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.
As a member of the class of '42, I dare say quite a few of us who bemoan the loss of M* as we knew it represent a diminishing market. Many of us on MFO are retirees or close to it; I doubt my kids and grandchildren will pay much attention to mutual …
Thanks, @msf! With the sad demise of Tom and Ray, the Tappet Brothers, it may be time to reprise one of their signatures. They always said the Ray Suarez of PBS "knows everything." I'm not sure about Mr. Suarez, but I am confident in anointing @msf …
I shouldn't be surprised at what the current administration's policies or impulsive actions are in any domain. However, I can't help commenting on this article and its reference to tariffs. The latter are so discredited as a means to promote growth …
Switched 2/3 of my stake in BCSVX to ARTJX. Still seeing FBT pay off, after I rolled a couple of dice on a biotech revival. BIIB’s surprise news on its Altzheimer’s drug the other day has helped the entire sector. Luck plays a role in investing; the…
Didn’t know about TAIFX, @Tarwheel. Has it always been a fund of funds? I was surprised to learn that it is NTF at Schwab. My balanced fund is Bruce, and it’s not tax-advantaged at all.
@hank: Thanks for this topic and the link to Max Funds. I spent a few minutes on their site trying to figure out what they have to offer. I was a bit confused by their rating system. By entering a fund family name (although not a big one like TRP) w…
@Tarwheel: WAB is a company I have owned, but just follow now. The narrative about the company suggests it ought to succeed. OTOH, it could well be a value trap.
@hank reminded me that in our case as well, it has been the state of MI that sends the letter you don't want to receive. I agree that it's usually chump change, also. For some time I had computed my buys and sells myself, often because I had sold sp…
Just yesterday I heard an interview on Here and Now (WBUR) of Aaron Glantz, author of “Homewreckers.” I found Glantz’s findings on the ill-gotten wealth of Mnuchin, Ross, Barrack, and Schwartzman and how they benefitted from the financial crisis ent…
@gmarceau: You are right to miss the Obama years. They were eight years of a scandal-free presidency. Obama's people got thoroughly vetted and didn't end up having to resign or be fired for conflicts of interest, fraud, and incompetence. You may be …
Thanks, @Old_Joe. My comment was a little opaque for a person who well remembers having to wait for an attendant to fill the tank. @davidmoran's reminiscence reminds me that my VW barely took $2 worth. Maybe I'm the dinosaur. FWIIW, my father was a …
@hank and I, and maybe other MI residents receiving retirement benefits from our state, will now have about $600M of the pension fund administered in house. I have no idea if Fisher's company did well for us or not (see Lewis' comment above about pe…
You could be living in the country that leads them all in bureaucratic quagmires. Our daughter is working in France now and is entitled to health insurance as a bene. However, to have health coverage, you must have a bank account. When she went to t…
I am happy reading the NYT online, but my wife wants the physical paper, so it is delivered daily. The academic version of the WSJ, paper and digital, is so cheap I keep re-upping, sometimes against my better judgement. (Kind of like looking in on F…
@Derf: After getting out of GP last year, I too sent in a check for the Contrarian Fund. I think it hasn't hit $4M in assets yet. Biotech seems to be widely despised, so I made a bet on FBT in hopes of a comeback. These could well be falling knives
Really ugly crash. The Yankee Air Force Museum near me in Willow Run, MI has a restored B-17 that takes up customers on weekends. It flys near my house and it’s four engines are heard long before it lumbers into view.
PTIAX, ORNAX, and two individual stocks (a nut processor and a medical software provider). These latter are SC, small float, issues. The big machers on this board might pile in and short my babies if I give their trading symbols. LOL!
@Derf: when I trade in and out of CAPE, I think that might be what Old_Skeet does. We're both using either an S&P 500 fund or, in my case, one that tracks the overall US market but has done so with some out performance. Like @Mike, my stock play…
I agree, @MikeM, with your method for finding a buy point. I traded in and out of CVS, buying first when M* rated it 5 stars and selling after a decent profit. These value plays (it is a game with money I can afford to lose) test my nerves and I, to…
That's a wonderful summary of the problem, @hank and @Old_Joe. Boeing, it seems to me, has a huge challenge: how to realign its culture with that of the customers and pilots of its planes. As to the NTSB/FAA failures to coordinate their efforts, I h…
I suspect the "culture that emphasizes collaboration, excellence and intellectual curiosity" is the same culture as found at Grandeur Peak/Rondure. One of this culture's contributions was a highly successful winter Olympics in 2002, an event charact…
@Crash. Ditto on deplorable MI roads. We often remark on how much better the surfaces are when we travel to other states. The other day we returned to DTW and took the shuttle to our parking lot. The short ride was so rough that I said, "Well, we kn…
It's an important question, @davidmoran. Pinto has had to take over allocation decisions for the fund because his colleague, Gibson, who handled the fixed income, departed. Pinto, according to M*, had been responsible for the good equity performance…
One takeaway for me has been to review what flights we have taken in the recent past on airlines that are not flagship quality and which may have employed pilots trained who-knows-where. Several domestic flights in China in the 1990's when we were t…
I just wasted a lot of time thanks to M*'s dropping of the "Purchase" tab for researching MFs. Going to both Schwab and TDA I found that AFOIX is available only to institutional investors at the former and not at all at the latter. My surfing to Alg…
Thanks @hank. I might have mentioned that Langewiesche brings to bear his own experience as a pilot as well as his extraordinary contacts in the field of air crash investigation. I didn't check his Sullenberger article for the exact quote, but the l…
Glad you agree, @Gary. It did seem to me shortly after the crashes that the facile and perhaps discriminatory story that “foreign” pilots were to blame might have been untrue. After reading this article, my ire at the FAA and Boeing has diminished s…
I was an enthusiastic early adopter of GP, including GPMCX. I also had positions in GPGOX and GPIOX. I sold of all these funds and I remember commenting here about my dissatisfaction with GP management's explanation for why most of their funds had l…
