Muni bonds in the last three weeks have fallen out of bed. Normally I disdain these investments but we are nibbling at multiple Invesco Van Kampen funds yielding an amazing 8%.
Symbols include VMO,VGM, VIM, VKI, and VCV. We expect to not only pick up the units dividend on 12-12, we expect to make some short term capital gains from these very depressed levels. The long bond has fallen dramatically on prospects of economic improvement. This may be the correct interpretation but we think the muni market has taken a disproportionate hit. It’s of course not immune from rising rates but we are short term traders and expect to pick up the dividends on the 12th and trade out shortly afterward for capital gains as well.
I lived in Oregon for a while (not Portland, but I visited there a lot). While a btuieaful place with many positives, Oregon was the only place I have ever lived where 1) I met adult people who told me I was the first Jewish person they’d ever met in their lives and 2) I saw open displays of white supremacy (like a guy in full white supremacist gear sitting across from me on the bus, entirely unselfconscious about the giant swastikas and other badges on his jacket).Also in the town I lived in, I was given a lot of shit for publicly laughing about the fact that the local African-American Dance Troupe didn’t have one black person on it.One of the reasons I left Oregon (among others) was I just wasn’t used to the monocromatic nature of the place. Mind you, I’m not saying that everyone there was bigoted at all. But it’s entirely easy to say you’re open to other races and cultures when you don’t have to live with them. There seemed to be some hypocrasy there to me.Mind you, there is *some* minority presence in Oregon, but it is very low, and African-Americans seemed to be the smallest precentage of all miniority groups in that region. Though to be fair, I grew up in NJ and I never saw or met a Native American person until I moved to Oregon, so they could make jokes about NJ or me for that.