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.
I think the article is absolutely right about how people react to framing odds. But it's not entirely right about needing to cut expenses (or at least by 30%).
It's often suggested that your expenses will go down because you won't need good cloth…
Altruist Financial Advisors seems to have some curious notions regarding Vanguard:
"For those who do not have access to DFA, we suggest they limit their bond holdings to domestic bond funds." A blanket rejection of VTIBX without even mentioning i…
I really don't know much more about DFA's funds - I've read through their literature from time to time to understand why they don't consider their funds index funds. It seems to amount to greater flexibility in various dimensions (such as the stoc…
Regarding Roth 401(k) RMDs, that's correct. Also inherited Roths are subject to RMDs (at an even faster rate than traditional IRAs).
If you have no income (not just wages, but investment income, etc.) then it makes sense to use traditional IRA di…
From the article:
" But you had to really be paying attention [to the rise in rates beginning around Thanksgiving] — which, at the time, I wasn’t — to notice the increase."
Yup, I was slow too - my post from just three weeks ago:
http://mutualfundo…
"For example, when a new stock enters an index, a traditional index fund has to add it all at once. This can push the price up before the purchase is completed."
Bzzzzt. Wrong answer.
"The public at large has been fully aware of any changes sched…
IMHO the conclusion (headline) is correct, but the analysis is wrong.
He writes that the tax bill may double. First, this is the wrong perspective - what matters the most is the tax rate on that incremental income. For the person posing the ques…
Hi Guys,
Everyone, in any industry, must be held accountable for his performance. In baseball, a pitchers Earned Run Average (ERA) is a convenient way to assess the effectiveness of that pitcher even if he pitches for a terrible team that makes ple…
Years ago, I worked for a large company with major locations on the east coast and in Illinois. It considered Lincoln's birthday a regional holiday, so it only gave the day off in some locations - the ones outside the Land of Lincoln.
While feder…
That's more or less the way brokerages do work with mutual funds. Since the brokerage and not the fund does the bookkeeping, the brokerage is able to buy institutional shares from the fund (without paying for the per-client bookkeeping services th…
What I was trying to say was that there doesn't seem to be a huge trick to this - just charge the investor the price of the shares (at the time the brokerage bought them, not the previous closing prices).
Yet here we have a brokerage that didn't …
Another brokerage, another account w/o margin that magically "borrowed" money for a trade. In this account, like all qualified/IRA/HSA/MSA accounts, margin is not only disallowed, it can void the whole tax shelter.
This time the error was on a…
If you want a benchmark fund (for this nearly three year old fund) in its Lipper category, you might compare it with American Funds SMALLCAP World Fund (depending on which share class, generally "3"s across the board for 3 year performance), or Inve…
I voted against the reorganization (though now I remember why I didn't turn in the proxy initially - if they don't get a quorum, it fails).
All the reasons given amounted to "because nothing will change":
(1) The management companies support it (wh…
I think managed payout funds like this make more sense for income, not growth. They are effectively the mutual fund industry's answer to annuities, trying to give you a smooth cash flow (though not as smooth as an annuity's) while still leaving y…
It all depends on what someone is prepared for. He's saying, "look, the chance of outliving your money is really less than 5%, so you can spend more". Is the first part correct? Yes. Is the second part correct (that you can spend more)? I'…
VASFX is also available as an underlying fund in Vanguard Managed Payout Fund VPGDX. (VASFX currently represents 10% of the parent fund.)
While there are some similarities between VASFX and VMNFX (e.g. they are the only two funds in VPGDX that are…
My last post in this thead (since Mike added comments):
- A fine page for wonks (and only for wonks) from DOL (2013):
Private Sector Pension De-risking and Participant Protections
"[The director of PBGC] suggested that lump sums are inappropriate…
Longevity insurance provides a cheap way to protect against the long shot of living too long (outliving one's money). I've been advocating its use for just the reason described in the article - it frees up money to be spent earlier - you no longer…
Your initial post asked if a pension might default "When the corporation that employed you goes bankrupt or when the insurance company that owns the annuity goes bankrupt" This question allowed the possibility that the employer might purchase an a…
I had not looked closely at Fidelity's (or anyone else's) ETF research for a couple of admittedly biased reasons: I don't invest too much in ETFs (though I do on occasion), and I feel most research (especially on ETFs and index funds) just throws ou…
Apparently the proxy material that Shadow found was supposed to go "live" on February 14th, but was delayed.
http://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/1318342/000139834416009900/fp0018074_delam.htm
Here's the updated material, filed Feb 22, dated Feb …
How could the PBCG (starts with Pension...implication is that it is still with the corporation) be responsible once the annuity option is chosen and the corporation passes the cash on to the annuity payer (this case Met Life) and Met Life starts pa…
I think it's worse than that.
It's been suggested that bets on spreads were created because some people had difficulty understanding odds. (Shows what has happened to the level of education when the average gambler can't handle the arithmetic at …
"So I'm covered as long as the government stays solvent."
I'm an advocate of annuitization, so don't take this comment the wrong way, but PBGC is not "explicitly backed by the full faith and credit of the federal government; doing so would require …
Near the top of the OSMAX page I see NTF:
Oppenheimer International Small-Mid Company Fund
Class A OSMAX
OppenheimerFunds | Foreign Small/Mid Growth
The HSA account is a full TDA brokerage account. The only restriction is that money only mo…
I agree that TDA is not the best for MF investors, but it doesn't seemall that bad, and has gotten much better in recent years. Further, different types of accounts have different rules.
I have a TDA account for my HSA. Note that different banks…
Berwyn must be having problems getting proxies. I just got a proxy call from them, and all I have is a bare minimum in one of their funds (just in case).
Pressure by the government to get keys goes back decades. As mentioned in this video, you had the Clipper Chip in the 1990s. But going back even further, you had the government asking (I think it was only asking, not demanding) to prescreen rese…
C shares are called "level load" for a reason. They charge higher expenses that are used to compensate the broker.
In addition, " American Funds Distributors pays 1% of the amount invested to dealers who sell Class C shares", which is why they'…
Does the Obesity ETF pay a fat dividend, the Organics ETF invest in companies that grow organically rather than by acquisition, and does the Long Term Care ETF care to invest in companies for, well, the long term?
Don't have a clue about Health and…
I am aware of what the fund invests in, and have read the prospectus (though not recently). My comment was directed toward your perhaps too brief description (a).
Just as prerefunding improves the risk profile of muni bonds, this fund attempts to …
RiverPark Short Term High Yield Fund.
"(a) high yield bonds are a sliver of the portfolio". Does this mean that the fund is in violation of Rule 35d-1, requiring 80% of a fund's portfolio (at time of purchase) to reflect its name?
M* reports the…
In a stripped down form, I believe this is what one gets out of Buffett's advice for his future widow - 10% short term government bonds (effectively a cash substitute) and 90% in an equity index fund.
https://blogs.cfainstitute.org/investor/2014/0…
Allow me to question a few assumptions (or not quite precise statements) to refine some thoughts.
@MJG: "Market returns will never repeat that precise order. All evidence points to a purely random series of returns."
Never? If results are purely …
Harmonizing Ted's post with David's:
PRGFX: $41.6B
TRBCX: $28.9B
PRHSX: $11.7B
TRLGX: $12.4B
TRVLX: 21.6B
Total TRP: $116.2B
Sequoia: $5.7B, or about 1/20th the size, i.e. 20x as committed as these T. Rowe Price funds.
David wrote that afte…
A remarkably unremarkable fund (albeit concentrated). But terminating C shares (and converting to A shares) is a new one on me.
The closest situation I know of is American Funds class C shares that automatically convert after 10 years to clas…
FWIW, M* shows only 3% of RPHYX's bonds as unrated.
M* gets the ratings for each bond in a fund's portfolio from the fund company. When asking for this data, it says that "So-called internal or manager-derived, alphanumeric credit ratings are n…
Here are the 2/29 holdings (from RiverPark):
http://www.riverparkfunds.com/Funds/ShortTermHighYield/FullHoldings.aspx
90.06% are securities. There are not sufficient details given to completely identify the securities, but based on M*'s analysis a…
