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.
And keep in mind that when choosing between a business president and an ideologue - the former will never break his/her word, while the latter can have a vision in the middle of the night.
Sorry @rono, that is such a romanticized/naive view of a b…
Will try to answer this as apolitically as possible.
What is debatable, is whether or not you believe that adopting this tax increase is helpful to the US economy or detrimental.
Depends on how that additional revenue is used. In theory, spendin…
As for being the greatest country on earth . . . it takes leaders and they've been a tad scarce lately. Sorry.
That is exactly what I was wondering.
We have great business leaders, we have great technology leaders, etc, etc and yet when it come…
John Bogle seems like the only guy who calls it like it is because he has nothing to gain or lose. So far he is the only one who has pointed out that these markets aren't investing any more, it is betting against each other and bidding things up.
…
Factors that affect property tax as a combination
Things that make it go up:
Desirability of the location (people with more ability to pay move in before locals can protest and influence the local government)
Lack of commercial or tourist tax base …
I agree with Maurice if it were clear that he would have been on the ball first.
But watching that in slow motion several times with frequent stop frames, it appears to me that his moment of hesitation coincided with the Bronco arm reaching over t…
Notes on grading Small Cap US Equity Funds
Benchmarked to VISGX and IWO. A problem with Small Cap category is that there are multiple indices tracked by different funds. These two benchmarks track different indices so the substantial difference bet…
Off topic: I'll probably be voted off the island for writing this, but I think Sanders is a refreshing breath of fresh air to the national political debate. And, I'm a registered Republican that campaigned for Reagan at the Infinite Corridor in 198…
@Anna, Amazon does not gather information like that from other sources. Nor does it have the feature to use that information in the My Vehicle section. They aren't like Google with data sucking tentacles everywhere. They may be looking at purchases …
Isn't it curious every time the stock market takes a few lumps these networks roll out the bears?
Not just on TV. In the forums too.
This thread will be a good one to revisit in 6 months.
If I recall from some papers in the past, both small and value show a premium that portfolio theory cannot explain because they are less volatile rather than more volatile. Larry Swedroe isn't correct on that point.
I find these studies over decade…
@Joe, you keep saying that and you say you are an insider. Any specifics? You said oil companies will collapse earlier. Which companies outside frackers and why? If just fracking industry, why would it be such a big deal outside of a few states in t…
@Ted is spot on.
As good as Broncos defense was, QBs at SuperBowl level even when losing or facing great defense or team not showing support, show moments of brilliance in a play or two. Cam had nothing brilliant I can recall. Seemed overwhelmed b…
Thanks for confirming @Catch22.
What is the procedure to report bugs on this site for corrective action? Do admins monitor this category or should I e-mail or post a form somewhere?
So have @MikeM and I earned the right to rub @Ted's head virtually or dunk him in virtual water or whatever the allowed ritual is to gloat on these forums....
My propitiating model says we are due for a technical bounce this week. One of these bounces in the future starting this week will turn out to be the bottom. As to which one it will be, I have to wait for my propitiating ball to come back from its t…
@davidrmoran, the answer to your last question is in that same post I pointed to earlier which gives example of how and when they might differ. A low volatility fund can score very high or very low depending on its returns through time relative to i…
@old_skeet, isn't that true of any ranking? I don't know of any ranking or rating that will guarantee a certain performance (or lack of) especially in a single snapshot of some time period. Perhaps the problem is in what you expect from a ranking wh…
Still occurring. For example, if I try to edit my post above. The following is what happens on screen when I try to post or save after editing if it has that mutual fund symbol in it.
@davidrmoran, I think you have a fundamental conceptual misunderstanding of what this is measuring that my explanations so far have not helped. Admittedly, the metric is a bit nuanced than the typical but that is true of any new concept. The biggest…
@Catch22, I hear you.
Back in 2000s I used to follow the story of the "then in trouble" American Airlines as I used to fly them a lot to Europe and was vested in their health. The story of that set of incompetent management team is enough to turn a…
Notes on grading Large Cap Growth
Benchmarked to index funds IWF and V I G R X (cannot post with this symbol whole, seems like a bug in the software) for measuring alpha.
Most funds come from US News Money Top Funds and contain well known names. M…
@davidrmoran, I have not kept track of it as I saw no point. If you think there is a point to be made, please do look it up on M* and contribute to furthering understanding. That is how this study started after all.
@MikeM, thanks for the kind word…
@davidrmoran, I truly don't understand what you are trying to say above. Seems like the exchange is getting unnecessarily combative.
So I will let it sit there unless someone else feels there is a point I am missing and explains it to me.
Moving o…
I would pay no or at least much less attention to RARE unless delimited for manager tenure. Otherwise you're not measuring a real entity, other than generic sector choice as flavored by some random people, I would suggest.
@davidrmoran, not going …
@davidmoran, you got it. This is doing what is painful to do manually at M* over a sufficiently large sample space.
About the management changes, it is an interesting point. As you know, conventional metrics may be made irrelevant by manager chang…
Not taking a position for or against value because it does not matter for a diversified portfolio but one has to be careful about metrics that suggest something will overperform next. The worst thing one can do is switch when such articles come out.…
Broncos 21 Panthers 17 not having followed either team but taking experience over youth. :)
Or higher scoring with the same 4 point win.
Yes, I have been warned about betting against @Ted.
@davidmoran, you are measuring a different thing. This is explained in my earlier thread/post on the results and in the discussion above. That difference is exactly the thesis for this study. Simply put, what you have measured is the relative perfor…
Funny you should ask today. I had some old positions in gold funds in my taxable portfolio I sold off today for a small profit after sitting on it forever as they reached overbought conditions. They did give some stability during this meltdown in a …
Yes, cutting dividends to maintain credit ratings is a valid reason since the latter can significantly increase the cost of doing business. That could very well be what happened here.
However, if you see COP doing aggressive share buybacks in the n…
@Pressmup, be fair. Didn't say you should swear off stocks because of those two alone. More reasons...
Part of my continued narrative that it is very difficult for individual investors to assess the health and potential of a company, especially whe…
Notes on grading for US Large Cap Value funds
While noting that the funds being selected for this grading are what would be considered highly rated funds and so they should all have done reasonably well, I found many more funds to have realized con…
These funds were sold as providing the flexibility to go anywhere where gains could be made. Which is fine if the manager had the ability and the skills to manuever as such. Turns out Rob Arnott is just Hussman in a corporate suit with a rigid philo…
@MikeM, have tried similar experiments (with ETFs not individual stocks) none of them really worked for me. Fixed stops in amount or percentage don't work because it depends on the inherent volatility of the asset. A lower volatile asset keeps you i…
@davidmoran, you are reading far more into it than what it is. Not cynical or following from this analysis. Basic business axiom. Businesses (unlike charities) exist to make money not product. In most cases/times, those two are aligned. But business…
I don't satisfy that trading requirement so they must have some discretion on who they offer it to. In my case, I was having a discussion with a Fidelity rep about a stop loss limit order on one of ETF sells when I was just trying to figure out how …
