@yogibearbull,
My thinking (minus the Neel speculation) was exactly that. I noticed the presser dynamics too. If there was a severe adverse reaction to the leak, the Fed probably would have stuck to the 50 basis points. With no such reaction, Fed got the permission to push the 75 basis points through.
We had a leak of the Friday CPI on Thursday too. With no transaction fee trading, the markets are moving very fast compared to only a couple of years ago. Leaks are exacerbating the problem. The volatility across the board has ratcheted up. At some point, the market participants should start requiring higher risk premium, commensurate with the higher volatility, and may effect market liquidity / plumbing in the long run.
I do not like this normalization of the leak culture - not only the small guy gets screwed, it is also not good for an orderly functioning of society.

I have used Portfolio manager for years. It was particularly useful when I had assets in several places. But dudes,,,,, we have bigger things to fret about. Maybe we should be like the Bogleheads who brag about not looking at the their investments for months at a time.

I pay about $50 yearly for an app from Apple’s store. Positives and negatives. Usually one of the prices on a fund is inaccurate or missing.
M* has been fine over several years.
I’m looking now at Yahoo‘s free tracker. Provided recovery email. You can opt out of their request for a phone number, Confusing to set up. Also being bombarded with ads even with my blocker running.

Sorry, but PQTIX lost 1.70% today.
But, PGAGX - PGIM Wadhwani Systematic Absolute Return Fund gained 0.66%! PGAGX, a fairly new fund, is currently on my watch list. Looking for lower volatility funds in this category. So far, so good.
According to the Financial Times, the investment objective of the related UK fund is to seek a positive return on capital while simultaneously attempting to limit the risk of capital loss using a multi-faceted risk management. PGAGX intends to achieve its investment objective through investment in financial markets globally, gaining exposure through the use of financial derivative instruments to currencies (through forward foreign exchange contracts), fixed income securities (through bond futures) and equity securities (through equity index futures and equity index swaps) or by investing directly in equities.
Per M*, the manager, Dr. Sushil Wadhwani, CBE, is the Chief Investment Officer for QMAW, originally founded as Wadhwani Asset Management in October 2002. Prior to joining QMA, Sushil served as the Founder and Chief Executive Officer of Wadhwani Asset Management. He was formerly a full-time member of the Monetary Policy Committee at the Bank of England from 1999 to 2002. Prior to this, his roles included director of research, head of systems trading and partner at the Tudor Group, and director of equity strategy at Goldman Sachs International Ltd, and as an academic economist at the London School of Economics. He has over 25 years of quantitative modelling experience and runs a high calibre team of quantitative and qualitative research analysts...
Fred

BION, I have a friend who made enough money in Bitcoin a few years ago to buy his daughter a house. I’m sure he’s out of that market now. Glad @rforno got out.

@Crash: we have personal experience as heirs of a portfolio containing several Limited Master Partnerships, positions bought and held by a DIY investor before the advent of electronic brokerage record keeping. The estate (read the lawyers) had to establish a basis at time of death for everything being passed on. It took several years to sort things out, at considerable expense to the heirs. The ironic aspect of this mess was the original investor’s intent to save on income taxes. That the outcome resulted in handing over his hard-earned dough to lawyers and accountants instead of the IRS would surely have disturbed his final rest.

Managed-futures funds are supposed to latch on to some trend, up or down, to make money. But as far as stocks/SP500 is concerned, PQTIX has been NEGATIVELY correlated. This is seen in the ratio chart of PQTIX:SPY; the bottom panels show PQTIX and SPX. In a ratio chart, down-trend means underperformance, up-trend means outperformance, flat means in-line performance. Timeframe used is 5 yrs but may default to 1 yr later.
So, PQTIX bet has been on other markets outperforming the SP500 and that has only worked recently. I held it for several years but dumped it (prematurely) before its recent spurt. In general, I have been disappointed with both managed-futures and long-short funds.
https://stockcharts.com/h-sc/ui?s=PQTIX:SPY&p=D&yr=5&mn=0&dy=0&id=p09370989141

I own some and (more) KMLM in the same space. The latter does not have a long record as an ETF, but its managed futures strategy dates to 1993. It seems to have avoided the string of mediocre years of performance that PQT_X racked up, as Lewis highlighted. ER for KMLM is 0.9%, or half of the PIMCO fund. Nice presentation at kfafunds.com/kmlm in which they explain in detail the make up of their proprietary special sauce, the KFA MLM managed futures strategy. They also detail the long-term performance of their Index. Thanks to @wxman123 for the tip on this ETF.

Diane, I have used PQTIX for a few years and a couple of other funds in the Managed Futures space in an attempt to diversity my portfolio and add some assets that are not correlated to the stock and bonds markets. I also thought they might perform well in the inflationary environment we are in now and I thought was coming with the government Covid spending.While managed futures have performed well, as of late, their long term record is not as impressive. I like Managed Futures for the diversifying features but they also have some strong negatives. Opaqueness of strategy and holdings is a major drawback but reading all the literature and reports the advisors or sub advisors publish can help clear a lot of that up. The expense ratios are ridiculously high. There is the opportunity cost of holding them when they may underperform in a bull market and how much that insurance is worth in the next downturn and that is only if the managers models are mostly correct and they can perform as well as they have this bear market next time. I would also try and hold these in a tax deferred account they can be tax inefficient. I hope that helps.

Not too bad considering its Fidelity and Vanguard peers are down a good bit more:l
TRAIX (I class of PRWCX) (14.95%)
FBALX (19.09%)
FPURX (17.36%)
VWENX (17.55%)
and outperforming S&P 500 substantially

DODBX is down 10.56% YTD (lags farther out). I’ve got $$ in both.
There’s a lot of ways to slice & dice it. As I recall PRWCX lost 28% in all of 2008, so it’s already down more than 50% of that loss in 5.5 months. Arguably, things were much worse in 2008. There’s some swagger with Giroux. So I like to nit-pick his management a bit. D&C employs more of a team approach. Giroux did predict in the

Barron’s year-end “round-table” that the 10-year wouldn’t finish the year above 2.5%. Made quite a point of it. Ahh … We’ll see on that one. And griping about Amazon’s management hardly seems becoming of someone with all his supposed talent. Man-up. You went overboard / overweight on one of your worst picks! More humble managers would say as much.

Yes, DODBX is outperforming ytd, but over 3 and 5 years. TRAIX has considerably outperformed, especially over the last 5 years, per Morningstar.:
DODBX 3yr. 7.99%. 5 yr. 7.01%
TRAIX. 3yr. 8.80% 5 yr. 9.66%

@rforno - Sounds logical. I’m thinking a half point rate hike. But language designed to ease the market stresses. Potentially a rebound Wednesday - if only short lived.
It feels more like “investing” now. Things got too damn easy for a few years. :)
Sorry for those in crypto. Afraid a lot of inexperienced people got suckered in by the lure of easy money. And their losses may greatly affect the economy going forward.
Side note: Amazon got slammed. PRWCX now down 15.35% YTD.

Not too bad considering its Fidelity and Vanguard peers are down a good bit more:
TRAIX (I class of PRWCX) (14.95%)
FBALX (19.09%)
FPURX (17.36%)
VWENX (17.55%)
and outperforming S&P 500 substantially

@rforno - Sounds logical. I’m thinking a half point rate hike. But language designed to ease the market stresses. Potentially a rebound Wednesday - if only short lived.
It feels more like “investing” now. Things got too damn easy for a few years. :)
Sorry for those in crypto. Afraid a lot of inexperienced people got suckered in by the lure of easy money. And their losses may greatly affect the economy going forward.
Side note: Amazon got slammed. PRWCX now down 15.35% YTD.

Coincident to this thread, in the 6/13 WSJ is an article titled: "How the Fed and the Biden Administration got Inflation Wrong" (its behind a pay/subscription wall).
Fair-use excerpts: (paraphrased)
-Yellen urged Biden to spend, to avoid the "austerity path" which Obama took after the GFC.
-Powell bemoaned the "long years of underemployment" after GFC.
-Dems wanted to spend more to further their social agenda ("Great Society 2.0")
-More "relief checks" even when labor shortages were becoming apparent.
-“If you look back in hindsight then, yes, it probably would’ve been better to have raised rates earlier,” Federal Reserve Chairman Jerry said in an interview last month.
-They blame the "models" for getting it wrong. So I guess their Excel spreadsheet was broken?
===
Maybe we can put a stake in the idea that the "team" didn't get this terribly wrong. Yellen acknowledged it. Jerry acknowledges it.
-Pay workers to not work. Penalize (oil-) producers to supply. "Gun" the money supply 40%. Guys, this is "Econ 101, aggregate supply & demand. They "gunned" demand by sending out helicopter money, and suppressing the price of money (interest rates), and they constrained supply (aided by paying workers to stay home & not produce).
The "team" made decisions based on emotion, partisan dogma and a lot of "groupthink".
Enjoy filling up the gas tank.
Are you better off now than you were 4 years ago?

Tar, no problem -- You are fine with the predicament we are in. We can agree to disagree. Enjoy filling up the gas tank, and giving Putin more leverage, not by anyone's intent, but definitely by effect, by burnishing ESG credentials. Since oil production is still needed, we can either produce here -- where environmental standards can be enforced -- or to our 'friends' in the Persian Gulf, and Russia.
I've no problem holding others accountable --- You mentioned CEOs" Sure, agreed. Both parties spent the past 40 years allowing CEOs to offshore US jobs to our strategic competitor. -- The 1st guy to fight it was... Trump. Once upon a time, the US produced the vast majority of chips used in the domestic economy. -- The supply chain mishaps would largely have been avoided if we still produced what we use/need. Why are the feed stocks for most of the pharmaceuticals we consume sourced from China? And the rare earth minerals in our electronics? -- Heck the rapid spread of the virus itself was accelerated because the economy is so very globalized..
In fact, back to the whole "Global warming" issue, if GW is so important, why have the GW advocates not insisted we build locally -- to reduce greenhouse gases from these round-the-world supply chains? -- Their silence on that is astounding -- if they are sincere..
As for 'holding Trump accountable' -- well Trump holds no office, and was fired in 2020, so holding someone accountable who has no current official powers, may be emotionally satisfying, but really, what is the point?
The point of holding public officials accountable is not to do a "gotcha". Its to remove incompetents (or those who do not operate in the public interest) from positions of power, and discourage wrong-headed decisions by the next guys who take over.
Thus endeth Civics 101 class for today.

So tell me, geniuses, how was the Fed and other policy makers supposed to:
- Anticipate the Russian invasion of Ukraine and its effects on gas prices?
- Prevent supply chain disruptions, which were caused by the pandemic and corporations faulty decisions to cut back too much on production?
- Labor shortages and resulting cost increases caused by the pandemic and years of corporations skimping on wages?
Too many people blame government leaders for problems outside of their control and often caused or made worse by poor corporate decisions.

Tar -- we (the People) hire these people to be accountable. They spend most of their time collecting their checks, obfuscating, and dodging responsibility. Harry Truman quipped : "The buck stops here!" At least Yellen confessed her failure. But oh, well, just giver her a free pass? So she can do what, make more mistakes?
What is the alternative to holding people in power accountable? No accountability? I mean this is basic "Civics 101" stuff. Maybe people are too far gone to even care.
You threw some straw man proposals up there to suggest the "helplessness" of policy makers. I do think a "post-mortem" on these colossal blunders is in order. I will start with the following
-Sending Covid checks to people who did not lose their jobs -- and in many cases who were already retired. That should never have happened.
-Creating a hostile regulatory environment for N. American oil/gas production, in order to virtue-signal to the ESG crowd. -- Cancelling Keystone is an example. Why on Earth would an accountable oil/gas CEO invest in marginal production if the authorities are determined to "cancel" these industries. Incremental supply was impacted b4 Covid, thanks to the tree-huggers. Where is the accountability?
-The monetary base has increased something like 40% since pre-Covid. Whatever the Fed/Govt should have done, they went way, way overboard -- with predictable result (runaway inflation -- which initially created gross asset bubbles to spur a "wealth effect").
-Jerry's Fed should have commenced tightening ~ 1 year ago. There was a very political reason why he did not -- Jerry wanted to be re-appointed, and Biden delayed a decision regarding re-nominating (why, I do not know). The effect: Jerry played "dove" until after Biden re-nominated, fearing a hawkish stance would scuttle his renomination. -- giving inflation a year to be embedded in the economy. That delay means a lot more pain will be needed to fix it.
--
As for the suggestion that "all those other policy makers overseas did the same thing"..
I can't speak to that, but the incompetence of foreign policy makers is hardly an argument that Jerry + Joe didn't scr#w the pooch here.
Its a systemic problem in this country, that the people with the most power/authority are seldom held account for their errors/incompetencies. We have a lot of people who tolerate it. -- Which suggests we will continue to experience more incompetencies in the future.

"I’ll take 8% annual inflation and 12% average portfolio returns any day over 2% inflation and negative portfolio returns."
That's the way that I see it too.
"One “plus” to inflation is that fixed payments on a 30 year mortgage become less and less onerous over the years as they are repaid with cheaper and cheaper dollars, That’s a big help to young first time home buyers."
Sure worked for us.

Ha!
Joe, Janet and Jerome all agree it’s “way too high”. So, perhaps it is. Some of this, however, is political posturing. And Powell may be in sympathy with bankers who don’t like inflation because loans get repaid in cheaper dollars. Who knows?
I’ll take 8% annual inflation and 12% average portfolio returns any day over 2% inflation and negative portfolio returns. And, as long as wages and benefits (ex-taxes) stay ahead of inflation workers shouldn’t be too unhappy either. One “plus” to inflation is that fixed payments on a 30 year mortgage become less and less onerous over the years as they are repaid with cheaper and cheaper dollars, That’s a big help to young first time home buyers.

Fools wade in …
ISTM that sometimes rights guaranteed by the Constitution conflict with each other. “We the people“ and our legislators and courts need to sort that all out - establish priorities. Before the 2nd Amendment, in both actual placement and in time, is language guaranteeing people the right to life. With 18 year old kids, psychologically disturbed or angry individuals, and every Tom, Dick & Harry running around with military grade weapons capable of firing off 50 or 100 rounds in quick order there can be no guarantee of “life.” So those rights - both guaranteed in the Constitution - are in conflict and need to be resolved by “We the people.” Hell, you wouldn’t hire or trust some of these uneducated idiots to take care of your dog while away on vacation or unclog the toilet in your home. Yet, you allow the fools to go out and buy extremely potent armament. Reason needs to prevail. I taught high school for 29 years. My heart bleeds at the thought of those wonderful innocent children having their brains and guts blown away. These were your future doctors, clergymen, scientists, generals, great artists and thinkers of every type - all blown away in an hour’s time. And - they were somebody’s precious kids and grandchildren.
Here’s the Preamble to the U.S. Constitution: “We the People of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defence, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America.”

So tell me, geniuses, how was the Fed and other policy makers supposed to:
- Anticipate the Russian invasion of Ukraine and its effects on gas prices?
- Prevent supply chain disruptions, which were caused by the pandemic and corporations faulty decisions to cut back too much on production?
- Labor shortages and resulting cost increases caused by the pandemic and years of corporations skimping on wages?
Too many people blame government leaders for problems outside of their control and often caused or made worse by poor corporate decisions.

My only concerns with "bucket" suggestions is that I think they underestimate how long the market can be down. While I do not think American Association of Individual Investors (AAII) is helpful most of the time, they did provide simple guidelines for withdrawals. When the SP500 is within 5% of its all time high, take money out of stocks. When it is not use your cash. This avoids selling in a down market
They think 4 to 5 years cash is enough, but if you go back to 1929 you can see years where the market took 7 to 8 years to recover.
I would keep at least 6 or 8 years of minimal expenses in cash or short term bonds
The worst thing that can happen in retirement is to go into it in the middle of a bear market