Tag Archives: price

5 Strong Buy T. Rowe Price Mutual Funds

Founded in 1937 by Thomas Rowe Price, Jr., T. Rowe Price currently manages $725.5 billion worth of assets (as of September 30, 2015). This renowned publicly owned investment management firm manages more than 100 mutual funds across a wide range of categories. Additionally, T. Rowe Price offers other financial services, including a wide variety of investment planning, guidance tools, subadvisory services and retirement plans. With over 5,000 employees and more than 5,900 associates, the company serves clients throughout the globe. Below, we share with you 5 top-rated T. Rowe Price mutual funds. Each has earned a Zacks Mutual Fund Rank #1 (Strong Buy), and is expected to outperform its peers in the future. To view the Zacks Rank and past performance of all T. Rowe Price mutual funds, investors can click here to see the complete list of T. Rowe Price funds. T. Rowe Price Media And Telecommunications Fund No Load (MUTF: PRMTX ) invests a major portion of its assets in securities of companies involved in operations related to media, technology and telecommunications. It primarily invests in common stocks of large- and mid-cap companies. The fund has a three-year annualized return of 15.4%. Paul D. Greene II is the fund manager of PRMTX since 2013. T. Rowe Price Blue Chip Growth Fund No Load (MUTF: TRBCX ) seeks capital appreciation over the long run. The fund invests the lion’s share of its assets in common stocks of growth-oriented blue chip companies. It focuses on acquiring securities of large- and mid-cap companies with strong fundamentals. The T. Rowe Price Blue Chip Growth Fund has a three-year annualized return of 16.3%. TRBCX has an expense ratio of 0.72%, as compared to the category average of 1.18%. T. Rowe Price Capital Appreciation Fund No Load (MUTF: PRWCX ) invests a minimum of half of its assets in stocks. The rest of its assets are expected to get invested in other securities, including convertible securities, debt securities issued by both government and corporate bodies, and bank loans. It may also invest a maximum of 25% of its assets in securities issued in foreign countries. The T. Rowe Price Capital Appreciation Fund has a three-year annualized return of 11.5%. As of September 2015, PRWCX held 265 issues, with 4.21% of its assets invested in Marsh & McLennan Companies Inc. T. Rowe Price Growth and Income Fund No Load (MUTF: PRGIX ) seeks long-term growth of capital and income. It uses bottom-up analysis to invest in both growth and value stocks of companies. To select growth stocks, the fund focuses on companies that are expected to provide above-average growth. The T. Rowe Price Growth and Income Fund has a three-year annualized return of 13.4%. Jeffrey Rottinghaus has been the fund manager of PRMTX since June 1, 2015. T. Rowe Price CA Tax Free Bond Fund No Load (MUTF: PRXCX ) invests a large share of its assets in debt securities that are expected to provide interest income free from federal and California state income taxes. It seeks high tax-exempted income through prudent portfolio management. The T. Rowe Price CA Tax-Free Bond Fund has a three-year annualized return of 4.3%. PRXCX has an expense ratio of 0.49%, as compared to the category average of 0.90%. Original Post

Will Falling Silver Production Start To Impact SLV?

Summary The price of SLV lost 9% of its value during 2015. Silver production may drop in 2015 — for the first time in over a decade. As the deficit in silver keeps rising, this could eventually start affecting the price of SLV. The silver market didn’t have a good year as the price of the iShares Silver Trust ETF (NYSEARCA: SLV ) shed over 9% off its value. The direction of silver will continue to be dictated by the direction of long term interest rates and U.S. dollar (among other things that silver investors look for when investing in the precious metal). But what about the changes in the physical demand and supply for silver? After all, the ongoing low silver prices contributed to the decline in silver production this year – perhaps 2015 will be the first year since in well over a decade, in which production won’t rise. Will this be enough to drive up the price of SLV? I have already addressed the recent rate hike by the Fed and its impact on SLV. Currently, the market isn’t convinced the Fed will raise rates by another 1 percentage point as its members estimated in the last FOMC meeting. The implied probabilities , as collected by Fed-watch, suggest the market projects only two hikes of 0.25 basis points in 2016. If the Fed wind up raising by only 0.25bp or not raise at all, this could bring back down long term interest rates and perhaps even depreciate the U.S. dollar – two shifts that could behoove the price of SLV. What about the changes in production? According to the Silver Institute the balance between supply and demand was in deficit (i.e. the demand was higher than the supply). And this has been the case for the past 12 consecutive years . This year’s deficit is expected to settle at 21.3 million oz – the lowest deficit in a decade. This decline in deficit is mostly due to net outflows from ETFs holdings and derivatives exchange inventories. Basically, as the demand for silver as investment diminishes, it helps ease the physical deficit. But there is also the matter of falling production that could increase this deficit. Up to 2014, production has been rising. This year, however, it seems production hasn’t picked up and perhaps even slightly declined. Among the top leading countries the produce silver: Mexico, Peru, China, Australia and Chile, according to one outlet , total production in these countries is slightly down for the year (up to August) – by less than 1%. So it’s still unclear how the year will end for the silver balance. But even if this year the deficit expands again, it doesn’t mean this trend will be enough to push up the price of silver. The high deficit in recent years including 2013 and 2014 hasn’t helped rally the price of silver. But perhaps this could also be a matter of timing. Eventually the deficit in supply-demand balance will matter enough to pull up the price of silver, especially as silver loses its shine as investment. When will this happen? That’s unclear. Therefore, for the near term it still seems that the direction of SLV will be govern firstly by the changes in the demand for silver as an investment tool and only secondly by the changes in supply and demand for physical silver. This means the direction of the U.S. dollar, other precious metals – most notably gold – and long term interest rates will set the pace for SLV. In the coming months, I won’t be surprised if the Fed takes a more dovish tone than it took in its recent statement, which could actually slightly pull up SLV. Finally, in the medium term, the growing deficit in silver – mostly driven by falling production and rising physical demand – may take a bigger role in moving the price of silver. For more please see: What’s Up Ahead for Silver in 2016?

The Dynamics Of Liquidity And Investing

I’ve been getting questions recently about liquidity , specifically in the context of exchange traded funds ( ETFs ). Liquidity is a hot topic in financial markets these days, so let’s spend a little time going over it. First, we’ll explore what we mean by “liquidity” and then we’ll explain what it means when it comes to ETFs. Defining liquidity When I think about liquidity, I think about a transaction: I am able to buy or sell something at a known price. The more liquid an investment, the easier it is to buy and sell without affecting the asset’s price. More fully, liquidity has three main components: price, time and size. If an asset is liquid, I can trade it quickly, and I can trade a large amount of it, without moving its price. In reality, most investments involve trade-offs between these three components. Want to trade quickly? You may not be able to trade a large amount, or you may impact the price you are going to receive. Want to trade a large amount? Do it slowly, or be prepared to impact prices. A general rule of thumb for liquidity for most investments is that you can get two of the three attributes, but not all three at once. If we consider liquid assets, a large cap stock is a good example. Unless you are trading a significant number of shares, you can generally trade fairly quickly at a price that is close to what you see on the exchange. A home, on the other hand, is relatively illiquid; you can get an estimate on its price, but until a buyer signs on the dotted line and you have a check in hand, it’s unclear what you’ll actually get when selling your home. And it will generally take you a while to sell your home, no matter what its size. Liquidity and ETFs When it comes to a security like an ETF, I can see that it’s trading at a certain price, and I can generally buy or sell that ETF at a price that’s pretty close to the quoted price. I can generally trade fairly quickly, as long as my trade is not large compared to the security’s volume. A large ETF trade is in some ways similar to a large equity trade; I need to trade over time or risk impacting the price. Let’s take it a step further and look at bond ETFs. If you want to go out and buy a bond, you can’t just buy it on the open market via an exchange. Instead you would buy it over the counter, in a negotiated transaction with a broker. The price you would trade at is often unclear, and it can be difficult to trade a large amount, or trade quickly. In fact, some investors may find that individual bonds don’t have any of the three aforementioned features of liquidity. With a bond ETF, which is a basket of bonds traded on an exchange, you have much more price transparency. You can actually see the price at which a bond ETF is trading and have a sense of the price of a trade and how many shares might be available to trade at that price. As the bond ETF trades on an exchange, you can generally trade it with the same speed as an individual stock. The liquidity rule of thumb still applies to bond ETFs; it can be difficult to trade in large size, quickly and without impacting price, but overall, exchange trading liquidity can be greater than liquidity in underlying markets . And that is an improvement that all investors can benefit from. This post originally appeared on the BlackRock Blog.