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.
A convertible note/bond from company A has the same underlying equity of A. So, if the stock of A rallies, the convertible also rallies (and on conversion, the company A is debt free!); if A tanks, the convertible may become busted, i.e. may act jus…
@Hank, those are 2 stories online that are consolidated into one in paper version. The 2nd story forms the latter part w/o any subheadings. Typically 2-3 Up & Down Wall Street online are consolidated as such every week.
Similar for Trader but su…
@Hank, are you able to access Barron's Digital that is availably EARLY Saturday AM? It provides a true digital copy of the paper edition.
Barron's Digital https://barrons-nj.newsmemory.com/
When I start my Barron's work on Fridays, I do have to r…
Too much of a good thing is bad.
There is a saying that one cannot live on cake. This one European queen who said during a famine, what's the problem, no bread? People can just eat cake. - she was deposed not just from her queendom but this world.…
Fund industry, including its trade association ICI, opposed the Names Rule. ICI press release doesn't indicate that entirely - it claims to have softened compliance a bit
https://www.ici.org/news-release/23-news-names-rule-vote-statement
It all sta…
Those suggested allocations for VG PAS in 60s & 70s (60-40), early-80s (55-45), late-80s & beyond (50-50) are much higher than those for target-date funds (TDFs), including Vanguard TDFs. Of course, the questionnaire for PAS determined the s…
Bloomberg story via open Yahoo Finance.
Basically, Illinois is consolidating many local police pension funds into a big state level police pension fund. But this is under litigation as many locals like to "play" with their own underfunded pension …
YBB Notes
FED FUND rate held at 5.25-5.50%; bank reserves rate at 5.4%; discount rate at 5.5%. Possibly 1 more hike in 2023. Real & nominal rates may change differently. The base effect is in y-o-y, but the Fed also looks at monthly (m-o-m) and…
So, if you have SPLG /SP500 at ER of 2 bps, do you really need SPY/SP500 at ER of 9.5 bps?
Yes, would say State Street - for higher liquidity for institutions. But retail investors would be just fine with SPLG.
SPY is State Street's original cash …
M* Performance tab shows that the new TCAF (6/14/23- ) had inflows of about $70 million/mo. Its $222.4 million AUM (M*) is decent for a new ETF. A survivable ETF typically has $50+ million AUM. True, there have been hot ETFs from other hot managers …
Bank loans are usually floating-rate loans by banks (FR/BL) to startups and emerging and small companies that cannot tap the regular bond market or afford fixed-rate loans. So, FR/BL have junk ratings and have higher correlation with stocks and econ…
More
Vanguard Digital - A cheaper cousin of Vanguard PAS
Fidelity Go
Schwab SIP - High cash allocation is kept in Schwab Bank; other variations.
Betterment - Was fined by the SEC for errors in tax-harvesting algorithm & poor disclosure.
Wealthf…
@Baseball_Fan, I see articles from Lewis B in Barron's frequently. So, I assume that things are fine with him - may be he is on a short break from MFO.
Here is from THIS week, Barron's Part 2, 9/18/23,
FUNDS. DIVIDEND-oriented funds are attracti…
@Devo, the OP question was fund's average holding period. Annual turnover (if stable) sort of indicates that.
100% turnover means the entire portfolio is changed in 1 year.
50% turnover means that about half the portfolio is changed in 1 year, or …
"The turnover ratio measures fund yearly trading activity. It is calculated by taking the lesser of purchases or sales, dividing that number by average monthly net assets. Securities with a maturity of less than a year are not considered."
Fund rep…
I also track other Sentiment indicators. Last week, the AAII Sentiment was an outlier indicating notable improvement, but others remained negative or neutral. But THIS week's AAII Sentiment reading makes it clear that last week was a fluke.
Most Se…
Recycling is to prevent toxic stuff in the landfills and/or to reuse materials that are in short supply.
Most recycling requires additional energy. Only safely combustible waste (bio-waste) may produce energy economically.
Not many real estate hybrid funds around. I know of FRIFX but that may be a tamer RE hybrid fund.
I am also familiar with TIAA QREARX (VA) that is mostly direct real estate. There are many RE equity funds (FRESX, VNQ, etc) and a few nontraded-RE f…
DARPA is a very familiar name in university & industry R&D. It is now a funding agency within the DOD that supports fundamental long-term research.
The DOD also funds lot of applied research for its immediate military needs via other agencie…
The only surviving bears now are billionaire-bears and firm owners/founders. Most other bears with jobs have thrown in the towel.
Unfortunately, this means that shorts have been mauled too. So, this mostly-long market is now subject to sudden up-sp…
@Junkster, you may seen the same posts at Twitter - there are noises that 2023 YTD is shaping as the 3rd down year for Treasuries and "that cannot be". The total bond market and corporate bonds seem to have turned around 2023 YTD. Will that drag Tre…
M* now had downloads only (vs URLs) for many of its documents; its Homepage articles remain open-access with URLs.
I see that some others are also doing this. My guess is that it may be easier to put downloadable documents behind some wall (pay or …
Muni regulator MSRB has an alphabet soup for munis - ESG, GBP, SBP, SBG. The MSRB has been mentioned at MFO, but not recently. It makes the point that all munis don't become ESG.
https://www.msrb.org/Making-Impact-ESG-Investing-and-Municipal-Bonds
CAPITALIZATION vs Bold
All CAPS are screaming. That would be bad as would be all bold.
But selected CAPITALIZATIONS often substitute for bold at many discussion forums.
Many sites don't have bold (Facebook, Twitter, etc). Some that have it don't …
From 2022 M* Category Classifications,
Foreign Large Value 26
Foreign Large Blend 26
Foreign Large Growth 26
Foreign Small/Mid-Value 27
Foreign Small/Mid-Blend 27
Foreign Small/Mid-Growth 27
Global Large-Stock Growth 28
Global Large-Stock Blend 28
…
3-mo T-Bill rate $IRX trades daily; note that scale is 10x yield.
One can look at trading on Fridays and Tuesdays, the day-before and day-after the Monday Auction (except when Monday is a holiday). Just a quick look at the chart shows that rates ar…
It should be obvious from the discussions so far, but I double-checked anyway. The following observations should be easy to remember.
EVERY 13-wk T-Bill has the same CUSIP# as some 26-wk T-Bill.
The 4th issuances of 13-wk and 26-wk T-bills have th…
I prefer Treasury Auctions when nearby (for 13-wk and 26-wk T-Bills, there are). There is a large supply and even much larger demand (often 2x-3x). EVERYBODY gets the same price whether buy they $100 (at Treasury Direct) or $1,000 (at brokerages) or…
T-Bill CUSIP Numbers - Matching
Because of 13-wk, 26-wk, 52-wk T-Bill issuances, some maturing dates for 13-wk T-Bills will coincide with those for 26-wk and 52-wk T-Bills. Similar for 26-wk and 52-wk T-Bills.
When the T-Bill maturity dates are th…
@Roy, both of your examples are for LC-growth.
A problem with this category is that the LC-growth index has become nondiversified. Fund companies are handling this in two ways: i) ignore the index and be diversified as per ICA 1940. Active funds c…
See October 2022 press release from the SEC requiring "concise and visually engaging" fund reports. Of course, the SEC formal documents on the right panel is only 350 pages! There is an 18-month transition period but funds can do this earlier.
Mutu…
At Schwab, I use Semantec VIP app. Every minute, it generates a 6-digit code (copy-and-paste OK) that has to be appended to the password. With Schwab Mobile, I have to be fast - to enter user ID, password+VIP code, all under 1 minute.
A limitation …
I think that one can quote 10-25% under fair use, less the better.
Paraphrasing the essence of the article is another way, my preferred way. I didn't mean just word replacements for paraphrasing.
I did listen to 2 songs that @msf noted on a famous…
It belonged to Northern Trust multi-manager funds. These have NT managers allocating $s to external advisors.
NENGX had 5 external subadvisors according to a recent report. ARK was removed as a subadvisor in 2021. The NT managers for the fund were…
BTW, I am also signed up for FREE Credit Karma (Intuit/INTU) that provides free credit reports and monitoring from Equifax and TransUnion.
So, Kroll covers the 3rd, Experian, for me.
If you have other credit monitoring, then the Kroll offer via P…
I mostly paraphrase (the safest option), but sometimes also use limited selected quotes. Extensive quotes are likely violations of the fair-use notion.
https://fairuse.stanford.edu/overview/fair-use/four-factors/
Edit/Add: @Old_Joe, I posted a note…
