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.
Support MFO
Donate through PayPal
LewisBraham
Hi Hank,
Your satire came across very well. Don't worry about the user name.
Best,
Lewis
There are vehicles like MLPs and options in closed-ends where return of capital can make sense because of their underlying structures and tax treatment but they are a minority of closed-end funds. For another take on why such return of capital payou…
I think the notion that a young person should by default be 100% in stocks is fundamentally false. Individual financial circumstances vary tremendously. A young person with a new job is vulnerable to financial instability—first hired, first fired—…
https://nytimes.com/2021/04/05/technology/amazon-nlrb-activist-workers.html
Amazon Illegally Fired Activist Workers, Labor Board Finds
The two employees had publicly pushed the company to reduce its impact on climate change and address concerns abo…
Based on what? Traditionally, when one analyzes a company's stock, you look at the company's business fundamentals, its prior growth rate, profit margins on products, the size of its end market and potential market share, valuation and prevailing in…
One of the selling points of CEFs is that because they don't have to deal with money flowing in and out as with OEFs, they don't have to endure cash drag.
I agree. I think in some respects CEFs would be a better structure than open end funds and ETF…
@Mark I'm not really disagreeing with you about purchasing return of capital at a discount. There is a value to the amplification of the yield from the discount regardless what the source of the yield is. But I do think there is often an intention t…
I'm fairly certain there are limits with regard to even nondiversified funds and concentration levels above which they lose their RIC status, but I can't find it at the moment. I see some mention but not in detail here: https://stradley.com/-/media/…
From the Fidelity link: For example, let's say a CEF is 95% invested in one security, with the other 5% sitting in cash. That security was purchased at $100, is now worth $110, and the portfolio manager believes it is worth $120. The manager could s…
I don’t know what to make of the “religious” influence cited by Cathie Wood.
Isn't that just a way of saying the returns are good lately and I really want them no matter how weird or nutty the ideas behind them sound? If this were a Christian drama,…
Agreed, there are nuances, but the notion that a fund has "never cut its distribution" when it's returning capital is misleading. And even if positive returns of the fund's underlying portfolio on the surface appears to counteract the NAV erosion fr…
If a fund is paying out distributions that are a return of capital as UTG has done in the past--https://prnewswire.com/news-releases/reaves-utility-income-fund-section-19a-notice-301138164.html--then the idea that the fund has "never cut its dividen…
From the New Yorker article:
The Democratic congressman Andy Levin, of Michigan, a union stalwart, has described it as “the most important election for the working class in this country in the twenty-first century.” On Monday, the Reverend Dr. Will…
This tiny $17 million fund is up 20% YTD beating most of its peers because the stimulus, which Democrats supported and Republicans who claim to care about small businesses opposed, will actually help small cyclical businesses. I find it dishearteni…
@Mav123 If you sign up for a Morningstar Basic subscription, which is free, and go to "Fund Quickrank" and the "Short Term" tab you can see which funds have performed best in each category over the past day, week, month, three-months and six months…
Baseball_Fan, This is a common view in the U.S. that hasn't proven to be the case in Europe, which actually has negative rates for a while now: https://bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2020-12-14/the-case-for-ecb-keeping-europe-s-negative-rates-where-…
Two things: Interest rates can go negative as they have in Europe and Japan. And Japan hovered in zero rate territory for decades. Finally, third thing, while inflation is certainly possible, the idea that it’s a given in this environment and rates …
An interesting project, if anyone has the interest, would be to calculate or estimate more likely how the funds would've performed if they hadn't held so much cash.
I agree, but then a document written by white males who at the time didn't think women or people of other ethnicities were capable of rational thought will tend to favor white males. The founders were important interesting men, but they were still m…
I'm more a fan of Thomas Paine's Agrarian Justice I guess, although I'm glad Jefferson replaced "property" with the "pursuit of happiness." My way of thinking is that if one has no food, no healthcare and no housing, one doesn't feel free, even if w…
Freedom is a nebulous term that means different things to different people, and is thus often subject to propagandistic use. I think conservative libertarians often think of freedom to want, i.e., you can buy or sell anything freely on open markets …
Stopped reading the WSJ one when I read "The Obamacare 'subsidy cliff' is poor policy that punishes Americans for working and earning more...." Have to read WSJ opinion pieces with an entire shaker full of grains of salt. Obamacare is flawed and the…
I don't think either Apple or Facebook is a force for good. They're corporations. "Goodness" to them is not the end goal. Profits are. If you want to find businesses that are a force for good, probably the closest you could come to that is a B Corp …
Here's another way of looking at it: https://theguardian.com/technology/2021/feb/27/bitcoin-mining-electricity-use-environmental-impact
https://bloomberg.com/news/articles/2021-03-01/bitcoin-s-long-term-value-doubted-due-to-esg-tighter-regulation
The thing is Lynch ran money in a different era when there was a lot less competition between active managers so stocks were less well analyzed and one could argue inefficiently priced. Buffett has made this argument and I believe Lynch has too. Me…
It’s good to be a skeptic but it’s also good to be open minded to new things.
The problem is people tend to be open minded on the way up and skeptical on the way down when the real goal is to try, difficult though it may be, to achieve some form of…
Regarding Italy, if you're handy and don't mind living in the countryside with an aged population: https://cnn.com/travel/article/italy-one-euro-homes-castropignano-molise/index.html
I'm not debating the potential to profit off technology or technology stocks. But that technology is based on science, not religion. Economics is already called the "dismal science," because frankly its proofs are weak compared to the hard sciences …
The question is how did followers get from Mother Teresa to here, to rationalizing their pursuit of extraordinary wealth as a divine vocation? I don't think it says anywhere in the bible that Amazon shall inherit the earth.
When you wish upon a star.....
Then came another sort of awakening. Wood was raised Catholic and considers herself a person of faith. She reads devotional literature and attends church. In 2006, when the housing bubble was not yet at its peak, Wood …
Not trying to have innuendo in my writing, sorry. I mean that I don’t think the invention of nuclear weapons was as beneficial for humanity as that of penicillin, yet the free market tends to treat these innovations equally or, worse, favors whiche…
I do wonder if confusing technological innovation with progress for humanity doesn’t expose an ethical failing here. Not all technological innovation has been good for humanity and regulation serves as a necessary counterpoint to prevent the worst c…
Given that the average AA bond currently yields 1.87%, there are almost surely some 10-year A ones, that yield over 2%: https://wsj.com/market-data/bonds/benchmarks
