The article written by @lewisbraham was informative.
Investors who chase star managers often don't properly
consider conditions which corresponded with success.
I'm guilty of doing this myself years ago...
"All of which illustrates a larger point: Fund managers don’t drive performance by themselves.
In its conclusion, the study points to other factors in departing managers’ future success,
including the investment culture of the new firm, its analytical resources, and fees —
despite the authors’ before-fee focus."

Boneheadedness? You can’t touch this. A couple of years ago, when I had a TDA account (now closed), I had an excellent Hermes Federated MM fund that paid the highest yield around (MMPXX maybe, I don’t recall). One day I was moving spare cash into it, and made a miscalculation. I bought $50,000 too much — on margin. I didn’t realize it until about two months later, after I noticed a whopping margin interest charge.
I contacted my TDA rep and explained that it was obviously a mistake — *nobody* would buy a MM fund on margin. He was nice enough to waive all the interest charges.
Lesson learned. Watch your balances.

Been there, done that ! Comes under, shit happens !

OMG same. :)
Years ago, just before the GFC, I remember suddenly being long 16 futures contracts instead of 4 b/c I never got a confirmation back and kept refreshing the screen on the ramshackle Java-based active trading platform I was using. About 15 minutes later I nearly died when I was in such a large (an unexpected) position , which I promptly liquidated completely before catching my breath....thankfully the market remained relatively flat during that period of confusion.
To my then-broker's credit, they credited me the few hundred bucks' I was down, plus the commissions, b/c I proved, and they confirmed, the problem was due to their platform. I was relieved, to say the least ... but rarely used that system again.
We live, we learn.

.25 sounds like a lot. And it is with really large amounts that are left untouched out to 5 or 10 years. For lesser amounts:
$20,000 invested 1 year would earn roughly an additional … $50
$50,000 .………..1 year ……………………………………….. $125
$75,000 …………1 year………………………………..…..…. $187.50
What will the above extra return buy?
$50 - A 750 ml bottle of Johnny Walker Double-Black blended Scotch whisky - including state tax.
$125 - A nice upgrade from your $500 dollar a night room at a Manhattan hotel to a “corner view.”
$187.50 - Taxi fare from LGA to Manhattan and back - including driver tips.

Good numbers/comparisons --- though fwiw saying, on principle, I still refuse to buy mutual funds with .25 12(b)-1 fees.

.25 sounds like a lot. And it is with really large amounts that are left untouched out to 5 or 10 years. For lesser amounts:
$20,000 invested 1 year would earn roughly an additional … $50
$50,000 .………..1 year ……………………………………….. $125
$75,000 …………1 year………………………………..…..…. $187.50
What will the above extra return buy?
$50 - A 750 ml bottle of Johnny Walker Double-Black blended Scotch whisky - including state tax.
$125 - A nice upgrade from your $500 dollar a night room at a Manhattan hotel to a “corner view.”
$187.50 - Taxi fare from LGA to Manhattan and back - including driver tips.

Every fund and every broker handles these things differently.
I once owned a BlackRock fund, service class shares, at Fidelity. That was the lowest ER noload share class I could buy. Once the (slightly cheaper) A shares were offered NTF, I asked Fidelity to convert the shares. They said that BlackRock wouldn't allow this. (Since this was a taxable account, I couldn't just sell and repurchase on my own without consequences.)
Gradually I liquidated the position over a few years, for other reasons.

(https://humbledollar.com/2023/07/courage-required/)
William Bernstein | Jul 22, 2023
EVEN AFTER BEAR markets in 2020 and 2022, investors’ appetite for stocks remains as robust as ever. But what if stocks had not just a rough year or two, but a dismal stretch that lasted more than a decade? Below is an excerpt from the second edition of my book The Four Pillars of Investing, which was published earlier this month.
In August 1979, BusinessWeek ran a cover story with the headline “The Death of Equities,” and few had trouble believing it. The Dow Jones Industrial Average, which had toyed with the 1,000 level in January 1973, was now trading at 875 six-and-a-half years later. Worse, inflation was running at almost 9%. A dollar invested in the stock market in 1973 purchased just 71 cents of consumer goods, even allowing for reinvested dividends.
According to the article, “The masses long ago switched from stocks to investments having higher yields and more protection from inflation. Now the pension funds—the market’s last hope—have won permission to quit stocks and bonds for real estate, futures, gold, and even diamonds. The death of equities looks like an almost permanent condition—reversible someday, but not soon.”
Contrast today’s universal acceptance of stock investing with the sentiment described in the BusinessWeek article, when diamonds, gold and real estate were all the rage. The price of the yellow metal had risen from $35 an ounce in 1968 to more than $500 in 1979 and would peak at more than $800 the following year, equal to roughly $3,000 in today’s dollars. Still, there are similarities between the 1970s and today. Now the wise and lucky own houses in cities with desirable real estate. Back then, those who had purchased their houses for a song in the 1950s and 1960s were by 1980 sitting on real capital wealth beyond their wildest dreams. Stocks and bonds? “Paper assets,” sneered the conventional wisdom.

FUNDS. Many STAR MANAGERS who leave for other firms, or form their own firms, don’t succeed as well (JUCAX with Bill Gross was a classic disaster). The reason may be the vast analyst, research and data support systems that they relied on at their old firms. Almost 42% of these managers didn’t even last 5 years at their new firms; the startup costs at their own firms may be high. Many firms now use multi-manager team model that reduces the impact of anyone leaving. Notable exceptions/successes include GQGPX with Rajiv Jain (and Jefferey Gundlach who succeeded with DoubleLine against all odds; notably, Howard Marks underwrote most of the initial setup costs). (By @lewisbraham at MFO)
Many fund companies (BLK, IVZ, WT, Fidelity, etc) are flooding the SEC with new SPOT-CRYPTO ETFs and daring it to reject them all – while there are noises in the DC about GENSLER’s/SEC approach, and in a recent ongoing court case SEC vs XRP/Ripple, the judge wasn’t very sympathetic to the SEC arguments or its general approach to securities regulations. BlackRock’s/BLK spot-crypto approach is novel in that it will use Coinbase/COIN trading platform, but the Nasdaq/NDAQ exchange will provide assistance for detecting fraud, manipulation, etc. BlackRock has had 576 ETFs approved with only 1 rejection, so, will its spot-crypto ETFs be its 2nd rejection, or does it know something that others don’t? Anyway, several other filers have also adjusted their spot-crypto ETF filings in a way similar to BlackRock. On another front, Fidelity, Schwab, etc are developing an alternate crypto exchange that is modelled after traditional US exchanges. (One thought is that the SEC suddenly throws in the towel by saying that this crypto stuff has now sufficiently matured, or Gensler is just dumped).
An insightful Q&A:
Louis-Vincent GAVE, Gavekal Research. There are huge GEOPOLITICAL shifts going on in Europe, Asia, Middle East. It’s astounding that the peace deal between SAUDI ARABIA and IRAN has been brokered by CHINA (!) – this is like the peace between France and Germany after WWII, and possibly, a future peace between China and India. For China, an immense benefit will be a land pipeline from Saudi Arabia to Iran to ? to China. The possibility of a US/Western oil shipment embargo for China during any conflict with the US has spooked China. Then, there is this new DOLLAR DIPLOMACY that is causing gradual but steady shift away from dollar-trading and dollar-reserves into local/regional currencies. The dollar index (based on a fixed currency basket) is outdated – many already use trade-weighted dollar. The EMs ex-China are actually booming now, but the EM indexes are held back by the heavy weight from lagging China. Forget AI and Nasdaq, the markets in Argentina, Brazil, India, Indonesia, Mexico have outperformed. It still isn’t too late to participate as the EMs are under-owned and most US investors have sworn off the non-US markets. Nothing against AI, but AI will also be huge in EMs, and people would find better/cheaper alternatives to overpriced MSFT, NVDA, etc.
JAPAN is finally changing – it has inflation and rising rates and there will be a massive shift from bonds to equities. But it will be very volatile near-term (it is said that Japan is the most cyclical among the global markets). CHINA has lagged because it didn’t have huge stimuluses during the pandemic and its Covid problems are hardly over. But that is changing. Soon, the world may wake up to the day when Chinese global auto exports will exceed those by Japan. President Xi Jinping has to realize that China’s future lies in the tech sector and everything else will be secondary (economic growth, domestic consumption, etc) (with his power assured, he may flip on policy easily). Many Chinese stocks have sold off sharply, are under-owned, but have huge future potential.
LINK

@BaluBalu, was a customer for many years. Given the number of years they did not spend money on upgrades they raised rates to pay for, I'ld say you made the right choice. Sometimes making money is selling "too soon."

@yogibearbull: We had to choose the AT&T bundle because we are far enough away from a main street to have to rely on a buried copper cable for all our connectivity. Comcast is in town but would have charged us big bucks to lay a cable 2/10th of a mile to our house. Dish antenna we tried 15 years ago was spotty for TV; that may have improved with AT&T's takeover. AT&T prefers to sell dish service as opposed to copper wire because its more profitable. We could drop the landline, but my wife uses it as often as her cell phone. Don't get me started on price increases for our services over the past decade.

Where I am we had a 1950s era phone “landline”. After a few days of heavy rain it would sometimes go out for several days. Not sure where the problem was. Possibly in a buried cable to home. Cellular reception is poor here. For home service I use a cellphone connected to outside cellular antenna / cell phone booster for regular home service. The booster runs on electric, so it would be hard (but not impossible) to get a call out in event of power failure. (Than, there’s the portable gas powered generator to fall back on.) But most days the $25 / month cellular from Visible (Verizon) performs very reliably.
I don’t think it takes a rocket scientist to see the advantages to a “utility” in providing tower service rather than in ground cable. Many technologies become outdated in 5-10 years. “Hard” lines (pole or buried) would be a lot more expensive, ISTM, for them to upgrade than upgrading their towers - especially if burring cable to home.
I suspect in another 10-20 years a whole lot of this stuff (maybe all) will be space based, as satellites are becoming more advanced, lighter and less expensive to launch by the day. I never thought I’d see wireless charging. But it’s here - for some devices anyways. One of the networks featured an in-production solar powered car on its Thursday newscast. Three wheeled. A slight problem is having to run a zig-zag pattern to get up any hills. And they didn’t comment on how well it works at night.

The era of growth-utilities (unregulated) started in 1980s and has now picked up steam with alternate energy. If you want to trace developments in this industry, check the history of Vanguard VWINX benchmark changes - it started with a very simple idea, utility stocks + long-term bonds. The VWINX today is far different from that.
Even with phones, I do have landline but AT&T pushed for "attractive" Uverse bundles (landline, wireless, Internet, TV). I settled only for Internet + landline Uverse. When the technician was here years ago, I asked him what's the catch? He said, after saying that he isn't really supposed to be telling this, but conventional landlines, that are also powered by AT&T at low voltage (so, it worked even when power went out) is a "regulated" business and AT&T wants to move people to "unregulated" Uverse. OK, so if the power goes out now, so goes down the Uverse, and the landline with it. But as I have wireless phone (T-Mobile), I am not worried about being cutoff from the world - until the cell tower goes down. And if both the power and cell towers are down, there must be some bigger problem.

The best suggestion of a specific fund I’ve received (for my needs) from this board came from @BenWP a couple + years ago. That’s GLFOX. It’s the first new fund I purchased after moving to Fido’s brokerage. Thanks Ben. It is technically an infrastructure fund. M* lists it as slightly over 50% utilities. Most of the holdings are X-USA (primarily Europe), which partially explains an ER north of 1%. The fund isn’t for everyone. And, as noted, isn’t a “utilities” fund. You can probably find better infrastructure or utility funds depending on your needs for a portfolio fit - especially how much foreign exposure you need or want.
Lazzard, itself is a giant in the global investment banking business. There’s been upheaval at the top with a new CEO in recent months. Like most of the big houses, there’s cost-cutting going on. I read somewhere there’s a soft close on institutional ownership of GLFOX, but that it is still open to individual investors. Strikes me as opposite what T. Rowe is doing by closing PRWCX but allowing those with hefty initial investments in.
Of course, Fido’s “Select Utilities” (FSUTX) with a lower .74% ER is a star performer in utilities.

Yesterday, M* flipped the switch to off on my access to their portfolio manager tool. Thank you for the past years of providing this tool to the retail investor. It has been much appreciated but time for us to part ways by your choice and not mine. I expect you bowed to the pressures coming from big clients to stop helping the little guy through the offering of X-ray and portfolio manager. And, so it goes ... M* is no more for me ... The little guy.

Hank is right in drawing a distinction between the years up to the mid 90s and the time since then. Though I would say that the key difference between then and now is regulation.
Utilities were heavily regulated, vertically integrated companies. Electric utility companies combined power generation with transmission and distribution. Ma Bell designed its own equipment (Bell Labs) and manufactured it (Western Electric) under the 1956 consent decree.
Under regulation, utility companies were granted monopolies and guaranteed a fair rate of return. They were cash cows, very much like bonds with steady payments.

[Through the early 1990s] most public utilities were regulated monopolies. They were guaranteed a fair rate of return, based on their capital investment and costs. ...
in the old days of regulation, a utility like Con Ed would be required to regularly submit a resource plan to a state's public service commission. The two organizations would forecast demand and decide how much money should be invested in power plants and transmission lines. Rates would be adjusted to cover costs. Under deregulation, however, nobody plays that crucial planning role.

https://www.nytimes.com/2003/08/16/opinion/the-day-the-lights-went-out-an-industry-trapped-by-a-theory.html

I don't know. If there is a bond fund that returned 7.84 over the last 15 years, and 10% over the last three years, like FSUTX has, I'ld like to know the name of it.

Some really good discussion here. A couple comments:
@FD1000,

So, just my opinion, good timing/trading is the only choice IF you can do it.

You are always self promoting this option. Fact is, 90% of every-day investors that try timing methods actually end up with less return over time. That is pretty well documented. Lots of people "think" they can do it, at least initially, but I contend there is a very small minority that actually benefit. I'd be the first to say it hasn't worked for me.
@fred495, @Observant1

...This fund (JHQAX) seems to offer appealing risk/reward characteristics and it's less expensive than many "alt" funds.

JHQAX has successfully proven its mettle over the past 9 years by "providing smoother returns by tempering downside and upside returns via a systematically implemented options strategy".

I'm definitely on the same page as you guys. I don't expect it to make the same return over 10 years as say the S&P 500, but you can say the same for most balanced, allocation or bond funds too. At my age, a smoother contributor in a portfolio with good upside/downside risk stats is valued.

Well, if you read my posts, I said the following hundred of times. Most should own a limited number of funds (mostly in indexes and low ER) based on their risk and goals and hardy trade. Trading is for a small % who can do it with reasonable success. But, the following MAY work for retirees who have enough and don't want to lose much. They don't care about performance, they care a lot more about NOT losing money.
BTW, I never said that JHQAX isn't a good idea. As always the whole portfolio matters more than one fund. Example: suppose someone has 5 funds, each at 20%, he/she can own 20% in JHQAX per their EXPLORE portion.
Basically, there are all kinds of investors, there is no one size fits all. Someone can use one of the following lazy portfolios(link), do nothing for decades and stop reading everything about investing.
This site and other investment sites, in contradiction to the Boglehead, are about thinking about other choices.

Some really good discussion here. A couple comments:
@FD1000,

So, just my opinion, good timing/trading is the only choice IF you can do it.

You are always self promoting this option. Fact is, 90% of every-day investors that try timing methods actually end up with less return over time. That is pretty well documented. Lots of people "think" they can do it, at least initially, but I contend there is a very small minority that actually benefit. I'd be the first to say it hasn't worked for me.
@fred495, @Observant1

...This fund (JHQAX) seems to offer appealing risk/reward characteristics and it's less expensive than many "alt" funds.

JHQAX has successfully proven its mettle over the past 9 years by "providing smoother returns by tempering downside and upside returns via a systematically implemented options strategy".

I'm definitely on the same page as you guys. I don't expect it to make the same return over 10 years as say the S&P 500, but you can say the same for most balanced, allocation or bond funds too. At my age, a smoother contributor in a portfolio with good upside/downside risk stats is valued.

As posted nearby, the AAII Sentiment Bull-Bear spread is at 2.25-yr high.
I am starting to scale my tactical-asset-allocation (TAA) back to normal - for me, 40-60% effective-equity. My TAA had become too high from purchases during 2020-2022.
The idea is hold/buy when Sentiment is VERY negative, sell some when Sentiment is TOO positive.
Personally, no hedging or shorting. Been there, tried that in my working years, but I don't do that now. I do have margin accounts but I don't use margin now.
BTW, low VIX and high SKEW indicate lots of institutional hedging. It's like many institutional bulls are just dancing near the exits. Now, retail investors seem to be joining the party.

Charles Lynn Bolin does an excellent job explaining risk/volatility/unique funds and how to build a portfolio. If you pay attention, it's not static, his view keeps changing because markets keep changing. See below 2 good examples:
https://www.mutualfundobserver.com/2022/10/shining-the-light-into-black-box-funds/
https://www.mutualfundobserver.com/2023/03/to-sell-or-not-to-sell-remix-pqtax-gpanx-cotzx/
BTW, 2022 was one of the easiest years to time markets = sell a big % to MM. We had High inflation, high prices (gas, oil, food, housing, vehicles), terrible supply chain issues around the world, and war in Europe. The Fed screams it will raise rates by several % in the coming months. Lastly, both bond+stock funds go down slowly for weeks letting you sell.