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This was a fund I used to own a long time ago offered in a 401k.
This departure is significant news for people who have this fund but a manager leaving the fund when it is lagging isn't as bad as the manager leaving when the fund is riding high! Th…
Defense spending may increase but it won't be because we have some greater threat, it will be showboating in Washington to escape the accusation that we are weak on defense.
The cold war generation is fixated on Russia because they don't really kn…
I suspect it will change again soon as the market is just churning with no leadership for longer term trends. This is the kind of scenario where relative strength calculations fail to provide useful trend information.
Unfortunately, people always make decisions based on recent past than on future.
In an unprecedented time when capital has trounced labor in returns, tax treatment and political clout and likely to continue for at least another 4-5 years before th…
While this number is a good promo for the Walk Street Casino as the lottery blurb "see what a dollar can get you" is to appeal to greed and wishful thinking, what is more relevant to an average investor with various strategies and risk tolerance is …
This is not a problem with the forum. Increasing number of sites serve pages customized to tablets, phones, PCs, etc. Since tablets don't have printing some sites may do things differently when you visit with such a device for print links.
You can …
This seems like Monday night quarterbacking with very little inside information of what happened. External vs internal is always a problem facing any company and there is never a guaranteed solution. Sometimes it works, sometimes not. Not all extern…
Washington can craft a better retirement plan for people without much money than private sector can for them (not enough RoI there). Private sector can craft a better retirement plan for people with money than Washington can for the same people (not…
Used the pullbacks this week to populate my play money portfolio with a hedged country strategy, energy and banking.
Countries aren't all correlated at the moment. I am continuing short position in broad EM (EEV) and China (FXP) until they get stop…
Biotech is behaving like a retail venture capital fund because of barbell return characteristics of the products.
Technically, this is still within the 4-6% expected pull back from the last high as I had posted earlier and so not yet a concern. IBB…
This is becoming even more bizarre than the Gundlach story.
Most likely, we will see Gross departing soon for health reasons and/or to spend more time with his family.
@catch22 is spot on.
Voting based on political ideology screws up the country. Investing based on political ideology screws up your portfolio.
Politics has become the new religion, it seems.
I think Staples still does a lot of sales direct to businesses. Hard to see their retail side continuing much longer, in current form anyway.
Yes, the way to go up against Amazon is to specialize in verticals. Staples has a great customer base in s…
Not sure if you are asking a question to understand or just trying to make a point with gratuitous self-deprecation and feigned moronicity as your site marketing angle. :-)
Why do you think VTSMX is the right index to compare all of those funds? Th…
@maurice, you do have a valid point regarding weighted averages but I feel even that is too academic given the number of ill-informed people, terrible 401k plans etc., that support so many bad funds. The metric relevant to us is whether the small su…
Anybody with the investing knowledge of his wife (which is presumably not much) wife AND the size of trust he is leaving her will do fine with that. That is the only sensible way I can interpret it.
To answer the original question, I have had MAPIX for a long time in my core portfolio but also have FXP in my play portfolio for the current situation that creates a hedge for China weakness.
How do you and others see MAPIX fitting in with MACSX and MPACX?
You don't need all three and the question should rather be how do you see any of these funds fitting in with your total portfolio. If your portfolio strategy is a few funds with wide…
It all depends on the portfolio size in the withdrawal period. Don't know if he mentions the size of the portfolio he is putting in the trust, but my guess is that it is large enough that losing all of the money in the 90% would not make his survivo…
Ted, I have owned the 10 funds marked with an asterisk for 15+ years. Yes, I suppose I could prove it if I had to. But I'm not trying to brag, just trying to understand.
Are you claiming that you only owned those 10 funds (in equities) the last 15+ …
16+% over the last 5 years with 2008 rolling off is not that inconceivable given that a simple 60/40 split portfolio returned about 14% in that period. Risk was well rewarded not punished during that period and even many mistakes made money.
As to …
@cman I'm not sure what index you consider an appropriate benchmark, but morningstar uses Barcley US Aggressive Bonds. LSBDX blows away this benchmark over all periods over and including 1 year. Can't remember when I bought this without looking it …
Not sure what Walk Street vs Main Street has to do with it. Both can equally fool themselves. :-)
I would attribute any over performance if it really exists to allocation skill or luck or both or to a bad benchmark. :-)
But seriously, the more com…
The problem is if you don't put enough to not hurt yourself in a downside scenario, than the returns in an upside scenario will not make a material difference.
It is not possible to predict what an optimal allocation should be for the future becau…
In other words, a 10 year bond can be efficiently priced in a gradual rate movement environment but not in a rapid change environment. Common sense. So, to predict what happens in the next 10 years one would need to make a prediction on volatility w…
This thesis can be true or false depending on how interest rates go up. In general, a steady rise of interest rates has a very different effect on the markets and economy than a spike. A sudden spike (not sure what would cause this) would hurt the h…
@old_skeet, you could make a case that you are managing manager/strategy risk by diversification but such diversification when compared to a correct index in allocation and risk will underperform, especially with the high fees being paid. Just a dom…
Defence sector is up today. Ukraine may trigger return to cold war. Russian Empire is a real threat .
I have completely the opposite view and that neither side can afford a cold war in the economics of today. There are a lot of people that may want…
I don't make long-term holding decisions on these short term wigglies and don't buy them when there is uncertainty from short term events. The +/-1-2% difference it might make is in the noise unless you are deploying significant part of your portfol…
@ted, on my shopping list TO BUY today/tomorrow to exploit the typical over reaction in gold and treasuries to news like this more than any other asset class and they eventually revese course. EEV and FXP previously held are making money for me toda…
Too many people think this is a buying opportunity and short term to make it a good buying opportunity today. Less than 1% drop in futures is not even close to alarm. It is more like buyers waiting and so there will.be some sell pressures to start w…
Nonsensical article. US investors have the most money at risk as a whole compared to any country. That tells you the relative confidence and risk taking behavior.
It is also natural that people with most money at stake are also typically the most …
Scott Burns had been accused of spinning in a previous thread to make a point. This is another example.
The tax isn't a marginal rate on the income but a consequence of the tax deductibility of SS income going away as total income increases. Scott …
In my play money portfolio, closed out QLD for a small profit. Holding EEV and FXP. Recently purchased HYD and URE. Waiting for entry into KBE and/or KRE.
@cman: Thank you for sharing these anticipatory thoughts about asset class rotation. With that in mind, how can one can best invest in the banking sector?
Best regards,
MS
KBE and KRE would be the most direct and pure exposures if one were to do a …
@mrdarcey, my closest parallel for anticipated adoption of Bitcoins is the adoption of voice over IP services which took about a decade to get into mainstream facing hostile telecoms that were threatened by it, governments that feared their use for …
