oddballstocks

Agreed, I'd hate a cold calculated rational world devoid of emotion. The best things in my life looked at through a calculating rational financial lens would be considered mistakes, but without them I couldn't imagine life. For example, getting married, having kids, spending money on hobbies, vacations, taking days off to relax etc. Rationally I'm better off maximizing my time, working, getting more money etc. I'd rather enjoy life. The grocery bills have exploded with three boys, the time I get with them is invaluable. Rationally I'm better with my nose in a book learning wisdom or something..no thanks. I'll take a beer with friends any day over sitting alone in a library. And I like to read!

Is this a pedigree place or is it the type of place that only cares about results? I've come to understand 90% of working on Wall Street is what college you went to and what connections your family has. There are other places out there (and very well represented on here) that were started by non-traditional managers. If your dream is to just get a job in finance get the best MBA, network and get working on climbing the ladder. Alternatively if you are creative, a bit of a hustler and can create your own unique value proposition you can skip the MBA and ladder all together. Start to research and write your ideas publicly. If your ideas are good and you can write you will be offered jobs and money. If you can't write or have bad ideas then it's worth reconsidering if this is a good path for yourself. That 10% of Wall Street that doesn't care about degrees cares about results. If you can deliver your background doesn't matter. It's also not hard work. You could read endlessly and spin your wheels on marginal ideas. Or you could focus and bang out a few killer ideas that are offbeat but good. Those offbeat ideas will garner recognition and get you further than reading another KO or BRK or flavor of the day value 10-K. Did you develop software? If so I'd try to stick with that, find an intersection. With software you can create actual things of value for clients. Money managers don't known if they've provided value for years, and sometimes years of value is destroyed at once. You can create products that create value now and continue to create value. If you're looking for prestige run for the local city council or school board. Everyone where you live will know you, you will have real power over a small locality and will be treated like a king. In money management no matter how much you have you will always want more. And outside of CNBC and a few investing groupies no one knows anyone besides Buffett.

Wonder if this is similar to Bill Gross. What you think is happening isn't what's truly happening. There was an article in the CFA magazine years ago where Gross spilled too many details on how he runs his fund. While everyone thought the guy was a bond guru he was really something different. If I remember correctly he was operating more like a bank. He sold these custom designed short term options on bonds he held and then reinvested the proceeds in long dated stuff. He was able to gain leverage from this and there was some aspect of the options that made it exceedingly unlikely that they'd ever be called. If you're in the bond world and can safely leverage yourself some you'll massively outperform. I don't think this is how he started the fund, but it seemed like this is the approach he took once he got much bigger and it was harder to pick individual bonds in size to outperform. The guy was essentially running a backdoor banking operation. The Rentech articles I've seen are always along the lines of "the company has super secret algos that beat the market" with no discussion beyond that. Someone sent me an email years ago saying they knew Rentech was doing some massive quant investing in net-nets worldwide and that helped them. It wouldn't surprise me if they were doing market making type operations as well. My guess is it was some combination of those two with some leverage. The LTCM guys blew up because they hit a black swan type situation. If Rentech hasn't hit anything like that they can keep printing money. I think the mystique of these guys is they hired super smart people who invested some magic formula that prints them money. The strategy is infinitely scalable and no one can figure it out. I doubt that's true, but I also doubt they want the world knowing how they are truly making money. It's probably a lot more pedestrian and boring.

This is a fascinating thread, and it's showing me how little of Canadian borrowing I understand. Is it common for someone to pay 10% to get a second mortgage? Usually the rate on a second here is higher, but not much. We have had two (different houses), both about 1% higher than the first. So if the first is 4.25% second would be 5.5% or so. Unsecured credit is cheap as well, someone with good credit can get a car loan in the 0-5% range. An unsecured loan for home improvement is cheap, saw a sign at Allegheny Valley Bank offering a 10yr loan at 2.49% up to $50k max. I'd always heard of hard money lenders as people who charge high rates but can get a lot of cash on the spot. For example if you're a real estate investor and bid on houses at an auction. You might have a hard money lender who can come up with $100-200k in cash on the spot and tide you over until you get traditional financing on the house. You pay a 10-20% rate, but it's only for a month. But understandably your situation in Canada is much different than here. Is it hard to get credit at a bank? Why would someone come to you for a loan verses going to a bank?

I've used TaxAct in the past. It's very simple, did my taxes correctly and even handled business taxes my first year. I've since moved to a CPA and they're worth every penny. TaxAct captures a lot of the things people view as confusing, marriage, houses, jobs etc.

There is also a lot of volume you never see reported for illiquid stocks as well. Best way to know is to toss a bid out there and see what hits. These things are more efficient than you'd think. Maybe there are a few odd trades, but in my experience it's market makers putting out a required bid when they don't want to sell. The quotes are sometimes just the bids.

In some ways I feel like DTEJD1997 completely trolled this forum. The guy is a coin dealer and I believe owns a coin store. There was a thread on this a year or two back. He's talking his book like anyone else here talking some stock. I think it'd be interesting to know how many people on here could really pull together $4-5k in a day or two (probably most, but this is also a board filled with rich people). I worked at a place with stock options that needed to be exercised with cash and in talking to co-workers the common response was "who has $3k in cash laying around?" The idea that anyone even had that sort of money available was absurd.

Or perhaps he simply prefers to have a few cash sales because there's no traceable documentation which could trip him up when he fails to report the revenue from that job to the IRS. It's a nice little boon to his financial situation to charge you $5k to do your roof, not report the revenue and then apply the $3k of costs (for which he will certainly have documentation) against the revenue that he must declare from the clients who do pay him by cheque. But at least the explanation that he provided to you is less sleazy than the simpler alternative. Seriously, this is the correct reason. Supplier credit? Give me a break, that's being naive. He's worked with that same truck driver for months/years. He says listen, I'll pay you when I get paid. Either do the job and get paid after I get paid, or don't do the job and don't get paid at all. The truck driver knows that. And he's buying materials out of pocket from Home Depot, whether you pay him by cash or check. He's giving you a break on cash because it causes him less of a headache with taxes and dealing with cash flow. This guy is a contractor who would rather be on his couch than your roof. He looks you over once, and figures really quickly how much of a break he needs to give u to cough up in cash. I'm guessing on a 5K job it's about $200 bucks. $300 if you endeared yourself to him and asked about his family and shared a cigarette and beer with him. Supplier credit? C'mon now. +1 ;D The only supplier credit he is sharing is a small portion of the taxes he is avoiding by getting paid in cash. Most likely he hasn't even heard of the term "supplier credit" Wow, quite the pile on here. Yes tax avoidance is what everyone thinks of with paying cash. I've had contractors like that, I watched a driveway guy take my cash and then divvy it up to his workers on the spot. On the other hand supplier the materials and credit is a real thing. A good friend worked with this at a giant materials company. My friend said supplier credit was one of the major reasons contractors went out of business. They kept rolling their credit, it grew, eventually they couldn't pay and they'd close up shop. The company (publicly traded) loved it, they charged insane rates and milked contractors. The credit was like a drug to these guys. They needed to keep the wheels spinning with the hope they could get ahead, but you never could. I need to ask, but I believe there are two prices for raw materials, the cash price and the credit price. The company knows credit customers will eventually go under and marks up the price accordingly. Maybe I'm naive. If the guy seems shady (and I've met a LOT of shady guys) and the tax avoidance is the cash reason I'm looking for a bigger discount. Some of these guys are 100% up front about the fact they're avoiding taxes, in that case I want more than a 5% discount, I want a 25% discount. This guy doesn't take credit cards and went on a rant about accepting cards. As someone who has a business that takes credit cards I agree 100% with the rant. Cards are a pain, about 25% of them don't work when you try to run them for a renewal. They expire, they need to be maintained. If someone pays me with a check and an invoice I will cut them a break for the lack of hassle. Credit cards suck. At the end of the day I don't really care. The house has a VERY steep roof and other quotes we received were absurdly high because the guys didn't want the job. This guy gave a competitive price and was willing to do the job, and I saved a few hundred bucks by paying in bills verses a check.

If you are aware of the problems of plastic, and are moving towards cash...Then you will realize there are all sorts of problems with cash too. One of the major problems is that over long periods of time, cash simply does not hold it's value. Gold & silver do hold their value over long periods of time. Cash also still has a counter party risk. While the risk is MUCH lower than with plastic, it is still there. Gold & Silver don't have this problem. Moving some amount of wealth into physical gold & silver can counter some of the problems with holding large amounts of cash. I have good amounts of silver & gold. I think people that DON'T are extremely foolish/naive. If there is enough interest in this, perhaps it can be stock for yet another thread... One of my fascinations lately has been with the online "stacker" community, with many people who seemingly put all of their disposable income into precious metals. It seems crazy to me but it's quite a sight to see the huge hoards of precious metals that people keep in their homes. Any links?

I loved this rant, completely agree! Cash is king. To pile on: -We are putting a roof on a house we own. The contractor quoted us a check price and a cash price. The cash price was a few hundred dollars lower. Why? Because he could pay the truck driver and materials on the spot and doesn't need to rely on suppler credit. He said for the lack of hassle and cost savings he passes it straight on. I happily paid cash. -When I sell anything used (car, furniture) I always demand cash, I won't take anything else, not even a cashiers check. Cash only. Downside of cash: -Banks are making it harder to withdrawal. I went in last week and needed to put out $12k for a few different things. I was told in the future to give them a few days notice if I ever wanted to do this again. This is crazy to me. I'm shopping for a used car, will of course pay cash. If I find a car I don't want to tell a seller "hey can you wait a week so my bank can figure out how to get me $10k in $100s?" Of course not, I need to be able to pull the cash out when I need it. I can understand a limit of something like $50k or $100k, but $10k? -I purchased an RV six years ago for $3,500. We were using PNC bank at the time, they wouldn't let us withdrawal the cash without advance notice, and also without another $3,500 in the account. It was a mess, they made my wife jump through hoops for an entire afternoon trying to get that money out. The teller told us we should have just pulled the daily max of $500 for seven days. To my earlier point "hi seller, can you wait a week on this? I need to pull out $500/day until I get to $3500, please be patient." Of course not, that thing would have been gone. I'll say this, PNC was impossible to get cash out of. I use Dollar Bank now, a local bank, they at least let me take out over $10k at once, they had to consult the manager, but it happened. I'd probably need the PNC CEO's stamp of approval to get $10k out in cash there.

Hands down this is the best way to go. Have a UTMA for the oldest, need to set up accounts for the other two. You just put money in there and it builds up. My plan is to encourage my oldest to save with a matching type system. You earn $5, save $2.50 and I'll give him another $5 on the match, or something even more generous. But the key is the match and savings go to the UTMA. They can get at it at 18, and that's fine with me. I think in some ways it's a good check on parenting. Does the thought of your kid getting money they saved at 18 frighten you? If so then why? And that's an opportunity to teach them or get involved. We've encouraged our kids to have the mentality that work = pay. We have expectations around the house, but jobs above and beyond can be done for a price. Help me bag the billions of leaves in the front yard? That's a few extra bucks. Help straighten up the garage? Same thing, more cash.

Your attitude isn't unpopular, but if these are just forgiven what happens to the people who paid them, or those who paid cash for school? To me this seems like a very quick way to drive a huge wedge between age groups. Those above 35-40 have a small amount or no school debt, and those under have a lot. But the old guys running companies are in the older bucket, any chance there could be some spiteful discrimination? My wife and I don't have any school debt. But if the government is just going to give out money why don't they just pay off my house or something? At the same time what universities are charging is bordering on comical. In the grab for as much cash as possible universities have done themselves in. What used to be a third-rail view, that going to college wasn't necessary is now catching on. I think they've made their own bed. I would hesitate to hire someone with a lot of debt including school debt. People who are skating close to the edge can quickly end up in financial distress which has repercussions for work performance as well as increases the risk of fraud or theft. Maybe it's not popular to say that out loud, but it's something I think about.

I have a degree in Systems Analysis, think a weird hybrid Computer Science and Math degree. I have a minor in Sociology. It's been 12/13 years since I graduated and looking back the Sociology was FAR more valuable than Systems Analysis. The Systems Analysis taught me algorithms and assembly language and how to think about computers, but I learned the real tricks of the trade working. Sociology taught me how to think, how to write, how to view things. My Oracle 7/8 knowledge is useless know, but writing and knowing how to think have become more valuable over time. Someone who writes and communicates well is regarded as smarter than someone who has more raw brain power but struggles to express their ideas.

What are good jobs/careers that average Joe and Jane can pursue based on "on the job training and/or other non-degree training"? Is this really something that can cover a significant percentage of middle class? I doubt it, but I'm willing to suspend my disbelief if there are wide ranging good examples. :) Trade jobs are in very high demand. You can make $50-60k fairly easily in a trade. Working at Costco, you make up to $25/hr. Husband/wife at Costco and we're talking $100k combined salary. You don't need a college education for that. Starting bulldozer drivers make $60k (someone offered me this job, was more than I was making in software dev at the time). Crane operators make $120k, not the giant cranes, but standard crane guys at a construction site. Worked with a guy who's now an exec who barely scraped by in HS. Got a job in tech and went from there. I know a LOT of people making well into six-figures who were self-taught developers. One guy wrote the core of NASDAQ's trading system, left college after one year. Insanely smart guy, apparently college wasn't necessary, NASDAQ still using his code. Said person also wrote SAC's systems, which is an interesting conversation he loves to have off the record. A lot of sales jobs don't require a college degree. If you are personable and are knowledgable enough about the product and can deliver results you'll be hired. A friend of a friend owns a nursery, did extremely well for himself. Purchased lots outside the city in development's path, would resell for millions. Guy can't read, his wife does anything requiring reading, yet he's a millionaire. I've come to the conclusion in life that smart and motivated people will do well regardless of their education. They will blaze their own path forward. College is great for someone with little initiative because it automatically bumps them to a level they couldn't get to from just working on their own. College is necessary for STEM type things, but beyond that I'm not sure anymore, especially at today's prices. For myself I'm positive my outcome in life would be no different if I hadn't finished college. I had an internship at a startup during school, they offered me my job before finishing, said they didn't care if I just dropped out and started working. Subsequent companies have all said they don't care about degrees, and going forward I only expect to work for myself. Finishing college was a nice cherry on top of all the money paid, but held no true value for my career.

Paul, Don't know much about Columbus except that merging onto and off of 270 going to my in-laws in Cincy is always a harrowing experience. Bad highway layout with the worst of the Midwest drivers. The Prius has something crazier than a CVT. Essentially one fixed gear and all the gearing ratios done via the electric motor. Here's a nice write up http://prius.ecrostech.com/original/Understanding/ContinuouslyVariableTransmission.htm I'd love for electric cars to become economical and catch on. Even gas/electric. I think my dream is a full sized pickup body with a motor that can generate hundreds of pounds of torque and has a long range for cross country trips. The torque and electric motor can generate is mind blowing. I don't know why we do t have those instead of enormous V8 engines that drink gas. Think motor in a diesel-electric locomotive. There are some conversion kits out there that have a small gas tank plus an electric motor. I think this is how the Volt works va the Tesla which is just batteries. Nate

Thanks, I have a good memory, once something's up there it seems to stick. Here's the real trick, I just talk to a ton of people about almost anything. I learned the intricacies of transmissions last winter. I go skiing once a year to Utah, stay in the same hotel (comes with meals included!) etc. Anyways each day I like to relax in the hot tub, and naturally there are others in there and I'm outgoing and strike up a conversation. Last year I was in there with a transmission designer and Nissan/Toyota mechanic. We spoke for probably 1.5 hours about how they work, why companies are making the switch, car repairs and anything else car related. I had a small base of knowledge that I built off for this. It was interesting and I've read some since. At a basic level a CVT has been around for decades, think your lawn mower engine. A CVT has an almost infinite amount of gears or speeds, whereas a traditional engine has five or six. Companies went this way because they're lighter, and a CVT has more precise gearing that can help with gas mileage. The switch was 'forced' by the government with the increased fuel efficiency standards. Car companies saved weight with the actual device, plus gained a few MPG. What's lost is reliability. From surfing Nissan forums I've seen that 95k is where they start to run into issues. They're relatively new. What's interesting is Nissan lengthened the warranty on them to 120k, they had a lot of complaints. It seems instead of fixing the root cause they just lengthened the warranty. This mechanic was interesting. He was on Nissans for 25 years, then switched to Toyota. He said the Renaultization of Nissan killed their quality legacy. He went to Toyota and had some interesting observations. He said in terms of overbuilt vehicles you want either a truck of Prius. He said the Prius is the truck quality build of sedan. They're bullet proof. If you buy a used one with lower miles you don't need to worry about the battery. I considered one to replace the Malibu, but they aren't great in snow, and I like to drive during snow storms in West Virginia (on neglected back roads) to get good snow. A Prius that struggled in deeper snow on grades isn't it for me, but for almost anyone else it's ideal. The Camry is good too. In terms of car length it's all over the map. You want something well maintained. Dealers are required to clean the glovebox when they get a car. To get maintenance records you need to buy from a private seller. My dad had a 1995 Lumina that cracked 300k miles, a 1998 Malibu that crapped out at 280k miles and a Camry he gave to my brother that has 275k miles on it and is still going. People claim Hondas last forever, but here's my test. Go on Craigslist and look at the $1500-2k cars. You rarely find a Honda with over 200k miles for sale. You regularly find Toyotas with high mileage. You also find trucks that high as well. I saw someone here trying to sell a 4Runner with 250k miles for $5k, that's insane, but it's not uncommon. Cheap cars on craigslist to me are the ceiling of lifetime. When someone is dumping a car for $1500 it's usually toast. So for example if most Ford's at $1500 have 130k miles you can figure they last about that long. Another way to go is buy used luxury. I've looked at used Lexus cars. The theory is people who buy luxury cars take better care of them. The downside is repairs are expensive. Lexus comes out tops in dependability rankings, Porshe #2 and Toyota #3. Bottom of the list is Land Rover. And anecdotally this is true, we had two friends with Land Rovers. They began falling apart at 70k miles. I mean huge repairs in the multiple thousands. They are a dealer's dream in terms of service revenue. I'm casually looking to replace my own Malibu, it's a piece of junk. If I were going sedan I'd be looking at a Camry or Prius. You can get a 2009 Camry around here with 70k miles for $7k. If you drive 15k miles a year you're looking at maybe 10 years before you'd want to dump it for $1500. That's about $550/yr to drive. It's not bad. You can get deals on higher end used cars that are slightly older. Reason being there isn't much of a market for them. Someone who buys a Lexus wants a new one, not one from 2008. That said one of the most reliable cars in the world is the late 1990s Lexus ES. You can pick those up use now for a few grand. It has older styling, but they're sedan tanks. I think you're in Cincinnati right? There's a place on Montgomery road right past Fields-Ertel that has really good deals on used cars:http://www.mgmimports.com/used-cars-dayton-ohio-for-sale/ My mother-in-law lives near there, we drive by often, I like to browse their inventory. They buy higher end cars and have decent prices.

Make sure it is a Stealership you trust, and/or make sure there is a reasonable time/mileage warranty if you are going to buy a certified pre-owned car. You may also consider inquiring to see if they have the maintenance records for the previous owner to see what work was performed and when. Ha, love the attitude, reminds me of my dad buying a car. I remember being at a dealer with him and him saying to the used car guy "I can't believe you don't have velvet elbow patches and a plaid sport coat." Look, you'll have both honest dealers and dishonest private sellers. I've run into both. I'd go to a higher volume dealer, they're focused on volume not playing games to crank you down for the last cent. That said the car business has changed dramatically. People still think it's 1988 out there, the Internet and open pricing has reduced what a dealer can make on the front end to a few hundred dollars. The incentive for a sales guy isn't to make much from you, it's to get vehicles out the door so they get their monthly bonus from the manufacturer. Certified pre-owned is a scam in my view. Get the checklist online. Their 400 point inspection involves things like "ensure functioning headlights" that's something you'd do anyways. The certified inspections don't do much if anything mechanical. Ask if certified pre-owned means they get the car on a lift and start poking around, I can answer, they don't. Yet there's a branding premium to that. Save the cash and buy non-certified. Take the car to a trusted mechanic and pay $100 for them to get it on a lift and inspect. Ironically dealers do this sort of thing themselves, a pre-sale inspection, yet they don't do it on their own cars they're selling. I'd stay stay away from the Accord, they have a CVT in there. Maybe you get 95k on that tranny, maybe 125k, but then you're buying a new tranny. Get an older Nissan before the CVT switch, or go Toyota. If the CVT thing doesn't make sense google how transmissions work for 10-15m, you will thank yourself. In short a traditional transmission has metal gears, CVT has belts, like rubber bands that expand and contract. Which lasts longer, a piece of machined metal or a rubber band? Snap the band and the tranny is shot. Honda is known for transmission issues. Re: Biking - Used to bike to work when I was in an office. Absolutely loved it. I'd bike in with work clothes in a pannier along with a laptop, then I'd change when I got there. Now that I'm at home I will run or bike at lunch, just for exercise. Even if you can bike a few days a week it can reduce expenses a lot. In Pittsburgh it's $6-14 to park a day, each parking garage has free bike racks saving fuel and parking expense. There's a dedicated bike trail from the north and south into town avoiding all roads. I would park at the trailhead and ride in. My commute was a few minutes shorter biking compared to sitting in traffic. Shorter, healthier, cheaper, not sure why it wasn't more popular. You can adapt for cold weather and snow. I know guys who have bikes with snow tires for riding in winter.

That's a great memo. And I think IRR is the correct metric by which to judge the performance of someone like an individual investor, who is completely in control of his/her own capital. IRR, or something that's abstractly similar (ROIC, ROE, etc.), is what we all use to judge all of these companies we're investing in. Why wouldn't we use it on ourselves? The time weighted metric just seems like a way to avoid the truth. Most individual investors are absolutely not fully control of their own capital. You can't change when you receive your salary, or when you get an inheritance or a gift etc. If you got a big gift in 2009 you just got lucky, while if you got it in 2007 you got unlucky. If you don't try to time the market does it make sense to try to measure that? Agree with this, that is unless people are literally hoarding money, storing it away without ever intending to use it that timing is really out of our control. I have no idea how I did in 2015, calculating it will be a mess because money was moving in and out throughout the year. We purchased a house halfway through the year and I sold some stocks to facilitate the purchase. Would I have done better if I hadn't sold them? Maybe, but then again I wouldn't be living where I want to. In my view the purpose of money is to work for you, and in this case investing enabled us to buy a place we wanted. I'd like to think I can control the timing of my account, but I can't. When we found a house I couldn't wait until the year end to make performance nice and tidy.

There will always be another opportunity. Investors look at 2008 like it was a single event that will never repeat because since then the market has straight lined up. We'll have crashes and downturns again. And just like in 2008 most investors will find reasons to not invest because of 'the fear'. If you look hard enough there is almost always a market in a recession, but there are also valid reasons to avoid said market. That's what makes value investing difficult. If you want to invest in value type investments (not GARP stuff) you'll need to invest when there's a lot of fear and uncertainty about the future.

Where and how do you drive? If you're mostly commuting and live in an area with decent weather I think a Camry is fine. I had an Accord, tranny blew out at 140k, clear coat peeled, not satisfied. Honda went to the CVT transmission, I'd avoid those if possible. I like Toyota trucks, Sequoia, Tacoma, 4runner. But then again we purchased our main vehicle (Sequoia) to pull a trailer, and drive during snowstorms in the mountains to ski, and haul a bunch of people around town. We don't do much day to day driving, I work from home and my wife walks my son to school. Gas mileage is irrelevant to us and my use case is probably different from most. In the north the biggest determinant to how long you can drive a car is how rusty it is when you buy it. Try to buy a used car with as little rust as possible. My 03 Malibu (that I put 3-4k miles on a year) has a rusted through frame. Thing is a piece of junk, maybe worth $500-1k if lucky. If I replace it I'll be looking for something garage kept with zero rust, or just surface rust. I had a cracked intake manifold on that thing at one point, honestly I'm shocked it hasn't blown the head gasket yet. Chevy's and Nissan's are head-gasket time bombs. If you're buying used get under the car and really check it out. I look for rust, but also any fluid weeping or strange wet spots. If you're buying high mileage take it to a dealer and have them compression test the cylinders. Buy used from a private party and make sure they have the maintenance records.

Looking at my example bond a bit more. Fidelity has pricing history, they include their markup in historical trades. On Fidelity people are buying with a 13-15% yield. Quotes from Bloomberg are yielding 17.5%. That 3% spread up front equals a 12% lower return. That's like investing in a stock at $50 and when it comes time to sell retail investors can trade at $88 and professionals at $100. Retail investors would be incensed, yet no one bats and eye in the bond world. Maybe there are good deals when the bonds are at 50 or lower. I try to avoid being the patsy at the table. Maybe you guys have figured out how to be the patsy and make it work, but for me it doesn't.

Let me guess, a bond broker? It's like a financial advisor saying "Don't worry about the 5% load, it'll work itself out over the life of the fund." Maybe it will, but getting hit on the front and back side is killer. ETF's are loathed here, but they've taught us one thing, commissions and costs matter. A low cost ETF is going to outperform a mutual fund with a load on costs alone. I think the same is true for HY and retail investors. Unless you're moving a lot of money around a HY ETF might capture most of the gains. Of course there's no sexy factor to that. I think the point is if you're moving $10-20k into each position the spreads and commissions are material. Now if each position is $250k or $500k the cost is probably lower and doesn't hurt as much. My hunch is that anyone investing more than a million or two into these things has a professional relationship where they can get better prices. It's the small fries trying to buy these things who are eaten alive.

My understanding is that these bonds are marked up significantly to retail investors. Here's an example, this is random. In Fidelity I searched for bonds in the 6-15% yield range. First on the list Southwestern Energy 7 1/2 2/1/18's. Bloomberg quote: 82.797/82.797 Fidelity: 85.22/86 IB: 82.28/106.98 (a bit of a weird spread) Then Fidelity charges a commission on top of that. On the side of Fidelity's trading screen they have a thing "Third-party price" that looks suspiciously close to the quote from Bloomberg. They have an about window explaining how the price came from a third party system and it's likely you can't buy it at that price. Here's the problem, a fund can buy at 82.797, I can see the trades. A retail investor is going to end up paying about 3% more, plus a commission. For an equity maybe that's not the end of the world. But in the fixed income world you lock in your yield when you buy. And paying 3% more on the purchase (and the sale) really cuts into what you can make.

Maybe the ego club? The launch and landing was incredible. I watched most of it live, then watched it again with my sons this morning. My oldest loves space and to see this stuff happening monthly is incredible. My wife commented that there was no progress for so long, and now suddenly it's going crazy. This is how it should be. I'm excited to see where we are a few years out at this pace.

Yeah, I've done this. Fidelity will let you convert any number of shares of a holding into a physical certificate. The process is simple: 1) Call Fidelity and tell them you want a certificate 2) The Rep will read you a list of reasons why it's a bad idea. The rep is right, listen to them and consider if you REALLY want this. 3) About a month or two later you'll receive certified mail with your cert. That's it. Don't lose it or forget about it.