Bogleheads.org

I don't find it particularly stunning that this bond fund carries the 5 risk rating. As the fund says, it only invests in US dollar denominated bonds, emphasizing that this eliminates currency risk from US based investors. But the default risk goes from near zero for normal government bonds to somet...

If it was me, foremost in my mind would be my plans/expectations for my future residence. Am I an American who's going to live the rest of my life in America? Am I a Norwegian-American who will regularly visit Norway no matter where I'm living for work? Am I planning to work here and retire to Norwa...

Yes, you'll need to file those two. Also there's the form TD F 90-22.1 that has to be sent to the Treasury, not to the IRS with other tax forms, if the aggregate value of all accounts exceeds $10k. This is for disclosing your foreign bank and financial accounts. There are also nominally hefty penalt...

Nice graph, thanks. The main message I get is that for investment grade intermediate term bond funds low cost was much more important than the credit spread between treasuries and investment grade corporates over this period. In other words, I'd rather have been on any of the lines other than the or...

Cudos to Prof Choi for publishing the results because it doesn't really paint the Wharton MBA students or the MBA education they received in a flattering light.

I'll give you the potted version of my savings history. 65% (est) through college. As parents paid for essentials, I saved most of anything I earned. 16% graduate school. Stipend covered living expenses, but had a fellowship that paid extra. As the fellowship money lasted only two years, I saved it ...

Trying lots of different wines is the best way to figure out what you like and what wineries or styles are usually to your taste. Perhaps the least expensive and most enjoyable way to discover this knowledge is to attend wine tastings. If your state owned store doesn't put them on (for fear of gener...

So, really? The academics have known this for seventy-six years and the traders have never cottoned on? Indeed. I had thought (guessed, really) that the anomaly existed because it was too costly to exploit. But Larry's data on a live strategy suggests that too costly is not the case. Being a well-k...

Are the momentum fund returns pre- or post-tax? I imagine momentum stratgies have high turnover---and M* says around 70% for the AQR funds, which truth be told is not as high as I'd have guessed. Nonetheless, that's still pretty high. What's that do to taxable distributions for the fund investors? I...

I don't know if it would be cool or not, but the closest thing is this http://www.cpmkts.com/index.php http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Capital_Markets_Index Not enough people thought it was cool because they seem to have gone out of buisness and the index is no longer being updated.

Vanguard (and/or FTSE) says the emerging markets currently make up about 10% of global stock market capitalization (graph on this page https://personal.vanguard.com/us/funds/snapshot?FundId=0628&FundIntExt=INT#tab=2 ). So while 15% is not unreasonable, you are nearly 50% overweight emerging comp...

As long as Vanguard operates at cost and as long as the inflation of those fixed costs grows on average more slowly than funds under management, then the expense ratio will continue to decline. At the extreme consider that the total US stock market cap is around $15 trillion and that the total stock...

I would first stuff as much as possible into 529s for the kid' educations. That and paying off the house would make me comfortable that I'd done my best to fulfill my money obligations as a provider. (Whether that's going overboard or not is a different question.-) I have left many variables open en...

The institutional page of Vanguard's total world fund lists sector weightings at the bottom of this page https://institutional.vanguard.com/VGApp/iip/site/institutional/investments/portfoliodetails?fundId=0826#SectorWeightings . Financials 21.9% Information Technology 12.0% Industrials 11.6% Consume...

As per turbotax, the pdf of all forms and worksheets is 92 pages, while the as filed pdf is 25 pages. That's federal; we don't file state.

From a diversificatioin point of view it only makes sense for the Norway fund to hold no commodities. Their main source of income is from oil. Holding no commodities is counter-cyclical to their main income source. If there is such a thing as a Japan soverign wealth fund, it should invest in commodi...

I use Vanguard's total world fund as my core stock holding. FTSE has claimed that the global all cap index followed by total world covers 98% of investable market capitalization (free float and all that). The index fact sheet is http://www.ftse.com/Indices/FTSE_Global_Equity_Index_Series/Downloads/G...

I can't say I wholly believe your numbers. My recollection is that total international finished 2012 slightly ahead of total US. Moreover, where you start your charting will make a big difference on relative performance perspective. If you start your chart from the beginning of 2000, for instance, I...

You may want to go to https://americas.vanguard.com/institutional/home.htm and look at the offshore funds Vanguard has set up in Ireland for use of non-US investors. Or call up Vanguard and ask them what you can do with them offshore. You will be able to invest in US dollars without having to conver...

@asset_chaos You're right. I am way below the 25K contribution limit. I understand the tax benefit of superannuation and will increase my contribution gradually as I earn more. I am hesitant though to put more money into my super than my after-tax fund as I won't be able to access my super fund for...

You're saving around a third of income and you portfolio allocation seems reasonable for your age and situation. I'd say you're looking pretty good. My only suggestion is that perhaps you change the balance between inside super and outside super contributions. You'd have to run the numbers, but you ...

digit8 wrote:Total World down to .35%, nice. Still too much, but...

But third year in a row with a 5 bp decrease.

The major problem I have with the advice of domestic only investing is good enough is that it is unequivocally wrong for the bulk of investors in the world. General advice that's not good for everyone is probably not the best advice. Would a Boglehead seriously advise domestic only to a Swede (1% of...

You may notice a difference, but, if you do, it will come from the extra riskiness of your overall portfolio (from dropping the bond allocation). I suspect, but can't know for sure, that a bit more REIT---if your other equity funds are index funds, they'll have some real estate in them already---and...

I use total world stock index fund for my core stock holding. However, I would not be inclined to use a total world bond fund. I think the bond portion of a portfolio should focus on low-risk, high-stability of principal and easy liquidity. If you lived in a small country, e.g. Sweden, Australia, et...

I suspect it's a function of TSM and TISM being much larger funds than total world at this point. Total world hasn't yet distributed a capital gain and I don't expect such a taxable distribution to be any more likely than for the other total market type funds. So, yes, total world is as suitable for...

Rick Ferri wrote:This is a tong-in-cheek blog

Ouch! (emphasis added) That's probably too much dedication to blogging.

As my core stock investment is global market index, I don't think this means much to me, except for whatever real cash the private equity company is putting in. I presume I partly own, through the index, both Heinz and Berkshire, and I presume I own none of the private equity company. So the purchas...

Anything is possible in the markets. The data seem relatively clear---to my untutored eye---that small and value represent real economic risk factors. But I'm not aware of any good data or theory that suggests what the size of those factor premiums should be or why in the past they have realized a p...

bpp is right: think domestic/foreign instead of US/non-US to translate what you mostly see on this board. I think that all investors, particularly those in small market countries, should begin with global market weight for their stock allocation. Then ask yourself a series of questions, the answers ...

Bogle's "little" book is great. You might also consider William Bernstein's "4 Pillars of Investing" http://www.efficientfrontier.com/t4poi/t4poi.htm, which is also good and is specifically aimed at people like your son.

There's not much question that leveraging an investment that rises will boost returns. How do the touters of this stategy guarentee that what they lever will rise in price? Funny, I'd heard risk parity described before as making the asset classes of your portfolio contribute equally to the overall r...

If the stock market makes you worry---even a bit---about what it'll do next, that may be a sign you have too much in stocks to be compatable with your true risk tolerance. By all means, take some out. And, being retired, if you want to spend some of your hard-earned on remodeling and a vacation, go ...

The Beaux Stategem. Yes, you loved it as a restoration comedy. Now, get it as an investment stategy. With the same hilarious results!

If you GDP weight for stocks (and I don't), you shouldn't focus solely on EM. There are developed countries whose culture chooses to have more private than public companies. Take Germany. It has the around the same global stock market weight as Australia and currently less than Canada. But the Germa...

a) One must make some judgement about what percentage of ones stocks should be invested internationally. I don't think it's a very critical decision, but it's one you need to make yourself--nobody can make it for you. If what you want is weighting by global capitalization, i.e. 55%-60% internationa...

This thread is about the Total World Stock ETF, not the Total World Stock Mutual Fund. According to Vanguard, the ER for this ETF is only 0.22, just barely more than the 0.18 ER for the Total International Stock ETF. Well, sorry I spoke and wasted your time. At the risk of wasting some more, I will...

For what it's worth, total world isn't my only stock index fund, but I've made it my core stock index fund. I do a bit of small value tilting too. On costs, in the annual report for total world for the year ended October, Vanguard reports the actual expenses of total world to have been 35 bp instead...

I've had a copy on my bookshelf since it appeared in 2007; have even read it several times. I don't recall what I paid for it, but I consider Bogle's little book well worth the cost.

I'm not an expert, but I didn't think muni tax exemption existed because congress decided that should be policy. I thought it was due to a supreme court decision interpreting the section of the constitution saying the states and federal governments can't tax each other. The same reason treasury bond...

When we created a trust about 30 years ago, we used one of the trust companies our lawyer recommended as a back-up executor. The company no longer exists, nor the company who took them over. However, all the relatives we listed (in succession to each other) as executor before the trust company are ...

Two days ago the Vanguard website had a $500 limit for Coverdell contributions in 2013. I transferred $500 into one child's account, but for the other children's accounts Vanguard's website told me there was a problem, wouldn't make the transfer, and told me to come back later. Today I went back, an...

Where did you get the 5% number for small? But assuming that is correct, as US is around half of total world, I'd say half of 5%, or around 2.5%, will be a reasonable estimate of the amount of US small caps in total world fund.

If you have all your international stock investment in total international fund, then you have the market weight of emerging countries as a fraction of your chosen allocation to all non-US stock capitalization. Emerging markets are about a quarter of all non-US markets and Europe is less than but no...

Umfundi, I don't understand: I don't see where per share NAV comes in. I'd have thought that the return on cash in the fund---the interest I receive--- is the gross interest rate minus the costs of operating the money market fund. For every dollar the fund receives in income Vanguard used to use 20 ...

The FTSE index that's used by the Vanguard total world fund is free float, and the US is about 45% of the free float total global stock market. You can find that on the relevant Vanguard or FSTE webpage. This data http://data.worldbank.org/indicator/CM.MKT.LCAP.CD/countries/1W?display=map from the W...

I don't recall seeing an announcement of this, but I logged on to Vanguard just now, and there was a note on my balance and holdings page that the cost of Prime money market fund had dropped to 16 bp from 20 bp. My only question is have cash rates dropped again so that Vanguard has to do something t...

Literally on 1 January, zero. But some time before January 31st my wife and I will fund Roths and 529s.

UpstateNY86, You're almost there. Look at all the investment decisions you've done right so far. You've had the discipline to save money: great, keep it up; you're ahead of the game. You've opened a Roth to put your savings into: again a smart decision. And you've figured out that the surest way to ...

I'll guess that the finance industry already knows that the economy and stock market are different. Otherwise there would already be exchange traded notes or swap agreements linked to changes in GDP. Such notes could be a direct---well derivative---investment in total economic activity. With all the...