Thank you @msf
From Mr. Merriman's web site:
"There’s a lot of money to be made from financial newsletters that give investment advice. But the money comes from selling the newsletters, not from taking the advice.
Literally anybody can start and publish an investment newsletter. The key to success is to have a period of successful predictions that can be promoted as if it’s a sign that the publisher has talent, insight and an accurate handle on future performance.
You can claim almost anything
Despite their slick appearance, many investment newsletters are run from home. It’s easy to start a newsletter. You don’t need a college degree. You don’t need a license. You don’t need a track record. You can claim almost anything you want to as long as you aren’t actually being paid to manage money."
>>> Some of his above would suggest some amount of due diligence, a self code of discovery.
NOTE: I'm surely not in an intellectual position to discredit his years of work and sharing of information; but disappointed with this current write. His newsletter is free, although one may suspect some form of monetizing his work. I'm not inclined to give my time to such an investigation.
Mr. Merriman's web site
Perhaps too much coffee, for me, this A.M.
Take care,
Catch

FYI: For an investor whose story was featured in a best-selling book and an Oscar-winning movie, Michael Burry has kept a surprisingly low profile in recent years.
But it turns out the hero of “The Big Short” has plenty to say about everything from central banks fueling distortions in credit markets to opportunities in small-cap value stocks and the “bubble” in passive investing.
One of his most provocative views from a lengthy email interview with Bloomberg News on Tuesday: The recent flood of money into index funds has parallels with the pre-2008 bubble in collateralized debt obligations, the complex securities that almost destroyed the global financial system.
Regards,
Ted
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2019-09-04/michael-burry-explains-why-index-funds-are-like-subprime-cdos?srnd=etfs

Overall, a piece with lots of factoids, but no description I can find about how they scored the brokerages or features. Various Kiplinger comments about brokerages are also rather odd.
Here are some weird statements made about E*Trade. I'm not picking on E*Trade in particular, it's just that it was the first brokerage listed.
"More than 3,900 mutual funds you can buy with no sales fee or fee to trade".
It looks like Kiplinger chose this arbitrary number and didn't bother to report actual figures. E*Trade claims over 4,400 NTF funds. Fidelity, which Kiplinger also says offers the same 3,900+ NTF funds appears to offer "just" 3,593, according to its fund screener. Kiplinger says the same of Schwab, though I haven't checked its true figure.
"the highest percentage of no-transaction fee funds with three-star ratings or better from Morningstar."
Does percentage matter? ISTM what is important is the selection (quantity) of high quality funds (I use that term loosely), not the fraction of funds offered that fit that description.
"E*Trade’s Max Rate Checking Account comes with unlimited ATM reimbursements on charges that other financial institutions levy (though you may be subject to charges from the owner/operator of the ATM). "
That's a curious way of saying simply that foreign ATM fees "will automatically be credited to your account."

FYI: Lazy, hazy, crazy days of summer?
August certainly was crazy for the global financial markets, and the outlook is unquestionably hazy as the season unofficially ends with Monday’s Labor Day holiday. Lazy might have been the best investment strategy, however, if that meant setting and forgetting a diversified stock-and-bond portfolio.
August saw wild swings in the U.S. markets, buffeted by the three Ts: tweets, trade, and Treasuries. Through Thursday, the SPDR S&P 500 exchange-traded fund (ticker: SPY), which tracks the U.S. large-capitalization market, had a total return for August of minus 2.85%, according to Morningstar data. That surely stings most readers.
Regards,
Ted
https://www.barrons.com/articles/when-the-stock-market-is-this-crazy-you-should-just-invest-lazy-51567213413?mod=hp_INTERESTS_funds&refsec=hp_INTERESTS_funds

FYI:
Regards,
Ted
August 29, 2019
Dear WEALTHTRACK Subscriber,
Volatile U.S trade relations with China are immediately reflected in the financial markets but what about the economic impact? Could they push the U.S. into recession? On our website this week we have a podcast on the topic with leading global economist and strategist Nick Sargen.
On the television program this Labor Day weekend we are revisiting a recent Great Investor show with a global value manager. He is a long time holder of Berkshire Hathaway, even though the stock has badly lagged the S&P 500 so far this year. It’s basically flat vs. the market’s around 15% gain. On a total return basis Berkshire’s stock has trailed for the past decade. Berkshire doesn’t pay a dividend. The S&P 500 does which makes a difference. Berkshire’s stock has risen by nearly 260% versus the market’s more than 300% total return advance in the decade ended in 2018.
Despite Berkshire’s stunning record since 1965, 21% compounded annualized gains, this is not the first time that the company’s shares have underperformed the market for a decade. It has happened several times in recent years.
Berkshire has outperformed the market by double digits in every trailing ten year period since 1978, but it hasn’t had a double- digit advantage since 2002, and in recent years it has underperformed the market in three ten-year spans.
Even Warren Buffett himself admitted the company’s glory days of outperformance might be over. In an interview in the Financial Times his response to the question: if Berkshire would be a better investment than the S&P 500 he said “I think the financial result would be very close to the same.” He went on to say “…if you want to join something that may have a tiny expectation of better (performance) than the S&P, I think we may be about the safest.”
At a $507 billion market capitalization and few places to deploy it in enough size to make a discernible difference to the bottom line, is Berkshire just too big?
Over the years Berkshire Hathaway has benefitted from sizable stock buybacks in some of its major holdings. In Berkshire’s 2018 annual report Buffett cited American Express where its holdings “remained unchanged over the past eight years,” but our “ownership increased from 12.6% to 17.9% because of repurchases…”
In the same his 2018 Letter to Shareholders, Buffett said the company itself “will be a significant repurchaser of its shares…at prices… below our estimate of intrinsic value.”
What else does Buffett have up his sleeve to enhance shareholder returns?
The company has never purchased a tech stock. It recently bought Amazon and Buffett heaped praise on CEO Jeff Bezos. Berkshire has also never paid a dividend. Could that be next?
We’ll hear from Tom Russo, an avid student of Buffett’s style of value investing with no intention of changing his approach. Russo is Managing Partner of investment advisory firm, Gardner Russo & Gardner where he oversees around $11 billion including his Semper Vic Partners fund which he launched in 1984 after hearing Buffett address his class at Stanford. Semper Vic has generated 14% compound annual returns since inception, handily outperforming the S&P 500’s 11% returns.
The global value manager focuses on owning a small group of exceptionally well managed brand name firms - 19 at last count - with dominant, almost unassailable positions in their mostly consumer-oriented businesses and then holding them pretty much forever. Berkshire Hathaway has consistently been one of his largest positions.
On this week’s show I asked Russo, given Buffett’s modest expectations for the stock’s future performance, if he is rethinking the position.
Don’t forget, if you are away this weekend, it’s easy to take WEALTHTRACK with you! The WEALTHTRACK podcast is available on TuneIn, Stitcher, and SoundCloud as well as iTunes and Spotify.
Thank you for watching. Have a great Labor Day weekend, and make the week ahead a profitable and a productive one.
Best regards,
Consuelo

Nick Sargen Podcast:
https://wealthtrack.com/trade-war-impact-the-markets-economy/

@Derf- No purchases as far as I can recall. Just held on and hoped for the best. I'm really a financial coward at heart. But we had just retired, didn't yet have a good feel for how our income stream would shape up, and were afraid to risk more because who knew how that mess was going to turn out?
Remember also the role that Ben Bernanke and the Fed played in the recovery. We tend to think of that as "normal" action now, but it was historically unique, and there were powerful conservative forces militantly opposed to his efforts. No one had a clue how that whole thing was going to play out- it looked like '29 all over again.

FYI: It's tough when a fund's top selling point is we lost less money than the index.
But that's the strategy one buys into with a defensive mutual fund like a balanced fund. The balanced fund is a portfolio that holds both stocks and bonds so that investors can get both growth and income in one vehicle.
Most financial advisors recommend a portfolio of both stocks and bonds for diversification. That's because stocks and bonds typically moved in opposite directions. When stocks rise, bonds fall in price, and when stocks fall, bonds rise in price. The theory is one asset should temper the losses in the other, resulting in lower risk and volatility.
So, if you want diversification, but don't feel like researching a whole bunch of funds to make sure you have the appropriate asset allocation, you can buy a balanced fund and get the whole thing in one package, such as the Hennessy Equity and Income Fund (HEIFX).
Regards,
Ted
https://www.forbes.com/sites/lcarrel/2019/08/29/hennessey-fund-is-well-positioned-for-choppy-market-offering-lower-risk-and-volatility/#956d3da7accc
M* Snapshot HEIFX:
https://www.morningstar.com/funds/xnas/heifx/quote

I hope there is a correction. A big one. Seasonally, September is often a weak month for equities.
I jumped in a 'tad' on the down 800-point day last Friday -- because I figured there would be follow-through down days, and did not want to go "all in" in a single day. But, despite all the financial bloggers who suffer from Trump Derangement syndrome, the buyers came right back in to bid up stocks. --- Including UP 250 points today, the day after the article provided by the OP). Sigh! --Too much optimism can be very depressing!
Frankly, I like select divd stocks (not quite at these prices, but if/when we see some pricing weakness) with a sub-2% 3-year Treasury. In fact, I like them more, as other investors become more pessimistic.... But I really need to see some follow-through ACTION on the pessimism. "Talking gloomy" is one thing; panic-selling is what we need. But, maybe we will finally get there in September. Hey, I'm a "glass is half full" kinda guy.
In a sustained depressed interest-rate environment, quality enterprises may have an opportunity to refinance even more debt at even lower debt-servicing costs. A more slack employment market would ameliorate wage pressures, and companies might "clean house" on some unnecessary costs that have crept into corporate P/Ls over the past 11 years. I see it every day at my "day job". And my employer is just like a lot of other big companies -- fat, happy, distracted with "stakeholders" & "sustainability" & millenial-friendly "happy talk" media nonsense.
But a crash is coming. It's been coming for 11 years. We've had crashes before. We will have many more. It's just part of the business cycle.

I agree with @rforno on both financial preferred and quantumonline.com. I also prefer to hold individual preferreds although I also hold a CEF preferred fund.

FYI: “Preferreds” are one of the best performing investments, yet many investors still avoid them.
While it’s no surprise that US stocks are the highest performing stocks in the world in 2019, who would have ever thought that those boring, old preferred stocks would have outperformed small & medium capitalized stocks before dividends?
In fact, to students of financial history, the success of these stocks is not a big surprise.
Since over a century ago, beginning in the year 1900, preferred stocks have been by far the best performing income investment. As the following chart & table shows, there has rarely been a timeframe when preferreds have not outperformed corporate or treasury bonds.
Regards,
Ted
https://www.forbes.com/sites/kennethwinans/2019/08/27/how-does-a-6-yield-with-a-tax-break-sound-try-preferred-stocks/#28ab22ad6f0d
Quantum Online Com:
http://www.quantumonline.com/QuickStart.cfm

FYI: In constructing financial plans, I tell clients that the second most important decision they will make is to set the overall riskiness of their portfolio by deciding upon an asset allocation. I’ll disclose the most important decision at the end.
As a financial planner, I’ve been trained to administer what’s called a “risk profile questionnaire” to new clients to determine how much of their portfolio should be in more volatile asset classes like stocks. One of the best such questionnaires I’ve seen is this survey from Vanguard. It asks questions about how clients feel about risk and when they will need their money, with the answers supposedly determining how much risk to take.
Regards,
Ted
https://www.advisorperspectives.com/articles/2019/08/26/why-risk-profile-questionnaires-dont-work

You said it!
What shatters me is the inability to TRUST anything this idiot 'president' says or does -- it's either false, exaggerated, reversed an hour later, or denied by others as ever having happened.[1] Couple that with his not having a higher degree of public trust because he fights tooth-and-nail to keep his tax returns secret is only further fuel for the fire....an 'innocent' or trustworthy person wouldn't do that. Gods help us if we ever get into a real war or financial crisis -- who are you going to believe? Tweety Amin and his fantasies or the traditional global news media?
If the Modern Framers could somehow include empathy, being a decent human being, and a requirement to represent ALL CITIZENS of the country, that would be nice, but .... alas.
[1] To wit: this morning he said China is 'ready to deal seriously' on trade, which shot the Dow up from it's -300 overnight levels after the G7+1 fiasco. Yet China denied any such phone calls had been made.

"intellectually coherent"
I really like that. What a shame that wasn't written into our constitution as a presidential requirement by the framers. Of course all of them were intellectually coherent, so it likely never occurred to them that this was anything special.

"...Average Joe/Jane investors may be nervous about their financial well-being, college funds, retirement plans, etc, and he's totally oblivious to them -- just has to snark on his political opponents quitting the race. Because, it's all about him and being the authoritarian strongman bully."
Perfectly apt description. What is most appalling to me is that so many could not see this prospect during the campaign. They voted for this huckster with bad business sense. And now, with the absolute highest possible degree of sarcasm, I quote scripture: "...And a little child shall lead them."

I woke up this morning to see headlines that Tweety Amin expressed 'second thoughts' about increasing the China tarriffs. Then, 2 hours later, the WH says he meant to say he had 'second thoughts' about the percentage of the increase and that it should've been higher, and his talking heads are reinforcing that on the bobblehead shows here. If this was during market hours, we'd have seen more 500-point whipsaws in the Dow.
The pathetic thing is that Nobody. Can. Plan. Effectively. China fiasco aside, he's flailing more and more ... i.e., the economy is 'booming' and the 'best ever' but he needs the Fed to cut rates anyway. He announces, or hints of announcing, something and then needs others to clean up after him before he reverses/suspends his decision once it polls poorly. Yes, there's the usual marketplace uncertainty we all accept as investors, but we've got a whole new level of instability here -- and then factor in algos that trade off of headlines between themselves, and you have a recipe for disaster. Speaking of algos, gods help us if the idiot rambles about gun violence, war, and the markets in the same tweet.
He was actually tweeting jokes about the Dow's drop on Friday, too. Average Joe/Jane investors may be nervous about their financial well-being, college funds, retirement plans, etc, and he's totally oblivious to them -- just has to snark on his political opponents quitting the race. Because, it's all about him and being the authoritarian strongman bully.
I shudder to think what this regime would have done if they were in charge during the GFC. We'd probably still be in it, based on their current track record for effectiveness, planning, and competence. But it'd never be *his* fault, because in the world of delusion created by his liddle stable genius chosen-one mind, he can do no wrong, ever.
GRUMBLE.

FYI: Patricia Russell wanted to help.
That’s what she wrote me in an email offering to be a trusted, helpful resource for my work. She was a certified financial planner, and the founder of FinanceMarvel.com, a website about getting out of debt, repairing and improving credit scores and more.
Regards,
Ted
https://www.seattletimes.com/business/ake-expert-diminishes-the-value-of-genuine-financial-help/

FYI: Doomsday scenarios don’t have to come with the hype, speed, and spectacle of a Hollywood blockbuster. The biggest threats today are slower-moving and decidedly less visual: The U.S.-China trade war could become an all-out conflict that plunges the world into recession and undoes globalization; a Japan-like deflationary funk could spread through the U.S. and Europe; or state-sponsored hackers could paralyze critical infrastructure, undermining confidence and sparking a cyberwar.
A relatively healthy U.S. economy, along with global central banks’ willingness to cut interest rates, have allowed some measure of optimism, despite alarming headlines. In fact, investors’ equity holdings as a share of their financial assets hovered around 30% earlier this year; the last time it was higher was in the late 1990s.
But that’s exactly why some strategists, fund managers, and financial advisors are beginning to consider the investment versions of survivalists’ supplies, including Spam, gas masks, and gold. “It’s really the first time in seven or eight years that we are starting to meaningfully derisk across portfolios,” says David Carter, chief investment officer at Lenox Wealth Advisors, which oversees $2 billion. “Whether the tariff war escalates or lingers, the downside is a no-growth world where risk sentiment evaporates. And central banks around the world are trying to provide a safety net, but it’s a small net with a lot of holes.”
Regards,
Ted
https://www.barrons.com/articles/how-to-prepare-your-portfolio-for-the-worst-when-the-worst-is-a-real-possibility-51566603417?mod=past_editions

@MFO Members: Same article via Financial Advisor.Com with Bloomberg as its source.
Regards,
TEd
So You Can Read John's Link" InvestmentNews,Com
https://www.google.com/search?source=hp&ei=WoxfXaC4FurI_Qbh8KzABA&q=Stock+volatility+spurs+worst+run+of+ETF+withdrawals+in+six+months&oq=Stock+volatility+spurs+worst+run+of+ETF+withdrawals+in+six+months&gs_l=psy-ab.3..35i39.4235.4235..6794...0.0..0.76.76.1......0....2j1..gws-wiz.YEttKXTmkB0&ved=0ahUKEwigzfeas5jkAhVqZN8KHWE4C0gQ4dUDCAc&uact=5
Financial Advisor.Com:
https://www.mutualfundobserver.com/discuss/discussion/52164/stock-whiplash-spurs-worst-run-of-etf-withdrawals-in-six-months#latest

FYI: Every summer for the past several decades I have organized a series of Friday lunches in eastern Long Island for serious investors. More than 100 people attend the four sessions, with 25–30 at each one. The participants include hedge fund, private equity and real estate billionaires, venture capitalists, an academic and some corporate leaders. I moderate a discussion of the key issues facing the financial markets for the better part of two hours. This year, several significant events occurred between the first two and the second two sessions. First, the Federal Reserve cut the Fed funds interest rate by a quarter of a percentage point; second President Trump announced a 10% tariff increase on $300 billion of Chinese goods; third, China allowed its currency, the renminbi, to decline to more than seven to the dollar; and fourth, the Hong Kong disturbance took place.
Regards,
Ted
https://www.realclearmarkets.com/articles/2019/08/22/plenty_to_worry_about_but_not_much_for_investors_to_do_103868.html

It is closed unless you purchase directly from Vanguard. (M* lists it as limited, not closed.)
From the summary prospectus:

Important Note Regarding Vanguard Wellington Fund
Vanguard Wellington Fund will be closed to all prospective financial advisory, institutional, and intermediary clients (other than clients who invest through a Vanguard brokerage account).

Vanguard fund page: https://investor.vanguard.com/mutual-funds/profile/VWELX

@Ted- That would be fantastic for a baseball batting average but not so great in financial affairs. I'd bet that your financial batting average beats the hell out of Mauldin's.