Here's a statement of the obvious: The opinions expressed here are those of the participants, not those of the Mutual Fund Observer. We cannot vouch for the accuracy or appropriateness of any of it, though we do encourage civility and good humor.
Support MFO
Donate through PayPal
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
Oil pulled back due to China’s lockdown on Shanghai - worst outbreak in the last two years. It is severe enough to affect export production and oil consumption in that city. They are starting to use Pfizer vaccine which is considerable more effectiv…
Specific criteria and weighing factors were not mentioned in the ranking process. Customer support, on-line and/or live person, are essential to many investors. Thus the article appeared to be incomplete.
Many merchants these days prefer credit cards to ensure they get paid. Also they pass on the 3% transaction fee to the customers. American Express charges even higher fee at 5%. Several firms I worked for want their employees to use AE.
Some sh…
Good to know that many funds now not listing 12-b-1 fee, but instead include them as other fees. One can consider institutional shares if the minimum is reasonable instead of $1M.
Thanks to Ned Johnson Fidelity and Schwab were the early pioneers in discount brokerages that benefit many small investors. Prior to them, full service brokerages were the only option. How time have change. Fidelity was my first brokerage and they …
WB understands insurance business well since Berkshire Hathaway owns several insurance companies including Geico. It is challenging for someone to overcome this acquisition with over $11B in cash.
I too read Barron’s but often fail to follow up o…
Congratulation on your pick! Unless someone who can offer higher bid than Warren Buffet, Y will be part of Berkshire Hathaway after 25 days. He is known not to out-bid other competitors. Also he is buying the entire company, not just taking a ma…
Many core bond funds are down 4-5%. Short duration bonds loss less. Nevertheless, the 2.5 month loss is much less than those of stock fund loss in a single day. We put some $ into I bond since last year. Unfortunately, it is limited to $10K per p…
@Devo, would you please link your previous article on drawdown? I seem to difficulty locating it.
@Obserant1, are you subscribing to M* in order to have access to their X-ray tool ? T. Rowe Price is now enable this tool when the investors reach c…
Basically, yes. Banks can raise lending rates and regional banks benefit from higher mortgage rates in today’s housing market.
Two ETFs were mentioned by Ms. Mack on energy: Energy Select Sector SPDR, XLE and Vanguard Energy, VDE.
Energy is the…
Our rebalancing process has evolved over time that include the business cycle. In our core bucket, we rebalanced it about 4 times a year. The tactical bucket where we invested in individual stocks, ETFs, commodities, and OEFs, is more actively mana…
My deepest condolence to his family. Micheal Price exemplified the very best value investors and I have learned much from his funds.
In the early 90's, I invested with Mutual Beacon and Discovery and have had solid results with below average risk…
Geopolitical risk readily translates into financial risk. If the question of is Russia investible was posted a year ago. Most likely it would be yes due to the oil and the tie to global economy. Today, it is the opposite.
China posts a differe…
Petraeus gave 4 possibilities on how this war may end.
This war remind me of the Chechnya war back in 1994 and left Chechnya in ruin along with thousands of death on both sides. Putin did not care and the Russian citizens were powerless at that t…
David Petraeus (former CIA director) was interviewed by CNN (Peter Bergen) and provided further insights on the Russian invasion and why they got bogged down. Quite revealing coming from a former commanded US forces in the Iraq and Afghanistan. In s…
The yields among 3, 4, 5, and 10 year treasuries are flattening. Will watch if this tread continues.
Will yield curve flattening follow by “inversion” ?
Few Russian drones flew across into Poland boarder and got shot down quickly. Are the Russian testing the NATO boarder as they have done so near Finland and Norway ? Other NATO countries including Romania, Latvia, Estonia, Lithuania and Poland shou…
CW is not someone I want to invest with. I prefer Warren Buffet’s steady approach. Sold most of my EM positions last year and had a decent gain. Reallocated to developed market lately, but they got hammered hard lately. Not too many safe options le…
Really appreciate your assessment. Wild day for emerging market. Will rebalance more once things settle a bit.
What concerns me is China is undergo lockdown in several large cities with several thousands cases of COVID. One is the city equivalent …
@Mark, On the contrary I believe COVID has significant ramifications on the economy including work stoppage, labor shortage, supply chain challenges and let alone the human toll across the globe. Just as COVID situation stabilized somewhat, the Ukra…
From Washing Post this morning,
signaled far more rate hikes, a total of seven for this year, marking a big first step in the Fed’s precarious fight to rein in the highest inflation in 40 years.
If 25 bps per hike, 7x0.25 = 1.75% by year end. Fed…
For retirees who depend on bond yield, this is not a friendly environment.
Today the yield on 2 and 10 year treasuries went down a bit today after the 10 Y went over 2.0% on Monday.
Fed meets on Wednesday, March 16th and will decide to hike the …
The holdings are not published daily
TRP is offering a total of 8 actively managed ETFs.
https://troweprice.com/personal-investing/tools/fund-research/etf
It would be harmful to the fund company and the investors if the holdings are published on…
Yes, precious metals are up considerably. Other soft commodities including wheat, corn, soybean, fertilizer and other are more due to supply chain and transportation issue. Think this constraint will ease as the pandemic improves in the coming month…
There is another tread on commodity below,
https://mutualfundobserver.com/discuss/discussion/59300/my-commodities-basket-got-clobbered-today-dbc
Since oil is a major component within the Bloomberg commodity index, large swings of oil price in both d…
The inventory on soft commodities including wheat, corn and soybean is low right now. DBC, an agriculture commodity ETF has been rising since 2021 and continuing during the Ukraine war. Ukraine is key grain producer for Europe and Africa. There is r…
I concur with your assessment on COVID. With respect to COVID death in China, I don’t think that data was public released and verified. It is more likely than not that the death figure is much higher, given the high population density and limited me…
Russia has formally asked China for arm support since China has promised full support last week. This alone could cloud the issue of whether investors should invest with China, in addition to the concerns that @yogibb highlighted.
#3 above is prob…
Except the last part of the transcript,
Now, for shorter term, more call it tactically-oriented investors , volatility can actually breed opportunities, including the ability to use periodic rebalancing, to take advantage of market swings, frankly,…
One of my biggest concerns is his mentioning of "no end game." Basically Putin just wants to kill and/or eliminate all those he feels disrespect him and his rule. It's terribly hard to believe that the Ukrainians will ever just roll over and go awa…
@hank, hope all is well with you. Situation is quite different today than that of the 70’s. Today, the Fed is part of the market instead being the last resort of lending during the period of financial crisis. By keeping the interest rate low since …
I welcome as many views as possible. It is the supporting data leading to the conclusion or probability to recession that would be informing for everyone here. I too subscribe to Barron’s and in my opinion, the comments section is where it get int…
Forsyth’s general tone is that various economic indicators are signaling an approaching recession.
JURRIEN TIMMER of Fidelity still think we are in a secular (long term) bull market. The article was posted on March 9th but it is tough to say if r…
Thanks to @ Devesh Shah, YTD return on short-term inflation protection security such as VTIP and STIP are up 1.4%. Think they will do ok in rising rate environment.
https://mutualfundobserver.com/2022/02/thoughts-on-inflation-protection/#more-16373…
Moldova is the next target as revealed by Lukashenko. NATO and Biden need to make that clear to Putin that they are free to move in and out of Ukraine without being threatened. Any incident could launch into WWIII.
US has mobilized 8,000 troop and…
