Bogleheads.org

Being tax time, I just wanted to confirm that withholding from RMDs can be used in place of making quarterly estimated tax payments. Having inherited IRAs, I take RMDs in the latter part of every year. I seem to recall other smart folks around here use withholding from RMDs to avoid the need for mak...

...it doesn't real hedge the type of risks some people buy it for (because they come with machine guns to confiscate your gold) I guess that explains why folks waiting for doomsday typically are heavily armed, needing serious firepower to defend their gold & cans of soup. :D Anyone buying VGPMX...

Looks like I'll be holding what I have. Given that 73% of my bond holdings are ST (mostly ST Inv. Grade with a bit of ST Tax-Exempt -- which is really an ultra-short bond fund -- mixed in) I have only a limited amount of interest rate risk. The remainder of my bond holdings are this TIPS fund and GN...

I used to be a major fan of HY Corp and owned shares from 1995-2013. I'd been selling off shares since July 2012 and got rid of the final bit in January. It was the first Vanguard fund I bought when I started invested with Vanguard 18 years ago. As a Flagship client it's still open to me, though I d...

Rick Ferri wrote:ETFs are an ideal way to invest in value stocks because turnover does not generate taxes (DFA should start offering ETFs for this reason).

Seems Vanguard has already beat DFA (and all others) in that area by creating ETF shares that are part of existing open end funds.

I have six IRAs. Four of them are inherited and being of different type (Roth vs Traditional) and having come from different decedents they can't be combined in any manner that would simplify things.

Being disabled by anxiety, I can assure everyone of how valuable human capital is. You really notice its value when you have none.

Presumably that 0.5% fee in & out will go away as the fund get older & larger such that new purchases are largely offset by existing investors redeeming shares. Vanguard over time has removed such fees on every fund except for this one and their new short-term TIPS fund.

2000-20xx - Bear Market - 13 years so far Where is this 13-year-long and counting bear market of which you speak? Stocks have been soaring since early 2009, so much so that we're sitting close to all time highs that are impressive enough that retail investors who have a propensity for jumping in at...

So do you hold an inflation bond fund in a taxable account? Yes. It does avoid Wisconsin income tax and my state LOVES to tax. My income was too low to justify a muni fund, so a TIPS fund made sense. I may or may not sell as I've already significantly lowered by exposure to interest rate movements ...

billyt wrote:I don't know about the 0.25% purchase fee. That is paid into the fund. If I establish a position in the fund, then I am collecting that extra 0.25% from other buyers until it is discontinued.

Yes, you just hope they don't discontinue it the day after you buy.

An unhedged International Bond Fund would be useful in protecting against the possibility of Fed QE25+ printing so many dollars that the dollar gets crushed. Couldn't one also get more currency exposure by having a larger percentage of their equities be foreign? Perhaps do a 50/50 US/international ...

Is it not more likely they will simply merge it with another EM ETF? I don't know I hasten to add, but this is what usually happens with mutual funds. That does sound more likely than liquidation. After all, what money manager would voluntarily let go of assets that their percentage cut on those as...

Thinking about shifting some of our holdings in TIPs to this new fund but no decision has been reached yet! I believe there is an up front fee of 25 basis on buying? so that may make it a bit more expensive. I'm hoping that 0.25% purchase fee goes away. Vanguard tends to drop such fees as funds gro...

Am I the only one that thinks the immediate move to add this sub-class to the target retirement funds is more for the benefit of the new fund than it is for the old funds? I think the point is to take advantage of economies of scale as adding to these other funds means a huge pile of assets to star...

Are potential investors in this fund expecting higher returns? Hate to disappoint you, but this fund isn't going to yield any more than the Vanguard Total Bond Fund, and may yield less due to higher fees and hedging costs . Those were two concerns I had. While talking about how nifty hedging is, Va...

I remember when CNBC had Ken Hebner on the show all the time to predict and pundit on just about everything. His record in the beginning was great, but it slowly got worse and worse over time, until now you never hear from the guy anymore. I'm sure he's richer than sin, but nobody seems to want him...

I have a proven ability to be wrong. But PIMCO gave Gross a $100M compensation package some years back; all the rest of us who know how to be wrong didn't get one. So unfair!

Normally I'd simply go with an index fund as expenses are lower, but that's not the case here. In this case the active International Explorer has a lower ER at 0.42% compared to VFSVX @ 0.50%. (Yes, there are ETF shares that cost 0.28%.) Interesting that an active fund can actually managed to underc...

Also from the article: Many funds are designed to avoid volatility. As a result, they may gain less than their benchmarks in bull markets but lose less in bear markets. Where are these magical funds that lose less in bear markets? That's always the claim, but not a shred of evidence can be found to ...

Multiple managers? Hmm, so much for trying to find THE outstanding talented manager who will outperform. We all know that you can only beat the market is you're different from the market. And if you want extreme outperformance, then you have to greatly differ, which also gives a major risk of losin...

The only "magic" of indexing is low cost, and all Vanguard funds have that same "magic" working for them so they should do nearly the same as an index fund. Yesterday I compared International Value to Total International Index. What I discovered is that International Value is one...

Over the 26-year history of Total Bond Market, the lowest NAV was $8.73 (in 1987), and the highest was $11.23 (in 2012). That is a difference of 22% from high to low. Just to give an idea of where rates were, the 10-year Treasury was in the neighborhood of 9% back in 1987. It hit a low of around 1....

When Rick Ferri makes his 30-year estimates of future returns, what index is he basing them on? Is his SV that beats TSM by 2% per year over the next 30 years the SV we can all get at Vanguard or is he referring to some deep value microcap fund that you can only find at DFA or some other source, but...

A lot of things haven't changed since 1999. For example, the NASDAQ is still at the same level. :D Only difference is I don't have any smug fools telling me how I fail to comprehend how the Internet has entirely changed investing. Soon as their investments in GotNoEarnings.com went down the toilet t...

few thoughts First, regulated utilites are excluded from value stocks as are REITS, though Vanguard funds include both We have had period of sharply falling rates recently and both utilities and REITS are long term risk so you would expect outperformance. Also value risk has shown up with negative ...

So this is what gets me: we have 20 year periods where the wrong portfolio wins. We have 80 years of data, at best. Seems to me that's not enough, considering how long growth or value can outperform. You're right that stock market data is lacking. We only have complete market data going back in 192...

It seems that the biggest risk/return effect is in the very smallest end of the pool and most value tilted side. DFA slices much thinner than Vanguard which splits into value or growth depending on how you relate to the middle. If they divided the market into three segments and didn't put the middl...

Karl, I wonder if this dissection is really worth it as most of us here believe in broad diversification.. Who knows what will happen. Frankly, to me TSM is more than adequate. If you want small caps, maybe just buy the small cap index fund, period? Given that TSM is by far my largest equity holdin...

What, exactly, am I supposed to be seeing? Because what I think I'm seeing is a fund that has exhibited considerably greater risk than VISVX--during 2008-2009, an original investment $10,000 in RSV lost 2/3 of its value while VISVX lost half. And, for taking that risk, it rewarded investors, over i...

Question. What about utilities? I just remembered that whenever Larry Swedroe talks about small value, it's never small value, it's "small value ex-utilities," because, well, small value utilities stocks are small value stocks that don't behave like small value stocks. And I just noticed ...

jtl46 wrote:

crowd79 wrote:OBTW it is a 6 month penalty.

Positive side of low yields is the penalty ends up being really tiny.

Theory tells us that SV should beat SG. The argument varies, either being that investors are mesmerized by hot & exciting growth stocks and pay too much or that value stocks are risky dogs (e.g. K-mart) and they have to provide higher returns to entice any investors to touch them. I was just tak...

http://static2.businessinsider.com/image/5044941aecad04d95000001e/image.png http://www.businessinsider.com/this-is-what-the-sp-500-looks-like-when-adjusted-for-inflation-2012-9 I thought this chart interesting as we re-approach the nominal 1500s record. So your purchasing power has doubled over 20 ...

My Roth IRA is 100% in Wellesley Income, a nice balance of stock exposure and bond stability. It will do a good job for your Mom (and you) whether she never touches the funds in her lifetime or beats all the odds and lives to 101 years old. Also, it's stock/bond allocation may be a nice averaging o...

If inflation eventually does come charging back, stocks and nominal bonds are toast. The lowly TIPS could reign supreme. You just never know, do you? Stocks aren't necessarily toast in times of high inflation. Look at emerging markets where inflation rates have at times gone into the stratosphere a...

^Thanks for the list, Browser. Nice to see Wisconsin isn't on it. They being one of the higher-taxing states, that might not last. :( Yes, that's one of the many unknowns we must deal with when investing. Over the last 30 years, for example, it was bonds that were the highest returning asset class,...

I see that my question might have been poorly phrased, as the wisdom of putting a Roth 100% in stocks is something that depends entirely upon context. Let's say a Roth was the only investment account an elderly individual had. In that case, it would be an absolutely terrible idea for most. That isn'...

^Thanks for the list, Browser. Nice to see Wisconsin isn't on it.

...you might want to have bonds and REITs in your Roth instead of stocks. Reason being, bonds & REITs generate a lot of dividends that would be more efficient in a tax sheltered account. Yes, if one is going to hold REITs they'd definitely belong in a Roth (if possible). The limited amount or R...

It feels a little weird to me for you to be laying claim to this money and investing it as if it were yours while your mother is still alive. Since she has no expectation of spending the Roth within her lifetime, it only makes sense to manage it as a family legacy that will live on for decades to c...

Thank you for the post. [Personal attack removed by admin LadyGeek] [Response to personal attack removed by admin LadyGeek] She turns 84 this year and I've managed her money with great care for many years. You assume she has to lose for me to win, yet that's not the case at all. Who would you prefe...

My elderly mother has an Roth that's a 50/50 mix of stock funds and ST bonds. Since one wants the highest returning asset in a Roth (for tax-free growth) I just realized I should change it such that her Roth is 100% in stocks. This is money she'll never spend in her lifetime and which will pass to m...

^Thanks for the advice, but looks like I won't be needing it. Now things are showing up as normal and I didn't do anything to change it.

Seems computers are magical mystery machines that just do what they like as the mood may strike them. Let's hope Safari & my Mac remain in a good mood.

Charts such as the ones shown in this link: https://personal.vanguard.com/us/funds/tools/marketsummary While using Safari I see no charts there at all, nor any charts when looking at performance of individuals funds. This started a day ago, so I'm guessing I inadvertently did something to make my Ma...

How much money does it cost these stores, especially a place like a grocery store with long lines, to handle cash and checks? I gather you've never been to Aldi, the deep-discount grocery chain where they don't take any credit cards. Their cashiers, who move with the speed of a Ninja, aren't slowed...

If you're getting 2% annually and inflation is running at 2%, and you have little prospects of price appreciation, you are treading water. Reality is even worse than that. Total Bond Admiral is yielding 1.60%. Take off the income taxes owed on that yield and it becomes even more pathetic. Sounds mo...

Since you live in a state with a state income tax you could avoid state tax by holding a treasury fund in your taxable account instead of short term investment grade which is corporate. Treasuries don't pay as much as corporates so it may not make much difference. The yield on ST Treasury is a mere...

If you sold any shares of GNMA at a loss in taxable and bought GNMA in IRA, then you have a wash sale for those number of shares sold at a loss. Not to worry. I sold for a gain of $1,666, so about 3% capital appreciation. They used to have more capital appreciation, but that was wiped away by some ...

Seems I'm the only person left who has yet to memorize ticker symbols. I had to look it up to find out it's Limited-Term Tax Exempt. (Side note: Vanguard really should change names as their "Limited Term" is really a ST fund, while "Short-Term" = Ultra-Short.) I don't own VMLUX, ...