Have a drink & lean back!
Seriously … I’m convinced that moving from TRP to a Fido brokerage account several years ago took 2-3 years off my life. Horrendous experience.

I moved all of my TRP funds to my Fidelity account a couple years ago since all of the funds are NTF at Fido. This has made my life so much simpler. I have kept the TRP funds that have been good performers, but sold the laggards and reinvested in Fidelity funds. I’ve invested with TRP for about 30 years but their customer service has steadily declined.

I invested with Eric Cinammond (ICMAX) several months years ago around 2009-10 and sold when markets started to fly, his analysis looks great when markets crash but then he holds too much cash for too long and misses a lot of performance.
Deep VALUE investing usually = trouble LT, because markets are going up most times, based on momo, and can go up much longer than you think. The best I have seen in the last two decades is PRWCX managed by David R. Giroux. It has been a "perfect" fund for anyone who loves a great risk-adjusted performance fund.

@hank
Eric Cinammond ( PVCMX) calls it "the art of looking stupid" . This is a good read.
( BTW PVCMX was ahead of SP500 last three years until October with lot smoother ride!
https://www.palmvalleycapital.com/post/the-art-of-looking-stupid
"In our opinion, current equity valuations do not justify aggressive positioning. However, as we witnessed in Q4 2023, valuations alone have not deterred investors from chasing asset prices higher during the current market cycle. With small caps soaring into the end of the year, we're sure our patient positioning didn’t look very bright. But this isn’t new for us. Patient positioning almost always looks unintelligent during periods of sharply rising asset prices. And while we can’t predict the future, we expect we’ll continue to experience periods of looking stupid, and maybe even smart, but rarely will our paths look the same."
I would think the worst thing to do is to be forced to go 109% in equities because your staff ( or investors) don't like bonds.
Individual investors do not suffer from GMO's career risk where they can be fired for underperformance, unless your partner pays much more attention to the bottom line than mine does.
We just have to answer to ourselves and be able to sleep at night

@sma3 - Thanks. Taleb sounds fascinating. Next on my audible listening list. Currently still listening to Howard Marks, who likes Taleb and quotes him in some of his chapters.
Marks tells a funny story about a (fictional) fund manager who, after a 10 year sizzling hot bull market in stocks, writes a letter of apology to his clients for having lagged the S&P over that time. He and his staff have been trying to “uncover” the reason for why some manager years ago decided the fund needed to own bonds. It’s a real mystery to the current staff. Apparently the decision was based on some unfounded “archaic tradition”. So, he’s been gradually selling off the bond holdings over recent years. Now, finally, his fund is rid of its bonds and 100% invested in equities. No more of this bond nonsense. :)

Quite honestly I have not been successful with alternatives in the last few years. I move on to short bonds and T bills. Much less expensive to own.

Fido makes you wait an extra day to complete a fund-to-fund trade. I can live with that. Agree sooner would be better.

Once upon a time Fido let you reinvest a portion, up to 90% of anticipated sale proceeds as of the last closing price as I recall, during the same trading day. But that ended many years ago.
Their current policy was a source of great frustration for me in early April 2020 when I sold shares an OEF on the day the market bottomed but couldn't finalize buying shares of the replacement OEF until the next trading day. Several % were lost on that trade. That is one of the benefits of investing in ETFs rather that OEFs at Fidelity.

Clearly it's important to know the precise definition of terms when reading statistics. Even back when M* was using 1 year maturities as the cutoff for cash equivalents for analyzing portfolios (i.e. before 2017), it also used the 3 month definition in other contexts. Here's an excerpt from a 2014 M* glossary:

Generally, only investments with original maturities of three months or less qualify under this definition. Original maturity means original maturity to the entity holding the investment. For example, both a three-month US Treasury bill and a three year Treasury note purchased three months from maturity qualify as cash equivalents. However, a Treasury note purchased three years ago does not become a cash equivalent when its remaining maturity is three months

https://morningstardirect.morningstar.com/clientcomm/DataDefinitions-EquityandExecutive_201408.pdf
This restriction of cash equivalents to securities with original (time of purchase) maturities of three months is lifted straight from the official definition of cash equivalents as given by the Financial Accounting Standards Board (FASB) Accounting Standards Codification® (ASC) 230-10-20. That's what reporting entities, like mutual funds, corporations, etc. use:

Cash equivalents are short-term, highly liquid investments that have both of the following characteristics:

a. Readily convertible to known amounts of cash
b. So near their maturity that they present insignificant risk of changes in value because of changes in interest rates.

Generally, only investments with original maturities of three months or less qualify under that definition. Original maturity means original maturity to the entity holding the investment. For example, both a three-month U.S. Treasury bill and a three-year U.S. Treasury note purchased three months from maturity qualify as cash equivalents. However, a Treasury note purchased three years ago does not become a cash equivalent when its remaining maturity is three months

ASC 230 July 2023
For completeness and wonks: FASB defines GAAP.

The FASB Accounting Standards Codification® is the source of authoritative generally accepted accounting principles (GAAP) recognized by the FASB to be applied by nongovernmental entities.

FASB cash flow update
Personally, I consider Treasuries and CDs with just weeks until they mature to be equivalent to cash regardless of when I acquired them. I consider no penalty CDs to be cash regardless of maturity length.
Suppose I have a 2 year T-note that I acquired at auction and it has 6 weeks until maturity. GAAP says that's not a cash equivalent. But if you and I swap the same T-notes, then they become cash equivalents because we just acquired them. I'm sure the accountants know what they're doing, but by my kitchen-table bookkeeping those two T-notes are the same.

I've been contemplating down markets as we make new highs in some areas of the market.
[snip]
Long term treasuries have historically appreciated during periods of equity down turns. This was not the case most recently as we witnessed both equities and bond move down in unison.
Have we returned to more normal times where bond (especially LT bonds) will balance out our portfolio performance by acting as the opposite weight (barbell) to our equities?
[snip]

Intermediate-Term Treasuries have historically provided ballast for stocks during downturns without the duration risk of Long-Term Treasuries. I don't believe 2022 bond market performance will be repeated anytime soon. Starting yields were very low and the Fed funds rate increased significantly thoroughout 2022.
We have returned to more normal times.
This doesn't preclude Treasuries or investment-grade bonds from experiencing potential losses in 2024.
However, I think high-quality bonds are much more attractive today compared to a few years ago.

I retain an old school perspective that my parents -- who were products of the great depression and dust bowl -- taught me.

Ditto. Parents were in their “formative” years during the Depression. Stocks were a dirty word. I gifted them a money market fund in the 70s once into which I’d deposited $500. MM funds paid double-digest interest then. But they didn’t trust it and moved the $$ to the local bank they could actually see driving by every day. :)

I never understood "I need cash for an emergency".
It's been already over 30 years since I needed lots of cash. Just in the last 1.5 years, we had the following unpredictable expenses:
1) My wife totaled a vehicle and we bought a new one. I took a small loan and paid it in full in 2 weeks because the dealer gave me a $500 discount. He also agreed to charge my Visa 2% cash back for another $10K. I still owed close to $10K which we paid by check because the dealer was willing to wait 4-5 days.
2) First time in my life we just went to see the possibility of replacing the other old vehicle one Saturday, and found a great cheaper option than expected and just bought it. That dealer only allowed me $3K on my Visa 2% cash, the rest was expected in 2 business days. I sold a fund at my broker account on Monday and wired the money on Tuesday.
3) The roof started leaking heavily. First, we covered the hole with a blue tarp. Then, we found a roofer I liked. For the initial pay of just $2K, I used the same Visa again. He charged me 3% (lost 1%) but I did it so I can dispute something in the future while you can't do it with checks. The work was amazing and I paid with a check.
4) The deck suddenly was wobbly and could not be used. Same process as above.
All were "must do/fix it quickly".
We just keep several thousand in the bank and the rest is invested in brokerage accounts in the market. Most retirees have safer, short-duration bonds they can always sell. In the last year, MM pay over 5%, again not a problem, but MM will not do that for a long time. I don't invest in anything I think can't generate 6+% annually.
BTW, while I was working I was laid off 4 times, when I needed more money, I just sold 1-2 of my mutual fund. Again no need to hold months of available cash.
All our credit cards and loans over the years were paid in full every month and why we have a very good credit score.
I'm still looking for a logical reason why I need an emergency fund and can't find one...wait, I got 2 needs = illegal drugs or ransom.

Quote - On the essence of value investing:
In their fiscal year 2000 Annual Letter to Shareholders, Leucadia National Corporation’s former chairman, Ian Cumming, and former president, Joseph Steinberg, spoke to this dynamic, likening themselves to groundhogs:
“We pop out of our holes each and every morning and look around the marketplace for investment opportunities. The first question we ask is, ‘Do we see anything that can earn more than the risk-free rate, adjusted for risk?’ When the markets are as high as they have been in the last many years, we saw very little of interest and went back down in our holes…Patience is required for this process, but it is not complicated.”
My 2 cents:
I appreciated this quote. But here is the dilemma for investment managers (IMs)- they have to put committed funds to work in order to justify their annual fees. Investors demand it. Waiting long periods for opps to materialize (essentially, market timing) is often a no-no. It's rare to find IMs with the chutzpah to sit in cash if they don't like the current market conditions. Probably more acceptable for "sophisticated investors", but even then...their patience will wear thin if the IM's guess wrong.

@Derf - Not a bad idea, except mortgage interest rates have rocketed up over past couple years. I actually have a small 3% refi mortgage taken out 5-6 years ago for some remodeling. Hell can freeze over before I’d pay it off. Today you’re probably looking at around 7-8% 6% on any kind of mortgage refinance.* Not an attractive risk / reward proposition IMHO.
* One source I checked shows 15 year fixed refi loans (national average) currently at around 6%.
Umm … maybe. Proceed at own risk! :)

So the cash bucket certainly needs to be adequate to cover 3 to 5 years of those normal expenses.

@Old_Joe - Nice detailed job outlining conventional wisdom. But ISTM that’s exactly the notion the author is arguing against. If I’m reading him right, he thinks the risk of losing out on potential market gains while sitting on that bucket of cash is greater than the risk of having to pull that money out on a “as needed” basis when markets are lower. (That’s because markets usually go up)
It should be noted,
(1) the article is from 2020 when cash yielded 1-2%, much lower than today’s near 5%.
(2) His recommended “investment” portfolio is quite conservative with up to 50% sitting in intermediate-term Treasuries / TIPS.
Enjoying all the thoughts folks!

One thing I noticed. When I retired I planned for about 55k/yr expenses. Now retired 17 years I found I'm averaging 73k+/yr. Some of that is inflation but what adds up is the new cars, new roof, new boat, some large xmas gifts to the kids. i.e. those big expense items spread out over the years add several $k per year to your budget. ADD: I guess some of that additional spending is because I feel comfortable with my results so far.

While the Treasury yield-curve is weird. It has an unusual dip in the belly. It seems that an inverted yield-curve is trying to normalize (to up-sloping), but the Fed has literally fixed the short end.
https://www.ustreasuryyieldcurve.com/

This doesn't exactly align with the belly, but I found it interesting that most yields are still significantly above where they were at the start of 2023 except for 1 - 7 year maturities where they are the same as 2023 (at the low end of that range) to 1/4% higher at 7 years.
In other parts of the curve, the current yields are around 1% higher now at the short end (1.5% higher at 1 mo.) than Jan 2023 and around 1/2% higher at the long end. If one squints just right, that seems to follow the same contour as the yield curve itself.
This might just be another way of saying that the yield curve is flattening, or as you put it, on its way to transitioning from an inverted curve to a normal curve.
ov/resource-center/data-chart-center/interest-rates/TextView?type=daily_treasury_yield_curve&field_tdr_date_value=2024

Catch22, I believe you’re half right regarding FZDXX (FZEXX-muni sister). Yes, you have to purchase like a MF but you do not have to sell to buy. I’ve been using one or both of these MM funds for several years. And never did I have to sell to buy anything. It first checks your core account for sufficient funds, then pulls from FZDXX / FZEXX if necessary.

Yep, and that's a nice advantage over VG NOT searching for and pulling money from any
other MMkt a/c's other than your Settlement a/c, making VGBUYs a 2-step process at times.
On FZDXX Minimums: We have owned FZDXX in EVERY taxable and IRA a/c that we either own or manage for friends and relatives for as long as we can remember. NEVER has Fidelity held us to the stated minimum for FZDXX in the respective a/c's. In some a/c's we have as little as $25 in FZDXX, and have had that piddly amount for over a year!
Note that some of those a/c's are for persons NOT regarded by Fido as Preferred Customers.
VG conversely does routine sweeps related to MMkt and Admiral shares Mins, and adjusts your holdings accordingly.

FWIW to the naysayers of CDs, my CD ladder has outperformed gem fund RPHIX for the past 3, 5 and 10 years with no market risk and guaranteed, FDIC'd interest payments.

The author disagrees with the often recommended notion of stashing away 3, 5 or 10 years spending in cash or short term treasuries to ride out potential market downturns. It’s a popular notion often recommended here and across the financial press.
His investment portfolio: ”Beyond cash, all a retiree needs is one ‘bucket’ for investments. The portfolio would hold between 50 and 75% in equities for those following the 4% rule or similar retirement spending strategies. The remaining 25 to 50% would be held in intermediate term Treasuries and TIPS.”
I’m pretty much in agreement with @Crash. I generally don’t bother to maintain a bucket at all, but sell / withdraw from investments “across the board” two or three times during the year for basic needs or major expenses. If the markets get a little “crazy” on the upside, I may pull out an entire year’s spending ahead of time to lock in that extra return. During withdrawals I also rebalance, taking a higher percentage from those assets that have appreciated the most. (I am aware that some here refute the notion of rebalancing at all. )
But your position is probably different. My pension (with some limited cola) and SS (inflation adjusted) could probably cover basic necessities (but not infrastructure maintenance, travel, new vehicles). So I can’t put myself in the position of those who live entirely off investments. It’s a huge difference and so “buckets galore” might well be the preferred route for them.
FWIW - I only started keeping accurate year-by-year records in 2007 (but have some generalized averages from before). Beginning with 2007 (the past 17 years) I’ve had three “down” years. Two resulted in single-digit losses. But ‘08 was nasty with a loss of over 20%. That suggests to me, anyway, that a large cash stash isn’t warranted. To wit - this simplistic analysis overlooks both the magnitude and the duration the market downturn that began in 1929. A multi-year downdraft in equities of that magnitude would inflict greater pain. (But there’d be other more serious issues to worry about.) Recent downturns have been much shorter and may have given some of us a false sense of security. Also, the Japanese experience in the 90s and afterwards should sober any who look at it.

Well... If I required of myself (and spouse) that we set aside and grow a segregated bucket full of money sufficient to cover 3 to 5 years' of expenses, I'd never be able to invest, period. So that whole bucket-stuff matters not to me, one iota. The best plan for us is to invest, prudently, for the long haul. We certainly are better off than if we were struggling to fill a pail carrying 5 years' worth of money to cover what we need for that time-period.
Each of us is dealt whatever hand we are dealt. From there, we make choices, and make the best of things. I'm feeling rather fortunate these days--- with zero buckets in the mix. Yes, this stuff in general is indeed very personal, after all is said and done. Using buckets in my case would be like attempting to make a Scientist out of me. I'm not cut out for it.