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treecat

Here are the details on the 2 options which I need to make a binding decision on within 30 days of starting employment: ORP Mandatory 7% Employee Contribution Employer 7% Matching Contribution Low cost index funds available Need to confirm my situation but appears I would vest immediately for both employee and employer contributions AZ State Pension - link to AZ plan here https://www.azasrs.gov/content/estimate-your-benefits Mandatory 12.71% Employee Contribution Employer Matches 12% Contribution but those contributions do not vest if I leave for any reason other than position being eliminated which does not seem likely Full Retirement benefit at age 62 + 10 years of service or age 65 No control over investment selection Working less than ...

treecat

nalor511 wrote: ↑Sun Jan 15, 2023 6:25 pm https://public.com/invest/treasuries , it says 4.8% yield, but then it also says there's a 5bps/month fee, so I don't know what the real yield is (if their quoted yield is before or after expenses)

What are the fees for a Treasury Account?
In exchange for the management, trading, and custody of Treasury services, Jiko charges a flat management fee of 5 basis points per month

5 bp/mo = 0.60% per year. Going from 4.7% or so return down to 4.1% is a lot given TD & normal brokers all have zero fees!

treecat

GRP wrote: ↑Wed Jan 04, 2023 8:55 pm Arguments about gold aside, one year of data is literally meaningless and likely just statistical noise when it comes to anything relating to investing.

I certainly agree one year has its limitations. I listed the returns because the OP’s article made a specific claim/prediction about the year 2022 which seems worth addressing.

treecat

treecat wrote: ↑Wed Sep 21, 2022 8:39 am As of August, gold was at least doing better than stocks/bonds... 1/1/22 to 8/31/22 returns via PV:

Update - that's still the case for year end of 2022 (via PV). Gold's return lags cash but is a lot better than stocks/bonds:

Code: Select all

VT	-18.01%	world stock
TIP	-12.24%	interm. TIPS
VFITX	-10.43%	interm. Treasuries
GLD	 -0.77%	gold
SGOV	 +1.46%	cash/tbills
DBC	+19.34%	commodities futures

treecat

"Better" at what? By what criteria do you measure whether it's "better"? Your post implies "better" at higher returns, which T-bills probably are most of the time , especially over longer periods. Good question - I think I mean, which asset has higher returns, given one wants very good liquidity and low downside risk, for potentially short-term holdings (or situations where you have uncertainty about short-term cashflow needs). My understanding is money market funds are even better than t-bills on these criteria, but for many short-term purposes, t-bills are pretty good. But returns aren't the only consideration for most, nor is VMFXX considered a "long term" holding. If you're looking at "long ...

treecat

Like many here, I've noticed 1 month T-Bills often have a higher rate than money market funds right now. Specifically, I just look at the yield shown on the Treasury website or on my brokerage account's secondary market webpage, then I compare to VMFXX's 7-day SEC Yield reported on the Vanguard website. If you have a specific amount of money and are deciding to purchase a t-bill just once, versus invest in VMFXX, maybe that's an ok comparison. But I was wondering about comparing rolling t-bills over time, versus using VMFXX, to simulate holding for a longer term. Then the current market rate for a new t-bill isn't the right comparison; instead you should average over 37 days (or so), because you have the yield of holding 30 days' worth of t...

treecat

I’m used to thinking it’s a bad idea to pay tuition for PhD studies - many or most are funded, but it varies by field and I’m sure other factors.

treecat

Thanks! Lots of webpages warn about wash sales being triggered by dividend reinvestment. If the practical effect is either small or even none at all, that's great to know.

treecat

Hi, I was trying to understand wash sales in the following situation. Say you have two tax lots: April 1 lot: 1000 shares of XYZ Sept. 30 lot: 5 shares of XYZ (from dividend reinvestment, say) Now you sell all of them: Oct 4 sale: Sell 1005 shares of XYZ: 1000 from April lot, 5 from Sept. lot So you're in the 30 day window for the Sept. lot, but not the April lot. Which share sales count as a wash sale? Is it any of the following scenarios? Or please let me know if I'm thinking about this all wrong. I'm not sure I even have the right terminology. All 1005 shares are a wash sale 5 shares of April lot are a wash sale. 995 of April and 5 of Sept are not a wash sale. The 5 shares of Sept are a wash sale. 1000 of April are not a wash sale. If it...

treecat

I’ve only looked at lower end APS-C and M43 bodies/lenses to compare to an iphone 12. At night, with wide aperture primes and stability for slow shutter speed they can do better… but the iphone night mode works better more often overall. If you think about features the iphone has but these ILCs don’t, like software helping stabilize a 2 second handheld shot, it’s not surprising.

treecat

As of August, gold was at least doing better than stocks/bonds... 1/1/22 to 8/31/22 returns via PV:

Code: Select all

VT     -17.67%  (world stock)
TIP     -8.59%  (interm. TIPS)
VFITX   -8.26%  (interm. treasuries)
GLD     -6.84%  (gold)
SGOV    +0.34%  (near-cash)
DBC    +23.77%  (commodities futures)

In my portfolio the proportion of gold ETF actually increased during 2022 just because it did better than the stocks/bonds that comprise most of the rest. Doesn't fulfill the promise of pro-gold people but could be worse...

treecat

We switched to US Mobile after similar Verizon price increases. In total saving ~$90/month (!). (Admittedly some of the savings is because we had plans with more data than we needed.) There are many MVNOs and guides to them; /r/NoContract was useful.

treecat

Cool, thanks for the suggestions.

treecat

The backfitting fear is a good one. Here's a robustness test: instead of checking the rule and potentially trading weekly, for each day, do it with probability 20%, which is on average every 5 days (one week of open markets, approximately). I'm seeing annualized returns ranging from 3.0% to 7.9% (the 95% confidence interval over simulations), with median 5.6%. So it's doing better than buy-and-hold at 0.1%, but the 7.69% return from PV weekly checks/trades looks like a positive outlier. (Albeit this is a different implementation, with I'm sure plenty of other differences.) The range of returns are similarly wide for different check-and-trade probabilities.

treecat

There's an argument that commodities are nice at times like now, but too expensive to hold as inflation insurance at other times. This paper (from Artemis in 2020: https://artemiscm.docsend.com/view/taygkbn) has backtests of a complicated alternatives-heavy portfolio from 1928-2019, but most relevantly is the piece of it called "Commodity Trend", which they implement with buy/sell of commodities based on a fifty day moving average. They note the trend following component was important to make it work, compared to rebalancing buy-and-hold of commodities, then recommend weird complex variants. I was wondering whether the simpler moving average thing could work with a commodity futures ETF (the paper's results seem to be from commodi...

treecat

Vanguard’s forms for in-kind transferring securities between accounts let you specify individual lots. I guess they’re suppose to preserve cost basis info though I don’t have experience with that. It’s worth saving copies of the info for yourself and to double check once done.

treecat

PV's "Asset Class Correlations" shows correlations among a selection of ETFs, including I think the asset classes you mention: https://www.portfoliovisualizer.com/ass ... rrelations

You can put in any tickers you want into the similar "Asset Correlations" page (and get longer history if available). It looks like it supports a 12 month window if you're especially interested at the yearly level. For example, between Vanguard S&P500 and REIT: https://www.portfoliovisualizer.com/ass ... &months=12

treecat

[dupe]

treecat

Lastrun wrote: ↑Wed Jun 15, 2022 9:07 pm
treecat wrote: ↑Wed Jun 15, 2022 8:50 pm I am curious if anyone has tried this - “MS Money in Excel” (https://support.microsoft.com/en-au/off ... a12a585c4a) and there was an annoncement about importing transactions via “Plaid” (https://plaid.com/blog/microsoft-announcement/)
They are killing it....

https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/off ... l%20files.

And it's been only 2 years after the initial announcement, yikes. I guess that's a good sign for Tiller.

treecat

I am curious if anyone has tried this - “MS Money in Excel” (https://support.microsoft.com/en-au/off ... a12a585c4a) and there was an annoncement about importing transactions via “Plaid” (https://plaid.com/blog/microsoft-announcement/)

treecat

Tiller (https://www.tillerhq.com/) works well for me. It pulls transactions and balances into a spreadsheet. I think there may be other similar services?

treecat

anoop wrote: ↑Thu Mar 24, 2022 1:15 pm The old 2016 SE (even a new unit) will get very poor battery life with the latest OS. I don't know that you can even find a reputable dealer that sells a 2016 SE so you have to beware of scammers.

In July 2021, I bought an original 2016 SE via backmarket.com for ~$100 and the purchase worked fine. It didn't feel like a scam. I think I used Gazelle further back in the past.

The device itself ran all current apps just fine - I think it was still on the newest iOS - though it's true the battery life was not great. I stopped using it mainly because I broke it, though I was tempted to replace it with another 2016 SE! I got a 12 mini which, as other posters mention, feels pretty similar (a tiny bit larger, but not much).

treecat

bbrock wrote: ↑Sat Mar 12, 2022 3:05 pm
treecat wrote: ↑Sat Mar 12, 2022 1:02 pm On the topic of transferring from Vanguard to a Fidelity DAF, it worked for me to send from the Vanguard side, and I don’t think I filled out anything in the Fidelity DAF side. It was Vanguard’s standard web form to send a gift ti a charity. I was able to specify which lots to donate.
viewtopic.php?f=1&t=358237&p=6439197#p6439197
Really treecat… you initiated it from the Vanguard side?

Yup.

At the Fidelity DAF site, I played around with the “demo” and noticed one could enter data on some screens, it populates a letter of instruction which one could send/scan/email/mail to the sending brokerage.

I’m sure that could work too. I haven’t seen it.

treecat

On the topic of transferring from Vanguard to a Fidelity DAF, it worked for me to send from the Vanguard side, and I don’t think I filled out anything in the Fidelity DAF side. It was Vanguard’s standard web form to send a gift ti a charity. I was able to specify which lots to donate.
viewtopic.php?f=1&t=358237&p=6439197#p6439197

treecat

[also above]

For mutual funds and ETFs, also try https://fossilfreefunds.org/ and other similar sites from https://www.asyousow.org/invest-your-values/. There are spreadsheet downloads too, if you prefer.

They don’t directly show individual stocks, but many or all their metrics seem to be based on information about individual companies owned by the fund.

treecat

I looked at Target Retirement Income. The 2021 short and long-term capital gains, I think, were 0.24% and 1.53% respectively. If you look at the historical distributions wiki page ( https://www.bogleheads.org/wiki/Vanguard_Target_Retirement_Funds_(2005-2025)_tax_distributions#Target_Retirement_Income_Fund ), this is a lot higher than the average of ~0.3% total, but a few years (2014, 2016) had comparable amounts. I was one of the people hit by this. I was holding Target Retirement Income in a taxable account for convenience -- its allocation made sense for the account's purpose and I didn't want to bother separating stock vs. bond funds -- and I justified it by noting the historical average cap gain distributions would have resulted in what...

treecat

Have people had issues transferring specific lots from Vanguard to Fidelity's DAF? That is what I am planning to do. Personally I have some highly appreciated stocks that I'd like to contribute to the DAF. Several months ago, I was able to specify lots of a mutual fund when donating from Vanguard to our Fidelity DAF. I believe the web form is called "Gift assets to...", accessible from the Vanguard page "Forms & applications" (current link: https://personal1.vanguard.com/ngf-next-gen-form-webapp/forms). It was a Docusign form, and not very well integrated -- to specify lots I had to use another window to view all lots under Vanguard's cost basis page, and then specify the dates and share numbers manually in the gift...

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Re: Help Deciding on ORP or State Pension Option

Re: Anyone try the Public.com Treasury account?

Re: WSJ: "This Should Have Been a Great Year for Gold. Here’s Why It Isn’t."

Re: WSJ: "This Should Have Been a Great Year for Gold. Here’s Why It Isn’t."

Re: Are 1-month T-Bills better than VMFXX?

Are 1-month T-Bills better than VMFXX?

Re: PhD - Student loans or pay every semester?

Re: Wash sales: per-share accounting and dividend reinvestment

Wash sales: per-share accounting and dividend reinvestment

Re: Mirrorless/DSLR vs. iPhone for low-light photos

Re: WSJ: "This Should Have Been a Great Year for Gold. Here’s Why It Isn’t."

Re: Surprise Verizon Price Increases

Re: Commodity trend experiment

Re: Commodity trend experiment

Commodity trend experiment

Re: Can me and my wife split our joint Vanguard funds/stocks?

Re: Where to get year by year correlation data?

Re: Where to get year by year correlation data?

Re: Looking for alternative to Mint for transactions analysis (not budgeting or investments)

Re: Looking for alternative to Mint for transactions analysis (not budgeting or investments)

Re: Looking for alternative to Mint for transactions analysis (not budgeting or investments)

Re: Replacement for Iphone SE?

Re: Creating new DAF at Fidelity

Re: Creating new DAF at Fidelity

Re: Spreadsheet of ESG Stocks?

Re: Target date funds ... so much for "set and forget" [and WSJ article]

Re: Need advice with my first DAF