Bloomberg covers the topic here:

Home buying isn’t for everyone. While there are financial benefits to owning property — the value could increase, and mortgage interest can be tax-deductible — you lose the flexibility that comes with renting. And property taxes, maintenance, insurance and unplanned expenses mean there is much more to consider than just whether or not a mortgage payment is cheaper than rent.
Bloomberg spoke with people across the world about what went into their decision to buy — or wait.

real-estate-market-rent-or-buy-a-house-during-covid-home-hunters-explain-moves?

"During election season, a big portion of financial media news coverage shifts to presidential election outcomes.
These election seasons tend to be good for media ratings and clicks, but to what extent do they matter for investors? Does accurately predicting the result of a presidential election generate outperformance? Can we say a lot about the direction of the economy depending on which political party is in charge? This article takes a look at those questions."
Lyn Alden Schwartzer at SA

I am in the final stages of selling a home that I have lived in for almost 35 years. Purchase price was $67K. Hoping to close at $277K, but those numbers are not the whole story.
Home improvements (landscaping, additions, remodels, and replacement of original components have cost close to $100K plus interest over those years. Recent costs (getting the home ready for sale) were close to $25K. Property taxes collected by my town over 35 years were close to $150K. Insurance costs close to $30K. Mortgage interest (financed and refinance the property) costs totaled $100K.
Had I rented instead of owned, my housing costs (average $1.2K / month over 35 years) would have been about $500K. So maybe...just maybe... "owning" (the bank owed the home most of the 35 years) my property was a break even proposition financially.
Had I put $10K into VFINX 35 years ago (a portion of the 20% down payment on the $67K sale price I had to come up with) that investment would be worth $436K. If I had invested in the entire 20% ($14,400) it would have grown to $628K.
https://portfoliovisualizer.com/backtest-portfolio#analysisResults
Interesting.
Here's a conversation on the topic (at the 5 minute mark):

For most people, your house is your biggest asset and also your biggest liability. So it’s understandable to think about the financial implications of the most significant purchase you’re ever going to make. But a home is about more than what you buy it for and what you think it will be worth in ten years.

Almost 50 years ago, two upstart companies pioneered a new model in the financial services industry—one entirely devoted to individual investors. Following this week's close of the acquisition, TD Ameritrade and Schwab are now part of one company with the same shared goal: helping people realize their dreams through the power of investing.

mail.tdameritrade.com/H/2/v600000175091d3956a25213f4bbe5cfc0/b21ddfaa-76df-4f58-b1b4-0239b10f8915/HTML

One Excerpt:

Accept that you are flawed, he says, and you will have a chance of doing the right thing. “Do not aim to be coldly rational when making financial decisions,” he says. “Aim to be pretty reasonable. Reasonable is more realistic and you have a better chance of sticking with it for the long run.”
Mr. Housel offers two examples of reasonableness: Try to defer gratification, recognizing that wealth is created by not spending today so that you have more options in the future. And try to maintain a long horizon.
“Time is the most powerful force in investing,” he says. “It makes little things grow big and big mistakes fade away.”

mutfund/money-hacks-psychology-of-money

Things to chew on from Brian Gilmartin at SA:
Summary
° There seem to be too many different types of risks developing around the Presidential election.
FD: the usual --> do nothing
° Personally, I still think Financials in general and bank stocks in particular are more "value" than "value trap" but more patience will be required.
° It's another dry week for S&P 500 earnings releases, but the fireworks really start once again in the week of October 12th, 2020 when the big banks and many financial companies kick off 3rd quarter earnings.
FD: I don't see why anybody would look at Financials or invest in one category when most just need /want SPY/QQQ. Financials don't move markets anymore because the category is much smaller than before without much growth.
Article Here

Things to chew on from Brian Gilmartin at SA:
Summary
° There seem to be too many different types of risks developing around the Presidential election.
° Personally, I still think Financials in general and bank stocks in particular are more "value" than "value trap" but more patience will be required.
° It's another dry week for S&P 500 earnings releases, but the fireworks really start once again in the week of October 12th, 2020 when the big banks and many financial companies kick off 3rd quarter earnings.
Article Here

Likewise, I neglected to mention that even IRAs inherited from the same person can't be combined if they are of different types. However, there may still be a way to combine accounts (again, assuming inherited from the same person), because some of them are 403(b)s.
Here's a 2016 article from Kitces that covers rolling over inherited 403(b)s. Take it with a grain of salt, as the more recent SECURE Act has changed some things (e.g. eliminating stretch IRAs if the original owner died after 2019, but extending the non-stretch period allowed from five years to ten years).
https://www.kitces.com/blog/non-spouse-beneficiary-stretch-of-inherited-ira-and-401k-or-403b-employer-retirement-plans/
One of the things Kitces points out is that one has (or had?) the option of doing a rollover Roth conversion of the 403(b). That is, rolling the inherited T-403(b) directly into an inherited Roth IRA. Of course taxes would be due upon conversion. This could provide Mrs. Ruffles a way to increase the assets in that small inherited Roth IRA, assuming both the 403b and Roth IRA were inherited from the same person.
Of course this would not eliminate RMDs.
Even if the 403(b)s could not be combined with existing inherited IRAs (Roth or Traditional), rolling them over could still simplify administration. OTOH, Mrs. Ruffles may have investment options in the 403(b)s that are unique to them (e.g. stable value or TREA, or R6 share class of funds, or ...).

Good morning @hank : "One thing I like at Max Funds is the maximum 1-year loss they envision. Worst case scenario for sure. Where it’s helpful to me is in looking for / comparing relatively ”safe” funds to meet a certain portfolio need. "
Is there facts as to how close they come to ringing that bell, so to speak ? Is there a look back section ?
Stay Safe, Derf

Hi Derf - They claim some kind of “proprietary” system I think. (Doesn’t everyone? :)) My understanding is it’s run by Max Ferris who has appeared often on Fox as a financial / investment commentator. I don’t know if he still does. Never cared for Fox’s financial programming - but recall him being one of the better ones among the bunch.
I just ran a few lower risk funds through MaxFunds and - yikes - they really derate them (is that a word?). RPSIX comes in with a WCS (worst case scenario) of -40%. A favorite of mine, TRRIX weighs in at -45%. And Price’s venerable (and conservative) PRFDX scores a wopping -70% WCS.
Maybe ol’ Max knows something about the coming cliff? Or maybe he needs to change his whisky brand. I really don’t know.
To answer your question, @Derf - There’s no “look back section.” I can, however, appreciate and agree with their relative risk assessment of the 3 funds just cited, having owned all of them at one time or another. But the depth to which each might fall seems to me a bit exaggerated.
Regards

I love these fantasyland hypothetical scenarios that presume that A. most Americans have $750 extra a month to stash in the stock market and B. that the stock market's past returns will be the same in the future. Depending on which study you believe, on the low end, 40% of Americans have less than $1,000 in liquid assets to invest: https://bankrate.com/banking/savings/financial-security-january-2020/
But more importantly, who can say with any honesty what the next 20 years of stock performance will bring? No one.

@Gary1952: I’ve ferreted out for you the essential points in the Mester quotation. Here’s what she said:
Mester’s Overarching Thesis: “Opportunity and inclusion are important for achieving a strong economy”
How Mester thinks the “policymakers” can assist in meeting the need implicit in her thesis:
1. Increasing access to high-quality education.
2. Helping all households gain access to high speed internet.
3. Eliminating systemic inequities in access to credit and financial services.
Do you disagree with Mester’s thesis or with one of her three recommendations? I’m confused. I did not take her suggestion for “increasing access to high quality education“ as an indictment of our secondary schools. I thought she was referring to some kind of post-secondary assistance (subsidies, grants, scholarships, direct aid to universities, etc.) so kids from less well-off familires could enjoy the same high quality post-secondary education that kids from wealthier families do. Her second recommendation (access to high speed internet), however, is intrinsically linked to quality of education across all levels - including K-12.
In today’s modern economy, without some form of post-secondary education kids are at a severe disadvantage (and Mester sees this impacting American competitiveness globally). Post-secondary education need not be college, but study after study has confirmed that lifetime earnings correspond closely with years of college completed. And college is expensive. “... the average cost of college for the 2017–2018 school year was $20,770 for public schools (in-state) and $46,950 for nonprofit private schools, only including tuition, fees, and room and board.” Source
So, to your point, I saw nothing in Mester’s speech about “bad teachers” or mandatory school attendance laws not being enforced. Seems to me you tossed out some dubious red herrings to distract attention away from what she really said.

“Opportunity and inclusion are important for achieving a strong economy ... Policymakers can improve economic mobility by increasing access to high-quality education, helping all households gain access to high speed internet and eliminating systemic inequities in access to credit and financial services” Mester said. Story
Duh.
No disrespect to Mester. Just find it incredible that this needed to be said at all or that it took a Fed Reserve official saying it to make news. It would seem so damned obvious. Relates back to the recent Ray Dalio thread in some ways.

A pretty obvious academic exercise, but basically a straw man.

The key, here, is the ... sentence: once a portfolio is going to be rebalanced every year, the impact of decision rules is made null and void and the buckets are essentially just an asset allocation mirage, because the total amount of withdrawals is always the same (regardless of which asset classes it’s taken from) and the final allocation is always the same (due to the rebalancing).

The latter part of the sentence provides the explanation of why the two approaches come out the same. Hence my characterization of the substantially equal results as pretty obvious. However, the assumption that the portfolio be rebalanced annually, even if stocks and bonds are both down, is not realistic. Hence I take this theoretical equality to be a straw man.
If the cash bucket is to be replenished annually come hell or high water, what's the point in keeping more than a year's worth of expenditures in that bucket? In the real world, that cash bucket serves as a buffer for extended periods when both stocks and bonds are down. As Christine Benz describes the cash replenishing process:

In a good year for stocks, like 2013 or 2014, the retiree will be selling highly appreciated parts of the equity portfolio. If bonds have gained at the expense of stocks, the retiree would be lightening up on bonds. And if neither stocks nor bonds had appreciated, the retiree might allow bucket 1 to be drawn down, or even move into "next-line reserves" in the bond portfolio.

https://www.morningstar.com/articles/754593/retirement-bucket-basics-a-qa-with-morningstars-ch
You might have better luck with Moshe Milovsky's work, since he looks specifically at using the cash bucket without replenishing in down years. In a simplistic example, he shows that in the worst case (when the cash bucket is too small) the bucket approach can leave one with less. Fair enough, but is that an argument against the bucket approach or for allocating an adequate cash bucket?
He goes on to observe that in his example "there is a 60 percent chance [that a bucket approach] will be better off and a 40 percent chance [that a single balanced fund] will be better off. Indeed, the odds might favor [the bucket approach], but this is not a guaranteed way to avoid a poor sequence of returns."
https://www.thinkadvisor.com/2007/06/01/lesson-5-spending-buckets-and-financial-placebos/
P.S. Kitces describes the superiority of the bucket approach:

[A]s advocates of the strategy often point out, the bucket approach is arguably superior from the perspective of client psychology; it fits far better into our mental accounting heuristics, and makes the portfolio easier for clients to understand. Furthermore, clients may have an easier time staying the course through market volatility when they can clearly see where their cash flows will come from in the coming years, and that they truly have a decade or more to allow for any declines in the equity bucket to recover.
...
[E]ven if a bucket strategy merely produces the exact same asset allocation and portfolio construction, but does so in a manner that makes it easier for clients to stick with and implement the strategy, it is arguably a superior one.

(link)

Lance Roberts, Chief Investment Strategist, RIA Advisors
After having been in the investing world for more than 25 years from private banking and investment management to private and venture capital; Lance has pretty much “been there and done that” at one point or another. His common-sense approach, clear explanations and “real world” experience has appealed to audiences for over a decade. Lance is also the Chief Editor of the Real Investment Report, a weekly subscriber-based newsletter that is distributed nationwide. The newsletter covers economic, political and market topics as they relate to your money and life. He also writes the Real Investment Daily blog, which is read by thousands nationwide from individuals to professionals, and his opinions are frequently sought after by major media sources. Lance’s investment strategies and knowledge have been featured on CNBC, Fox Business News, Business News Network and Fox News. He has been quoted by a litany of publications from the Wall Street Journal, Reuters, Bloomberg, The New York Times, The Washington Post all the way to TheStreet.com. His writings and research have also been featured on several of the nation’s biggest financial blog sites such as the Pragmatic Capitalist, Credit Write-downs, The Daily Beast, Zero Hedge and Seeking Alpha.
Over the last couple of weeks, we have been discussing the ongoing market correction. As we stated last week:
“As shown in the chart below, we had suggested a correction back to previous market highs was likely but could extend to the 50-dma. So far, the correction has played out much as we anticipated.”
However, we also said:​​ “However, while we expect a rally next week, due to the short-term oversold condition of the market, there is a downside risk to the 200-dma, which is another 5% lower from current levels. Such would entail a near 14% decline from the peak, which is well within the historical norms of corrections during any given year.”
On Friday, due to the “quad-witching options expiration” (when all options contracts for the current strike month expire and rollover), the market gave up support at the 50-dma, as shown below.
The good news, if you want to call it that, is the market did hold a previous level of minor support and remains oversold short-term.
As such, the break of the 50-dma must recover early next week, or it will put the 200-dma into focus. That is currently about 7% lower than where we closed on Friday.

Curiously, I ran across this family in looking at SCG funds that market themselves as value funds. That came up in another thread.
Comparing Virtus KAR Small-Cap Value Fund's (PQSAX) prospectus with this one shows how worthless stated strategies often are. These two are cut from the same boilerplate. Below are the lead paragraphs in their respective Principal Investment Strategies section.
The main difference is only in market cap (small/mid vs. small). Both this "growth" fund and the other "value" fund say they invest in companies believed to be "undervalued" relative to their "growth" potential. I've tried to highlight the market cap differences between the two funds.
Small-Mid Cap Growth Fund
The fund seeks long-term capital appreciation by investing in small- and mid-capitalization stocks with lower overall risk characteristics. The fund invests in a select group of small- and mid-market capitalization companies believed to be undervalued relative to their future growth potential. The investment strategy emphasizes companies the subadviser believes to have a sustainable competitive advantage, strong management and low financial risk and to be able to grow over market cycles. Although the fund invests primarily in U.S. companies, it may invest in foreign securities and American Depositary Receipts.
Small-Cap Value Fund
The fund pursues long-term capital appreciation in the small market capitalization sector while seeking to incur less risk than the small capitalization value market. The fund invests in a select group of small market capitalization believed by the fund’s subadviser to be undervalued relative to their future growth potential. The investment strategy emphasizes companies the subadviser believes to have a sustainable competitive advantage, strong management and low financial risk and to be able to grow over market cycles. Although the fund invests primarily in U.S. companies, it may invest in foreign securities and depositary receipts.companies.
Small Cap Value prospectus (and prospectus for the family's other funds):
https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/34273/000110465920006713/tv536302_485bpos.htm

Price’s ultra-short TRBUX (not equivalent to a money market fund) is normally pegged at $5.00 But has managed somehow to creep all the way up to $5.09 resulting (in part) in a 2.62% YTD return. This seems to me to be the financial equivalent of being “up the creek in a canoe without a paddle - and with thunder clouds on the horizon“. I don’t understand how they get out of this without investors taking a bath when the price eventually returns to $5.00. Everything I understand about the fund is that the $5 peg is the nominal NAV and they are loath to deviate from it very far for very long.

M* shows 41 distinct world small/mid funds. Their returns Monday, grouped by current portfolio style:
SCG (5): GPRIX -1.68%, GPGCX -2.09%, GPMCX -2.17%, EKGAX -2.67%, -SGSCX -3.1%
SCBl(3):  IZSYX -2.69%, DGLIX -2.92%, EVGIX -3.01%
MCG (17): WAGOX -1.04%, OBEGX -1.26%, WWWEX -1.24%, GGSYX -1.63%, GLNIX -1.65%,
                  GPGIX -1.63%, OWSMX -1.65%, SMCWX -1.69%, HGXVX -1.74%, DGSCX -2.06%,
                  AGCTX -2.08%, OPGIX -2.11%, GEOSX -2.37%, FHSIX -2.41%, ESVAX -2.42%,
                  TSYIX -2.43%, GNXIX -2.85%
MCBl(6):    NALFX -1.61%, FHESX -2.35%, LPEIX -2.36%,
                  CAEIX -2.49%, TEMGX -2.49%, CSMOX -2.64%
SCV (2): YASLX -2.43%, GGMMX -2.76%
LCG (1): FEUIX -1.21%
MCV (4): RAILX -1.35%, GCCHX -2.54%, GCHPX -2.56%, MOWIX -4.20%
LCBl(3): VMNVX -0.91%, HEOYX -1.92%, DGBEX -2.14%
The six italicized funds are ones that seem to be environmentally focused (e.g. "climate", or "environmental" or energy in an SRI sense). There are also ESG funds, DGBEX, FHESX, and HGXVX, but an ESG focus may not fundamentally alter the pool of companies they are fishing in. (One can debate whether sustainable development goals funds should be grouped with environmental funds.)
This exercise helps to illustrate a few things. Peers matter, how one groups funds matter. 15% of these funds are environmental. That means they aren't looking at the same companies, any more than, say, a financial sector fund is looking at the same companies as a value fund.
Styles matter, but grouping by style here leaves one with too few funds for meaningful comparisons. If you like the investing approach of a fund, and it is executing that approach well, it doesn't matter how its figures look relative to other funds with different approaches.
Time frames matter. These one day returns, even grouped by style, are all over the map. I suspect one would find at best only modest correlation between star ratings and these one day performance figures. Too much noise in a day to be meaningful.
Worth a mention is VMNVX. On a one day basis, it certainly looks like it is meeting its goal of lower volatility. But what I want to highlight is its overall performance. Out of the gate, it was the darling of many investors. The fund is now about 6½ years old. For its first couple of years its performance was great relative to its peers (for whatever that's worth). However, over the past five years, it has turned in a 69th percentile performance. Time frames matter.
Also worth a mention is NALFX. Possibly the granddaddy of clean energy funds (nearly 40 years old), it did miserably for many years (1 or 2 stars). IMHO waaay ahead of its time. Look at it now. Top 3% over the past five years. Being in the right place at the right time matters. With a fund that's only been around for a year, one can't tell whether that's luck or skill. But with this fund, after decades one has a pretty good idea of where it is heading.

Different doesn't mean better, though it can provide diversification. On the day, GPGCX underperformed every other Grandeur Peak fund, peer or not. Again, this is why one doesn't look at short term performance.
[ Edit: my error, GPMCX did worse, -2.17% vs. -2.09% ]
One of the fund's four stated strategies is indeed finding out of favor growth. Also from the man, the other three involve finding "broken growth, underappreciated growth and undiscovered growth."
This is like reading an old description of Legg Mason Value Trust and suggesting that BIll Miller should have been benchmarked against a value index.

The adviser follows a value discipline in selecting securities. ... Value stocks as a group may be out of favor ...

2004 Prospectus
 

The veteran value investor buys traditional "value" fare like financial stocks, but also "growth" stocks prone to nosebleed valuations and jarring volatility like Nextel Communications, Amazon.com Inc., IAC/InterActiveCorp, eBay Inc. and, most recently, Google Inc. These picks occasionally have drawn critics, but they were also key drivers of a more than 15% jump for the fund in the fourth quarter. ...
Mr. Miller: ... Now people look at the market and are concerned about valuation, but we aren't.

WSJ, Jan 6, 2005
Watch what I do, not what I say.
To find SCG funds that purport to be value funds (i.e. ones saying that they buy out of favor stocks), look for boutique growth families marketing value funds, or conversely, boutique value families with a fund classified as SCG.
For example, and hardly coincidentally, WAMVX. Its principal strategies include "us[ing] a 'bottom-up' process of fundamental analysis to look for individual companies [it] believe[s] are temporarily undervalued." Sounds like "out of favor" to me. Summary Prospectus.