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 no guarantees in finance, but I would say the likelihood of a private shop as big as Vanguard being acquired is slim, and a $70 billion target date fund that is a mainstay in thousands of employees retirement plans probably won’t change it…
What would you hold for the next 20 years? The $70 billion 2040 Target Date VFORX is the most obvious solution for many investors but not here. The notion that you can’t get a reasonably smooth ride purely by indexing isn’t true. You can index a lot…
I disagree with the notion that articles on how active funds on average continue to get slapped around by index funds year in and year out don’t have a place on this board because we’re so sophisticated we know how to avoid the pitfalls of poorly ru…
@sma3 I tend to think "active management" should also include knowing when the market is too expensive and the potential long term return unattractive and be able to raise cash for a margin of safety.
I tend to agree, but actually very few active m…
Anyone looking at the stats recognizes it's just brutal for active managers over the long-term. It's that fee drag that accumulates over time. There are a few lessons to be learned in it. It's really hard to win in large-caps that are widely covered…
Book burning, censorship and restricting access to information while permitting only a controlled narrative are important markers of the early stages of authoritarianism and fascism.
Never ever ever buy a bond fund. There is no maturity date on a fund!
These absolutist views that you should never buy a bond fund or only buy bond funds seem reductive and, frankly, stupid to me. There are advantages and drawbacks to each. Bond …
I think if I were comparing and trying to value two houses to potentially purchase, one with an HOA and one without, I would subtract at least an extra 10% discount to my valuation estimate of the HOA one and call it the "BS Factor Discount."
@BenWP It is certainly an interesting fund for those who want exposure to the Artisan team. But the more I look at ARDBX, the more I think it is truly a different animal from ARTKX. Not just small-caps, but highly concentrated in just 34 stocks. I w…
Finding a good substitute for ARTKX is a tough one as it has had terrific outperformance. Although the strategy is different as it invests in smaller companies, the new Artisan International Explorer or ARDBX is also run by Samra: https://artisanpa…
Thanks everyone, for your kind remarks. One thing I’ve tried to do—though it’s not always possible—is think long-term. How a fund plays defense via risk control seems essential to me to think about if you’re a long-term investor.
Ahead of surrendering, Trump posted on social media that the experience is “SURREAL,” adding, “…Can’t believe this is happening in America.”
Funny, because that was exactly my reaction after election night in 2016.
This video linked below explains the strategy. I am underwhelmed as I think it is high risk, high fee and you’re capping your upside with the options while still taking those risks. If I wanted to take so much risk, I would just buy Tesla or ARKK di…
Seems foolish to me: https://realmoney.thestreet.com/investing/ets/tsly-tk-16109970
These are highly volatile strategies so you have to be a smart trader or speculator to play them correctly, not a long-term investor. But also I believe the fees are…
I think you’re right that TIPS do deserve a look. I think the hardest thing for many investors to understand is the impact of duration and rates on TIPS, and how their inflation adjustments work, with a phantom income like component. Explaining the…
I think a lack of discipline or psychology plays a role in selling a 30-year TIPS before maturity, but that characterization puts the reason for selling completely on the investor's shoulders as some sort of moral or psychic failing. A lot can happe…
Thanks for your cogent response, William. These are all good points. I've been examining the finance industry and markets for a while too, so words like "riskless" or "guaranteed" I've seen often are, I admit, pet peeves of mine. I think though you …
I think it makes complete sense to discuss the probability of a 30-year TIPS being a good long-term investment and here's why or why not. Once anyone in finance uses absolute terms like "riskless" or "guaranteed," they've usually lost some of my tru…
Although I agree with some of what Bernstein says here, I find it amusing for him to use the term "rational investor" in the same article he uses the term "riskless." Nothing in life is riskless. Investors call T-bill interest the "risk-free rate" b…
It may be stumbling now, but I'd be surprised if it stumbles for long. The fee advantage it has over its other active fund competitors is large. In the short-term that means little, but over a long time period, that deducting an extra percentage poi…
This report seems to do a better job than the FRDM ETF's Cato-Institute derived benchmark at delineating and ranking the admittedly nebulous "freedom" or at least democracy in emerging and developed markets. It's quite a fascinating read:
https://v…
@hank All true. Yet if you look at the lowest rated states--West Virginia, Mississippi, Arkansas, Louisiana, Kentucky, Alabama, Nevada, Oklahoma,Indiana and Wyoming--you can see a common theme that I bet was also true 50 years ago and remains true t…
I find it insulting to people who actually suffer from mental illness, and many do, when a highly functioning wealthy individual tries to use it as an excuse to avoid jail time:Velissaris also said that he suffers from mental illness and had "felt …
People who play up nostalgia and tradition rarely acknowledge how badly many things stunk as little as a hundred years ago, let alone 6,000. Food especially tastewise in America has come a long way. Beer has too.
Often the research on concentration relates to that of "active share" as a metric in funds as the more concentrated a fund is, the more it tends to differ from its benchmark, having thus a high active share. Yet the two concepts are not synonymous. …
One thing I've noticed with PKSAX and the other KAR funds is its fairly concentrated, 29 stocks, for a small-cap fund. It owns high quality small-caps so one assumes they are resillient to downturns, but one company blowup here can significantly hur…
While this is a well run fund with a high-quality tilt, for better or worse Virtus Kar seems to run a lot of funds with similar styles, management and stock hunting grounds: https://virtus.com/our-products/individual-investors/mutual-funds#/type.dai…
Pretty sure this fund is closed to new investors: https://virtus.com/products/kar-small-cap-core#shareclass.I/period.quarterly Weird that Schwab would allow that.
Before doing this investment analysis, it’s worth doing a budget analysis of how much you’re spending per month or anticipate spending. Are you alone, married, have any relatives that might need financial assistance or provide financial assistance i…
I would probably wait on STIP, but maybe not CCOR. Bonds are a lot more interesting today than they were last year, despite the name of this entire thread.
Unless you bought at the peak of CCOR's performance late last year as David described, it has proven generally more defensive than DSTL, up 2.5% in 2022 overall while DSTL was down 10.6%. Yet no question, CCOR is struggling this year. But these two …
Depending on your financial situation, you could take that RMD and invest it again, but in a taxable account. CCOR has indeed been poor lately. Here's their explanation: https://corealtfunds.com/assets/pdfs/Core_Alternative-Commentary_January2023.pd…
