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Ok, so you are saying that I could use a larger portion of my paycheck to fund my 401K and use my inheritance money to pay my bills normally funded by my paycheck. Interesting. I never thought of this concept. Can you think of any downside to usin…
I can tell you that 75% of the portfolio is in taxable accounts because it is inherited money. The remaining 25% is in tax-deferred accounts (401K, Roth IRA, Rollover IRA). I'm maxing out my Roth IRA each year, but there's not much else I can do wi…
Reply to @MOZART325:
Schwab recently added some commission-free sector funds. I bought 500 shares of RYH a few weeks ago (around $50K) and the bid-asked spread was consistently around 10 cents or about 0.1%.
So you bought a commission-free ETF and …
Or instead of PMARX, you could take a look at iShares All Country Min Vol ETF (ACWV). Not quite the fixed holdings as PMARX but no load or high ER either and comparable (if not better) performance.
Your diversification may be good but I'd look into trimming some of those funds that charge a load if you can find a decent equivalent.
For example, the Blackrock High Yield Fund (BHYAX)...4% load and a 0.92 ER. You might be better off in a similar…
I'd stick with VDE for the long-term so you have the diversification. Besides, XOM makes up ~21% of the ETF so you're getting a decent amount of exposure right there.
I've helped many people out with their 401k's and believe me the allocation I walk into most of the times is downright frightening.
I'm not saying that target date funds are the best, but when you see someone with an allocation of 30% in a bond fu…
Reply to @hank: Writing covered calls in a portfolio isn't necessarily a bad thing since if your shares do get called away that meant they went up in value and you received a premium in selling them. All you missed out on was further upside. If not,…
Reply to @VintageFreak: The real tragedy is CRNEX's 2.10% ER!!!
And if the only way they're "hedging" is by selling OTM calls on the SPX that isn't going to help very much in a big market downturn.
Reply to @TSP_Transfer
The one thing I always look at with a fixed income CEF is how much of the distribution is return of capital.
In the case of FAM, ~13.6% of their last 3 monthly distributions consisted of return of capital and was higher befo…
Reply to @ron: As TSP pointed out using UUP is a good proxy for the dollar index since it tracks its performance against a basket of different currencies.
With that, the YTD daily correlation of GLD and UUP is -0.6178 and the 5 year monthly r^2 is…
If she doesn't have to contribute to the "defined contribution annuity" at work I wouldn't have her do it.
Since you're not currently maxing out an IRA, I think she'd be better off putting whatever money she would have put in the annuity program i…
It seems as if no one is ever pleased with target date funds. Either they're "too risky" in their portfolio allocation (i.e. T Rowe Price) or too conservative and don't perform as well as the others (i.e. Fidelity as is mentioned in the article).
…
Mr. Kim conceded that his team’s projected return for TIPS (5.66 percent) and bonds (5.91 percent) “may be optimistic, given current market conditions.
If that's what Mr. Kim is using as an annual return on TIPS and bonds in his model, I think he's …
Reply to @Old_Joe: I stand corrected regarding the paying of a load when exchanging from one fund to another. However I still maintain the opinion that the loads and/or higher-than-normal fees of the "C" class shares are one of the main reasons for …
Reply to @Soupkitchen: You couldn't just transfer shares from one fund to another. You'd have to sell the bond fund and then buy into the equity therefore paying the 5.75%.
Reply to @msf: I didn't mean to reference any particular fund, I was merely looking for what their load was on their bond funds. And again, to me, that's why they've performed so poorly. With a load of 3.75% and yields being in the mid-2's for the m…
To me it all comes down to expenses. Since Jan 2008 American Funds has seen outflows of $200B whereas Vanguard has seen inflows of $452B. It could be argued that most were seeking bond funds since inflows to those have been very high during that per…
One thing to keep in mind also when dealing with ETF's is not only expense ratios but volume.
As the writer pointed out, Schwab has the lowest expense ratios, even slightly lower than Vanguard. However, for the 2-4 basis points you'd save using Sch…
Mr Romney had $20,000,000 of taxable investment income last year and paid $280,000 in taxes or 14% of the $20M. I paid 20% of $50,000 or $10,000 due to the fact that I was taxed mainly on earned income, not investment income. Collectively we paid $2…
As far as what to do, if you think the market is going to drop, try an inverse S&P ETF such as SH. If you want to add the possiblity of making some money off of increased volitility and/or the S&P declining, do your own volitility trade and …
I've traded TVIX and currently VXX options to some success but I wouldn't use TVIX as an "all or nothing/I'll make my money back quick" option. As a matter of fact I don't think I'll trade TVIX anymore period. It's bad enough when you're using a fut…
I use Scottrade for trading and haven't had a problem but haven't used them for NTF funds. They do offer commission-free Morningstar ETF's if you're interested in that but they're lightly traded.
As far as quarantining deposited money, they just h…
My guess would be that people sold off seeing that there may not be much CPI inflation coming down the pike. At this point that's where you're getting practically all the yield on TIPS since the currenet fixed rate is 0.75% for the 5-yr and 0.25% fo…
