Don't forget @hank, @JD_co...many of the financial advisors, commentators and the like have only come of age during central bank balance sheet expansion...they are the experts now, borderline mocking the wise elders such as Munger and Buffett, how they don't get the crypto, etc.
One day and it might be soon...won't matter how much jaw boning powell etc do...everyone is going to rush to the exits en masse...the whamo-o moment.
Ah well. My what the f moment came when I had a couple 20-something year olds reporting to me a while back...after a business lunch in downtown CHI we were walking back to the office and I realized they had their phones out looking for Pokemon characters...ya, our future...
We'll see how it plays out.
Baseball Fan

My neighbor has a Senior at Yale. They are of modest means and felt Yale was generous and when the Dad lost his job, Yale increased the financial aide. RIP.

PHDG is interesting for the nervous:
https://invesco.com/us/financial-products/etfs/product-detail?audienceType=Investor&ticker=PHDG
https://spglobal.com/spdji/en/documents/methodologies/methodology-sp-500-dynamic-veqtor.pdf
Regarding the assumption that inflation will kill the golden goose because of monetary and fiscal stimulus, one word--Japan. It could just as easily go the other way when the stimulus and "handouts"--somehow what happened last March with the Fed for the stock market wasn't handouts, but now that the money is for working people it's "handouts"--stop. We could have unemployment and deflation. But markets are overvalued either way.

I used to live in New Haven and know people who worked with him. He was truly a very modest man who could have made billions on Wall Street but instead stayed at Yale almost his entire career. He certainly got paid well ( I think more than Yale President ie around $1,000,000) but clearly made a lot less than he could have elsewhere.
His goal was to make money for Yale so they could increase financial aide so no student who was admitted would be unable to attend due to lack of money.
He certainly increased the endowment. It is hard to tell how much of that increase truly went just to financial aide, and most of the other Ivies have the same policy and efforts now.
However, while they claim they offer enough aide to everyone who needs it, their definition of a parent's need and the parent's are frequently very different.
He also seems to have had a high moral standard as he refused to invest with some of Wall Street's more unsavory characters ( ie Steve Cohen)
both of his books on portfolio management are well worth reading. The one on endowments killed the "60/40" model for endowments, although individuals cannot invest in a lot of the things he did like excellent private equity and timber.
His book for individual investors is good, with the usual advice you hear from Buffet, Bernstein etc.. Diversify Index funds don't time the market etc.

I want to thank all the members of MFO who made suggestions in response to my OP. I will look into all of them and see what might work best for me. I have endured/survived every crash since 1987. My situation was not helped by financial 'advisors' at two national companies. Finally, I voted them off the island and went solo after 1999-2000. Any money I have made has been more luck than skill and from tips on Fundalarm. While online tools may not be perfect, they will be better than my hunches and intuition. Thanks again.

Yellen’s comment must have served to strengthen the Dollar on the currency exchanges, Most everything I own tied to non-dollar assets took a hit. Just by way of example: Miners lost 1.15% across the board. OPGSX, PRELX and RPGAX among my worst performers.
Yellen has also received some derision among the financial pundits. Quoth one: “Talk is cheap.”

As @Old_Joe said, " Losing this place is going to leave a great void for me, and will be like losing a great number of friends all at once.
Thank you so much for all that you've done here, in the creation and management of the best financial watering hole that one could hope for. "
My thoughts also !
Enjoy your retirement, Derf

David- I'm thinking that the odds of finding someone with your gentle touch in administration, coupled with your knowledge of the investment areas, are likely slim to none.
I was an old buy-and-hold fund type, did pretty well doing that, and because of the limitations of my plain vanilla experience didn't have much to contribute to the in-depth financial discussions here. But over the years this place has become almost like the local watering hole, pleasantly populated by interesting and intelligent people whose varied experiences and opinions on all sorts of matters have been a source of great interest and mind-stretching knowledge. Losing this place is going to leave a great void for me, and will be like losing a great number of friends all at once.
Thank you so much for all that you've done here, in the creation and management of the best financial watering hole that one could hope for.
The very best to you and yours in whatever your futures may bring.
Dan

lede
Ever since the covid-19 pandemic struck, the Federal Reserve has gotten plenty of kudos for moves that have helped stabilize the economy, kept house prices from tanking and supported the stock market. But those successes have obscured another effect: the inadvertent impact the Fed’s ultralow interest rates and bond-buying sprees are having on economic inequality.
Longstanding inequality in the United States has been exacerbated by the Fed’s role in touching off a multitrillion-dollar boom in stock markets — and stock ownership is heavily skewed toward the wealthiest Americans.
ending
Jason Furman, a former chair of President Barack Obama’s Council of Economic Advisers and currently an economics professor at Harvard, summed up the inequality trade-off this way in an interview: “I don’t want to have a lower stock market and higher unemployment.”
In other words, increasing wealth for the wealthy is an inevitable side effect of keeping interest rates low to support the economy and create jobs.
The latest round of stimulus checks will help close that gap a little by putting money in the pockets of low-income earners like Tan. But near-zero interest rates will make it harder for them to save the money for the future, as Tan hopes to do. She would like to set aside $1,000 to $2,000 in savings accounts for her 16-year-old son and 3-year-old grandson in addition to saving for her retirement and a rainy-day fund.
And as the Fed pumps more money into the financial system by buying Treasury securities and indirectly supporting federal stimulus programs, the run-up in stock markets is likely to continue — and leave people like Tan even further behind than they already were.

@Baseball_Fan,
I take your question as directed at the broader audience here. Personally, I don’t have anything very incisive to say or add. FWIW - Here’s the portion of the linked article I was succinctly referencing for @Catch22 who’s apparently too busy to read it in its entirety:
“‘Inequality is a cumulative process,’ said Karen Petrou, author of “Engine of Inequality: The Fed and the Future of Wealth in America” and managing partner of the Washington-based consulting firm Federal Financial Analytics. ‘The richer you are, the richer you get, and the poorer you are, the poorer you get, unless something puts that engine in reverse,’she said. ‘That engine is driven not by fate or by untouchable phenomena such as demographics but most importantly by policy decisions.’“
Being in somewhat of a soporific disposition (perhaps not unlike Catch) I’m reminded of other popular expressions about wealth and money and their impact on human kind.
- “The rich are different from you and me.”
- “It takes money to make money.”
- “If you would know the value of money, try to borrow some.”
- “Money can’t buy happiness.”
- “He that goes a borrowing goes a sorrowing.”
- “He that is of opinion money will do everything may well be suspected of doing everything for money.”
- “You can’t take it with you.”

@davidmoran,
There are reasons why American above age 62 may not be able to work.

A lot of people can't afford to wait to sign up for Social Security. Consider that most Americans have not saved enough for retirement.
"The biggest challenge for most people is they under-save for retirement," Houston says. Many people can improve their financial situation by working in retirement, but you could also end up retiring earlier than you planned to. "They can work in retirement, but unfortunately 50% of Americans end up retiring before they had planned for three reasons: The first reason is their health, the second reason is their spouse's health and the third reason is that their services are no longer necessary – they were terminated," Houston says. So, planning to continue to work during retirement is not always an option.

The reality for many older Americans... they have to work to make ends meet...that means collecting SS @ age 62 and working a job.
The fastest labor growth rate comes from those 65 and older:

I haven’t read everything above but I say cash is form of bonds.

More appropriately - Bonds constitute a derivative of cash. You have surrendered the cash (having immediate liquidity) in return for a promise of said cash at a later date plus future cash reward.
In developing a personal portfolio allocation model and a modus operandi you have license to call the internal components whatever makes sense to you. However, if you were running a mutual fund or bank and didn’t differentiate between cash and bonds in your financial statements it could land you in trouble.
I agree the distinction gets a bit clouded. Morningstar shines some light on it:
“Cash investments are very short-term debt obligations that are often FDIC-insured; CDs, online savings accounts, checking accounts and bank-offered money accounts, and money market mutual funds are all versions of cash instruments. (Of the aforementioned investments, only money market mutual funds aren't FDIC-insured.)” https://www.morningstar.com/articles/946730/cash-versus-bond-fund-which-is-better
@Robert’s method of lumping all fixed income together under one umbrella is one good way to do it. Within that sleeve he places minimums on the percentages of fixed income that must be held in cash.

https://www.financial-planning.com/list/bond-funds-with-the-worst-15-year-returns
Bond funds with the worst 15-year returns
By Andrew Shilling
All of the fixed-income industry’s worst long-term performers recorded gains over all time horizons, with only one in the red so far in 2021.
The 20 worst-performing bond funds of the past 15 years, with at least $100 million in assets under management, notched an average gain of nearly 1.5%, Morningstar Direct data show. Over the past 12 months, the same funds — all actively managed like those in last week’s top-performers ranking — had an average return of 2.28%.
With Treasury yields hovering around 1% over the better part of the decade, Amy Magnotta, co-head of discretionary portfolios at Brinker Capital Investments, says it’s no surprise that the industry's shortest-duration bond funds had a large presence.
“All of the funds on the list with the worst 15-year returns are short-term bond funds, both taxable and municipal,” Magnotta says, adding, “The yield on the one-year Treasury bill has averaged just 1.16% over the last 15 years, and it spent most of the time period below 1%, which is not an attractive starting point for returns of shorter maturity securities.”
For comparison, the iShares Core U.S. Aggregate Bond ETF (AGG), which has a 0.04% net expense ratio, recorded a 15-year gain of 4.29%, data show. Over the past year, the fund had a gain of 0.60%. The iShares 2-3 Year Treasury Bond ETF (SHY), which tracks the ICE BofA 1-3 Year Treasury Index, had 1- and 15-year gains of 0.17% and 2.2%, respectively.
In stocks, the SPDR S&P 500 ETF Trust (SPY) and the SPDR Dow Jones Industrial Average ETF (DIA) have had 15-year returns of 10.30% and 10.32%, respectively. In the past 12 months, SPY and DIA had gains of 48.69% and 44.79%. The funds have net expense ratios of 0.09% and 0.16%.
Fees among bond funds in this ranking were higher than the industry average. With an overall net expense ratio of 0.58%, funds here were only slightly pricier than the 0.45% investors paid for fund investing in 2019, according to Morningstar’s most recent annual fee survey.
When discussing bond fund performance over any time horizon with clients, Magnotta says it’s key to also have a conversation about their role in a diversified portfolio.***
Anyone owe these lemons?

https://www.marketwatch.com/story/a-capital-gains-tax-hike-might-sink-stocks-heres-how-financial-advisers-and-their-clients-can-stay-a-step-ahead-11619222398
A capital gains tax hike might sink stocks. Here’s how financial advisers and their clients can stay a step ahead.
Higher taxes for the ultra-wealthy when they sell stocks would have a ripple effect on all investors
Many financial advisers follow Warren Buffett’s lead, adopting a buy-and-hold mentality and urging jittery clients to shrug off scary headlines to achieve long-term gains. But what if those headlines signal a threat to a long-term investment plan?***
More muni tax exempt bonds eh??? Think we heard that advise numerous time in this forum

Indicators / Indexes / Prices
- Dow
- Nasdaq
- 10-Year Treasury Bond
- Oil
- Gold
Funds
- VFINX
- TRBCX
- PRHYX
- TRREX
- HSGFX

When Mr. Roubini (aka Dr. Doom and a fierce critic of all things crypto) wrote that piece for project syndicate, Bitcoin was $6,300 per coin. It's now around $57,000. Blockchain has the potential to disrupt banking in a similar way in which mobile phones did to the telephone pole. I just don't agree with the liberterian fantasy slant... but yes I do agree that central banks could provide alternatives that eliminate intemediaries and reduce energy ... but why didn't they? It's no coincidence that blockchain/bitcoin was launched approximately 6 weeks after the financial crisis.
All that said, I'm not very interested in the idealogy of blockchain. At present, it doesn't violate a moral code of mine. I just want to profit from investments in it. So far, so good.

Disclaimer: Cryptoassets is a tiny interest of mine in terms of investing but an area I want to learn more about solely for investment / profit purposes. I'm not an official defender of BTC or crypto. In the future, I think I'll leave rebuttals to experts or others better informed than I.
You present some good points. I've been a long term skeptic and even critic of crypto... That said, before you define bitcoin and crypto as the term imaginary (btw bitcoin mining is as "real" as mining for gold) ... Imagine this:
For the first time in history there is now a system where you can send "value" from one person to another or from point A to point B without the physical exchange of an item AND without using a 3rd party intermediary. The last part being the most important and intrinsic to the story of bitcoin/blockchain. There is no administrator that can be influenced. This is an electronic payment system that goes uncensored and payments are delivered without going through a financial institution and without the need to ID people further than a hashtag. Yet all of these transactions are visible and transparent to anyone on an open ledger.
"its supply and demand of something no one really needs and it's scarcity is manufactured" - the same could be said of gold and diamonds. Intrinsic value is a faulty concept. The value of something really comes down to the demand for it.
Re: Bitcoin and Energy required to mine. Is it less energy efficient than mining for gold or printing modern currencies/fiat? The vast majority of bitcoin is currently mined in areas of the world (CN) with an extremely low electric cost. Many of these miners are converting to geothermal and the CEO of Square notes that "eventually" BTC will be powered completely by clean energy or renewables. Here's the whitepaper on it: https://assets.ctfassets.net/2d5q1td6cyxq/5mRjc9X5LTXFFihIlTt7QK/e7bcba47217b60423a01a357e036105e/BCEI_White_Paper.pdf
The last paragraph 'Bitcoin feeds...' - I don't subscribe to that as the intention or intended purpose and outcome of BTC and I'd bet those CEOS and companies dumping 100's of millions into it subscribe to a different theory as well. Best investing fortunes to all!

https://investornews.vanguard/5-investing-principles-that-are-built-to-last/
investing principles that are built to last
**Markets are unpredictable and investment fads come and go. Already in 2021, we’ve seen speculative behavior around AMC and Gamestop and overheated trading based on emotions rather than fundamentals. At Vanguard, we believe you can stay on the path to long-term financial success by avoiding trends and focusing on balance, discipline, and diversification.**
Is Jack Brennan Bogle*s long lost brother?

It would be a good idea to review the holdings in your emerging market local currency bond funds. Russian government bonds offer high yield over 7% but the sanction may change that.

In the face of a flurry of new US sanctions mostly aimed at the Russian Central Bank, Moscow had decided against holding on to its 2021 borrowing plans and had been exploring an option to offer only OFZ treasury bonds from June 14, the date after which US lenders would be barred from purchasing Rouble-denominated Russian sovereign bonds

https://financial-world.org/news/news/loans/7499/russia-hurt-by-new-biden-sanctions-slashes-2021-borrowing-plans-to-offer-ofz-bonds/
https://reuters.com/article/us-russia-debt/foreigners-share-in-russias-government-bonds-nears-five-year-low-as-sanction-fears-increase-idUSKBN2BH2GH

Thanks for the clarification. As hank observed, derivatives can be used for protection or to increase returns. Either way they change the risk profile of the fund. I believe that investors should look at what's in a fund and if they don't understand it or it makes them uncomfortable, they shouldn't invest in it.
Note that many types of securities are derivatives. CMOs for one. Commentary from the Cleveland Fed, 1995: "Collateralized mortgage obligations (CMOs), first introduced in 1983, are a form of financial derivative created to provide more stability and predictability for those investing in mortgage assets. Although some investors have profited handsomely from CMOs, others have lost millions of dollars. ..."
https://www.clevelandfed.org/~/media/content/newsroom and events/publications/economic commentary/1995/ec 19950901 derivative mechanics the cmo pdf.pdf
That four page paper does a pretty good job of explaining how CMO tranches are derived from the underlying mortgages and various ways the risk profiles may be tweaked.
The point is simply that derivatives are everywhere (including in FPFIX). One does the best one can to understand what one owns (or might choose to invest in), and goes from there.