Bogleheads.org

David Jay wrote: ↑Sat Jul 13, 2024 5:11 pm It's probably a good reason to avoid offerings from small "concierge" firms, narrowly focused funds (like AI for instance) and funds with low AUM (under $50M?).

I would have little concern about broad based index ETFs from major players: Vanguard, Blackrock/State Street and Schwab.

Blackrock is closing FM which had ~$400M AUM at the time of the announcement.

Rocinante Rider wrote: ↑Wed Jul 10, 2024 2:58 pm For what it's worth, Fidelity also uses 40% international for their stock allocation in their target date funds.

Interesting, because when I was discussing international allocation with my Fidelity rep recently, he mentioned that for their managed accounts, their baseline recommendation was 30% international (and of course clients could say they wanted more or less.)

Gorlow wrote: ↑Tue Jul 02, 2024 6:42 pm I am 50% invested in large cap and 50% small cap for my 401(k). The crazy difference in return the last quarter has me nervous and wanting to rebalance my portfolio. I don’t want to rebalance now and accept a loss but I’m worried it will get worse. What should I do?

Why are you comparing returns of separate asset classes at all?

If it's $9, I'll be sure to get my money's worth. "How 'bout them Phillies? Did you see Bryce Harper the other day, that was some hit!"

Question for those who rebalance through new contributions: I'll use my case as an example. I follow the Bogleheads guidance for tax efficient asset placement, so domestic equities in taxable and Roth, bonds in tax deferred, International in tax deferred and a Roth IRA due to the dividend tax drag, I'm currently mildly overweight domestic equities. I contribute to the mega backdoor Roth 401k, which has a very cheap S&P 500 fund and not great international (actively managed and high ER.) It's also dividend time in taxable. Rebalancing with contributions is not great in this case since it means buying high ER international funds or bonds in a Roth 401k, or buying high tax cost international or bond funds in taxable. Buying more domestic f...

I would sell. You've already won the lottery. The chances of winning the lottery again are close to zero.

There are many risks with Nvidia that are not discussed, such as alternate ways of processing LLMs that do not require GPUs (being worked on now), LLM hitting the same problem blockchain did (neat tech, restricted use cases), power issues, this being another fad, Nvidia not being the best long term stock for LLM/AI (like how Apple was the better telecom stock than Palm/Blackberry/Nokia), etc.

Logically Vanguard should charge lower fees to those who use another brokerage. Why should I subsidize Vanguard's brokerage platform when I don't use it? That is part sarcasm but it is a logical conclusion to the griping about how phone calls are keeping VTI's ER at a sky high 3bp. You are exactly right, Vanguard's rock bottom cost model SHOULD apportion costs to the client who generates the costs. Apportioning costs to those who generate them... Like people who call customer support too often. :shock: I suspect that this probably fits in the 80/20 rule, where 80% of the customer service center costs are being generated by 20% of the Vanguard clients. Regards, Maybe, but since we still don't know what executive compensation is, there may b...

whodidntante wrote: ↑Thu Jun 27, 2024 11:28 am Normally the reason for more than one call is that the issue wasn't solved right the first time. Are Vanguard customers an especially needy demographic?

In the interest of transparency, they should just post their fees. $49.95 for each customer support case seems fair to me. $599.95 if outside of banker's hours. They could use any profit to lower their mutual fund expenses.

Logically Vanguard should charge lower fees to those who use another brokerage. Why should I subsidize Vanguard's brokerage platform when I don't use it?

That is part sarcasm but it is a logical conclusion to the griping about how phone calls are keeping VTI's ER at a sky high 3bp.

edge wrote: ↑Thu Jun 27, 2024 11:18 am In some ways the PAS popups on the website are worse than calls that route directly to voicemail...

I know of a widow who received an unsolicited phone call from Vanguard to enroll her in PAS soon after the passing of her husband. Thankfully she and one of her kids are both Bogleheads and they passed on the offer.

Has Vanguard's CS gotten any better in the last few months? I'm really considering moving some assets over, primarily for their money market and to get access to funds that support automatic investing (which you can'd do with ETFs at Schwab). Anyone gone against the grain and moved from Schwab or Fidelity back to Vanguard? Customer Service since Covid been improved, they took a year three months to give me Flagship status, it was too long a wait. I had 2.6 million all that time. An appeal to Vanguard through secure messing is a request to be able to buy Vanguard PrimeCap, currently only open to account with Flagship above 1 million. All my equities are at Vanguard, been with them since 1995, I have no current plans to leave Vanguard, despi...

arcticpineapplecorp. wrote: ↑Wed Jun 26, 2024 7:06 pm they get you in with their low cost funds...and then call to upsell you their other (money making) services.

I did a portfolio review with the rep that Fidelity assigned me once. My portfolio is very Bogleheads, with a small value tilt and some (<5%) corporate stock. He only suggested that I look into municipal bond funds because of my tax bracket and didn't try to sell me on any Fidelity funds.

What Blackrock did not do was reduce the expense ratios on the existing funds. For instance ITOT launched with an er of 7bp (says the linked press release) but the (now) non-core fund it superseded cost 30. The people who had invested with ishares and helped make that business and who had a decade or more of capital gains that meant they couldn't effectively sell up, those people were just treated by Blackrock as cash cows to be milked. I don't know where you are getting your information but this is incorrect. The fact is that ITOT launched at 0.07% and was reduced to 0.03% in 2015 and is one of the lowest cost total market ETFs on the market. It is a good fund that many bogleheads hold. You decided to misread what I wrote. As I said, ITOT...

arcticpineapplecorp. wrote: ↑Sat Jun 22, 2024 6:39 pm

Whakamole wrote: ↑Sat Jun 22, 2024 5:17 pm This is why you stick with a company that is so diversified it's more like an ETF, like GE or Tyco.

GE? you sure about that?

It was sarcasm, Tyco should have been the tip-off because of the legal issues, similar to Enron.

But there were big fans of GE at one time, Jack Welch was put on a higher pedestan than Jensen Huang. Of course Welch's legacy is tarnished as it should be.

Claudia Whitten wrote: ↑Thu Jun 13, 2024 2:07 am

jyun wrote: ↑Wed Jun 12, 2024 11:23 pm Could any of you Bogleheads share your stories or those of your acquaintances who, despite initially outperforming the market by investing in individual stocks, eventually ended up with poor results?

Dot-com. Cisco Systems. JDS Uniphase. Enron. WorldCom. Etc. Etc. Etc. (and who today remembers "etc. etc. etc."? )

Even Microsoft crashed by more than half, from $60 in 1999 to about $25 in 2002 and then continued doing nothing, landing at $18 in 2009 and not rising past the 1999 high until 2016 or so. Almost 20 years. Would you have held? Talk about sequence of returns risk for a retiree at that time!

This is why you stick with a company that is so diversified it's more like an ETF, like GE or Tyco.

What other investment got this kind of buzz on Bogleheads? 30 year treasuries right before the rate increases?

InvestBiz99 wrote: ↑Thu Jun 20, 2024 4:44 pm Even if the market were to crash by 50%, NVDA will still be ahead of SPY (in terms of price return)

It can drop by more than 50%. Companies like Nortel and JDS Uniphase (darlings of the telecom bubble in 2000) never recovered.

https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/crazy-tr ... -donnelly/ has an anecdote from a day trader (who didn't learn all the right lessons.)

Some further questions:

Since you mentioned owning AVUV for the past year, I charted the share price vs VTI for the past year. Most of the time, AVUV was outperforming, and only in the past month has AVUV diverged negatively compared to VTI. If this divergence didn't happen, would you have made this post?

If this is about performance as well as simplicity, and international continues to underperform, would you make another post about divorcing your international fund in a year?

You can do whatever you like, but you should do them for the right reasons.

cosmos wrote: ↑Wed Jun 19, 2024 2:50 pm Interesting, ive seen state MMF that invest in short term municipal bonds targetted at high income earners in the state of residence also have a 1.0 fixed nav like the treasury ones but keep being told they could completely go bust and were unsafe which seems odd.

Most of the municipal MMFs I know of don't own many short term municipal bonds. Instead they use variable-rate demand notes which are basically longer term bonds with a variable interest rate.

The Motley Fool should be a sell signal, not a buy.

sschullo wrote: ↑Wed Jun 05, 2024 2:40 pm If BOXX is so great, none of the dozens of books from the Bogleheads and other authors mentioned it, as I recall.

BOXX started in December of 2022. None of the Bogleheads suggested reading books were published after then: https://www.bogleheads.org/wiki/Suggested_reading

TravelforFun wrote: ↑Mon Jun 03, 2024 6:50 pm

Mr. Maunder wrote: ↑Fri May 31, 2024 1:11 pm I read a description recently that I thought gave a great framework for thinking about when to use an LLM: ask them questions that are hard to answer but easy to verify.

Hmm ... I'm thinking of what would be some really hard questions we can ask LLMs and verify their answers easily?

TravelforFun

Ask it to factor the product of two large prime numbers.

avalpert1 wrote: ↑Mon Jun 03, 2024 10:47 am

nisiprius wrote: ↑Mon Jun 03, 2024 10:35 am The problem is that such uses for generative AI as of 2024 can't possibly bring in enough revenue to make up for the astronomical development and operating costs.

Nailed it... a friend of mine at a game developer that was acquired by one of the big boys said they are pushing them to incorporate AI into everything not because it makes any sense from a development, gameplay, or customer standpoint but because they need to justify their investments in it.

I think that is why I'm being forced to use it at work. I find LLM (it's not AI) useless yet we are forced to use it so the company can say how many employees use AI in their advertising.

"LLMs can't be trusted" is more succinct.

Bogleheads is a registered trademark and it should be removed from ChatGPT unless those bots are authorized by the Center.

bondsr4me wrote: ↑Mon May 20, 2024 6:25 am

Northern Flicker wrote: ↑Mon May 20, 2024 1:39 am Anything is possible in this regard, but I have a hard time imagining Vanguard leaning on customers to convert mutual fund accounts to brokerage accounts only to push the brokerage accounts holding the mutual funds off on another broker.

+1...totally agree with you.
It just makes no sense to me for VG to push business away.

How would they be turning business away? The brokerage arm is a cost center. It takes money to run the website, answer calls and messages, send out tax forms, handle transfer requests, and develop and run the IT behind this. Pushing non-PAS customers to another broker externalizes customer service costs.

...... Ramji also said, “I view the competition as complexity. I view the competition as high fees and barriers that are getting in the way of individual investors accessing good wealth management and asset management services,” he said. “ Bogle wrote a lot of books and gave a lot of speeches. I’ve read them all.” To my, the key here is "accessing good wealth management and asset management services." With his stated background at Blackrock in wealth management and then ETFs, I can see why Vanguard picked him, as this aligns with my impression that Vanguard wants to move everyone to PAS (or out), and push more active funds and ETFs. Right, but how does Vanguard move everyone to PAS? And how do they force people out? I can't see h...

nisiprius wrote: ↑Sat May 18, 2024 7:57 am

3000 wrote: ↑Sat May 18, 2024 2:28 am Emerging Cancer ETF - oh my God what a name.

Ghost website for HealthShares, Inc: https://www.healthsharesinc.com/guide/about_our_funds/

They offered eighteen ETFs. Is it possible that not one of them has survived?

Web searches difficult because Google thinks I might want to be searching for "healthcare cost sharing ministries."

The company, XShares, went under back in 2014, with the remnants being sold to Deutsche. I can see a preview of an etf.com story about this, unfortunately deleted. Interestingly the company had target date ETFs back in 2007 (!), if only the ER wasn't 0.65%: https://www.thestreet.com/investing/etf ... s-10382343

I have not had good experiences with ex-McKinsey consultants taking on leadership roles.

nisiprius wrote: ↑Wed May 08, 2024 8:10 am The biggest limitation of LibreOffice, as far as I know as I haven't checked lately, is that there is no way to configure it to save in .DOC format by default.

I just booted up LibreOffice, and you can set this under Tools->Options->Load/Save->General; there's a section for "default file format and ODF settings" and one is "always save as" which you can set to .doc (or .rtf or a number of other formats.)

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2024-05-02/bill-gross-says-total-return-strategy-he-pioneered-is-dead Bill Gross, who pioneered the “total return” strategy in the 1980s that revolutionized the bond market, says the approach is now defunct. [ Just for reference: A similar article was published in 2022: https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2022-10-18/bill-gross-criticizes-total-return-bond-funds-he-popularized . The earlier article was discussed in a thread at that time: https://www.bogleheads.org/forum/viewtopic.php?t=388387 Thanks to member who pointed this out. Moderator Pops1860] Reminds me of, "death of equities". Perhaps a turning point in the debt markets? Anyway, not tradeable for me. I stick with my IPS and AA. ...

Mine are true to size.

My question seems simple: Is Vanguard paying Fidelity anything to administer Vanguard ETFs held in a Fidelity account? I assumed the answer was along the lines of "absolutely not", but now I'm not so sure especially if any fee charged by Fidelity is less than it would cost Vanguard to administer shares in-house. Does anyone know? We call can guess which is what I've been doing. Is a small portion of the ER Vanguard collects being paid to Fidelity in this scenario? From reading this thread, it seems like that's a possibility. No. Fidelity has arrangements with iShares. Part of the reason Fidelity doesn't have dozens and dozens of their own ETFs is because of that agreement. Fidelity already has dozens and dozens of ETFs. Unfortuna...

This article at etf.com talks more about the impact, and indicates that in actual numbers, it may be overstated: https://www.etf.com/sections/fidelity-plans-15-platform-fee-etf-issuers Still, Markiewicz downplayed the impact of the fee. AXS is a boutique ETF issuer with $1.1 billion under management, and Markiewicz said the 15% annual piece of ETF revenue “ends up being a lot less than you’d think.” For perspective, if the fee were applied to the $64 million AXS Astoria Inflation Sensitive ETF (PPI), which charges 76 basis points, Fidelity would collect just over $700. Sources familiar with the rollout of the new fee on ETF issuers say Fidelity is still working out the details on how it will track the fees it intends to collect, because the...

RogerRabbit wrote: ↑Fri May 03, 2024 4:37 pm We also have the case in some Fidelity employer retirement accounts that only the Vanguard version of an index fund is available, such as VIGAX, and not the Fidelity equivalent, such as FSPGX.

I think you mean available in your 401(k) plan. BrokerageLink is separate, and acts more like a regular brokerage account. For instance, I own individual TIPS and have in the past also owned Avantis and DFA ETFs.

It's a fee increase but it wasn't exactly cheap before at $75. You can build a three-fund portfolio easily using Fidelity index funds, and if you use the zero fee funds, you will only pay an expense ratio for the bond fund. You can always buy the ETF version of VIGAX.

Just received this from Fidelity. BrokerageLink is their program for letting investors buy almost anything in their 401(k). You are receiving this notice as our records indicate that you have a Fidelity BrokerageLink ® account, the self-directed brokerage account offered through your employee benefit plan. Certain fees relating to purchases in BrokerageLink will be changing effective June 3, 2024, as described below. No action is required. On June 3, 2024, fees will be increased for purchases of a limited number of mutual funds, and a new service fee will be applied for a limited number of exchange-traded funds (ETFs), available through BrokerageLink. These fees will be applicable to funds and ETFs offered by fund families that do not pay F...

the_wiki wrote: ↑Fri May 03, 2024 10:31 am It's wild to me that this is a 500 post thread about a 1 time $100 fee.

Some of us old timers remember account closing fees being a harbinger of other additional fees being added after.

An old timer with a better memory may remember which brokerage did this.

Maybe Vanguard should charge fees to open accounts as well? I don't see why shareholders of Vanguard funds should have to bear the expenses involved with someone opening new accounts.

Thesaints wrote: ↑Wed May 01, 2024 9:32 pm

not meeting Our Digital Interaction Expectations as stated in this Agreement

????

Vanguard has a section on "Digital Interaction Expectations" in this document:
https://personal1.vanguard.com/pdf/v718t.pdf

Unfortunately Vanguard decided to add DRM to their customer agreement so you can't copy-paste it, but this paragraph sticks out:

You understand that excessive reliance on Our phone associates for tasks that can be accomplished online may negatively impact Your customer service experience including, but not limited to delayed response times, additional fees, and possible Account termination.

Anyone looking to move better do it ASAP not that $100 is going to break anyone but it's the principal of the thing. Transfer everything but $0.01 ! ALthough the way its worded, even "transfer of assets" is subject to this fee, so yeah - may be do it before this change goes into effect! For me, I transferred to Fidelity 2 years ago, but use Fidelity for keeping cash in VUSXX (besides 529 and 401K accounts there).. so it does not matter at all. Right. The old trick to avoid transfer out fees was to do a "partial transfer of assets", leave a penny, and close the account. I never heard of a broker going after someone for the rest of the fee. Considering other brokers charge much less (if anything) for transfers out, Vangua...

Thanks to everyone who has talked about their experiences. 55 is coming sooner rather than later for me, and these communities sound ideal if you can find the right one.

I wonder what it will be like being both one of the older employees at a tech company and one of the youngest residents in a 55+ community

McQ wrote: ↑Tue Apr 16, 2024 11:43 pm Question for those reading the thread: are you full up, bought all the TIPS you (think) you need? What would it take for you to expand your allotment, as I am doing?

I'm almost full for my current strategy, which builds an income floor from my planned early retirement date until the time I collect SS (which opensocialsecurity suggests I do earlier than 70.) In that sense it's like a bond tent.

I think 2.5% would make me consider changing my asset allocation from 75/25 to 70/30 (maybe 65/35 - the SWR isn't that different) and extend TIPS into retirement years.

wellboy99 wrote: ↑Thu Apr 11, 2024 10:02 am Can I buy Tips ladder in fidelity brokerage link account? Try not to buy them in my taxable account.

Yes.

I bought the Jan 2029s (the ten year) just to get it over with.

I'm watching the Tencent adaptation of 3BP and I'm really enjoying it. Now I want to read the books, though I've heard that the Tencent version is faithful enough to the novels that I can jump right in.

loukycpa wrote: ↑Fri Apr 05, 2024 9:36 am Is there a calculator out there where you can plug in the TIPS you currently own and the expected cash flows by year in today's dollars?

https://eyebonds.info/downloads/pages/TIPSLadder.html does this, look at the "Yearly" tab after you've entered your inventory.

Thanks for this, looks like it is time to get another set of Corelles.

On the whole IMO the "Big Brother" paranoia is just that. Sure a lot of companies collect data...but it's a huge swath of statistics and trend analysis. It's rather arrogant IMO to think companies are going "hey everyone, LOOK, Joe Smith at 123 Maple St, Blahville USA is buying this and that and he has apps A B and C installed on his phone and his fav team is the Tigers and......" It's more like "OK we see that 70% of the people in this region have app ABC installed so we should try to target a similar app there" etc The raw data being logged is closer to "Joe Smith at 123 Maple St..." You can't figure out "70% of the people in this region have app ABC installed" without knowing where speci...

On the whole IMO the "Big Brother" paranoia is just that. Sure a lot of companies collect data...but it's a huge swath of statistics and trend analysis. It's rather arrogant IMO to think companies are going "hey everyone, LOOK, Joe Smith at 123 Maple St, Blahville USA is buying this and that and he has apps A B and C installed on his phone and his fav team is the Tigers and......" It's more like "OK we see that 70% of the people in this region have app ABC installed so we should try to target a similar app there" etc The raw data being logged is closer to "Joe Smith at 123 Maple St..." You can't figure out "70% of the people in this region have app ABC installed" without knowing where speci...

DIHP (DFA High Profitability) is one I've been looking at, as it looks like a better holding in taxable.

It's not just Google tracking you: https://proton.me/blog/outlook-is-micro ... on-service


I'm a happy Proton user. Am I still being tracked? Probably... but not as much, and I'm a harder target. Plus my emails aren't being read anymore.