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.
I recently changed auto insurance because the previous insurer kept raising premiums and was no longer competitive in my state.
So, I shopped around and found a major insurer with much lower premium.
I thought I was pretty smart!
Now, on 6-mo ren…
BXSL is a BDC, has "Fund" in its name, but isn't recognized by ETFdb (so, not an ETF) or CEFConnect (so, not a CEF). BDC is a slightly different structure than ETF or CEF.
Morningstar and Yahoo Finance classify it under Asset Management firms,
htt…
There are many sources that point out that the first withdrawals from T-IRA are assumed to be RMDs. This can create trouble sometimes. For example, it you do Roth Conversion as the 1st transaction, it won't really count as Conversion, but contributi…
@Derf, I checked Schwab Bonds & Fixed Income screens.
For CDs, shown are those that pay interest only on maturity (i.e. interest is accumulated). These effectively act like zeros. I didn't see any click for CD-zeros.
For all bonds except Treas…
Post-FOMC Notes
Rates: Fed funds held at 4.25-4.50%, bank reserves rate at 4.40% (generous), discount rate at 4.50%. Treasury QT continued -$5 billion/mo, MBS QT at -$35 billion/mo.
Inflation-expectations remain high now but should be headed down …
50th G-7, June 15-17, was in Canada (rotating presidency, 2025). Besides the G-7 members (including the EU), invited as guests were the leaders of India, Brazil, South Africa, Mexico, Ukraine, Australia, Indonesia & S Korea, plus NATO, UN & …
Direct link for Morningstar Portfolio. There is a button on the upper-left for switching between old/Legacy and new.
https://www.morningstar.com/portfolio-manager/my-view
Hopefully, what happened to CEFs during the GFC won't be repeated.
At the time time, many CEFs relied on auction-rate preferreds (ARPs) for debt. These preferreds had weekly, biweekly or monthly auctions to reset their floating rates. ARP sponsors …
What trading securities do after ex-div is unpredictable - they may even go up enough to make up for distributions. CEFs are no exceptions.
For GDL (high discount of 20%) that's involved in M&A arbitrage, there could be news related to one of i…
I have seen posts related to estate, trusts, Wills in Other Investing - that is personal finance. So, I will leave it there, but the site moderators are free to move it to Off-Topic if they think it belongs there.
I thought that exemptive-reliefs were almost gone in 2019 SEC ETF Reforms. The SEC grandfathered some exemptive-reliefs due to fund industry lobbying. But why is SEC considering exemptive-reliefs for new applications?
One problem with exemptive-rel…
Vanguard eventually converts Investor shares into Admiral shares, if eligible. But I do it the next day & not wait for Vanguard to get to it.
I assume that with the new ETFs classes of active mutual funds, it would be one-way street, mutual fun…
From prospectus,
Online Disclosure of Complete Portfolio Holdings
Actively managed equity funds, unless otherwise stated, generally will seek to disclose complete portfolio holdings as of the end of the most recent calendar quarter online at vangu…
Several of these companies have issued convertible debt at low/no interest (zero-coupon convertibles). So, their bet is on crypto boom that will eliminate/convert debt to equity and the risk will be for those equity holders, not the company treasuri…
Schwab 1000 Fund SNXFX $129.11. So, after 10 for 1 split, price will be around $13. Still looks like busy work for mutual funds.
Schwab 1000 ETF SCHK $29 won't be affected.
There are better SC indexes - more selective IJR, SPSM & earnings-weighted EES.
IWM is OK for benchmarking. Many funds use it because it may be easier to beat.
There is double-talk by China.
It says that there are no new export restrictions for rare-earths/magnets, but licensing is required and that has been a slow process and hugely backlogged.
SSA site alert https://www.ssa.gov/scam/?oig-redirect
If I get any email, text or letter from my financial sites, I first log in and check.
Lately, I am not even clicking on email links from my card companies that they have sent for years to signu…
TestFol now has limited Safe Withdrawal Rate (SWR) & Perpetual Withdrawal Rate (PWR) runs. Problem with terminal values remain - those are also adjusted for inflation & nominal values aren't provided..
https://ybbpersonalfinance.proboards.co…
@rforno, thanks for Archive Today source.
https://archive.ph/
I am familiar with Internet Archives and WayBack Machine, but those are not as current.
https://archive.org/
https://web.archive.org/
Article requires subscription and I couldn't find an open alternative.
I have done withdrawals from my TIAA 403b and Fidelity 403b. Note that for most part, nonprofit 403b are similar to company 401k.
My TIAA 403b allows online withdrawal and I ca…
SSGA website links for ALLW prospectus don't work for me. So, I found those from Edgar/SEC.
Summary Prospectus https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/1516212/000119312525045861/d872457d497k.htm
Prospectus https://www.sec.gov/ix?doc=/Archives/edgar/…
Many other sites also had reported possible changes in SP500 on 6/6/25, 5:15 PM ET. I was watching too. But S&P Announcement website went down/crashed. Some blamed the overload on the crypto crowd as Robinhood/HOOD was a potential candidate (a h…
Posters here don't need the reminder that sentiment indicators are contrarian.
I used to mention it in 2021-2022, but then skipped it.
But as these posts now are also at Facebook, X/Twitter, Bluesky, LinkedIn, I restored this caution in March 20…
People all over the world are watching this bold strategy with drones - ship parts, use local helpers to assemble, transport & execute. It may be repeatable elsewhere too.
Magnets get lumped with rare-earths category. There are news reports of potential slowdowns in auto production in the US, Germany and India due to Chinese export restrictions on magnets.
This problem may be more immediate than that for some esoteri…
Unicorns are global phenomena. So, don't overlook Asian unicorns. When economic growth is high, as in Asia, unicorns also grow like weeds.
Unicorn by countries:
US 656, China 168, India 71, UK 53, Germany 30.....
From the link, I counted 160 for …
WisdomTree/WT earnings-weighted ETFs do use several screening criteria to narrow the list - market-cap (to separate LC, MC, SC), profitability, etc, but in the last weighting step, it applies earnings-weights using 4 quarters of earnings data and do…
Some observations after going through MFO, June 1, 2025.
@David_Snowball: My TIAA 403b does include some non-TIAA funds, but the only Pimco fund available is PIMIX. When my plan changed about 4 years ago, some options were frozen - so, I could keep…
I was surprised by the data - current international exposure only 12%, recommendation 15-20%.
Now look at international exposures (stocks and bonds) in some allocation funds/models & TDFs.
Morningstar Allocation Models https://mp.morningstar.c…
LinkedIn has changed a lot. It's way beyond a job site although that is a tab within it now. Discussions there are quite wide ranging but there is less noise because people are posting under their real identities. What I like most is that links are …
LBJ was so mad at Fed Chair Martin that people at the ranch reported the Big Guy pushing & shoving the Little Guy. Little Guy was a bit shaken, but not stirred - he held the line on rates.
The most contrasting Fed Chairs may be Burns and Volcke…
