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.
Yes, this really demonstrates only total return matters. Some products such as closed-end funds offer high yields but come with very high price erosion and you could better on total return with something paying less dividend.
Reply to @catch22: I bonds are unique in their own. Taxes on Interest is deferred up to 30 years (until maturity) or redemption of your bonds.
So, they do not have to go to tax sheltered account. In fact, I am not sure if you can buy them in tax s…
Reply to @VintageFreak: I could not read the article but I am not sure if this article is accounting in service rollovers as withdrawal. Many plans now have the option of in-service withdrawal or rollover option over a certain age.
I think it is pe…
Hi folks, my test on Friday went well (at least I feel that way) But, the margin of error is very slim in this high rank test. I will know the actual test results from my master in a couple of weeks. They do not tell us immediately. Even my master, …
Reply to @Accipiter: Well there are positives and negatives. I think it will be beneficial to me. I think I would not change iPhone version much. It works well in a narrow screen without side bar and other space inefficient enhancements. However hom…
I am posting this over iPhone and ticker links are not working at this time. I am accessing the forum via http://www.mutualfundobserver.com/discuss/index.php
Update: it looks like vanilla forum is displaying an iPhone optimized site when accessed v…
John, why blatant disregard for the copyright? Would David Snowball like if someone copy pasted his articles?
I know you get these updates a few days earlier but they get posted on the website and you can post the link to the article without any is…
Reply to @Maurice: I believe the situation is CA temporary as opposed to permanent here in TX. Again, the same short term over all other greed found in Wall Street is present when it comes to Energy production vs. Environment issue. We all know how …
I don't think this guy is going to sell everything and retire. But if he indeed does and I hope he does, he will sell his resorts to someone else and they will employ someone to work there. After all someone has to do the beds, clean, cook, run acco…
Reply to @LarryH: There is no trick. These funds are getting exposure to equity markets through investments in derivatives (futures, options, swaps) and investing the collateral in an actively managed bond portfolio.
Some quotes:
“The compelling simplicity of a 60/40 strategy is very hard to beat,” Timothy J. Keating, president of Keating Investments in Greenwood Village, Colo., and author of two reports on endowment performance, told me this week. “Many invest…
For those us who would like to see where we are going to end up here is the final URL:
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/10/13/business/colleges-and-universities-invest-in-unconventional-ways.html?ref=business&_r=1&
Reply to @Anna: I agree. Some investors decided to hold until get back to the previous point. This is typical as well. Now, there are probably really fewer long term investors in equities. I think this situation will not reverse without significant …
Direct Sale channel is making investing with Advisor sold more expensive plans totally unnecessary. When there is not enough money to siphon away, advisor sold plans are being eliminated. This is actually a good thing IMHO.
Reply to @VintageFreak: Their small cap funds have largely moved to mid-caps after assets grew. Like many of Royce funds this fund did not offer anything special and this time investors did not bite.
Reply to @johnN: The unemployment figures from week to week, month to month are very volatile and could be revised. That is why it is more useful to look at 3 month moving average. So far the moving average has been trending downward.
Reply to @rono: Guess what - They do compute that as U-6. It's 14.7% not 20%. In fact, it has never been 20% in the past 5 years.
Now 14.7% is high but you need to compare it to other U-6 numbers. The highest it has been was Oct 2009 at 17.2%. Even…
If the Chilean Peso investment had 0% return and you sold that and decided to bring the money back in dollars you would lose 10.25% of your original investment in dollar terms.
Update: @mfs is correct. I made a mistake. You gain 11.42%
Summary:
* PIMCO Total Return ETF Clears $3 Billion in Assets
* AMG Among Bidders for Harbor's Parent Company (Robeco)
* Fixed-Income Manager Departs American Century
* Dodge & Cox, American Funds to Benefit From Sprint Nextel Takeover
* Blackr…
Reply to @Maurice: This is really temporary until the refinery problems are solved and governor has already moved to allow sale of less clean oil. This issue is really supply and demand imbalance issue and the problem will resolve itself as now the…
Reply to @Heathbob:
Microcap funds typically have very high volatility. The safest time to buy these is after market has declined 25-30% from highs and that requires holding your nose and having courage which is very difficult. Thus I prefer small …
Here is the unemployment by age:
Nearly all age groups improved their unemployment rates considerably in September.
16 to 17: 25.3%, a whopping 4.0% better than the 29.3% in August.
18 to 19: 22.8%, 0.1% higher than the 22.7% r…
The issue is really the formulation of Gasoline in California and the refinery fire has cut the capacity. Here in Texas the prices has actually went down but this is a state that has repeatedly shown no interest in protecting the environment.
Reply to @scott: Business world is still largely dominated by Microsoft software. In our company, we have a choice of PC laptop or Apple Laptop. I do use an Apple MacBook Pro. We are one of the largest Apple deployments in business settings but Appl…
Reply to @InformalEconomist:
Yes the regression analysis shows CRSP indices are pretty close drop-ins to MSCI domestic indices.
The international swap will be a bit more significant but probably not enough to make large behavioral differences eit…
It is interesting paper. But the Contrary Connie results come with bigger spread and believe few people can tolerate that. It is riskier and thus it has a wider range of outcomes. Who wants to expose themselves to such high variability of outcomes t…
AFAIK, these are the securities that JPM got when it acquired Bear Sterns. Ironically, it was Fed arranged shotgun marriage that got JPM into this business. They acquired Bear Sterns dirt cheap at $2/share so the cost of litigation could have been f…
People use index funds two ways.
1) Setup an asset allocation and stick to it. Spend not much time other than occasional portfolio balancing. This is the passive approach.
2) Setup and index fund portfolio and actively manage the allocations yourse…
