Recent content by Grep

Speaking as someone who went to top-three public and private (Ivy League) schools, I can say that the public school was far more concerned about maximizing the value to society delivered per student than the private one was. At the latter, collecting fees and not interfering with the...

As a Professor at a prominent research University, I'm bound to defend those who wish to study what society deems impractical from a monetary standpoint. There's a place for artists, musicians, poets and dreamers, and the world would be a poorer place without them and institutions that will...

Preface: I put myself through my undergraduate and graduate degree programs with essentially no help from anyone, including from financial aid. By working hard, I took on very little debt, and paid that off immediately. This was VERY hard on me as an undergraduate, when it's hard for a kid...

Clifp, I wouldn't read too much into how Mr. Geithner's case was handled. It was, one might imagine, a "special" case. On the other hand, yes, the IRS is a pussycat compared to many state's tax boards (like mine). As to capital gains, I increased my allocation to stocks at the lows and...

Wow, I had a very different take on the article, unless we're collectively being sarcastic. It seemed to me that half of what he proposed is impossible, and the other half will never happen, at least not definitively. But then, I'm so sick of black swan this, black swan that. He's had his 15...

NW-Bound: Vanguard will manually send you the "adequate" documentation identifying specific shares if you call them up (or at least they will if you are a higher-tier customer). Once you take care of getting the documentation, you go ahead and sell on your own the normal way. It's a huge pain...

Thanks Audrey, Ah, yes, now I dimly remember that basis issue (hasn't come up for me yet). I've been using the specific shares method, with manual book-keeping. I don't automatically reinvest dividends, etc., to keep that more manageable. Instead, I've used that money to make less frequent...

Thanks Audrey, Please pardon what may be elementary questions. First, can you explain the above point further? How do bond fund distributions (by this you mean dividends or sales of shares?) increase the basis? Then, suppose that through market turmoil, some (stock) shares are up, and some...

Yes, in tax-deferred, there's no point to a basis (from a tax standpoint) and it don't matter what you do. The question is about taxable accounts. Thanks, though.

Audrey, I'm curious about your strategy for rebalancing in taxable at that point. I'd assume that you would have some shares underwater, some about even, and some up, plus potentially some substantial paper losses due to tax-loss-harvesting. So what would you sell, in what order, and with what...

I see. Are we talking about placing multiple orders that are only executed en masse? If so, there is a certain logic to having a single fee, especially if the orders were at the same price. But if the orders are at different prices, I'd still say a per-trade fee is not unreasonable. Regardless...

True, but it's a bit late to join that party now. I'd like to know what the next one is! (No, I don't believe it's going to be lithium, unless driven by fools. Oh, wait...).

I also did this, as well as having increased my positions in Small Cap Value and Emerging Markets. All three have done well during the past month. I expect to hold VGSIX (in tax-advantaged) for a while, if only for the dividends. I'm not hopeful for a continued rush higher in NAV, however...

I wasn't even aware of this, but it doesn't seem so unreasonable to charge per trade rather than per security with multiple trades. Vanguard is clearly not the broker of choice for day traders. They have a certain corporate philosophy in which they discourage frequent trading. Their 60 day wait...

There are two camps of index fund users, those who go with market capitalization and those who "slice and dice." Market capitalization is the cheapest and most efficient in a theoretical sense, and it's the easiest - just buy Vanguard's Total Stock Market fund plus their All-World ex-US for...