>> varies by how hot the hand is. Is this a way of advising (sometimes) to bail from extreme runups?

Point well taken. In the 90s - a few years from retirement - I found myself taking a crash course on investing. Bogle either drove me to drink or put me to sleep. Andrew Tobias, while less esteemed in the investment community, was much easier to digest (The Only Investment Guide You’ll Ever Need).
One thing that has always influenced me is Tobias’s suggestion small investors pick up all their marbles and walk away from the stock market if they ever find themselves in the midst of a gigantic bubble. Of course, the problem with this is in actually knowing whether a bubble exists. And he wasn’t clear on how to determine that. An additional problem now is that interest rates are much lower and the bond market likely more precarious than at the time Tobias wrote. So there isn’t a good alternative place to hide.
I did listen to Tobias, and also Bill Fleckenstein, in the late 90s and moved mostly to bonds prior to the 2000 equity rout. Fair to say the two of them saved me some money back than. Today I’m light on equity exposure - but not completely out as Tobias suggests. Subscribed recently to Fleck’s Daily Rap. Can’t say whether it’s a good investment or not, but does offer a starkly different perspective to most of the Bull crap coming from mainstream financial sources.

FYI: Losses in technology and financial stocks weighed on Wall Street on the last trading day of 2017, in what has been a banner year for U.S. shares.
Regards,
Ted
Bloomberg:
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2017-12-28/asia-stocks-head-for-muted-open-after-record-high-markets-wrap
Reuters:
https://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-stocks/wall-street-set-to-end-the-year-on-dour-note-idUSKBN1EN13K
MarketWatch:
https://www.marketwatch.com/story/dow-sp-set-to-power-to-fresh-record-on-2017s-last-trading-day-2017-12-29/print
IBD:
https://www.investors.com/market-trend/stock-market-today/stocks-have-big-gains-for-2017/
CNBC:
https://www.cnbc.com/2017/12/29/us-stocks-open-higher-sp-500-tracking-for-best-year-since-2013.html
AP:
http://hosted.ap.org/dynamic/stories/F/FINANCIAL_MARKETS?SITE=AP&SECTION=HOME&TEMPLATE=DEFAULT
Bloomberg Evening Briefing:
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2017-12-29/your-evening-briefing
WSJ: Markets At A Glance:
http://markets.wsj.com/us
SPDR's Sector Tracker:
http://www.sectorspdr.com/sectorspdr/tools/sector-tracker
SPDR's Bloomberg Sector Performance Pie Chart:
https://www.bloomberg.com/markets/sectors
Current Futures: Negative
https://finviz.com/futures.ashx
Quote

@jerry, I’d agree on the last 2 items. Not very profound. Rate them both “Duh.” His first offering, however, is somewhat provocative: “Financial advice is the only business where you are better off giving customers what they need versus what they want”.
Learned in taking T/F tests that when you encounter a statement containing a word like “only” or “always” you’re best off marking it false. My thinking here is that there are many endeavors where one is better off giving the customer what he needs rather than what he wants. Law enforcement, medicine and education come to mind. Probably many others.
And based on the exhorbitant fees charged by some financial principals (including some fund companies) along with a flotilla of “suspect” product offerings it seems to me many haven’t really bought into the idea that they’d be better off giving the customer what he needs.

FYI: Many individual investors and financial advisers consider equal-weighted index funds to be a sure-fire way of beating the stock market.
They’re wrong. In fact, equal-weighted funds, which give the same percentage allocation to each of the stocks they own, are more likely to lag their capitalization-weighted peers — which weight each stock according to its market valuation — on a risk-adjusted basis over the long term.
Regards,
Ted
https://www.marketwatch.com/story/these-top-ranked-index-funds-arent-built-to-handle-the-next-stock-market-crash-2017-12-26/print

FYI: Mark Hulbert, a fellow MarketWatch columnist and respected observer of the financial advising business, recently wrote a thoughtful critique of the massive rush to index-style investing.
I just wish the headline had been different.
Regards,
Ted
https://www.marketwatch.com/story/jack-bogle-to-investors-avoid-these-junk-etfs-2017-12-19/print

FYI: I’ve been on a high lately. A financial high, that is … and bitcoin is my drug of choice. Strange as it sounds, research indicates that what I’m feeling is not much different from an actual drug experience.
Regards,
Ted
http://www.etf.com/sections/index-investor-corner/allan-roth-my-brain-bitcoin

A sort of pleasant surprise is that the results seem more rational and informede than I expected. PEOPLE HAVE OBVIOUSLY MOSTLY READ SOMETHING ABOUT THE ISSUE/PROBLEM. fOR EXAMPLE ALMOST EVERYTHING i HAVE READ ABOUT RETIRING PLANNING INCLUDING ADVICE TO FINANCIAL PLANNERS IS THAT ONE SHOULD PLAN ON LIVING TO 90. hENCE IT IS NOT SO SURPRISING PEOPLE SEEM TO BE PLANNING ON LIVING Sorry the cap lock went on . I am not really shouting

FYI: It is that time of year, when the financial industry engages in its annual ritual of making forecasts, which is usually little more than the prelude to looking foolish. Titles like “Outlook for 2018, “What to expect in the new year,” or some variation thereof litter the landscape. Over the years, it has been my distinct privilege (and truth be told, pleasure) to point out how silly this process is.
Regards,
Ted
https://www.bloomberg.com/view/articles/2017-12-15/wall-street-wises-up-to-the-folly-of-forecasting

FYI: In the good old days of the investment industry the life of fund selectors and investors was much easier, since equity funds invested straightforwardly in equities—as did their fixed income peers with bonds. Even mixed-asset funds were easy to classify, since they had fixed or target portions of their portfolios invested in equities and bonds in combination with cash as a risk-free position. Investors could simply buy a fund that had an equity portion that was suitable for their risk appetite.
Regards,
Ted
http://lipperalpha.financial.thomsonreuters.com/2017/12/monday-morning-memo-how-to-properly-classify-mixed-asset-funds/?utm_source=Eloqua&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=00008DM_NewsletterLipperAlphaInsightFundInsightsWeekly_Other&utm_content=Newsletters_FundsInsightWeekly_Dec122017

Hi Guys,
Like it or not, volatility is a characteristic of markets. It does change, sometimes dramatically, over various periods, but the historical record tells the basic truth. In very gross terms, annual equity standard deviation is approximately double annual returns. That's not likely to change, so investors must accept that as the uncertainties of expected returns.
Variability always exists. The arithmetic average return will always be larger than the geometric return. That disparity grows as return standard deviation increases. The geometric average return Includes a correction for Standard Deviation. The geometric return is what determines your end wealth. The equation tells the story.
The approximate equation is: Expected Return equals Average Return minus 1/2 times the standard deviation squared.
Therefore, I take issue with Ben Carlson's closing statement. Portfolio volatility matters; it is your enemy. Portfolio Standard Deviation directly impacts long term returns in a negative way. That's why we work hard to select portfolio components that hopefully reduce our portfolio's volatility.
Carlson is a terrific financial writer. In this instance, he was not representing a viewpoint from an individual investor's portfolio perspective.
Best wishes on accomplishing that target goal.

FYI: During three separate interviews this week I was asked if I was seeing any signs of complacency among investors, markets, or clients.
If anything, the people I talk to are more concerned with the high probability of lower market returns in the future but my view is surely clouded by the clientele and readers I deal with on a regular basis.
Whether my sample size is representative or not, measuring market sentiment is getting harder and harder these days. Everyone now has a megaphone to voice their opinions — social media, blogs, 24-hour financial television, podcasts, conferences, magazines, financial news websites, etc.
Regards,
Ted
http://awealthofcommonsense.com/2017/12/what-a-complacent-investor-looks-like/

You could have written that headline 20 years ago...
That said, tech is -- and will --put severe financial pressures on many industries -- displacing (or buying or replacing) them.
(Physical-) travel agents? (Mostly - )Long gone.
Retail? Check.
Pay/cable TV? -- Amazon prime, Netflix, and (soon-) streaming Disney/Fox content direct.
Many others too. Glad I will be out of the workforce soon. The "AI job-pocalypse" is coming...

I’m skeptical of financial journalism when I see loaded terms like “wall of money”, “fever pitch”, “spree” ...
I get the point that munis are more in demand than a month earlier. As someone who stepped gingerly into a couple muni funds 6 or 7 months ago (PRFHX, PRFSX) I can tell you the action has been decidedly undramatic. The former has picked up a couple percent over that time. The latter has gone slightly under water since I bought.
No discussion of munis would be complete without attention to (1) a generally long-lasting overbought condition of bonds in general (going back decades), (2) a generally long-lasting overbought condition of high yield bonds (going back to post-2008), a rapidly flattening yield curve that is making shorter duration bonds increasingly attractive relative to longer duration bonds and (4) a frothy equity market that is causing investors to seek shelter - even in low yielding fixed income instruments.

@Old_Skeet,
From this linked BI Article with Morgan Stanley Analyst:

2,750 could also be the peak for next year, Wilson said. That's based on the expectation that S&P 500 earnings growth will peak and financial conditions will tighten as the Fed continues to hike rates.
"We would be very surprised if we don't return to a more normal environment and witness at least one if not several 10 percent plus drawdowns next year," he said.

businessinsider.com/stock-market-news-forecast-2018-morgan-stanley-2017-11

“The broadly simple answer, many financial experts say, is that taking some money off the table could make sense for anyone who needs it soon. But, they add, it might be a really bad idea for those who have a long-term investment horizon and are mainly just worried about another market correction.”
Nice to be able to pull up a WSJ article instead of drawing a blank. Don’t know how you did it @Ted. But a nice job. I didn’t read all of it. The couple sentences I quoted say it all. It really is all about time horizon. Unlikely most will heed the advice. General public like to buy when the sun is shining and sell after it rains. Song as old as time,

Mondays are always a good day to read this blog (linked below).
This Monday discusses (among other things) the Impact that The Tax Overhaul will have a financial sectors:

Link to the entire Blog:
dashofinsight.com/

I believe the equity market can act as its own re-balancing mechanism. Market price conditions change "moment by moment". When you are in the accumulation stage of life you might dollar cost average (dca) into these price conditions and in a sense your "dca" helps you re-balance into the market's price. Dca into investments over a long time horizons (many overbought and oversold changes) usually provide a positive return on investment. This might be considered a component of a re-balancing growth strategy.
When you move from the Accumulation (growth) Stage to the Distribution Stage, re-balancing is often impacted by the spending ("distribution of cash") of your portfolio. Re-balancing as a result of spending comes in many forms - retirement income, RMDs, one time tuition payments, wedding costs, house buying, and divorce to name a few. Most of these involve raising cash from your invested investments.
Raising cash in a portfolio is somewhat a kin to running a farm. Equities are the cows, the hens, the crops. The bonds are the working capital needed to run the farm- the fertilizers, the machinery, the outbuilding, the land, the service costs, etc. Think of cash as the profits from the corn, the hay, the eggs the milk. When a cow needs to be milked...milk it. When the field needs to be hayed, "make hay when the sun shines". Harvesting is part of farm's life and I believe it should also be a dynamic part of a portfolio's inner workings with respect to the cash needs (financial goals) of the portfolio.
Another take on re-balancing:
Using @Catch22 portfolio (50% FCNTX and 50% PIMIX) this farm has hired hands (Danoff and Ivascyn) who help manage the production and the operation of the farm separately. You need to roll up your sleeves and coordinate how these two managers are "running" your farm and "re-balance" their efforts. If your are young and your goal is long term growth, buy more FCNTX, but remember that you may need more land, more equipment, more fertilizer...so also buy some PIMIX. In a growth portfolio (with no need for short term cash) I would own enough PIMIX to cover the downside risks (Maximum Draw Down or MAXDD) of FCNTX. So every dollar you spend for future growth of FCNTX, an additional amount (in MAXDD percent) should be directed at PIMIX to hedge FCNTX's MaxDD risk. This will allow you to not sell FCNTX at the wrong time (in case you did need cash), but might even provide an opportunity to buy more FCNTX during oversold times.
For me, I gauge "overbought and oversold" using my portfolios holdings. I use PIMIX as my "risk off" portfolio indicator comparing it to my "risk on" investments, in this case FCNTX. "Overbought and oversold" conditions of FCNTX are compared against the performance of PIMIX dynamically. . In other words I use PIMIX to tell me when FCNTX is over or under performing PIMIX. Also, using @Old_Skeet's upper bands as a re-balancing trigger (+20% gain on the upside for FCNTX compared to PIMIX) - sell FCNTX and move proceeds (re-balance back into) PIMIX. Conversely, a (-10 percent loss of FCNTX compared to PIMIX) - sell PIMIX and buy (re-balance) into FCNTX
We can hire a manager to do this for us with hybrid/allocation/glide path retirement funds or we can "farm" a portfolio ourselves with individual securities (stocks or bonds) or with additional hired hands (stock or bond mutual fund managers). Either way, we still need to identify a strategy to deal with the spending dynamic and determine how that spending impacts portfolio re-balancing as we move through the distribution stage of life.

FYI: With Congress getting closer to passing a tax overhaul package and the Federal Reserve talking about easing regulation, a regional banking exchange-traded fund is getting a lot of love from investors.
The SPDR S&P Regional Banking ETF, ticker KRE, took in $290 million on Nov. 29, its largest daily inflow since 2008. That added to the almost $270 million the fund received the day before, as investors line up bets that regional banks will benefit from tax reform and deregulation. The ETF has gained about 7 percent this week.
Regards,
Ted
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2017-11-30/regional-banking-etf-gobbles-assets-as-politics-grabs-attention
M* Snapshot KRE:
http://www.morningstar.com/etfs/ARCX/KRE/quote.html
Lipper Snapshot KRE:
https://www.marketwatch.com/investing/fund/kre
KRE Is Ranked #11 In The (F) ETF Category By U.S. News & World Report:
https://money.usnews.com/funds/etfs/financial/spdr-s-p-regional-banking-etf/kre

Hi @Puddnhead, If you are referring to Eric Cinnamond, I believe he was part of the ICMBX team but I don't think he was ever the lead manager. I could be wrong. I think he was lead manager for Intrepid's small cap fund. You know, I was in his River Road small cap fund when it opened when he went out on his own. It really wasn't his deep value theme that turned me away. It was his persistence to be heavy in mining companies and energy when those sectors were collapsing. I believe he succumbed to the term "value trap", which to me is a sin for a mutual fund manager. In any case, below is what I found from M* in a Google search for "ICMBX Cinnamond".

Eric K. Cinnamond
01/28/2010 — 09/02/2010: Mr. Cinnamond serves as Portfolio Manager for River Road’s Independent Value Portfolio. Prior to joining River Road in 2010, Mr. Cinnamond served as Lead Portfolio Manager of Intrepid Capital Management’s small cap strategy, Co-Portfolio Manager and Analyst at Evergreen Asset Management, and Portfolio Manager at First Union National Bank of Florida. Mr. Cinnamond holds a B.B.A. in Finance from Stetson University and an M.B.A. from the University of Florida. He earned the Chartered Financial Analyst® designation in 1996 and is a member of the CFA Institute.

Thanks @Puddnhead. The fund didn't ring a bell so I forgot about that exchange. Now I remember. It's done well. I hope it continues going forward. You are right, not your typical REIT fund.
A lot of what I read is saying tech and financial going forward. Who knows. Back to my 'short'-necks, aka a can Genesee Cream Ale.