On the mutual fund side there is GASFX, The last 10 years it has either been one of the best or one of the worst in its category.

Yep, VYM+VCIT approximates VWINX quite well. PV runs from 12/1/09-2/28/22 (12+ years). Elsewhere, other variations/refinements has also been tried. LINK

Congratulation on your pick! Unless someone who can offer higher bid than Warren Buffet, Y will be part of Berkshire Hathaway after 25 days. He is known not to out-bid other competitors. Also he is buying the entire company, not just taking a major stake in the company as he did with Occidental. WB is over 90 years old and still maintain his edge.

“there’s what 25 days to see if Allegheny receives a better offer? You could always throw that 5% in a high flier like BRK.B ?”
Ummm … Good point. I’m not familiar with the legalities here. Is Berkshire locked in to the offer for 25 days? I’d have to guess that’s a very generous offer. Will be surprised if anyone tops it. FWIW: I sold at $846 having put in a limit offer before open. Y closed at $844.60. So there was a slight drift down during the day.
Rocked my boat seeing it up 25% in the pre market hours. I’m very old and very conservative. Would have settled for 25% over 2 or 3 years. Already have 2 stocks in the growth sleeve. Having this one in the more conservative “alternative” sleeve was a real reach in the first place.
Below is a link to the Barron’s article that whetted my appetite last November. I tracked and studied the company for over 3 months before deciding to take a bite. Averaged in during February / March while it was falling. Bottomed at $588 March 8. Currently $844.60
https://www.barrons.com/articles/buy-alleghany-stock-berkshire-hathaway-pick-51636151493
But thanks for the thoughts.
BTW - I think Barron’s is underappreciated.

The fraud in the Covid relief is shameful, but it is misguided to assume that some billions fraudulently misappropriated in $5.1 trillion worth of two relief--2020 and 2021--packages indicate some sort of failure in policy:
https://cbpp.org/research/poverty-and-inequality/robust-covid-relief-achieved-historic-gains-against-poverty-and

When COVID-19 began to rapidly spread across the United States in March 2020, the economy quickly shed more than 20 million jobs. Amid intense fear and hardship, federal policymakers responded, enacting five relief bills in 2020 that provided an estimated $3.3 trillion of relief and the American Rescue Plan in 2021, which added another $1.8 trillion. This robust policy response helped make the COVID-19 recession the shortest on record and helped fuel an economic recovery that has brought the unemployment rate, which peaked at 14.8 percent in April 2020, down to 4.0 percent. One measure of annual poverty declined by the most on record in 2020, in data back to 1967, and the number of uninsured people remained stable, rather than rising as typically happens with large-scale job loss. Various data indicate that in 2021, relief measures reduced poverty, helped people access health coverage, and reduced hardships like inability to afford food or meet other basic needs.
These positive results contrast with the Great Recession of 2007-2009, when the federal response was large compared to measures taken in other post-World War II recessions but less than one-third as large as the fiscal policy measures adopted in 2020-2021, when measured as a share of the economy. While decried by some at the time as too large, the relief measures enacted during the Great Recession were undersized and ended too soon. As a result, the economy remained weak for longer than was necessary — and families suffered avoidable hardship. Two years after the Great Recession began, unemployment was still 9.9 percent and food insecurity remained one-third above its pre-recession level. While some of that difference stems from differences in the trigger to the downturn, some is clearly due to the strength of the policy response.

What I don't like is states and politicians claiming they don't need federal assistance and shouldn't have to pay taxes while taking loads of federal assistance.

@BaseballFan - I consider you a great asset to the board based on your investment related contributions over the years. As long as everyone is civil no harm in voicing dissenting views. I actually pay $$ to subscribe to Bill Fleckenstein’s “Daily Rap.” His political opinions run similar to yours - and distinctly contrary to my own. But I’m willing to overlook that right wing dogma because it’s all about investing. And I think he, like you, has some interesting thoughts on investing.
It’s not for me to decide, but I would hope everyone tries their best to talk about “best ideas” for preserving and growing our capital and less about politics or which party is best for growing wealth. I do believe there are investments for every “season”. So let’s size up the current macro financial environment as it exists today and work to come up with investments that work.

My parents bought LTC insurance that reimbursed my mother about $45,000 for the last year in Assisted living ( not a nursing home or SNF) at a max $108 a day out of a total allowable benefit of $130,000.
I don't know when they purchased the policy so I do not know how much it cost, but is was more than $45,000, and if that money had been in the SP500 would have accumulated far more than $130,000. I am sure they started the policy in the 1990's, so they paid on it for over 25 years.
I think there are two lessons
1) one of the reasons her LTC costs were so low was she lived in Texas, where the Assisted Living was "only" $4500 a month. IT was a high quality well run institution. If she had been in CT where we lived it would have been up to $10,000. Most of this is due to lower labor costs and much less regulation. SNF is far higher.
This would seem to recommend moving to Texas, but while I have not checked into it, Title 19 in Texas likely does not cover much in LTC, as it covers very little anything else.
In CT ( once you have exhausted all your money) the state will pay for your nursing home (only skilled nursing, not Assisted Living)
2) either way if your family can't keep you at home it is very expensive.

Nocera (following Greenberg) has been muddying the water b/w shorting, even aggressive and disinformation-spreading shorting, and naked shorting (increasing the float) for many years now, building strawmen, blaming the victim, building defenses upon the low or zero effect of the wrongdoing. (Remember, thieves are a helpful reminder to lock our doors; we're all safer for it. A company so thoroughly crappy deserves to go down; if it was truly valuable someone would buy it and stop the shorting; studies show even naked shorting has no effect.' Etc.)
But naked shorting is shorting more shares than there are in a company, and is unlawful. Weakly enforced, if at all. With it the stock volume can be larger than the tradable shares in the market. Does that sound like a good idea, or just the side of an argument, to be able to do this w impunity?
For those into detail:
https://deliverypdf.ssrn.com/delivery.php?ID=748001100113103125085064113123017030099042041058020023102082095068097107009022099065019107039057114029060023093091020114126106017070064086060028019031087094093094092088029095069067091094112081087093125081004003029075068094015106072026009099026083005083&EXT=pdf&INDEX=TRUE
No one is going to read all that but the conclusion (the second one), about SEC overhaul and aggressiveness, is altogether warranted.
http://wrap.warwick.ac.uk/55474/1/WRAP_Raman_1173295-wbs-100713-nss_jfe_2011_784_resubmission_20121224_revised_manuscript.pdf
This is thorough and does find delivery fails did not play a part in price declines in '08.
These could be superseded, but I could not find updates.
State of play, at least by the date:
https://www.natlawreview.com/article/sec-brings-naked-short-selling-case

“just as economists such as Summers predicted."
I follow Summers weekly on Bloomberg’s “Wall Street Week.” ISTM his main gripe has been with the Federal Reserve. They’re way behind the curve. (Wonder who nominated the current Chair?) As far as the parties go, didn’t the Rs initiate the mailing of stimulus checks? Why was it a good idea for Trump to send them out (accompanied by his personal signed letter) but a bad idea for the Ds to do the same?
Yeah - you can debate the whole ball of wax if you want to (tax policies, the impact of Covid, assorted legislation and years of very low interest rates). But let’s not oversimplify. You’ll find economists on various sides of the inflation issue (it’s complex and has more than 2 sides.)
I’ve always accepted in my mind that paper currencies eventually depreciate. Hence - the reason for investing is assets like homes, precious metals and stocks. The best way to make a paper currency “appreciate“ in buying power is to bring on a severe recession or depression that nobody wants.
ISTM Japan went down that road. Sure - the Yen appreciated, but their stock market was in the dumpster for 25 years.

@LewisBraham,
This is an excellent, very informative article.
I seldom read Fortune magazine these days, but don't recall seeing content of this caliber in recent years.
Thanks for posting!

So sad to read of his passing. I also want to send my deepest heart felt condolences to his family.
He died way too soon, at only 70.
I too bought Mutual Shares as my first mutual fund in 1989 ( or before, but that is as far back as my available records go!) after reading everything I could find about him and his ideas about value investing. Over the years we put more and more in until it was my biggest position, with Mutual Discovery a close second.
When he sold the firm, I wrote him a long letter, thanking him for putting up such good returns, but also for teaching me about investing and the difference between the value of a company and the price of it's stock.
I can't think of any other well known investor, other than perhaps Buffett, who had a greater impact on my investment ideas ( or on our net worth!).

Our rebalancing process has evolved over time that include the business cycle. In our core bucket, we rebalanced it about 4 times a year. The tactical bucket where we invested in individual stocks, ETFs, commodities, and OEFs, is more actively managed, especially in the last several years where the market conditions rapidly change. Our goal is loss less than the market average while having a respectable gain and staying a bit ahead of inflation. For us that is good enough.

Sold out of MGGIX the other day as part of early tax loss harvesting for 2022. It was acting too much like a concentrated tech fund and that's not what I wanted when I bought into it.
Their 2021 Annual Report came today. Call me spoiled or misguided after years of the informative, descriptive, reflective personal multi-page discussions in the annual letters from Giroux, Capital, Vanguard, and other funds, but when fund management's commentary for an annual report is only one page, unsigned, and doesn't even say 'thank you for investing in our fund' (*) it just suggests to me they don't really care about building a relationship with shareholders.
(*) I refer to the manager of the fund itself, not the Chairman's introduction note on behalf of the fund manager's firm.
I noticed a similarly annoying thing an a recent report from Blackrock. They (Blackrock) were the investment advisor, yet they kept saying "the Investment Advisor...." as if to rhetorically distance themselves for some reason. And it was only 1 or 2 of their funds doing that, the rest were more first-person in tone. Weird, but noticeable.
Edit: Interesting too that the majority of MGGIX directors come from Perkins-Cole. One would think there would be greater diversification there.

I posted a pissed off thread about MGGPX recently, but held on. Good thing I did. Guess, you gotta trust a good manager. Doesn't have the jitters during rough times. He killed it during covid. Let's hope he pulls through on all this.

Here's the page from which @bee's except was taken:
https://www.deepcapture.com/the-story-of-deep-capture-by-mark-mitchell/
naked shorters ... (it's flatly illegal goes the argument
Is naked shorting flatly illegal, or is that just one side's argument?
Naked shorting is not unconditionally illegal, just as going long without having the money to cover it on the trade date is not unconditionally illegal.
Is it illegal to buy a security and then talk it up? It depends.
"[A]busive 'naked' short selling as part of a manipulative scheme is always illegal under the general antifraud provisions of the federal securities laws, including Rule 10b-5".
SEC Rule 10b-21 https://www.sec.gov/rules/final/2008/34-58774.pdf
Absent fraud, naked shorts can be legal, so long as they comply with other SEC regs. "'Naked' short selling is not necessarily a violation of the federal securities laws or the [Security and Exchange] Commission’s rules. Indeed, in certain circumstances, 'naked' short selling contributes to market liquidity."
https://www.sec.gov/investor/pubs/regsho.htm
Apparently naked shorting is not flatly illegal, goes the official argument. The DTCC agrees, saying that "there is some legal naked short selling.
With respect to Overstock, "In 2004, Cohodes, a partner at a hedge fund called Rocker Partners, and David Rocker, the fund’s founder, shorted Overstock after concluding that Byrne was making untenable promises about its financial performance. "
https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2020/12/14/a-tycoons-deep-state-conspiracy-dive
That's 18, not 15 years ago. This matters because Regulation SHO became effective January 2005, and Rule 10b-21 became effective Oct 2008.
For a very different, expansive perspective of the alleged conspiracies, here's Joe Nocera's business column from Feb 2006:
https://www.nytimes.com/2006/02/25/business/overstocks-campaign-of-menace.html
To bring this back to the Reuters piece - put options were purchased. That's a way to gain the same exposure as with a short, but there's no failure to deliver; no security lending is involved. As the CEO of Farmland stated, ""This is not about shorting. This is about securities fraud."

Well, large distributions may also be forced by significant outflows (a negative for the fund) and manager changes (just housecleaning to start fresh, at best neutral). So, portfolio outperforming is not the only reason for large distributions although that is common in good market years (but may also be in disastrous years). M* publishes Potential CG Exposures and for many funds that may remain forever, or not. Culprit here is constant inflows/outflows from mutual funds/OEFs.

Mortgage credit in the port now at zero; it was by far my largest allocation in recent years. Last to go was EIXIX. AlphaCentric and Regan's entries in the category have been ~ 75% ROC recently, thus with a pitiful income yield. The category was flat early in the big 2022 selloff, weakening lately, and just not a whole lot of upside left in the tank. This is my obituary for the great debt trade of the last decade-plus. (I might buy in again on a true selloff and signs of recovery.)
I'm probably more cautious than a lot of posters, given no pension and adequate but not massive savings/investment $. #1 position now is cash, #2 is PQTAX, with some ETFs mainly in trading mode. Capital preservation is the main objective at this point.

Yes, Eaton Vance. Since everyone's tax situation is different take a look at last years distributions/share and see how you may be affected. The distributions were all either long-term capital gains or income.
ETV

Sold out of MGGIX the other day as part of early tax loss harvesting for 2022. It was acting too much like a concentrated tech fund and that's not what I wanted when I bought into it.
Their 2021 Annual Report came today. Call me spoiled or misguided after years of the informative, descriptive, reflective personal multi-page discussions in the annual letters from Giroux, Capital, Vanguard, and other funds, but when fund management's commentary for an annual report is only one page, unsigned, and doesn't even say 'thank you for investing in our fund' (*) it just suggests to me they don't really care about building a relationship with shareholders.
(*) I refer to the manager of the fund itself, not the Chairman's introduction note on behalf of the fund manager's firm.
I noticed a similarly annoying thing an a recent report from Blackrock. They (Blackrock) were the investment advisor, yet they kept saying "the Investment Advisor...." as if to rhetorically distance themselves for some reason. And it was only 1 or 2 of their funds doing that, the rest were more first-person in tone. Weird, but noticeable.
Edit: Interesting too that the majority of MGGIX directors come from Perkins-Cole. One would think there would be greater diversification there.

would expect a ruling before this issue becomes a class action law suit
The suit was filed as a class action lawsuit. The cited piece reads: "The plaintiffs ... seek compensation for the alleged harm on behalf of a class of similarly situated investors nationwide."
What is the problem with that? This seems to be exactly the type of suit for which class actions were created - large number of plaintiffs, similarly situated, a common transaction, and not worth most people's time and money to sue on their own.
Assuming the court finds that some duty was breached by Vanguard, calculating damages will be interesting, since tax liabilities would seem to be more a matter of when a taxpayer owes taxes (i.e. when a taxpayer recognizes gain) than if a taxpayer owes the taxes. It could be a question of time value of money, not added tax liability.
The duty question: Vanguard has tax-managed funds. These were not promoted as such. Did Vanguard have any duty to consider tax implications?
Tax recognition timing: a plaintiff might argue that the recognition of gain was not certain - the fund shares could be bequeathed or donated to charities. So the damages should be the full amount of taxes due. OTOH, these are funds marketed as retirement funds, i.e. funds expected to be sold down during retirement. Arguably while other dispositions are possible, they might be considered speculative while gradual disinvestment would be considered the norm.
If it does come down to a question of timing (recognizing gain now rather than say, from age 65 to 95, then the damages might be just the time value of the taxes paid now rather than over those 30 years. Current discount rate (even with the 0.25% fed hike) is pretty low.
Lowering the institutional series' minimum was a stupid thing for Vanguard to do, given that it was going to merge the institutional and retail series of funds a few months later. But stupid and negligent are not the same, and in any case, the tax bills would have come due sooner or later.
See also
https://www.thinkadvisor.com/2022/03/15/vanguard-hit-with-class-action-suit-over-target-date-fund-tax-bills/

FWIIW, the Providence Journal was a staple in our household when I was a kid. Utilities buy-outs can work well for the investor if the stars align. A few years back, M* signaled that ICT, the electric transmission company, was a possible target. Sure enough, the ICT sign outside a station in my current town, reads “A Fortis Company.” The ICT shareholders, and moi aussi, got a decent premium. Never mind the false leads I followed, OK?