Fund Expenses
A quote from fundgrades.com, an online fund analysis tool.
Expenses are 100% certain while past performance IS NOT an indication of future results. Is there any evidence that expenses are predictive? The truth is, NOTHING is predictive for picking winners. However, expenses do tend to have some statistical connection, and a not surprising relationship to keeping the odds of getting burned minimized. This statistical connection and relationship of expenses to results has been documented in numerous academic and industry studies.
fundgrades.com is a free online service that will help you decipher costs you don’t see directly in your mutual fund portfolio. They also have a proprietary fund analysis that may be helpful in sorting out the multitude of fund choices.
I am NOT familiar with their Wealth Care Capital arm. It is an RIA, Registered Investment Advisor, which means they sell advice for money. It does not mean any government agency has “approved” of any of their investment methodologies.
Based on a quick tour of their site, they appear to be genuinely trying to offer sensible, cost efficient solutions to both investors and their advisors. I don’t know anyone who works there and have no experience with their company. I consider it a huge positive that they offer what seems to be an unbiased look at funds and fund performance. On that basis, I can suggest you explore the fundgrades.com site and test drive a few of your mutual funds through the process.
Look in "Other Links" box for a link to fundgrades
Tuesday, April 22, 2008
Sunday, April 20, 2008
United Mistakes of America
A friend of mine e-mailed me a Hillary joke. It made me start thinking about politics, something I try to avoid. After I’ve listened to a politician, I have an irresistible urge to take a shower.
Any election is regrettably about electing the least objectionable candidate. I must disclaim, I haven’t voted for anything in 20 years. The decision was simple for me, anyone who wants to run for office is automatically not someone I would want to vote for. Anyone, for any reason.
Besides, I can’t get my mind around why people call them “leaders” and “public servants” in the same breath.
The differences between the blues and the reds are manufactured “issues” designed to keep third party candidates out of the races. Think about it. The major things government can do are:
Maintain the infrastructure, they don’t
Operate quality schools, they don’t
Provide universal heath care, they won’t
National defense would be infinitely cheaper and simpler if we didn’t go sticking our nose into everybody’s business, starting with the Shah of Iran after we helped him depose the Ayatollah Khomeini. That was helpful, wasn’t it?
Instead, they babble about abortion, flags, the ten commandments and family values. The immigrants who risk life, limb, and imprisonment to send a few bucks home the their families have family values. We have divorce lawyers, and juiced up hyper-parents trying to jam their kid into Harvard so she, too, can be sucked up by the machine.
Politicians piddle around endlessly with the tax code, creating all kinds of unintended consequences (recall the late 80’s real estate S&L meltdown after they pulled 15 year accelerated depreciation because it created too much unnecessary real estate? That would be at the helm of his majesty Ronald Reagan.)
-recall the stock option debacle of playing hide the money and pretend accounting which led to the tech crash, Enron, WorldCom, Tyco et. al.
-recall the tax advantaged hedge fund rules that incentivized enormous risk and quite nearly, once again, melted down the financial system.
-recall the deregulation of airlines which led to seats the size of postage stamps, surly ‘flight attendants’ handing out miniscule bags of peanuts which morphed into tasteless pretzels because the chronically allergic nuts can’t be on the same plane as an edible one. Want to give a starving family a laugh? Tell them your troubles with lactose intolerance and peanut allergies.
Deregulation created multiple and repeated bankruptcies (how can the same airline, Continental, go bankrupt three times? Isn’t there an incompetence penalty of some sort?) Heckofajob Brownie!
-recall the, so far, one TRILLION dollars in off budget debt we’ve issued to fight a war the (oxymoron alert) Iraqi army mostly refuses to. They don’t have time to fight. Too busy carting off bundles of our money in graft and plain theft. Can somebody somewhere understand, you can’t fix the world’s shit at any price?
The most amazing illogic I’ve heard recently is that we have to keep putting more troops at risk to honor the troops we sent to get killed in the first place. How stupid is that?
J. Krishnamurti said it 50 years ago, “If you really loved your children, there would be no war.”
Of course, the politicians are us, not some ‘other’ people. We are gullible and lazy, greedy and indifferent. We pay a heavy price for it.
Which brings me full circle to the beginning. You may fairly ask, if you don’t vote, what are you doing to fix these issues? Nothing, with all my heart. I suggest, if nobody votes, maybe the politicians would have to start listening to voters instead of corporate lobbyists. Maybe they would be forced to have a real choice of candidates, not merely two.
See, when there’s only two viable parties, it doesn’t matter how many politicians start running, in the end you are getting two choices. You are getting two choices financed by massive lobbies, virtually equally. Look at the bigger donors, they give out of the left and the right hand. Campaign “issues” are crap to rile up voters. Once the campaign is over, the elected answer to the same masters. Voters are just a necessary nuisance along the way.
Any election is regrettably about electing the least objectionable candidate. I must disclaim, I haven’t voted for anything in 20 years. The decision was simple for me, anyone who wants to run for office is automatically not someone I would want to vote for. Anyone, for any reason.
Besides, I can’t get my mind around why people call them “leaders” and “public servants” in the same breath.
The differences between the blues and the reds are manufactured “issues” designed to keep third party candidates out of the races. Think about it. The major things government can do are:
Maintain the infrastructure, they don’t
Operate quality schools, they don’t
Provide universal heath care, they won’t
National defense would be infinitely cheaper and simpler if we didn’t go sticking our nose into everybody’s business, starting with the Shah of Iran after we helped him depose the Ayatollah Khomeini. That was helpful, wasn’t it?
Instead, they babble about abortion, flags, the ten commandments and family values. The immigrants who risk life, limb, and imprisonment to send a few bucks home the their families have family values. We have divorce lawyers, and juiced up hyper-parents trying to jam their kid into Harvard so she, too, can be sucked up by the machine.
Politicians piddle around endlessly with the tax code, creating all kinds of unintended consequences (recall the late 80’s real estate S&L meltdown after they pulled 15 year accelerated depreciation because it created too much unnecessary real estate? That would be at the helm of his majesty Ronald Reagan.)
-recall the stock option debacle of playing hide the money and pretend accounting which led to the tech crash, Enron, WorldCom, Tyco et. al.
-recall the tax advantaged hedge fund rules that incentivized enormous risk and quite nearly, once again, melted down the financial system.
-recall the deregulation of airlines which led to seats the size of postage stamps, surly ‘flight attendants’ handing out miniscule bags of peanuts which morphed into tasteless pretzels because the chronically allergic nuts can’t be on the same plane as an edible one. Want to give a starving family a laugh? Tell them your troubles with lactose intolerance and peanut allergies.
Deregulation created multiple and repeated bankruptcies (how can the same airline, Continental, go bankrupt three times? Isn’t there an incompetence penalty of some sort?) Heckofajob Brownie!
-recall the, so far, one TRILLION dollars in off budget debt we’ve issued to fight a war the (oxymoron alert) Iraqi army mostly refuses to. They don’t have time to fight. Too busy carting off bundles of our money in graft and plain theft. Can somebody somewhere understand, you can’t fix the world’s shit at any price?
The most amazing illogic I’ve heard recently is that we have to keep putting more troops at risk to honor the troops we sent to get killed in the first place. How stupid is that?
J. Krishnamurti said it 50 years ago, “If you really loved your children, there would be no war.”
Of course, the politicians are us, not some ‘other’ people. We are gullible and lazy, greedy and indifferent. We pay a heavy price for it.
Which brings me full circle to the beginning. You may fairly ask, if you don’t vote, what are you doing to fix these issues? Nothing, with all my heart. I suggest, if nobody votes, maybe the politicians would have to start listening to voters instead of corporate lobbyists. Maybe they would be forced to have a real choice of candidates, not merely two.
See, when there’s only two viable parties, it doesn’t matter how many politicians start running, in the end you are getting two choices. You are getting two choices financed by massive lobbies, virtually equally. Look at the bigger donors, they give out of the left and the right hand. Campaign “issues” are crap to rile up voters. Once the campaign is over, the elected answer to the same masters. Voters are just a necessary nuisance along the way.
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