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.
This is an opinion of the person who has been right many times in the past:
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Interesting Week Ahead
On Friday, the S&P 500 rallied after breaking through the 100 DMA in the last
hour of trading. The double bottom mentioned in my last post h…
I added to FPACX during that downturn hoping the fund will decrease their cash position and find some stocks to invest after that correction. If not I will have to reconsider my FPACX investment as I do not want to invest into cash.
I think Yacktmans YAFFX is a good example. It is a substantial part of my portfolio and I was disappointed by its performance in 2013 that was below its peers. However the fund showed much better results than its peers during the current recent mark…
Thank you all for your input. My interest is mostly in building a moderate portfolio of active mutual funds. I prefer mutual funds to ETF because I (maybe naively) believe that good fund managers can provide better risk management than just index fu…
David_Snowball: Complexity of asset allocation is not a goal and rather a way to get a better return within the same risk level. I am still wondering whether DIY investors can consistently outperform the best moderate allocation funds (VWELX, FPACC,…
Thank you all for your contribution. Looks like the consensus is Fidelity and Schwab are the best choices overall even though Scottrade has much smaller transaction fee.
Ted, I am OK with TD fund selection. I do not like 6 month holding period for NTF and their MF research tools. I cannot even plot a graph for MF price.
Hi Junkster. What is a definition of short term at Scottrade and what their short term trading fee?
Do they have similar MF selection as other brokerages?
Thank you, Ted. Brokerage reviews usually deal with stock investment. I selected TD Ameritrade long time ago when I invested in stocks and I was quite happy. Now when I switched to mutual funds investment I found many MF specific drawbacks in TD and…
It is not a migration issue as I experienced the same problem before the upgrade.
The Great Owls Funds are not shown in IE 11 browser.
At the end of the page I see a message "Your browser won’t work with iframes".
Is it possible to fix that by conf…
Reply to @cman: I do not argue with you regarding performance predictions based on back testing. Nothing can predict the future. However we have to rely on historical data as that is the only thing we have.
I can add to your point regarding validit…
Reply to @cman: Beta exposure, asset allocation, and any stress testing are also based on historical performance data. They are more broad characteristics than individual fund returns and therefore has less standard deviation. However it is still ba…
Want to replace some from LC blend and value funds with LC growth. I believe that type outperform this year. I could not find open MF that I like and decided to go with ETF. Most etfs perform like S&P 500 and I found only one RPG that beats the …
Reply to @cman: I agree. It could be something like a stable fund that exists in many 401 plans - guaranteed interest (adjusted over time). It will pay more than money market and will be risk free.
PTTDX and DLTNX both are up today like many other domestic bond funds (AGG +0.21%).
All HY Muni bond funds are up - HYD is +0.32%
However HY bonds are down -JNK is -0.73%.
Short term and bank loan bonds are down.
EM bonds are down.
That may give …
Reply to @cman: Flight to safety this time may be different than in the past. There are multiple indications that outflow from equity funds goes to cash and not bonds. Asset allocation funds increase their cash positions and not bonds. In that case …
Reply to @Junkster: HFRZX lost 44% in 2008 and did not recover its loses till now. So it looks like it is a momentum trade right now and requires constant attention from you. Do you think it is a safer bet than stock fund?
I always compare fund perf…
Reply to @bee: You can find useful discussion of bond fund performance during 1940-80
http://www.bogleheads.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=85803
when 10 Y Treasury rate went up from 2 to 14%.
http://www.multpl.com/interest-rate/
My impressi…
Reply to @msf: Thanks. I like MWTIX (M* places it intermediate bond fund category) but it has $3M minimum investment.
I prefer the same approach in bond funds as you leaving to a fund manager a difficult task navigating the bond market and protectin…
Reply to @msf: Total return bond funds , like the ones I quoted, are not very flexible as we could think. For example, they have to keep majority of portfolio in high quality bonds. HYB and emerging market bonds are allowed as very insignificant par…
Reply to @Mark: You are right - I did not compare different editions of "Random Walk". Instead I compared his allocation with traditional 60/40 portfolio.
REITs and dividend stocks may increase equity part in his allocation to about 80%.
I am tryin…
