We talked about Braver Wealth’s Diversified model here, with its focus on ETFs and preserving capital. This week, Braver Wealth added iShares Barclays 20+ Year Treasury Bond Fund (TLT). TLT invests up to 90 percent of its assets in the index whose performance it’s trying to replicate—the Barclays Capital U.S. 20+ Year Treasury Bond index. It also may contain up to 1 percent of its values in government bonds not included in the index. As of the date of this post it was trading at a slight discount to NAV.
Yesterday we discussed many of the moves Dan Plettner made in his Core model. Today, let’s discuss a change made to his Taxable Income model. The Taxable Income model invests in taxable securities that generate income. It is attempting to outperform bond portfolios and ETFs. This week he added US Bancorp (Del) (NYSE: USB) to the model. USB has a relatively high price to earnings ratio compared to its peers, and—as of the date of this post—a low dividend yield of just .94 percent. USB recently acquired the First National Trust Company which is a subsidiary of First National Bank of Pennsylvania. Since the announcement of this acquisition on August 19th, USB has fallen slightly from its $22.40 closing price the day before the announcement to $21.31 on August 24th. This is a loss of almost 5 percent.
