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.
According to BusinessWire, Elan Financial Services is a division of US Bankcorp. Elan seems to concentrate on branding products (like this credit card, debit cards, etc.) for other businesses.
Here's Fidelity's page, updated already:
https://www.fidelity.com/cash-management/visa-signature-card
Their FAQ says that the issuer/creditor is Elan Financial Services (could be a subsidiary of the Reuter's reported US Bankcorp, just as FIA is a s…
The first of the M* articles linked to in the elevator talk item was a "Fund Spy - Medalist Edition" column. While I haven't got a clue why M* gives analyst ratings ("medals") for some funds as opposed to others, the immediate answer to why GTSOX …
I'd never taken a close look at those bar charts to see what they actually represent. My current working hypothesis is that they are simply the 10 year risk and reward ratings on the ratings & risk tab. If my theory is correct, funds that ha…
Can't let it go, can you?
You asked how many of the 162 funds M* calculated this year. I'd say all of them. The vast majority of current bond quality averages were calculated for the past quarter (9/30/15). Though you're right, some fund famili…
I agree that it was a nice gesture, and could have been left at that.
My mention of M* was to point out that one has to be careful with processed data from different sources - if sources process raw data differently, the resulting numbers can't …
What information would M* get with a phone call that it doesn't already have? We're not talking investment approach à la Gundlach, but objective data on file with the SEC (portfolio holdings), and bond ratings (provided by the NRSROs, not by the f…
This must be a very recent change.
I have a petty checking account with BofA (only to get a boost in cashback rewards on their credit card). It's a legacy eChecking account that would charge me money if I were to do an EFT transfer to my "real…
Best case - those are similar, but not identical, averages to what M* would have computed. Worst case, they still understates risk.
The best case is that these ratings represent the rating firms' averages of the bonds in the portfolio (based on t…
>> Aside from the treasuries held in the fund, the average credit quality is about AA for the rest of the bond sleeve held in the fund
>Makes you wonder why *M cannot make a simple phone call like I did.
It is quite possible that despite…
The breakout by Credit Quality has '-' for GLRBX; the columns that are filled in are the benchmark and category average figures. I suspect the reason why the figures given are dated 12/31/11 is that this appears to be the last time that M* did a c…
This does describe what I'm seeing - that an extra "income" dividend is paid at the end of the year, and that it doesn't vary by share class (since all the expenses have been paid already out of the usual monthly dividends).
What puzzles me about t…
Here's the complementary audio - a discussion with one of the columnists, Noam Scheiber, on The Takeaway today:
http://www.thetakeaway.org/story/two-tiered-taxes-one-system-rich-one-everyone-else/
While the figures may be somewhat astonishing (the …
@PRESSmUP - not unique, but not a routine occurrence (unlike monthly income divs and annual cap gains distributions).
The monthly income dividend comes on the last day of the month. For December, it came on the 31st in 2014, 2013, 2012, and 201…
Something that seemed curious to me is that while PIMCO's link to the file is named is roughly what I stated above (quarterly/annual/supplemental), the file itself says only quarterly dividends. It looks like PIMCO may have grafted onto its quarte…
Depends on the size of the losses, value of those losses, opportunity costs.
Do you want to be out of the market for a month? Or if you move that money to other funds for just a month, what are you hoping for?
If you're hoping for a gain, then…
Always, ALWAYS book taxable losses.As I tried to describe above, I don't agree with this, except as a simple rule of thumb if you don't want to get into more detailed calculations.
For example, suppose you are married. The 15% bracket goes up to $…
This is way OT, but out of curiosity, since multiple people have qualified their statements with "likely" (candidate/opponent), what unlikely candidate do you feel could win or would you support?
I'm not trying to start a debate here, just wonderin…
Some years I do, others I don't. I look at AGI figures as well as how much tax I'm going to pay. There are reasons why one wants to control AGI (e.g. eligibility for Roth contributions, taxation of SS, etc.).
So my personal answer is: yes I se…
The way the article is describing infrastructure investments, it could just have easily been describing utilities, pre-1980. Monopolies, regulated, guaranteed reasonable profits (via regulated rates). As it says, airports, pipelines, electric ut…
Those top ten lists (I didn't look that closely) are really interesting. From the brief descriptions, I had assumed that the only difference between the indexes would be the cutoff in the number of stocks selected - a fixed top 100 for the new, an…
Here's S&P's page on S&P 500 Quality Index:
http://us.spindices.com/indices/strategy/sp-500-quality-us-dollar
and the page on the S&P 500 High Quality Rankings Index
http://us.spindices.com/indices/strategy/sp-500-high-quality-rankings…
Big 4 OneFund sounds like a good nickname for Fidelity's Four-In-One Fund (FFNOX) - big four indexes in one fund: S&P 500, extended market (all US stocks not in S&P 500), EAFE, and US Aggregate bond index. Maybe Fidelity can buy the ticker …
I don't believe there is, nor do I expect there to be, a problem with dirt cheap, mass produced drugs like amoxicillin and atenolol. The drugs mentioned in the article cost at least double digits ($13.50, $20) per dose. In contrast, Costco sells…
Qualified dividends are taxed at 0%, 15% and 20%, the latter if you are in a 39.6% tax bracket.
From @heezsafe 's link:
"[Q]ualified dividends ... are taxable federally at the capital gains rate, which depends on the investor’s modified adjusted …
"She must find a buyer in the market. In some cases, her broker sells the ETF shares to a specialized dealer called an “authorized participant,” who presents them to the fund company in exchange for an identical basket of all the fund’s underlying h…
The Yahoo Finance article presenting these 29 funds,linked to in the original article, is here:
http://finance.yahoo.com/news/why-the-current-credit-crisis-might-be-35-times-worse-than-you-thought-134706002.html
Its video is okay (talking about jun…
@little5bee, I'm not sure the government would get involved with taxing junk food and sodas, but if you consider that right now the government is subsidizing junk food/soda as its primary ingredient is corn--corn syrup, corn chips, etc.--it would be…
"You have to be right on the timing too or effectively you're wrong"
Like Jeff Vinik. But I don't mind my managers being a little early - it's when they're late to the party that there's a problem.
AP story, July 19, 1996, by Bruce Meyerson: "Un…
@little5bee Just say "Hi, Oscar".
Really, that's how the company promotes itself, and is also the company's website:
http://hioscar.com
It's a VC darling, a new insurance company targeting millennials. Well priced (and losing money), with some in…
Just wondering: if only pregnant women were required to pay for maternity care, what would that do to their premiums? Right. Astronomical. We need to get from ME to WE.
What intrigued me was that buried deep in the rhetorical question about why a co…
"How is this fair? Should billion-dollar corporations get special health insurance tax breaks while regular American families struggle"
IMHO, he's got this one right. Level the playing field. And while you're at it, don't distort the marketplace…
@bee - Thanks for the information. I was familiar with VTMFX, but not with USBLX.
These don't really fit my current needs (as explained above) or my style, but would be a nice fit for some people. Like you, I generally prefer to control my own …
Thanks for the positive comments on the (now) Baird team.
Hardly a performance chaser. Just playing year end tax games and have cash on hand.
This is one of those unusual (but not extremely rare) years where a good year is being followed by a f…
I always assume that the final distributions will be higher than the estimates. The management firm usually don't know the fund's earnings for the entire fiscal year when it makes the estimates, and it don't know until the record date how many sha…
Got to learn to place my hands at the right place on the keyboard, I guess.
I didn't count Joe Czechowicz among the managers from BMO, because while he did come from BMO, he didn't seem to manage any funds there.funds.
Thanks for the link. It c…
BRLVX is all but completely unrelated to AAGAX. The only common factor is that they are both part of the American Beacon family. In both cases, AB subcontracts the day to day management to outside managers. Bridgeway for the former, and a combina…
Didn't recall that. Thanks. Sounds like this latest problem was just the last straw.
You noted: "It's not clear that "CEO for 24 years" was exactly correct (there were a couple firms, a couple titles and a gap)."
Hence the very careful wording …
I was going to say something similar - Danoff and Primcap seem to move somewhat out of sync - one fund can do better for a few years, then the other takes the lead. Hard to say one is better than the other - they seem to be complementary in the la…
