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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
Atlanta Federal Reserve Bank President Raphael Bostic told The Financial Times over weekend that the Fed may impose a 50 basis point rate hike in March.
Saw that too in other sites and that could have sizable impact on the long bonds. Mid March is t…
@davfor, thanks for sharing your view. I too have made sizable changes throughout 2021 in order to lower the risk from multiple fronts: interest rate hike (inflation) and potential war (Ukraine and other conflicts). Will be patient just like previou…
However, I do see human irrationality playing a big part in the markets of recent years. That includes not only equities, but assets like real estate, bonds, crypto. And further, that uniquely human ingredient compounds the difficulty of determinin…
Thank you for confirming the data. Both financial and energy sectors are ahead of S&P 500 by several % so far this year. The short stock is labeled as hedged equities in D&C recent Shareholder Letter.
the Fund holds a short S&P 500 f…
The mechanics of buying (even when you have one million dollar) and selling does not work for many people. These are for institution and wealthily individuals.
For me it is more important to have competence active management and exposure to that …
That man set a bad example for being the leader of the country. Hopefully England will elect a new leader.
Read elsewhere that many small business in England are having serious problems selling their products in EU due to the existing commerce a…
@hank, I too notice that DODBX is up while the balanced index is down, +3.2% vs -2.3%. Will see next week if that is a typo reported.
I moved sizable investment grade bonds last year to floating rate bonds, ST HY, stable value and cash. There …
Don't know if you can consider CEF such as RQI in the same category as CPREX with respect to the risk-reward. RQI has done well last year just as the OEF such as VNQ. I maintain small allocations in FRIFX and VNQ.
Wonder if we are late in the business cycle for smaller cap funds? With the possibility of several rate hikes this year and supply chain issue, I reduced my small cap % late last year and moved to more defensive positions.
It appeared that international value funds are leading their growth counterparts this year. They trail growth style for over 10 years. Will they persist in the near term?
We are all guessing at this point. Best is to watch for new changes in the fund. Wish they just launch a new fund with different strategy from the other D&C fund. This fund is already quite large.
Often OEFs would broaden their investment mandates so they can open other space. Likely the balance fund would invest more overseas as it become a global balanced fund similar to that of VG global Wellington.
Think there is more to unfold in next several weeks. Ten year treasury yield is moving up since the beginning of the year and the bond prices are falling. The 10 year treasury rate jumped sharply from 1.512% on 12/30/21 to 1.780% as of today.
Th…
Value funds such as Oakmark lagged S&P 500 index which dominated by FAANG stocks for awhile. It is more appropriate to compare them using the appropriate benchmark, VG Value index as you noted. Will see how this plays out this year with rising …
Growth stocks tend to lag in rising rate environment. Thus, quality stocks will do better with their lower valuation and dividend such as DIVO, SCHD and dividend growth funds. This week the value funds dominated. Same trend also observed in overse…
Thanks for the overview of your thinking. I agree that higher interest rates this week affect many sectors of the market negatively, and left few pockets unscathed. Hope thing wills settle down in next few weeks.
Glad to see "transitory" term is…
Good funds but bad timing to hold them right now. Also there maybe already too much overlap; best to verify that first. YTD return on several of the above funds are already in red. ARTYX is down 7.9%, for example.
More important questions should …
Several companies are starting to increase the unvaccinated employee’s insurance premium by several hundred dollars per month. The carrot days are over. Now comes the stick! One can have their freedom, but they are not entitled to infect others wh…
The COVID drawdown was rough on many mutual funds, even treasury. Many were down 10-40% within 2 weeks. Nevertheless, this drawdown recovered quickly comparing to the 2008’s drawdown that lasted several years. Since then value funds trail their grow…
Bill Nygren of Oakmark funds have done well in 2021 relative to their benchmark. He is a good value manager and he owed up to his mistakes (i.e. Washington Mutual back in 2008) while improved their risk management process to avoid the classic “value…
Good article. Being patient helped to navigate through the extremes of fear and greed. Now it is a good time to reflect and make the adjustment to face a new year (and challenges).
@Newgirl, to clarify my earlier statement, we moved more equity to defensive sectors such as health care and utility. Traditionally, these sectors plus consumer staples are considered defensive while the other sectors are considered cycincal. Thi…
For sure, I am looking forward to your article in Seeking Alpha. I too is rebalancing $ among the defensive sectors from real estate and health care to utilities. I also will focus more on the total return from dividend funds/ETFs than bonds since …
@Charles, Happy New Year. Thank you for the reminder.
I rebalanced in early December since my equity positions have grew considerably relative to bonds. This new year I will have more cash than bond, but always looking for opportunties suitable i…
My recent Roth conversion at Vanguard has completely online without any issue. Actually it is pretty simple and asked whether I want to have tax withheld. I declined and paid the tax directly to IRS (quarterly estimates). Fund was transferred in 24…
The month of December has been a risk-off and risk-on scenarios where investors are trying to figure out how badly the market can be impacted by Omicron variant. It has been a risk-off scenario for the last weeks.
This year uptick of infected ca…
@PRESSmUP, Thanks you for the clarification and how you managed the FI part. It is great that you can get that high dividend yields from SCHD and DIVO. I also use healthcare and utility in ETFs to generate some income with the understanding of incu…
@PRESSmUP, you must hold a sizable cash position since you are not holding any conventional bond funds? Can the other positions generate adequate income?
Yes, I did exact what you did at the library. For a number of years, I subscribed to No-load Fund Analyst that taught me everything I knew today about mutual funds and more. The internet allows me to further my learning in several blog sites includi…
@bee, as always thank you for the links. Took pre-retirement class at work, but there are many aspects of preparation for the drawdown and taxes.
@crash, the natural disaster are very hard for many people, especially in countries where the govern…
