It's going to be interesting when their "feeling" that "their financial health is in good to excellent shape" meets reality.

Yep - Those working class stiffs are making out just fine. Retire on Social Security alone (if it’s still there) and then live another 30 years. What could possibly go wrong?

It's going to be interesting when their "feeling" that "their financial health is in good to excellent shape" meets reality.
You just know that this was a well-designed survey, right? Thanks Ted, for more worthless garbage.

FYI: Most American couples feel their financial health is in good to excellent shape, according to the Fidelity Investments Couples & Money study released Tuesday.
The strong economy of the last few years may be the reason 47 percent of those surveyed said their household’s financial health is very good and another 22 percent went even further to say it is excellent.
Regards,
Ted
https://www.fa-mag.com/news/couples-say-they-re-feeling-good-about-their-finances-39431.html?print

FYI: Average on Tuesday, many participants in its 401(k) retirement plan were likely in shock. Over one-third of the plan’s assets have been invested in the shares of General Electric, as shown by the company’s federal filings. Its share price has fallen by 60% since the end of 2016, as the S&P 500 has risen by over 25%.
Similarly, participants in the 401(k) retirement plan at Scana—a natural gas company in Georgia—have suffered heavy losses from inadequate diversification. Over 60% of the plan’s assets were invested in Scana stock, as shown by the company’s federal filings. Its share price fell by nearly 50% since the end of 2016.
As these examples illustrate, holding a large portion of your retirement assets in your employer’s stock is dangerous for your financial health. Such a large concentration undermines the risk-reducing benefits of a diversified securities portfolio. Indeed, a large holding in employer stock doubles your risk: If your company runs into major problems, you may lose your job and your retirement security.
Regards,
Ted
http://fortune.com/2018/06/20/general-electric-dow-jones-401k-retirement/

I've found an AT&T (T) make whole note, coupon 6.5%, maturing 3/15/29, with an asking YTW of 4.991%. (Other maturity bonds are also available; longer ones with higher yields and shorter ones with lower yields.) CUSIP 001957AW9.
On the page you cited is a link to a Bloomberg article from ten days ago:
AT&T Cut by Moody's as Time Warner Deal Adds Billions of Debt

The purchase made the company the most indebted in the U.S., excluding financial companies. AT&T’s debt load will force it to refinance large amounts of debt every year, "making the company beholden to the health of the capital markets," Moody’s said as it lowered the company’s unsecured debt rating one level to Baa2, two levels above speculative grade.

IMHO it's reasonable to hold a ten year corporate bond like this as part of one's diversified bond portfolio. Good cash flow (especially since it's a premium bond). So it does what a bond is supposed to do. Whether it's a good vehicle in which to hold cash is less clear. I suppose that depends on what one's requirements are for cash.

Hi Guys,
I have said this before and I will surely say it again and likely again over time. Monte Carlo simulations are a terrific tool to challenge the survival robustness of a portfolio. What portfolio? Any you own or are likely to own.
There are now many free Monte Carlo simulators available on the Net. I especially like the one offered by Portfolio Visualizer. It provides many options, is comprehensive, is easy to use, and is fast. I have referenced it on earlier posts. Here is a Link to that useful financial tool:
https://www.portfoliovisualizer.com/monte-carlo-simulation#analysisResults
If you want to explore the probability odds of a portfolio's survival, please give this tool an examination. I think you will be impressed with it. Give it a few test runs. You can use it to improve the survival odds of your portfolio. Enjoy and prosper.
Best Regards

FYI: Vanguard Group won a victory of sorts when E*Trade Financial Corp. added 32 of its exchange-traded funds to its commission-free platform. The arrangement allows prospective Vanguard buyers to avoid the $6.95 fee that E*Trade charges to trade funds that don’t make the cut, the online brokerage said in a statement this week.
Regards,
Ted
https://www.fa-mag.com/news/vanguard-wins-over-e-trade-with-etfs-despite--no-payment--policy-39370.html?print

FYI:
Regards,
Ted
June 21, 2018
Dear WEALTHTRACK Subscriber,
We are celebrating the launch of our Fifteenth Season on Public Television this week! Talk about long-term investing. We are delighted that you are here to share it with us.
Our goal when we started the show was exactly as it is now - to help our viewers build long-term financial security through disciplined, diversified investing, with advice from some of the top professionals in the business. We are continuing that tradition this week.
One of the hallmarks of Great Investors and Financial Thought Leaders is independent thinking. In order to beat the market you have to do unconventional things. This week’s guest is a prime example. He is known for his rigorous research and ability to create strategies that are either non-correlated with market behavior, i.e., they zig when the market zags, or add alpha, a performance edge over the market using more conventional strategies.
We’ll be joined by Cliff Asness, Co-Founder, Managing Principal and Chief Investment Officer of AQR Capital Management, a global money management firm he launched in 1998. It now has $225 billion dollars under management in hedge funds, as well as other alternative and more traditional strategies for clients and its family of mutual funds, which it started in 2009. One of the oldest, the AQR Managed Futures Strategy Fund, which has so far achieved its goal to be non-correlated to the market is co-managed by Asness and has a Morningstar Bronze analyst rating.
AQR stands for Applied Quantitative Research. The firm uses proprietary computer models to forecast returns for a wide variety of assets and geographies using a heavy application of old fashioned human brainpower, which it has in abundance. At last count 11 of the firm’s 26 principals have doctorate degrees and 5 are current or former professors.
Asness is a PhD in Finance from the University of Chicago where he was Nobel Laureate Eugene Fama’s teaching assistant for two years. He has won numerous prestigious awards for his own research including the CFA Institute’s James R. Vertin Award in recognition of his “body of research notable for its relevance and enduring value to investment professionals”.
AQR is known for its value orientation but Asness is quick to point out there are other key strategies employed. During this week’s interview, we’ll discuss the four core strategies AQR has identified over the years that can add a performance edge to portfolios.
If you miss the premiere show of our new season on air this week, you can always watch it on our website. It’s available to our PREMIUM viewers right now and to everyone else over the weekend. We also have an EXTRA interview with Asness about his research on a seldom used but highly effective ice hockey strategy that has investment applications.
Also, if you're looking to take WEALTHTRACK with you on your commute or travels, you can now find the WEALTHTRACK podcast on TuneIn, Stitcher, and SoundCloud, as well as iTunes. Find out more on the WEALTHTRACK Podcast page.
Thank you so much for watching. Have a great weekend and make the week ahead a profitable and a productive one!
Best regards,
Consuelo
Video Clip:

@Art: You've got one hell of a nerve telling the author of a piece of financial writing that he doesn't have the right to comment on the misuse of his own original work.

A headline that I would like to see:
One Trick I Learned from Other Worthless Financial Posts
"One trick I learned from other worthless financial hacks is that if I write a column with "Five Tricks I Learned" in the header some guy named Ted will help me make a living writing useless crap by copying it to MFO".

FYI: Most millennials can’t answer simple financial questions correctly, according to a new nationwide survey. Only 17 percent of working Americans ages 25-40 could answer five basic financial literacy questions from Massachusetts Mutual Life Insurance Co. (MassMutual) Foundation’s FutureSmart Digital program correctly, according to the report. The questions were on topics including credit scores, compound interest and investing.
Regards,
Ted
https://www.fa-mag.com/news/millennials-lack-basic-financial-knowledge--massmutual-finds-39299.html?print

JG has said repeatedly, as have others, that the corporate debt explosion is looking like it could be the trigger for the next crisis + recession ... although the recession indicators he talks about are not signalling anything dramatic on the near horizon. (That of course doesn't rule out an intracyclical slowdown like, for example, in 2015, the kind of slowdown ECRI is projecting.)
The 6% T comment is the one comment he's made in quite a while that sounds more like an assertion without any real support rather than the usual well-documented insights in his webcasts. Really, to get an idea of what he's up to, someone would need to tune in to at least a couple of full webcasts.
His ego's pretty puffed up, yes, but the economic, financial, and investment insights are mostly close to the mark and overall useful. The 6% thing is a real outlier, IMHO.

Here's a FT article discussing a 2016 CFA Financial Analysts Journal paper studying The Effect of Management Design on the Portfolio Concentration and Performance of Mutual Funds. Here, "management design" means the use of one manager or multiple managers.
Unlike the Bloomberg column that looked only at the ten largest funds in each of three groupings, this paper used CRSP data for the whole US fund market, excluding only funds holding fewer than 10 assets, less than $500K AUM, and funds with under 12 months history.
I think it is worth reading the paper itself (one can skim/skip the detailed analyses and focus on the plain English sections) as well as the FT piece. The paper has many observations, including:

We showed that portfolios of funds managed by a single manager tend to have a higher degree of both within- and cross-sector concentration. A singlemanager management design, on average, achieves a better net performance and has a higher expense ratio. ...
First, all else being equal, equity mutual fund investors may be better off selecting funds with portfolios concentrated in the top one or two stocks (relative to the stocks’ own size) within each sector. Investors could also benefit from selecting funds that are concentrated in a few industry sectors relative to the market portfolio.

My initial impression is that while single management vs. multiple/team management tends to lead to more highly concentrated portfolios, it is that level of concentration more than the management structure that matters. Haven't read the paper carefully enough yet to verify that impression is entirely correct.
Note also that it also observes that older funds run by long term managers tend to underperform. Your guess is as good as mine as to how one picks newer funds run by short term managers.

No strong opinions on teams vs stars, but FWIW the "teams" at American Funds are one of the main reasons that we are comfortably retired with minimal financial concerns.

https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/1103243/000141304218000161/momentumbond497cls.htm
497 1 momentumbond497cls.htm
The Momentum Bond Fund
A series of PFS Funds
Supplement dated June 8, 2018
to the Prospectus and Statement of Additional Information
each dated September 1, 2017
The Board of Trustees (the “Board”) of the PFS Funds (the “Trust”) has approved a Plan of Liquidation (the “Plan”) relating to The Momentum Bond Fund (the “Fund”), effective June 6, 2018. NWM Fund Group, LLC, the Fund’s investment adviser (the “Adviser”), recently completed a strategic review of the management and operations of the Fund and determined that it does not desire to continue to support the Fund and has recommended to the Board to approve the Plan. As a result, the Board has concluded that it is in the best interest of the shareholders to liquidate the Fund.
In connection with the proposed liquidation and dissolution of the Fund called for by the Plan, the Board has directed the Trust’s principal underwriter to cease offering shares of the Fund immediately as of the date of this Supplement. Shareholders may continue to reinvest dividends and distributions in the Fund or redeem their shares until the liquidation.
It is anticipated that the Fund will liquidate on or about June 29, 2018. Any remaining shareholders on the date of liquidation will receive a distribution of their remaining investment value in full liquidation of the Fund. If you have questions or need assistance, please contact your financial advisor directly or the Fund toll-free at 1-888-331-9609 or the Adviser at 1-707-252-1343.
IMPORTANT INFORMATION FOR RETIREMENT PLAN INVESTORS
If you are a retirement plan investor, you should consult your tax advisor regarding the consequences of any redemption of Fund shares. If you receive a distribution from an Individual Retirement Account or a Simplified Employee Pension (SEP) IRA, you must roll the proceeds into another Individual Retirement Account within sixty (60) days of the date of the distribution in order to avoid having to include the distribution in your taxable income for the year. If you receive a distribution from a 403(b)(7) Custodian Account (Tax-Sheltered account) or a Keogh Account, you must roll the distribution into a similar type of retirement plan within sixty (60) days in order to avoid disqualification of your plan and the severe tax consequences that it can bring. If you are the trustee of a Qualified Retirement Plan, you may reinvest the money in any way permitted by the plan and trust agreement.
This Supplement, and the existing Prospectus dated September 1, 2017, provide relevant information for all shareholders and should be retained for future reference. Both the Prospectus and the Statement of Additional Information dated September 1, 2017 have been filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission, are incorporated by reference, and can be obtained without charge by calling the Fund toll-free at 1-888-331-9609.

@VintageFreak- From what I've seen so far, the "technology" is about at the level of when mass mailings first attempted to "personalize" by being addressed to you. This, if you remember, produced some interesting artifacts, along the lines of "Dear Addressee Unknown".
The stuff out there now consists of remarkably bland pre-cooked "financial" paragraphs, with the company name and some other info such as recent stock price filled in by the robot.

@Benwp Because there are thousands of financial advisers who can and those advisers are highly valuable customers to Morningstar.

"I'm wondering when media companies will deploy robots to write articles for them."
Some already have, with short financial "articles", to a primitive degree. So far the result isn't pretty.

How would you like to have accounts at FlagStar bank?
Wells Fargo is exiting retail banking operations in three Midwestern states as the beleaguered company follows through on previous plans to reduce the number of locations it has open.
The San Francisco bank said Tuesday that it will sell 52 retail bank branches in Indiana, Michigan, Wisconsin and Ohio to a Flagstar Bancorp subsidiary, as well as several branches in Wisconsin.
Financial terms were not disclosed. Almost 500 employees will be get job offers from Flagstar.
Wells Fargo & Co. has said it will reduce to approximately 5,000 the branches it operates by the end of 2020.
https://www.pbs.org/newshour/economy/social-security-trust-fund-will-depleted-17-years-according-trustees-report

@David_Snowball- David, thanks much for your non-financial comments this month. I'm not going to be specific, but I suspect that you'll know which ones.