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
Sometime convenience of camera cell phones has it's price. Take a good look at Jennifer Lawrence's (and others) case and the consequence of poor judgement. I love my digital SLRs and am very careful with cloud storage.
Regardless whether the government is right or wrong to the shareholders, this is an example of downside risk of narrowly focus (financial) and concentrated mutual funds.
@John, Rebalancing your portfolio is a solid approach in risk management. I too have fair amount of exposure to Apple and having been trimming it (along with Google) and buying bond funds. Still think economy is not robust enough for interest rat…
I am definitely NOT smart enough comparing to these experts. I do agree with Scott that healthcare and energy are long term themes we need, and that where I look for buying opportunities.
so far this year...
It is important to look the performance or compounded return span over a full market cycle, I.e. 2008 to present. YTD return is another form of performance chasing.
Oakex has a large stake in Europe where it is in or near recession. Smaller caps companies don't have sale in other part of the world where their economy is doing better. If you have a long term perspective, it will likely work out okay.
I per…
@catch, I lived in Michigan briefly in the 90's, and never understood the thrill of deer hunting, especially when the state allows for the practice of "baiting" prior to the season opening. Over-population of deers is rampant across the country in…
Will see how this will play out. It is really unfortunate that the government is trying to reduce the debts by taxing Roth IRAs. What about all those corporations who move their headquarters to countries outside US in order to avoid paying their f…
@Max, you can get institutional share with $5k minimum for tax deferred account plus a transaction fee in most brokerages. Fidelity charges $50 whereas it costs $20 at Vanguard. Wish more companies would lower the $minimum for IRA accounts.
The article forgot to mention that Vanguard also offers a fine array of actively managed funds.
Quietly, T. Rowe Price is also doing very well in attracting new asset this year.
@Andy, I think DBLTX has a slightly better downside protection (3 years) than DBLFX according to M*.
http://performance.morningstar.com/fund/ratings-risk.action?t=DBLFX®ion=usa&culture=en-US
@Charles, thank you for the detailed report. Particularly,
He know what it takes to advance technology, not financial engineering. Take a look at IBM, HP, Cisco, and other old tech firms who fail to understand what "innovation" requires. Soon…
In recent years Amazon is became less relevant for us as consumers. We now shopped less than 10% than we used to.
Hardware they made, Kindle Fire and Fire phone, are barely competitive both in price and functionality. We have both Android and i…
@Kaspa,
Still driving a 1992 Honda Civic with 200K miles - remarkable reliability! Before we bought 2011 Odyssey minivan, we did fair amount of research on both crash test and mechanical reliability and came back to Honda again. European cars are…
Agree! Very informative. Have been reading his las test book.
"Reducing the Risk of Black Swans: Using the Science of Investing to Capture Returns with Less Volatility Paperback"
Totally agree. Fear is a powerful motivator for selling newspapers. It is particularly troubling to see the decline of financial journalism among major papers including WSJ and Barrons.
High valuation of smaller caps make this asset class less attractive rather to the larger caps. In today's slow growth environment, it is better to own blue chip stocks with global exposure.
When the daily trading volume is light on sector or narrowly focus ETFs, the ask-bid spreads tend to be large. The converse is true for broad based ETFS with healthy daily trading volume. In addition, the market price may be trading at a premium …
Vanguard index funds have 6 months holding period while the ETFs have none. However, there are limits of how many trading one can have in one year. My account is limited to 6. Other larger accounts may have greater flexibility. I use index funds…
Thank you. Cash position at over 20% is the highest in recent years. Dan Fuss is preparing for the worst scenario since geopolitical riisk can spread into other markets.
Going forward interest rates will likely be higher, and bond returns will nowhere near what they have been delivering. I would pick EVBAX (multi-sectors) and MWTRX (intermediate term), and keep the total bond/cash allocation in the range 30-40%. A…
@kevindow, thank for the clarification. One would think Fidelity treats all retirement accounts the same. I will talk with the rep and they are really good with that. Thanks again.
Yes, I do remember Lou and his shows are entertaining. There were many excellent guests (as discussed above) and some "not so great" such as Jeffrey Vinik who exercised the old trick of pump-and-dump on stock recommendation.
Haven't watch CNBC f…
@kevindow, don't know when you please a trade at Fidelity on EVBIX. Maybe thing has changed a bit since you posted. It now required $250K for IRA account in addition to $49.95 transaction fee.
