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.
They are attributing today's market drop to these new tariff
I'm not so sure it's the new tariffs per se as it is the increased uncertainty, as if that were possible. We have Trump telling the EU that despite having negotiated lower rates, he's st…
Since you asked, look at Axos Financial and its dealings. Trump's lender of last resort.
https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/donald-trump/trump-organization-used-borrow-major-banks-now-look-lending-money-rcna22068
At the time this came out, our then …
This is a $9.8M AUM clone of the $35.7M OEF LZSCX / LZCOX / RLSMX. It is sold through variable annuities and variable life insurance contracts.
The OEF fund remains open. Though with a 2 star rating, mediocre cost and relative risk, and just $…
Off topic, Fidelity Elan's 2% from everything is hard to beat, but to repeat myself, anyone who has Verizon for cellphones / Fios (cable TV, Internet) really must get the Vz card which applies 4% of all food and dining (plus gasoline) purchases to y…
Also from the NYT:
[Justice Kavanaugh] also noted that the administration had used the leverage of tariffs to enter into key trading deals with other nations. Mr. Trump, he wrote, “helped facilitate trade deals worth trillions of dollars — including…
I don't know for sure (no personal experience). Here's what NerdWallet says on the page cited above on what qualifies as travel:
Real estate agents (MCC 6513). Mastercard’s rules define this as “fees charged by merchants engaged in the rental and m…
"rent and HOA fees paid through a property management company"
Property management companies usually code their charges as mcc 6513. That's included in BofA's travel category. The property management companies often outsource their financial mana…
So, the folks who work at these plants and the surrounding communities (friends and families) may be exposed to the harmful effects of mercury poisoning
Not just any communities but military communities. Mr. Trump signed an executive order [Feb 11…
What exactly is he going to do to stop the opening? Post tanks on the MI side?
Invade a northern border state starting with "M"? That's so 2025. Post tanks on the Canadian side. Now that's more like 2026!
it can be possible to tax-loss harvest each position to help manage your tax bill. By contrast, an ETf or mutual fund does not offer the ability to harvest individual positions.
That's the sales pitch. The other side of the coin:
With an ETF it …
IIRC those taxes can be deducted on the Federal tax
If it's available (see below), one generally wants to take it as a dollar-for-dollar tax credit.
Global mutual funds often don't pass through the foreign tax credit because they don't meet the 50…
@msf,
Where would I easily find "tax efficiency ratio" data for Funds? I recall it part of M*, but can't remember which tab. Thanks.
It's on the "price" tab, on the right side, next to other fees. (One might expect to find it under performance or p…
Another allocation fund using munis is TAIFX. A fund of ETFs, including:
CGHM 25% - Capital Group Muni High Income
CGMU 21% - Capital Group Muni Income
CGSM 3.5% - Capital Group Short Duration Muni Income
do you know if the small cap funds, VTMSX or FSMD, are managed similarly?
In a narrow sense, yes. They are both managed to track their respective benchmark indexes. And those indexes cover roughly similar segments of the US market. VTMSX trac…
If you like VTMSX, another fund in the same SC Blend space to consider is FSMD (Fidelity Small/Mid Multifactor). Both funds hold around 600 securities and they have similar tax efficiency ratios - 0.40% and 0.44% respectively. Similar trailing twe…
Thanks, everyone.
As I wrote, my vaccination likely lessened the RSV severity. Some people (especially those with initials RFKjr) seem to feel that risks are binary - if you still get sick a vaccine is useless but still comes with a minuscule risk…
@ msf Glad you are doing OK. I assume you got your RSV from a child? The cough can be really debilitating.
@sma3 Thanks for the kind thoughts. Cough was bad the first couple of days (dry cough at first) but now coughing just to clear passages. W…
In the past year, the Dow has gone from 44368 (Feb 12, 2025) to 49452 - up 11%.
In the same time, the Nikkei has gone from 38963 to 57639 - up 48%.
Yes, the markets are about politics:
* But Japan's market story is primarily about politics.
Japan …
The only OEF share class is Institutional.
Institutional Class Shares are available only to institutional investors and certain broker dealers and financial institutions that have entered into appropriate arrangements with the Fund. These arrangemen…
Unfortunately, as @sma3's letters from last year make clear, this is nothing new. Though initial actions were directed more internationally, the anti-vaccine chickens are coming home to roost.
The Trump administration intends to terminate the Unite…
The mind reels at the ways one can parse this headline. Does an engineer have an affair in test runs by trying out a couple of trysts? If they work out does the engineer put the affair into production? Otherwise does the engineer terminate the …
Schroeders manages 36% of two Vanguard funds: VWILX and VINEX.
https://workplace.vanguard.com/tools/investment/active-portfolio-managers.html#
It cobrands a number of Hartford mutual funds and ETFs (i.e. Hartford Schroders Funds):
https://www.schro…
MFO often doesn't display images unless their URL ends in something like jpg, jpeg, png. Here's a shorter link to yogi's graph (still doesn't display, so you'll have to click on it):
https://pbs.twimg.com/media/HAuDpHqWAAAatSw?format=jpg
The grap…
At first glance, the M* list of best balanced funds (link from equalizer's post) appears to give each fund's cheapest not oldest share class. This may be why the list includes several less familiar tickers.
For example:
TRAIX (Dec 2015) rather th…
at least we can get the lies to agree.
Which in itself is something rather impressive, especially as the lies accumulate. As Sir Walter Scott observed:
Oh what a tangled web we weave,
When first we practice to deceive.
Without reading too carefully (e.g. is the latest monthly figure "raw" while the annual figure "revised"?), two details come to mind:
- The current monthly job figure is for January 2026 while the downwardly revised annual figure was for 2025.
-…
Thanks for the clarification.
According to the fund's annual statement (Oct 2025), the fund held three Egyptian bonds. The largest (in term of value) was the one you gave, with a coupon of 24.458%. The highest coupon bond (much smaller total …
So that's the plan for shoring up Social Security! How could I have been so blind as to have missed this?
From the CDC: The reasons people may seek medical care in another country include:
Unavailable or unapproved procedures: To get a procedure o…
I'm waiting to learn how I can transfer my IRAs to DraftKings. Hopefully in time for the next Super Bowl. :)
Self directed IRAs might get you there. I haven't thought this through, only observing how one might compound risk upon risk upon risk. …
A difficulty in seeking funds with similar strategies is that one can take different views on what "similar" means.
"Similar" may include multiple paths (different portfolio types) but managed with a related philosophy if they lead to similar re…
Had Mr. "Art of the Deal" been willing to honor a deal reached 2017 we would not be here now:
NYTimes: Trump’s Yanked Support for Hudson Tunnel Angers Those Who Saw a Done Deal, March 3, 2018.
https://www.nytimes.com/2018/03/03/nyregion/trump-schum…
I must be missing something. "AI" (I use the term loosely as it can cover almost anything automated) has been used in insurance, including selling insurance, for years.
"[A large language model AI program] removes traditional friction points in in…
For a broader picture on the history of sports betting or betting in general, here's Bill Maher's take in New Rules.
"ESPN is just OTB now. It's literally partnered with DraftKings."
Just to be clear, he's talking about New York Penn Station, not NJ Penn Station.
Somehow it would seem fitting for that abomination of a train station to be named after a failed developer. The original Penn Station was a masterpiece.
https:…
Here's a corrected link (the URL shown was correct but the embedded link wasn't) as well as the before and after screenshots:
https://www.independentvanguardadviser.com/weekly-brief-when-safe-havens-shake-and-indexes-concentrate/
Evening:
Next mo…
I opened a Schwab Investing bank account last month w/o problems -- did it entirely electronically.
Checking or savings? Checking can be opened electronically but there doesn't seem to be a way to open a savings account online. Also, a checking a…
Oh, darn -- now they have less $$$ to put into customer service.
I've shared back here for some time, I'm gladly paying the extra $0.00135 per $10k (etc.) elsewhere per quarter to get decent customer service. Which is a shame, since Vanguard has s…
Sorry, I've got my head in too many statements and tax forms right now (friends and family as well as my own). Totally missed what I should have seen as an obvious parody.
I'm not quite clear on what you mean by an ETF "like this". If you mean a fund that screens not on what a company does but what it says (even if it does the opposite), then I agree that AFAIK there aren't other funds like this.
If you mean funds …
The fund has already been around since Oct 10, 2022. While the investment adviser is changing from Tidal Investments LLC to Yorkville America Equities LLC, the main task of the investment adviser is to select and oversee the day-to-day subadviser. …
