Bogleheads.org

You need to first determine how much of a loss you can handle without panicking. If you invest in the stock market you could lose perhaps 1/2 of that investment in the short term if a bear market would occur. Would you sell? If so, then perhaps you should avoid the stock market. If you do invest , s...

Do you have Capital Gains? I wouldn't like paying the tax right now.

For an individual bond, price and yield are directly related by a formula, and are two ways to express the same thing. For bond funds, both SEC yield and distribution yield (as calculated by Vanguard) are based on averages over a previous 30-day period, so there will be some lag in seeing these yie...

Duration actually tells you how much the price of the fund changes when interest rates change. Let's suppose that interest rate on 10 year Treasuries, a commonly used measure of interest rates, rose by 1%. A duration of 3 on the bond fund then tells you that the price per share on the bond fund wou...

Call_Me_Op wrote:You may never see it. It depends upon what caused the price decrease.

Rising interest rates such as now.

Back in the late 1990's I bought EMC stock for about $21 per share. Then the dot.com bubble burst and EMC plunged. I ended up selling it for about $8 per share. Now many years later the stock is up above the price where I had bought it. Lesson learned: Don't own individual stocks because there is ab...

Suppose a person owns a bond fund that has a duration of 3.0. That fund then declines 3% in NAV. About how much of a "lag" time is there before a person would see the expected 1% increase in yield?

Follow the advice from your friends and see a Fee-only advisor.

I would say no to switching from Traditional to Roth at your age. If you have a large amount in that Traditional and move it at once you will put yourself in a tax bracket higher than 25% Federal, so that move could cost you perhaps 1/3 or more of that money. If you were younger it would probably ma...

Jim180, remember that if you have two different accounts with the same firm, each one is covered up to $500k. For example, if you have a brokerage account and an IRA with the same place, each one is covered up to $500k rather than combining the value of the two then subjecting that total to $500k. ...

I'm thinking of moving greater than $500K to a large investment firm. Large firms such as Vanguard, Fidelity and Schwab claim they have additional coverage from Lloyd's of London, so I've been told by them everything should be fine. ( Of course what else would they say?) I have a two part question. ...

The 2 Life Strategy Funds are:
LifeStrategy Conservative Growth and LifeStrategy Moderate Growth. That gives you your 50-50 mix.

Those Vanguard Funds you can't seem to find are institutional shares. Those are available through Transamerica, but you cannot purchase them yourself. The advantage of those funds are that the expenses are even lower than you could get through Vanguard. (Assuming that Transamerica doesn't charge you...

I think your advisor only explained one of the fees to you. Ask the advisor about the following fees: 1. Mortality Expenses (M&E) 2. Administrative expenses 3. Annual expense ratio of the portfolio (I think this was the one he gave you) 4. Expenses of any additional riders you may have purchased. ( ...

The first thing you need to do is find out what the annual fee is on that annuity. Then find out what the surrender penalty is. Vanguard has a very low cost annuity you might want to get into. What you save in fees would most likely make up for the surrender penalty over the long term. If you decide...

If those 10 funds were already in the Stock Market you are simply making a "sideways" move. Therefore you can go ahead and put the money into those Vanguard Funds right away.

I did some math and can say now with certainty that it is your gold ETF that caused your underperformance. Gold has been down about -25% YTD. 25% of your 4% holding= 1% So your gold ETF has taken about 1% off your portfolio. The numbers you gave show that you are underperforming by guess what? 1%! S...

I think you may have a few things in your portfolio that are not in the benchmarks you mentioned. You may also be more heavily weighted in some areas than the benchmarks. Some of the holdings you mentioned were gold. Yes, I know it's only 4% but it does drag you down a little. You mention TIPS. The ...

I will say this. When rates are rising there are fewer mortgage prepayments so the duration of GNMA funds has a tendency to increase. For example last year the Vanguard GNMA fund had a duration in the 3-4 range. Right now that fund has a duration of 5. Your decision comes down to risk tolerance and ...

joe8d wrote:Interesting, Bob Brinker for years would recommend GNMA as the ultimate bond fund.Now he never mentions it.

Brinker still has them in his Balanced portfolio, and also his Income portfolio. Brinker talks about GNMA's when they are doing well but never mentions them when they are going down.