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.
A well managed index fund can do a little better than the index minus expenses.
It can make some money by lending its securities. (Some funds let the fund management keep some or all of this; in Vanguard funds all of this revenue goes into the …
IMHO this is good news, since it means we can expect less bloat, less of a headache for managers having to deal with hot money, and more good funds reopening.
The object is to do well over time, not each and every year. In this article, they look…
Is there a publicly accessible list of NTF funds available through TIAA? I'm curious because I sometimes see M* list a fund as NTF at TIAA that's not NTF at other discount brokers. (I find the M* brokerage availability pages among the least relia…
Many brokerages have improved significantly in the past decade or so. These days it seems to be (with a few exceptions) a choice between adequate, good, and really good. I put Schwab in that latter category.
Though I don't use Schwab much, I ha…
@Sven - you CNBC link has a problem. What's displayed is correct, but the embedded link has an extra "http//". In these posts you don't need to embed a link, just type the URL and the server will take care of the rest for you. Such as:
http://w…
The arithmetic, the reasoning, and the writing are all a bit off in this column.
The best I can do in guessing where that $3245 (-67.55% total return) came from is that the writer flipped four signs. Instead of +30%, +30%, +30%, -20%, -20%, he us…
He looked at the elimination of the estate tax without considering the likely concurrent elimination of Section 1014, aka step up in basis.
As noted in this ABA Probate and Property article (2005) "much of the justification for the step-up in ba…
I don't think so. Not the clearest statement (the best I could find on a very quick search):The spousal benefit can be as much as half of the worker's "primary insurance amount," depending on the spouse's age at retirement. If the spouse begins re…
Has anyone looked at the Trump "plan"? You can find the full, entire, unedited, one page "plan" in this CNN article:
http://www.cnn.com/2017/04/26/politics/white-house-donald-trump-tax-proposal/
With so little in it, people are grasping at anythi…
Bogle is an independent thinker and quite critical of Vanguard when he feels it is doing something wrong. I seriously doubt that he would dismiss international funds because they weren't available at Vanguard.
If you saw my post on the cited artic…
Ferri's "reasoning" with Occam's razor doesn't make sense. Occam's razor is applicable only when predicted outcomes are the same.
When MJG writes: "the key is to select the option with the highest expected return", he is saying that different o…
There was a time when Lipper and/or Morningstar drew a distinction between statically balanced funds (e.g. Wellington's (VWELX) traditional 60/40 and Wellesley's (VWINX) 40/60 mix) and funds that said they'd shift allocations within some specified r…
I wrote my post above in a bit of a hurry - had to dash - so I just rattled off a few items that came to mind. There are two almost independent issues:
1) What is taxable income? Rono is absolutely right here. This is where all the complexity…
It's not that simple, unless you agree with Spicer (or whatever he said for five minutes) that 401k's are not deductible. Likewise employer matches, IRA contributions, HSA contributions, etc. Or are you only talking about "below the line" deduct…
For the mathematically inclined, the graph is not of two variables (fees and size), but of three - risk adjusted performance (stars) on the x-axis, fees on the y-axis, and size on the z-axis (projected into 2D space by mapping size into dot radius).…
MFO Mermbers: Before we pass judgement on the Trump tax plan, lets wait for the details.
Isn't "Trump details" an oxymoron? The details will come from Congress, just like the health plan that Trump was going to provide the moment his HHS nominee …
The IRS also tries to curtail such trading (wash sale rules). As with the IRS rules, fund short term trading rules can be easily circumvented by substituting one fund for another. While there are a few funds that are sufficiently unusual to make su…
"Perhaps then we can ask the question, if one sold DODGX when value fell to $90, and then bought it back after it crossed $100 again, ... "
That's a surefire way to lose money. You're selling on dips, and buying back when the price is higher than …
Let's see. 300 people on a flight, acting in unison, can clear $30/person, plus $1K for the person who waits 2 hrs for the next flight.
United has a full page ad in the NYTimes (p. A7), probably elsewhere.
United also promised (in the ad) not t…
Morningstar introduced medal (and neutral and negative) ratings in 2011. So asking what medal, if any, a fund had 15 years ago is meaningless. The predecessor to medals was analyst pick or pan.
I haven't found an analyst pick list going back quit…
Bloomberg story on McKinsey study ("Diminishing Returns: Why Investors May Need to Lower Their Expectations") that looks even longer term - 20 years, comparing it with the past 30. Bottom line - expect 1.5% to 4% lower returns in US/Western Europe…
Along the lines of "Murphy [as in Murphy's Law] was an optimist", the best remark I've seen (this was in reference to the George W tax cuts) was by Kevin Phillips.
"This isn't even trickle-down economics. It's mist-down economics."
http://www.nyti…
There is no way I'm going to be able to explain how to build regression models. What I tried to do was just offer the simplest model (100% CAPE + static bond return - static expenses).
I rattled off a few of the many simplifying assumptions in…
I can remember Mr. Know-All Gross and a lot of other self-appointed poobahs predicting low, single-digit returns for the last decade (2000-2010), then just about every year thereafter.
While I agree with your sentiment that a lot of these guys are…
Unfortunately, St. Jack has done so much evagelizing with platitudes (e.g. lower costs = higher returns), that it's easy to forget that he's more than a salesman. But I have read a couple of more solid writings by him, and feel that Lewis is right…
I didn't try to analyze this too much because, as you noted, there are only a few data points. There are a lot of variables - how the bond portion moves, the overhead of the leverage (the cash payments that need to be made on the swaps), to what e…
Assuming that Doubleline bond funds behave similarly to DODIX (far from a sure bet, they're more like black boxes), the difference between a 50/50 combo of TWEIX (or CAPE) and DODIX would be due primarily to leverage.
Effectively, $100 of DSENX buy…
I tend to agree with MikeM that the "black box" thesis is overblown, though with different details.
If you look at DSENX's portfolio, it has full exposure to the Schiller CAPE US sector index by buying total return equity swaps on the index. If y…
Mutual fund X has $200 worth of assets, and has 10 shares outstanding. I go to the distributor of fund X, hand it $20. I am issued one share. Fund X now has $220 worth of assets, and with 11 shares outstanding, each share represents a 1/11 inte…
I think we're all in agreement that funds (whether OEF or ETF) provide a valuable service for which they deserve fair compensation (management fees) and fees to cover reasonable costs (legal fees, servicing your account, handling proxy material, etc…
>> I'd prefer not to pay more than $10K for $10K worth of securities.
haha, there goes the system. I'd prefer not to pay any markup ever for anything, cars, groceries, furniture. Actually no, I don't mind; I know that's how the service gets …
If I want to buy a $10K interest the Vanguard 500 portfolio, I could pay exactly $10K for VFIAX. Or I could pay a bit more for VOO shares representing the same $10K interest in the portfolio because of the added cost of the spread. I'd prefer not…
I'm also not a fan of ETFs. Though I can't speak for David, I suspect some of my objections overlap with his.
- bid/ask spread. With an ETF you're almost guaranteed to lose. (Even if you put in a limit order, that's primarily going to protect y…
Been thinking a lot about this one. A "PR" nightmare for UAL for sure. Nobody should be treated the way the gentleman was - though I'll note that it was Chicago airport police who performed the roughnecking - not UAL employees.
Normally, I'd be inc…
NTF at Vanguard.
https://investor.vanguard.com/mutual-funds/profile/fees/K166?FundIntExt=EXT
But it appears to entail special handling rather than go through the usual channels. The clue is that buying or selling takes three days to settle. Typi…
Here are a couple of articles (same author) on senior housing investments. The first, from three years ago (June 2014) is a good four page discussion of the sector, including demographics, housing stock, rates of return, etc. and concludes with ris…
This looks like a 506(c) advertisement. That's a relatively new SEC regulation that allows private placements to advertise publicly, but they're still restricted to actually selling to accredited investors.
https://www.cuttingedgecapital.com/publi…
The Vox piece is an interesting narrative, though I wonder how some other facts fit in with it.
Southwest was not the only national airline to come out of Texas. Texas International competed with Southwest and in 1982 its parent company bought…
I'm going to guess from your use of the word "mirroring" that you're looking at the new AlphaClone Mirror Portfolios Wrap Fee Program. You pay 0.196% in wrap fees for a portfolio of $383,333. That's $750. You'll pay $750 for any lesser amount as…
