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.
Barron's this week has a positive Cover story and a positive Q&A on real estate. Suggestion is to start bottom fishing cautiously. Sure, there are concerns and lots of bad news, but when everything is hunky-dory, prices would have moved up alrea…
Harris is a value boutique in Chicago. It runs Oakmark funds. It isn't known for deep bond bench. In fact, OAKBX for years had mostly Treasuries for the bond portion and that worked for a good deal of times; some years ago, OAKBX added more bond ana…
I keep a LONG Watchlist (M*, Yahoo Finance) of past, current and potential future holdings. Rarely I delete some that I never plan to go back to. It also serves as my list for daily quotes.
Feds have 20% MANDATORY tax w/h from 401k/403b EXCEPT for direct-rollovers/transfers. So, any amount withdrawn from 401k/403b for any other purpose (for RMDs, expenses, even manual rollovers) will have 20% fed tax w/h. The option via W-4R is to INCR…
On CREs,
"The test's focus on commercial real estate shows that while large banks would experience heavy losses in the hypothetical scenario, they would still be able to continue lending. The banks in this year's test hold roughly 20 percent of the …
Examples
Period 01/1985-05/2023 (as far back as free PV goes)
Fund SWR PWR
VWINX 8.76% 5.53%
VWELX 9.77% 6.64%
ABALX 9.35% 6.29%
VFINX 10.93% 7.52%
So, in this period of about 37.5 years, the realized SWRs we…
Mandatory employer contributions (at universities/colleges & nonprofits) are different from employer matching of optional employee contributions (practically nonexistent at universities/colleges & nonprofits; that is more of 401k thing). Rul…
Wiki: "Markowitz.....optimization.....optimal mean-variance portfolios..... In 1954, he received a PhD in Economics from the University of Chicago with a thesis on the portfolio theory. The topic was so novel that, while Markowitz was defending his …
401a allows employer & employee contribution. So, those could be combo mandatory & optional plans.
401k/403b are optional plans with employee contributions.
All of this is under the IRS code section 401 and within it are subsections 401k, …
@MikeW, LSLTX does mild sector rotation with top 3 sectors now being techs, consumer cyclicals, industrials, accounting for 58% of tiny fund assets. This strategy never became popular and not many such funds exist anymore. You also noted its high ER.
@MikeW, for LSLTX (seems the only class) Fido shows AUM range of $9.50 (2020) - $19.86 (2017) million for 2014-23; now $11.89 million.
https://fundresearch.fidelity.com/mutual-funds/view-all/527289201?type=sq-NavBar
How about 2,844 ETFs in 2022?
The total US market (W5000) has only 3,480 stocks now.
https://assets-global.website-files.com/60f8038183eb84c40e8c14e9/6462aa70ae7c2a11c83779e6_FT_Wilshire5000_IndexSeries_May2023.pdf
@catch22, 1035 exchanges are for personal annuities.
Workplace tax-deferred annuities (401k/403b/457b) can be rolled over into T-IRA - in-service cash rollovers if allowed by plans, and cash rollovers on retirement/resignation/termination from job…
403b for educational and nonprofit institutions originated much earlier and had simpler rules.
401k for corporations came later and accidently. Their rules are more complex and features more restrictive. The fear was that companies with lots of res…
It depends.
Annuities are complex because they are insurance CONTRACTS and come with thick prospectuses. But don't let that fool you.
Some low-cost accumulating annuities have all-in ERs that are less than those of typical mutual funds.
Several c…
Watch $25 for TCAF. That was the initial price and it may be supported for a while by the dealers/market-makers. Click 5-day on the Yahoo chart. Break to 24.98 so far doesn't count.
https://finance.yahoo.com/quote/TCAF?p=TCAF&.tsrc=fin-srch
Follow M* intrigues at:
For those with M* access, https://community.morningstar.com/s/question/0D53o00006ce0GGCAY/m-updates-2023
For those without M* access, https://ybbpersonalfinance.proboards.com/thread/460/updates-2023
In my quick search with M* Investor Screener yesterday, I missed some usual hybrid favorites because:
1. M* has (again) changed allocation/balanced categories to descriptors: Conservative, Moderate-Conservative, Moderate, Moderate-Aggressive, Aggre…
M* Investor Screener provides (BTW, old screener is gone) these among Gold/Silver rated:
Moderate-Allocation BLPFX, RPBAX, VBINX / VBIAX, VSMGX
Moderate-Conservative-Allocation INPFX, FMSDX, TRRIX, VSCGX
I am surprised that some usual names are …
@Derf, if you buy CDs in the secondary market (not suggested for illiquidity, except for bargain hunting), you will have the same issue with the accrued interest.
BRK is in several S&P indexes.
But it's only in the MSCI USA Financial Index, not in the MSCI USA Index. QUAL just selects from the latter. I tried to find why BRK isn't there, but couldn't find a reason as the broader index does have financial…
@Crash, were you signed in at M* Home? That signup is different from M* Discussions, although both may have the same login info.
M* Discussions https://community.morningstar.com/s/
From M* Home
M* Portfolio (Old) https://www.morningstar.com/port…
M* Bill Baranyk confirmed on this thread (login required) that M* portfolio will be around for 2023.
https://community.morningstar.com/s/question/0D53o00006SL6RiCAL/m-discussions-forum-links
Some stocks that are really blend may be in both growth and value indexes/benchmarks with different weights. That is why the sum of stocks in R1000-growth and R1000-value far exceeds that in R1000 (about 1,000). So, some overlap in holdings is OK.
Performance is less stable than SD, so both Sharpe and Sortino Ratios are also less stable. In fact, optimizing them may just lead to performance-chasing.
@Tarwheel, in my margin accounts (Fido, Schwab), I would be able to enter sell for TRPBX (T+1), and then right away buy TCAF (T+2) and enter buy for FADMX (T+1) without any margin interest. Some other variations may dock me with 1 day margin interes…
@WABAC, from the general description, it seems to be that your wife had an OLDER, dedicated TIAA plan (with TIAA handling all aspects) that was CONVERTED to a NEWER, more flexible TIAA plan that has TIAA only as its recordkeeper. In the flexible pla…
It's a sign of times.
Giroux is hot and T Rowe Price has put gates around him by keeping PRWCX closed to most investors. As you know, anything gated is prized now - you put gates and crowd will come looking in.
In the BB thread on how to beat PRW…
M* has Categories and Styles.
M* puts funds in Categories (on Quote pages) by taking into account the fund objectives and its own assessments. So, sometimes that may differ from what the firms may say, especially when they give wide latitudes to f…
@Devo, being contrarian, sentiment is too bullish near the market tops, too bearish near the market bottoms.
I personally don't sell much when sentiment is negative.
Attempts for sentiment-based trading haven't worked. The so-called Bull-Bear In…
My personal observation of posts at this and other forums is that the forum moods correlate well with the AAII Sentiment Survey (posted weekly here), but not so much with institutional or professional sentiment surveys.
The AAII Sentiment has impro…
But PRWCX has been closed for years. This is why there is interest in the new ETF TCAF (see a nearby thread). It is 100% equity but is managed by Giroux (who also manages PRWCX).
Of course, once TCAF has some record, its proper comparison would be …
In all-weather fund lists, I like to see some familiar names of funds that have been around for several market cycles. The screen of up 2022 & 2023YTD found several unfamiliar funds.
There are now several favorable comments on 60-40 including in this week's Barron's (Joyce Chang, JPM). 2022 was a horrible year for bonds and hybrids (also for stocks, but nothing historic). It should be better/good going forward.
Once I had Schwab app (Android) issues and I called Schwab. It recommended updating the app via Google Play and then everything worked fine. It seems that apps don't auto-update. I had similar issue with a bank app recently.
Google Play will show …
