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.
Reply to @reids:
It concerns me, reids. There are other mutual funds that I otherwise like, AUXFX and PIVFX come to mind, for which I have the same concerns. Generally I'd like there to be a few people to bounce ideas off of each other. Vulcan …
I just sold BERWX so my only dedicated small cap holding is GPGOX which is at 17% cash.
My other stock holdings are in global funds which are all small enough (and willing enough) to go significantly into small caps if they find value there. Their…
I'm at a loss to call this article shamelessly misleading or idiotically misleading. It actually says that the dollar hasn't lost 97% of its value because if you had bought a treasury bill with that dollar you would have earned interest on it. One…
I'm curious, how does a fund like this get such a high yield when something like Vanguard's hi yield fund has an SEC yield of 4.37%, a duration of 4.87 years and an average 'B' quality? Is it purely the liquidity issue?
My guess is that someday they'll begin tapering QE while replacing it with some other kind of stimulus (what I have no idea) and that this will go on until a currency crisis occurs. But I warn you, my opinion isn't worth too much more than Alan Gre…
Clem, we must think alike as I went back and forth between pairing FPIVX with FPACX or just going with FPRAX. Decided that the size of FPACX meant that American smallcaps would be ruled out whereas FPRAX is small enough to go anywhere and would als…
Reply to @DavidV:
Elaborating a bit on what David said, TWEBX has the widest latitude with the same investment team, so I'd prefer that one from Tweedy. The only thing wrong with the family seems to be the expense ratios, but the extremely low tu…
Reply to @bee:
True, certainly a solid way to go. Not much foreign, either stocks or bonds, in there, though. You could argue that they're mostly global companies, of course.
Here's my three step plan:
1. Keep investments about 50/50 bonds and stocks. Bitter experience has taught me that I can't time the market.
2. Go global. Not only can I not time the market, I can't tell whether Europe's going to outperform Amer…
Reply to @Vert:
Out of curiosity, I just checked out why the 15 year record of NSEIX should be so much inferior to the 10 year record. I see that NSEIX lost 13.21% in 1999 and lost 16.45% in 2002. I'd almost consider a poor 1999, the great tech …
The fund family has a good record as GARP investors. NSEIX is their most value-oriented offering, accepting lower growth rates for greater yields. It's a family-owned business and the Nicholas family invests very heavily in their own funds, includ…
I'll soon be buying IVSIX. It's run as a conservative global bond fund with a relatively short duration. On the considerably more aggressive side, I just bought a closed-end global bond fund VGI from Virtus. The discount's opened up to over 9% an…
Just a few comments:
1. Is there ever a time when earnings estimates aren't excellent? Everything that I've ever read suggests that analysts are invariably over-optimistic and that their estimates inevitably come down the closer we get to reporti…
Reply to @Charles: You know, I do believe that we have our verb tenses wrong here. The market 'has returned' positive rewards about 70% of the time annually, and these same markets 'have returned' an annual rate that is about 6% over inflation.
…
Dex, you and I are in practically the same circumstances. You might think about adding some stock exposure by way of your IRA. I firmly adhere to Benjamin Graham's suggestion that no one should have any less than 25% of their investable funds in s…
Somebody (Galbraith?) once said that economists don't predict because they know, they predict because they're asked to predict. That goes triple for market predictions!!!!
Two of the three best investing decisions I ever made caused me to 'leave m…
Reply to @AndyJ:
Well, I apologize if I'm being argumentative over a very small point, but passive investing would seem to be a matter of degree rather than any clear 'active/passive' split. If I understand it correctly, a market cap-weighted ind…
Reply to @Ted:
Thank you, Ted. I don't understand how passively following criteria that you've actively chosen makes you a passive investor, but then there are a lot of things in this world that I don't understand.
Isn't this viciously period-dependent? I mean, if you retired in July of 2008 it's wonderful, if you retired in July of 2009 it's terrible. Making up some kind of historical average and pretending that any particular point in time meets that avera…
My impression is that for the purposes of financial planning Social Security is treated as an inflation-adjusted annuity. Isn't that pretty much the equivalent of a TIPS bond? In any event, when determining a stocks/fixed income split of your inve…
No to market timing, yes to stock selection as repeatable skills. This probably explains why I wouldn't even consider buying a high turnover fund (if market timing is a matter of luck then high turnover only increases costs) and also why I really w…
MJG,
I also believe that we'll see smaller returns going forward, but I don't think that implies we should move to passive management. After all, whatever the market returns, active management as a whole can only return the market's return minus a…
If I read David's chart right, this is the ninth time in 15 years we've reached these p/b levels in emerging markets. Out of the last 8 times we've seen 2 subsequent 50% declines, a 25% decline, a 15% decline and a 10% decline (approximately). I w…
I have about 15% in RPHYX for my biggest holding. Also about 11% in FPNIX, 8% in AVEFX, 8% in DHSTX.
Have about 6% in each of several stock funds (VDIGX, NSEIX,FAMVX,TWEBX,TBGVX,FMIJX,FPIVX, FPACX) plus about half that in several small cap funds (…
