Vanguard Has Outflows & My Recap Of The Memorial

Index Universe is reporting than Vanguard had net outflows from its funds for the first time since 1994. The article points to Vanguard’s bond funds as being the culprit. The news has reported that this was the worst time for fixed income in some huge number of years but the way I remember it, the summer of 2003 was much worse than this. Obviously bond funds also got waxed during the financial crisis even though yields generally went down (there were some exceptions).

For the last few years we’ve had a mix of holdings that were unlikely to go down and those worked but they haven’t really had any yield to speak of. We have also owned some other things with some yield and they have felt the decline to varying degrees. Our one across the board CEF’s market price, as mentioned in a previous post, got hit harder than in past events but its NAV barely budged so there has been panic in these spaces. Even some ETFs traded below their NAVs too.

If you’ve gotten any yield in the last few years then you’ve probably seen some price decline in the last few weeks. If you chased yield in the last few years (like from loading up on CEFs) then you’ve probably seen a lot of price decline.

The details might be different but the emotions manifested in the market are the same.

Today I attended the memorial service for the Granite Mountain Hot Shots at Tim’s Toyota Center in Prescott Valley. We had nine Walker Firefighters in all in attendance plus one alumni. We were given instructions beforehand about staging our trucks but that changed on the fly. As we were arriving we were stopped for a procession of buses, each bus had the family of one of the fallen 19. That is the first picture.

We staged kind of far out and planned to watch outside on one of the jumbotron screens that were set up. We had one of those popup canopies for shade and a bunch of chairs to make a day of it. While most of the group was setting up, two of us walked over to Fry’s Grocery Store to buy coffee and doughnuts and Fry’s gave it to us for free.

On the way to Fry’s I got a couple of fun shots of some fire trucks from other areas. We met/saw firefighters from as far away as Montreal, the UK and Australia not to mention what seemed like hundreds of guys from Arizona and surrounding states.

While we were hanging out under our canopy News Channel 3 came up to us and interviewed me live and then apparently it was rerun later in the day as well. I talked about having worked with Eric Marsh on the Basin Ops Group, the cohesion of the firefighting community in Prescott and my belief that this incident will radically alter how firefighters will be trained in the future.

While I was doing the interview one of our guys very industriously scrounged up tickets for us to go inside. We sat up high, exactly opposite from the center of the podium which was a great vantage point for the event, I got a picture I like and was able to take a decent video when the bagpipes played Amazing Grace.

The statue is significant. It had been in Boise at the National Wildfire Coordinating Group (NWGC) but I believe is going to windup at the Hot Shots’ home at Station 7.

The ceremony itself was well done. The highlights included a reading of the Hot Shot’ Prayer by Brandon McDonald, the surviving crew member. Chiefs Fraijo and Willis from Prescott Fire each gave very heartfelt speeches. Many people had good things to say about Vice President Biden’s speech but it seemed a little off to me but I might be too cynical.

While this really hit a lot of people very hard, including my wife and me, it is also historically significant. The manner in which the fire community not only in Prescott but from all over the world as it turned out rallied to support the families and surviving department was wonderful to be a part of. I was honored personally to be a part of this even at the outskirts as we were and also honored that our department participated as well.

About an hour or so after I got home, the radio toned out with the Last Call for the Granite Mountain Hot Shots. May God bless them and their families.