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.
Sure. The confusion may come about from the way the rule on margining mutual funds (at least as quoted above) was phrased.
Once you own shares of FCNTX for 30 days, they become eligible to borrow against ("margin"). You're free to borrow (up…
Overdraft = loan
http://www.investopedia.com/terms/o/overdraft.asp
That's a good word to describe to the negative core balance. The question is, was the loan proper?
It wasn't a loan in the traditional sense (margin, use of money for interest, e…
There are different settlement rules for MMFs and other funds (generally T+1 vs. T+3).
Mutual funds through brokerages generally settle in one day, though a fund family can process an exchange on the same day. Many other securities (e.g. stock…
"By regulation, brokers may not allow clients to purchase mutual funds on margin."
Good point Ted. I forgot about that little nagging point.
Actually, the rule didn't apply here. Had the account been marginable (I double checked - it was not), th…
Let me fill in the details. I think it was an honest error by the brokerage (as will be evident) - what surprised me was that they showed no interest in unwinding the transactions and redoing them correctly.
The transactions occurred exactly as I …
IMHO, trying to infer anything from a class name other than perhaps A, B, C, I, and Investor is an exercise in futility, since there's no standardization.
For example, Federated funds have classes A, B, C, F, R, and Institutional (IS). A,B, C,…
I looked at this study but could not figure out whether the authors' data suffer from survivorship bias. If the dead funds are not included in the database and analysis, the findings of this paper could mean nothing. Suppose that a fund disappeared …
I just compared the above top rated Forward Income Builder fund (AIAIX) to the fund I've been using in this space for the last 13+ years TIBIX. No thanks, I'll continue to remain oblivious.
Edited to add: I'm sure I'm missing something but it does…
There are so many ways of closing a fund that it's hard to fathom cash flow management being a difficult issue.
There is of course the hard close, where even existing investors cannot add more money. This should not impede funds with excess cas…
Sigh. I was hoping that that we could have a list of funds without loads being interjected. In part because while you and I might not pay for advice, others do. And in part, because the fact that some people pay a load for a fund doesn't mean tha…
On a dollar-weighted basis, the impact on industry performance figures is de minimis.
Just as I don't look at inflated (unweighted) expense ratios - 1.25% for the average fund vs. 0.71% for the average dollar (2013) - I don't pay much heed to al…
I still think this is a solution in search of a problem. This "hybrid that combines what some consider the best parts of the actively managed fund with an ETF" also seems to combine some of the worst attributes.
Like an ETF (and unlike a mut…
The rules are: assume all the plaintiff's (Gross') facts are true. If the law says he'd still lose, then he loses, end of story.
Sounds like that's what PIMCO is saying - that the "lawsuit had no basis in law".
In fairness, as I recall the sui…
Trivia on the Valeant/Philidor connection:
- Philidor was Valeant's only specialty pharmacy
- After all hell broke loose last October, it still took Valeant three months to terminate that relationship (Valeant products were still being sold throug…
Class B shares seem like one of the most misunderstood, maligned vehicles around. (I'm not defending load funds here, just looking at reputation vs. numbers.)
FYI: Class B Shares:: (Source Investopedia)
[...]
Cons
Long Time Horizon Required - If …
By way of a backhanded compliment, they have simplified their website a bit. (I'd not seen one more complex than theirs.)
Before, if you had the usual type of accounts (e.g. 403(b), or anything else using the TIAA-CREF annuity structure), and y…
Deluxe has all of the Schedule D (and C, and ...) software restored this year.
For simple stuff, I suspect that any respectable software will do fine. But watch out for anything even slightly off the beaten path.
When Intuit removed some of t…
"(ETHSX) is one of just a handful of funds that has consistently beaten the market over virtually every time period."
Statements like this always leave me wondering what "consistent" means, and what "market" means.
As an example, has a fund that u…
Here's the Prospectus Supplement (it explicitly says that if you're working through an advisory-fee program you can continue to purchase shares).
As I posted before, Oppenheimer is trying to raise its management fee by 1/3. Total ERs, including …
You're one up on Rumsfield. He knew he didn't know everything that he didn't know.
That is, he had unknown unknowns, and he knew that.
http://www.gurteen.com/gurteen/gurteen.nsf/id/there-are-known-knowns
You trust M*'s statistics more than mine. Good idea. Seriously. Just as I would trust M*'s suggestion that 12% of funds beat VBINX over your claim that just 7.4% did. It's large discrepancies like that (1.5x) which raise credibility issues.
…
Here are a few datapoints that might help - there are approximately 148 moderate allocation funds (not share classes) in the M* universe. (For reasons I won't go into, I don't believe that number is precisely correct, but it's accurate enough to s…
msf, 1. Can you please provide the number of Allocation funds that have closed or merged due to underperformance during those 10 years that VBINX has outperformed?
Answer: yes. Will I? No. You can spend your own time. Question is ambiguo…
Why do they outperform AOR? Any thoughts? It's more broadly diversified? Suboptimal bond sectoring?
I don't know much about the etf - I just looked at its current composition, and it looks like a world allocation fund - 27% foreign stock, 31% US sto…
@willmatt72 I agree that tax considerations are important for funds held in taxable accounts. But I also feel that the "magic number" tax cost (or after-tax return), while offering some insight, is not a particularly refined figure. The best it …
The numbers are suspect because:
(a) they refer to share classes, not funds (though you call them funds)
(b) the terms are not defined - Fidelity (using M*'s taxonomy) provides a broad category of "Allocation" funds; you appear to have selected fi…
VBINX (a simple 60/40 fund) is ranked #16 out of all 1194 Allocation (Balanced) funds based on Fidelity's Mutual Fund research site over the last 10 years. Therefore 98.6% of all the CFA's, MBA's, ChFA and PhD's portfolio managers cannot outperform…
How fast can Republican contenders can prep? I hope we'll hear something more constructive tonight than: he was a great jurist, so to honor him the country should wait a year for a replacement to be nominated.
Quoting one of these gentlemen: "We …
Regarding taxes in NJ - while it may have high property taxes, it has the second lowest gasoline tax in the country (after Alaska), last raised in 1988. Resulting in truly crumbling roads (third worst in the country). The increase in gas tax nee…
Fidelity used to offer Active Trader Pro as a courtesy to Private Client customers (though not level 2 quotes). They stopped doing that years ago, though.
If one is interested in where the market is heading, depth of book (Level 2) quotes provide more detailed information. Here's how these quotes look on barchartTrader, along with a brief explanation:
http://www.barcharttrader.com/help/mdepth/market_…
There's a proxy now to increase the management fee of OSMAX/OSMYX in a way that would increase it by 23 basis points (1/3 of its current 70 basis points). That's just the management fee; the total ER would likewise increase by 23 basis points. I…
Silly me. I was trying out mutual funds. You're right - it behaves differently for etfs. I finally remembered how to get the equivalent of the old pop up quotes box - go to Research->Quotes, then enter the fund ticker (or etf ticker, or whate…
I'm not fond of Fidelity's latest website, but then again, I've found each iteration worse than the one before. Anyone remember their old color scheme (years ago)? To me it had a more attractive shade of green.
Some of the changes they've made …
little5bee and vkt seem to be affirming my statement that degrees are admission tickets. Regarding startups, my observations of BA startups is that when small, they hire based on experience (no new grads). That experience needs to be somewhat clo…
I was responding to the article's claim that as a group, millennials had an advantage as being more educated. It's in this context that I was using "typical".
True, one can measure the number of degrees, while quality of learning is less quant…
Vanguard Brokerage Services, like Fidelity, also imposes a $50 short term redemption fee for NTF shares sold within 60 days. There are some brokerages that do not add their own short term redemption fee to any that the fund might impose. When I p…
Scottrade has "always" had a $17 redemption fee for TF NL funds. So if they were charging you $34, that should have been $17 (redemption) + $17 (short term). That is, they had been charging the same $17 short term redemption fee for all NL funds,…
