<p>@dstark </p>
<p>However, invest in NNN leased Out of State commercial buildings DOES make sense. In some cases, the 20 year lease gives steady income and the cap rate could go as high as 10%, but more secured cap rate is around 6%.</p>
<p>Commercial buildings worry me. </p>
<p>Then you can buy a ground lease, where you own the land not the improvement on it. Normally it has a 20 year term and in Ca the cap rate is around 4%. </p>
<p>No headaches. </p>
<p>Yes… You are right. </p>
<p>One Year ago, was offered 10 Single Family house in Memphis, all rented, for 200K. Great cash flow and cap rate. Total monthly rent was around $6,000. Had to pass it up, I didn’t want to LIVE in Memphis…</p>
<p>You couldn’t find anybody to manage the houses?</p>
<p>Its the same theory, you do not want own headaches long distance. I have enough headaches here in the Bay Area.</p>
<p>Sold 16 spy puts with a 196 strike price today. </p>
<p>That 's it.</p>
<p>A sponsor is trying to lock up an apartment building for several of us. Don’t know if it is going to happen.</p>
<p>Why don’t u sponsor mine? 
</p>
<p>:)</p>
<p>I am not the sponsor. </p>
<p>“A sponsor is trying to lock up an apartment building for several of us.”</p>
<p>What does this jargon mean?</p>
<p>I’m way too long in the market right now. I’ve started to buy more protection for xle and spy.</p>
<p>A sponsor is somebody who finds the investment, which is an apartment building in this case, gets the investors, gets the financing, negotiates the deal and runs the property. He can get help running the property. </p>
<p>For this he gets a share of the profits. </p>
<p>I was looking at some areas and Memphis has very high vacancy rates. Super high. This was 2013 numbers. </p>
<p>Being long has been right. </p>
<p>I want to be market weighted now, not overweight (LOL!). I have a lot of stuff that makes me uncomfortable: baba( 100 - 110, 90 - 150 call spreads, 110 -115-120 butterfly), xle (80 - 90 call spreads), fb (50 -55 and 70-75 calls spreads), twtr (27-30 call spreads) These all expire in January. I picked January assuming I was going to be working less so less income. (My boss told me today, he isn’t going to let me do this, that I’m a sh**head, that I’ve already retired in place and he’s not going to let me work less and have me ride into the sunset. I don’t think he likes me). In some accounts of have 2 - 3x weighting. That’s the problem with too many accounts that have too many similar investments.</p>
<p>If Memphis has a high vacancy rate, why would anybody want to invest there?</p>
<p>On Memphis, you will have to ask artloversplus. </p>
<p>“My boss told me today, he isn’t going to let me do this, that I’m a sh**head, that I’ve already retired in place and he’s not going to let me work less and have me ride into the sunset. I don’t think he likes me).” :)</p>
<p>So what are you going to do?</p>
<p>That is why I did not invest. In order to have the unit rented in high vacancy area, you have to go down the quality of tenants. So, the drug dealers type, the skip town type, the non-paying type, the stuff the house with 20 people type, the wear it down, tear it apart type, all became reality. And all you have left as owner are headaches.</p>
<p>With the S&P being where it is, I’m gradually moving some of my S&P 500s to bonds, something I haven’t played with much in the past. What would the main considerations comparing a mutual fund such as VSCSX Vanguard short term corp bond index fund vs the equivalent ETF VCSH assuming I’m not interested in the advantages of easier trading during the day? What do you know about VIPSX, Inflation protected Securities,TIPS - I understand how regular bond funds behave when interest rates drop or rise - how do TIPS mutual funds perform if inflation stays low like now or begins to rise?</p>
<p>Tips are also affected by real rates of return.So for example, if inflation is 2 percent and the bond yields are 2.5 percent, the real rate of return is .5 percent. </p>
<p>If real rates increase the value of tips decrease. If real rates decrease, the value of tips increase (which is what happened over the last several years. </p>
<p>I have no idea why a fund would be better than an etf unless the difference between the bid and offer in an etf is large.</p>
<p>I would ask about bond funds in the retirement thread. IxnayBob and other posters own bond funds.</p>
<p>The longer the duration,of the bond fund or etf, the greater the risk. </p>
<p>Edit… I see you are going to invest in short term securities. That cuts your interest rate risk.</p>
<p>Thanks dstark - you’re always a great help in these matters for someone like me. </p>
<p>When I read up on TIPS (as opposed to regular x% bonds), I guess I was looking for how historically inflation rates on which TIPS seem to be based on, track regular bonds rates and bond performance. I’ll do a bit more digging and then post on the other thread if I decide this may be something I want as part of the bond portfolio.</p>
<p>As to bonds, I went with short term for exactly the reason you state. Given where interest rates are, I assumed there’s a higher risk of rates going up than down, which is why I went with short term. I checked treasuries and you can actually get 6 month or 1 year CDs that give several times the treasury rate, so I went with short term corporates bonds.</p>
<p>Here is a list of tips etfs…</p>
<p><a href=“http://etfdb.com/type/bond/tips/”>http://etfdb.com/type/bond/tips/</a></p>
<p>Here is a list if short term bond etfs</p>
<p><a href=“Short-Term ETF List”>http://etfdb.com/type/bond/short-term/</a></p>
<p>You can enter the symbols in yahoo finance or a site like that and compare graphs…</p>
<p>Good luck…</p>
<p>Tomorrow may be difficult as Japan has entered a recession: <a href=“Bloomberg - Are you a robot?”>Bloomberg - Are you a robot?;