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.
@msf, I had a professor once who insisted that if the results were claimed to be accurate to n-significant digits, then EACH step of the calculation must be rounded to n-significant digits. This may have been the limitation of the old slide-rules. I…
I have noticed several things about Yahoo Finance (YF) data:
1. Data-feed errors are generally not fixed. This I have noticed at other sites too. Reason probably is that it is pointless to correct data-feed errors manually as the next data-feed ref…
As of about 10 AM CT, major averages are below/at/near late-January lows. Only R2000/IWM is well above (it had been beaten down quite badly already). Is this the "flush" that the current Barron's mentioned? Stay tuned.
https://stockcharts.com/h-per…
M* JR https://www.morningstar.com/articles/1080326/infinity-q-diversified-alpha-worst-fund-ever
"The Verdict
Is Infinity Q Diversified Alpha the worst mutual fund ever? Many funds have lost more money. Indeed, three dozen registered mutual funds ha…
Putin is into 2 "independent" Ukraine regions for "peacekeeping" and the world is reacting with limited sanctions. This is a start of something bad.
Futures started out deep in red Monday evening but started turning around 1:30 AM CT.
Good that you are doing better than your benchmarks.
Those SVs may be helping. My rule of thumb is to prefer SVs when their rates well exceed the 30-day SEC yields of bond funds under consideration. Which SV do you have? I have some TIAA Traditiona…
Some here may have access to private-equity-like TIAA Real Estate Account VA (QREARX) within the 403b and special TIAA IRA. TIAA provides liquidity guarantee for withdrawals of any amount once/quarter.
https://www.tiaa.org/public/investment-performa…
@davfor, which "VIX"?
There are "VIX" for SP500 [VIX], Nasdaq 100 [VXN], small-cap Russell 2000 [RVX], emerging markets [VXEEM], oil [OVX], gold [GVZ].
Precede these tickers with ^ at Yahoo Finance, $ at Stockcharts.
@mona, Fido AM40 FFANX and VG LS-Conservative VSCGX would be appropriate for that mix (34% Cash, 34% US Stocks, 6% Non-US Stocks, and 26% Bonds). Clearly, no benchmark would have that much cash but you can evaluate later how your decision to hold th…
Benchmarks should be simple & stable/static. TDFs are too complicated as general benchmarks. Then, there are wide variations among the same-dated TDFs.
This is why I like previously mentioned Fido Asset Manager & Vanguard LifeStrategy serie…
@Derf, leave to Price to make it confusing to the max.
So, there were the original TDFs going back to around 2002. These are now called (TRP) Retirement 20xx. These were/are known as the most aggressive among the TDFs.
To address the criticism (th…
@Jim0445, now it works fine. Original and comparisons in Interactive-Charts now have reinvestments. Both mutual funds and ETFs also have reinvestments. The 1st version had the flaw that it did reinvestments for mutual funds but not for ETFs, but now…
Two good fund series for benchmarking are:
Vanguard LifeStrategy (equity 20%, 40%, 60%,80%) funds of index funds.
Fidelity Asset Manager (equity 20%, 30%, 40%, 50%, 60%, 70%, 85%) funds of Fidelity Central (internal; not listed) funds.
https://ww…
USAA basically got out of the investment business to focus on insurance and personal finance services to military families.
USAA sold its brokerage business to Schwab and its mutual fund business to Victory Capital. It got caught in the transition…
@msf, good points.
Both Yahoo Finance and Stockcharts use adjusted-prices (ratio-adjusted for distributions). These provide good enough approximations for cumulative or annualized TRs for up to 10 years, in my experience. Beyond 10 yrs, the approxi…
You can deduce this type of info from charts.
M* Charts go quite far back although they are acting up this morning (try later from the following link). https://community.morningstar.com/s/feed/0D53o00005E8h5tCAB
Portfolio Visualizer data go back…
Fed's primary business is T-Bills, T-Notes, T-Bonds, TIPS, so that restriction makes sense. One can potentially execute yield-curve positioning plays with Treasury-only funds.
In 2020, only IL tapped Fed's muni liquidity facility, but other states c…
This was a difficult year and rankings show many surprises. Rankings were based on performance in multiple areas; they didn't include other factors such as service, etc. Many big firms lagged. Smaller and upstart firms did better. There were lots of…
It may be hard to beat American Funds with 19 or more classes. http://financials.morningstar.com/fund/purchase-info.html?t=BALFX®ion=usa&culture=en-US
Stock futures were/are up overnight. But with geopolitical situation as it is, do the traders want to go into the long 3-day weekend with many long positions? I am thinking of down closing today but that may or may not happen.
Oil futures are down …
It seems that details from Google are more FAVORABLE to advertisers including FB (which SUPPORTS the move). Google's approach will be PHASED in over 2 years and the final result will be TWEAKS rather than ad shutoffs (like new privacy setting opt-IN…
In this extreme hypothetical example, each $1 redemption in TSLA would create $1 in realized CG distribution liability, and the point when the fund would be broke is when it still has $5.6B + $1.3B - $6.9B/2 = $3.45B in nominal assets, but $0 in une…
Franklin Income/FKIQX is misclassified as conservative-allocation/30-50% equity. When looking at its Relative-SD/Effective-Equity (65.8%; 73.6% for TSHIX), it is like moderate-allocation/50-70% equity. That can lead to unhappy experiences.
Edit/Add…
Thornburg describes TSUMX newer (3/1/19- ; AUM $70 million only ) as multi-asset fund (stocks, bonds, alternatives) that is "unconstrained" or go-anywhere. No ranges for assets are specified in the prospectus but M* puts it in conservative-allocatio…
The SEC has rules for diversified vs nondiversified funds. BPTRX is nondiversified.
That is the problem with rule-making. There are feeder funds that hold 100% in another fund; the new wrapper may just have different ER and/or eligibility. This is …
@hank, treasury yield-curve continued to flatten. As easy read is from 2Y-10Y spread,
https://stockcharts.com/h-sc/ui?s=$UST10Y-$UST2Y&p=D&yr=1&mn=0&dy=0&id=p66195125656
@Observant1, when faster MA (50-dMA) c…
Interesting that Willian Blair is closing its 3 US fixed-income (FI) funds and almost becoming an equity-only shop. There is no m-mkt fund but one may be offered via a 3rd party. Its Macro-Allocation fund has small exposure to FI, so it may retain s…
A death-cross formation is imminent in days (2-3?) for Nasdaq Comp, and in weeks (2?) for Nasdaq-100/QQQ and R1000-gr/VUG. This dreadful name is when the 50-dMA crosses the 200-dMA on the downside. Other major indexes are not showing this formation.…
@BenWP, short-term nature of futures leads to high realized gains (and distributions) in strong years. There may be some loss-carryovers to offset those. But the ETF structure alone isn't any help in this case.
"Old" Sam Stovall may be in late-60s. He used to be at S&P but then in 2016 S&P spun off its equity research unit to CFRA. His father Robert Stovall, a well-known Wall Street analyst, passed away in 2020.
Son/Sam Stovall https://www.linkedi…
True, YTD is somewhat arbitrary but has been interesting so far in 2022.
I also look at other periods, especially the Stockcharts panels for multiple timeframes. Below is one for S&P sector ETFs for 6 months (other clickable periods are 2 and …
Beyond measurements and baskets, the current inflation is not capturing the housing inflation. This is because owners' rent-equivalents are used and those have huge lags. When other things start to cool down, higher rent-equivalents may start showin…
For most people, K-1 in IRAs don't matter. But for some, it may - if there is large UBI in K-1 Box 20 (over $1,000); and then the IRA sponsor will prepare Form 990 and will bill you a few hundred bucks for its preparation and filing.
https://finance…
QREARX surprised its skeptics. Its best description is private-equity real estate. Its NAV declined less than 2% in 2020 and then started its strong move up. The feared collapse in top tier real-estate never happened. Some rents/leases were delayed …
QREARX - TIAA Real Estate Account VA is not really an interval-fund. It does have once/quarter withdrawal restriction but ANY amount, including 100%, can be withdrawn. QREARX pays a Liquidity-fee to TIAA and in case of heavy redemptions, TIAA is obl…
@carew388, from Stockcharts (chart scale is 10x), 10-yr yield range today was 1.927-2.050%, close was 2.031% at 3:00 PM (also Yahoo Finance, Treasury). CNBC is showing 2.05% at 6:30 PM (as trading continues).
https://stockcharts.com/h-sc/ui?s=$TNX&a…
