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.
TCAF and PRWCX are managed funds. Just because their top holdings right now are similar to the S&P index doesn’t mean that they will be in the future. Personally, I think TCAF would be a good complement to SCHD. If you’re going to invest in a ma…
The mortgage on our first house was 10.5% in 1986. Our second house had a mortgage about 8%, but we refinanced to a 15-year loan at 6% a couple years later. We eventually paid it off at that rate.
Doing quite well... the CDs and Treasuries keep dribbling out money like a broken slot machine. I like money!
I’m loving the higher yields. I’m in no hurry for the Fed to drop rates. Every time a CD or Treasury matures, I just buy some more — often …
@yogibearbull - My wife’s grandfather gave her the GE stock more than 40 years ago. We sold portions over the years for down payments on two different homes. It then proceeded to lose much of its value, but my wife doesn’t want to sell it for sentim…
FCNVX, my favorite bond fund of the past year, dropped only 0.1%. USFR actually rose 0.03%, to be expected since it’s a floating rate fund.
Although not a fund, General Electric, was up 1.14% on the day. Don’t ask me about its 5, 10 and 20 year ret…
@Crash - I do not understand your problems with the Fidelity website. I think it’s fantastic. I’ve been one of their customers for 20+ years, so maybe your issues are due to lack of familiarity. I also had an account with TRP for more than 20 years …
I’ve got several funds in the moderately conservative class that might be worth considering. Fidelity offering is FMSDX, which started out with phenomenal returns and is now more typical for the class. TRP’s higher income clone of PRWCX, which is PR…
EM has been nothing but a black hole for me. Sold my two funds with relatively high EM holdings last year, and I’m sleeping better. My best performing EM fund (SFGIX) gained scarcely more than a mediocre bond fund in more than a decade of owning. Ot…
Crazy day on Wall Street on Friday. Bonds got absolutely destroyed, but stocks did well. FCNTX went up nearly 4% in one day! Overall, all of my accounts rose in value, even with huge drops in bond funds. I may go ahead and start redeploying money fr…
I sold all of the muni funds in our taxable account last year and reinvested in CDs and Treasuries, as well as an ultra-short bond fund, FCNVX. My CD- Treasury ladder goes out five years, with more issues on the short end. The yield on munis is so m…
I moved all of my TRP funds to my Fidelity account a couple years ago since all of the funds are NTF at Fido. This has made my life so much simpler. I have kept the TRP funds that have been good performers, but sold the laggards and reinvested in Fi…
I started buying brokered CDs at Fidelity because the yields are higher, they are easy to purchase, and it’s a convenient way to build and maintain a ladder. My credit union used to offer very competitive rates but has not kept pace over the past co…
@MikeM — That’s low for a balanced fund with about 60% of assets in bonds and cash, but one month’s data is not enough time to draw conclusions from. The yield in December 2023 was quite a bit higher — about 3.1% if annualized. FMSDX has a similar a…
I think @Old_Joe has it right. However, I don’t understand why some would buy a jumbo CD requiring a deposit of $100,000 or more when they could buy a brokered CD (fully insured) that yields much more. Makes no sense to me.
I noticed that too because we own PRFCX in three different accounts.
By my calculations, that would amount to a 1.7% yield if it pays at the same rate every month (which is probably unlikely).
I don’t understand your comment. When I check the CD rates at Fidelity, the yields range from about 4.9 to 5.15% through the entire 1-month to 5-year range. The yield curve has flattened some, but the highest rates are still in the short term range …
It may be that TRP created PHEFX as a substitute for other hedge funds, as I know they’ve created other special funds in the past to use in their allocation funds, such as a commodities fund. My main concern is that I don’t like “black box” investme…
@BaluBalu
In addition to RPGAX, TRP uses hedge funds in some of their Spectrum allocation funds, such as TRPBX. In the last two bear markets, TRPBX (which I owned for many years) did not perform any better than most comparable funds. I owned TRPBX f…
I do not understand the interest in hedge funds. Most of them underperform simple market index funds, and some fail spectacularly. T Rowe Price started allocating about 10% of the holdings in their allocation funds several years ago, and I can disce…
FYI, I talked to a Fidelity representative this morning and this is what I found out. My additional shares in PRCFX were purchased at Friday’s closing price. For some reason, the transaction didn’t settle until Monday, but that seems to be irrelevan…
Sorry if I’m being unclear. Here is what happened step by step.
On Thursday, 1/4, I sold $20K in another fund. Fidelity website reported that the sale went through at the closing price Thursday, and that my account had $20,000 cash available to tra…
The settlement date for shares purchased on 12/8 was 12/11. Settlement date for shares purchased on 1/5 was 1/8. Both purchases occurred on a Friday, well before market closing. Both purchases did not settle until closing prices on Monday. In every …
@yogibearbull — I’ve purchased numerous third party funds through Fidelity over the years, and I’ve never had a transaction take so long to settle. This was a cash purchase, not an exchange. In other cases, if I placed an order before 4 pm, the purc…
FYI, I purchased shares in PRCFX 12/8/23 and 1/4/24 through Fidelity. Both transactions took 3-4 days to settle. I’ve never had a fund purchase take so long to settle since I’ve been doing transactions online. I plan to speak to someone at Fidelity …
@Old_Joe — Oftentimes it pays to acknowledge your ignorance. When I first started buying CDs last winter, I was ignorant of some important details— such as whether they are callable. Some more knowledgeable posters pointed that out to me, and I rest…
@SecretAgent - My issue with Matthews was an investment with MAPIX. I owned it for more than 7 years, and it still lost money. I’m a buy and hold investor, and didn’t realize all of the turmoil going on at Matthews — managers leaving, manager change…
The attraction for many, I assume, is for investors locked out of PRWCX due to its prolonged closure. TRP put a hard close on PRWCX many years ago. I jumped on PRFCX when it became available and paired it with TCAF, so hopefully the result will repl…
@Derf — You can pay estimated taxes with the IRS form, or ask the fund company to deduct taxes from the proceeds. You’re better off paying estimated taxes from taxable savings, however, to maximize the size of the Roth conversion.
Nice to know, although I primarily use M* portfolio now as a watch list for intraday market movements. I haven’t updated my portfolios for our various accounts in ages because they are much easier to track and compare on the Fidelity website.
Among the SC funds that I track, FDSCX, Fidelity Small Cap Selector, is among the leaders for every time period going out 15 years. It’s been a steady, reliable performer — unusual for SC funds, which tend to be streaky. I prefer SC blend funds for …
Personally, I find the Fidelity website much more useful now than M*. The only thing I use M* for is a watchlist that follows an ETF portfolio similar to my holdings.
Excellent article, @TheShadow
I’ve invested in some of the funds discussed in the article, but not Bruce. I might still be invested in YACKX but they instituted a hard close, even for existing investors. So I switched to PRBLX, which was all for th…
Your pie charts seem to confirm my view that high foreign investments have hurt its returns. TRPBX’s foreign holdings are much higher than FBALX. I don’t shun foreign investments, but will prefer to use dedicated foreign funds from now on, particula…
2023 went out with a whimper rather than a bang, but it was a better year than most expected. I was most surprised by the rally in bond funds over the past couple months. Also surprised by the performance of foreign funds, which still trailed the S&…
