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.
@Hank - that's different from what American Funds does. What Oppenheimer is doing seems more like a variant of - take your pick - a master-feeder relationship or a fund-of-fund relationship.
In those arrangements, the investor's fund invests some…
Are you sure you can buy more shares? I've spoken with a few brokerages who have said that they'll let you hold these shares, they'll even let you transfer them in and buy more with dividend reinvestment. But they won't let you place "buy" orders…
@Alban - I don't know why AF created fully owned subsidiaries. Maybe it gives them more legal protection? What I can offer is their 2012 SEC filing where they requested exemption from some rules so that they could run their funds this way:
https…
Confirming your statement about AF that they're marketing experts. Didn't matter whether the F shares did anything new, they were sold as "new and improved".
I took a quick look at EuroPacific Growth. The first prospectus in which class F share…
By going into MMAs (which are still doing much better than MMFs), one is betting on rates rising at at least a certain speed. If you lose that bet (rates don't rise as fast as expected), then short-intermediate funds could be the winners.
ISTM th…
A finer detail on F-class shares. The original F class shares (now F-1) include a 12b-1 fee. These trailing fees (as well as any "fee offset" arrangement) "do not meet the NAPFA definition of Fee-Only practice."
https://www.napfa.org/membership…
There's insufficient information to tell.
Consider: two bonds with same credit rating, same maturity (those two factors should produce same yield to maturity), same duration, non-callable vanilla bonds.
If one of those has less interest rate risk …
"Their introduction of F-class shares came about 10 years ago when they realized they were being shut out of many fee-only accounts established by RIAs."
Most load funds enable brokers to sell their funds without loads so long as the brokers collec…
I don't think this article helps too much, but here's a 2013 article describing Capital Group's reorganization into multiple groups:
http://www.fa-mag.com/news/capital-group-will-restructure-based-on-investment-objectives-13699.html
Ignoring for th…
I agree that it's percentages that matter, not absolute numbers.
It looks like the fund has taken in almost no money in the past six months (thus failing to broaden the base receiving those early realized gains).
AUM at the end of April was $30…
Honestly, I've never thought about the impact of (or on) maturity for bonds of similar credit ratings. Generally when comparing two bonds or portfolios of equal duration (and quality), what matters is convexity.
That's a measure of how fast t…
It helps to read the footnotes. These figures all come under the heading "30-Day Yield"; on the page in question, that heading has a footnote #2
The 30-day dividend yield represents the average daily dividends for the 30-day period, annualized and…
Thank for the reminder. Three weeks ago I got an updated CC contract from Citibank with a one-time opt out offer:You have the right to reject this arbitration provision. ... You can reject arbitration by writing to us .... Your letter must be …
Look at it this way. Many elections, there's one turkey (though people disagree on who that turkey is). This year, we can come together over our abundance - two turkeys.
Happy Thanksgiving.
For that matter Congress should have Obamacare. If it's good for the rest of us, it should be good for them. ONLY then will there be no debate as to whether something is good or not. If it's good for all then it really needs to be consumed by all. …
Here's the actual GAO report.
While some of what it says may be sound and even useful, there are enough things that pop out to suggest one not read a news report without looking at the GAO report itself.
The report starts: "GAO’s nongeneralizable …
Speaking of California, are they the only state that taxes you even though you moved out? A lot of retirees move to AZ, NV, etc to enjoy retirement with a cheaper cost of of living. California figures they need to tax anything you made in CA, even…
He does mention 10,000 miles per year, and based on that assumption compute cost/mile. He seems to use that implicitly to infer that buying rather than leasing would create only "modest exposure to increased repair bills"
If by "mileage" you mean …
We need to bring back all the jobs lost in America, like those 5,300 lost at Wells Fargo. Starting of course at the top, with that "very decent man", John Stumpf.
For an "amusing" anecdote about how little has changed, here's a story posted on Ze…
I agree that HSAs as originally conceived did largely favor the better off - since they could use these for tax-sheltered savings, and because the tax deductions HSAs provide are more valuable to those in higher tax brackets. In contrast, the ACA p…
I've never been able to find a listing. I do know an advisor there and asked him to pass along some feedback - that the brokerage information for DIYers is close to nonexistent.
While TIAA has traditionally been focused on assisted investing (t…
Okay, forget about auto insurance being mandatory; that was perfunctory. The main point was about guaranteed renewal. That's what the paragraph in the article was talking about - if you act responsibility and buy insurance on day one, then insura…
@Joe - As noted in the Investopedia page cited by @AndyJ, these bank loan notes have fairly high recovery rates, because they are collateralized and because they are senior to other debt. That doesn't affect the risk of default, but it does mean t…
Interesting exchange at about 4:00. Kinnel is asked whether he's concerned that people put too much reliance on the star ratings and analyst ratings. His response was no, because most money is invested through advisors who watch out for the suita…
Thanks, I suppose.
I guess that we should let anyone serve as a financial advisor, because otherwise we're discriminating against unlicensed "practitioners". After all, not all of them are charlatans. Who are we (or the DOL) to say?
"Trump adviser ... Scaramucci has compared the fiduciary rule [for IRAs, 401Ks] to the infamous Dred Scott decision, a 1857 Supreme Court ruling that denied black Americans citizenship."
Would that be because the SEC rule would hold financial advis…
FWIW, I ran a M* screen on taxable bond funds with duration greater than 4, and found 525 distinct funds (one share class per fund). Of these, over 40% (212) had three month returns greater than -2.0%. That's not to say that one would want to ow…
One question is always how fast rates will rise. For example, GIBLX, with an SEC yield around 4% and a modified average duration of 4+ years might be expected to return a tad south of 2% if rates rose 1/2% in the next year (lose 2% on price, gain 4…
The fact that the column could have been better written does not detract from the points it is making. The paragraph from which that sentence comes is clearly talking about maintaining coverage (protection) for people who develop an expensive medi…
According to the fact sheet, 1/3 is project financing, which is more or less the taxable equivalent of what I was describing with muni revenue bonds. That is indeed different from corporate financing.
In contrast, structured products are basicall…
I've been thinking a bit about Archie Bunker. He was an undeniable bigot, but also someone who was concerned about providing for his family, worried about losing his blue collar job (loading dock), and was very confused about the changes going on a…
Ignoring politics for the moment, I'm having difficulty seeing the appeal of a corporate bond fund focused on infrastructure.
If this were a muni bond fund, I could see how it might make sense. It could invest in revenue bonds where the revenue c…
From the Post article: "The other — preventing insurance companies from denying covering because of pre-existing conditions — offers a perfect illustration of why Trump and most of the other Republicans critics of Obamacare don’t understand the heal…
It was down 7.90% for Nov 10th, while the category average fund didn't fare that much better, off 5.85%. (Data from M*) Dropped from $18.74 to $17.26. On Veterans Day it dropped another 7.36% to $15.99. (Daily prices from Yahoo)
That 14.67% d…
The original column expressed concern about Gross not having enough resources to manage one fund, let alone more. Perhaps he could manage many funds if they all had teams of analysts behind them, but the point of the column was that he already nee…
There would seem to be questions not only about resources behind Gross, but about Gross spreading himself out as well. It seems he has his eye on starting up another total return bond fund.
http://riabiz.com/a/2016/11/3/bill-gross-jumps-back-in-t…
I don't think anyone has a clue. Flight to quality? Last night the 10 year yield dropped about a dozen basis points (higher Treasury prices), yet this morning the yield was up. One could say that this was the realization sinking in that the US…
Until this decade, Lipper said that a fund that fell within the top quintile was in the first quintile. Apparently too many people thought that quintiles were the same as stars, and concluded that first quintile performance was lousy. So Lipper i…
