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 may not be a scam legally but it stinks to high heaven. The portfolio managers who seem like relatives never seem to have managed a mutual fund before or even worked in the financial industry. They work for a company called MediaBistro that org…
You will probably not hear this from bespoke but by their own arbitrary definition, FBIOX is solidly overbought. :-)
If people who believe the same kind of technicals act on them, in the short term, it has upside of another 5-6% before a correction…
Reply to @mrdarcey: It looks like a Roth IRA with just one fund choice at the beginning. Contributions not pre-tax so no implications on taxation. After reaching $15k, it will HAVE to be rolled into a regular ROTH IRA so you can knock yourself out w…
Reply to @equalizer: Yeah, didn't take long for him to tweet about it. He uses his own money rather than other people's money so whatever he wants to do with it....
Like I said, this will be discussed pretty much aligned with political ideologies.
If I were to design this from a financial perspective rather than political perspective somewhat like trying to solve the obesity problem a small step at a time, thi…
I am all for the technology but just don't want to share all my purchase information as well with Google. Don't like the idea of one company having access to such a broad spectrum of personal information from email to calls to browsing habits to loc…
Reply to @mrdarcey: Without getting academic about what is "riskless" and taking its colloquial meaning, TIPS held to maturity is a form of riskless investment that can provide growth with inflation protection. With a tax-deferred retirement account…
Reply to @willmatt72: Just a pesky math thing. You cannot reduce volatility of your existing portfolio by adding another fund correlated with your existing funds. But, if you want to add another world stock fund to the collection, I am sure the grou…
What are you reasons for a single fund to do both worldwide allocation strategies and risk management?
Not that there aren't but it would seem to artificially limit the choices available. Does the portfolio already have too many funds? Is the amou…
Wonderful. "Arbitrariness" explained in many, many words. :-)
There is more money to be made selling subscriptions talking about the 50 day moving averages than trading them.
But there is an aspect of self-fulfilling prophecy to technicals. They …
The recency effect on sentiment is amazing.
It was only a few years ago that people were falling over themselves in media and investor groups to suggest higher and higher allocations to EM with rationalizations of how EM is no longer the EM it was …
Reply to @Ted: Only in the eye of the beholder... or the brain. :-)
The market bounce back should improve the higher than normal level of grouchiness in the restless pack.
Just amused at the loss of value in Carl Icahn's holdings with the recent purchase increasing his stake in AAPL to a billion dollars. I guess he will tweet a lot next few weeks to pump it up.
Reply to @JohnChisum: They don't need that much cash to become a bank. Walmart tried to do this to save card processing fees at their stores. The banking lobby will fight it fiercely so the problem is regulations.
Apple needs the cash buffer becaus…
Reply to @JohnChisum: I have heard this mobile payment as next big thing from several sources. It is no longer watch or TV it appears. While technology is there for either Apple or Google to do this, I wonder how a proprietary system as each of them…
Reply to @davidrmoran: >>> what does have?
Not the point. It is the attempt to make something without practical value imply something of value with equivocation to sell subscriptions.
Reply to @AndyJ: The problem is arbitrariness and equivocation. Works great to sell subscriptions that publishes trading strategies/signals I suppose.
You can define a zone as 1 deviation above some moving average and call it yin and similarly 1 be…
Reply to @Ted: False choice. I think the concepts of oversold and overbought are ill-defined with no practical value other than for making headlines as David suggests or usually talking one's book.
Reply to @Mark: if one were to try to infer from your posts, the general demeanor of the board is passive aggressive?
Still doing the same passive aggressive thing. When you characterize people (incorrectly) as drinking MPT koolaid, it is just offe…
Don't know if everyone is lost in the wilderness but at least some are lost in existential angst.
Mark, you are on a rant mixing up two entirely different views that perhaps irk you. If something, someone said bothers then be direct about it than t…
Reply to @catch22: Asset allocation or the broader portfolio construction is not very well understood and is harder than just choosing a bunch of funds. Not peculiar to this site nor to this domain. People build up a wine collection the same way, by…
Reply to @tp2006: You can leave your current funds be and construct the portfolio here for cash on its own, have it set up before you take a look at existing funds. This simplifies the process a bit so there aren't too many moving parts. Once you do…
There are many different types of global funds and you have to think about why you want the fund in your portfolio.
There are global funds that simply invest globally in some market cap based or some other formula and do no tactical allocations. Th…
An article with convoluted logic and false premises. Best ignored.
Hot money has been coming out of EM for a while now long before Fed started to taper not because of the Fed but because of performance chasing in the US. When EM no longer justifies…
Reply to @bnath001: Stress testing, shortfall and VaR are three of the techniques for risk assessment/management in finance. In the retail investment context, stress testing is only recently becoming popular with companies like hiddenlevers providin…
Reply to @bee: Just so there is no confusion and risk of going off on a tangent here, I am recommending the use of the free tool provided by weatherfont as an unemotional efficient frontier asset allocation tool to create a base portfolio for a DIY …
Reply to @Mark: of course. It tests the assumptions people have made about volatility and risk tolerance. This is why I am a big fan of stress testing tools over shortfall or VaR tools and suggested it for @tp2006. You don't have to wait for days li…
Reply to @mrdarcey: Looks reasonable if one doesn't mind the number of funds. A potential problem with a larger number of funds in the accumulation phase is the ability to do reasonable DCA into each fund with small amounts. This may or may not be a…
Reply to @bee: Not fond of target retirement funds for many reasons for someone with a long time horizon. Fees eat up too much for very little value. The fund which has to market and attract assets every year up to close to target has to make confli…
Reply to @mrdarcey: Excellent questions. I encourage board members to opine as well.
Regarding market efficiency, I think one can safely assume market efficiency over a long investment horizon. It is the small time scales where the assumption might…
Q for @tp2006. Is the portfolio you posted from the tax-deferred tab or the taxable portfolio tab? Please confirm that you have the right portfolio for your circumstance.
This is a very good discussion to have not just for @tp2006 but the whole board. It makes explicit the assumptions/biases behind fund suggestions which are usually left unsaid caught up in the specifics of a fund. It seems sometimes that even the fi…
Reply to @tp2006: Think of this portfolio as a template, don't have to take it literally. You should be able to find 1-1 equivalents at other brokerages if that is the way you want to go. Fidelity has a number of such ETFs with no transaction fee. B…
