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.
Here's an older (2012) article by Wade Pfau summarizing a research paper he did on the subject:
Efficient Frontiers: Inflation Assumptions, Fixed SPIAs, & Inflation-Adjusted SPIAs
While it dates from a few years ago, I figure that interest rate…
"Boeing’s CEO Dennis Muilenburg on Monday [June 3] said ... he expects that the planes will get a green light to fly again by the end of the year, but declined to provide a timeline."
https://www.cnbc.com/2019/06/03/boeing-plans-to-fly-a-boeing-737-…
Great site. Thanks @msf. Crazy with that 4,000+ plane order by Southwest however. :) The problem with this subject is that the more you learn the more you realize how little you know.
You can thank @Ted for the site. He presented the link to subst…
Perhaps we're reading too much into the statement that the sales charges were dropped. That could mean "removed", or merely "reduced", as in: the retailer dropped the price of its merchandise to give a huge boost to its sales. Or it could mean "…
There he goes again, more recycled hits:
“I think that if I ever got impeached, the market would crash,” Trump told Fox News in an interview. “Everybody would be very poor.”
http://fortune.com/2018/08/23/market-wont-crash-trump-impeached-experts-his…
Somewhere in the mid-90s, Fidelity started removing sales charges on its funds. For example, FGRIX dropped its sales charge on Oct. 20, 1995. Prior to that, it had experimented with waiving loads on some funds inside of IRAs. But it wasn't until…
ISTM this is merely a reflection of scheduling realities having little to do with SWA being extra cautious.
Boeing has not yet conducted a certification test flight that is required before it can submit the software fix and training upgrade for appr…
https://simpleflying.com/the-airbus-a320neo-vs-boeing-737-max-what-plane-is-best/
Great link! The posters on that site are great at taking apart the numbers, e.g. Vince writes:
In addition, the higher bypass ratio and lower core speed on the LEAP1…
To avoid random noise, or more likely selective time frames, the government requires funds advertising performance to use standardized periods ending on calendar quarters. 17 CFR 230.482(d)(3)(ii).
So I took a look at the link Ted provided, and cl…
"MFL's 9.9% discount is great, but my favorite muni-bond CEF is even more overlooked. ... I just released the full story of this off-the-radar muni-bond fund to members of my CEF Insider service. And now I'm ready to share it with you, too. All you…
A not so brief followup. I sent Merrill a set of questions given all the processing in my accounts. It took a week, but I did get a response which was more a reiteration of what happened than an explanation. Whatever. Here are some excerpts:
(…
Please, for those who know more than I do: why is this NEW fund advertised as an "income" fund? Is that not the raison d'etre of bond funds generally? There are income funds and there are total return funds. From one of many articles about Bill …
I generally agree with this article (about counting annuities as part of the "safe" portion of your portfolio allocation). It does gloss over a couple of points that merit further thought.
One is how to reduce to present value, i.e. how does one …
https://mutualfundobserver.com/discuss/discussion/11407/an-exciting-portfolio-backtesting-website
If your question is how to input data into any backtesting tool, I've worked through an example, using FCNTX. According to M*, its top five positions …
Very early in my career I was involved in the creation of a completely new system from the ground up. New design of hardware, software, support systems. Distributed architecture, tens of millions of lines of code. The most important requirement…
Let's look at how we make use of three years of cash.
I'll go along with @MikeM here. One isn't going to start drawing from cash the instant the stock market drops from a peak. That might be daily noise or the beginning of a bear market, you don…
If the headline, "dividends the IRS can't touch" means that for some taxpayers the IRS can't tax the dividends, we can say the same thing about lots of funds.
For example, VFIAX (Vangard 500) pays dividends the IRS can't touch "if one doesn't make …
Minor point, but the headline is incorrect. 10.5% of last year's income from VMO was subject to AMT - the IRS can touch it.
Click on the second to last item under Income breakdown:
Federal Alternative Minimum Tax - National Funds
https://www.inv…
FYI: What if I told you that I'd found this article posted by @JohnN two days ago with the exact same headline?
https://mutualfundobserver.com/discuss/discussion/50312/3-big-dividends-the-irs-can-t-touch
@MFO Members: I have always recommended an emergency funds of six months worth of living expenses.From the article:
"Most people are familiar with the idea of having an 'emergency fund' during one's working years—a pot of money (typically, equal t…
While that is an accurate quote from the beginning of the column, it's not what the column focuses on. What is important is not the odds of needing care, but what type and for how long. As the article goes on to say:
" you will find that most Am…
Call and Liquidity Risk
Municipal issuers often exercise the call option on their high-coupon paying outstanding debt in a low interest rate environment; which essentially means that they can retire their outstanding bonds before maturity by either…
of the 171 muni-bond CEFs tracked by my CEF Insider service [WARNING: product placement], 141 are beating the index for 2019. In other words, over 82% of the actively managed municipal-bond funds are crushing the "dumb” index fund.
You might wonder…
Where is the health care costs calculator on bee's page? As bee wrote, it's "a good resource for many of your financial scenarios". And it truly is. But not for all of them.
" the Advisor does not anticipate that the NextShares Fund will experience meaningful growth in the foreseeable future."
Hardly surprising. From WSJ, July 13, 2016:
"some analysts had suggested that it faced a major hurdle in getting any large b…
One can purchase the institutional class shares TIBIX with a $2500 min, albeit with a transaction fee, in Fidelity IRA accounts.
TIBIX is available with a $100K min (and transaction fee) in all types of accounts at Vanguard.
I'm not clear on your objectives here - dialing down risk by shifting from equities to bonds with a less aggressive hybrid fund, while simultaneously dialing up risk by shifting from MMF to an intermediate term bond fund (ftbfx thread). As I noted…
I'm not sure the timing is great (bonds have had a great short term run, as the 10 year has dropped in yield from around 2.75% in late January to 2.14% today). That said, it seems like a solid long term holding.
https://www.treasury.gov/resource-c…
The first page of the summary prospectus (not the update at the front) has the title and text: CROSSINGBRIDGE LOW DURATION
HIGH YIELD FUND
Trading Sym…
My apologies. Normally I take note of funds that are still open via direct purchase (e.g. VWELX), but I completely missed this one. I can't even make the excuse that, well, it had been completely closed but subsequently partially reopened. Th…
That's using a narrow definition of journalist. Forget "influential", Will made the Arthur L. Carter Journalism Institute's (NYU) nominee list for the 100 outstanding journalists in the United States of the past century (as of 2012).
He did not, h…
I'm going to guess that you're talking about buying the Zeo funds at Fidelity or Schwab, where the transaction fee to buy a fund is $49.95. Elsewhere it ranges from $0 (direct investment or Vanguard (Flagship level only), to midlevel, e.g. Interac…
Looking at even this fund's ten year record is misleading. It used to be a player in an even narrower niche - e-commerce. (Think about this fund launching in Sept. 1999 to get a sense of how far off Landis was.) Effective April 30, 2010, Firstha…
According to Trump, Mexico (and China and ...) will be the ones paying the tariffs. it seems he's finally figured out (in his mind) how to get Mexico to pay for the wall.
https://money.usnews.com/investing/buy-and-hold-strategy/slideshows/7-best-vanguard-funds-to-buy-and-hold
...
7 Best Vanguard Funds to Buy and Hold
...
Picking low-fee index funds.
... Here are seven of the best Vanguard index funds to buy and ho…
With the historical ratio of muni yields to (10 year) treasury yields of 80%, munis can be attractive to upper middle class earners, even with the currently reduced tax rate of 22% -24% for these families. Of course I'm comparing munis with other b…
Thanks for posting the real purpose of Memorial Day.
Here's a CNN page contrasting Veteran's Day and Memorial Day.
https://www.cnn.com/2019/05/25/us/veterans-day-memorial-day-different-trnd/index.html
As you noted, it began as a commemoration o…
"During the year ended December 31, 2018, the volume of the fund’s activity in options, based on underlying notional amounts, was generally between 8% and 15% of net assets."
In the back section for individual securities, the option written amount…
All the annual and semi-annual reports (SEC search):
N-CSR are the annual reports
N-CSRS are the semi-annual reports
https://www.sec.gov/cgi-bin/browse-edgar?action=getcompany&CIK=0000793347&type=N-CSR&dateb=&count=40&scd=filing…
"During the year ended December 31, 2018, the volume of the fund’s activity in options, based on underlying notional amounts, was generally between 8% and 15% of net assets."
Annual Report, Dec 31,2018.
IMHO it's not the use of derivatives (includi…
