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.
In the modern conservative, Trumpian view, education is unnecessary and frivolous. What matters most is your “gut” feelings — whether you’re talking about the environment, the economy, immigration or any other issue. Science, higher education and li…
Morningstar has treated its forum like an ugly stepchild for a long time. For that reason and others, I visit the site much less frequently. The main draw for me is the M* Portfolio Manager, and I would seldom visit the site if that became disabled.…
Good article. I particularly like the one about market highs signaling an imminent crash. A lot of investors fall victim to this reasoning and miss a lot of gains.
I wish something like a “10% Rule” was common knowledge when I started working in the 1970s. Nobody talked about saving for retirement then, and the stock market was considered a risky gamble. You could earn 12% interest from a money market account …
To me, the key takeaway is the futility of predicting interest rates. Last fall, it was considered gospel truth that the Fed would continue hiking interest rates through 2019 with some so-called gurus predicting rates as high as 5-6%. That scenario …
I subscribe to The NY Times and their financial coverage is decent. However, I get most of my financial news from free sites. The Fidelity website’s news section is particularly good in this regard as they run selected articles about investing and t…
We are holding off drawing SS as long as possible. My wife started at full retirement age (66), and I’m considering waiting until 70. For us, SS functions as a sort of longevity insurance. Plus, my wife has many close relatives who lived into their …
We’ve currently got about 10% of our total savings in cash right now, the highest in many years. This is due to the relatively high yields of CDs and money markets right now, as well as the low yields for high quality bonds. That, plus we need to ma…
I consider myself pretty financially literate, but I would have missed the fourth question — which was a ringer in my opinion. I’ve never heard of the term interest capitalization before, and I’m not sure how important it is to know. Then again, I h…
I’ve been using Tax Act for electronic filing the past few years. I’ve filled in the returns for 2018 already but haven’t filed yet because I owe money. However, there wasn’t any question asking for my drivers license or other state ID. My biggest g…
Another bond guru making self-serving stock market forecasts, which usually turn out to be wrong. Why does anyone care what a bond manager thinks about stocks?
PSILX, which is TR Price Spectrum International, is another good foreign fund to consider. It’s a fund-of-funds, that is, other TRP funds that invest in foreign and EM stocks.
You better be a very disciplined investor to do that. Although the long term returns for EM might be good, they are extremely inconsistent. Spectacular returns some years, punctuated by equally bad returns other years. Even in good or average years,…
Those who criticize others for having too many funds ignore a common reality. Many investors have different accounts with different funds available to invest in, making it virtually impossible to simplify beyond a certain point. My wife and I both h…
I drink mostly craft ales and beers, which are high in calories, but usually limit consumption to 1 a day. I also like bourbon, which is comparable to scotch or wine in calories. If I had to drink only mainstream beer, I would probably switch to bou…
I’d be willing to bet that much of TRPs underperformance was due to foreign stocks. TRP allocation funds, in particular, tend to have higher percentages of holdings in foreign stocks than comparable funds. Their bond funds also had a rough year. I’v…
Personally, I think bond gurus should stick to their cooking rather than predicting stock market returns and crashes. If nothing else, they have a vested interest in steering investors away from stocks and into bonds. They also tend to have poor rec…
Foreign stock funds have been dead money in my portfolio for many years. My funds all have relatively good long-term returns compared to comparable funds, but foreign stocks in general have sucked for the past decade or longer. That said, I recently…
Ouch! Parnassus has had huge distributions for two years in a row now.
No problem if in an IRA.
I own PRBLX in my IRA as well as taxable accounts. I am keeping the IRA portion, but took advantage of the market correction to make a tax loss sale in …
I randomly chose yesterday to do sell two stock funds in my taxable account for a tax loss sale. Good timing, particularly if the markets drop today or remain steady, because I plan to reinvest in a different fund right away. I never try to time the…
I have avoided foreign banks because of my perception, probably wrong, that returns could be reduced by currency fluctuations— which have destroyed returns for foreign mutual funds. I choose CDs that pay monthly interest so I can reinvest income soo…
I’ve bought a number of new issues CDs though Fidelity in setting up a ladder. Fido has a large number of offerings. I look for issues that pay interest monthly and avoid foreign banks. The first leg of my ladder is a money market yielding 2.1% righ…
Ford had already announced that it would stop producing many of its car models. Pretty soon, the only car they’ll sell will be the Mustang. I looked at Fords for the last new car that I bought 6 years ago, after driving a Ford Ranger for 15+ years, …
The Impala and Volt are most disappointing to me, not that I would buy either. The Impala because it was a nice revival of a classic model that I remember from childhood. The Volt because Chevy/GM has the smarts and know-how to make a great electric…
About 20 years ago, I bought a brand new Ford Ranger for about $10,000 with my trade-in. It was one of the least expensive vehicles you could buy and got decent gas mileage. However, Ford quit selling Rangers in the US, probably because they were so…
I wonder if article was written before the correction in October. Small caps we’re outperforming through September but have faltered badly over the past few months.
The problem is that the tax cuts overwhelmingly benefited the wealthy. However, higher prices from tariffs— which are also taxes— hurt everyone but more so for the poor and middle class.
