Howdy folks,
Asia and the metals. Before Fund Alarm, I believe it was Fund Vision with Salil.
That said, the paper and real bullion markets are diverging significantly (i.e. the premiums are widening). Since the banking issue, the demand for physical bullion has skyrocketed. This has led to increases in premiums and further out delivery dates. This increase in premiums implies a market with artificial pricing on the paper side. That's fine and longstanding. What might be different this time, is the int'l flight from the dollar into other species. It might be in slow motion and take years, but we're witnessing the end of the dollar as the worldwide medium of exchange and reserve currency. When that happens, the PM's will rise significantly. I say this because in other currencies around the world, they've been doing better than stateside for years. It all depends upon which currency they're priced in. That's OK. The markets are what they are.
and so it goes,
peace,
rono

Hold a target date fund for 20, 30, 40 years? Sounds good in theory.
What legal or contractual agreement exists with the sponsor to operate that fund for an indefinite time period or as @Baseball_Fan says to adhere to the same allocations, operating restrictions, fee structures? I’ve had at least two firms I invested through (Strong & Oppenheimer) go completely out of existence in the past 25 years. A third one, Templeton has been essentially merged out of existence since I opened a workplace plan there in the early 70s. Or are these simply extreme aberrations due to my antiquity?

Would the class agree that indexing and especially target fund investing are indeed active management...indexes do change over time..so really the advantage is as mentioned prior, low costs and keeping the "man away from the machine, man only there to feed the dog who keeps the man away from the machine"
LB yes, I understand what you wrote and agree re Target Date funds but do know folks who got wiggy over the last 3 years and bailed out...and these are very educated, successful folks with MBAs etc...they looked like their dog got run over during the down drafts and did bail to cash...
While we are at it, meaning looking at the way back time machine...I actually wonder how many of us would have actually done better rolling with treasury notes for the past 30-40 years instead of puttering around with buying funds, stocks. Don't the studies show that most investors do NOT come anywhere near the returns listed for funds etc....due to the in and out and puttering around?
David M...saw the TWEIX in your post...that would have been a great long hold....and someone on the boards wrote within the past two years that they had a friend/colleague who had only ONE fund, Blackrock Global Allocation MDLOX?...keep it simple....keep adding to it. I read that a long long time ago in IBD Investors Business Daily. same thing, invest in one solid fund, keep at it. Enjoy your life, go to the beach, focus on your job etc...

What would you hold for the next 20 years? The $70 billion 2040 Target Date VFORX is the most obvious solution for many investors but not here. The notion that you can’t get a reasonably smooth ride purely by indexing isn’t true. You can index a lot of things, including bonds. VFORX is all index, has a 0.08% expense ratio and will grow gradually more conservative in its allocations as 2040 approaches. A target date fund isn’t right for tinkerers and traders like on MFO, but I actually think it’s quite useful for many employees in retirement plans who don’t understand investing. One and done.

Last year, the media declared Allocation 60-40 dead, and this year they have risen from the dead, or risen from the ashes. WSJ, Barron's, M*, almost everybody. Media headlines are for the the current news with some hype.
While basic 60-40 (SP500-like + 10-yr Treasuries) had its ups and downs, there were only 5 years in history when both stocks and bonds were down, 1931 (both DODBX and VWELX existed then), 1941, 1969, 2018, 2022 (last year), and in absolute terms, 2022 was simply the worst year for 60-40 since 1937. It is almost natural that dramatic rebounds follow dramatic collapses (for funds at least).
https://twitter.com/charliebilello/status/1609209009994612739

Down-years are to be expected from time to time
Lean years, sure. Down years, not so much. Aside from last year, the last calendar year in which PRWCX lost money was in 2008, when it lost 27.17%. The only other calendar year in which it lost money was 1990 when it lost 1.3%. (Inception was in 1986.)

As PRWCX has risen lately, I redistributed some of my shares to where I wanted them in other TRP funds, but still within the T-IRA. PRWCX is up (per Morningstar) YTD by +7.13%. I've been in since 2013. Quite very satisfied. Down-years are to be expected from time to time. The amount I'm holding in terms of proportion within my portfolio is getting uncomfortably high, which is why I moved some $$$ around. PRWCX is still almost 38% of my total. My other balanced fund is BRUFX: almost at break-even today, YTD.
(*Edited.)

Today is the 32nd anniversary of my purchase of DODGX. It was neck and neck with SPY up until the dot com bust. From then on, SPY never caught up. What happened the last 1-3-5-10-15-20 years doesn't make any difference.

Good for you.
I read some reputable article 41y ago about the best funds, and DODGX was right in there, and I invested, but of course bailed at some point. TWEIX and TORYX and the others in the article fell by the wayside over time.
It remains interesting to me that 10y returns of the very best broad-based biggies still show, today, DODGX slightly lagging FXAIX, FCNTX slightly ahead, and the only big big winner FBGRX.
All the others I looked up lag. FLPSX, e.g.
Of course niches (FSELX) excel also.
I did have a good friend in the 1990s, amateur investor, tell me she was in FBGRX big and was going to stay. I wonder if she did. At the time I thought meh. What a fund that was (and very recently is).

”It would seem to mean little more than average investors fleeing investments at their low points only to buy back at higher prices. Add this data point to the "even more evidence about not beating the market" thread.”
Absolute! :)
Yes - That’s the underlying gist of the whole article I’d say. I didn’t quote it, but OAKBX was another “balanced” fund cited as having lost assets. I’m a bit surprised, in the case of PRWCX because i get the feeling from many posts here over the years that folks have practically been “knocking the doors down “ to get in. Resorting to schemes like transferring a single share to someone else so they could open an account.
The excerpt might well have been better placed in the "even more evidence about not beating the market" thread. BTW - I probably should have noted that the article is very positive towards balanced funds - largely because of the higher interest rate background today.

”The vast majority of investors don't have the stomach or temperament to passively invest in SPY or VBINX over 40 years. Even on this forum, how many are only invested in only these two or similar passive investments?”
For better or worse, the kind of investors who post here probably aren’t sitting on their hands for 40 years. :)

I think all of us are looking for a smoother, less dramatic ride...whatever that means. With indexing, you ride it up, you ride it down, and please don't tell me that there is a law of nature that says stock always go up over time...proven fact they get riskier over time...especially when you consider that you have more money invested over time...(why else would put options cost more the longer out your strike date is?)
I'm thinking back when my Dad got me started investing in the early 80's with my money working at the local Texaco...*ah the stories...I should write a book....
Kellogg, Raytheon, JNJ, Merck and Coke (KO), $2k in each....
Looking back I'm thinking if I just added $2k each year to each of those and did nothing else I would have a beach house in Hawaii to go along with a Ferrari collection..without all the noodling around, reading WSJ, etc etc.
I'm thinking my 5 stock portfolio would have beat any SPY index fund although, I don't think there were any index funds back then?
I think you could do worse than just roll with a Raytheon/LMT, JNJ, WMT/Costco, BRK-B, American Express, MSFT going forward over the next 20 years....
Best,
Baseball Fan

Check FMI international FMIJX. It was discussed a lot here as well on M* forums when it was a top performer for a few years. As usual, it is not mentioned anywhere as it's been underperforming for the last few years. I held ARTKX for a long TIME in one account or another, and bought it in my retirement account when they announced about closure.
Also, check VTRIX, VWICX, and Avantis International Large Value ETF AVIV if you are OK with ETFs.

Today is the 32nd anniversary of my purchase of DODGX. It was neck and neck with SPY up until the dot com bust. From then on, SPY never caught up. What happened the last 1-3-5-10-15-20 years doesn't make any difference.

Congratulations!
Most D&C funds carry ERs around .53% - probably a bit higher on international funds. Couple that with good management and it should pay off longer term. What I don’t know - but would love to hear - is how does a stable investor base affect a fund’s long term performance? And - while we’re on the subject … Indexes, like the S&P don’t have to contend with “flighty” investors moving in and out. Probably another reason they outperform active management..
Incidentally, looks like D&C’s domestic funds held up better than most yesterday. Likely their financials helped soften the downturn in overall market. Of course - that cuts both ways.

Today is the 32nd anniversary of my purchase of DODGX. It was neck and neck with SPY up until the dot com bust. From then on, SPY never caught up. What happened the last 1-3-5-10-15-20 years doesn't make any difference.

For the audience on this forum at least, I agree with stillers that these articles are kinda useless. For the very long term, passive beats active but in interim periods active can and does beat passive. Also an entirely different story and stats can be produced by picking different start and end dates of any analysis.
The vast majority of investors don't have the stomach or temperament to passively invest in SPY or VBINX over 40 years. Even on this forum, how many are only invested in only these two or similar passive investments?

ALMOST makes the entire managed (non-index) MF industry seem like a scam...
"Consider these tallies for funds that invest in S&P 500 stocks through the end of 2022:
Over three years, 74.3 percent of actively managed funds trailed the index.
Over five years, 86.5 percent underperformed.
Over 10 years, 91.4 percent underperformed.
Over 20 years, 94.8 percent underperformed."

I don't make much of articles that lump everybody together. Unless you are willing to really look at you goals and risk tolerances and investigate how a particular manger fits, you are better off in a passive funds, but ones based on the broadest market possible.
The extreme out performance of FAANMG or whatever in the last few years has distorted everything.
I do think it is fair to ask mangers who are 100% invested if they beat their respective benchmark over time.
I tend to think "active management" should also include knowing when the market is too expensive and the potential long term return unattractive and be able to raise cash for a margin of safety.

Anyone looking at the stats recognizes it's just brutal for active managers over the long-term. It's that fee drag that accumulates over time. There are a few lessons to be learned in it. It's really hard to win in large-caps that are widely covered by analysts. Fees really matter, so if you go active, look generally for a low-cost manager. Career risk matters too. This last one I think many investors don't know. I think many managers hug the benchmark because if they deviate too much and just a handful of, for instance, FAANG stocks are driving the market higher, not holding those stocks is a significant bet that could lead to job loss if you're wrong. So, many managers feel pressured to hold those popular names, end up being closet indexers as a result, and fall just as much as the market plus their fees when downturns occur. You need a manager who thinks differently, has the research team, intelligence and trading chops to execute his/her strategy effectively and low fees to boot--a tall order. Hence you get awful stats like the one in this article about large-cap managers versus the S&P 500:

Over 20 years, 94.8 percent underperformed.

I should have been more specific. The article's claim of private LLC's dying isn't true in today's world, most certainly not after the passage of the JOBS Act.
The ability of LP's in a real estate private LLC to get the benefits of depreciation that shields most of the tax impacts of the distributions is massive. I didn't fully realize the magnitude of this impact until I personally saw it on my tax returns. Easily 80%+ of cash flow is not subject to yearly tax due to depreciation and distributions from these partnerships are in general much higher than public REIT's -ranging from 6 - 12%.
Another lever available to LP's in real estate LLC's is the ability to pair passive losses against passive income (known as the PIGS/PAL strategy) to basically shield even more of the cash flow from taxes.
Investors in public REIT's do not directly get the benefits of depreciation. 1031 exchange(I have not done any) is another lever to execute a strategy colloquially referred to as defer, defer and die.
I'm not condoning the system (it is what it is, individual investors have no control on tax policy) but tax rules imo are ridiculously stacked in favor of property investors. Same applies for carried interest, a tax benefit that is today entirely disproportionate vs. the benefits to society.
The most public example of the benefits of tax rules to property investors is Trump -- New York Times has extensively covered how Trump got away(legally) with declaring massive (paper) losses on property that shielded his real cash flow income for many years(more than 15 if I recall correctly). At much smaller scales, LP's and GP's in real estate LLC's are basically doing the same thing.
Investors in Fidelity CRE would not(my guess) get the benefits of 1031 exchanges but the benefits of depreciation should flow directly to the LP's in the fund **assuming** the fund is structured similar to how private funds in general work(getting a K1 is key).
Fidelity in general as an org is a sharp cookie and they run a fairly large business as a custodian of private LLC's so they have a front row and insider view of the economics, consumer interest and ROI(to Fidelity). I'm speculating of course but I can't imagine that Fidelity is launching this fund on a whim.
EDIT
I see on the term sheet that tax reporting is 1099-DIV so what I stated above mostly won't apply to this particular fund but notwithstanding that, I stand by my other comments on the disproportionate advantages of being an LP in a real estate LLC.
I don't get what advantage accredited investors will get from this fund without a K1 that provides depreciation benefit but perhaps Fidelity's target is the mass affluent market that does not want to spend time scouring for reliable sponsors and trust in the Fidelity brand. Fidelity looks to be somewhat replicating the wildly successful BREIT fund.

I've lost tract of when that was @hank. Definitely Fund Alarm days. I think I started watching FA around 2006-7 or so so probably around that time. PMs and Asia EM were the hot sectors. Harry Brown's permanent portfolio was also talked about a lot. (rono might have called the consistent post 'asia and the metals' now that I think about it).

“Asia and the Metals “ was a morning staple on F/A. Already running when I came there sometime around 2000. But @rono may have posted it on an earlier board before F/A. Asia was a different animal geopolitically 25 years ago. Folks who then complained that Asian workers were taking away U.S. jobs now complain that the cheap items they bought at KMart / Walmart in those days cost a lot more today.
Unfortunately, I cleared out my trading records back to about 10-15 years. Otherwise I’d have a better reference to say when I first tuned in to F/A. Was around the time I moved out of American Century funds. Posted a question re that matter to which Maurice responded. (Never throw anything away.) :)