"The list of "closed"/member-only sites is long and growing."
So, that forces one to sign up with each site, even if one wants to just read. Most sites these days say one can sign in with "Google" / "Apple" or go through a multi step process and give the site all sorts of personal information to create an account with them, and site specific user name and password.
From a consumer privacy and getting hacked (i.e., collateral damage) perspective what is safer: creating accounts with each site or signing in with "Google" / "Apple"?

Just set up one 'dummy' account you use for news sites / forums - or use things like HideMyEmail or Apple's email-guard service. That way if it gets compromised at one site, it won't impact anything more sensitive in your life. The new login/authentication technology called 'passkeys' will probably make this situation much better in the coming years, too.
FWIW saying I'm more concerned about credit cards, which are more of a PITA to change than an email address. I use Privacy.Com to generate a limited- or one-time use Visa card for every magazine, subscription, or one-off site I might use. That way, not only is is keeping my 'real' bank/credit card accounts safe, but if I forget to cancel a service (eg, a streaming site I wanted to catch 1 series on) I'm only out up to the (fairly low) limit I set on the card. In fact just yesterday, I got notification from Privacy.Com that a # I used once 2 years ago (and had been auto-cancelled after use) was declined for a charge at a store I never heard of in Georgia ... so that only reinforces the notion that credit card # compartmentalization is a good thing.

I don’t know why M* coughed-up its premium analyst rating when I pulled up OAKCX this morning. Not a subscriber. But I coped a piece of it (excerpt from a portion of full report):
”Oakmark Bond Fund earns an Average Process Pillar rating. The investment strategy as stated in the fund's prospectus is as follows: The investment seeks to maximize both current income and total return, consistent with prudent investment and principal protection management. The fund invests primarily in a diversified portfolio of bonds and other fixed-income securities. Under normal market conditions, and it invests at least 25% of its assets in investment-grade fixed-income securities and may invest up to 35% of its assets in below investment-grade fixed-income securities (commonly known as "high-yield" or "junk bonds").
“The main contributor to the rating is the firm's five-year retention rate of 82% over the period. Management team experience, which averages 16 years at this fund, also supports the rating. Lastly, the process is limited by the parent firm's five-year risk-adjusted success ratio of 47%. The measure indicates the percentage of a firm's funds that survived and outperformed their respective category's median Morningstar Risk-Adjusted Return for the period. The parent's subpar success ratio suggests that the firm could do better across its fund lineup.
“This strategy has a 3.7% 12-month yield, higher than its average peer's 3.4%. Typically, higher yields come at the cost of higher credit risk. Rated on Jun 23, 2023 Published on Jun 23, 2023”

* AUM rarely bothers me unless below 50 M putting a fund at risk of closure. All else being equal I prefer smaller AUMs.

Harris is a value boutique in Chicago. It runs Oakmark funds. It isn't known for deep bond bench. In fact, OAKBX for years had mostly Treasuries for the bond portion and that worked for a good deal of times; some years ago, OAKBX added more bond analysts.
Why chase new bond funds from Harris?
OAKCX, Inception 1/28/22
M* shows 1/28/22-6/29/23 -7.99%
Yahoo Finance Adjusted-Prices 1/31/22-6/29/23 -9.02% (It doesn't accept prior dates)
StockCharts - OAKCX not recognized

Back to the original post in this thread. It makes me giggle to read the phrase, "slightly Luddites."
All manner of financial "everything" has been dreamed up and created, in order to devise instruments to be bought and sold in the Markets. Remember Michael Burry? He went to GS to ask them to invent an instrument by which he could short the housing market. Smarter than them all.
He exploited what he was able to see in the statistics. OK. But "everything" needs to be regulated. Because the Market owns no conscience. PEOPLE ought to, but too often don't. And the people who too often don't, have lots of money to put to work. And Larry Summers jumped down the throat of Brooksley Born for pointing out the need to regulate (or more tightly regulate?) credit derivatives. Summers opposed it, vehemently.
(And yes, the Head of the CFTC could not accurately be labeled as just a "staffer.")
That episode with Born in Summers' office goes back a lot of years. Perhaps it is too far back in the rearview mirror to matter anymore? Perhaps uncle Larry can be forgiven? At any rate, regulations, in turn, depend upon humans with a conscience in order to be enforced. Regulations cannot stop greed, but the regulations can prevent particular instances in which naked greed is center-stage and obvious. And we need more regulation, not less. Maybe more precisely, what I want to express is the need for a fundamental overhaul, so that regulations do not need to be created for A, B, C and onward all the way to Z, like continually sticking fingers into holes in the dike. I don't bet we'll ever see such a thing, though: too many vested interests would find their own oxen would be gored.

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.