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.
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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
I have good and not so good experience with Vanguard, Fidelity and T. Rowe Price. T. Rowe Price is the slowest and requires medallion stamp on everything.
Fidelity is the easiest, especially when $ is coming into Fidelity. Everything is done on…
@hank, did a short stint working in an American research station in South Poles. Everything depends on batteries are pushed to the limits. Cold weather drains the batteries rapidlly. Often we kept battery packs inside inside our coats and change …
Toyota already made a hybrid Highlander, an AWD SUV. Don't see many on the road. Even the hybrid Camry is not all the popular comparing to Prius. I think there is a fundamental limitation on the power to weight ratio from the electrical- gasoline…
I think this is the consolidation effort to drive up the bottom line, the profit. Buying out smaller competitors increases the customer bases. Custodian services on pension plans, 401(K), and even 529 plans are well fought over among the biggest br…
This fund is actively discussed in Boglehead site.
https://bogleheads.org/forum/viewtopic.php?t=255026
Wonder if anyone in MFO have experience with this fund?
in case it wasn't clear the scale was due to the taxcuts
It is a champaign promise. Did the middle class really get much out of last year tax reduction?
The farmer's bailout due to tariff war also contributed to the deficit - only $28B.
htt…
It is too early to say it is a done deal. Friday meeting amounted a hand shake, nothing more. Only believe it when there are sign agreement from both parties. Also there are supposedly several parts with each one are more challenging.
Value-oriented foreign funds have been lagging for a number of years and Bernie Horn's funds are no exception. I follow and watch, and have difficult to find solid compelling reasons to invest with him (and his team).
@Old_Joe, I think you answer your own question - demand. We are facing a slowing economy as demand for services and goods are declining. In bad times consumers would find alternatives to luxury goods, beers in place of fine wines; used cars versus…
What can you do with premium wine grapes if not for wines?
The global economy is slowing considerably this year. Europe is suffering from lack of demand for their products. Tariff does not help for sure. This article is 3 months old and it poi…
In comparison, my three step CD Ladder has a current yield of 2.6%.
@Old_Skeet,
Where did you find CD ladder with 2.6% yield? Many brokerage such as Fidelity offers 5 years ladder (4 CDs) with 1.88%. A sizable reduction after Fed rate cut.
It is marketing driven effort in an attempt to gather new assets. There are simply too many ETFs just like mutual funds. There must be enough demand to keep some of them afloat for several years, then survivorship of these products takes over.
Make sense for sure. I am just happy not to survive all unnecessary ups and down. Next week there will be more to unfold now that the Chinese team left early in trade talk.
Japanese treasury has very low yield for several decades. That is one of the reason they are the largest or second largest holder of US treasury. It would be long US will follow suit as Alan Greenspan pointed out earlier this week.
I have been using PIMIX for some time, but this year it lags badly among the multi-sector bond funds. Also disappointing is that PIMCO raised all their expense ratios.
It is nuts to have mortgage rates go negative. Does that imply mortgage-back bonds will also have negative yield? For income investors what is the point to hold these bonds?
@Charles, Safari has served me well over the years just as IE, Chrome and Firefox on the Windows OS. So far Portfolio tool has been very useful while in exploring less correlated asset classes and lowering the overall risk over time.
The Recove…
@Ben, You can use the back icon to get back to the MFO Premium home page. Click Portfolios again and it brings you back to your portfolios page with all portfolios you created. Fractional % works fine. If the total % of all funds do not sum up t…
Thank you @Charles. Had lots of fun over the weekend. Portfolios is a very informative tool for visualizing changes in performance and risk parameters (Ulcer index and MFO Risk ranking) within a portfolio when low/non-correlating funds are used. …
#SharpieGate was pathetically amusing on Twitter today.
Saw that yesterday - what a scream! Yet he double-down on the error and keep insisting he is right.
That is why you work with a good brokerage so that direct roller take place between the former employer and the brokerage. In the meanwhile the customer never touch the 401(K) fund to avoid triggering several tax events.
Fidelity has helped to ma…
@davidmoran, every time I read my SS annual statement, it always stated XX% reduction on future payment. There are fewer payees than 30 years ago as the baby boomer generation are retiring today. It is good for those who are collecting SS now, bu…
@PRESSmUP and @catch22, Agree. Info on her Twitter are more concise than the longer articles she presented in Schwab.
https://www.schwab.com/resource-center/insights/content/market-perspective
Today the market is up (risk off) since China and US …
@msf, thank you for the excellent article.
the trust fund is projected to run out in roughly 20 years and
benefits could only be paid from current Social Security taxes – which would not actually
“end” Social Security payments at all, but merely w…
