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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
Many mutual fund companies are moving that direction in order to attract new asset. Franklin has consolidated other smaller funds but their funds are sold through advisors. David’s July commentary mentioned that Franklin is NOT growing asset while…
June labor market data will be released on this Friday. It appears more jobs are created than expected.
From Barron’s, Private-sector employers added 497,000 jobs in June, nearly double the consensus forecast of 250,000 among economists surveyed…
Unless these folks have a decent pension, social security, and/or other income stream (i.e. rental properties and others), they are taking a lot of risk with high stock allocation. The worse scenario is that these folks don’t have the time to recove…
Yes, there are many tragedies of mass shooting in several cities, but I am not sure cancelling July 4th is an answer.
Over the July 4th weekend, we spent time calling our friends and relatives to catch up with our lives, and it was great. Some se…
In late 2022, GGSOX held SVB (1.9%) and First Republic Band (4.9%), and that is a lot for a medium cap global fund. SVB failed in March 2023 and FRB got bought out by JP Morgan a month later. Wonder how much Stuart Rigby contributed to GP company…
Think Grandeur Peak was careless with respect how they handle the risk on the stock and their fund levels. The worst part was they did not even apologize for this mistake. I found this data from their 2022 annual report. If you look up these two ban…
I firmly believe some of these office space can be repurposed to residential apartments, but this takes time that may take over 10 years or more. Right now there is too many empty offices and there is a slow indication of reversing the trend.
In…
@Roy, you are getting great inputs from many posters here on your asset allocation. Target date fund’s glide path provides a good starting point for the major asset class allocations, and I use them as a reference point, just as @Observant1 is doi…
Something to watch for in small mutual fund shops. @LewisBranham mentioned that if they would hired an accountant to review all their bank’s asset, it would reveal the vulnerabilities to various scenarios. Pretty much textbook failure of holding s…
Grandeur Peak fund’s did not do so well in 2022. One of their fund, Global Stalwart, GGSOX, had two bank failures in their top 10 holdings: Silicon Valley Bank and First Republic Bank. So much for their management.
Post-COVID time period, i have had mixed experience in air travel. There seems to be fewer flights and at higher cost. Hopefully this will return to normal in the coming years. In the meantime, we stay locally to visit the national parks on the wes…
@yogibearbull, It boils down to the expense ratios. In David July commentary, Vanguard is attracting the second most asset while BlackRock is leading everyone.
Currently BlackRock offers institutional TDF with 0.06% fees while Vanguard offers TD…
@Roy, think you are doing the right thing by reduce equity risk as you approach retirement. Five years out is not far away. Shifting more to balanced/allocation funds is another way to increase bond allocation. My high yield and bank loan funds ha…
My heartfelt thanks to David's team for another month of informative articles.
@yogibb, hard to imagine TRP will offer index-only target date funds. Additionally, they cannot compete with the low fees offers at Vanguard.
Your local library may subscribes to many fee-only news sites,which is funded by your property tax. Depending on the city you live in, the level of the availability varies.
If you subscribe to Apple News which have some but not all the WSJ, NYT, …
My smaller cap funds are trailing considerably behind S&P 500. The banking crisis in March did not help either. Additionally, the possibility of recession by year end (inverted yield curve) and more rate hikes had me to rethink the investment f…
Seller remorse is common in investing, especially in volatile time periods. I typically sell in multiple lots over several months so to minimize the regret that comes later. One thing I am cognizant of is not to chase hot funds at that moment and …
3 years ago: 30-yr mortgage rate was 3.13% & median existing home price
in the US was $284k.
Today: 30-yr mortgage rate is 6.67% & median home price is $396k. Result: $22k increase in down payment (assuming 20% down) and 109%
increase in mo…
Good for you! Five days to completion is quite fast since everything is done online and you submit the other brokerage statement as a PDF. Vanguard requires the paper forms and it takes about 10 days on an average.
No doubt that data on PRWCX are stale by at least 3-6 months. Publicly available data always lags behind. Think the high cash and bond allocations allow Giruox to make large tactical moves in the stock portion of the fund. That is the part active ma…
The Wagner is a mercenary group, i.e. soldiers of fortune, and they will fight against whomever as long they are paid (there is no loyalty). And many do not live long enough to collect. News reported that they will be redirected by Russian army. Oth…
This incident is not over and Putin’s vulnerability has been exposed. Al Jazeera article discussed some possibilities after the excise.
Questions remain:
1. What is next for Prigozhin in Belarus? Cannot imagine he just ‘retires’.
2. Who will t…
MSNBC is following the news as they evolve. Interview with Richard Engle is very informative.
https://msnbc.com/the-last-word/watch/breaking-richard-engel-on-reports-of-attempted-coup-on-putin-in-russia-184441925759
Not much discussed in this tread is the other non-stock allocation of PRWCX. On the surface, Giruox invests in bank loans, private bank loans, high yield, and treasury, but these % fluctuate considerably (via semiannual, annual reports, and intervi…
That is one of the consequences of China’s one child policy, even after it ended back in 2016.
https://npr.org/2021/06/21/1008656293/the-legacy-of-the-lasting-effects-of-chinas-1-child-policy
Not having enough younger demographic push the country t…
Trading ETFs and stocks have no holding periods for buy and sell. That is one of main driving force to use ETFs instead of mutual funds. However, there are excellent active managed mutual funds that have no equivalent ETFs.
The dividend and cap gain distribution will be reinvest without transaction fee. You can to decide if the distribution goes to the sweep account (money market) or reinvest. Make sure you make this selection online.
Learned from @msf years ago, y…
The rep was puzzled too. I suggested they issue a ticket to resolve this internally. Fidelity has been very responsive in the past. Will continue checking.
For taxable account we keep rolling our 3 mo and 6 mo ladder. Not sure when the yield curve will be like a year from now. However, the longer end of the curve is gradually rising. Have been watching the 2 mo-10 yr spread.
@hank, I have been talking with Fidelity on this topic. D&C funds disappeared from Fidelity mutual fund listing in the last few weeks. Very strange since it was on their Transaction Fee platform for years. It is also strange that when you ent…
@yogibb said,
FWIW, I like to receive some things via snail mail, but I am OK to get other stuff via email. So, on sites that allow selectivity (Fido, etc), I only get statements and 1099s via snail mail, but the rest (confirmations, prospectuses, …
I have invested in BL/FR bonds in last several years and managed to have a modest gain. Now it is time to rotate these bonds into longer duration investments grade bonds - treasury and corporate. If and when the recession arrives, the FED will cut…
Agree. We moved away from paper statements when the electronic ones became available. They are easier to store in your hard drives. Additionally, you can get them several weeks earlier.
Inflation number looks encouraging for Tuesday reporting.
The consumer price index, set to be released Tuesday at 8:30 a.m ET, is expected to show that all-items inflation increased just 0.1% last month, equating to a 4% annual rate, according to …
I too think the upcoming FOMC meeting and CPI reporting this week have unusual observation. Surprising CPI data could change the tune just as Canada and Australia hiked their rate unexpectedly.
Mike Wilson of Morgan Stanley has been bearish for …
@MikeM,
I started a new tread on the same topic. Glad to see you are doing well with your bond funds. The timing question on rotating to bond funds is a person decision. I was mostly out of bonds in 2022 and now at half of my target bond allocati…