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.
Reply to @Ted:
Ted, I have been a pretty satisfied customer with Fidelity for about two decades with both retirement plans and standard brokerage accounts. But going to the local office is often of little use given how Fidelity divies up specific …
Whoops, I guess I flunked reading comprehension! DavidV, if you can only purchase mutual funds (and not CEFs or ETFs), I think you really can't avoid miners except through your aforementioned QGLDX, or PRPFX which per M* as of 8/31/13 held 21.16% of…
Josh Brown {The Reformed Broker} had an interesting take on portfolio construction and gold:
In my opinion, there is only one answer to the question of gold in a portfolio: You should either hold a lot of gold (25- 50% of total assets) or none at al…
If you don't want to store physical on your own premises, take a look at the CEFs that just hold bullion: GTU (gold) and CEF (gold & silver).
Both currently are trading at a discount of over 3% to NAV.
Reply to @ron:
re: bank loan fund
I bought some FLOT for the first time last week, and apparently I was not alone:
http://www.forbes.com/sites/etfchannel/2013/07/16/noteworthy-etf-inflows-flot-2/?partner=yahootix
Very helpful comments here. Thanks to everyone!
There are no absolutes, but short of the Supreme Court, her job is very secure. She has no debt with the house and a brand-new car paid for. So, I'm thinking she can handle the expense of 3 years of L…
401(k) will become a rollover IRA at Fidelity, which will be separate from your existing Roth IRA there. Investment choices available should be the same for both accounts. Keep in mind the new Rollover IRA contains pre-tax money while taxes have alr…
With no match, my inclination is to use the Roth IRA and Roth 403b vehicles while you can, as I think they'll be outlawed eventually, e.g.:
http://articles.latimes.com/2011/apr/10/opinion/la-oe-scorse-roth-iras-20110410
David, regarding Fidelity's rolling out new funds, one of the ways fund families such as Fidelity supposedly goosed the returns of new funds was to give those funds (regardless of the funds stated investment philosophy in the prospectus) allotments …
Kiplinger's has an item on Oceanstone this month. manager Wang wouldn't talk to them either:
http://www.kiplinger.com/columns/fundwatch/archive/mysterious-oceanstone-mutual-fund.html
I am interested in comments from ye MFO denizens on some of the concerns about MLPs expressed in this Seeking Alpha item:
http://seekingalpha.com/article/500871-master-limited-partnerships-dark-clouds-ahead
and in particular, the following:
2. As…
David,
FYI, at the end of 2008 the Crawling Road blog had a look at PP returns from the 1970's on at http://crawlingroad.com/blog/2008/12/22/permanent-portfolio-historical-returns/#comments
Crawling Road's analysis has the PP annual return from 19…
As you mentioned, the Roth offers more flexibility when it comes to the when & how of making distributions and/or passing the IRA onto heirs.
The reality is that Washington will be sorely tempted in coming years to:
A) raise tax rates (for ex…
Reply to @scott: In terms of longer-term themes (esp. emerging markets), I think Jay Pelosky is worth paying attention to:
"In the global search for yield, four principal areas of opportunity stand out. First is USD denominated Emerging Market deb…
ETF inflows have been taking up some of the slack from mutual fund outflows:
Through the first 11 months of the year {2011}, total inflows into exchange-traded products stood at about $101.4 billion.
http://etfdb.com/2011/where-the-etf-money-is-f…
If you haven't read them already, check out the models of gold prices under low real short-term interest rate conditions by Eddy Elfenbein and Willem Weytjens:
http://www.crossingwallstreet.com/archives/2011/12/refining-the-gold-model.html
Reply to @Anonymous: Here's the official word from TDA customer service: "In general, the NTF symbol on a loaded fund should designate that the sales load is also waived. However, please contact our Mutual Fund Department prior to purchasing such a …
BusinessWeek article on redemptions:
http://news.businessweek.com/article.asp?documentKey=1376-LTXX2V0D9L3501-2919CVFKG2KPA6JHG5LFAOE663
"Fairholme held no Goldman Sachs or Morgan Stanley shares as of Aug. 31, according to a Form N-Q filed Oct. 28…
