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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
Reply to @scott: Wish I have the skill to pick individual REITs. I was approached last year about private equity but decided that was not my cup of tea.
Reply to @Charles: Concur with your observation. Bonds are doing okay up till May and now they are trailing badly. We shifted most of our bonds to balanced/asset allocation and value funds, VWELX, VWINX, and VEIPX. Only one we are keeping is OSIT…
Reply to @johnN: I believe the Japanese trains have left the station several years ago. Oakmark foreign funds have invested heavily in Japan as a backdoor play to Asia's emerging market. Thus far the strategy plays out well.
Recent rise in Japa…
Reply to @MaxBialystock: You hang in there with heat wave. The entire west coast is well over 90-100 F. We have had good connectivity service with Comcast in the Pacific Northwest. If you think this is bad, think about those who get their IT supp…
I would contact Scout shareholder service directly. They should able to provide the current SEC yield. The negative duration is derived from derivatives aiming to protect the portfolio's duration risk in case of rising interest rate.
Sorry, didn't see your post...
For now bonds have been over-sold because of Fed's tapering of $85M monthly bond purchase. The yields have risen quickly in the last few weeks that impact negatively particularly the longer duration funds including FC…
Reply to @MikeM: Clearly the market was ahead of itself while not questioning the consequences of the tapering. One can only hope that end okay but I am not holding my breath. Since spring I raised my cash position close to 20% by reducing mainly …
Reply to @AndyJ: The change came with the addition of the other co-manager. Today Yockey's fund invested much less in financial sector and ARTIX has improved in the last several years.
Good for you. Enjoy.
On the front of Artio's pending sale to Aberdeen, both fixed income and international strategies have underperformed their respective indeces for prolonged periods, and significant outflow contributes to this sale of this on…
Cash may be the king right about now, eh?Reply to @catch22: That is for sure... In the current low interest environment, there is very little opportunity cost for being in cash. At the present there are few place to hid and the summer months will …
Reply to @AndyJ: My thinking is similar. I conidered MAINX, but the high expense ratio for what it offers does not overcome Templeton Global Total Return, TRTRX, and the experience of the Templeton manager. I might consider Vanguard's fund when mo…
the simplest and safest approach is simply to park funds in a low-volatility money market fund and accept near-zero returns.
It is difficult for retirees who depend on the already low interest bearing options. For those who venture into longer dura…
Steven Spielberg and Tom Hanks produced an excellent series of "Band of Brothers" that depicting the WWII on the European front. One can watch it online for free.
watchseries.lt/serie/band_of_brothers
Reply to @tigerman3: These data are available in M* under the "Rating and Risk" tab.
performance.morningstar.com/fund/ratings-risk.action?t=SSHFX®ion=USA&culture=en-us This is an example for Sound Shore fund.
In addition to using the st…
Reply to @Investor: This is not the first blow-up with Bill Gross's big bet on various bond sector. The downside protection from the derivatives in this fund does not help much either. To complicate the matter further there is little cushion in t…
Reply to @MaxBialystock: It is possible that many investor got in junk bonds late and get out in the wrong time. The strong correlation to equity does not provide much in downside protection. The worst are those funds that concentrated in the low…
Reply to @andrei: WAFMX has even higher risk investing in the frontier market than the that of the emerging market. There is little overlap on the holding between these two funds. WAESX shares one of the comanager with WAEMX.
Another alternative to WAEMX is Matthews Asia Small Companies Fund, MSMLX even though it is less diversified. It has only $420 M in asset under management.
Here is the link to the WSJ article.
online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424127887323728204578515271236522826.html
In case you can read the artle. Google the title and one can read the entire article.
Not exactly how the Fed aggressive bond buying will end. I increase cash position through stable value and Pimco Unconstrained while selling Pimco Total Return, Fido High Income, BOND and Vanguard Total Bond Index. Will do more trimming with equit…
Reply to @Investor: AUM is close to $2 billion. No doubt that the managers are having difficulty in finding enough small cap EM stocks to invest in. The other choice is to invest in mid- and large-cap stocks, then the fund will morph into an al…
If this fund is not available in retail brokerages you mentioned above, have you considered other no-load large cap value funds? I believe there are many and perhaps better options.
Reply to @STB65: While I am not a subscriber to WSJ or Barrons, I can read many of the articles by googling the title and its source, and read the entire article afterward. NYTimes has informative articles, but now they only allow 10 free articles …
Since we are on the topic of fraud, China has old tainted baby formula with melamine in 2008. A number of Chinese baby died as a result. The heads of these companies were convicted and harsh sentence was handed down. Problem many companies sold t…
Reply to @kevindow: Thank you. Schwab has been offer many A share funds as load waived. Fidelity should do the same if they want to compete in the same space. For now none of Templeton A shares are load waived. I will give Fido a call and let th…
Reply to @TheShadow: I think the frontier market is small and there are fewer publicly trade stocks available for trading. What is available they are thinnly traded as reflected in MSCI frontier market index, FM. Only 46K FM shares are traded dail…
Reply to @Shostakovich: Being large is not necessary of being successful. Osterweis is a small shop based in the Bay area managing many of the "old money". They invest conservatively across the board. The addition of an experienced manager may be…
it “reaches” further into undiscovered growth, frontier markets, fallen angels, and higher risk/higher reward
On P. 22. it listed the ER a tad lower (1.35%) than Global Opportunities and International Opportunities (1.5%).
