a short-term bond fund. 30-35% total
@ Bobpa, are you saying you have 65-70% is in stocks? If so, and you're roughly retirement age like a lot of us around here, you've go…
If it's as simple a question as it sounds, then imho it's buy or hold. I've been redirecting $ to both as I've reduced CEF holdings.
Like bee, though, I'm not entirely sure why the question ... you might get more specific replies if you were more …
So, Mike and other MFO brethern, Have you hugged a Native American today?
Welcome, jonesge.
No, not today, but I will give my Cree friend a big hug, like we always do, when our book group meets at the end of the week.
My city's one of quite a few…
Caution advised; Blackrock is staking its whole argument (well, in addition to the obvious tax-equivalent yield argument, which everyone who's ever read anything about t/e munis already knows) on relatively wide discounts, which in itself shouldn't …
Apparently the audiobook ML made about the Weather Service is incorporated into the new book, The Fifth Risk. It covers the attempt to gut the NWS's mission (with limited exceptions, an attempted prohibition on public forecasts!) to boost the fortun…
Lightening up on FI CEFs, concentrating now on Pimco multisectors with significant non-agency mortgage stakes (PCI, PDI, PKO), and adding to FI credit OEFs that are working (loans, mortgages), mainly IOFIX, SEMPX, and EAFAX. Modest equity exposure n…
The article lede is a biased presentation of the Fed data. Note that the data tables also include the median figures. Apparently the not-so-sharp "samurai" got (rightly) dinged for not including the median in his "analysis" under the original header…
This phrasing in the article is prob'ly revealing: "especially those focused on muni bonds and other fixed-income investments...." Munis as a class, yes, but the author (and perhaps his sources) seem to extend the theme to CEFs in general, which isn…
If the Morgan Stanley global fund is too volatile for ya, PGIRX is another growthy, high-P.E. fund with a bit lower downside risk. It's relatively new, but appears to trail MGGPX when growthy stocks rally and beat it when they lag. (M* risk ratings …
If fairly simple tech analysis is your thing, EEM is still deep, deep, deep in death-cross land, with two head fakes since the 50d/200d cross in June. There are several MA, MACD, and/or RSI signals you could use for a buy trigger (no guarantees, of …
What would be the case for investing in SEMPX when you have IOFAX?
Here's the latest fact sheet; see holdings info on p. 2. SEMPX is also a mortgage fund, but as you can see, it's a lot more diversified than IOFIX ... which is almost entirely lega…
Of course it's the producers of commodity ag products, where exports play a big role, that are getting hurt. On the other hand, farmers who produce food for direct local/regional consumption are doing just fine.
Maybe that'll turn out to be the si…
Right, they should just pull a random sample from the morningstar.com forum and run with it ... or, they can prob'ly get all they need from the 791 (and counting) comments on the "How Tiresome ..." thread.
There's a M'star piece on the debt/capital ratio of S&P 500 corps up now.
Short FWIW version: over the past 3y, it's grown beyond the 2009 GFC peak (43% vs. 37.5%). Mid/small caps and foreign have smaller but still fairly significant ratios.
…
Possible triggers for the corp debt bubble going systemic: banks start to tighten standards for "covenant-light" loans, a single-industry cascade of defaults and maybe bankruptcies (frackers appear somewhat vulnerable to such, unless prices jump so …
CBLDX is now on several platforms - such as Schwab, Fidelity, TD, etc.
At Fido it's shown as a TF fund, $250k minimum (same for taxable and retirement).
There's a new (to me, anyway) fund "presentation," as the IOFIX guys call it, up on the site, dated July. Just about everything you ever wanted to know about it, all there in living color ...
Here's a tidbit I'd forgotten: the holdings are almost …
Yer welcome, David. Pimco might take a while to make an offer; I think they're pretty busy answering investor questions about what they're doing renaming and reorienting several of their in-house OEFs.
Impressive performance for 3y, but I might be jittery going forward about a fund comprising "securities backed by credit card receivables, automobiles, aircraft, student loans, and agency and nonagency residential and commercial mortgages ... also .…
For novelty, there's XLC, the first etf based on the new, resorted, reclassified "communications services" sector (old telecom + some tech and discretionary names, including FB, Alphabet, Netflix and others). There are some beaten down elements ther…
There's a good overview of floating rate loans by one of the best SA contributors up now. The specific focus is on CEFs, but the first half or so and bits of the rest are about the sector in general.
Note the subtitle: '"Curb Your Enthusiasm." The…
M* contributor and apparent investment pro acamus set up a terrific site here. I use it and Cef Connect.
I'd recommend ginning up and maintaining a spreadsheet with the data you consider most important to help you make buy/sell decisions. CEF inve…
Manning and Napier was a terrific brokerage with great, steady, conservative funds, out of small city Rochester NY, when it was privately owned by the guys that started it. The company went public in 2011 and hasn't been the same since. Now they hav…
The linkster, of course, doesn't use quotes around his clips, and always follows them with "Regards ...," so anyone new to said poster's proclivities would assume at first glance, knowing how the written language works, that they are his words. Some…
Overreaction, @ Anna, including unwarranted assumptions, to wit: Why do you think my comment is about Ron's post? Why do you think I have a business degree, and what's that got to do with anything? You appear to think I'm a right-winger, which could…
Please implement IGNORE feature where one User does not see posts from another User. Problem solved.
Agree. It can't be that hard to do, given that M* does it.
@ Derf, the timing didn't seem clear to me in the article. I thought it might be that 2m ago was more or less when the pre-tariff stock was dwindling or gone, so anything bought after that would have a tariff cost in it. I just re-read that part of …
On the subject of tariffs the U.S. has implemented, here's a Bespoke piece on the effect on washing machine import volume and prices since that tariff went into place. Note the spike in price: +17.7% in the past two months.
Haven't seen any detail…
Another possibility I heard about recently - thought it might have been here @ MFO, but search doesn't bring it up - is NSDVX, North Star Dividend: $300-ish mil cap, heavy discretionary, very light financials for a small/micro, somewhat overweight s…
For retirees, how aggressive a particular allocation is depends very much on the level of income from pensions, annuities, and/or Social Security. Ted almost certainly has a generous pension from Uncle, and might even be a double dipper, so in this …
