Source: Barrons
"Small-caps outperformed during recessions in the 1970s and early 1980s, when the Federal Reserve was fighting high inflation, as it is now. The group has higher proportional exposure than large-caps to inflation beneficiaries, like energy. It’s also more domestic and more tied to capital spending, which is a plus if U.S.-based manufacturers continue moving factories home. But small companies generally have less financial flexibility than large ones, which is a negative if borrowing rates stay elevated.
One way for investors to add small- cap exposure is with a low-fee index fund like the iShares Russell 2000IWM –2.75% exchange-traded fund (ticker: IWM). Then again, switching indexes might be an upgrade. The S&P SmallCap 600SP600EQ –2.60% index has outperformed the Russell 2000 index by more than a percentage point a year over the past five, 10, and 20 years, and has generally been less volatile. The biggest reason: S&P uses a profitability screen to admit index members. SPDR S&P 600 Small CapSLY –2.81% ETF (SLY) is one fund option there.
If a profitability screen helps, how about a value tilt? The aforementioned indexes weight small-caps by market cap. Asset manager Research Affiliates has an index that weights them by fundamental measures of value like sales, cash flow, and dividends. Investors can buy in through Schwab Fundamental U.S. Small Company Index ETF (FNDA). It’s more expensive than the other funds, but still cheap, with yearly expenses of 0.25%. Since inception in 2013, the fund has returned 7.4% a year, beating the Russell 2000 by nearly a point through Sept. 30."
"For actively managed funds that are open to new money, Columbia Small Cap Value II (NSVAX) and Wasatch Core Growth (WGROX) get high marks from Morningstar. Each costs a little more than 1% a year and has beaten its category by about a point a year over the past decade."

I never said in any of my posts the managers were committing fraud. The appropriate term, "returns smoothing," would be as described in the Advisor Perspectives article:

Stale pricing can create problems for investors. For example, funds are incented to engage in “return smoothing” by selective use of valuations

There can be disagreement as to what the "fair value" of a private security is precisely because it does not trade and in many cases could be one of a kind. That's not fraud, but let's just say the pricing can tend to favor the managers of the funds when there is a debate between what they see as the intrinsic value of a private security is versus what the market says publicly traded securities with very similar credit qualities, businesses and risks are worth.
It reminds me almost of how General Electric used to smooth earnings out so they hit their targets every quarter for many years. I don't think it was ever labeled fraud, but it was disingenuous as to what the company was actually producing earnings wise each quarter. I would trust an interval fund more that marked its portfolio down more during March of 2020 and simply issued a letter to shareholders stating: "We don't think any of our portfolio companies are impaired at this point but the market thinks there is a risk that there could be impairment in the future and so the market is marking down all high risk securities and we are marking ours down accordingly. The good news is because we are an interval fund we are not facing a run on the bank situation like an open-end fund would and if we're right and there is no impairment we should recover all of those losses."

No, he wasn't wrong that time. I'm just thinking that the Hosers up North might have said: "Fine, you want her? Arrest her. We are not your lackeys." And they could extradite her to the USA. Instead, she was hung-up for several years, between Canadian and U.S. courts and deals and decisions.

FPA Queens Road Small Cap Value (QRSVX) is pretty much atop the pile, at least if you value long-term performance. Over 20 years it matches the S&P 500 with comparable volatility and a noticeably small maximum drawdown. Also, nice people.

I'm personally invested in interval funds NICHX and CELFX for what I believe are good risk adjusted returns. Currently evaluating CEDIX.
** Not investment advice by any means, buyer beware **
Fwiw, I was fixated on ER's for more than 20 years and hewed to strict limits of 1.25% with very few exceptions over those years. However I'm now more focussed on strategy, pedigree and what's going to end up in my pocket compared to the alternatives. Not stating that cost controls aren't important and also not stating that my current view is right for everybody but in general while I believe cost should be a factor it should not be a means to automatically eliminate. The cost should be viewed along with other factors -- strategy, risk, etc.. I love Vanguard products and focus on cost but Vanguard funds don't always result in the highest(or safest) net returns
Niche investment strategies and steady returns will command a fee premium, it is what it is.

johnN has been a poster at MFO for many years. He seems attracted by offerings that promise above average returns, but upon closer examination also have well above average risks. Not for the faint of heart. Perhaps the gains and losses of these types of things average out over long periods of time- we have no way of knowing.

Green-bonds raise money for clean-energy and other ESG related purposes. It is a way to tap into the ESG wave (it has subsided some in 2022). They were launched about a dozen years ago.
https://www.climatebonds.net/market/explaining-green-bonds
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Green_bond
https://www.investopedia.com/terms/g/green-bond.asp
https://www.icmagroup.org/sustainable-finance/the-principles-guidelines-and-handbooks/green-bond-principles-gbp/

I have an old MSN email account newer (5 years) Hotmail account. Both can be accessed on Hotmail.com.
Approximately 3 years ago, I started to receive these extortion emails at my MSN email (I never had a problem with my Hotmail account). I changed my password and notified the FBI. These extortion emails lasted about 1 month.
While I rarely use my MSN email, I do receive a considerable amount of spam. The nature of the spam leads me to believe that it is a function of the extortion emails. I guess "they" figured if they could not get money from me, they would be a royal pain in the a**. This problem did not infect my PC with a virus or malware. I think that I had Windows Defender back then and a few years ago I added the free versions of Malwarebytes, Glary Utilities, and CCleaner.

From the Hoya Capital blog:
Blackstone Redemptions • Mixed Jobs Data • REIT M&A
'Blog' reports are supposedly readable by anyone but just in case here's a snippet.
"Real estate asset manager Blackstone (BX) was in focus today after its massive $70B nontraded REIT platform - BREIT - announced that it has begun limiting withdrawals after a wave of redemption requests that exceeded its monthly and quarterly limits. An issue that we predicted in our State of the REIT Nation Report last month, BREIT reported that its Net Asset Value has increased 9.3% this year through September 30 - claiming roughly 40% outperformance over the public REIT indexes despite paying "top-dollar" to acquire a half-dozen public REITs over the past two years whose closest public REIT peers are trading lower by an average of 30% this year. Naturally, investors have seized on the opportunity to redeem shares at these premium valuations. We've discussed the risks of non-traded REIT ("NTR") space across many reports over the past half-decade and continue to watch the area for signs of stress given their typically-high leverage and sensitivity to investor fund flows - which we expect could eventually become an area that's "ripe for picking" for the more conservatively-managed REITs."

@LewisBraham
I wasn't generalizing about health care unions, just reporting the fact that much of the opposition to the much needed merger of the two hospitals in a very small town ( big enough for only one, really) came from the nurse and hospital unions at the non Catholic hospital, as the prospective buyer did not plan on retaining union personnel.
I know many examples of Unionized nurses standing up for patient safety and fighting for better staffing etc, but in this case the union did little to object in the past to years of mismanagement by the non profit administration, which is why a merger or sale was the only alternative to bankruptcy
Equally at fault was the Catholic Bishop, who refused to allow the merger of the Catholic Hospital and the non-profit even after significant work arounds were developed to allow tubal ligations after caesarian sections to continue ( there were about 25 a year). This has been worked out in a variety of ways nationwide in other Catholic hospitals, but he canceled the deal because the sheets of the patients would have been intermingled with those of the "Faithful", as he put it.
Consequently, both hospitals remained separate and desperate. Their bonds were selling for 50 cents on the dollar. One was driven into the arms of the hedge fund and the other taken over by a large Catholic hospital chain. Neither is doing well, as they continue to compete with each other for patients and reimbursements from commercial insurance companies who can play one off against the other on price alone.

Years ago the biggest issue with non-profit hospitals was the insider dealing on the boards, esp the smaller ones. CEO puts buddy lawyer on board. He gets all the legal work and votes to increase CEO pay and benefits year after year after year. Same thing with local construction guy and accountant. Nobody cared that hospital lost money year after year after year. This is what drove the two non profit hospitals I worked at to near bankruptcy, forcing sale to Hedge Fund.
A legitimate state government would have stepped in, but the Democrats were bought off by the employee unions to look the other way, until it was too late. Even then the Unions successfully got the Governor to block two proposed mergers to much better partners than the hedge fund that finally bought the hospital. Governor was quoted as saying to the CEO of Tenant Hospital Corporation at their only meeting "I don't like to talk to people like you, but they tell me I have to".
Now almost all "Non-profits" are owned by massive chains that are in fact really profit companies. They just spend all the excess cash at the end of the year on something (CEO salaries first, of course) so they end up with only the minimal surplus allowed legally.
I worked at the VA for ten years. It was far far worse with no incentive to spend money on better care at all until disasters were too obvious to overlook any more. Horrible post op infection rates because there were pigeon nests in the air intake of the OR. Wouldn't pay for new drugs because they were too expensive, etc etc.
I don't know much a bout track record of European or Canadian systems, but the UK is a disaster.
Recent data shows their target for beginning cancer therapy is 90 % within TWO MONTHS!
They are currently at 60%. So almost half of newly diagnosed caner patients wait over two months to start treatment.
UK per capita health care expenses are LT 50% of the US, which of course is the highest in the world.

If Banks perceive that interest rates will drop at some point within the next few years, they will not offer up higher rate CDs with a long duration (over 30 mos). These last few expected rate hikes would not affect that outlook.
Hope I am wrong there, but that's what the recent activity has been showing.

T. Rowe Price released a research report claiming that, over the last 20 years, its actively managed funds have consistently outperformed passive peer funds – net of fees.
https://www.troweprice.com/content/dam/trp-ecl/global/en/ipc/assets/us-retail-intermediary/2022/quarterly-updates/passive-peers-methodology-summary.pdf?van=performancestudy

At Fido, lucky to see 4.8% or 4.9% non-callable 3 year CDs. They go fast, if you can even catch them.
Forget about getting much above 4% (non-callable) for any CDs dated longer than that.
Banks have made the decision that rates will come down within the next few years. Which makes sense. They are going to protect themselves and their profits.
This rate cycle has peaked for 3 yr CDs (and longer).

For sure. I'm definitely getting the feeling that if you want to buy CDs (and of course, other bond-like instruments) with a decent rate (close to 5%) you're not going to find much going out more than a couple of years, and I shouldn't be surprised to see fewer of those as we go forward. That inverted yield curve is really wicked.

I have dabbled in a few small companies but it is hard to 1) pick the correct technology and 2) even harder to predict it will work.
There are many people, with much more engineering and scientific expertise that I have, spending their careers on this. For an example Google "Thunder Said Energy". Unfortunately their reports cost $500 each.
I have instead been working on picking the best few Climate Change funds.
Few have been around for very long, and the best may be GCCHX ( $5,000,000 minimum) but I would also look at
NALFX GCEBX RKCIX HEOMX
They are actively managed and cover a variety of climate change issues.
Something else I am trying is Valueline has a monthly newsletter on "Climate Change " companies that is reasonably priced at $200 for two years

I abandoned MAPIX and Matthews a few years ago. Another star that went nova and then died.

With all due respect to Elizabeth Warren, Dick Durbin and Tina Smith, IMHO cryptocurrency is no more unsuitable today for employer-sponsored plans than it was a month ago. Their current letter is more or less a followup to a similar but more extensive letter sent by Senators Warren and Smith in May. That in turn came after DOL issued guidance on cryptocurrency in 401(k) plans in March, emphasizing its risks.

Fidelity isn’t the first company to give 401(k) participants access to cryptocurrency assets. Another industry provider, ForUsAll Inc., has linked workers with cryptocurrency exchanges through brokerage windows for several years. Fidelity takes a different approach with its Digital Asset Accounts product, which doesn’t rely on outside exchanges or brokerage windows.

Employee Benefit Plan Review, October 2022, Volume 76, Number 8, pages 16-19. CCH Incorporated.
(Published before FTX's collapse)
The genie has been out of the bottle since brokerage windows were allowed. Fidelity just provided another route to the same investments. That's not to say that plan sponsors have no responsibility for how those windows are used. The DOL guidance hints at that. Quoting again from CCH:

DOL provides a clear and definite warning to plan fiduciaries:

The plan fiduciaries responsible for overseeing such investment options or allowing such investments through brokerage windows should expect to be questioned about how they can square their actions with their duties of prudence and loyalty in light of the risks described above.

While the focus of this guidance is on 401(k) plans, the DOL’s warnings also extend to plans and plan fiduciaries responsible for allowing cryptocurrency investments through self-directed brokerage windows.

One way of addressing this is to set limits. As stated in the OP, Fidelity sets a 20% limit. So the 20% Bitcoin decline in value lamented in the senators' letter would have resulted in a 4% or less decline in a participant's plan value. Significant but not catastrophic. And ForUSAll sets an even tighter limit, just 5%.
Finally, note that while some senators are advocating caution, others welcome wild west investing in retirement accounts.

Update: A Partisan Divide

The Department of Labor's cryptocurrency guidance has provoked contrasting responses on Capital [sic] Hill.

On May 5, Sen. Tommy Tuberville, R-Ala. introduced legislation that would prohibit the DOL from limiting the kinds of products workplace retirement savers can invest in through self-directed brokerage accounts.
A day earlier, Sen. Elizabeth Warren, D-Mass., criticized Fidelity Investments for its decision to launch a new 401(k) cryptocurrency product, in a May 4 letter to Fidelity CEO Abigail Johnson.

https://www.shrm.org/resourcesandtools/hr-topics/benefits/pages/dol-guidance-could-crimp-401k-brokerage-windows.aspx (Limit 3 free articles per month)

Just out of curiosity, I ran a screener on MFO for funds with a manager tenure of >= 20 years, 20 year performance and SubType = US Equity
Top of the pack is FDGRX with APR = 13.8
FCNTX with APR = 11 comes in at #19
Just one narrow angle on the data, not suggesting that FCNTX is not a great fund.
** Note that MFO data is updated monthly only so these stats are for end of month October 2022.

Giroux makes big high conviction bets but his long term track record is pretty strong. I don't think Giroux performance(or most long tenured managers) can be judged by any time period less than 3 years.
Always a risk of a long term performance going off the rails though -- Exhibit A: Berkowitz.