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.
Frank Oppenheimer put art in the mission of the Exploratorium from the beginning. Lord knows what's going on there these days. But most towns have their own Explo by now.
Not sure what this has to do with the OP. But this is the internet after all.
Did you log in again prior to looking at the holdings? Clearing cookies will cause the browser to forget that you were logged in to M*.
No dice on the latest version of Firefox. And I'm lite on adblockers these days. The sites I visit could use th…
All I can say is that the holdings came up fine for me with relatively recent versions of Firefox, Chrome, Edge, and IE, though pulling up the holdings failed on an older browser. I wasn't even logged in to M* with those newer browsers and I went …
The top ten holdings have been missing for the last few days. Very disappointing if this is a permanent change.
Maybe the holdings are for "premium" victims now.
The problem I always run into with emerging market funds is that they invest so much money in countries with unpredictable legal environments for investors.
China is all about the Communist Party. Russia, and several other countries, seem to be kl…
Side note: what happened to Oakmark? Not a single fund rated higher than 2 stars. Though M* still loves the company, giving most of its funds gold or sliver prospective (forward looking) analyst ratings.
I held some of their funds for a short per…
I was out and about today. And it is always hard not to note the amount of tattoos. Some of the art is truly impressive. On youthful skin.
I don't have any tattoos on my old skin. Too permanent. I'm waiting for for bio-nano-LED changeable skin art.…
Commodity dance moves:
Backwardation
https://investopedia.com/terms/b/backwardation.asp
Contango
https://investopedia.com/terms/c/contango.asp
Can I find a fund manager who does this for me?
I didn't understand any of that. And it came up in co…
Robert Louis Stevenson, along with Lloyd Osborne, wrote a black comedy titled The Wrong Box whose subject and plot is the tontine. Free online read on a number of sites.
Here's one review from Faith Jones, 2018.
https://medium.com/@havingfaith/b…
I think the problem with the U.S. Senate prioritizing land and geographic rights--really property rights when you think about why "states' rights" exist--over individual rights is far more significant. There's no good reason if democracy is the aim …
Politico leans right and seems to give a forum for every GOP conspiracy possible !
Not my experience in general since Trump came into office. They were mildly center-right during the Obama era. RINO right one might say.
The penultimate graf of this…
In Chicago, they're 199.99999% confident :-)
https://strong.academic.wlu.edu/humor/the-dead-vote-in-chicago-elections/ (humor)
Thanks for the reminder. My local BOE system shows that the post office received my ballot 1.5 weeks ago, but that it …
Dunno if it's a dead cat bounce or not. I sold my gold miners into the bounce today though.
I've got a long way to go before I do much better than break even with USAGX. Initiated my first position at 41.63 per share on 8/12/2011.
Bought again at 2…
IIRC, the gamble at the time was that Congress would make sure the increases never went through. I have to assume that the GOP was operating on the assumption that they would remain in the majority.
On less firm ground, I think the machinations had…
@sven: Everyone has to start somewhere. And Forbes offers good standard advice. The Wired article provides some practical how-to's to address some of the basic issues in #6 in the Forbes article.
The information at CISA is easy to read for the m…
@msf. Been working on the house. So dodging the internet. Sorry I missed your post re DODIX.
At the time I wrote about DODIX I could swear it was BBB, and that the duration had crept up to five years. That's why I read their report, and discovered …
@sven: That article is the garden variety advice for beginners. But weak on how-to's.
I think they missed one obvious issue: Do you store bank card information at places where you regularly shop? Totalwine.com would love to store my bank card infor…
VMVFX is on my list to sell. Too much movement chasing whatever seems to be low volatility at the moment. I was leery of the thesis to begin with. Bought it as sort of an experiment.
Per the article cited, I don't feel like I've lost out on much by…
Thinking about selling DODIX. They are now averaging BBB. And duration has crept up to five years. According to the last report I read they bought a lot of carbon energy during the down turn.
If I'm going to hold bonds at all I want them to be bori…
My advice to youngsters is to save as much as they can because they will be facing the perils of lay-offs after 50. If not before. We never went into long-term debt for anything but a house.
We certainly intend to spend down our retirement saving…
There are ESG style bond funds that might be more acceptable to your non-profit. TIAA-CREF has at least one. Parnassus has one. There are probably others.
It really depends on how much risk your non-profit wants to take. What the money is being set…
I figure it's hard enough to pick stocks to stay invested in. So I naturally distrust the stock funds with rapid turnover. At that point you've got to be pretty much of a genius to overcome the expenses.
That being said, most bond funds seem to tur…
U.S. Wind and Solar Installations-Trend May Not Last-I doubt that. Trillion $ companies are trying to become carbon neutral in 15-20 years. They don't rely on subsidies. Electric cars for the masses (Million Mile Battery) & new kid on the block …
@WABAC PNW is expanding it solar footprint. But, yes, Arizona regulators appear to be committed to centralized projects. Per M*'s writeup on PNW:
They certainly used to spend enough money to elect the regulators they wanted.
We shall see what t…
