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.
Fidelity will accept $2500 for QUSIX in an IRA.
Fidelity will likely let you transfer in shares (e.g. from Vanguard) to a taxable account even if you don't have $1M. But you should check to be sure, and also make sure that they'll let you buy m…
@BobC - thanks for your post. In some cases at least, as @catch22 pointed out, the learning experiences weren't even mistakes. At the time there were sound reasons for the choices, whether they worked out or not.
Small companies often use annui…
I must be really stupid. I've knowingly purchased B shares. At the time it seemed like it was worth the cost to get more dollars into a sheltered account (401k) where they would grow for 25-50 years without having to worry about taxes. Wasn't a…
One can choose how much credibility to give to subjective analyses. That said, "scoring" that is retrospective is generally objective. What's important there is understanding what goes into that score.
For OSTIX risk, M* and Lipper are in pretty …
M* December 2014: "So this fund's true risk profile has been more conservative than the portfolio's credit profile suggests. ... Thanks to having the category's lowest 10-year Morningstar Risk score, its risk-adjusted return over that period lands i…
If you just want the chart, you should be able to right click on it (at least on Windows) and copy the location. I linked directly to the source.
That chart was part of a larger report that you can find here:
PWC, Medical Cost Trend: Behind the N…
I'm agreeing with you that since Computershare was their agent, PFE already had the information it was requesting. For most shareholders, it didn't. (Still doesn't excuse their asking you for info they already had).
At least you'd get something …
The shares were owned through Computershare.Computershare was the transfer agent (i.e. the company doing the stock bookkeeping for Pfizer). That means your name was on the shares. So theoretically Pfizer could have used the information its trans…
Did you hold PFE stock directly? The vast majority of people hold stock at brokerages in street name. From the SEC:
"Street Name Registration: ...
- Since your name is not on the books of the company, the company will not mail important corpora…
"People never complain about funds outperforming when they veer from their stated investment philosophy."
Since we're talking about legal liability, note that in order to sue for damages, there need to be damages. Seems sort of obvious. So it r…
@davigrmoran - I may get to this tomorrow.
No I haven't read the full legislation. There's just so much nighttime reading one can take. :-)
As a matter of fact, right now I'm trying to track down something I'm not sure is or isn't in the l…
The default at Schwab and Fidelity is 40 basis points, but this is subject to negotiation. Funds pay Schwab to be listed (albeit at a lower rate) even if they are sold TF.
It's up to Schwab and the fund to haggle, and then it's up to the fund to d…
Investors invest in funds because of what the funds say they do. If the funds are misrepresenting themselves as M* suggests, then to invert Shakespeare, the fault dear JoJo, is not in ourselves but in our stars (funds).
First webpage: Item #6 divides possible reasons for the slowing of cost increases into transitory and structural. It (IMHO correctly) dismisses the Great Recession as a transitory cause still having an effect. But it doesn't discuss the possibil…
Paraphrasing:
1. Recent years' annual rates of increase are less than in earlier years, notably before ACA.
2. Recent years' annual rates of increase are not changing much; they are remaining flat at this relatively low rate of increase number (6.…
This may not be hank's day for math. A 20% gain followed by a 10% gain is no different from a 10% gain followed by a 20% gain. Either way, one winds up with 132% of the original investment. That's because multiplication is commutative.
120% x …
I was about to attempt to try to bring this thread around to actual financial/investing facts.
Multiple sources suggest that the markup on cards is 100% to 200%. So Hallmark (as manufacturer) is getting around two bucks for that card that reta…
What I was demonstrating was how Hank's quick and dirty averaged total return (as contrasted with your averaged annual) figure compared with the true (geometric mean) annual return.
BTW, the new base was $20K, as the hypothetical started from $10K …
There's a bigger picture than payroll taxes. Companies are paying for health coverage, not just for seniors (Medicare payroll tax) but for working people (employer group coverage). The latter is far and away the larger health coverage cost borne…
@Hank, you may need a little coffee this early in the morning. 2/15/12 to today (1/3/17) is a tad under five years, not four. What was that about calculators? :-)
Glad to see you mention that "true" (compounded) interest rate is a bit lower tha…
Some other taxable fixed-income mutual fund categories, not well represented in the AGG, with significantly different results per M* category return pages: multisector +7.6%, bank loan +9.2%, high yield +13.3%, emerging mkts +10.0%.
Short duration…
There are more creative ways to mix and match. For example, SS has two bend points in its calculations. You get X% on the first $N, then a lesser percentage on the next $M, and finally an even smaller percentage on anything above that.
Raise the…
I was thinking more in terms of personal services, so to that extent you are correct that some service jobs can be outsourced, whether to India or just offshored from Manhattan Island (Wall Street) to back offices in Jersey City. To a person losing…
I thought about adding something about WFC's rising price, but then I'd have had to normalize it - compare with how other financial/bank stocks had done over the same period to see if WFC under or over performed. As you wrote, a single stock does …
I keep heading back to the old site, and I keep receiving the same message....?I can't comment - I haven't tried returning to the "classic" pages. If you're stuck in beta, that's something to complain about.
If you owned WFC, you benefited from illegal activities for years. But you're not supposed to pay a price when this catches up to you? Heads you win, tails you're not supposed to lose? Same benefit whether ownership was direct or indirect (via …
http://www.bizjournals.com/sanfrancisco/news/2016/12/27/wells-fargo-bank-wfc-scandal-credit-scores.html
For the full WSJ article referenced (and generously borrowed from) in the above article, here's a google search (first link should be the WSJ ar…
The big software companies hire beta testers to do the dirty work. Is Morningstar too poor? It is disrespectful to make customers test their buggy software. Pretty sad.
Big software companies like Google? Pay testers? Sometimes it seems that i…
There are manufacturing jobs and service jobs. Generally speaking, service jobs (outside of Chinese laundry and customer support) are difficult to offshore. Since most of Hallmark's employees seem to be in retail, their 75% mark doesn't seem that…
Squeezing every penny of profit out of products has gone on "forever." It would have only cost a dollar to have made the Ford Pinto safe (1971-1980).
http://auto.howstuffworks.com/1971-1980-ford-pinto12.htm
"How can it possibly be that there isn'…
Wow. rforno alludes to a spectrum of quant funds ("quant-lite") and you ask me whether these funds fit the definition of quant funds. Especially since there doesn't appear to be a clear definition.
Okay, FWIW. First let's deal with a technical…
American Beacon has two different LCV funds. I believe you mean American Beacon Bridgeway Large Cap Value (BRLVX) and not American Beacon Lg Cap Value (AAGPX).
As appears to be common with quant funds, Bridgeway's rule based systems (or model b…
When that happens to me, I try to weigh the continued aggravation of possibly dealing with the place against the cost of leaving/replacing. Sometimes the aggravation wins (like you, I leave), sometimes the pocketbook wins but I try to minimize int…
I'm not sure where property taxes came in. Crash did mention mortgage interest deductions (none in Canada). How changing that deduction could affect US real estate prices was implied in TSP_Transfer's real estate post (referring to tax code chang…
