Some poster on YT did a more detailed summary than did I:
2:11 In my career I've said many things that didn't turn out
4:00 The last 10 or 11 years we've had $30 trillion in QE
4:35 This business is about guessing
5:11 We've only pulled off 2 or 3 soft landings in history. The one I remember was 1994/1995
5:20 We've never had a soft landing after inflation has gotten above 4.5%
5:56 Anything is possible. I've been wrong plenty of times in my career
6:25 Once inflation has gotten above 5%, it's never come down unless Fed Funds has gone above CPI
(but this time that will probably be broken, because Fed Funds would have to go above 8% this time)
7:24 Once inflation has gotten above 5%, it's never been tamed without a recession
8:23 We have $1 trillion to $1.5 trillion in excess savings (who? households or the Government?)
9:53 I was a dropout of a Ph.D program at the University of Michigan
9:57 I don't use what traditional economists use to predict the economy -- things like employment
10:17 The inside of the stock market has a prescient message regarding future economic activity
10:27 Stocks lead fundamentals by 6 to 12 months
11:00 We listen to companies and do a bottom-up analysis
11:14 If leading industries are turning up or down, that's a signal
11:27 The bond market used to be a prescient signaler,
but the last 10 or 11 years it hasn't signaled because the Central Banks have manipulated bond prices
12:04 Last summer when the 10-year yield dropped from 1.70 to 1.15, I didn't anticipate that
12:15 Central banks were buying trillions of dollars and manipulating price of bonds
13:15 Home builders with good fundamentals have declined 50% from their highs (might actually be around 36% drop)
13:28 Trucking is down 40% from their highs (might actually be around 30%)
13:49 Retail numbers are tainted. Can't just accept them blindly
14:48 A lot of these signals have long lead times, 6 months to a year (meaning, recession might not happen until 6 months to a year)
16:10 When I first got into the business,
if a company reported bad earnings but still closed the day positive, that stock was going to be up 6 months from then (and vice versa)
16:28 If the economy looked great and bonds were rallying, that meant the economy was not going to be great
16:55 Price versus news is weakened these days compared to 20 years ago
17:21 I started in this business in the mid 1970s
17:27 Traditionally, I learned that during bear markets I had to morph into bonds, commodities, foreign currencies
17:45 Maybe this says something about my dysfunctional personality but I've always made more money during bear markets
17:55 the way I did it was by ignoring equities and taking them off the table, and buying bonds
18:00 But I've never seen a situation like this where inflation is over 8% and yields 3%
18:21 Referring to golf, I feel like I'm about to play without a driver or wedge, because bonds which have been my go-to may not work this time
18:50 Investing is an art form and you have to innovate from cycle to cycle
20:29 I've lived through enough bear markets to know that if you get aggressive shorting, you can get your head ripped off with rallies
21:03 Side-stepping a decline is not the worst thing in the world (that is, getting out rather than risking losing or gaining)
21:31 I'll be surprised if sometime in the next 6 months the dollar DOESN'T weaken
23:09 There's a strong correlation between crypto and NASDAQ
24:00 My 69th birthday is in a few weeks
24:32 I feel like my predictive power is better but I'm not making as much money because I'm not as aggressive (with investing)
26:34 If we're gonna have a bull market, I want Bitcoin. If we're gonna have a bear market, Gold
27:35 You gotta know your own biases
28:10 I was lazy in college, but I'm passionate about investing.
I'm intellectually stimulated imagining the world and prices 12 to 18 months from now
31:15 Business school says that if you're highly diversified, you have less risk. I don't believe that at all
31:26 People get in the most trouble when they have stale longs or shorts
31:42 You have to have ruthless discipline and be paranoid
32:09 What I learned from George Soros is that it's not about whether you're right or wrong,
it's about how much you make when you're right and how much you lose when you're wrong
32:25 I believe in streaks. One of my number 1 jobs is to know when I'm hot or cold
35:41 When you hear a good idea, within 2 or 3 weeks it may be too late

Anyone can open a conventional taxable brokerage account at TIAA.
https://shared.tiaa.org/private/mytcbrokerageaccountopening/aobrokerageapp/secure/required
It gives you access to what you'd find at most brokerages - stocks, ETFs, mutual funds. Like those other brokerages, it does not give you access to mutual funds sold through annuities.
Most brokerages offer retail IRA accounts that, aside from being wrapped up in an IRA, are virtually identical to their retail taxable accounts. TIAA does not. It used to but stopped offering such an IRA account a few years ago.
What TIAA does do is sell retirement annuities. To colleges, that's a 403(b) annuity. Like most variable annuities, TIAA's have a limited set of funds that are sold only through annuities. Notably the CREF funds, like CREF stock. And like some variable annuities, the TIAA annuities offer a fixed annuity option. Here, that's TIAA Traditional Annuity.
For individual investors, TIAA offers two variable annuities. One is your typical VA, called TIAA Intelligent Variable Annuity. It offers "funds" (typically VA clones) shown here. The other VA is effectively the equivalent of the 403(b) annuity (plus brokerage window). It's that one that gives you get access to TIAA Traditional, CREF, and TIAA Real Estate.
That annuity is only offered to "eligible" investors, and only as an Individual Retirement Annuity. Unlike typical VAs, you can't buy it for a taxable account.
https://www.tiaa.org/public/retire/financial-products/annuities/annuity-ira-benefits
As Yogi mentioned, the TIAA Traditional Annuity (fixed annuity investment option) that you can get though this limited access IRA annuity comes with a lower rate than paid to 403(b) participants. It is paying 2.50%, and has a guaranteed floor of 1.0%. I believe the IRA annuity contract restricts Traditional withdrawals to one per quarter.
An IRA investor is at the bottom of the totem pole when it comes to the CREF funds. Several years ago, TIAA split these into three share classes, with large institutions getting cheaper shares and small institutions getting the most expensive shares. As an IRA investor, you're thrown in with the small institutions. It could be worse; TIAA could have created a fourth share class for IRA investors.
IMHO the only significant benefit to this IRA annuity is access to TIAA Real Estate Account (TREA).
You can find the VA options (including those for this IRA annuity) here. The IRA doesn't give you access to the non-TIAA VA subaccounts listed (except for Nuveen, which is owned by TIAA).
https://www.tiaa.org/public/investment-performance
Since it is structured as an annuity, this IRA can be difficult to deal with. You can't do transfers in kind (e.g. for RMDs, or IRA-to-IRA). When transferring money out of this annuity, you have to initiate the transfer from the TIAA side; typically one initiates transfers from the receiving side. These are attributes normally associated with employer-sponsored plans (401(k)s, 403(b)s), not with IRAs.
The website is atrocious. I'm won't go into details. Suffice to say that people who complain about Vanguard's website likely haven't yet had the "pleasure" of dealing with TIAA's. And you won't know what funds you can buy through the IRA brokerage window until you actually open an account.

@MikeM - It’s not a “negative call” on the fund. Aware of its stellar record. But I do have quite a bit in DODBX (similar risk / reward level). That’s directly with D&C. We’ll see how things pan out. I did regret leaving PRHYX many years ago believing they would reopen it some day.
Thanks for chiming in.
@Sven - Thank you also for your comment.

I always find @LewisBraham’s articles excellent. Several of his have been very helpful to me over the years. This week’s “9 Funds That Could Beat the Market” is no exception.
My sweeping remark was a reaction to the cover story only. IMHO they tried to cover too much. Glad @Yogibearbull and others found it useful. As Yogi intones, the appeal is likely stronger for those with a special interest in this type of investment. I look forward to Barron’s every week, and sometimes it’s hard not to not weigh in on articles mentioned on the board. Hope many others share their reactions to this and other intriguing articles.
Remark not directed at any particular individual. Ben’s assessment is what prompted me to weigh in - sparked my interest so to speak. But I’d been thinking about what I said for some time.

With M* Portfolio (free/Basic and Premium) going away soon (2022), and its replacement M* Investor having very poor portfolio analytics, I have collected several TIPs based on my use of FREE Portfolio Visualizer (PV) over the years. It may serve as a primer for new PV users and refresher for experienced users.
https://ybbpersonalfinance.proboards.com/thread/311/portfolio-visualizer-pv

What I tried to do was look for a similar historical period and see how different stock allocations would perform under those conditions. The cash buffer was a conceptual attempt to mitigate most, but not all impact of market swoons.
In essence, I started with a traditional 60/40 portfolio and swapped some or all of the bonds for more equity and cash, figuring (hoping?) that the cash would add stability allowing for a higher equity allocation.
Intuition says that if one has too many market corrections/bear markets in a span of a few years, preserving one would be better off with cash. I tend to agree with this intuition. However, it turns out that this risk sometimes vanishes if there is a full recovery between the periods of market decline.
Looking at the 1968-1980 period (assuming withdrawals and reallocations are done on calendar year boundaries), at the end of 1972 (right before the 1973-74 bear market) the allocation methods (including withdrawals) all are in the black. The portfolio values (nominal dollars) range from $101,402 (all stock) to $102,728 (90/10 with a cash buffer). A 28% cash buffer (7 years @4%/year) ended in the middle of the pack with $101,964.
Since all methods ended 1972 above their high water marks, they would rebalance to their "normal" allocations. It would be as if 1969-1972 hadn't happened, except that some portfolios would have a few hundred dollars more or less than others.
The reason why starting with 1969 instead of 1973 seems to make a difference is that this moves the ten year mark. If one ends after 1978, one ends just before the market has a big run up: 18.52%, 31,74%, -4.70%, and 20.42% from 1979 through 1982. It's the arbitrariness of the time periods and not the method that's the problem here.
Finally, a mea culpa. In looking more closely at the two sets of results, I realized that I erred in building the results for 40/60 in 1973-1982. That method (stocks/bonds, annual rebalancing) came out pretty well. The 30% bond return in 1982 (vs. 20% for stocks) and 8% return in 1981 (vs. -5% for stocks) surely helped.

  Year	December 31 Balance							
100% stock	90/10		90/10		75/9/16		75/9/16		60/40		55%-40%		40/60
single asset	annual rebal	cash buffer	annual rebal	cash buffer	annual rebal	glide path	annual rebal
1972	$96,000.00 	$96,000.00 	$96,000.00 	$96,000.00 	$96,000.00 	$96,000.00 	$96,000.00 	$96,000.00 
1973	$77,916.04 	$79,964.65 	$79,964.65 	$82,774.63 	$82,774.63 	$84,941.86 	$85,820.08 	$88,454.77 
1974	$52,849.69 	$57,065.02 	$56,366.89 	$62,757.74 	$62,779.42 	$66,449.90 	$68,565.60 	$73,770.73 
1975	$67,177.97 	$71,171.20 	$71,526.14 	$75,940.95 	$75,586.94 	$77,923.98 	$78,943.98 	$82,707.22 
1976	$77,709.51 	$81,312.30 	$83,093.89 	$85,862.08 	$86,793.31 	$89,157.97 	$89,949.56 	$93,980.77 
1977	$66,440.91 	$70,788.22 	$71,449.48 	$76,681.03 	$76,733.21 	$81,584.58 	$83,607.73 	$88,682.57 
1978	$64,393.97 	$69,072.33 	$69,728.56 	$75,016.17 	$74,903.38 	$78,784.24 	$80,338.99 	$85,247.72 
1979	$69,100.59 	$74,061.67 	$75,423.11 	$79,380.19 	$80,871.40 	$80,108.79 	$79,673.90 	$84,001.59 
1980	$82,907.47 	$87,939.43 	$91,236.47 	$91,378.46 	$95,352.49 	$86,229.83 	$81,409.15 	$84,953.48 
1981	$70,161.78 	$76,604.00 	$79,004.86 	$82,044.34 	$85,902.92 	$77,823.31 	$74,781.73 	$78,754.87 
1982	$75,302.27 	$82,308.84 	$85,951.03 	$89,100.42 	$94,318.06 	$87,801.30 	$85,465.37 	$90,618.38 

Appreciate the post ... Where to Invest Now? That is the question. If you're not in retirement and you have some cash on the sidelines, where do you invest? You definitely want to avoid any companies that are not generating profits. It's impossible to call a bottom. Yes. Ok, so will the recession (we are in one) last 18-24 months? If so, should you wait for another 12 months before deploying cash? DCA into index funds? Which ones? S&P 500 or Small Cap or both?
Kiplinger article "The good news is that stocks tend to do well in the first year of Fed rate hikes. Looking back some 65 years, Deutsche Bank found that 12 months following the first hike, the stock market was up 91% of the time, by an average of 7%." <-- that's some positive data.
I'm keeping an eye on the labor market. It's a strong point at the moment but we're seeing a lot of hiring freezes and offer letters being rescinded. It appears the Tech companies are gearing up for a slowdown. Interesting times.

I enjoyed all of the presentations in the July commentary. Lynn's commentaries regarding retirement planning will allow me to have more "ammunition" to "prod" a few folks who still don't realize how fast the years move along; and suddenly find themselves a lot closer to retirement than they had remembered. The psychological aspect being as important as the investment aspect.
Remain curious,
Catch

Mark Freeland wrote a very good analysis of the returns of different asset allocations during the inflationary 1970s He estimates the expected results of withdrawals from various allocations of equities 100% equities to 40%/60%.
The best results were a 79/9/16% ( latter is cash) which allows withdrawals for four years without selling equities at the bottom, or when they are below their high
This "cash stash" keeps you from the largest draw on performance, selling into a declining market at the low. This approach is similar to James Cloonan at American Association of Individual Investors, who proposed five years expenses in cash and withdrawing from equites only when the SP500 was within 5% of it's high.
I looked carefully to see it four or five years is enough and I am not sure it it, because the market took 3.2 years to recover from 11/68 high but then less than a year later, ( 1/11/73) it peaked again and took 7 years to recover (7/16/80). The 68 peak to the 80 recovery was over 11 years.
Similarly from a high in 3/2000, the recovery took 7.1 years but less than 5 months later crashed again and didn't recover until 3/2013, a combined total of 13 years.
Consequently, I believe that the customary 4 or 5 years is not enough to cover these prolonged declines. Seven years of expenses in cash or short term bonds seems to be the minimum.
Maybe the withdrawals would have been during those short period of market highs, and the withdrawals if below the peak would have been at least pretty close to it. You also have to withdraw enough to replenish your "cash stash".

My thoughts on the topic:
-The Fed would prefer to just jawbone the capital markets to do the heavy lifting of slowing demand. (i.e. talk tough, but carry a wet noodle).
-That might have worked if Jay "Helicopter Cash" Powell had begun tightening in mid-2021, instead of mid-2022. But Jay was all about being re-appointed to a 2nd term. By waiting a year ("transitory" talk), inflation expectations are now strongly embedded in the behavior of economic actors.
-The only way to "kill" inflation is to kill demand. The asset bubbles need to be "pricked" to do so. Obviously some of that has happened. The Fed has a lousy history of avoiding recessions. To be fair, its a tough, nearly impossible job to "thread the needle" -- dampening demand "just enough", without pushing the economy into recession. Frankly, I wish Ben Bernanke were still running the show.
If not for the scheduled Q/T, I would think the bond market would be through correcting. It still may be: if stocks continue to grind lower --- due to downward earnings revisions -- a good chunk of the capital may move into bonds -- thus offsetting the Fed's Q/T sales.
_if the Fed is serious about killing demand -- and doesn't waiver, then a recession is my "base case". OTOH, if the Fed chickens out and "pivots", then a recession may be avoided --- but the cost will be higher, longer inflation, and a loss of confidence in the USD.
[[An aside: there may be bigger issues than "just" the economy this time, geopolitical issues. How can the West "de-fang" Putin? - crashing oil prices. How might that happen? -- a global recession. And which currency benefits from a de-risk trade? The USD. The USD has been very strong (against fiats, but not commodities). But a higher USD (prompted by higher rates) would tend to exert further downward pressure on oil prices. This would put incrementally more "hurt" on Russian oil revenues.
-So, I think bonds will find their final bottom b4 stocks. (Though stocks can have a countertrend rally any time, and July is usually an up month.)
- I always remind myself to "be mindful of the calendar". Even if we get a relief rally, the damage YTD has been extensive. -- Traders will want to register tax losses b4 year-end. (For many institutions, the tax year ends 10/31). So price-action in the weeks before Halloween may provide an opportunity to put money to work as institutional sellers close out their loss-positions.
-Mid-term election results may also provide a boost to the market in November -- assuming the SCOTUS Roe-reversal doesn't jinx a Red Wave result.
-Housing prices have not fallen yet. But that is one big asset bubble which needs to be popped to dampen inflation. If mortgage rates continue to climb, I would expect some of the corporate buyers (e.g. Blackstone, etc) to unload some of their holdings, in favor of bonds. That might precipitate downward price action, as inventory (finally) expands.
Given how 2022 is unfolding, 2023 may be lining up to be a good year. (3rd years of the Presidential cycle usually are)
Just my 8 cents.

Apparently, M* does not rely on its traditional users for income. It has been driving away users for years. I used to visit M* daily, and now I rarely ever use the site. No love lost from my viewpoint.

Price gouging !! I just posted about huge increase in monthly, average, natural gas bill.
Derf

Well, you call it price-gouging. But that seems to be popular behavior with every industry these days. -- Airline fares. Agriculture/food. its impossible to go through a burger drive-through without paying +$10/person, for crap 'food' (it may be Solyent Green). My landlord raised the rent 12%. Housing prices are up outrageous sums since the helicopter money was dropped by Jay "Top Gun" Powell.
The employer I happen to work for has raised its prices on all of its product lines +100% since 2019. --- And we keep having more customers showing up at our door asking for more product.. (i.e. no loss of volumes due to the high prices).
When everyone is "price-gouging", its not price-gouging. its inflation. Inflation is every where and at every time a monetary phenomenon (M. Friedman). Our govt (including Jay "Monopoly Money" Powell) has done this to us.
Are you better off now than you were 4 years ago?

I have been a Schwab customers for many years. Yesterday, for the first time I learned in my taxable account that I can not place a sell order for SWVXX and immediately place a buy order for a mutual fund from another fund family. (Strangely, about a month ago I transferred cash from my bank to Schwab and parked the cash in SWVXX to later buy a mutual fund. Evidently, the $200K I have in SWVXX gives me a margin buying power of $30K to buy another mutual fund before SWVXX sale is settled - very strange.) I called the Schwab rep and he said Schwab changed their policy a year ago and now you have to wait for the mutual fund sold to settle before you can place a buy order (SWVXX is treated as a mutual fund). When I showed him that recently I had no problem switching mutual funds on the same day in my IRA, like I always did, he said the new rule applies only to taxable account. W/r/t my taxable account, I asked him to clarify and after two days he still has not gotten back to me with answers to (1) why I am not allowed to use immediately 90% of the potential sale proceeds of SWVXX (or any mutual fund) to buy another fund? and (2) why I am not allowed to use the exchange feature to sell and buy funds from the same non-Schwab fund family? I no longer own any mutual funds in my taxable account to test if (2) is correct, except that is what the rep said.
It is already punitive that Schwab does not provide a MM fund as a sweep account like Vanguard and Fidelity do. Schwab wants to discourage using their MM funds and force liquid funds into zero interest cash account if immediate liquidity is desired. Schwab has gotten so used to paying no interest on cash in its bank and brokerage accounts that it does not want to pay any yield now, even when FF rate continues to go up.
I am surprised it is legal for Schwab not to give its customers access to any non-Schwab money market funds. I could not find this access on their website and the Schwab Rep said that is the case.
More likely I will be moving the cash from Schwab to (Fidelity or Vanguard) where I can get a better yield in the sweep account than in SWVXX.

I am considering exchanging some positions I have in some conservative allocation funds for some dividend ETF's. I have looked at some which have better 1 years returns, such as PEY, DVY, GCOW, SPYD, CDC, CDL, and DHS. Looking forward does it make sense to move from the 30-50% stock portfolio of conservative allocation funds to the ETF's? I already have a position in SCHD.
The dollars now invested in the CA funds probably would not be needed for 3-4 years. Any opinions on the move or the ETF'S being considered. PMEFX is the only CA Allocation fund I have that has held up well. It is now yielding 4.49% (according to Morningstar) and is about 15.5% of my total portfolio. If I was to move the other CA Allocation funds into it, the position would be 27% and I am not sure I am comfortable with that much in one position. Thank you for any comments.

Before Morningstar there was the Wiesenberger annual yearbook, "Investment Companies." First published about 1941, it tailed off about 2000.
Readers of John Bogle may recognize the name: his historical compilations drew on Wiesenberger, especially the 30-year returns study he mounted in preparation for launching the S&P 500 index fund.
I've been picking up copies on the used book market (only the 1943 volume is free to read on books.google.com). I have pretty good spacing, enough for my needs, from 1943 through 1966. (Goal is to assemble historical returns for funds no longer in M*; Wiesenberger gives trailing ten year returns, so I only need a volume every N years).
My university library has all the volumes after 1952, but it is a couple hundreds of miles away and an overnight stay to access. That trip would cost me some hundreds of dollars plus the discomforts of travel, and I'd inevitably forget to copy something. Meh.
It occurred to me that members of this forum might have older copies no longer of use, which would save me that trip.
I would like to buy anything prior to 1946 (excepting 1943), and also, anything from 1971 to 1977.
If interested, please message me. I paid $30 to $40 each for the older volumes, would expect to pay more for the fatter volumes published in the 1970s. If you want it to be a donation to MFO instead, that's fine too. (I'll donate for scans of key pages, even, if you are the fortunate person who owns a complete set of Wiesenberger.)
I'm not a reseller, BTW; these will sit on my shelf next to old copies of Moody's, old copies of the SBBI, old copies of Poor's Railroad Manuals, etc.
Its good to be retired with discretionary income to spend on hobbies :-)

Crypto advocates point out that Bitcoin has fallen by more than 50% eight times since its 2009 launch, and three times since 2018, and it’s recovered every time. And it’s been a top-performing asset class with better than 35% annualized returns over the last three and five-year periods and 80% annualized returns over ten years. In addition, an entire crypto industry has developed, which is expanding rapidly and being widely accepted by Wall Street, businesses, and some governments.
This week’s guest is a believer. He is Matt Hougan, Chief Investment Officer and former Global Head of Research at Bitwise Asset Management, a cryptocurrency asset manager founded in 2017.
I began the interview by asking Hougan about the role crypto assets play in a portfolio, considering they act like stocks.

I can also confirm that old M* Chart pages are gone now - they generate message, "The report is no longer supported". It was good while it lasted (for 2-3 years).

Same with the other old pages that I'd continued to use - Performance and Ratings & Risk. Gone with the wind.

I can also confirm that old M* Chart pages are gone now - they generate message, "The report is no longer supported". It was good while it lasted (for 2-3 years).

Don't like to jump around, but losing my confidence in Int'l fund managers. Hold VWILX and MGGPX. Thinking of reducing positions and adding to VTSAX, a smoother ride. These guys did weather 2020 pretty well, but are getting beat up now. Stay the course? Thoughts needed!! Thanks!

I've owned VWILX for several years.
The fund has experienced significant losses YTD (-31.11%) and over the trailing 12 months (-34.31%).
I don't have any plans to sell VWILX in the short-term.
Guess I'm a glutton for punishment!

Yogi, thanks. I am so disgusted with much going on. I do own PRILX for many years. It has been the worst year 2022 for much of what i have. At age 88 I want to avoid anything that makes 2022 so bad.