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.
Most people who voted didn't vote for Hillary. Yup, I'll bet everyone thinks that means Trump got 80% of the vote. Well, not everyone, just most people :-)
LATimes opinion column: "All of Obamacare’s taxes are repealed"
KHN news headline: "…
Wellesley 40/60 invests "mostly in bonds"
http://www.vanguard.com/funds/reports/wellar.pdf (2009 annual report, p. 5, pdf p. 7)
Kinnel/M*: "Vanguard Wellington is just a great balanced fund. ... It's mostly in equities, but it's a smoother ride…
Narrow networks. Choice of treatment was affected by quality of doctors and facilities available, and my insurer's network offered what appeared to be better quality for one treatment than another.
It was different when I was on a group plan wi…
I do indeed cite acasignups.net - Charles Gaba is about the most meticulous person I've seen tracking all this stuff.
I also cite MW ("most: (1) greatest in quantity ...; (2) the majority of; [e.g.] most people"). 2/3 > 1/2 > 1/3 .
Th…
Like many articles on the ACA, this one tends to muddy what has changed and why. It states that the ACA is doing all these wonderful things, but buries many paragraphs down that much the improvement in coverage and cost is due to its changes to si…
That's true now, but for its first decade, give or take, BUFSX was a very good SCG fund. 1% is a fair price for such a fund, it performed well, and it was a bit distinctive in that it employed some top-down (sector-focused) management. AFAIK the …
I tend to use M*'s premium screener. Familiarity and reasonable flexibility (many criteria and allows numeric values). There are more criteria/features I'd like, but I can work pretty well with it.
I've got T. Rowe Price to thank for this freebi…
@PRESSmUP @catch22 - The M* sector table has blanks (well, dashes actually) in the fund's column. The other columns (category and benchmark) do have values.
It always pays to go back to the source:
http://www.doublelinefunds.com/shiller-enhanced…
@msf,
I believe the to NASDQ funds are considered low beta for their category (Large Growth). I am assuming S&P 500 is Large Blend. I like your suggestions with ER, I'll add that to my screening tasks.
Your link to the M*screener locked me out…
Anyone remember Potomac funds? They used to put out leveraged index funds with a multiplier of around 1.25 if I recall correctly. They made a big deal about how a higher multiplier just didn't pay off, between the risk, the cost of the leverage, …
That's a neat back door to an advanced M* screener.
https://awrd.morningstar.com/SB/USAASB/USAAScreener.asp
There are actually 27,375 share classes. The 15,616 that you started with are the result of the default settings on the screener restrictin…
It used to be that all 1099s had to be mailed by January 31st. Now the IRS lets these go until Feb 15th, in theory to prevent the need for so many corrections. Still, there seem to be lots of corrections.
I tend to wait until, well, about now (…
"... [and] paying more attention to the performance of said funds, their index construction, and—not the least of it—the tax consequences of selling one fund to buy a cheaper one."
There are differences between indexes. Some are better designed …
As well as disadvantages (compared with deductible traditional IRA contributions).
If you're planning on leaving money to charities, you're usually better off keeping that money in a traditional IRA. You won't have to pay taxes on the IRA when …
Quick update - the broker advised that the wash sale error was known and had been corrected (the form is "in the mail"). But it wasn't available online.
Did I hear my name?
- If you've got $0 taxes, the odds are very high that your AGI is low enough to qualify for a Roth contribution. That's always better than a nondeductible contributions. No RMD, no taxes on earnings.
- All money, including…
If I understand your example correctly, you're adding an implicit long term purchase - that is, you're coming into this sequence of trades already owning some shares:
2013 (say) buy 100 shares
1/5 sell 100 shares (at a loss)
1/11 buy…
Some numbers may help put things in perspective. This is from a five year old M* page of "40 Must-Know Statistics About Long-Term Care", but I don't think the figures have changed much:
10%: The percentage of people who enter a nursing home who w…
While I too would like to the the OEF TFs reduced, Fidelity already makes it possible to increase positions in TF funds for $5, and to sell positions at no cost.
That likely makes it the least expensive brokerage for OEF round trips. (I am di…
When's the last time you think Trump saw all the people riding the subway, and cheered that it was keeping all the riff raff separated from him? You don't have to ride the subway to see what it does (or doesn't do where it doesn't exist).
Highlighting a different section of the article:
Instead, the agency said in a statement on Wednesday, tax returns will be processed as always ... in line with an executive order that President Trump signed [on January 20th]
No change. The chang…
To repeat - this is not a change. Under Obama, the IRS did not require you to check that box. The only thing that's changed is that Trump has effectively publicized this fact.
Had Trump not signed the executive order, then there would have bee…
@hank- your potholes will surely get filled before ours, since Michigan helped to elect him. Thanks.
Apparently, there are things that matter more to Trump than votes. Like most politicians, he cares about what he sees (or in his case, thinks he s…
Oh please.
"Donald Trump said in a weekend interview that he is nearing completion of a plan to replace President Obama’s signature health-care law with the goal of 'insurance for everybody'". Washington Post, Jan 15.
Either his replacement p…
Because he gave that name to his son?
https://www.wsj.com/articles/SB10001424052702303332904579224351143883302
(WSJ article gives you just enough to get the point, even w/o subscription)
Actually the 0.94% is SEC yield, which IMHO is a better indicator of total return. The current yield (as opposed to trailing twelve month) is 0.98%, per Vanguard.
Since this is a tax-exempt fund, for someone in the 25% tax bracket the effective y…
"The Treasury Secretary said that 50 year and 100 year bonds weren't completely out of [the] question, and that indicates that they are at least thinking they may have to go the deficit route and use those bonds to defray things." (1:20)
"The bundle of hedge funds had compound annual returns of 2.2 percent in the nine years through 2016, compared with 7.1 percent for the index fund. The billionaire estimated that about 60 percent of the gains that the hedge funds produced during tha…
@LewisBraham To a large degree, I agree with you. I do not want to be investing in companies that do bad things. Someone wrote, in another thread, that what Wells Fargo did was not out of the ordinary. (Everyone does it, so it's okay.) If th…
One can separate political views (and contributions) from investment practices. Over the past several years, what has served as a benchmark for me in measuring how much politics has swayed money managers is how loudly they decried the deficit afte…
EXTAX (Manning & Napier Tax Managed) was first suggested by board members and also favorably mentioned by Professor Snowball perhaps 8-9 years ago. ... (Apparently that fund no longer exists).
If it got your attention just 8-9 years ago, you ma…
Good thought, wrong villains. To a small extent, I suppose the program/technology design could affect the program behavior. But the main driver is the training set. Scored documents are input into the system so that it can "learn" (essentially…
Here's the full paragraph: "Ellis says the new policy doesn't fully rise to the level of declining to enforce the law. 'If the IRS turns a blind eye to people's status, that isn't quite not enforcing it,' he says. "It's more like the IRS wanting to …
There are two obvious (IMHO) regional factors that could be filtered out before analyzing the data. The midwest blue states tend to emphasize American cars, a legacy of the American auto industry. The south/southwest red states (Texas, Oklahoma,…
Oh, Dex, as of tonight there is no more tax penalty enforcement, so now the downward spiral you so devoutly wish for can happen more freely. Not exactly. As of the date of this post (Feb 15) there is no longer the promise of stricter enforcement, …
I've got to agree with our Professor. Without more information, naming funds is not particularly productive. (Even limited to blend/growth small cap, tossing out names without knowing the objective is hit or miss.) In addition, tossing up funds…
The first table (that contained the 7% figure) is labeled "asset allocation". I think that most people here understand AA to be a breakdown along the lines of cash, bonds, and stocks.
The second table (that contained the 87.88% figure) is labeled…
The 7% foreign in your first breakdown is a percentage of your total portfolio. Given that only 55% of your portfolio is equity (48% + 7%), that means that your foreign equity as a percentage of equity is 7%/.55 = 12.72%. Okay, some rounding err…
If OJ had wanted to hijack the thread, he could have said that W created this market. That would have been backward looking, as opposed to describing the market conditions at the time.
My issues with the article are threefold:
1. Anecdotal - it d…
I concur w/Edmond's assessment. Note also that there are ways to get around Fidelity's TFs. The most well known "secret" is their AIP (automatic investment program), where you can add to (most) existing TF positions for a $5 fee.
Others inclu…
