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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
Read elsewhere that utility sector was overbought last year and it is now over-valued. Quite a reversal from 2022.
Similar to energy sector which is lagging now. Consumer discretionary is the leading sector as consumers spend freely.
They are all good short term vehicles for the cash bucket. This year bond funds already have exhibited more volatility than expected and the year has just began.
I keep reviewing my developed market funds for Chinese stock exposure, but they still have a few that required looking though the entire portfolio. I eliminated VWO several years ago as I grew uncontrollable with the Belt & Road Initiative. Sea…
@hank,
You can touch the sender address in Mail to reveal its email. If it is different from a legitimate sender (easily tell from strange address and extension), you can create a filter with that particular address so it will be discard automatic…
Thanks, read the article too and review all our setting. The newer models use face and fingerprint recognition in addition to 6 digit passcode. We also avoid keeping passwords to other sites on the iPhone in case we loss them.
Still we get spam …
Dollar-cost-average in is still work, especially days like today. There is likely to have more than 3 25 bps rate hikes this year given the PCE number, and any pivoting will be in 2024. The tight labor market and high service cost is making the in…
Very nice move. We started building T bill ladder last year. Now we are expanding them up to 2 year (notes) as its yield move up to 4.7%. More T bills and CDs are maturing in coming months to fund these new ladders.
Getting back to core bond is …
Just wonder if the Fed would act on inflation, say 6 months earlier?
At the height of the pandemic, Powell cut rate from to 0.25% while increase monthly buying of treasury bonds and later mortgage bonds. Rate hike started in March 2021 by 25 bps …
If one cannot be honest about his/ her investing and to share their own experience in an open forum, why bother ? This amounts to trolling. Best to ignore him/ her.
Well said on today environment. We will stick to our plan/asset allocation. While saving and investing diligently. Everything else is far away from our control.
@MikeM,
2- It's not a given high quality bonds will move opposite equities as we saw last year. I might argue stocks and bonds may stay correlated through this year too. That again makes locked in rates of 5%'ish a nice safe balance to falling equ…
@MikeM, thank you for the correction. I corrected my post above. Holding CDs with decent yield ensure the principal plus interest will be there for emergency uses.
You got it right that the total return is much more important than the bond yield…
More interest read on Ray Dalio:
Billionaire Ray Dalio, founder of the hedge fund Bridgewater Associates, will receive billions of dollars in exchange for his retirement from the firm after “more than six months of frantic behind-the-scenes wrangli…
CDs vs bond funds are really apple-to-orange comparison. CDs are considered cash equivalent, i.e. saving accounts and money market funds. The credit risk is low since they are FDIC guarantee. Bond funds have their duration and credit quality risk…
Think you can do better. Large brokerages such as Fidelity offers one-yr non-callable brokered CDs yielding 4.85%. Just avoid callable CDs from JP Morgan. Bank CDs are not competitive for my $.
@hank, thanks for clarifying about Gibson Smith position. Here is an article from him on bonds in general.
https://biz.crast.net/there-are-many-bargains-on-offer-in-the-bond-market-where-to-shop/
I don’t take one year ranking seriously either e…
This weeks one can build a nice 3 mo, 6 mo and 12 month T bill ladder with yield ranging from 4.85 - 5.0%. Since today is a holiday, Fidelity still have the auction open.
Also don’t forget to check out the CDs too.
I do hope bonds do make a turnaround this year after 2022. However, current inflation data, high service cost and strong consumer spending argue for longer rate hike than market may expected. Now they are expecting three 25 bps rate hike for the y…
Think he is there to show the continuing support for Ukraine and to reassure NATO. He is heading to Poland. All former European bloc countries (except for Hungary) are supporting Ukraine because Putin want to rewrite the failed history of the Wars…
*** Bonds of most flavors received a face slap again this week, although many bond sectors were positive on FRIDAY, easing some of the losses. I'm still inclined towards IG bonds for the longer term, being year(s) not months; when the FED rates in…
Thank you. Great to visualize the inverted yield curve.
Short duration are reaching close to 5%. As of today, 6 mo and 12 mo T bills yield 4.98 and 4.99%, respectively.
https://home.treasury.gov/resource-center/data-chart-center/interest-rates/T…
@MikeM, Quite honestly I don’t fully understand how to calculate the expected return from MF/ETF. So I hesitate to invest much in TIPs and limit myself to T bills and CDs at auction.
Now I am looking into individual agency bonds to get a bit high…
Notice that the treasury yield curve has changed since summer 2022:
1. The inverted curve started to flatten as 1 yr, 2 yr and 10 yr yields moving upward in the last several weeks.
2. As of yesterday, the 6 mo and one year yields reached 4.98% a…
Also he sold majority of Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing that he acquired a year ago.
https://cnn.com/2023/02/15/tech/warren-buffett-tsmc-chips-earnings-hnk-intl/index.html
@msf, thanks to your advice. I have gotten into several institutional MFs with a transaction fee while at a lower minimum. Adding more later with Fidelity’s automatic feature for $5 works well. Vanguard brokerage still requires $1M minimum. Still p…
In order to have long flight path, these devices need a floating platform such as a helium ballon to ride the air stream. It seems that many of parts can be found in a hobby shop. I think the intent is to disrupt and harass the west. Both Russia an…
That is fantastic! I got to give that a try. We are still using the older mini for storing music, video, and photo files - 8 TB and growing. Learned to make high resolution video recently.
In the past I invested in Franklin Mutual Discovery fund and FMI International fund. Both are currency hedged funds.
MDISX. The Fund regularly attempts to hedge (protect) against currency risks, largely using currency forward contracts and curre…
They could be from North Korea and Iran. With solar panels the size of satellites, they can be launched anywhere. Certainly these are designed to be expendable and lot less than low orbit satellites.
We have been lucky with our Mac so far with Safari browser. I only use Edge ant work but it is really clunky.
Updated to Mac Mini computer with M1 processor so It runs the largest Monterey OS.
@Crash, I use PC at work but there are firewalls protecting the system, but often at the expense of quick response. Supposedly, Windows OS10 and beyond have rewrote their codes to follow Apple (I am not a computer expert) that hardened their securi…
Saw the article in Apple News. Here is the link to The Guardian,
https://theguardian.com/us-news/2023/feb/12/us-military-shoots-down-fourth-flying-object-over-north-american-airspace
Whitmer said on Twitter that federal officials had been “trackin…
@hank, think you are right about Russia testing the detection boundary of NORAD.
A third object was shot down over Canada Yukon Territory on Feb 11.
A fourth object was shot down over Lake Huron on Feb 12. That may explain the closing of airs…
@hank, Many thanks to your info on what Fed and the market control. I too notice the 10 year treasury yield has moved up from the low 1.3% (1/5/23) to 3.74% (2/10/23), and that is sizable change in short time. High quality IG bond funds I am inves…
