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.
Well, yes but. The max you can put into that CD is the min you can put into VMMXX. $3,000. It's a 12 month Special EasyStart℠ CD.
Limit one Special EasyStart Certificate per member. This offer, including the stated APY, is effective Dec. 10, …
My concern is over the stability of a bank's rates, not the stability of the bank itself.
For example, when Capital One 360 (formerly ING Direct) started its $200 for $10K promotion a couple of months ago, its savings account was yielding 1.90% A…
That article may be older than you think. Here's an SEC Final Rule, adopted in 2004 that reads in part:
We are adopting, as proposed, a requirement that a mutual fund, other than a money market fund, include MDFP in its annual reports to sharehold…
They say a picture is worth a thousand words. A few pictures in this article say more than the text. Though the text is worth a read as well:
Methane levels have soared since 2007 for reasons that still aren’t fully understood. But fracking nat…
Sadly, such incidents are business as usual. Not just in the financial industry.
Long Island's Newsday recently published their three year investigation of unequal treatment by real estate agents on Long Island. Newsday felt this was important …
" And we know what happened to the ACA"
I wonder. Every time I look at provisions of the ACA, I go, oh yeah, I'd forgotten about that. For example, the tax on insurers. No one knows what's going on with that:
The health insurance tax was in e…
It doesn't exactly fit your parameters, but the ACA comes close. Medicare surtaxes of 0.9% on wages above $200K (single)/$250K (MFJ) and 3.8% on net investment income above those levels. Simultaneously, the ACA provided for tax credits (aka Oba…
Treasuries are, at least on paper, less risky than CDs. The former are directly backed by the full faith and credit of the US Treasury which issues the bonds. CDs are issued by banks that can fail, and are usually insured (within limits) by the …
To me, a premium bond is a bond selling above face value. Often a good investment as some investors are loathe to pay a premium for what would yield at least as much as a par bond.
However, it seems that in the UK premium bonds are glorified lott…
You are correct that funds subtract expenses before paying you a div. But they generally don't pay US or state income taxes on their earnings. Instead, they pass that income through to you, so you alone pay the taxes.
As Fidelity explains: "fun…
It only makes sense to hold a muni in an IRA is when you expect its total yield (cap gain plus interest) to exceed the total return of a taxable bond. That's because coming out of the IRA, both are taxed the same way. So which ever one wins on g…
The idea that the president could make munis taxable is dubious at best. The executive branch (including the IRS) generally, and the president specifically, can change regulations and policies only to the extent that the changes remain consistent …
Hard to say, for multiple reasons.
The prospectus says that: "If at any time your account balance falls below the applicable minimum initial investment amount [$2500, or $1,000 for IRA] ... in this Prospectus due to redemptions, a letter may be sen…
Alphacentric funds: http://alphacentricfunds.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/11/AlphaCentric-Distributions-2017-11-21-EST.pdf
Generally all share classes of a fund have the same cap gains distributions, because all shares represent the same fractional …
I've transferred fund positions with fractional shares as well, but I believe the fractions transfer separately, outside of the ACAT system. Not sure about that, though.
Lewis makes an excellent point about percentage change in rates (e.g. a change from 0.25% to 0.50% is a doubling). Since you'll get the face value of a bond back at maturity, the market price of a bond won't be cut by anything near a half. Still…
Try this link instead:
https://www.icmarc.org/x3333.html?RFID=W1582&usg=AOvVaw2I9Vd-WRuW_zIiwp1pxMzJ
A solid piece, pretty much textbook (longer duration = greater loss with rising rates, junk = less sensitive to rates).
A few curiosities:I…
I believe (on little but circumstantial evidence) that these fees are for transfers of securities, regardless of medium. That is, the fees would be charged regardless of whether the ACAT service were used to send the securities to another institut…
@msf; Do you regularly shop for the cash bonuses ? I guess that would make (CENTS}
instead of doing Sudoku puzzles, as I'm guilty. I do Sudoku daily and shop bonuses rarely :-)
I put more effort into getting investment money into the best financ…
To get GOFXX at Schwab will take $5M (per an attempted order entry). You can get that min down to $100K if buying at Merrill Edge.
As one can see from its rate sheet, most of the institutional class shares/funds are running around the same rat…
As David wrote, Portfolio Visualizer also does correlation. Here's a matrix for TGUSX vs. a couple of multi-cap growth index funds, CGJAX and FNCMX:
https://www.portfoliovisualizer.com/asset-correlations?s=y&symbols=TGUSX,CGJAX,FNCMX&…
A concern when shopping for savings account rates is how long the rate will last. Not much different from investing in funds - the ones currently at the tippy top are often the most volatile.
I'm not familiar with CIBC, and the 1.85% rate is v…
Here's the press release:
https://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/vanguard-to-introduce-total-international-bond-ii-index-fund-as-new-component-for-funds-of-funds-300970047.html
Identical to VTABX, but designed for Vanguard's funds of funds. Als…
Since the early 1990s, index-based investing, also known as passive investing, has been quite popular amongst investors looking to mirror an index and copy the market returns for an individual portfolio.
Seems a bit tautological (except for the 199…
T. Rowe Price has two series of target date funds: the original series now called Retirement Funds and its newer more conservative series that it calls Target Funds.
Price describes the latter as "offer[ing] lower volatility -- and lower potential …
As noted before, often you don't need to rewrite the URL. Just put your ticker into the search box and it will (usually) take you to the brokerage page for your desired fund. For example, a search works for VFIAX or GLFOX but not for the institu…
The third or fourth Capital One rep I spoke with said that some people are reporting problems with Firefox. So if you're unable to open an account, try a different browser.
Another problem: Capital One kept our "profiles" on file from when we had…
"Vanguard’s flagship funds charge about 10 bps for wrapping the entire stock market, SPY (an ETF, which structurally has lower costs) does it for 4 bps"
Since Vanguard funds have an ETF share class, they share the structural cost advantage of ETFs…
I believe @hank is largely correct in both the purpose of the guarantee and the increasing lack of knowledge in the industry. On the latter matter one would hope, in vain it appears, that the reason such knowledge is diminishing is because newer, …
Strip away much the text and what the writer is referencing becomes clearer:
Unlike Congress, the IRS has been working on the issue and took an important first step toward reducing RMDs for most retirees. ... Back in January, I observed that if the…
Link or no link, IMHO this is obvious. Target date funds are designed to manage an entire portfolio for a hands off approach. If an investor isn't using the TDF for virtually one's whole portfolio, then the investor isn't buying into that idea, …
Nice piece, non-technical. Thanks.
Several of the limitations presented are discussed in the NYU paper. One that isn't is what Nocera presents as gaming:That sounds good in principle, but managers began to manipulate the VaR by loading up on wha…
Just a guess, and definitely not legal advice ...
I got the same notice, and have a few takeaways from it:
1. As far as T. Rowe Price is concerned, an escheatment from an IRA constitutes a distribution. No surprise there: "When an IRA escheats…
