There are only a handful of small-cap funds less volatile than the S&P 500, and I don't know if there are any with a growth-stock orientation like these funds. One on the value side is RYSEX. Actually, NBGNX is one on the growth side. But that has a very different style and owns much larger stocks than these GP funds. It doesn't make them bad funds, but you have to know what you're buying before investing. Perhaps it would be a useful launch for GP, given the slew of fund launches they've had over the years, to create a new truly defensive small-cap fund.
A couple of things that make small cap funds more defensive in downturns are cash obviously, put options, holding dividend-paying stocks with a strong track record of paying them, strong balance sheets, low valuation but high quality companies with the aforementioned strong balance sheets. RYSEX for instance holds cash and seeks companies with low valuations and rock solid balance sheets. QRSVX on the value side is similar.

@Hank- maybe Junkster is thinking of ol' FD.

Actually no one person in particular, just a slew of them spread over numerous forums over many years.

LKAB says it plans to apply for an exploitation concession this year but added that it would be at least 10 to 15 years before it could begin mining the deposit and shipping to markets.
The approval for new mines in Sweden is a lengthy process in which the risk to water resources and biodiversity is considered.
https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2023/1/12/sweden-discovers-europes-largest-rare-earth-mine

Are the data for year 2020-2022 available? After 2022, it would be nice to have a decent year.

Nothing to update as 2020-2022 were not trifecta years. We won’t know if 2023 is such till the end of January.

https://nbcnews.com/science/environment/exxon-mobil-accurately-predicted-warming-1970s-study-finds-rcna65583
Will it affect its stock? It should, but it probably won't unless there's some sort of class action suit or government prosecution. An article excerpt:

Exxon Mobil’s scientists were remarkably accurate in their predictions about global warming, even as the company made public statements that contradicted its own scientists’ conclusions, a new study says.
The study in the journal Science Thursday looked at research that Exxon funded that didn’t just confirm what climate scientists were saying, but used more than a dozen different computer models that forecast the coming warming with precision equal to or better than government and academic scientists.
This was during the same time that the oil giant publicly doubted that warming was real and dismissed climate models’ accuracy. Exxon said its understanding of climate change evolved over the years and that critics are misunderstanding its earlier research.
Scientists, governments, activists and news sites, including Inside Climate News and the Los Angeles Times, several years ago reported that “Exxon knew” about the science of climate change since about 1977 all while publicly casting doubt. What the new study does is detail how accurate Exxon funded research was. From 63% to 83% of those projections fit strict standards for accuracy and generally predicted correctly that the globe would warm about .36 degrees (.2 degrees Celsius) a decade.
The Exxon-funded science was “actually astonishing” in its precision and accuracy, said study co-author Naomi Oreskes, a Harvard science history professor. But she added so was the “hypocrisy because so much of the Exxon Mobil disinformation for so many years ... was the claim that climate models weren’t reliable.”
Study lead author Geoffrey Supran, who started the work at Harvard and now is a environmental science professor at the University of Miami, said this is different than what was previously found in documents about the oil company.
“We’ve dug into not just to the language, the rhetoric in these documents, but also the data. And I’d say in that sense, our analysis really seals the deal on ‘Exxon knew’,” Supran said. It “gives us airtight evidence that Exxon Mobil accurately predicted global warming years before, then turned around and attacked the science underlying it.”

We’ve (DW & I) been at the conservative end with a target equity of 35% and 22% to TIAA’s Traditional account “guaranteeing” 3+%/yr. I’m grateful to have only taken a 7% hit this past year, between the 28% bond funds and 10% cash. Instead of investing the RMDs these last few years and not needing half of them for living expenses, we’d stashed the cash in 2020-21.
Now that the market has dropped, we’ve been investing back into equities (VTI, VIG, SCHD, VPU). We’d started to purchase short-term treasuries (3 and 6-month) at auction, but our VG money market funds seem just as competitive at the moment (am I missing something here?).

@catch22 - Do you have a chart showing the relative performance for the next 7 years? My guess is that those lines will pretty much converge again before this episode is all finished, as they did in 2018 and 2020. More aggressive funds tend to lead both on the way up and on the way down.

IIRC, back when I held it, Josh Spencer ran the fund fairly aggressively, too ... but he managed it quite well. I always liked PRGTX but think it got a bit reckless and IMO became addicted to Hopium(tm) in recent years (like Cathie Wood), so perhaps the manager change is deserved.
A 55% loss is inexcusable, in my view. Growth was rapidly falling out of favor as rates rose, yet I guess Tu stuck to his plan and rode it all the way down instead of trimming or moving more into safer holdings and/or cash. Reminds me of DODFX sticking to financial stocks during the GFC because it was "the plan" ... or Arnott holding a 20% short S&P position in his fund during years of a bull market because it was "his model."

When the situation changes, what would you do?

I don't own the fund, but just noticed this on the M* website. This is a copy & paste from part of their fund analysis. The fund has had very good years in up markets under the past several managers, but was down -55.5% in 2022. After 2022 the fund's 5 year average return is barely positive, .32% as of 1/10/23. Current manager is being replaced after only managing the fund for 3 years. Sounds as though there were some differences of opinion regarding portfolio construction and risk management between TRP management and the fund manager.
An unexpected manager swap and investment process pivot lead to a downgrade of T. Rowe Price Global Technology’s Morningstar Analyst Rating to Neutral from Silver.
Manager Alan Tu’s pending departure from this strategy raises a variety of questions that will take time to answer. Consistent with his predecessor, Tu managed the strategy in an aggressive fashion, posting strong results during bull markets in 2019 and 2020, but a tremendous drawdown of over 50% in 2022 led T. Rowe to make changes. Disagreements around Tu’s portfolio construction and risk management amid the tumult led the firm to conclude that analyst Dom Rizzo would be a better fit at the helm. Rizzo became comanager on Dec. 1, 2022, and will assume sole control on April 1, 2023. Rizzo is a reasonable match for the role but has just seven years of industry experience. Rizzo started his career covering small- and mid-cap tech hardware stocks in the United States, then moved to London to pick up coverage of European technology, including a handful of Asia-based companies. He does not have prior portfolio management experience.
Rizzo will manage the fund according to a different mandate. The new approach emphasizes greater diversification across secular themes and individual stocks. Rizzo’s goal is for the strategy to enjoy good—although perhaps less exceptional—performance in up markets, with more manageable downside during drawdowns. His investment guideposts are to invest in companies in secular growth industries with products that are mission-critical for customers, ideally at a time when business momentum is trending upward, and valuations are reasonable. Rizzo says he will rely on these pillars to create a portfolio capable of performing well in a variety of market environments, guided by his outlook over the next 18 months.
While the strategy’s new design seems reasonable on paper, its implementation hasn’t been tested. Further, the transition comes after a period of very weak performance and introduces the risk that the more-conservative portfolio may not make up lost ground in a strong rally as quickly as it would have under its previous iteration. The strategy still benefits from a deep team of capable analysts, and it’s possible Rizzo will be able to successfully steer the fund to success, but the picture is cloudy at the moment.
This strategy has historically been aggressive and highly differentiated from common technology benchmarks, but it will become tamer under its new structure. Manager Alan Tu and his predecessor Josh Spencer kept a relatively concentrated portfolio of stocks with large weightings in fast-growing companies with big potential—and a high level of volatility. Incoming manager Dom Rizzo will ply a modified approach that seeks to smooth out the strategy’s historically lumpy returns by including more-mature companies such as Apple AAPL and Microsoft MSFT, greater industry diversification, and smaller weights in stocks with a wider dispersion of outcomes.
Rizzo targets an 18-month time horizon in his process, which emphasizes buying companies in secular growth industries with products that are mission-critical for customers, ideally at a time when business momentum is trending upward and valuations are reasonable.
Rizzo’s framework is reasonable, but whether he can execute it well is yet to be seen.
This portfolio will undergo changes as it transitions from current manager Alan Tu to successor Dom Rizzo on April 1, 2023. Because of its mandate shift, investors should expect more prominent positions in more-mature mega-caps such as Apple AAPL and Microsoft MSFT. Rizzo believes these companies can still offer good risk/reward despite their size and the alternative of younger companies with faster growth. Rizzo also suggested that the number of stocks held will likely increase somewhat. Under Tu, the portfolio has held 40-60 stocks.
Rizzo indicated that he won’t shun companies with high upside and volatility but is likely to be more particular about when he owns them and at what position size. Tu was highly attuned toward a stock’s upside and was willing to hold large stakes in companies in which he saw the greatest potential. That included a rough stretch in 2022 when many of his holdings saw large share price declines amid slowing growth.
Rizzo will work with Tu to methodically transition the portfolio to its desired state over the following months to April 2023.

Why are you not buying broker CD/Treasury? Fidelity treasuries pays 4.8% for 6 months (https://fixedincome.fidelity.com/ftgw/fi/FILanding) and you don't pay state tax.
Can I trade back and forth with CD/Treasury? it's inconvenienced.
Can I buy several hundreds thousands of I-bonds? I can't.
This is why I use MM and trade anytime I want.
Do I want to own ST vehicles after bonds had one of the worse years in decades in 2022? Absolutely not. I said already in Nov 2022 that bond funds have a good chance to make 10+% and many of them, several % more.
I basically see bond funds as more of a sure thing in 2023 than stocks + much lower volatility.

Can most of America buy several hundreds thousands of anything??? no...

I rebalance quarterly -- generally to control risk.
I have had luck rebalancing into market downturns (COVID, 2008), but the net effect seems to be modest. Here I was using the safer assets (cash, short term high yield) as dry powder and balancing into major drawdowns. My wife, on the other hand, holds fewer safe assets directly, but holds more AA funds (which presumably are rebalancing into drawdowns as well). She seems to have done about the same as I have over the past several years (actually, I do marginally better on average), but with a bit less volatility.
Probably the reason for the low returns to my opportunism is because even though getting the timing right on market entry is straightforward ("hold your nose and jump in"), getting out at the right time is not a simple matter once the juicy returns start to accumulate and I get greedy and hold on too long. I.e., you get a nice15-20% return and feel pretty good about yourself ("you bold and daring genius, you!") -- do you try to take it to 25% and 26% and 27% before ... *whoops* ... the market dips and you're back down to 15% or less.

@Observant1 : Thanks for posting comment about using local library to access the link.
Have a good day, Derf
PS @catch22 :
Did you spend any time in the
hay mow , stacking hay ?
3 years was enough for me !

@catch22, you caught the spirit of my scribbles.
Hulbert may have had excellent advice. But it's behind a paywall. So I stumble along in ignorance with a certain amount of mule-headed, and juvenile, insouciance. ;>)
The way the market has been these past 12 months, I am disinclined to sell any part of the few winners in my IRA. And I'm not sure which of the losers I want more of.
Over the years I have harvested some tax losses in the taxable account if I am no longer interested in the thesis behind the fund. Other than that, I just let things ride. I'm too lazy to generate taxable events just to push money around to squeeze out one ounce more of return.
As for those bonds (Heavens. They're tasty. And expeditious.) I might go crazy with a floating rate treasury (TFLO or USFR) for some of the cash in my IRA.
I'm in the higher for longer camp. Watching the price of celery and iceberg lettuce here in Arizona, I think the Fed is more likely to continue raising rates than it is to bail out Wall Street with rate cuts. So I'm not interested in anything with a duration much longer than the life span of a mayfly.

WSJ Story: ”Liquor Brands Bet Thrifty Drinkers Will Keep Making At-Home Cocktails”
”Many Americans took to mixing cocktails at home during the pandemic, boosting liquor sales. Now, with inflation squeezing disposable incomes, big distillers are betting on another round of home drinking as consumers economize. Historically, around 80% of all U.S. alcoholic drinks sales were for home drinking, according to IWSR, a drinks market-research firm. That level rose to 90% during the pandemic, and sales at bars aren’t likely to return to pre-Covid levels for another four to five years, IWSR says. To capitalize, spirits brands are doubling down on efforts they started during the pandemic to meet drinkers where they are, launching new products and marketing campaigns catering to at-home drinking and putting greater emphasis on their e-commerce channels.”
(From “Business and Finance” - WSJ - 1/9/2023)
To each his own. But I’ll never understand ruining perfectly good whisky by dumping other stuff into it.

Hi @WABAC
I enjoyed your open thinking pondering about re-balancing.
I flash back to very early days and a type of re-balancing that likely carried over to be a new, young investor. Although being 'older' and with much more experience doesn't necessarily cause one to ponder less, the so-called, re-balance.
The youth years found me in a rural setting. Some of those in my age group were associated with farming. My family was not; but I had buddies' families who were. Which brings me to hay mounds and the near by creek.
--- Hay mounds: A friends uncle and grandpa had a medium sized working farm. We were allowed to play in the big barn. Each end of the barn had hay or straw bales stacked high, with the center being open. We used a large barn rope hung from the inner peak of the roof to swing (Tarzan style) from hay loft to hay loft. Testing one another's skills at various sections, as the bales were not always equal in location, versus the other side. Swinging back to the other side wasn't always the same circumstance.
---Jumping the creek: The creek was 8 feet at the widest, but some sections were only 3 feet wide during a dry summer season. The creek was surrounded by a forest of mature trees, young trees and dead trees. We'd find a dead, but strong tree limb of the right size and use it to kinda 'pole vault' to the other side. We'd often discovered the smooth, tapered bank on one side was a steep bank on the other side; and at times we couldn't find a suitable vaulting stick if the original fell into the creek while 'crossing'. Crossing back wasn't always the same proposition.
Both of the above caused a type of re-balance, a change of mode of operation, at least in my mind; to get back to the other side. Substituted today for a bond to equity, or an equity to bond move. Or perhaps the neutral zone of cash....but still a move and an investment.
The point being, at that young age, is that I unknowingly was learning a form of re-balancing that would eventually apply to investing.
The 'when you sell, what are you going to do with the money now'? What's your next move, dude?
Anyhoo......a fun example I still recall from youth. The learning process.
We don't have a re-balance schedule. The portfolio re-balance occurs merely from a given buy or sell. We generally lean towards at least a 5% move in order to be a meaningful amount to impact the portfolio; and we don't shuffle the money often.

Story (Originally published in the WSJ) -
The overseer of one of the largest public pension funds in the US is demanding an explanation from crisis-hit Southwest Airlines — New York State Comptroller Thomas DiNapoli wants to know how the carrier plans to prevent another operational meltdown that caused the recent holiday travel chaos. "Clearly this crisis has resulted in profound customer dissatisfaction and is expected to generate significant costs to the company," DiNapoli told Southwest CEO Bob Jordan in a January 6 letter seen by Insider. The Wall Street Journal first reported the news on Monday.
In the letter, DiNapoli also asked the carrier how it plans to "correct these failures - not just in the immediate term, but for the coming years."The New York state pension fund is one of the top-100 largest investors in Southwest. As of September 30, it held $17.6 million worth of Southwest stock, or about 0.1% of outstanding shares, according to Refinitiv data. The comptroller's office oversees the fund.
Source of Above Excerpt & Story
Major Holders of LUV - including mutual funds
LUV Market Cap $21.5 Billion - Interesting that LUV Is held in some “Mid Cap” mutual funds. Generally, at over $10 Billion market cap, it would be considered a large cap stock.

@hank, @LewisBraham - Do you think those redemptions from TRBCX are attributable to poor fund performance the last 2 years or possibly a rotation into the value area of the market? Merely curious.

Because it will gradually matter more and more to the investment landscape no matter what the climate science deniers think:
https://amp.cnn.com/cnn/2023/01/10/world/eight-warmest-years-climate-copernicus-intl/index.html
https://nytimes.com/interactive/2023/climate/earth-hottest-years.html
It has for instance huge implications for the insurance industry, for the food industry, real estate, the military, textiles, globalization, shipping, tech waste and power consumption, and of course fossil fuels. There will be economic winners and losers here, and of course a number of species will go extinct. Some already have. Given the conversations we’ve been having about asset classes, a forward looking analyst of them will have to take the shifting climate into account, and how it might impact the expected performance of each asset class over the next fifty years instead of just taking how they did in the last fifty as gospel.

@hank I agree with the benefits of diversification between these asset classes and their different performance characteristics. Rebalancing can also enforce a certain value discipline as you state. I disagree with the notion that equal weighting these asset classes will produce optimal results or necessarily even good results in the next fifty years simply because it has in the last fifty years.
These back-tested rules based systems lack nuance and a failure to acknowledge that the future is different from the past. Worse, I think the promoters of these rules-based systems can have ulterior motives. They may want to create investment products off them that a simple algorithm can run for 0.05% while charging 0.50% to ETF investors in a world that has devalued active management.
In many ways I think the asset allocation decision requires more nuance and is more important than individual security selection. An active manager who is thinking seriously about how long-term economic, geopolitical, environmental and market trends are shifting in 2023 can add value where the one who is only looking backward to 1973 through 2023 may not.
The problem I admit is most active managers are not adequately equipped to make that kind of macro forward-looking analysis of asset classes. And worse, some are also drawn to short- lived trends that help gather assets instead of produce good results. Crypto as an asset class comes to mind. So I can see how the AANA strategy has a certain appeal and, I think, a dangerous simplicity to it.

Think this post is supposed to be joke!

Yes @Sven. My post of the classic Geiko caveman commercial was supposed to be a joke. It was meant as a play on the writer’s emphasis on simplicity - “AANA is amazingly simple.”
I was also alluding to what @sma3 noted earlier - also in jest … I have seen several other “simple portfolios” proposed. But if we used them, MFO would collapse!
It’’s widely acknowledged that trading in and out of assets frequently damages portfolios more often than it helps. So from that perspective, these simple portfolios are good approaches in that they help you stay the course. All of the assets included in AANA A do rise in value over time (as measured in multi-decades) due to the corrosive effects of inflation on paper currencies. You would have made money in nominal terms over 50 years with gold, real estate, the S&P 500 and the other components. Rebalancing smooths the ride and hopefully keeps the investor from panicking and selling an asset when it is down. To the contrary, it forces you to sell some of your “winners” and buy more of your “losers” (counterintuitive for many).