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.
Stocks that are heavily shorted are most susceptible to Robinhood trading
ISTM the risk of a short squeeze (and manipulation thereof) increases rapidly as the magnitude of short positions increase. A stock that is shorted more than 100% (by one i…
The converter tool is a good suggestion. Though it works better for some funds than for others, and PRIDX is not a fund for which it shines.
What the tool is supposed to try to do is find ETFs (and ETNs) tracking the same index as a fund's pri…
Have I traveled in time back to the 1980s? Where's the DeLorean?
American Century introduced its A shares mostly in the late 90s, and at least one, ALPAX, after 1999, but I get your point.
What a surprise...three of the better Royce funds. Legg Ma…
Nice piece. Some things I might state a little differently, but a good presentation.
I would point out that all projections use models. Bengen used a model (past is prologue; assume that the future will repeat one of the past patterns). With s…
...But look instead at the "snapshot" view of the fund, and you'll see that the actual daily performance was +1.75%.
(The lovely geniuses in charge stopped offering hard-currency amounts in that space, long ago. Percentage is offered, only.) .....M…
After ten days of being stuck, the M* portfolio manager is finally presenting the correct prices and daily changes for PRIDX and VINIX.
Oh, joyous day!
It's not always easy to gauge a fund's style from its sectors, or its countries for that matter. For example, while companies in the financial sector tend to be value investments, that doesn't make something like Robinhood's anticipated IPO a valu…
New email from TRP:
Heavy postal volumes are delaying mail delivery. Call wait times are also longer due to higher than usual call volume.
From routine first class mail to package delivery individuals and business across the country have been experi…
The high turnover appears to be more for making profit than protecting against loss. For example:
A funds turnover ratio can vary and rise due to a plethora of causes. Pastor, Stambaugh, and Taylor (2016) suggest that turnover ratios are higher whe…
Impressive, in a negative sense. 10:30 EST on January 20th and Portfolio Manager is still showing the January 13th (sic) closing price of $93.27. (That was a 3¢ drop from Jan 12th.) Date/price from Yahoo finance.
But at least the portfolio mana…
I'll first reiterate that if there's a specific fund that you want, there's a good chance that Firstrade has it with no brokerage-charged commission and that it may have a lower min than one would find elsewhere.
That said, there are a lot of other…
CEF ROC can be destructive, constructive, or other.
Here's M*'s writeup, via Fidelity, of pass-through and of and constructive ROC.
https://www.fidelity.com/learning-center/investment-products/closed-end-funds/return-of-capital-part-two
I agree wi…
You're absolutely right, I typed the ticker too fast. Thanks for the correction, I do make mistakes. PONAX is load-waived at Fidelity. Where Fidelity falls short on the Pimco funds is that it offers the more expensive I3 institutional class in…
It's not uncommon to allow transfer in kind to new accounts. T Rowe Price is actually more restrictive than many. For example, they've told me that it is possible to move shares of a closed fund from an IRA to a new taxable account, but only if …
I like Firstrade for the access it provides to some institutional/advisor class shares, especially without charging a transaction fee. I used it for this purpose several years ago; I'll wager I'm the only one here to have walked into its office, b…
Is it really the midcaps that make VONE/VRNIX look better? Over its lifetime it has performed slightly worse than VV/VLCAX, which has a higher average market cap ($167B vs. $132B) and less market coverage (85% vs. 92%).
M* chart comparing VRNIX …
I wrote: Last year I received direct deposit. I gave the same bank account on my 2018 and 2019 returns, but this year I'm getting something in the mail. I don't know what yet (check or card). All I know is that it was supposedly mailed on the …
somewhat OT, and you have get past the wack lede, but an interesting thing to know maybe for investing outside the US
https://humbledollar.com/2021/01/lost-abroad/Methinks he doth protest too much. Foreign tax credits can be carried back one yea…
Yes, the fund dropped 60%, and yes it held mortgage bond insurance companies other than MBI. Yes, it was painful. But it wasn't that much worse than the typical LCV fund. Here's a chart for peak to trough of the fund 10/11/07 to 3/9/09.
It lost…
Aside from the behavioral aspect (the number of participants is driven by the size of the prize), this is essentially the "birthday problem". As the number of people in a room increase, the probability of two having the same birthday (or picking t…
There's no question that he was way wrong about mortgage insurance companies. However, despite this moderate sized bet, the fund performed respectably before and during the housing crisis.
Let's put some dates and numbers to paper. MBI would see…
It's slightly more complicated than OJ described, but that's the general idea.
The checks (or deposits or debit cards) are based on your 2019 AGI. If your 2020 AGI is higher, you won't get any more but you get to keep the extra amount. So if yo…
The Third Avenue complex has lost about 90% of assets under management over the past decade; when all else fails try an alternative to organic growth.
That would coincide with the beginning of the post-Marty Whitman era. He served as Third Ave…
Not a new fund, just an acquisition by Third Ave Value of REMS International Real Estate Value-Opportunity Fund (REIFX - founders shares, REIZX - Z class). Though it appears from the prospectus that TAV will be adding Investor class shares with a …
What looks to be the same piece is on www.inter-empresarial.com. My security software is blocking access. Rather than override, one can look at the Google cache.
Here's a Google search to get you there. Be advised that the same security softwa…
They'll probably be forming their own shop.
Perhaps ultimately, but "Jim Kieffer ... will remain part of the investment team for the time being, working as an analyst, advisor, and mentor."
(M* Analyst Note for ARTQX.)
This contrasts with the simu…
The "Access Denied" message is curious. The rest of the message is standard. It worked fine for me, once I asserted that I was an authorized user (by clicking "okay").
I have no idea why the IRS (or at least its website) is wary of you.
There we go, the government is doing it differently this time.
It announced that in lieu of checks some people would be getting debit cards. Same as last time. Who? Why? Who knows? The IRS writes:
For those who don’t receive a direct deposit b…
Congratulations to them. They're in good company, especially starting out.
Warren Buffett called an S&P 500 index fund “the best thing” for most people who want to invest.As part of his remarks offering some broader advice about investing at …
VLAIX has two bond managers and one equity manager as contrasted with two and two for JBALX. Otherwise there doesn't seem to be much difference in responsibilities.
JBALX Prospectus
Messrs. Keough and Wilensky focus on the fixed-income portion o…
He lost me at the first minute, where he says that twice the product (a television 2x the size of a CRT screen) at 16% less ($500 vs. $600) amounts to a 32% (2 x 16%) reduction in cost.
Of course the reduction in cost is more than half, merely beca…
Short answer: the credit is what it is; you get to keep it all.
You don't have to pay back your stimulus check, because it's a refundable tax credit
Your stimulus payment is technically a refundable tax credit, which reduces your 2020 tax bill o…
I just updated TurboTax and it has added lines to deal with the second stimulus credit. So the calculation is for a credit against our 2020 taxes as noted above.
It's time to invoke the 25th amendment. In a somewhat more forgotten corner of the Constitution is the Disqualification Clause (Section 3) of the 14th Amendment.
Section Three of the Fourteenth Amendment disqualifies an individual from serving as a …
"Historically" VWINX has held close to 40% equities (did I say that :-)). It's a traditional 40/60 fund. Its extra equity all but guarantees a better longer term performance than a fund that's closer to 30/70.
(Though according to M*, AOK is a…
near the 30% low end of the 30-50% category
"near" is good. It allows for fuzziness and the possibility of bouncing around the figure in a way that "on" 30% and "holding" 30% don't.
holds 30% equity
sitting on the lowest edge of 30-50% catego…
Not quite that good. It would be adding a fee on the fund of fund where none currently exists. So virtually no change in total expenses. Here's my comment from the thread where Shadow originally posted the proposed change:
https://mutualfundo…
The fact that AOK has dipped as low as 27% does not mean that historically its equity allocation has been under 30%. You seem to be conflating single moments in time with "historical" positions.
What does "historical" mean anyway? "the last 5 …
There's hysteresis built into the classification system. That is, if a fund has been holding 25% equity and moves to 35% equity, M* does not immediately change its category. It waits (three years or more) to see how permanent and how significant …
Nah, I just looked for $600 in the text (it's the 8th one counting from the top).
The text itself reads: "there shall be allowed as a credit against the tax imposed by subtitle A [income tax] for the first taxable year beginn…
