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Series presented at MFO:
AAII Sentiment Surveys (weekly)
Barron's Funds Quarterly (quarterly)
Barron's on Funds & Retirement (ad-hoc; when there are several stories)
FOMC Statements (about 6 weeks)
Fund Allocations (Cumulative) (monthly)
I-Bond Rates (semiannual)
Stable-Value (SV) Rates (monthly)
The US is a melting pot of immigrants. But the path to naturalized citizenship is long. In many families, one or more members may be noncitizens. Briefly outlined here are the situations where your immigration or domicile (or resident) status may ma…
Agree with @gman57 - edit & move to Discussions.
Minor tinkering:
In stocks, you have LCG and LCB. May be switch LCB SP500 VFIAX / VOO to LCB total stock VTSAX / VTI.
In bonds, may be switch from Total (investment-grade) Bond market VBTLX to …
I am a bit familiar with Empower as it handles 401k of a relative. But I never looked at its free personal investing dashboard. Looks like it is only an app without a PC version. I will try to find out what info is available without setting up a log…
Market-neutral (50-50 long-short) global ESG quant fund from Bridgeway. High expenses of 6.17% after 1.38% waiver until 11/1/25 are from a complex absolute-return strategy.
Roth IRAs became popular after 2010 when the income limits were dropped.
Rorh Conversions don't require earned income.
But recently, the stretch was eliminated for most beneficiaries - now most inherited IRAs must be drained in 10 years & annu…
$25 billion?
Oops! After the roadshow, Bill Ackman will be happy with only $2.5-4.0 billion CEF PSUS initially. He will hard-cap the fund at $10 billion - doesn't he know that "C" in CEF means closed, & they don't grow like OEFs or ETFs? To get…
@Charles, I didn't see the note at the top and was looking only at the legend below. Either place is fine, but you may want to note that this rollup is for flows AND AUM. As I noted before, different websites present AUM data differently - M* now on…
That's good - to show totals for the oldest asset class. But expand the note at the bottom to indicate this.
Looking at DODGX, it seems that the main display has total flows and total assets (checks with total $109.1 billion at M*; Fido has class A…
New poster, welcome!
There are several areas of the MFO Website:
Discussions - Funds (OEFs, ETFs, CEFs) related
Other Investing - Non-funds related and general strategies
Off-topic - With little or no relations to investments, or investment topics o…
@Mona, even within categories, active manager styles vary, so it's OK to hold 1-2 active funds in the categories you hold. This isn't an issue with index funds.
I would be comfortable holding 25-75% in a fund.
Diversified Funds https://ybbpersonal…
@Crash, that RMD amount calculation for younger spouse applies to T-IRAs and 401k/403b. There are several RMD calculators; the sponsor or the plan may provide calculations.:
https://www.aarp.org/retirement/required-minimum-distribution-calculator/
h…
I posted on it a few days ago and highlighted,
"Morningstar's John Rekenthaler starts with a simple but unusual observation that if 2 assets have the same long-term (LT) TR, then rebalancing will definitely benefit the TR."
In all other cases, reb…
Often recommended limit of 5% applies to individual stocks to reduce company specific risks. So, people holding only stocks (i.e. no funds) should have a portfolio of 20+ stocks.
Must funds are diversified, so they can be held at much higher levels…
L-S lite, 130-30 L-S funds were popular at one time. Fido also had one too. When that fad passed, firms changed the names.
Something similar is going on for ESG now.
One important takeaway is that it’s still preferable to roll Roth 401k/403b into Roth IRA.
Levine’s interpretation of an obscure clause is that when beneficiaries are “Designated-Non-Eligible” (a common situation), and death occurred after the RMDs…
BLNDX / REMIX name has "Multi-Asset". I checked that those include stock ETFs, long-short derivatives and cash-equivalents to support derivative positions - and that it!
This isn't what a typical multi-asset fund has - stocks, bonds and alternativ…
I have margin in (taxable) a/c at Fido and Schwab. Although I no longer use margin debt (so, my margin loan balance is $0), I like the benefits of the margin feature in easier trading - orders can be entered with zero net impact on the settlement da…
A disturbing update.
Nonbank fintech apps Yotta and Juno provided customers false or misleading assurances that their money was safe with FDIC insurance. Synapse handled that money as intermediary between Yotta, Juno and the FDIC insured banks (Evo…
If you cancelled the transfer, that shouldn't happen.
But if you clicked on some tab that asked how to fund the transfer to avoid margin, then the sell and transfer would be tied.
FYI, to avoid possible mistakes (and I have made some), I always do…
NYU law professor Daniel Hemel digs deep into the mechanics of the ETF BOXX and the fuzzy areas of tax laws (sections 1258 and 1092) that its tax deferral claims to exploits. He thinks that eventually there would be an IRS clarification or challenge…
Size of R2000 is tiny % of the total market-cap (R3000). As noted in weekend Barron's,
"The SCs R2000/IWM now are near 20-year low at 5.2% (by market-cap; the recent peak was at 8.8% in 2006) of the total Russell R3000 universe."
It should be poss…
LC to SC rotation started on July 10 & can not longer be ruled out as a 1-day fluke.
Ratio IWM:SPY stockcharts.com/h-sc/ui?s=IWM%3AONEQ&p=D&b=5&g=0&id=p37185738747
Ratio IWM:ONEQ stockcharts.com/h-sc/ui?s=IWM%3AONEQ&p=D&…
@Charles, good list of Morningstar/MORN achievements as it has made the successful transition from a small-time mutual fund information provider to a global fintech power house - sort of a mini-"Bloomberg".
In the meantime, M* has done everything …
Checked HOBAX / HOBIX. It does invests in BDC baby bonds. HOBAX is no-load/NTF at Fido only (not at Schwab).
https://www.holbrookfunds.com/_files/ugd/0b9fcd_f222282487f94c3490f5c24fb5daa6e6.pdf
VIX was supposed to follow global events 24/7, but instead, cryptos are almost doing that now.
https://stockcharts.com/h-perf/ui?s=COIN&compare=DJT,$BTCUSD&id=p13316794986
Baby bonds is a term used for bonds that are issued in $1,000 denominations and often trade on exchanges. These are popular with retail investors. Why would you want to limit the OEFs, ETFs, or CEFs to such baby bonds only?
Edited for clarity & …
It doesn't matter whether there is 1 manager or multiple managers.
The fund firm matters a lot. For example, Fido managers have great institutional support whether a fund has star manager (FCNTX, FDGRX) or a crowd (FBALX - a graveyard of former Fid…
@Crash, good that you found it useful.
I just searched small estate probate rules in Hawaii (each state has some variations), and the info says that the limit in Hawaii is $100K (in financial assets), BUT if any real property is involved, and there…
Edited
That was Eddie Lampert - his bright idea was to buy Sears and Kmart just for the real estate, run them down, and make tons of money on real estate. Problem was when the anchor stores failed, big malls failed, the real estate values collapsed…
Those hot SCG funds are for YTD (really, StockCharts 11/1/23-). But ANYTHING that beats SP500 these days attracts attention, especially SCG. Not all are recognized by StockCharts, but they are by MFO Premium.
https://i.ibb.co/L1yX6J0/Hot-SCG-YTD.png…
Listed asset managers AB, AMG, BEN, BLK, FHI, IVZ, SCHW (mainly, a broker), TROW.
Fidelity is private and Abigail Johnson is a major owner. Other owners are Fido employees and trusts.
@msf is correct, there are TIAA VAs as well as CREF VAs.
The VAs don't trade and there are no standard tickers for VAs. But referring to them by some tickers is convenient. Unfortunately, Lipper has its own tickers, MFO Premium has its own (slightl…
You may know that VAs are covered by MFO Premium and the new TestFol (Morningstar used to cover them too, but now that is now part of M* professional products). My particular focus has been on TIAA VAs, but others are covered too (including from Fid…
Charlie Bilello called it a reversal day. X/Twitter LINK
"Today was one of the wildest days in markets you will ever see. A complete reversal of all of the major secular trends in recent years.
The Losers Became Winners...
Regional Banks $KRE: +4.…
Having tried Treasury auto-rolls at both Fido and Schwab, IMO, Fido does it better.
Fido coordinates it with maturing Treasury & roll occurs on the same says as maturing Treasury. Auto roll can be canceled online once triggered but before the n…
TestFol Help now has links for "Report a Bug" (Google Doc form) and "Contact Us" ([email protected]). These have been quite responsive so far.
https://testfol.io/help
