Anonymous wrote:
Anonymous wrote:Interesting. It is my understanding that Feds used to be able to do daily inter fund transfers but are now limited to three a month.
OP here...Correct. Trades do cost a bit of money, and these folks (mostly from TSPtalk) were going nuts with it. Instead of buy, hold, wait, sell, repeat, those guys were going C > G > S > F > I in a single week. Most were proven to be losers by their own registered trackers.
TSP prides itself on having the lowest fees anywhere, so that nonsense was cut out thankfully. Technically, you get three inter-fund transfers a month if your first and last buy is 100% G, but only two if the month's first buy is of C/S/I. The max possible is 30 a year nowadays. I avearge about ten a year, and am currently at 8 for 2015.
Sometimes swaps don't work out. 11:59am is the deadline to get in an inter-fund transfer to catch the day's end closing price. On a day the S&P is moving in the favorable direction, it takes a turn in the late afternoon. One that always sticks out to me was a day when a 2+% gain was possible around 11:50, only to then make my move that resulted in locking up a 0.1% loss as the S&P dropped 35 points between 3-4pm. Hurts, but it happens. Like I said, you'll lose a little sleep.