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For discussion on investment choices please open another thread. This thread was posted under the broker sub-forum regarding broker policies.

There are some asset classes in which mutual funds almost always outperform ETFs. For example, most high yield bond funds outperform HYG and JNK in terms of both return and risk.

Can you please clarify, Is only a subset of funds on IB "load waived", or are all funds "load waived" as long as they are tradable on IB? If all funds are like this then I can trade all class As at very low cost. Thanks.

I called IB's customer services about this, and from what I was told, it appeared that all mutual funds traded on IB were "no front load" even when they were funds with front load in prospectus. They said that IB did not have the ability to charge the front load, so all front loads were waived...

IB customer services told that all mutual funds subject to a 60 day restriction after being sold. Can you give me an example of Profund that does not such restriction? Thanks.

HYG is a high yield corporate bond fund, not a treasury bond fund.

I want to backtest a long term strategy trading HYG (high yield bond ETF). However, HYG's history is too short for backtesting. I am looking for a long term proxy for HYG, such as a high yield bond mutual fund, but I can't find any good ones that have similar performance like HYG. Most funds...

Do you mean the ones listed under "commission free" are no load, or all funds traded on IB are no load? For example, NHMAX has 4% load shown on Morningstar. If I buy it on IB, do I need to pay the 4%? Thanks.

Is there any commission free mutual funds on IB? Other brokers often have certain fund families that are commission free. I am wondering if IB offers similar fund families.

I sold my vanguard fund and IB didn't allow me to purchase it again. What are frequent trading restrictions for mutual funds on IB? When can I buy the fund back? Another question is: if I sell a mutual fund within 30 days of buying it, will there be a penalty? Thanks.

Do you know how to replicate a cumprod from your data source? I tried but got the chart on post #22 above. Thanks.

Thanks for clarifying. I tried these formulas, and noticed that the TR series has only grown 3 times over the past four decades, with CAGR at 3%. My friend who has a Bloomberg terminal found a ticker MLT1US30 Index (Merrill Lynch 30 Year Treasury Bond Futures TR) on Bloomberg and it had grown...

I tried to create a TR series using the return column and got a series like this, which didn't look right. The formula is basically =previous value*(1+return/100) The spreadsheet is here. https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/9846094/Public/Bond Futures TR.Chart.xlsx Could you please take a...

I see. So for futures, regardless of the remaining term and coupon of the underlying, we always just consider as if it's always the latest 30 year bond. Is it correct? If this is the case, it seems like ZB and UB futures will have exactly the same total returns, right?

Thank you so much for your spreadsheet. May I know the Quandl page/identifier that you used as the input?

I thought, to calculate the return of the futures for each period, we needed both yield and duration of the underlying bond, no?

To calculate a total return index I would also need to find/estimate the durations of the CTDs, which I don't know where to get historically.

Is there a way to find out the average duration of ZB futures? The CTD changes every month and I don't know how to get an estimate. Thanks.

I am backtesting a strategy which involves rolling the nearest month of ZB (long-term treasury bond futures). I can't find a total return index for ZB futures that goes back long enough, so I am thinking about using TLT or VUSTX as a proxy. The later starts from the 90s. Does anyone know how...

Thank you.