> no particular connection between a fund's risk and tax exposure
They seem to be posting a lot of word-salad comments, but assuming good faith, they're saying these are separate downsides of mutual funds over ETFs.
Mutual funds trade on your behalf, like an ETF, but they pass through the gains and losses. That can be painful if they realise those gains when you'd rather not have them, or crystallise losses when you don't have offsets. In this, they're correct. On risk, they're wrong--you can stuff nonsense into ETFs as comfortably as mutual funds. What they're indirectly criticising here is active versus passive management, which is its own can of worms.
The only advantage of a mutual fund over an ETF is it provides friction to trading. Otherwise, they're a vestige from the cusp of computerised portfolio management. (If you have more than ~$1 to 10mm, you should be rolling your own portfolio in most cases.)
This account posts a lot of off-topic straw-man arguments, and wild context guesses like regular bot slop.
My issue with bank-fool recommend mutual funds is primarily they are often a self-serving structured product. i.e. the odds a sucker never sees a consistent behavior is far greater than random chance, and a unconstrained arbitrary guess of a chicken would likely perform better in the markets.
> bank-fool recommend mutual funds…the odds a sucker never sees a consistent behavior is far greater than random chance
Again, you’re criticising active management in general. (And seem to be mixing up alpha and tracking error. Passively-managed funds aren’t aiming to outperform the market.)
There is no evidence actively-managed ETFs (or hedge funds, for that matter) outperform actively-managed mutual funds. There is also not a material difference in tracking error between their passive products.
ETFs are a retail product. Like mutual funds. Make financial decisions based on the product, not the wrapper. (Also, where in the fuck does one go to get mutual funds in 2025 anyway?!)
> This account posts a lot of off-topic straw-man arguments, and wild context guesses like regular bot slop.
"This account" -- Do you mean account "JumpCrisscross"? No, I disagree. This person posts lots of intelligent things about securities markets and trading. You can review their history. I assume they work in securities trading on Wall Street (or something nearly adjacent).
They seem to be posting a lot of word-salad comments, but assuming good faith, they're saying these are separate downsides of mutual funds over ETFs.
Mutual funds trade on your behalf, like an ETF, but they pass through the gains and losses. That can be painful if they realise those gains when you'd rather not have them, or crystallise losses when you don't have offsets. In this, they're correct. On risk, they're wrong--you can stuff nonsense into ETFs as comfortably as mutual funds. What they're indirectly criticising here is active versus passive management, which is its own can of worms.
The only advantage of a mutual fund over an ETF is it provides friction to trading. Otherwise, they're a vestige from the cusp of computerised portfolio management. (If you have more than ~$1 to 10mm, you should be rolling your own portfolio in most cases.)