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.
Last semester I audited a course in political environmental theory. The professor directed students to a site that simulated different approaches to global warming that came with costs and benefits. The idea was to find a combination of solutions…
That's certainly a plus.
It's always interesting to find the quirks in brokerage fund offerings. While PRWCX appears to be available at Merrill, the subject of this thread, PRCFX curiously is not. Likewise, DODLX is not available at Merrill tho…
NTF at Merrill, fwiw
FPFRX would be NTF at Merrill if it were open there. Merrill shows it as closed for me in both taxable and IRA accounts.
The lower expense ratio share class FPACX is open and requires only a $1500 min (as opposed to $2500 at …
FPACX - $49.95 TF [at Fidelity], 1.06% er
You could look into buying FPFRX (NTF) and asking Fidelity to convert the shares (no fee) to FPACX. I've had some luck doing something similar with a couple of other funds. But then the cheaper shares h…
Curious that while M* uses TRAIX rather than PRWCX, it uses TRPBX instead of TPPAX.
It gets even weirder with Vanguard funds. M* lists VBINX which cannot be purchased by agents, brokers, or DIY investors. When Vanguard lowered the mins on the Adm…
FWIW, there seems to be little rhyme or reason for the share class selections made. M* says only that it picked the share class of a fund with the highest "medal" rating. But in the case of a tie, it sometimes gave the least expensive, most exclu…
Obama did not promise to cut premiums; he promised to cut the rate of growth in premiums. ...
Years ago when Obama was making his $2,500-reduction claim, he didn’t always make it clear that he wasn’t talking about a straight price cut, but rather a…
Investors have been moving toward index funds for years. While the existence of ETFs may have accelerated this migration it would have happened in any case. So this is not just a ETF phenomenon. Additionally, 401k plans have been slow to include …
I try to use cash or my debit card to avoid the 3% credit card transaction fee that now seems ubiquitous in many restaurants and retailers today.
My guess about why the fee is 3% is that Visa limits surcharges to 3% (MC limit AFAIK is 4%). It's di…
Maybe there's something special about Venezuelan crude that I don't know about. My understanding is that the US is a net exporter of light crude and a net importer of heavy crude because its refineries are optimized for processing heavy crude. Th…
See link below for prospectus and SAI supplements. My brief comment was that this resembles what T. Rowe Price did not that long ago.
https://mutualfundobserver.com/discuss/discussion/65375/vanguard-splitting-into-two-investment-subsidiaries
"When it comes to picking funds, it might mean a strategy that consistently edges past its benchmark index."
The selection of a benchmark makes a difference. From the quote above, it looks like Jeff may have used whatever benchmark the fund specif…
That is reserved for the CEOs of the banks.
Interest rates charged by credit cards are regulated. But by states, not by federal law. In 1980, Citibank moved its credit card division to South Dakota to take advantage of its lenient regulations. A…
A problem with the AI people analysis is that it doesn't seem to make a distinction between high manager turnover due to resignations and turnover due to deaths (or retirements). While each can result in style/skill discontinuity, only the former i…
Investors often have an understandable but ultimately irrational fascination with "better" vs. "worse" as a binary value. If they lose money on an investment, they will often wait to break even (not be worse off) before selling a clunker. Whethe…
The Usenet group is misc.invest.mutual-funds. It still exists, though for decades(?) it has been filled with literally nothing but spam. Too bad.
I don't recall the group's name before the great renaming . Could have been net.invest.mutual-f…
I'm a big fan of BBBMX/BBBIX, but the duration, while miniscule, is about three times that of the funds linked to by msf.
The difference is likely due to CLOs being invested in floating rate instruments while BBBIX is a traditional ultrashort bond …
Unable to access the Vontabel piece: "The page you are looking for is not available to your investor type, region or IP address."
I think you need to say you are a professional to get in. I only cited it because it was a financial institution us…
VWIAX prospectus:
Investment Objective
The Fund seeks to provide long-term growth of income and a high and
sustainable level of current income, along with moderate long-term
capital appreciation.
I wouldn't place too much stock in the names of funds…
Verizon's card looks good. But just as one does not squeeze some good funds into one's portfolio if they don't fit, this Visa card doesn't do much for my wallet personally. It would give me four bits or so on my FiOS bill monthly, but that hardly …
Q1: Think of bonds. They are governed by the terms of the bonds, including covenants requiring the issuer to perform or refrain from performing certain actions.
https://analystprep.com/cfa-level-1-exam/fixed-income/bond-indentures-and-covenants/
…
Three BofA cards start with a base rate of 1.5% that rises to 2.25% if you keep $50K invested with Merrill (and/or in BofA), and 2.625% if you keep $100K with them.
https://promotions.bankofamerica.com/preferredrewards/en
The cards are Unlimited Ca…
Bank-loans are non-investment-grade or not-rated. So, a pool of bank-loans would also be non-inv-grade. But then, the restructuring magic is applied to slice-and-dice the portfolio in tranches of various quality - AAA,...,BB,....equity tranch.
It's …
Personalized [variable] pricing isn’t new. We already pay different prices for many things—airline tickets, home insurance, groceries—based on our consumer data or ability to haggle in real life (in the case of a car, for instance).
These days, anyt…
Reminiscent of HFT computers colocating with trading floor systems. Though that's done for a speed advantage, not to save on data transmission costs.
https://www.binance.com/en/academy/glossary/colocation
While I would like heavy consumers of elec…
Man, you cannot even give these people money! No matter, It amounts to small potatoes.
Also small potatoes, but something I've been doing for the past several years is paying by credit card. As the third party fees have come down (now 1.75% and 1…
Is there anyone remaining at the IRS to be looking anyway, these days?
Perhaps Schedule AI also stands for "artificial intelligence". The simple stuff (computing penalties is pretty simple) has been done by computers for decades.
Getting someone…
I am planning now to up my January estimated tax payment to avoid a penalty, as I liquidated an inherited IRA this year also
The IRS doesn't look favorably on unequal, backloaded payments. Though it's always happy to get its money early if one w…
The name rings a very faint bell. Don't know why.
I'd never seen a fund with a M* risk score over 100 (i.e. beyond awful) until now. And bottom quintile 5 and 10 year returns. How did it possibly manage a +0.31 Sharpe ratio over 5 and 10 years?…
I've always been somewhat underweighted in large caps (futilely fighting the tape). In recent years I've maintained my md cap weighting but reduced small caps, shifting some of their weight to large caps (growing more cautious as one ages). Thou…
I was just helping someone with basket portfolios - at my suggestion. This is someone who basically wanted to mimic VSMGX (36% domestic stock, 24% foreign stock, 28% domestic bonds, 12% international bonds). By using ETFs, one reduces the cost and…
Fido has another quirk. Often if I begin to sell shares of a NTF fund held more than 60 days a message pops up: "If you believe you may be entitled to a fee wavier contact a representative." I did a couple times. They basically said to ignore the …
The charge I saw was on a fund for which Schwab was supposed to be waiving my fees. So discovering this was accidental.
I let Schwab know that they hadn't gotten my household waivers in place correctly (waiting on that correction). I also notif…
I would imagine that in the case of heavily traded ETFs brokerages settle for the funds earned from payment for order flow, just as they do for commission-free stock trades.
Schwab and Robinhood certainly rake in the PFOF dollars. In September, aro…
My own owned ETF is an iShares beast connected to BlackRock. I'm wondering what will happen to my stake in EWS. Paying a fee to buy, sell or add shares is a no-go for me.
Fidelity and iShares have a partnership deal that goes back around 15 years, …
Finally had time to dig up Schwab's disclosure statement:
Most NTF funds pay Schwab's standard OneSource/NTF fund fee of 0.40% per year; however, the annual fee can range up to 0.45% of the fund assets held at Schwab. ...
Fees on new institutional …
How do these etf fees compare to OEF fees charged for brokerage platform availability?
The rack rate for shelf space at brokerages like Fidelity and Schwab is 40 basis points for NTF and a lot lower (10-15 basis points?) for TF funds. Some famili…
