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.
Reply to @lova11:
Thanks. I sent them a note - they say that it is still available and open. Will consider them ($10 mutual fund trades if not NTF, which one can't complain about).
Reply to @bee:
Thanks, but it looks like USAA brokerage requires membership, and I don't see myself being eligible. (They say that USAA investment products, most checking and savings products, credit cards, life insurance, and shopping discounts…
It's impressive in a way how Franklin has pulled access to TGBAX from DIYers. Scottrade shows this share class as available (albeit at a $50K min), but when I asked them about this, the response was that it's available, but only if you work with an…
While I'm happy to criticize the shallowness and lack of thought that passes for "news" these days, and have certainly done so here :-), statement #1 is not an example of that. At best (or worst, I suppose) it is an example of poor sentence constr…
Fine tuning a few points. There is an RMD only if you elect to "stretch" your IRA. Otherwise you have until year 5 to take withdrawals (at which point the entire value must be withdrawn). The RMD for a stretch IRA starts the year after the deced…
Building on claimui's suggestion of using the benchmark that the fund uses - I think this is often the best approach. Especially for funds that adjust their fees based on a benchmark. They're not going to pick a benchmark that doesn't reflect the…
David, you cut too much out of the post. The Chinese headline sounds like it is saying: don't be panicking when seeing terrorists [sic] in the fund investment (very vague wording) ...
To give you an idea about the difficulty in doing a good tra…
Thisis a simple proposal; it's discouraging to see how everyone (including apparently Bloomberg) is getting it wrong. (Though they seem to have corrected their error without documenting the change in the article's "update" note.)
First, here's a …
Everything old is new again.
Fidelity complaining about the proposals? Weren't they the ones proposing insurance in the first place? Fidelity Investments has asked the Securities and Exchange Commission for permission to set up an affiliated insur…
Of course it's the next Contrafund, Fidelity said so itself :-).
It launched the fund as Contra II (then with the ticker FCONX), and named Jason Weiner as its manager. What goes around comes around.
Fidelity moved Weiner off the fund in February …
Despite my utter frustration with Fidelity this week, I'll generally second most of Sven's comment about them. If you're going with TF funds, Fidelity is a good way to do it, because of the $5 purchase/$0 sale pricing. Schwab may do the best job …
Of course this will be used for marketing (for which M* will receive a healthy licensing fee). That does not make the analyst ratings inherently suspect (just as one may question the somewhat subjective classifications but not question the objecti…
As this WSJ blog points out, investors should watch out whenever the Giants are even in the Superbowl: 1987, 1991, 2008. Oh yeah, there was that one up year, 1991 (S&P +25%).
Let me reiterate and amplify a point (that MikeM made as well) - MACSX is not a pure equity fund. If I had to classify/analogize it, I would call it Aggressive Allocation (70-90% equity), and analogize it to TRowePrice Cap App PRWCX.
The tradit…
Reply to @fundalarm:
Though figures show long term performance of MAPIX to be better, there have been significant (one year) periods where MACSX has outperformed. 2007 (21.54% to 18.05%), and 2nd quarter 2010 through 1st quarter 2011 (14.59% to 1…
Hank, the link is to a money market account. That's a bank account. Way back in time, savings accounts gave pretty fixed rates of interest (Regulation Q, I believe), and banks came up with the name "money market deposit account" to call the new, …
Reply to @catch22: The figures you are quoting are not exactly for the MMF, but for the returns of an investment option within a variable annuity. That option is a segregated account of the annuity that invests 100% of its assets in Nationwide Vari…
Reply to @hank:
"Add to this that money market funds don't carry FDIC insurance like banks do (who didn't know that?)'"
Things are not as simple as they may appear. Certainly that's true now, but in 2009 MMFs may have been guaranteed by the Treas…
You can't put too much stock in the category or benchmark with these funds. MACSX says that its benchmark is MSCI All Country Asia ex Japan (and M* classifies it that way), while MAPIX says its benchmark is MSCI All Country Asia Pacific (and M* cl…
There aren't many funds or families that do top down investing. Apparently managers feel it can't be done effectively, or at least they can't. A family that does do "theme based" (I'd call it top down) investing is Buffalo funds. And all their …
Inquiring minds want to know - what are the 20 largest Janus stock/balanced funds, and which four beat their benchmarks for the past year (somewhat meaningless stat IMHO):
By performance, with benchmark:
Janus Global Life Sciences, MSCI World Healt…
I'll let you parse the meaning of this sentence in the NYTimes article(2004):
Even while circumventing regulations prohibiting use of incubator performance figures, "fund companies can choose not to mention their incubator funds in any prospectus."…
It's all a matter of what you want, I guess. Personally, I was never happy with the zero cost, since as you noted, it messes up the ROI. And the cost is pretty useless for tax purposes - traditional IRAs show a cost even if the money was all pre-…
Reply to @Anna:
Ultimately, it is the plan sponsor (employer) responsible for the terms of the plan, so technically VALIC was correct in saying that it had nothing to do with vesting until someone tried to move the money. (At that time, they'd hav…
Reply to @scott:
Management changes are a whole 'nuther beast. Even within the same family, there's a question of how meaningful a performance history is. For example, T. Rowe Price is very meticulous in grooming successor managers, in effecting …
Reply to @kevindow:
The Bard said it best: What's in a name? That which we call a rose by any other name would smell as sweet.
"One could not have purchased FEHIX on 11/19/2007." Literally true, as a fund by that name (ticker) did not exist on t…
Reply to @kevindow: Shame on M*: they list the inception date of FEHIX as 11/19/2007, which is actually the inception date of ODHYX. FEHIX also adopts the performance of ODHYX, with no asterisk or qualifying statement by M*.I realize that slamming M…
That five year grace period is not something I was familiar with, but it looks like that's required by the IRS (see the Important Note in the first section of the IRS page).
From what the IRS writes, it sounds like employers can immediately take …
Reply to @Investor: Interesting. I've not seen them provide a discount brokerage to retail customers. All I've ever been able to find is "Contact a Financial Advisor", from which I infer full service, full fee brokerage. At least they seem to be…
I don't see why the problem would be any different from when a fund explicitly buys a privately held company. And that's pretty common. See, e.g. this WSJ article from 2006 that begins: "A growing number of mutual funds are venturing into the ris…
Reply to @Old_Joe:
Looking at the data, you'll see that groceries in general have risen pretty quickly, but that eating out has risen only modestly (I've seen reports about how the Dardens and such are racing to the bottom in prices due to the econo…
Don't count on it. I love the quality of service that Fidelity provides, but when it comes to what services they have, they're off in their own bubble. I spoke with their annuity dept., where the rep said that she gets requests on virtually a dai…
Addressing each person's point succinctly ...
The CPI metric cited in the article does include food, the price of which was measured as increasing (""Food prices rose 0.2% after falling in November. The increase was driven by a rise in cereal and m…
TIPS pay a positive real rate of return, in the case of the last auction 1/8% real return.
That's different from nominal rate of return. Let's take that one first, because people are more familiar with it. Say a bond pays 3%, but inflation is ru…
Reply to @BobC:
Thanks for the thoughtful responses. FWIW, I checked with WellsTrade (the only brokerage that I know w/o its own short term redemption fee) and NEARX isn't carried there. So if one wants it with a fast trigger, one may need to buy…
Reply to @Old_Joe:
Good theory, but trading costs are not included in the ER (wish that they were; they're not even included as part of "other expenses").
WSJ: The Hidden Costs of Mutual Funds
Those are the equity funds I typically look at, at Fidelity. But if he truly has access (with no load) to all Fidelity's funds, expand the search to consider Fidelity Advisor funds also. For example, instead of Contra, you could consider Fidelity…
Reply to @BobC:
Taking a look at US Global Investors Near-Term Tax Free Fund (NEARX) - the bottom line looks nice, but there are details that leave me wondering a bit. So I'm curious about your thoughts on them:
- Fee waiver is in effect (very n…
Reply to @InformalEconomist:
I agree about Fairmark. I would also include misc.taxes.moderated on Usenet as a source of high quality (and not so high quality :-) responses.
