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With respect to "skimming", do a search on "annuitization puzzle". Here's the first hit I got:
https://www.aeaweb.org/articles.php?doi=10.1257/jep.25.4.143 (Journal of Economic Perspectives)
"In his Nobel Prize acceptance speech given in 1985, F…
Many 401(k)s offer "brokerage windows" that allow employees to purchase individual bonds. The provider (issuer/guarantor) of these bonds can default.
Are you just asking whether the government is responsible for all losses (such defaults on bonds…
From the prospectus:
The Fund is currently not available for sale. ... Existing shareholders of Retail and Institutional Class Shares of the Fund ... as set forth below, may purchase additional Retail and Institutional Class Shares of the Fund thro…
Dex, Thank you for clearing some things up. One's choice of words lead to certain interpretations.
We're talking about rising costs of health care; that is, health care has always been a part of retirement costs. But it has become a larger part…
Let's slow down here - you may have some good points, but the facts are rather mixed up.
When Social Security began, it meant that a person would not be a pauper but food, clothing and shelter. Now, it means food, clothing, shelter, travel costs, ca…
1. I agree that many financial "articles", including this one, are silly.
2. This article is really about asset allocation in retirement; the rest is cheap window dressing to frame the article. ($50K/$1M were simply neat round numbers for illus…
Banks issuing cards with chips for the holiday season, but merchants aren't required to have readers in place for another year. A feel good (marketing) ploy?
Even after Oct 2015, chip-and-pin won't be required:
Corrections & Amplifications: Th…
Moving over to Janus opens another can of worms as Janus has had their issues with ethics and SEC investigations.
I don't see this as opening another can of worms. PIMCO made its own deals with Canary (for $25M) to allow Canary rapid trading whi…
Investors usually exit poorly performed funds. in order to raise cash for exiting investors, managers of the open end funds have to sell securities in a declining market. so they realize multi-year gains and sting the remaining investors with the …
The T. Rowe Price Small Cap Value qualified dividend percentage (as well as the qualified div percentage for other funds) look fishy to me. My understanding is that short term gains are not qualified - and so they can't be passed through by the fu…
I think Maurice has it basically right. The semiconductor industry is hugely capital intensive, so much so now that even companies like IBM have to take a deep breath and think carefully about whether they want to invest billions in the next round …
Morningstar premium screener. Ask for 2004 annual returns >= 0 and 2005 returns >=0 and ...
Pretty easy (but you do need a premium account with M*). The tedious part was transcribing the tickers :-( But I find a manual exercise like…
Now you're getting close to the interesting part of the case. Derf is right - the piper gets paid one way or the other.
Some of what's at issue here is whether the employer could have the employees pay. The plan docs say no, but the docs also…
According to M*, there are exactly two non-bond funds that did not lose money in any of the past ten calendar years. WICAX (one of the three funds named), and KRFEX.
While NSTLX (the institutional share class of N&B Strategic Income) makes the…
Howdy,
Just another monopoly to fall due to technology. Look what's happened to the telephone industry?
peace,
rono
I'm probably in the minority, but I take a different view of the telephone industry. Ma Bell was granted a monopoly and a re…
I'm not sure whether the question is asking about relative preservation or absolute preservation of capital. I agree with hank that the latter is not especially interesting - I'd go further and add that there is nothing magical about the number 0.…
Note: The San Jose, Ca Mercury is a well-regarded primary news source in the San Francisco Bay Area, and not noted for being particularly partisan in any direction.
You're not kidding. Under Knight Ridder, it was considered one of the ten best pa…
Okay, I'll bite. Why does an index fund close? Too low AUM? This one comes in one size only - institutional (but with a "modest" $250K min, not restricted to institutions).
Maybe they want to limit it to retirement plans and the like? (That's …
The webcast is now available. It seems you have to register to see it.
A more direct link than the one I posted previously is: http://www.webcastregister.com/acorn2014/
From the article: "Also, your cost basis can rise because the distribution counts in your basis, even if it's paid out and not reinvested. That higher basis can reduce your future cap gains tax on a profitable sale of shares."
Wrong. Only money th…
@Tampabay: I've never been a believer in the so called 'eating your own cooking' theory. I could care less if a fund manager has any money in the fund he/she manages. The proof in the pudding is what kind of returns do they get. There is no evid…
The author writes that the Trinity Study was updated in 2009 (it was updated in 2011 using data through 2009), says he conducted his own "research" over a 23 year period covering the years 1988-2011 (that's 24 years, from Jan 1 1988 to Dec 31 2011),…
As always, RTFM - read the fine manual (prospectus). Here are a couple of samples from bond funds (equity funds will clearly be trading):
Vanguard Short Term Bond Index Fund (p. 43): "A fund also may use fair-value pricing on bond market holidays…
If one wants to discuss how people are adding risk by reaching for yield, that's fine - and that's basically the lead sentence in the article. But the writer seems to have an agenda, and has slanted graphs and omitted data to that end.
(Disclaim…
The link seems to work for me.
No different from OAKIX (except the timing): "Effective October 4, 2013 the Fund closed to new investors at most third-party intermediaries. The Fund remains open to retirement plans, most investment advisors with ex…
Scott may have a good point. Since deregulation, most "utilities" funds hold a lot of companies that are not "utilities" in the traditional sense. By traditional I mean companies that have struck a bargain with local governments - they get a guar…
No blame - just trying to clarify. I thought your meaning was clear, but BobC's reference to VBMFX suggested that he was reading it differently.
VBMFX is particularly egregious - even Bogle is critical of its slavish devotion to the "wrong" inde…
I would be cautious about owning core bond funds when we are in a period of rising interest rates. Flat-to-lower rates are ideal for core bonds, ... Then again, the definition of what a core bond fund is. VBMFX, for example, has not lived through …
What I've read is that so far, the one place where chip-and-pin is essential is at automated vending machines (e.g. rail tickets) in Europe and possibly Asia. So long as there's a human being handling the transaction, chip-and-signature or even mag…
FWIW, Schwab bank doesn't issue a credit card, and the one that it did issue was run by BankAmerica (which ultimately branded it as its own card). Fidelity's cards, likewise, are run by FIA Card Services, a BankAmerica subsidiary.
It looks like S…
Guys, financial institutions are all the same. This is the price we pay to live in the real world. This is not about Chase. It could be just about any bank, and if you have any other expectations, you are kidding yourself. They will always skirt aro…
IMHO, target date funds are one of the most misunderstood/misused categories of funds around. Their fundamental conceit is that they manage the bulk of your portfolio for you, based on "typical" progression through time. Though one would likely s…
Interesting use of the word survivor. I noticed that the Putnam fund was described as the second oldest (presumably US) fund, not the second oldest surviving fund.
Until a decade ago State Street Research Investment Trust was undeniably the sec…
Here's a M* Fund Spy column explaining how a covered call strategy is good for reducing volatility, mediocre for generating additional total return, and potentially poor for generating an income stream.
See in particular Exhibit 2
All this means i…
the kid who picked up the phone @ Vanguard made a mistake. Vanguard does best to train them, but you know how it goes, plus being a bogle-funded truly mutual fund company (i.e. cheap) they can't really get good help like the loaded institutions can…
With the open end bond funds off the top of my head I would say about 70% (maybe even more) are in the daily accrual camp, where the NAV is not affected end of month, and you are paid accrued dividends for however long you were in the fund that mon…
Rjb's problem is not that he misunderstands how (most) Vanguard bond funds, such as VBMFX, accrue dividends, but rather that Vanguard misinformed him. Unfortunately, that's something hard to prove.
That is, VBMFX declares daily, pays monthly. (Se…
it wasn't... bond funds accrue daily dividends in their NAV, not like stock funds.
@fundalarm and other MFOers, in that case, the daily dividends increase the NAV?
Take a fund like the Vanguard Total Bond Market Index fund, what can change the N…
