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.
You can use an account aggregation service to get pricing on your full portfolio, more or less, through any broker that offers the service (often using Yodlee software or outsourced to Yodlee).
Schwab apparently used to offer an aggregation service…
@msf
Thank you for your continued fine efforts with everything you provide here.
Take care,
Catch
Thanks, but it's really just curiosity on my part. Once I dig up something that I find interesting, I figure I might as well post it - someone else…
A side note for those who care (perhaps too much) about who got caught in the 2003ish mutual fund scandal.
Here's a settlement notice from Columbia that pays shareholders of (among other funds) Acorn International, Acorn Select, and funds coming…
This is not one of NYTimes better articles. It strongly implies that this is a vanilla case of excessive fees for 401(k) services. But that's not what's going on here.
Observe that the trial court awarded $37M. The appeals court reversed the $1…
I was referring to Z shares when I wrote that Columbia has been cutting off access through supermarkets.
If you have a direct account with Columbia, then that is a fund account, not a brokerage account. Technically each fund is held in a separ…
Don't confuse M*'s portfolio manager pricing with their quote service (e.g. Ted linked to Yahoo's quotes). I've found that while the portfolio service lags by hours (some here are saying days), M*quotes are updated much more quickly.
As others ha…
I suspect any responses you get will be from legacy investors like Maurice and myself. Though unlike Maurice, I did invest in a Columbia fund ages ago, when Columbia was a boutique shop in Oregon with a few good growth funds. Got rid of that in 1…
The original fee charged by Schwab was somewhere around 25-30 basis points (I forget), and that was effectively "free" for new, small funds - because it would have cost them that much to manage the bookkeeping and distribution tasks themselves.
T…
Morn'in @Old_Skeet
It appears that LALDX is also a short duration, high yield bond fund. This FIDO view, from June 30 data, also indicates a 30 day yield of 2.6%.
...
Me 2 cents worth.
Take care,
Catch
LALDX appears in a M* article Is Your Shor…
managed distribution is almost unique to equity CEFs. ... i generally don't understand why you need to access equities via CEFs anyway... so managed distributions is not a concern for majority of the CEF investors.
Still true, but not as obvious …
Thank you for pointing out the PRUZX utilities fund and the advice on alternative healthcare funds. Is it fair to say that their Z class shares (no load class) are more likely to be offered at financial advisors than at the "supermarket" brokerages?…
"Girotto says that people’s problems estimating probabilities may have to do with how uncertainty is expressed. "
I'm not sure that these studies are showing much beyond people having a sense of "likelihood"; not necessarily demonstrating ability t…
The reason why you can't find this fund offered through any brokerage is that the fund is closed. Before investing in any security, it is advisable to read the prospectus, so that you know more about what you're investing in.
Scottrade seems to of…
There's actually no rule (at least none I know of) saying that funding an HSA requires any income at all. It's just that if you have no (taxable) income, then there's no benefit to the deduction. (Though there is still a benefit in the tax-free g…
There are lots of gotchas with closed end funds. For example, the "spread" may be due to the fund being a managed payout fund that is eating away at your principal.
Managed distribution funds attempt to pay the same amount in dividends monthly (or…
Unless you have no cash to fund the HSA, or no income, I'm not fond of HSA->IRA conversions.
For HSA deductions, income means any income - unlike an IRA, that is restricted to compensation.
(IRA compensation is more than "earned income" - it i…
Literally nothing new here past what Ted already quoted - Vanguard filed a motion to dismiss the suit. (Well, the last paragraph in the article adds that Danon has until Nov 17 to respond.)
The Quest case cited by Vanguard is interesting. Unilab…
Buffett's will leaves cash for his wife, period. No index fund, no bonds. Some of that cash goes into a trust for his wife, some goes directly to her. He advises (but does not require) the trustee to put 90% of the trust's cash into a very low co…
Sounds like you're agreeing with Max and David, that the wealthy don't need to get any extra benefits if they pay a SS surtax on higher earnings, because SS is not what's making them wealthy. (35 words)
The PIA formula says what percentage of av…
msf, yeah, I knew much of that; I meant welfare in the modern talk-radio sense, helping Those People.
Are you an academic, or historically minded attorney?
I sent you an email (let me know if you didn't get it), but to address this directly - I fee…
Yes, SS has always paid a higher rate for the first N dollars paid in ("bends" in the benefits formula).
Here's a 1960 SS Bulletin talking about its history. Table 1 shows the first six formulas. Interestingly,only the first one has two bend …
Hot topic. Just permit me to repeat: remove the cap. Done, fixed. No, I have no links or research at hand, but I did see an item or two or eighteen some time ago which backs-up my point. Let all income be subject to the SS tax. All. Ding.
Max - in …
David - I didn't think you being critical, and I appreciate the clarifications, enhancements, and new thoughts.
My own thought about the Krugman remarks is that while STB65's comment addressed the content of the Krugman citation, the later comment …
Thanks again David. I did put "print" in quotes. I thought about adding a comment that Congress has to raise the debt ceiling in order to "print" money (so the Treasury can't just print money on its own), but felt, as you said, that was rather won…
I'm usually wrong according to varying (high) percentages of observers, but I thought part of the problem with SS was that the money wasn't kept in the trust fund, but was spent to fund other popular programs, that would otherwise have required inc…
" And yes an account that says BrianW is much preferred to one that says the US Government."
"Any normal person would have a problem with this."
These are political arguments - they address not what will keep Social Security economically viable,…
Common sense says that whether I own 100 shares of Apple or you own 100 shares of Apple, the return on those shares is going to be the same.
So even if we assume, for the sake of argument, that investing in the market is necessary to 'save' Social …
So far, government-generated data seems relatively untainted by politics. Sources like SSA, Bureau of Labor Statistics, Census Bureau, etc. are good places to fact check.
For health coverage, Kaiser Family Foundation, http://kff.org is a fine sour…
Taking a cursory glance at this fund's basic profile numbers on the M* quote page, I see several things:
(1) once again, M* has placed FAINX in the wrong category, an exercise that should be so straightforward in this case that it would be considere…
The Myth of ETF Transparency:
http://c.ymcdn.com/sites/www.fpany.org/resource/resmgr/imported/The_Myth_Of_ETF_Transparency-ETFRFeb2011.pdf
A two page description of how ETFs really work (with portfolio composition files), how lack of transparency c…
DavidM - thanks for pointing out some of the problems with raising the retirement age - that's the main problem I had with TB's list. As you and others are pointing out, changes like that one are not as simple as they might appear.
Not only do the…
You might take a look at "the Social Security game" from the American Academy of Actuaries. It lets you choose from various changes and tells you how much of the shortfall you've addressed.
I tried plugging in the choices they had that IMHO were …
Yes. I just identified a (small) holding of mine left over from 2004 where the NAV appreciation over the decade is so low and the projected distribution so high that selling now is basically a wash.
I get $N in cap gains by selling now, or $N in…
Then there is the rare manager who, even without the final say, will just say no.
Hakan Castegren managed Ivy International IVINX. In 2000, the fund company wanted to reopen the fund - Castegren said no, so technically he was fired. The good ne…
For a large fund, however, the moment they begin to buy or sell a position they rock the markets. That's because the quantities they need to purchase or sell in order to make an appreciable difference in their allocation to the security are so muc…
Eat copious quantiles of macaroni & cheese and your grocery bill shrinks - but your waist line expands. :)
It absolutely costs more to eat healthy.
The flip side of that is that health insurance may cost less for those (healthy) people who ca…
VWEHX has a five year return (annualized) of 9.43%, and a ten year return of 6.78%. Each of those is under the stated returns.
I ran a search on bond funds with 5 year returns of at least 9.7% and 10 year returns of at least 7%. There are only …
There are lots of different things going on here. It's been many days since I read a brief or two on the case, so this may not be exactly right (and I don't have the time now to review), but here goes:
- IMHO Vanguard should win quickly - not on t…
