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.
I guess I'm lucky too; only one mail snafu in the last year - regular mail that took a month to get to its destination about 500 miles away.
My postal carrier says, and I've read this a couple of places besides, that Congress required that USPS pre…
2012 plan:
1. Consolidate funds moderately,
2. No short-term trades (we'll see how that goes),
3. Cut back on volatile investments (in relation to category),
4. Limit trading to strategic moves within allocation bands and occasionally replacing a…
Watch out for that MoneyMorning site. There are a lot of ideological buzzwords in that article, which is usually an indicator the author has a narrow view and can miss a lot of good info that doesn't fit his/her fixed ideas.
Reply to @Anna: Hi Anna, They're going with the tried-and-true Econ 101 notion that the employed do pay payroll taxes, and with the temporary cut in the rate, those people will spend more (it's more likely a tax cut will be spent, rather than saved,…
Great discussion, Ginko and Scott and Max. I'd add a couple of things around the edges about fed budgeting:
1. A surplus/lower deficit in good times allows an uptick in spending support for the economy when it needs it the most, without building u…
The one absolutely hilarious assertion in this thread is that Bloomberg has now or has ever had "a leftward bias." I truly appreciate the laugh-out-loud start to my day!
Hi Bee,
It seems to be in a range - every time it dips below $40, buyers appear.
It may be good to keep an eye on it (I am), but I seriously doubt the last shoe has fallen on euro banks, and it could get ugly. Plus the austerity approach by the …
The funds in question are largely, in effect, a leveraged bet on emerging markets. The strategy will work sometimes, and won't work sometimes. Individual investors can decide themselves if that's what they want in their portfolios, and if they do, i…
Msf - Just fyi, the figures I quoted were currency positions, from the most recent fund report, as of Aug. 31. I see now that M* has a news tidbit with the Oct 31 data, so apparently the portfolio has changed little in those two months.
Yes, it di…
I was curious about GIM, the cef near-cousin of Tgbax, and its rare fall to a discounted price from NAV recently, and found in the most recent report that Asia Pacific constituted 61% of the long positions in the portfolio, with a 23% short on the y…
In the linked article, Jakobsen is writing about the euro vs. the dollar, not the dollar vs. other currencies. I agree with him on that count, for, say, the mid-term, at least.
Any financial panic sends people running to U.S. Treasuries, and it doe…
So many ways to value the U.S. stock market - the Shiller P/E 10 is just below 20, or about 20% above its long-term mean of 16.4.
Only buying in this house lately is around the edges: added to both the S&P 500 index & total bond index in t…
Reply to @johnN: John, no one gets unemployment compensation if they haven't worked at a job and been laid off. If that was a key point in the logic of your, um, exposition, as it appears to be, you might want to rethink/reword it.
12% N. America stock
2% Europe stock
8% Asia-Oz-Lat. Amer. stock
3% highest-beta bond & commodities
15% core-plus bond
40% core bond, including ~15% munis
10% short-term bond
10% sideline cash, available for investment
Largest stock posit…
Max, just to be clear, my earlier comment assumed that you've done the DD, understand what Maptx is, and are willing to take on some risk for long-term Asian growth, which IMHO is still the most compelling investment thesis anywhere.
Maptx has slu…
Hi Max,
If you've studied the country and cap weighting and growth strategy and like it as good Asia diversification, then I'd say go for it - maybe cautiously at first so you don't get too much caught in a downdraft if one comes about. Maptx proba…
The DBL core FI fund (Dlfnx and Dblfx are the investor and inst'l share classes, respectively) is indeed a diversified, intermediate-ish bond fund - currently holding 25% agency mortgages, 22% CMOs, 19% treasuries, 18% U.S. corporates, and 11% forei…
Also, you can get the cheaper Pimco I-shares at Vanguard for $25k minimum and a TF: $20 (both ways, to buy and to sell) if you have $50k or more at Vang. - $35, I think it is, if you have less $ there.
I've trial-owned three OEFs and an ETF of Pim…
Reply to @msf: Interesting that you bring up Rpsix in connection with Vwinx, msf. Rpsix is kind of a clandestine conservative allocation fund; if you count the high-yield and EM bonds toward an 'equity-correlated' percentage of the fund, it has roug…
Reply to @Old_Joe: I almost had my credit card number entered on OldJoe.com, and then I saw that the act now! gift wasn't the Vegamatic I crave (slices! dices! vegetables! French (er, Freedom) fries! Fingers!). I already have several scars and a mis…
Burt,
Fsicx isn't really a go-anywhere fund; it's more of a diversified fund with a default allocation that it sticks pretty close to. It's a pretty palatable (lower risk) way to own some high yield and developed and emerging foreign bonds. Here's…
Reply to @Kaspa: Arivx and Arvix are different share classes; former = investor, latter = institutional. If you buy Arivx the investor shares from the fund company directly, minimums are $2,500 taxable and $500 IRA.
Which brings up a pet peeve: I w…
Reply to @scott: Ah, Scott, but you missed the excitement of the great plunge. I see from the M* chart that $10k invested at Tramx inception would be $7,100 today. Prmsx, the TRP general EM fund, would be $8,600, and W'Tree EM Eq Inc (Dem) $12,600.
Reply to @CathyG:
U.S. market's been range-bound between (in very round numbers) 1100 and 1200 on the S&P5c since the selloff in late July-early August; this (so far) top of the latest bounce is just a tad higher than the past 3 bounces. And t…
Reply to @Investor:
Yeah, those TBTF bankers & traders are sure fickle; you have to be with them 100%, every minute, can't even dole out a single insincere criticism for public consumption while you're shoveling cash out the back door for them…
The link Ken posted refers to the "MetWest Unconstrained Bond Fund (MWCRX, MWCIX) ...." The SEC site has a filing for a fund specifically named "TCW Global Bond Fund," so they're apparently different funds.
T. Rowe Price Global Stock (Prgsx), a bad fund that probably needs no introduction. I had hopes at one point of owning 2-3 no-load, low-minimum global stock funds as the stock part of the portfolio, but gave up on that idea and decided to go the rou…
VF, I've done the same thing all year with Vbltx, Vanguard's long term index. I own a tiny bit, but never ramped it up, while it's racked up huge gains maybe not to be repeated for the next century or so.
Looks to me like the big win for indexes recently is about as much of an artifact of index construction - the winners have happened to be the sector that is the largest by percentage in the index - as it is about the difficulty of running a successf…
There was also a risk score from +2 to -2, I think it was. As a snapshot for a fund you weren't familiar with, the alarm pages were really useful.
The benchmark miss I remember most was that global funds were compared to a foreign-only index. Also…
