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.
I was looking at the historical performance of a large-cap blend mutual fund yesterday (a good fund -- rated "Gold" and "five stars") and couldn't help but notice that 100% of its outperfomance over the past decade went straight to operating expense…
All of the Primecap Odyssey funds, which are in multi-year outflow mode, are distributing over 5%. (Looks like the Growth fund is doling out almost 12%, which comes on top of bottom quartile 5-yr. relative performance in its category, so no surpris…
Hey -- I am a dog expert: years of experience with a local shelter, served on the board of directors, became familiar with literally hundreds of dogs. Dogs don't care where they live, they care who they live with. You can assure your wife that you…
I read every columnist mentioned here when I was a kid. I'm not sure why they appealed; topically they were rather adult in nature. I became an English major and have to think it had something to do with their facility with language. My father sti…
That's really interesting. I'm familiar with reconstitutions (adding or deleting) but not shifting away from market capitalization. I'm curious to see what things look like after the changes.
I guess all one can say is that, so far, it has worked out pretty well. A whole lot better than bonds, foreign anything, or -- god forbid -- the fallacy of emerging markets. And that's been the case for over a decade. So who can blame them for st…
I used to but now that I've finally made up my mind to only index on the equity side (only took 20+ years lol) when it's gone it's gone. Anything sold now goes right into the index.... done.
Smart. This is the direction I'm heading, too, however …
How many people confirm their ability to secure insurance before they purchase a home? Farmers, CSAA, and Liberty Mutual round out the top five issuers, I think.
If you're curious you could try this. Log onto the website and under "Accounts" (for your Living Trust) click on "Balances," then scroll down to "Balance Details." I'm guessing you'll see that your "Cash & Cash Investments" are deposited with S…
"The Bank Sweep feature automatically 'sweeps' the uninvested cash in your brokerage account into one or more banks ('Program Banks'). Cash in the Bank Sweep feature is eligible for FDIC insurance." You can check this by looking at "Balances" on yo…
Not that I know what I'm talking about but while SCHW's profits could well be affected -- temporarily -- by increased costs of capital neither it nor its millions of clients will be going anywhere. Outflows from its MMFs? They've reversed. Schwab…
Between March 14th and 17th SCHW insiders bought over 128,000 shares of SCHW stock. I guess they expect to make more by doing that than the 4.5% Schwab's MMFs are paying.
Based on extensive first-hand experience I'd say that compelled arbitration isn't a disaster for consumers (maybe excepting the restrictions on access to class actions). Most cases filed in court go through arbitration anyway (at least they do arou…
I dunno, trailing five-year returns of about 1% per year are objectively awful, let alone sub-optimal. You can't eat relative performance. I wouldn't think the fund is "designed" to achieve such returns. Pretty darn sure that's not what management…
There sure isn't anything wrong with wanting FDIC insurance, now or ever. I've been moving funds from MMFs into CDs in order to lock in higher interest rates; FDIC insurance was the cherry on top.
Why would someone think that funds in a Schwab money market fund would be at risk? Those funds are not invested in anything having to do with Schwab. If the underlying assets were at risk that risk would quite possibly stretch over many other prim…
I agree with what others have said here. What struck me in the letter was another GP mea culpa and that somehow the extreme drops in the funds could have been mitigated in 2022. The solutions, which sound to me like creating more committees, do not …
If you compare 12 month rolling total return of RPHIX since inception to the beginning 1 year UST, there are 136 measurable periods. Below is the max, min and average excess return:
Max 5.09%
Min -1.71%
Avg 2.13%
Those seem like pretty good odds.
I'm guessing RPHIX made some sort of "special distribution" as well, though why it wasn't included in the updated version of the December distribution announcement is annoying.
The Primecap funds have certainly endured a few years of bad luck -- POAGX in particular was perfectly positioned to crater when covid struck as it had outsized stakes in things like airlines and cruise lines. Yet the fund is idiosyncratic, that's …
It is impossible to extrapolate completely as you said, but given that interest rates went from 3% at the end of September when this last shareholder letter came out to 4% on November 2, it is probable that the yield on this fund will be increasing …
This is exactly why latinate western European countries snort derisively at Anglo-Saxon capitalism. We are sunk in in a system that puts profit above all, and I mean all, else.
