Given the size of the Buffett's estate, the 90% allocation to stock index funds might be far more acceptable than in this case. If you've got several billion dollars lying around, losing a billion or two to a stock market decline in a year isn't life altering.

Ditto
You can quote or cite the esteemed Buffet to support just about any point of view. My favorites are the ones about swimming naked + “Rule #1” and “Rule #2” .
But yes. @Mark’s reference to Buffet’s plan for wife (as vigorously discussed / debated here about a dozen years ago) is correct. Suggest a big grain of salt. As I believe Lewis intimated, not all of us have an extra billion lying around.

@Puddnhead without knowing how old your missus is, I'ld suggest that you first think about things that suit her time horizon. Then talk about buying things that she will feel comfortable owning if they go through a bad stretch.
From your comments, that might look a lot different than things you are holding. ;) But if she doesn't want tobacco stocks, then she won't be interested in a dividend fund, like PEY, that holds Altria and Phillip Morris.
In the past, bonds, consumer staples, utilities, and phone companies have been the traditional refuge for the risk averse. Today some might add infrastructure and health.
But whatever you do, for heaven's sake, hold onto the FXAIX too. :D.
Anyway, considering the rest of the M* equity boxes, I would first look at things with three year betas below 1.00, positive alpha, and relatively low standard deviation. The past three years does take in quite a bit of market excitement.
But past returns are no guarantee of future performance. So you're probably looking at funds that will under-perform if something like normal returns to the world; that era before pandemics, inflation, European land wars, and UFO's being shot down.
M* has retracted its threats against legacy portfolios. You might build a few watch lists of things you are considering. I break mine up into sector, domestic equity, and so on.
Good luck.

+ @larryB
I can remember not to many years ago, all the comparison and clear winner from that comparison was CAPE over the S&P 500. It was the clear winner - until it wasn't. I'm sure many bought into CAPE high and sold when it faltered. The key is having the conviction to stay with one scheme over another. Value and dividend stocks will have their day, same as growth or tech or using the CAPE methodology. Isn't the S&P500 a collection of all those sub sets?

Global hybrids are difficult to find. Two good ones are SGENX & TIBAX, both no-load/NTF at Fido & Schwab. TIBAX also has an unleveraged CEF cousin TBLD that can be bought anywhere.

The cheaper TIBIX share class can be purchased (with a TF) in a Fidelity IRA with a $2500 min. It can be worth the fee if you're planning to hold the fund for a few years. And via Fidelity's automatic investment system, it should be possible to buy additional shares with just a $5 fee.
Fidelity comparison of TIBIX and TIBAX

VYM is current-dividend, VIG is dividend-growth, SCHD is dividend-blend. In recent years, div-blend has worked better.

Some things can appear so obvious that they become difficult to explain, yet be so unclear to others. I watched an economics teacher struggle to explain something having to do with averages, I forget what. As a 3rd party observer, these different perspectives were visible to me. Perhaps what is happening here is like that and I'm not explaining things well.
I wrote: there's a tendency for people to look at "what have you done for me lately" even when trying not to - sometimes it's baked into the numbers.
Here's a paragraph from CBS News describing how "what have you done for me lately" is baked into M*'s ratings. On the surface, it looks like M* is biasing its ratings toward long term performance, because it weights 10 year performance at 50%, while weighting 5 year performance at 30%, and 3 year performance at just 20%. But something else is going on.

Obviously, the past three years account for 30 percent of the past ten years, which means that they account for 15 percent of the overall rating (30 percent X 50 percent). They account for 18 percent of the five-year rating (60 percent X 30 percent); and 100 percent of the three-year rating. Sum them all up, and we find that the past three years account for 53 percent of a fund's overall long-term rating.

https://www.cbsnews.com/news/whats-right-and-whats-wrong-with-morningstar-fund-ratings/
There's a similar problem in looking at good 1/3/5/10 year figures and concluding that performance is somewhat uniformly good, especially over longer terms. The final year's performance is influencing (I would say skewing) all the numbers. We saw this effect clearly (though with respect to bad, not good, performance) in figures published after March 2020. Suddenly good (and not so good) funds looked terrible, even long term.
Now I'm not expecting another once in a century pandemic anytime soon, nor do I think that nothing has been done to make economies more robust. So I'm inclined to discount (but not ignore) 2020 figures to the extent that they distort averages.

>> what have you done lately
? SCHD longterm performance shows this is, again, a rather misleading way to put it.
>> Had you looked at the same figures at another point in time,
sure, cherrypick away

You pick one trading day out of 2800+ and I'm the one cherry picking?
I looked at the long term (read lifetime) performance of SCHD on every trading day since inception and found that on most of them, its long term performance was superior to that of FXAIX. At least by eyeballing it.
The easiest way to see this is to plot the two over SCHD's lifetime, and note that there are long (multi-year) runs where FXAIX's cumulative performance exceeds that of SCHD:
11/2/13 - 2/5/16 (2¼ years), 7/27/16 - 5/12/21 (4¾ years).
Here's Portfolio Visualizer's graph. You won't get quite the same detail I'm providing (gory details below). The PV graph looks as though FXAIX led the whole way until five months ago. Though that's not far off from what happened.
FXAIX outperformed SCHD for virtually its whole life until five months ago. Are those few recent months supposed to stand in for long term performance?
When you talk about cherry picking, recognize that if one were to pick a date at random, much more likely than not, FXAIX would have outperformed SCHD to that point in time.

>> that we can expect, or at least hope for, another huge year (relatively speaking) for SCHD in the future? One that will make up for its typical slightly underperforming years?
and now you make it sound like SCHD is more this volatile / Heebnerlike instrument.

I'm looking not at SCHD, but the difference in annual returns between the two funds. This has got little to do with volatility of either component, but of volatility of their correlation.
If, for example, you take two share classes of the same, wildly volatile fund, differing only in ERs, then the volatility of the gap in performances will be zero.
The difference in annual returns ranges in magnitude between a half percent (0.52%) and 4½ percent (4.59%) except for 2022, when the difference in performance is more than triple the next largest annual difference. In the "biz" we call that an outlier.
Lewis linked to a couple of pieces that suggest an explanation for this outlier. Assuming you buy the reasoning, the question for you is whether you believe similar conditions (with similar results) will happen again.
11/1/11 - 1/24/12 - SCHD leads
1/25/12 - 5/15/12 - FXAIX leads
5/16/12 - 5/18/12 - SCHD leads (ends on a Friday)
5/21/12 - 5/23/12 - FXAIX leads
5/24/12 - 5/25/12 - SCHD leads (ends on Friday, Mon holiday)
5/29/12 - one day - FXAIX leads
5/30/12 - 6/19/12 - SCHD leads
6/20/12 - one day - FXAIX leads
6/21/12 - 8/16/12 - SCHD leads
8/17/12 - 3/20/13 - FXAIX leads
3/21/13 - 8/13/13 - SCHD leads
8/14/13 - 8/16/13 - FXAIX leads (ends on a Friday)
8/19/13 - one day - SCHD leads
8/20/13 - 9/18/13 - FXAIX leads
9/19/13 - one day - SCHD leads
9/20/13 - 11/5/13 - FXAIX leads
11/6/13 - 11/12/13 - SCHD leads
11/13/13 - one day - FXAIX leads
11/14/13 - one day - SCHD leads
11/15/13 - one day - FXAIX leads (ends on a Friday)
11/18/13 - 11/20/13 - SCHD leads
11/21/13 - 2/5/16 - FXAIX leads (ends on a Friday)
2/8/16 - 2/9/16 - SCHD leads
2/10/16 - one day - FXAIX leads
2/11/16 - one day - SCHD leads
2/12/16 - 6/23/16 - FXAIX leads
6/24/16 - 6/28/16 - SCHD leads
6/29/16 - one day - FXAIX leads
6/30/16 - 7/11/16 - SCHD leads
7/12/16 - one day - FXAIX leads
7/13/16 - 7/15/16 - SCHD leads (ends on a Friday)
7/18/16 - one day - FXAIX leads
7/19/16 - 7/26/16 - SCHD leads
7/27/16 - 5/12/21 - FXAIX leads
5/13/21 - one day - SCHD leads
5/14/21 - 4/25/22 - FXAIX leads
4/26/22 - 4/27/22 - SCHD leads
4/28/22 - 5/4/22 - FXAIX leads
5/5/22 - 7/20/22 - SCHD leads
7/21/22 - one day - FXAIX leads
7/22/22 - tie, Friday
7/25/22 - 7/27/22 - SCHD leads
7/28/22 - 8/18/22 - FXAIX leads
8/19/22 - 8/24/22 - SCHD leads
8/25/22 - one day - FXAIX leads
8/26/22 - 9/8/22 - SCHD leads
9/9/22 - 9/15/22 - FXAIX leads
9/16/22 - present - SCHD leads

>> what have you done lately
? SCHD longterm performance shows this is, again, a rather misleading way to put it.
>> Had you looked at the same figures at another point in time,
sure, cherrypick away
>> that we can expect, or at least hope for, another huge year (relatively speaking) for SCHD in the future? One that will make up for its typical slightly underperforming years?
and now you make it sound like SCHD is more this volatile / Heebnerlike instrument.
>> a "true buy & hold type" is going to need more than a one year anomaly
huh ?
god forbid they look at the 10y (end of January) comparison.
>> but then counter balance it.
Oh. Of course!
What do you suggest?
So often when one does this, performance suffers. Just compare FXAIX with VONE over time.
Or with RSP, a different kind of balancing.
'Tis the great mystery of investing decisionmaking.
Pleasing outcomes --- recently. Recently, go with VONV or RSP.
But oops, not the last month.
So: everybody, just do VT, and let its broad diversification (counterbalancing) be the drag, most often, or the plus.
As always, where is that breadth sweet spot?

@ PressUP… I I thought about those two missing sectors many times. Just ran 80% SCHD, 10% VPU and 10% VNQ vs 100% SCHD. SCHD won but the next ten years may be entirely another story.

You're proving my point - it's all about "what have you done lately".
Had you looked at the same figures at another point in time, say on SCHD's 10 year anniversary (10/31/2021), SCHD's cumulative performance would have underwhelmed:
10 year: 309.10% vs 348.91% (FXAIX)
5 year: 118.00% vs. 137.75%
3 year: 71.20% vs. 79.20%
1 year: 44.08% vs. 42.89%
The fairly recent outperformance should be obvious from my table showing SCHD outperforming FXAIX by a cumulative 20% over the three past calendar years (2020-2022).
Do you give any consideration to "regression to the mean"? The same table shows FXAIX outperforming SCHD by as much as 10% cumulative in other three year periods. With actively managed funds, there's a lot that can change. But with index funds, a "true buy & hold type" is going to need more than a one year anomaly to "sell & trade":
2023 YTD: 1.67% (SCHD) vs. 6.71% (FXAIX)
2022: -3.23% vs. -18.13% <-- 15% spread
2021: 29.87% vs. 28.69%
2020: 15.08% vs. 18.40%
2019: 27.28% vs. 31.47%
What's the theory for buying SCHD? That any time the market goes down, SCHD will win big? Or that we can expect, or at least hope for, another huge year (relatively speaking) for SCHD in the future? One that will make up for its typical slightly underperforming years?
At least we can dispense with the former idea - that SCHD outperforms in down markets.
2018: -5.56% (SCHD), -4.40% (FXAIX)
2015: -0.31% (SCHD) vs. 1.38% (FXAIX)
interestingly, FXAIX/IVV is on the honor roll too, and not SCHD
This is a good example of why I continue to urge people to understand numbers, not just quote them. Honor roll status is based on raw performance relative to category, i.e. top quintile over 1,3,5 year spans. Immediately we see one potential issue - these are funds in different categories.
At least as important is the fact that FXIAX's performance is being compared with that of (only) other S&P 500 funds. With a 2 basis point ER, it's a sure bet that FXIAX will always be in the top quintile of its narrow category of peers. Instant honor roll.
SCHD is in Lipper's Equity Income category - a broad category, and SCHD doesn't always come out in the top 20%.
The fact that FXAIX is a LC Blend fund (M* terminology) while SCHD is LCV goes far to explaining the 2022 split in relative performance. Value simply had a once in a generation (relative) banner year: VVIAX lost 2.08%, while VFIAX lost 18.15%. This 2σ+ fluke is hardly suggestive of future outperformance.
To reiterate, SCHD is a fine fund. But a better long term fund? I wouldn't place heavy bets on one style of investing - value or otherwise. Sure, use SCHD, but then counter balance it.

Over the long term they do slightly better than FXAIX
Do they do any better, or are you just looking relative to a particular moment in time (i.e. now)? Comparing their three year rolling cumulative returns by calendar years (e.g. Jan 2019-Dec 2021), the figures (from M* charts) are:

     2020-2022  '19-'21	'18-'20	'17-'19	'16-'18	'15-'17	'14-'16	'13-'15	'12-'14	'11-'13
FXAIX	24.75%	100.32%	 48.80%	 53.10%	 30.38%	 38.28%	 29.02%	 52.54%	 74.51%	 56.77% 
SCHD	44.56%	 90.14%	 38.51%	 45.45%	 32.84%	 40.22%	 29.53%	 48.09%	 65.32%	 56.42%
CDC	38.27%	 78.90%	 27.03%	 30.48%	 31.78%	 38.76%	   -	   -	   -	   -

Over its lifetime (July 1, 2014 through Feb 10, 2023), CDC has done slightly worse than FXAIX, returning a cumulative 138.04% vs FXAIX's 143.78%.
More importantly, all the cumulative figures ending Dec 31, 2022 are significantly skewed by FXAIX's sizeable underperformance in 2022 relative to the other funds: -18.13% vs -3.23% (SCHD) or -7.76% (CDC). (FXAIX has done better so far this year.)
I'm not knocking any of these funds, and I can certainly see the point in suggesting dividend oriented funds to someone who has been focused on cash returns. It's just that there's a tendency for people to look at "what have you done for me lately" even when trying not to - sometimes it's baked into the numbers.

For true buy & hold types, the argument for SCHD over SP500 is clear: SCHD has nontrivially outperformed 10/5/3/1y. (A flip occurred 4mos ago.) For those who fancy themselves slightly more conservative or at least 'non-volatilist', a second argument for SCHD is clear. For preservation Lipper gives SCHD 5* and FXAIX/IVV 4*. MFOP gives Great Owl status to both (interestingly, FXAIX/IVV is on the honor roll too, and not SCHD) but shows SCHD's UI to be ~50%-75% of SP500, depending on time period.

I'm also a past FMIJX investor.
The fund was sold after my Roth IRA was transferred to a different brokerage firm several years ago.
I generally prefer unhedged foreign equity funds but favor hedging foreign bonds.

I guess I could try switching to physical NYT and Washington Post but the amount of paper we would have to take to the landfill weekly is overwhelming

It's not like the old days, when a Sunday paper could clock in at 12 pounds. These days it seems that I can fold the entire Sunday NYTimes.
https://www.guinnessworldrecords.com/world-records/heaviest-ever-newspaper
With the rapid rise in print edition costs (about 25% cumulative over the past two years), I've trimmed back to just the (ever lighter) Sunday paper. It is delivered in two parts (Saturday for fill sections, Sunday for news), so I still get to touch a paper for the whole weekend.

The SEC allows funds a 60 day lag in filing their annual and semiannual reports (also their quarterlies).
https://www.sec.gov/rules/final/33-8393.htm
Worse (or better, depending on your perspective), funds will be phasing in the annual report equivalent of summary prospectuses. Streamlined info (covering only an individual share class) will be distributed, and as with statutory prospectuses you'll have to go looking for complete (semi)annual reports.
https://www.sec.gov/investment/tailored-shareholder-reports-mutual-funds-etfs

Jaaaaaysus. This is the dumbing down of investors, indeed. Forcing curious, or detail-oriented investors to go onto a fund's website (or the SEC) to look for basic comparative information is insane.
I like the American Funds and held many of them them for years, but I totally suspect Capital Group, with its like 20 share classes per fund probably is behind the "fund documents to only report on a single share class" initiative. Why let individuals easily see that there are likely cheaper fund classes available and that the annual expenses DO play a major role in performance?
Fund companies must be ecstatic!

”if you are hedged”
Therein lies the problem. How much to hedge and what instruments to use. @BaseballFan had good luck using HSGFX last year I believe. Some use (inverse funds) SPDN or DOG to hedge. I believe investment grade bonds AAA rated @ 10 years or further out might be a useful hedge. The problem with most hedges is they will lose you money during good times. (I haven’t forgotten cash either, which I’m sure some consider a hedge.)
Some articles I’ve read recently have mentioned CCOR as a good hedge against stock market downside. But I remain undecided on that. It does not have a long enough track record IMHO.

Question: is there a correlation between 10 year treasury yield to the rest of bond market? This past week there is a pullback on IG bonds.

That’s for @catch22 to answer.
But since I mentioned the 10-year Treasury …. Mortgage rates set by banks often key-off of that rate. If I recall from refinancing, the rates are adjusted every Monday in line with how the 10-year has performed. . The 10-year represents the highest quality debt for over what I would characterize as an “intermediate” term. Very high quality corporate bonds of like duration would also react to moves in the 10-year. Their return should, however, be a bit higher.
But there’s a lot of other debt that’s little affected by what the 10-year Treasury does - like junk bonds which react more to economic conditions. And, of course, very short term investment grade debt (out to perhaps 2 or 3 years) reacts closely to the Federal Reserve mandated overnight lending rate. In a normal healthy economy, very long dated AAA bonds (20-30 years out) should earn more than what the 10-year yields. However, (without checking) it’s likely they do not currently because of the inverted yield curve.
@Sven - IG bonds fell last week in line with an uptick in yields. The uptick in 10 year treasury rates was part of that overall move. There’s a widespread misconception, I think, that the Fed is responsible for longer term rates. In reality, its influence is primarily at the very short end of the curve. The markets determine the appropriate rate out at 10-years and beyond. And that may diverge from what the Fed wants to happen.

Over the long term they do slightly better than FXAIX
Do they do any better, or are you just looking relative to a particular moment in time (i.e. now)? Comparing their three year rolling cumulative returns by calendar years (e.g. Jan 2019-Dec 2021), the figures (from M* charts) are:

     2020-2022  '19-'21	'18-'20	'17-'19	'16-'18	'15-'17	'14-'16	'13-'15	'12-'14	'11-'13
FXAIX	24.75%	100.32%	 48.80%	 53.10%	 30.38%	 38.28%	 29.02%	 52.54%	 74.51%	 56.77% 
SCHD	44.56%	 90.14%	 38.51%	 45.45%	 32.84%	 40.22%	 29.53%	 48.09%	 65.32%	 56.42%
CDC	38.27%	 78.90%	 27.03%	 30.48%	 31.78%	 38.76%	   -	   -	   -	   -

Over its lifetime (July 1, 2014 through Feb 10, 2023), CDC has done slightly worse than FXAIX, returning a cumulative 138.04% vs FXAIX's 143.78%.
More importantly, all the cumulative figures ending Dec 31, 2022 are significantly skewed by FXAIX's sizeable underperformance in 2022 relative to the other funds: -18.13% vs -3.23% (SCHD) or -7.76% (CDC). (FXAIX has done better so far this year.)
I'm not knocking any of these funds, and I can certainly see the point in suggesting dividend oriented funds to someone who has been focused on cash returns. It's just that there's a tendency for people to look at "what have you done for me lately" even when trying not to - sometimes it's baked into the numbers.
For a set and forget fund that covers all bases ("foreign, global, world and U.S", and fixed income) one might consider VGWIX / VGYAX. Not an index fund, but still a low cost fund. Its 35/65 stock/bond mix may also suit someone moving from a cash portfolio. Funds with more traditional blends include VGWLX / VGWAX and CIBFX (though jumbo). A drawback of these funds (notably the Vanguard ones) is a dearth of EM investment. You may consider that a plus (arguably a more conservative approach).

You might consider TSUMX, Thornburg Summit, balanced fund, has international exposure, focus is on provding total return over rate of inflation, younger folks runnng the fund, doesn't seem like they would retire anytime soon, no key person risk....if I had to only pick one fund outside of cash, tbills, CDs, MYGAs...maybe I would look in that direction...also would maybe look at BLNDX Standpoint if I had the conviction (which I'm not certain I do) that this might be one of the better funds over the next 10+ years...dunno.
Best Regards,
Baseball Fan

”Same manager since 1997” Thanks for the follow through Yogi. Very interesting.
Somewhere I heard this fund was more volatile than most but also more profitable. I’ll confess to often reading a forum that’s quite focused on gold / miners. And while I’m strictly an amateur observer there, it appears from what I read that there are stark differences in how different p/c mining companies have fared in recent years. Apparently this relates to the “sporadic” quality of various mines they own. Some have prospered while others have lost tons. Possibly OPGSX is intentionally investing in the under-performers as a longer term play.
I guess it bothers me that M* allows fund houses to post its “4 and 5 star” ratings (I’d imagine in return for compensation) as testimony / advertisement for their funds on their websites and than undermines that very rating in publishing critical reviews for readers willing to fork over additional $$ to see what their analysts really think about a fund. ISTM they’re making $$ on both ends here.

Yes, COWZ is up already by 7.5% YTD on saturday, 11 feb, '23.
SCHP= TIPS. (Schwab.)
FCBFX. 58% in triple B. (Fidelity corporate.)
HYMU. Munis. (Blackrock.)
Balanced: DODBX. Over 15 years, it's in top 7 percent of category. +7.63%.
Global stocks: YTD +8.42%. (TRP.) PRGSX . Over 15 years: +7.82%, top 18% of category.
52 USA. 43 foreign, presently.
Maybe SCHP is an Indexer. None of the others.
VMIAX. Basic Materials/Chemicals. (Vanguard. Stinky service.). YTD +6.49%. Over 15 years: +7.47, top 22 percent in category.
Single stocks for steady dividends: BHB. (I own it.) Regional bank in Northern New England. HQ in Bar Harbor, Maine. That's where Acadia National Park is. Branches in ME, NH, VT.
O is the mother of all REITS. Over 15 years, it's up by +10.45%. Dividends to reinvest. But I don't know how they keep doing it. The payout ratio is a huge, out of line number... But REITS are different animals, too. Since 1994, the stock is up by +730%. That's not a typo.
(Among REITs, I own PSTL. But it's still rather young.)
"Happy Motoring!"
"No, No, NO! Don't open that closet!"