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MERFX collapse was due to the collapse of the Aon/Willis Towers Watson merger agreement. DOJ had argued merger would reduce competition and raise prices in the insurance industry, so merger was called off due to regulatory concerns. This was a $30 b…
@wxman123
Interesting EFT...an ETF fund of ETF funds...I charted HNDL against VWINX which appears to have a similar bond/equity mix...obviously not the same sectors. HNDL overweights Tech, Energy and Communication Tech.
Read about HNDL's methodol…
Obviously the Diamond Hill HY team is great, I've been with them for years and very happy. My existing Brandywine fund (LFLAX) has been just as great in its own right.
You might want to explain what you mean by "just as great in its own right." I…
The article concludes: "As the name says, the stocks and funds inside pay out a 7% average dividend today."
There's an etf for that, HNDL. It's been pretty well optimized during its short history. I like it.
Obviously the Diamond Hill HY team is great, I've been with them for years and very happy. My existing Brandywine fund (LFLAX) has been just as great in its own right.
Thanks for the HY suggestion, AJ.
I now want to focus on a safe allocation fund with low fees for my taxable account, and I've settled on VTMFX which is roughly 50/50. It will be my core. No more procrastinating.
I can DCA into VTMFX and let …
Schwab allowed the trade to go through with no transaction fee
Do you mean you selected one of the transaction fee options at the point of purchase (as appears in the screen I just previewed), and that the fee was not charged, OR was there no optio…
i own two bond funds OSTRX and WCPNX - im thinking of taking all the money out of OSTRX and adding it to WCPNX - but i wont make my decision til the end of the year. any comments on these funds would be very much appreciated. im not the brightest bu…
I guess the only way to protect yourself against this type of misconduct is to stick with funds offered by the household names. Highly unlikely something like this could happen in the first place, and I would think the house would make good on any …
For me now I'm 1/3 of my portfolio in cash, money markets or CDs earning anywhere from .5% to 3% (lucky 5 yr cd's bought a few years ago). I'm VERY conservative, but OK with that. I don't look at the cash as an emergency fund, just a guarantee not…
I'm a strong supporter of PRBLX/PRILX and hold the latter in large quantities at the moment.
Though Portfolio Visualizer hardly shows it giving index-like returns. It does much better!
Indeed, if I could go back in my investing history and pick…
YTD performance is .34% for this well known and outstanding long term fund. Just curious how current investors in Wellington feel about this closure to intermediaries? Is this a good sign, neutral or negative to you?
More like 3.54% YTD. Having a g…
No strategy can work all of the time. I'm a holder of VMVFX as it's an EASY hold at least for now. If it gets better great and if not I can dump. To soon to give up on this one. I followed the same strategy with FMIJX, balanced out its losing pe…
I wouldn't put my life savings into this fund but I do own it as a satellite position and pleased so far. Even though it's short-lived it did great in the COVID drawdown (max DD 6.33) compared with IOFIX (max DD 37.95% during the same swoon). I'd …
Yes, those are the funds up exactly 0.97%. As you noted, that's not helpful if one is comparing with a multi-fund portfolio.
One isn't likely to achieve that return in either the aggregate or with an individual fund these days without using jun…
BTW, M* reports only five share classes of taxable bond funds with YTD returns of 0.97%. Three are not generally available to retail investors:
Not sure where M* is getting its info from but two of my largest HY holdings (FAGIX and DHHIX) and up ov…
Once again, you can't have a sensible discussion on this subject without defining what is meant by "bond fund." YTD my bond fund portfolio is up .97% compared to BND which is down 3.09%. Going back to 2002 FAGIX (which admittedly holds some stock …
Bond funds are essential to most portfolios unless you have the stomach for watching your life savings cut by 50% at any given point in time (as per VTI). Of course as interest rates rise many bond funds won't do well but some will do just fine (e.…
Why single out TMSRX? Pretty much any fund except the most vanilla of the vanilla might hold hard to value assets. It sounds to me like these guys had problems way beyond that, like fraud. I would rely more on the integrity of the firm than the a…
DHHIX, what a fabulous fund. Hope they don't change a thing, one of my largest holdings. Still surprised that DH let this go. These guys are what the firm should have been building on.
Thanks@wxman23 for adding to my investment vocabulary. I’d like to know the origin of “stink bid,” if you know it. I do place orders below the bid price, but I did not know the practice was enshrined in an expression. It takes patience and a willing…
Yes, and this is generally true for most CEF's but with caveats...most significantly some CEFs can trade at premiums or discounts for a very long time. I look at the history on MS, and you have to really get a feel for a fund before making signific…
PIMIX still has the highest Sharpe ratio, lowest drawdown and no down years
The following performance graph is from PIMIX's 2009 statutory prospectus. You can take it on faith that this is for the institutional class shares for calendar year 200…
@wxman123. Thanks much for sharing this one.. i wasnt aware of it. So Im curious what is your strategy for when you sell this fund? Its had a great run since November.
Yes, it has...but was looking dreadful during the depths of covid, that's when …
PIMIX had a sizable drawdown in 2020, -11.3% and finally recovered for the year. So the risk aspect is higher than expected. Performance-wise the fund is way way too big and trailed other bond funds for last several years.
PRSNX had a smaller dra…
If you don't mind the closed end space I'm a big fan of BTO. Need to sell the rips and buy the dips with this one (I do with both hands on the big dips). I always remind myself that in the end the bank usually wins! up 44% in past 3 months, no com…
I bought SVARX at firstrade, FWIW. Very happy. My view is that this is a solid fund in normal times but excels in market dislocations, like picking up IOFIX after it cratered.
I've had Firstrade among the brokerages I use for many years and for precisely the reason stated by the OP. I've had one fund order rejected but most work, great to get a foothold in institutional shares at a low minimum. One minor difference in …
SWAN might minimize its losses on its own but it’s not going to provide protection to existing positions like TAIL will.
True, perhaps, but in order to use TAIL as protection to your portfolio as a whole you would need to own a ton of it, and it sim…
I'm still not sure I want to bet against PIMCO over the longer term, even with the bloat in PIMIX, it's my largest holding. As for an ETF, I like FIXD.
If you're looking to counterbalance a HY muni I'd consider VMPAX. It won't get you the same bang as the funds mentioned above (but that's what the HY is for). I like that VMPAX has had only one down year in the past 20, and only a loss of -0.39% a…
