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.
Use banks or CU for banking services. Use brokerages for brokerage banking services.
Why not use a brokerage for banking services?
In 1977, Merrill Lynch took a gamble with a concept known as a CMA (cash management account). This blending of banki…
A couple of brief notes regarding credit unions:
- There is a shared network of brick and mortar CUs so that you can conduct some transactions in many locations (if your CU participates) even though individual CUs tend to have small footprints.
ht…
You may have seen the news that the 39th President Jimmy Carter passed away after about 2 years under home hospice care.
U.S. stock exchanges will close on Thursday, January 9 in observation of a national day of mourning in honor of former U.S. Pres…
FWIW, the culprit is TUHYX. Since most of these funds are from T. Rowe Price, and TRP seems to have provided data for all of them on the same date (M* reports portfolios as of Oct 31), I'm at a loss to explain why M* can't fully analyze this one f…
Which percentage table are you looking at? If it's the world exposure table on the X-ray overview page, that's showing percentage of total stock. I ask in part because that would explain the apparent discrepancy, and in part because I'm having tr…
I made one switch on Friday: exited BHB in favor of BLX..... BHB was 5.9% of my total. Now, X-Ray tells me, suddenly, that I'm holding 16.49% of total portfolio in Latin America.
To clarify your numbers: what was your Latin American holding percent…
M* has what looks like an absolute risk scale (1-100) for funds. Unlike its category risk scale (low, below average, ..., high), funds are not measured against their peers.
The methodology talks about target allocation benchmarks, but from what …
Historical precedent imo does not hold much value.
Others beg to differ. They look at how a fund performed in specific economic environments (such as the 2008 GFC you mention) and/or over full economic cycles to get a sense of how the fund might b…
I would trust AAA rated corporates over AAA rated securitized stuff.
There are lots of assumptions built into AAA rated tranche of structured credits that may have only A or BBB rated underlying portfolios. So, I won't take AAA CLO at face value, …
First line in Examiner story: "Taxpayers spend at least $182 billion a year on illegal immigration, the cost of providing services to an estimated $15.5 million immigrants."
Interesting Freudian slip. The last time dollar values were placed on hu…
Regarding annuities, I had a bad experience in the 1980s, when my company retirement program was negatively impacted by bankruptcy of a major annuity provider--the Baldwin Company.
Ah, the piano company. They were making loans to buyers (good pia…
Regarding CLOs, what is conveniently not mentioned is like most everything else in Bondland they melted down too during the Covid meltdown. Investment grade CLOs from AAA to BBB had drawdowns from 10% to 30% while below investment grade drawdowns …
If the mass deportation were done well (something I consider an oxymoron), with the housing thoughtfully planned, decentralized, supported with improved infrastructure, and coordinated with local governments, it could serve as a source of desperatel…
All true, which is why one is usually better off sticking with vanilla annuities. However, page count is a somewhat misleading metric.
Fixed annuity contracts are self-contained. Unlike mutual fund documentation, they are not broken into multip…
Even intermediate duration bond funds (like SNIDX) normally keep average portfolio duration at 10 years or less.
It's easy to mix up duration and maturity. A 10 year bond with 5% coupon has a duration under seven years.
SNIDX "seeks to mainta…
I haven't thoroughly thought through the ramifications, but a battle over SALT deductions may be looming.
NBC News: Republicans clash over 'SALT' deductions as they seek to extend Trump's tax law
If a cap is maintained, even if raised say to $20K, …
I accidentally snorted out whisky at reading half of these ... I was only trying to find the quote that no one has yet devised, concocted, imagined, or plausibly advocated a use case
https://www.cryptoaltruism.org/blog/15-quotes-about-the-potentia…
I made a lengthy post this morning regarding callable CDs. If anyone is interested in responding to that, I would appreciate it.
Hey, it takes time to compose :-) Done.
At Schwab, major banks are offering long term callable CDs (18 month, 2 year, …
An insurer can "fail" without ever being insolvent.
Never underestimate the ignorance of the investing public.
In 1991, Executive Life Insurance Company of New York (ELNY), the stressed but solvent subsidiary of its insolvent parent, Executive L…
If the only guarantee is from their credit rating, why not look at their or other corporate bonds as well or do annuity products come with some other credit enhancement features that make them better?
I wrote:
In the case of an insurer (the issuer…
Fixed rate deferred annuities, if used as savings vehicles (and not annuitized) are very much like CDs. Like CDs, and unlike funds, stocks, etc., their value cannot go down.
https://www.blueprintincome.com/fixed-annuities-cd-comparison
There is th…
Another observation. Do Fidelity, Schwab, and Vanguard have their own Dow Jones funds? No, they don't. Do they have the SP500? YES.
Years ago, back when Vanguard was providing free financial plans, my mother had them work up a plan. Several years…
I've invested in so many cash, short term, and fixed rate vehicles that I've lost count. The ones that come to mind are: prime MMFs, government MMFs, Treasury only MMFs, national tax free MMFs, single state MMFs, ultra short bond funds, short term …
I appreciate your interest in low stress places to put cash for 2-3 years. Different people have different objectives and that leads to different choices - as you said, that is okay.
2-3 year brokered CDs (callable) paying no more than 4.6%. …
PAAA. Per it's last distributions, it's close to 4.7% on an annual basis
That's about right when one takes the last monthly distribution yield and compounds 12 times (12 months/year). The figure is as of the end of Nov (record date 11/29, ex date …
alarm set for about 10 years
Now just 9½ years.
The public perception may have changed too about their fairness or unfairness.
It seems to me that it did, and in a rather curious way. Despite current antipathy toward "freeloading" government wor…
@Sven, for FRN funds (USFR, TFLO), approx yield = 4.296% + spread - ER.
I am sticking with USFR too.
One can get better yields with Treasury only MMFs, but only through a limited number of brokerages (those offering access to institutional class sha…
Short term yields seem to have anticipated the Fed move. The 1 month yield dropped significantly between Dec 2 (4.75%) and Dec 12 (4.43%), but has been relatively flat since (now 4.43%).
OTOH, the 2 and 10 year rates started their most recent rise…
Nice posts by @Anna. As her citations show, (a) without some adjustment, workers with some income from non-covered jobs will receive an unfair windfall, and (b) the formula used to make this adjustment (the best that could be done at the time it wa…
And he avoids jail time.
As president to be,
He doth go free.
Remember OJ (If it doesn't fit, you must acquit.) He still lost money ($33.5M) in civil court.
Le Grande Orange (with apologies to Rusty Staub) is not absolutely immune to civil p…
#1b (upstream giving) looks like a pretty big loophole for mass affluent/high net worth investors (with significant assets but under roughly half the estate tax exemption limit). This one never occurred to me.
As a loophole, it works with appreci…
M* Grandeur Peak family page:
https://www.morningstar.com/asset-management-companies/grandeur-peak-BN00000E0Z
Average 3 year fund rating: 1.9*
Lost 12% of AUM in past year
Book gains and fund DAF with those gains
I'm confused about what you mean by "book gains". Also, it doesn't look like net effect on taxes comes out to zero.
I'll make this concrete. $40K cost for stock, $64K present value, 15%/22% tax bracket …
msf, here is the key statement from my Original Thread Post regarding CDs that are maturing:
"I am wrestling with renewing at the 4.3% rate, with almost no stress, or jumping back into the more active investing options. Anyone else in a similar si…
I'm not sure who you are suggesting are idiots. If it's the Justices, I might agree:
“It’s less and less clear why we took this case and why you [Nvidia] should win it,” Justice Elena Kagan said at another point during arguments.
This was not a …
When it comes to diversions like this, we are not amused.
There are alternatives other than "he or she" that one can use. Though a substitution may be inexact if one replaces a definite pronoun with an indefinite pronoun.
With AI supposedly bec…
If your total withholding and estimates are at least 100% (or 110%) of last year's taxes, including January's estimates, then you're set. Otherwise you need to pay in at least 90% of what you'll owe this year in order to avoid penalties.
(The hig…
Assume that the market will go up during the year (that happens more years than not). Then if one doesn't need the cash flow from RMDs, one wants to take RMDs late when it's a smaller percentage of an IRA. Conversely, one wants to make Roth convers…
... I also moved a large percentage of my "taxable" Schwab account, in 2023, to CDs in a local Bank account--those Bank Account CDs can be sold before maturity, with a less "painful" early redemption fee. Also, with all of my Schwab brokerage acco…
