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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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  • Tech stocks are coming under selling pressure as QQQ was downed 4% today! Then oil and energy are down more than 4% too as China’s zero tolerance policy is taken place in several large cities. In the meanwhile, Taiwan is taking on a new approach - …
  • Looks like we have crossed the 15% loss mark for diversified portfolios ytd as of this morning. Sign!
  • For years Buffet was criticized for holding lots of cash. Yet BRK-A/BRK-B stock does not pay a dividend. Now he has the cash to deploy at low prices in depressed times. He once said that the risk of stocks is greatly decreased when the price is decr…
  • The year is still young and only one third done. Warren Buffet is busy shopping lately since he has lots of cash.
  • Well stated.
  • In the Survey week (Thursday-Wednesday), stocks were up (there was a huge Fed-"relief" rally on Wednesday), bonds down, oil up, gold down, dollar down. That explained the ups on Wednesday. Reality returns on Thursday and everything is down.
  • Bonds and stocks are falling at the same time. Both are down 9-11%. No protection from bonds in this rising rate environment. Energy, commodities, real asset, pm, and alternatives are doing better but they are volatile. This week the Fed is meetin…
  • It gets complicated. India and China cannot buy all that oil (even at a discount price). Also storage is limited. Zero COVID policy in several large cities have greatly reduced China’s oil demand so far.
  • Thanks, LB. Read the same topic on VOX. https://vox.com/23032486/deforestation-2021-brazil-amazon Our family is doing a small part to help the rain forest. We are mostly vegetarian and have not consume beef or pork in decades.
  • Thanks for the update.
  • We started using online payment in order to pay the utility bill on time, whereas it took literally 5 days for the payment to get clear by the paper route. Same goes for credit card bills. Once the payment schedule is set up, the company get paid f…
  • Future market indicating Monday will be down again. Oil futures are still over $100/bb. So the market has not bottomed yet. Besides the second 50 bps rate hike will be in May and several more will come through the rest of this year. Other countri…
  • @old_Joe, no worry. It is me for not being a subscriber to The Economist and our local library has limited subscription. Will check out the annual subscription. @yogibb, thanks for the links provided.
  • The link does not work. Read elsewhere that Russia demands the payment in rubles instead of Euro or US dollar as stated in the sale contract. It is a way to prop up the rubles when Russia is experiencing high inflation near 16% since the Ukraine in…
  • The latest survey of people's homes clearly showed how antiqued the postal service is. The questions are laughable and showed how little they understand their customers. They really missed the opportunties more than once to make themselves relevant…
  • I have fair amount cash/stable value, and in no hurry to deploy them. I share similar view with @sma3 that rising the interest rate will not lower the inflation as it did in the past. Supply chain constraint and geopolitical conflicts are difficult …
  • I agree, especially for 401(K). Fidelity is one of the largest pension plan administrator and they have fiduciary responsibility to the investors.
  • The man is one of his biggest donor. He lacks the technical skills to truly critical changes to the USPS business model while making them profittable. Changing toward electrical postal fleet trucks makes most sense since these are important infrast…
  • Four index bond funds/ETFs have a decrease of 0.5-1 bps while 3 active managed funds have an increase from 3-13 bps.
  • Yes, another day in a sea of red. Few asset classes have decouple from the rest - emerging market (VWO). Why?
    in OUCH ! Comment by Sven April 2022
  • They must be beefing up their customer service either at their branch offices, phone and online services. Now that the pandemic has eased up, reliable and consistent service are the key to hold on to your customers while gaining few more from their …
  • Thanks, yogibb for the complete list. AMAZ is widely owned by many growth and index funds. No wonder the broader index is falling today after a big gain on Thursday. I understand the AWS part of AMAZ is even bigger than that of Microsoft’s cloud…
  • Timing may not be the best right now considering the country is slowing down or entering a recession. I would be careful with smaller cap funds, especially growth style.
  • Would consumer staples sector be more connected to food prices? Below is a link to VDC and its portfolio. Noted not all of them are considered “food”, i.e. tobacco. https://investor.vanguard.com/etf/profile/portfolio/vdc
  • Take a look at Fidelity Strategic Real Asset fund, FSRRX, which invest in a combination of real estate stocks and debts, commodity, precious an industrial metals, convertible sec, and bonds. https://fundresearch.fidelity.com/mutual-funds/compositio…
  • Great! Just want more vehicles to counteract the high inflation. Bonds are struggling this year with rising interest rate. Lots of talk on the increased probability to recession.
  • @MikeM and @hank, in addition to commodity futures (COM) and gold (IAU), food prices are rising rapidly this year. Perhaps, agriculture futures such as DBA may present another opportunity. https://finviz.com/futures.ashx
  • TQQQ = 3X leverage QQQ. Some would accept hitting a home run once every 5 years.
  • Grandeur Peak funds invested in domestic and overseas mid- to micro caps stocks. These areas are not readily available in ETFs. Right now, money is flowing toward large caps and GP struggles. The business cycle perspective also points toward lar…
  • Look like we are retesting the low on mid-March. Big tech companies are reporting this week…
    in OUCH ! Comment by Sven April 2022
  • Future of EVs lies in new battery technologies to enable the EVs. Most of today’s lithium ion batteries have many limitations ranging from safety hazard (fires from accidents and battery failures), raw materials and immature charging infrastructure.…
  • Really good find to learn more about Ms Kofman from M* (forgot the old M*). She also manages Hartford Dividend and Quality Values funds. The track record is quite good.
  • @old_Joe beat me to it. BlackRock has one of the largest Russian exposure, $17 billion. For now Russia stocks are delisted from the west’s stock exchanges and the securities are mark-to-market as they underwent free fall… Even if the sanction are l…
  • Several experienced Wellington managers retired in the last 5 years. But Wellington have deep bench where newer managers typically have more than 5 years severing as co-managers in similar funds. Wellington is also advisors to Hartford funds and y…
  • Companies are increasingly deciding not to have their chief executives serve as chair Given Warren Buffet’s advanced age, they may have a point to have a second person to assume part of the responsibility. The vice chairman, Charlie Munger, is se…
  • Gold is still ok so far. The future market for Monday continues to decline today. At least you did not invest with Cathie Wood. Her flagship ETF is down 45% so far.
  • My mistake, it is VGWLX, Global Wellington. A global version of Wellington. Wellington also manages International Core Stock fund, VWICX. I reduced my EM and growth exposure in late 2020 as part of risk reduction. Now bonds are falling as well…
  • Large US tech companies are reporting next week. Netflix took a big hit the week and will the rest of FAANG stocks do better. Also crude oil future declined to $99 per barrel as the Chinese demand has soften due to lockdown on several large citi…
  • @bee, once again, thank you for Alex Umansky’s interview. Lots of good insights on his stock picking process and the risk of high growth stocks. These stocks are the future Amazon and Apple before they become so dominant today. Mentioned that Russi…
  • I'm a VWILX ¹ investor and the fund has performed poorly over the past year and YTD. Same here, but I exchanged most of VWILX to the more value-oriented VGWEX for reducing risk. Growth is out of favor now after it out-performed value for many yea…