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.
See also UBS To Offer NextShares Exhanged-Traded Managed Funds:
http://www.mutualfundobserver.com/discuss/discussion/28567/ubs-to-offer-nextshares-exhanged-traded-managed-funds
I am still of the belief that these are a solution in search of a probl…
The article has a fair description of the problem, but offers no suggestions.
I see three reasons for traditionally holding bonds: income generation (more stable cash flow than selling appreciated assets), improved risk/reward profile (give up a li…
For more illuminating (and less incendiary) descriptions and analyses of SS taxation, here's a detailed example (from AAII) showing how one's marginal rate (in the nominal 15% bracket) can reach 27.75%
https://www.aaii.com/journal/article/figuring-t…
Sure. It's a misnomer to describe the paragraph I quoted as analysis. That text came from the paper's conclusion. The paper presents an analysis in the preceding couple of pages.
There it goes into detail about what the numbers represent. It …
@msf said
I agree with @jerry in all respects - that SS can be handled with a well-considered
mix of reasonable approaches, and that Medicare is the elephant in the room.
And I also agree with a well-considered mix... WE HAD ONE !!!
Did we? …
"Trump's emphasis on immigration reform also has implications for Social Security, because under current law, non-U.S. citizens who are in the country lawfully and meet all eligibility requirements can get benefits."
I'll plead ignorance - it isn't…
What caught my eye was: "adjusted for inflation", which says that the figures are for 0% real returns. The recent concerns have been over 0% nominal returns. That's a less frequent occurrence (since inflation is almost always positive).
"Regress…
The article was published after the deadline for file and suspend. So it's of no help to future filers. It might help a few people who were misinformed, but how many people who spoke with SSA took note of the person, date, information conveyed? …
Be careful. I'm guessing that those payroll deductions include income taxes. Despite Burns' calculations, it is likely that most retirees will owe some income taxes (though likely less than when working).
Here's a SS Issue Paper, dated Dec. 201…
Here's the "Adjusting to Changing Markets" page you cited.
Those moves seem right; they comply with the 31 day rule (no reversals within 31 days, but they are allowed to make additional changes in the same direction).
January 7: 30% stocks (incre…
The rule itself is simple, though the prospectus states it in language that's a bit too compact.
You're not allowed to reverse direction within 31 days. So if the fund increases its stock allocation, it can increase it further, but if it wants to …
Hi @msf,
Thank you for making comment about a fund that I made mention of and that is CTFAX. I realize that the fund is not for everyone. No doubt, you must be one of those investors that does not favor the fund. I got to tell you, though, it is…
@davidrmoran - I agree with you about the disclaimer, though slow postings has been a major, major complaint about M* for some time now.
The paragraphs you cited do generally describe the ETF pricing mechanism. Though there are enough exceptions …
M* may update the security prices at different times.
As I wrote above, what you were seeing for VOO was NAV performance through June 30th, not July 31st. The graph has since been updated for the exchange traded security, and VOO shows a YTD retur…
Neither the heading nor the suggestion that SS will not be there necessarily follow from the article.
The article discusses but one of many different ways to keep SS solvent, viz. increasing employer and employee FICA rates by 1.33%. That's an in…
Here's the chart you described. Thanks for being so clear.
You couldn't have put money in these funds on January 1st. January 4th was the first trading day of the year. If you had put $10K into open end funds (which get end of day pricing) on …
Links would help, or if you could say exactly what you were looking at on M*.
Here's a M* chart comparing FUSEX, VOO, IVV, and SPY over the month of June (June 1 through June 30th).
It shows what you described. Closing values for the an initial…
If you are looking for a mutual fund that plays stock market pullbacks automatically you might wish to study CTFAX to see if its strategy might interest you and it might be a strategy to incorporate within one's own portfolio to take advantage of s…
Not fighting here either, just interpreting "stocks have been flat" differently.
In my mind, it's equivalent to saying "the stock market's been flat, so there wasn't any point in having investing in stocks" (regardless of whether one used funds …
I got the S&P 500 Total Return performance from the M* chart of VTSMX where I added the S&P 500 as a benchmark. Here's the link again for that chart. You can read the S&P 500 total return ending value for the period in the chart (Dec…
Not me. Here's Fidelity's page for the fund (it shows up as NTF). A test trade shows no fee/load/commission charged either.
https://fundresearch.fidelity.com/mutual-funds/summary/302933205?type=o-NavBar
I cited M* for S&P 500 TR from 12/31/14 close (aka New Year's Day, 2015) to 6/29/15 as 2.79%. Agreed it's not nothing, but it's not 3.73% either.
Since SPY is a unit investment trust that can only reinvest dividends quarterly, it suffers fro…
Sometimes in all these discussions about stocks the big picture gets lost.
Stocks haven't gone anywhere for 1 1/2 years
http://finance.yahoo.com/echarts?s=^GSPC+Interactive#{"range":"2y","allowChartStacking":true}
Remember to include dividends. …
Faulty reasoning from beginning to end, starting with the headline.
To ascertain how much money is needed to live well, one should define "live well" and then determine how much money is needed for that lifestyle. The 25th percentile of individua…
Part of VMVFX's outperformance (relatively speaking) can be attributed to the fact that it is currency hedged. To put this in perspective, TBCUX fell 5.17%, while TBGVX fell "just" 3.51%. Still significantly more than VMVFX, but a lot closer tha…
It's hard to make constructive suggestions without knowing more about your situation...
What percentage you plan to draw (and will SS kick in before or after you start, which could affect weightings), are you looking to leave an estate (which would…
"it’s pretty much a slam-dunk. If you defer for 8 years at 62, your life expectancy at 70 will still be 5.4 years greater than what you’d need to “break-even” on the decision."
(That is, you'll be expected to live to age 87.9)
- and -
"In your …
Why is 'bra' singular and 'panties' plural?
Panties is a diminutive, not a plural.Yes it is a diminutive, but of what? Pants. Already a plural.
A quick search turned up this paper, On Diminutive Plurals and Plural Diminutives. It is written…
From the prospectus: "When the Fund invests in other DoubleLine funds, the Adviser will waive its advisory fee in an amount equal to the advisory fees paid to the Adviser by other DoubleLine funds in respect of Fund assets so invested".
This is …
I'll believe the trend, but the data are suspect.
MasterCard reports that 52% of UK transactions are cashless (no date given) while the European Central Bank reports just 21% of UK transactions were cashless as of 2015 (Oct 15, 2015 is the date …
So USAA's bonus dropped by 9.1% (-1.7%/18.7%) vs. Vanguard's profit sharing increase of 12%.
Y/Y change, not percentage of wages.
The Reuters article seems to suggest simply that as Vanguard's profits rose, profit sharing (per share) rose commensu…
Well that reads like something put together between Fidelity's legal and marketing departments. Fidelity does a good job with index funds, but this is not a helpful press release.
I was hoping for something better organized, since I got a ton of …
I'm likely the only one who cares about this, but LEXCX is not a mutual fund. It is a unit investment trust (albeit organized under the 1940 Investment Company Act, like mutual funds). IMHO it is much closer to a HOLDR than to a mutual fund (in …
What moves a fund is the concentration it has in an asset.
4.8M shares of LNKD that rose around $60/share is an increase of $300M out of $142B AUM, for a bump of about 1/5%. (MSFT, about 1.8% of the fund, is down a tad less than 3% today, offse…
What caught my attention in the article was the combo:
John Hancock-sponsored plan charged asset management fees of 1.69 percent
JH is an insurance company; it is selling annuities as retirement plans ((all the footnotes on the 401(k) page describ…
AFAIK, the only rule that allows a short term "loan" from an IRA is the 60 (not 90) day rollover rule. Strange that wasn't mentioned in the "A" to the "Q".
Not suggested in the response was a suggestion to project out the impact on future RMDs of…
Long story short:
If the market rate for a 1 year bond is 1%, you might buy a bond at:
- 100 with a 1% coupon (returning 100 in principal in a year),
- 101 with a 2% coupon (returning 100 in principal in a year), or
- 99 with zero coupon (return…
