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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
Think we just observed a bear market rally in last several weeks. In my opinion, bonds may have a better chance to make a decent gain this year now that most of the rate hike is behind us.
With many workers who retired or are retiring since the pa…
Informative data that suggest investors are still cautious. Can you blame them after they got disappointed badly in 2022. Hopefully the bulk of rate hike is behind us and stocks and bonds are turning more positive in 2023.
Layoff has spread beyond large tech companies that indicates the slowing economy. Guess the Wall Street does not care about that and they traded higher last week. Look like they are getting ahead of themselves. More earning reporting are coming no…
I more I read about this VG fund that more I lean toward Pimco Income, PIMIX. At least you have an experienced team who can execute this multi-sector strategy.
@MIkeM said, “Maybe they are using this platform to drive up price on their picks.”
I believe that is called “pump and dump”. Remember Jeff Vinik who managed Fidelity Magellan, promoted his stocks on Louis Rukeysers he was selling the same stocks …
I like to do more homework on new funds and their competitors long before I invest $ with them. Also have a year or two of track would increase the confidence that their strategy actually works. Multiple sectors funds offer no protection in 2022. S…
College education is ridiculous expensive these days even at public universities. We spent several hundred thousand dollars for our kids just for their bachelor degrees. Whereas we the parents got our undergraduate degrees for a small fraction of w…
Since November, oversea funds are making bigger move upward than those of S&P500. Weaker dollar is helping funds without currency hedging.
Mild winter weather slow energy sector’s advance. The defensive sectors such as utilities and consume…
US stocks are traded at higher valuations compare to the rest of the world. Also US dollar stayed high until October 2022, so it hurt the oversea funds when they are not currency hedged. Broadening the investment universe or opportunities is health…
Totally agree that defaulting would have grave consequences just like back in 2011. Even for a brief moment it would be a mess when Standard and Poor down graded treasuries to AA from AAA.
If things get really bad, social security checks may get …
No doubt the omicron variant is much more contagious than previous strains. The bivalent booster is still effective against serious hospitalization but there are reported breakthrough cases. Some may last longer than several days depending on the he…
I use Safari browser in Private mode, thus it does not retain the history. I was pleasantly surprise to be able to read the entire article. Like Hank stated above, there are many funds in different categories that were filtered through the MFO premi…
Good article.
Lynn’s closing thoughts
I expect 2023 to be a volatile year and believe stocks will see new lows and am underweight equities. I changed my investment approach when yields increased by buying individual bonds to match withdrawal plans…
bivalent use remains low. Despite the safety of the booster for kids 5 to 11 (Update January 16), only 11.5% of recipients of a primary series have gone back for the bivalent (CDC).
That is the sad part of this political environment. So what so g…
The year of 2022 is a good example. Who would forecast such a difficult year with few safe haven. We can only hope the worst of rate hike is largely behind us as signs of slowing inflation takes hold. Now earning season is upon us. Will they hold…
Back in 2022 Moderna sues Pfizer for patent infringement on Moderna's technology.
https://hbr.org/2022/09/moderna-v-pfizer-what-the-patent-infringement-suit-means-for-biotech
It is unclear who was first to file the critical claims on these patents…
The crucial difference between Pfizer and Moderna cases is that Moderna took government fund for their vaccine development whereas Pfizer/BioNTech did not. Pfizer paid for their own development cost and they are exercising their rights to charge th…
Last year was tough for junk bond funds and those I followed were in double digit loss YTD. Only bank loan/floating rate funds had about 0.4% loss. The expectation of junk bonds to do well in rising rates simply failed. This year could be better …
It is all about the appearance and it looks bad from the NAV pricing perspective. Pimco had large redemptions in 2022. Unlike 2008’s GFC, Pimco did a lot better.
Thank you. Good read.
Oversea smaller caps tend to get hit harder than the larger caps during drawdown such as 2022. Other than the Contrarian fund, all Grandeur Peak funds are growth-oriented, thus likely to suffer even more.
More inflation data posted today.
https://vox.com/policy-and-politics/2023/1/12/23551782/inflation-cpi-consumer-price-index-federal-reserve
Couple that with last week’s slowing wage growth is encouraging; the rate hike may become smaller. After a …
Some comparison between the two cases:
There are also many differences, as well as other issues where we lack sufficient information to know what’s similar and different:
There were purportedly 10 documents with classified markings at the Penn Bide…
@Derf, what is the hurry? Bought some BND and will increase its allocation as T bills and CDs mature in coming months. If and when the Fed starts to cut rates, I will go for long duration bonds. Stocks are still expensive in my opinion. So I will se…
The minimum holding period is one year. No one really know if inflation get down to 2% in the next 12 months, but it is unlikely going from November’s 7.1%. After 12 months one can sell I bonds and lose the last 3 months of interest. Personally I c…
Rebalancing to reduce risk makes good sense to in normal market condition and the year is 2022 is not one of them.
Did considerable reshuffling in late 2021 to get defensive. Shared the details in another post that worked out ok in 2022. As rate…
I bond is limited to $10K per person @0and additional $5K on their tax return.
CDs and T bills can be purchase in large sums. However, T bills are more liquid and can be sold through secondary market. T bill ladder is recommended so the shorter…
Upon further examination there are considerable differences:
1. There were 10 classified documents stored in a locked safe in the Penn Biden Center for Diplomacy and Global Engagement.
2. They were stored there when Biden served as a vice presi…
How time has changed. There are now actively managed ETFs are becoming available and at a lower expense ratio. T. Rowe Price, Harbor and Franklin Templeton offer them. Additionally, many loaded funds are waiving their loads at large brokerages. In…
The problem I admit is most active managers are not adequately equipped to make that kind of macro forward-looking analysis of asset classes. And worse, some are also drawn to short- lived trends that help gather assets instead of produce good resu…
I am making few tweaks here in 2023:
1. Reduce cash to increase intermediate-term investment grade bond exposure.
2. Maintain decent exposure to energy and commodity futures and pay attention to China reopening and industrial output (they are #1 …
Thank you. They are very good funds going into 2023.
As for the bonds, 2023 may present better chance to gain 5%+ gain now that most of the rate hike are likely behind us now. Few smaller hikes are likely this year. And the yields are considerab…