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.
There was a thread not that long ago linking a paper that claimed M* understated credit risks of bond fund holdings. M* and the authors had some back and forth.
That MFO thread wound up in the bullpen. Here's a M* discussion community thread…
While I commend the intent of the post, the service cited is deceptive.
The IRS requires free filing services to be offered to taxpayers with AGI below $69K in 2019. I'll guess that this limit was $66K in 2018, because that's what MyFreeTaxes.c…
"As I said earlier, D&C is a good shop but I was always able to find better risk/reward funds than D&C."
That is figuratively and literally your bottom line. Though what you're looking at is volatility, not risk. SD is a measure of volat…
First, unless all your assets are tax-sheltered, you do have assets in taxable accounts. The question is not whether you invest taxable assets, but where. Unless of course you're keeping them all in cash, which some people would still regard as a…
There's a difference between finding funds and comparing funds. I still like the M* legacy pages for making comparisons. I never found M*'s free fund screener tool very helpful, though its Premium (subscription required) screener is another matt…
Why would one ever mess around with VUSXX, assuming they hold an account in vanguard? The vanguard sweep account, Vanguard Federal Money Market Fund (VMFXX), yields a tick more, is just as "safe" and has no restrictions. Neither fund is subject to …
I've used two for some time now, MGGPX a world fund and GLFOX a sector fund mentioned by WABAC which M* categorizes as a US Infrastructure fund but it's mostly not. I would love to hear the logic behind that placement.It's mostly foreign, and classi…
DODFX vs HFQTX depends on whether you're investing in a tax-sheltered account (where you're losing the benefit of the foreign tax credit) or in a taxable account.
In a taxable account, one pays a cost for the Janus fund's frenetic trading (142% tur…
Reliable? Yes. Easy? No.
Take the URL above and swap in the ticker for your fund. Most of the tabs for other pages (e.g. purchase, expense, portfolio, analyst) will bring you to the respective legacy pages. The filing tab no longer works (yo…
Some of the information is provided on their new pages, some isn't, but can still be found on their legacy pages.
For example, if you click on the price "tab" on a new page, at the lower right you'll find the three year tax cost ratio for a fund. …
"feeble thick-witted alarmist financial journalism of no particular point with no new news to it, kinda surprising for Motley"
I respectfully disagree (regarding the "surprising" part). Motley Fool says that its content and products are not jour…
@VintageFreak - Treasuries and Treasury MMFs generally pay less than corporate bonds and prime MMFs. VUSXX is no exception.
I was addressing the comment that Vanguard Prime MMF was safer than anything other than a bank account (which also implies…
There is a reason majority of my cash is in VMMXX...the only thing safer would be a bank money market fund. I do have a smattering of RPHYX and RSIVX.While I agree that a bank money market account, so long as it were within FDIC insurance limits, wo…
Both M* and Schwab uses the following information in describing assets, based on information provided by the fund company.
M* definition of "cash equivalent":
Cash Equivalent
Assets that can be quickly converted to cash. These include receivables…
RPHYX also reduces risk by holding a much higher percentage in cash (about 46%),
I try to go the horse's mouth. The latest annual report, Sept. 30, 2019, Statement of Assets and Liabilities (according to GAAP, see note 2 for the statement) gives…
I've read elsewhere that $50K is a bare minimum for muni diversification, which would mean 10 bonds, not 20. Still not the same thing as picking up a couple of T-bills.
Munis, like Treasuries, have become more attractive for middle income couples…
Not to get too political, but this is a well known effect on election ballots. People tend to vote more for the candidates/parties listed first.
Of course, this phenomenon also goes toward explaining why Vanguard is soaring in popularity :-)
Pure electronic transfer can work at the speed of light (almost). Recently, I initiated a partial (cash) transfer of IRA money from Merrill to Fidelity.
I submitted the paperwork to Fidelity online on Jan 1, not a trading day. Within a couple…
My impression is that PIMCO generally uses derivatives to boost income as opposed to using them to mitigate risk. Likewise, it can be more aggressive with junk bonds.
Foreign exposure? PIMIX is weighted negative 30% in non-USD developed markets. …
A couple more factoids:
- M* rates it bronze; though I have my doubts about how much intelligence there is in M*'s artificial "intelligence" ratings (done by machine, not analyst)
- Its 165% turnover rate is not a mere artifact of being a bond f…
It might have been faster, though the original quotation I gave suggests that this is only a problem when transferring to a mutual fund, here T. Rowe Price. An ACAT transfer should be possible if the transfer is initiated by the brokerage side. D…
I could (and probably should) have given the "clean" link explicitly. The "shared" link, however, is about 20 lines long, so that's one you never want to show the text for.
http://quotes.morningstar.com/chart/fund/chart?t=MGGPX®ion=usa&…
Here's a M* chart showing a one year comparison between SPY, QQQ, and MGGPX.
You just have to use a legacy chart page. You can start with the chart above, or you can start with a "clean" chart for any fund. For example, here's the chart for MGGP…
Point of reference: another IRA transfer between Vanguard and the same custodian done brokerage-to-brokage (VBS platform) via ACAT took about a week. That transfer even involved securities. The current transfer is strictly cash, requiring no liq…
What Schwab says when placing a test order:
1. This BUY order will be executed 01/13/2020.
2. This buy order does not have a transaction fee.
3. This buy order will be subject to a short term redemption fee if redeemed within 90 days.
4. This fund …
NYTimes news analysis: ‘I Honestly Don’t Trust Many People at Boeing’: A Broken Culture Exposed
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/01/10/business/boeing-737-employees-messages.html
In an exchange with Mr. Forkner [the Max's chief technical pilot] in 2014,…
@dtconroe - please read my post. An investor will be charged more than 1.45%.
From the Semi-annual report, dated Sept 30, 2019: "The Fund's total annual operating expense ratio in effect as of period end were .... 1.45% for Class A shares."
N…
PONAX pays 0.55% in expenses to use leverage. (This figure is the difference between the prospectus stated ER of 1.45% and Morningstar's "adjusted" ER of 0.90% that backs out some leveraging expenses.)
A reason to use leverage is to borrow money …
You can edit a post you make by clicking on the icon in the upper right corner of the post. That brings up a bubble where you can click "edit".
The history of the fund's day-to-day management is one of continuity. Kevin Booth was an original ma…
I agree that it's a bit superficial. And more (or is that less?).
It talks about how bonds fall into three broad categories: government, corporate, and securitized debt. It goes on to say that different funds tilt toward one or another sector.…
I had to laugh at one of the visuals - Park Avenue (0:47) - what else would one expect?
I have a couple of relatives with similar experiences. One had back surgery and received additional bills for hundreds of thousands of dollars. Fortunately …
Two points about the Glendale Schools Credit Union: It is insured by ASI, a private company, not by NCUA. "Membership is available to: employees, students and their parents of public, private and parochial schools within the greater Glendale Uni…
DODFX is a volatile fund that can have multi-year streaks of good or bad performance. I was going to say that despite that, it's not a white knuckle fund - with performances in, say, the top 2% or bottom 2% - until I checked. It came in at the 98…
The Section 199A income shows up in box 5 of your 1099-DIV. Add these all up, take 20%, and enter it in 1040 line 9 as the qualified business deduction (QBI).
There are worksheets for doing this calculation, but if all your QBI is from REITs, tha…
That would enter into a discussion of whether index funds are really transparent (many track proprietary indexes), whether this matters, etc. See, e.g. M*, The Most Over- and Undersold Benefits of ETFs, and Swedroe, The Problems with Index Funds.
…
DSENX seems like a pretty straightforward fund. It has 200% exposure to "the market", or if you prefer, 100% exposure to the US equity market and 100% exposure to the bond market.
IMHO the major risk is that it is effectively 100% leveraged. Ho…
Decades ago, Congress started out with virtually no laws on retirement (including no SS). It gradually put laws into place with multiple objectives: helping people save for and live in retirement, doing that somewhat equally across the population, …
My instinctive reaction was that this is not much different from alpha. Since capture ratios (upside capture ratio and downside capture ratio) are just betas over restricted regions (upside and downside), one would expect alpha to be around zero i…
I believe all Fidelity's index funds, new and old, are managed by Geode. That company was created by Fidelity and later spun off - a fact not mentioned on its history page.
WSJ, Aug 5, 2003: "Fidelity Investments said it spun off an in-house inve…
I'm usually a bit hesitant to consider two funds clones unless they have the same managers and their portfolios have very similar attributes and holdings. Puritan not only has just a single manager while Balanced has ten, Puritan's manager isn't e…
