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.
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Sven
Lynn,
Thank you so much. I am planning on a 3-year ladder since I am a year away from retirement. Lots of spreadsheet work to calculate the income replacement needed. This ladder will create a steady income stream. So thank you for all your help.
I moved back to high quality bond funds this year. Some of which you covered in the SA article. For now, I will stay with agency bonds to the bond ladder. I will pick active managers for corporate bonds.
Sven
We used to invest with Matthews who have done well for us. More recently we invest with Andrew Foster's Seafarer fund exclusively. His long term record including those from Matthews Asian Growth & Income is excellent, particularly during marke…
For one reason or another there are those who don't want to manage their finance and retirement. In these situations, robo-advisors would serve their purpose. Personally I would choose a well run balanced fund such as Vanguard Wellington or TRP Ca…
The jobs that command the highest wages are in STEM – science, technology, engineering and math professions. STEM workers are earning an average of $100,000 annually, twice as much as the national average of $45,000 to $50,000 a year, Cohen said.
If…
This interview is over a year late. For those who have a sizable exposure to developed and emerging markets this year, their portfolio should be well rewarded.
Everyone expect the tax cut and policy reform will stimulate growth with GDP of 3-4%. Didn't we went down that road, trickle down economics, that went no where.
Single payer system. Health vouchers that let patients choose their healthcare provider. If we believe in educational vouchers we should also believe in healthcare vouchers. Poor performing health providers will be replaced with high performing heal…
He said that his plan aka Thumpcare will "cost less and everybody get coverage. It is gonna be terrific, you will see." Only 24 millions (largely the poor and old demographic) Americans will lose medical coverage.
"4-5 % GDP is achievable". Wh…
People need to learn to be responsible for their own retirement. These days rolling over 401(K) can be readily done with various brokerages - Schwab, Fidelity, and others.
I went to one of these show when I was a kid. Always felt bad for the animals working in the cirrus. These days people are more informed of their treatments. So this is not a surprise of their declining business. Even Sea World have to make chan…
Brazil is having turmoil with their presidential corruption. Venezuela is in even deeper trouble and this may last for awhile. As a result, many Latin America funds lost in excess of 10% this week - the worst sector in emerging market.
@PRESSmUP, No I have not considered EM debts. This sector of debt is considered the riskiest in my experience in downturn. Perhaps time has changed since then...
@DavidV,
Under bankruptcy protection laws, Puerto Rico will not have to pay their monthly dividend while it is being restructured. As debt holders, you will experience smaller dividend paid to OPCAX until a restructured plan is approved. NAV will…
DavidV, Under bankruptcy protection laws, Puerto Rico will not have to pay their monthly dividend while it is being restructured. As debt holders, you will experience smaller dividend paid to OPCAX until a restructured plan is approved. NAV will…
Increased asset class correlation in the past decade makes it harder to benefit from diversification in international markets. In the case of 2008 all equity markets went down with emerging market performed the worst. Higher risk debts including hi…
Investing and making the right decision with respect to risk-return is hard work. Many financial magazines such as Kiplinger, Money and others try to over-simplify these matters. At time Barrons is also guilty of that in their annual round table d…
Given the geopolitical situation across the globe, our portfolios have made modest re-balancing:
1. Switch FMIJX to the institutional share, FMIYX as the fund closed as of April 30, 2017
2. Increased bond allocation to PIMIX
3. Increased EM equi…
Please note that many American funds are available to tax-defer accounts, the R classes, the 5% front load is waived. Their dominance started to decline when inexpensive index funds are widely available in many tax-defer accounts.
In my case, the Discover card has an embedded chip but the gas station where I bought gas does not have chip reader. Instead it requested to have the magnetic strip swiped. Since the card reader appeared normal, i.e. no wire or other hanging outs…
Credit card issue also happened during my family vacation over the spring break. I found two unauthorized charges elsewhere on my Discover card and I notified Discover right away. A new card was sent the following day. In this case the embedded c…
No thanks. I would rather invest in something more constructive such as local farming and high quality food production. Many of these products are not publicly traded, but that is not important to us per se.
@Old_Joe, you are corrected. We switched to a local credit union over ten years ago after we closed our checking account with Bank of America. Never look back since then.
Last time I visited Chicago, I flew into Midway airport using Southwest Airline. American Airline is another decent airline if you wish to fly into O'Hare Airport.
After Border Books went out of business (not necessary due to e-commerce), Amazon is building retail shops in shopping malls. Barnes and Nobles is doing something right and they are still in business.
