TIAA Direct/TIAA-CREF banking? Surprisingly high savings/money market interest rate

believe I am correct ...the 7-8% return for 2011 was due to a good year for bonds.

 

You are correct. I was thinking of Sallie Mae. I own a few Sallie Mae bonds. High interest, relatively high risk.

 

Yes, absolutely, and I agree. There was a brief, moderate downturn because of the Greek/European crisis in November of last year, which gave a momentary (and somewhat risky) window for buying, but generally it's been a jaggedy line up and down, with no clear bottom, and no rhyme or reason to it. My finger is poised on the proverbial 'sell' button, for sure. But, it is an election year...

 

I never see a clear bottom. When it is at the bottom, I expect it to continue down. When it starts back up, I don't know if it's just a slight up-tick on the way to more down. I never see any rhyme or reason to market movements except in hindsight. That's why I go with conservative mutual funds for stocks for the long term, and bonds and bond funds for income. I'm willing to risk lower grade bonds after research, for a small portion, but mostly fairly conservative. I learned my lesson the hard way when I trusted a very aggressive bond fund. The underlying bonds were fine, but the fund lost value and never recovered. It turned out they were producing high yield through leveraging, even though the broker (who I am no longer with) told me it was not. He flat-out lied to sell me the fund. I'm far more cautious now.

 

My technical guru is Doug Fabian who just does 200-day moving average variation but he elected to sit out this recent leg up in stocks. I followed his father years ago. Two hot bond funds he likes and I found before he recommended them are DLTNX and RNDLX. My interest rate prediction guru is Gary Shilling and he still thinks rates are heading down further (good return for conservative bonds).