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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

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  • Quick glance: Informative interview and Bill Hence laid out First Eagle strategy well. He previously managed Royce Small Cap Opportunity fund before co-managing this First Eagle fund (1.5 year old) with 2 other managers. FESAX is a NTF at Fideli…
  • People saw that if HTM was market to market, SVB was operating with negative equity since September. All that needed was some trigger for the run, and some say that rumors of it going under spread like wildfire on Twitter this week. And it happened.…
  • That is why I like to look at several sources to confirm the data is accurate. Additional, this "futures" topic is being posed in @Catch22 posting. https://mutualfundobserver.com/discuss/discussion/60788/only-for-the-sake-of-peeking-ahead-sunday…
  • I visit Bogeheads once in a long while. Group thinking is a nice way to describe them. Investors need to wake up to why SVB can fail even after all the banking regulations are put in place after 2008's GFC. Now other banks including the banking a…
  • Heard earlier Sunday morning that UK government stated "no bailout". Whoever private banks willing to take over need to have deep packet or the terms must be favorable to them. Also on CBS this morning, Janet Yellen said the same "no bailout". ht…
  • Schwab is a public trade company with a financial arm that caused all this headache. What about Fidelity and Vanguard and they are not public traded firms? Will T. Rowe Price runs into similar issue as Schwab?
    in Schwab... Comment by Sven March 2023
  • https://finviz.com/ https://cnn.com/business/markets/premarkets Please let me know if there are others? Thanks
  • Future market for next week looks bad -1%. Glad to see you have a good % cash position so you have wait for things to settle down. Defensive positions held up in addition to consumer staples that include IG bonds, treasuries, and precious materi…
  • Without paying MFO Premium has one to use some of its feature. Paying the subscription opens up all the capabilities for comparison, especially on risk assessment. Portfolio Visualizer has a free but limited version depending on your needs.
  • @hank, I use several VG LifeStrategy funds (static 60/40 and 40/ 60 allocation) and a target date 2025 (60/40 with a glide path) as my benchmarks. Not perfect but workable over longer time period over say 6 months. I don’t invest in them either. …
  • @old_Joe, thanks for sharing these invaluable info. I am still catching up on the SVB and its potential implication to smaller banks of similar profile. Also I agree that quality journalism has decline significantly and I try to read as much as …
  • @hank, really appreciate to pose Larry's question. Honestly I don't know. For short term cash in taxable accounts, one needs to consider the after tax consequences.
  • It is a sad state of affair that our election officials are harassed and their families threatened when there is no evidence of fraud. Kari Lake and other election deniers are positioned themselves to be VP candidates to the 2024 election.
  • Agree. Intimidation of public officials should never be acceptable in this country.
  • Not trying to change the topic. Treasury bill and notes are also competitive to broker CDs. They are good vehicles to build ladders. As of 3/8/23, 6 months yield 5.34%,12 months yield 5.25% and 2 years yield 5.05%. https://home.treasury.gov/reso…
  • Thank you for the State Department’s document. The classified version would be quite scary. This also explains why Buffet exited the entire TSM position quickly since he bought it in fall last year; a risk he does not want to assume. On a side n…
  • Grandeur Peak oversea funds are growth oriented. Only their Contraian fund is US value oriented but that is not what you are seeking. Staying with all cap value fund such as SFVLX is the best choice; it is categorized as mid cap value fund.
  • Situation with China is intertwined on multiple level and it may not be completely separated. Other vehicles ex-China are viable even with some trade off on growth. But what is growth when you cannot get your return on your money from that country.…
  • Our family is not using TikTok including our college kids. More info on the potential risk: In July testimony to the House Oversight Committee’s panel on national security, Brendan Carr, Federal Communications Commission Commissioner stated, “The…
  • It is challenging to eliminate all China exposure; Chinese stocks constitute large weighing in VEMAX (36%) and somewhat smaller % VTABX (9%). Unless one restricted themselves to developed market, some active managed funds still have smaller %. R…
  • MikeM wrote: Where do we not see value? Where everyone is hiding out—Where investors are seeking safety and where valuations are expensive. The most obvious areas are defense, energy, staples, agriculture, and pharmaceuticals... Speculative and pr…
  • Hartford funds are largely sold through advisors. Interesting that they are moving to actively managed ETFs. This particular fund is managed through Wellington who is also a subadvisor to a number of Vanguard funds.
  • Jason Zweig had an article in WSJ describing what @hank wrote above. It is about making lemonade out of lemon from treasuries. Until last year, the Fed had kept interest rates near zero for most of the past decade-and-a-half. Investors became desp…
  • In addition to the 10 yr yield, the 2yr treasury yield reached 4.8% on Tuesday (a level last seen in mid-2006). The 6 month T bill reached 5.1%. Stocks continue to fall today. Pimco managers have been buying long treasuries as their prices droppe…
  • After all, one's got 30 years to get things straightened out. Not sure I want to hold on to them for that long. Five year holding period is required for I bonds before facing the 3 months interest penalty. Selling the paper I bond at local bank so…
  • I invested in SIGIX since its inception. Still thinking about SIVIX since it is value-oriented and focus on smaller caps. @hank, alternatively one can invest in energy ETFs/funds and commodity futures as a indirect play on China’s reopening. The …
  • @msf, now you got me to think twice about buying the $5K ibond from this year tax refund. Alternatively we would hang on to it and sell it later at our local bank. For other treasury we keep all of them at our brokerage,
  • 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…
  • Great article in NYT today about child labor in the U.S. It’s actually pervasive: That is truly disturbing in today’s age. They are just kids.
  • 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…