I used to but now that I've finally made up my mind to only index on the equity side (only took 20+ years lol) when it's gone it's gone. Anything sold now goes right into the index.... done.

Smart. This is the direction I'm heading, too, however tentatively. Bond holdings excepted.

I used to but now that I've finally made up my mind to only index on the equity side (only took 20+ years lol) when it's gone it's gone. Anything sold now goes right into the index.... done.

@catch22 :
"Our house takes RMD's from T-IRA's in December and we play with how much FED and STATE tax we want removed depending on our estimate of how much we will owe from taxable sources through the tax year. Our goal is to be about even in taxes paid versus taxes owed."
I usually do the same , wait until the last two months of the year & take my RMD.
Over the last three years refund $995 owe $317 refund 1011 from Fed Taxes .
I believe the year I owed Mr. Vanguard had some rather unexpected CG's !

The final numbers are after covid started. The whole world economy collapsed. That was a black swan. Everything has a context.
The easiest way to measure success is effordability. The 2 biggest items to purchase are homes and vehicles. I will check the numbers tomorrow, from memory, in 3 years houses went up over 40% and vehicles about 30%. Americans have to work many more years to achieve their dreams.

Real wages are still higher than they were in three out of the four years of the previous administration prior to the Covid outbreak, and it's false to say every month. They just started to rise this year:
https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/LES1252881600Q
Meanwhile, the 3.7% unemployment rate is close to an all-time low:
https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/UNRATE

It's funny how 2 people look at the same numbers https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/LES1252881600Q and come up with different opinions.
The biggest wage increase since 1980 happened during Trump which reached the highest point. Covid brought it down and the current administration is far from the peak.
Here are the numbers based on the stlouisfed chart. During the Trump years: Q4/2016=349....Q2/2020=393 (that is 12.6% real wage increase in just 3.5 years). Trump finished in Q4/2020=377. There is nobody else that came close to a 12.6% real wage increase. Since 1980 the second biggest increase during any other presidency was about 5%.
The last number from Q1/2023=263 is still far from the top. This is after trillions of support and a waste of money for the next generation.

Real wages are still higher than they were in three out of the four years of the previous administration prior to the Covid outbreak, and it's false to say every month. They just started to rise this year:
https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/LES1252881600Q
Meanwhile, the 3.7% unemployment rate is close to an all-time low:
https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/UNRATE

I "love" Bofa predictions. See what they said on 12/28/2022 (https://www.businessinsider.com/stock-market-volatility-2023-investing-strategy-sp500-bank-america-subramanian-2022-12)
Bofa recomendations were:
1) Subramanian said she sees stocks going through a volatile period in the first half of 2023 as a recession hits the US economy.
2) avoid the S&P 500 index and mega tech
3) Her most-preferred sectors for 2023 are energy, financials, consumer staples, and utilities.
Reality:
1) Volatility wasn't high in the first half. In fact the indexes were nicely up
2) YTD...SPY made 14.8%...QQQ 37.3%
3) Subramanian preferred categories YTD performance...XLF -3.3%...XLE -7.1%...XLP -0.2%...XLU -7.8%
If you follow the above you missed at least 15-20%. Let me know another profession you can keep your job and be so wrong so many times.
=============
A week ago (link)
MMM...maybe it's time to sell, after all subramanian said "The market is more rational than its been in a decade’"
More than a decade? did she look at what the SP500 made in the last 10 years? SPY made 225% in 10 years and QQQ made 460%.

The new W-4R requirements are working smoothly now.
Default fed tax w/h for withdrawals are 20% from 401k/403b, 10% from T-IRAs. I wanted more tax w/h to avoid paying Est Tax (which is also a simple online process), so that kicked in new W-4R.
There were early reports of required paper filings of W-4R. But now everything is online. My experiences at 3 brokerages:
Fido (403b) Rep just asked verbal OK to complete a new W-4R for me. However, Fido insists that MY plan requires phone call, so no online processing.
TIAA (403b) allowed online editing of the w/h % without any thing additional. It's assumption seems to be that changing % is in effect completing a new W-4R.
Vanguard (T-IRA) required online completion and signature of a new W-4R.
In all cases, I could designate a specific fund to take all withdrawals - default is proportional withdrawals. So, if you do this via phone, speak up early, or choose "custom" option online. At least at Fido I learned a few years ago that if you mention this late in the call, the Rep had to cancel and start over - that is irritating to both the Rep and the customer.

@Graust - Thank you.
FWIW, this represented the remainder of what I held for many years at D&C - so essentially closed that account. Since previous transfers came from income funds there, I didn’t think it necessary to do in-kind transfers and found suitable NTF funds for the proceeds at Fido. Both firms a pleasure to work with.
@Sven - Thanks.
PDF is certainly better. However, I’ve been able to get away with uploading to Fido a simple screen shot of my D&C statements which I found easier to do. Yep. Those earlier ones came through quickly. And it appears D&C sent the proceeds of the liquidations via bank wire rather than slower EFT. To their credit, there was no “close out” fee at D&C which I’ve encountered with some companies in the past.

3 years ago: 30-yr mortgage rate was 3.13% & median existing home price
in the US was $284k.
Today: 30-yr mortgage rate is 6.67% & median home price is $396k. Result: $22k increase in down payment (assuming 20% down) and 109%
increase in monthly payment (from $973 to $2,037).

No wonder this impacts the affordability of the buyers. For sure the wage increases in the last 3 years don’t amount to 109% higher. If and when the recession arrives, the home sale situation would slow even more.

Not a fan of Rekenthaler. With 401, 403, 457, it is just another employer option of a variety of mutual funds, some risky and some less risky. When I retired, I transferred all of my 401, 403, 457 holdings into a rollover IRA, so they would be consolidated. As far as "retirement income", you pick all kinds of options on the risk/reward continuum, depending on your portfolio objectives. For years, I chose multisector bond oefs, nontraditonal bond oefs, HY and FR/BL options, Municipal bond oefs, etc. for the monthly dividends they paid, to produce a very nice retirement income on a monthly basis. When the markets started crashing with higher interest rates, I chose to move to CDs, MMs, etc. I will likely go back to some combination of a variety of OEF bond funds and CDs/MMs in the future, but for now I don't feel compelled to latch on to any option unless it meets my low risk criteria for producing "retirement income".

Examples
Period 01/1985-05/2023 (as far back as free PV goes)
Fund SWR PWR
VWINX 8.76% 5.53%
VWELX 9.77% 6.64%
ABALX 9.35% 6.29%
VFINX 10.93% 7.52%
So, in this period of about 37.5 years, the realized SWRs were much higher than Bengen's 4% rule. Equities did well and more equities, the better. PWRs weren't that much lower - remember that with PWRs, your or your heirs would also have the inflation-adjusted initial lump-sum on hand.
Period 01/2000-12/2009 (a tough decade)
Fund SWR PWR
VWINX 13.28% 4.14%
VWELX 12.31% 3.41%
ABALX 12.88% 2.98%
VFINX 7.42% 0.00
SWRs look high but remember that the initial balance is also exhausted in 10 years, and that alone at 0% return will be SWR of 10%. PWRs are low and more meaningful for this period. If some more aggressive funds are included, those may fail and would just show the PWR of 0.00% (as for VFINX/SP500).

LCORX?
I have been recommending PRWCX easily over 10 years. It's one of the best allocation funds of all time. Yes, I know, it's a flexible go-anywhere fund.
Since the inception of LCORX...LCORX made 695% while PRWCX made "only" 1453.8%(more than double). I don't know how Giroux keeps doing it with AUM over 50 bil, just amazing.

No question, fees are high and assets are small on LSLTX. The mainstay here is LCORX, but that is much harder to compare against anything as it holds different asset classes and moves around them tactically. If anything, a somewhat fair comparison would be against a traditional 60/40 indexed balanced fund like VBIAX. My cursory analysis is since its 1995 inception, LCORX has beaten VBIAX with a cumulative 695% return versus VBIAX's 651%, but there has been much fluctuation between the two in recent years. As I've said previously, Leuthold is a good shop. But it's a mistake to ever rule the indexers out.

Thank you. MFreeland and others (Ted) wrote about Direxion over the years before the outfit went fully psycho. Also after. G over V looked interesting to me (did not go to zero), and I lost a little less than a quarter of a non-large investment. Live and (sometimes) learn. Divo's two dozen stocks just makes me somewhat gunshy.

Unfortunately, LSLTX doesn't have a longer history. Comparing VS the SP500 after a huge 5 years run and then losing for the next 10 years isn't fair either.
2009-10 IMO is fairer.

I have a lovely collection of small cap funds . . . that I bought at the end of 2021 when they were less undervalued than they are now.. :)

Average stock likely to perform much better over the next 3-5 years than the average index because the average index is so beholden to a few vastly overextended stars.

I've got average too.
Making a list.
Find the cost of opportunity.
Leuthold sings: "Don't believe me? Just watch."
Working by hindsight.

I posted 2009 or 2010. Since 2010, 2011 the SP500 did much better. The SP550 had a huge run of 250% in just 5 years 1995-1999 https://schrts.co/ykvzeewQ
In the next 10 years 2000-2010 it lost money. https://schrts.co/wVEarbKn
A chart since 2010 shows that VFINX made 398% and much better than LSLTX at 248%. That's "only" 150% more
https://schrts.co/KzDIWqjt

Interesting history, worth reading for some of it, but it also perpetuates some false mythology about the democratization of the stock market and “everybody getting rich” off it. The vast majority of Americans who own stocks or stock mutual funds, own them in very small quantities so that the top 1% still owns most of the market just like they always have. Moreover, one of the reasons for the ostensible democratization is that workers were losing their pension plans and being put by their employers into 401ks with stock mutual funds. So now they’re stock owners. The end result was a massive increase in wealth inequality. So, to say everyone was getting rich in the 1990s simply isn’t true. Here is one problematic excerpt:

We went from 1% stock market ownership in 1929 to 19% in 1983 to nearly 60% by 2000.
Almost 60% of households who owned stocks had purchased their first share after 1990. One-third of all buyers entered the market in 1995 or later.
It didn’t hurt that the S&P 500 was up 20% or more for 5 straight years from 1995-1999 while the Nasdaq Composite was up a blistering 41% per year in that same stretch.
Everyone was getting rich and the rise of the internet broke down even more barriers to entry as companies like E-Trade brought a whole new segment of investors into the market.

With the current popularity of index funds, it's interesting to note the launch of the Vanguard 500 Index
(initially named First Index Investment Trust) was not a success.
The plan in 1976 was to raise $150 million but only $11.32 million was raised.
Vanguard 500 Index grew to $100 million in 1982 but $58 million of this amount was attributed to a fund merger. This fund also had an 8.5% sales charge!
Excerpted from Charley Ellis' book The Index Revolution:
"In the fall of 1974, Nobel Laureate Paul Samuelson had written 'Challenge to Judgment,' an article arguing that a passive portfolio would outperform a majority of active managers and pleading for a fund that would replicate the Standard & Poor’s (S&P) 500 index. Two years later, in his regular Newsweek column, Samuelson reported, 'Sooner than I expected, my explicit prayer has been answered' by the launch of the Bogle-LeBaron First Index Fund."
"Samuelson notwithstanding, the First Index launch was not a success. Planned to raise $150 million, the offering raised less than 8 percent of that, collecting only $11,320,000. As a 'load' fund, with an 8.5 percent sales charge, aiming to achieve only average performance, it could not gain traction. The fund then had performance problems. While outperforming over two-thirds of actively managed funds in its first five years, in the next few years it fell behind more than three-quarters of equity mutual funds. High fixed brokerage commissions were one problem. A larger problem came with 'tracking' difficulties. To minimize costs, the portfolio did not own all the smaller-capitalization stocks in the S&P 500. Instead, it sampled the smaller stocks just as that group enjoyed an unusually strong run, so the fund failed to deliver on its 'match the market' promise."
"Renamed Vanguard Index 500 in 1980 and tracking the index closely, the fund grew to $100 million in 1982, but only because $58 million—more than half—came by merging into the fund another Vanguard fund 'that had outlived its usefulness.' Finally, as index funds began to gain acceptance with some investors, the Vanguard fund reached $500 million in 1987."