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.
I'm currently trying to help a friend plan investments and cash flows for the next decade, when they will go from retirement pre-SS, to retirement w/SS, to retirement w/SS and RMDs. They also have two inherited IRAs, one traditional, one Roth.
How…
Trump v CASA - this is birthright citizenship case. The SC said that while plaintiffs can sue for citizenship, federal courts are not allowed to issue a nationwide injunction to cover all people born in the US. Rather, people born in the US will h…
firmly establishing the four eBay factors would also be necessary
Agreed. Though the Circuit Court seems to be saying that before considering whether an injunction is appropriate here, we must first ask whether the remedy of an injunction is even…
Contrast this with Fido which doesn’t even identify (or have a way of contacting them) a named rep on your account page.
Maybe you just don't rate :-)
On most of my pages, including summary, positions, activity, balances, docs is a little box in t…
Some unconventional thoughts on your allocation/drawdown plans, FWIW:
1. If all the money in your (future) RMDs will be taxed at the same rate, and if your RMDs will (along with other income including SS) will be less than your cash flow needs, th…
Appeals Court seems to have implicitly reprimanded CIT for not directly addressing the four (listed) eBay factors in its original ruling as well as, apparently, not doing so comprehensively in the follow up response.
Here we have another instance o…
Federal judges have lifetime appointments. They cannot be fired. They can only be impeached and convicted - a political process.
Count me among the skeptics about Trump firing federal judges. Attempting, sure. But firing, no way.
Still, it…
If you are thinking about a longer term CD (say a year or more), you might consider streamlining an IRA transfer by using a 60 day rollover (once per year is the limit).
You could withdraw the IRA money into your taxable Schwab account and on the s…
Thats interesting history. You motivated me to look a little further. American Beacon's acquisition of Sound Point Floating Rate Fund was a true fund adoption. The acquiring fund was "newly created" for this purpose.
https://www.sec.gov/Archives…
This case might be summed up simply as the government claiming that "IEEPA [statute] provid[es]ing the President power to impose unlimited tariffs" and the court responding, no it doesn't, not here. The concurrence went further and said in effect, …
Bonds did great during the dot com bust.
Year S&P 500 10 year Treasuries Baa Corporates
2000 -9.03% 16.66% 9.39%
2001 -11.85% 5.57% 8.54%
2002 -21.97% 15.12% 12.14%
https://pages.stern.nyu.edu/~adamodar/New_Home_Page/datafile/histr…
In the SEC order:
Respondent [Vanguard] shall distribute from the Fair Fund to each client that enrolled in PAS during the Relevant Period an amount representing that client’s pro rata share of advisory fees paid, plus reasonable interest from any r…
Don't believe everything you read on the internet. A link to the full court ruling is below. "We are not deciding" is not to be found. People, please provide links when you give quotes. It's darn hard to find a quote that doesn't exist.
This …
Completion of the proposed Transaction, often called a “fund adoption,” is subject to, among other things, approval by the shareholders of the Fund.
This does not appear to be a typical fund adoption.
(WSJ article from a dozen years ago, subscripti…
Oh. goodie... lots more fun!
That about sums it up. Now waiting for a suit against the entire Federal Circuit Court as having made a "direct assault on the President’s ability to" conduct foreign affairs.
Analogous to the suit against the Mar…
Someone (apologies for forgetting who yugo) mentioned Sallie Mae Bank. It currently has a a top rate of 4.40% APY for a 15 month CD. It also has 4% CDs out to 3 and 5 years,
These are direct from Sallie herself.
https://www.salliemae.com/banki…
Top ten holdings are reported monthly on the website. The most recent ones reported are as of July 31. Though TRP massages its data in producing that list. So it might not be what you're expecting.
This "Top Ten" (for June 30th) excludes MMFs…
What a fund's "top positions" are depends on how one defines them. For your purpose (flight to safety), the number is actually higher than 14%.
The fund's second largest holding according to the fund's webpage is TRP Government Reserve Fund, at 8.…
The "cause" alleged is having "'falsified bank documents and property records' in an effort to gain more favorable loan terms and lower interest rates."
https://www.nytimes.com/2025/08/22/us/politics/trump-lisa-cook-fed-mortgage-fraud.html
Gosh tha…
Merrill is okay for a one-off purchase and I've considered it, but there's a TF on both buys and sells. Also, Merrill doesn't sell DODEX or DODLX, at least in DIY accounts.
Some alternatives:
Buy D&C at Merrill and do a partial account ACAT t…
I respectfully submit that which national guards (or regular army) occupy areas is irrelevant.
As to the economic impact on the only state occupied so far (California), by federalized units of the California national guard, here's what the governme…
With securitized debt borrowers typically have some control over payment schedules. See "prepayment risk" and "extension risk" in prospectuses. The bottom line is that this affects convexity, often leading to negative convexity (especially for lon…
@JD_co observed that ground beef prices are shooting up (our "high end" store just raised its price 10%) and suggested we might have to resort to tofu on the barbie. That would certainly help out the soybean farmers.
[Our dinner plan for tonight …
Fidelity sells 111 distinct Vanguard funds. 115 share classes in all, as it offers two share classes of four funds: {VCPAX / VCPIX}, {VZICX / VWICX}, {VMNIX ($5M min) / VMNFX}, {VPMAX / VPMCX}
Vanguard funds at Fidelity
In its fund screener (see …
Global Wellington (VGWLX/ VGWAX) or Wellesley (VGWIX / VGYAX)?
I agree that one will rarely go wildly wrong with Wellington management. I think it is difficult to go with one fund, or even three, if one expects to have asset allocations change as…
There seem to be a few different thoughts floating around here.
- Bid/ask spread. A concern for thinly traded securities. Limit orders between bid and ask (or lower depending on price trend) addresses this. IMHO not an issue for most ETFs, at le…
Thanks for the comments. Personally I don't generally take flyers. Even if I did, I'd be buying in the expectation of making money (i.e. price rising). So I'm disinclined to try yogi's suggestion of bidding a few pennies below current ask price.…
Cost of an import/export license in the US
You generally don’t need to pay any fees to get an import/export license in the US.
The procedure for obtaining a trade permit depends on the agency you are dealing with. For imports, most PGAs only requi…
I'm using M*'s chart page (a tab found on any fund/ETF page) such as:
https://www.morningstar.com/etfs/arcx/fltr/chart
Set the Frequency to Daily and the Data Type to "Growth w/Dividend". That gives you total return and scales each fund charted co…
One has to be comfortable with a large amount of hi-yield fare in RPHIX. I ended up with CBUDX instead. Information on the composition of the funds is near the bottom of the links. Two funds near their range of M* standard deviation would be JPST an…
It may also be considered as an export tax.
Yes. If it walks like a duck and squaks like a duck …
Then it's an unconstitutional duck.
Article I, Section 9, Clause 5:
No Tax or Duty shall be laid on Articles exported from any State.
https://consti…
Agreed. The retail vs. institution data is so dirty that IMHO it's not even worth trying.
The link above gives the share classes of funds targeted at institutions. These include institutional class shares and institutional only funds. I believ…
Current status: $40M and still being litigated.
https://www.ropesgray.com/en/insights/alerts/2025/07/district-court-strikes-down-40-million-settlement-agreement-in-target-date-funds-case-based
In Jan 2025, Vanguard reached a settlement agreement wi…
https://www.independentvanguardadviser.com/meet-your-peers/
To be clear, the Average Vanguard Investor Index (AVII) is an average how the each dollar invested in Investor, Admiral, and ETF share classes and in VIP (Vanguard Insurance Product) portf…
So how did the SEC manage to remove those - or some of them anyway?
It promulgated a new set of fund report/advertising rules, effective Jan 4, 2023, but with required compliance deferred until July 24, 2024.
Funds will not be permitted to includ…
A few observations about this FoF, and replicating it on your own:
Unlike Vanguard that uses expensive share classes of underlying funds, AQR uses its cheapest (R-6) share class for acquired funds. In replicating this FoF, one would only have acc…
@WABAC - thanks for the post, and for reassuring me that I'm not an idiot posting about BBH and Payden. (Or perhaps we both are :-)).
Some of the funds you mentioned as not losing money did draw down microscopic amounts (in the rounding error rang…
Generally speaking, how does a fund like RPHIX compare to a moneymarket fund like SUTXX?
I spend (waste) the next couple of paragraphs below going through this year's returns because RPHIX has been a bit of a disappointment in 2025.
YTD (in just …
In 2022 VTAPX lost nearly 3% while NEAR gained a little. To me the latter is a better cash substitute. Cash should not experience down years.
Calendar years are easy to get statistics on. But I think the sentiment here is that cash should not be d…
