Hi, nath!
I'm not a financial planner or anything, but I'd almost think that you'd start with determining what you need rather than what you prefer. Will the combination of your current assets, future contributions and 3-4% appreciation get you where you need to be? That 3-4% would, of necessity, have been be deflated by the rate of inflation so you might be asking "will 0.5 - 2.0% real returns be enough, all things considered, for me to meet my goals and obligations?"
I guess if I were wondering about that, I'd start by running a Monte Carlo analysis using T. Rowe Price's Retirement Income Calculator. We've got a link and explanation in the "Best of" tab. The Monte Carlo thing simply means that they run a thousand simultaneous what-ifs on your portfolio for the period from now to when you retire. They give you two outputs, one is a comparison of where you're likely to be versus where you need to be. The other is a tool for tweaking your contributions, asset allocation, retirement date and so on to see what you might do to better align things.
They also have a newer version called Clear Future, but I haven't checked to see if that's available to non-customers.
Finally, the general answer to your original question might be a cheap, well-diversified conservative allocation, strategic income or retirement income fund: something that might be 20% stocks, 40% short term fixed income and 40% other fixed income. I suspect we could rustle up some suspects for you if you decide that's where best to go.
For what it's worth,
David

In the context of investment performance and choice, one day is meaningless except, perhaps, as a tool to pique curiosity and encourage a bit more investigation. So, what might one be curious about after the "oops" on Thursday? I'm curious about the funds that I track on your behalf and, in particular, the funds which should hedge your portfolio (to some degree) from the stock market's antics.
Here are three benchmarks that I looked at:
Vanguard Total Stock Market (VTSMX): unhedged domestic equity performance
Vanguard Balanced Index (VBINX): 60% equity exposure
IQ Alpha Hedge Strategy (IQHOX): a well-regarded attempt to market the performance of a broad index of hedge funds
VTSMX: down 1.39%
VBINX: down 0.78%
IQHOX: down 0.74%
So here's a thought: if your hedged fund lost less than 0.75% on Thursday, it's acting respectably. In that camp we have:
• Robeco Boston Partners L/S Equity 0.69
• Hussman Strategic Growth 0.20
• Hussman Strategic International 0.20
• Forward Credit Analysis Long/Short 0.13
• Hussman Strategic Total Return 0.09
• T. Rowe Price Strategic Income 0.09
• Fidelity Strategic Income 0.00
• Arbitrage R -0.08
• Pacific Financial Tactical -0.10
• Merger -0.18
• Whitebox Long Short Equity -0.38
• ASTON/River Road Long-Short -0.42
• TFS Market Neutral -0.43
• Diamond Hill Long-Short -0.51
• Gateway -0.52
• GRT Absolute Return -0.54
• Quaker Event Arbitrage -0.60
• Bridgeway Managed Volatility -0.61
• New Century Alternative Strategies -0.61
• RiverNorth Dynamic Buy-Write -0.66
• MainStay Marketfield -0.72
If you think it's also reasonable that they should have produced about 60% of the market's 25% gains this year, that list contracts:
• Diamond Hill Long-Short 19.17
• ASTON/River Road Long-Short 15.14
• MainStay Marketfield 13.45
If you have the more-modest goal of matching the YTD performance of the industry's best hedged fund, Boston Robeco Partners L/S (up 8.3% YTD), you'd add:
• Quaker Event Arbitrage 9.08 (the former Pennsylvania Avenue Event Driven)
More modest still? Perhaps just have bragging rights over the folks who are surrendering 2-and-20? Roughly that would mean north of 4.3%, the YTD return of IQ Alpha Hedge Strategy. You start adding covered call funds to the mix:
• Bridgeway Managed Volatility 7.08
• Whitebox Long Short Equity 6.63
• Gateway 6.19
• New Century Alternative Strategies 5.03
• RiverNorth Dynamic Buy-Write 4.88
Finally, is an "absolute value" strategy, marked by concentrated portfolios, concern about valuations and still on cash the answer? Here I looked at funds with 15% or more in cash that either I've profiled or ridiculed (Oceanstone) or that you've gotten all tingly about (Yacktman).
The columns represent Thursday's loss (under 0.75% would be nice) and YTD gains (over 14% is tingle-worthy):
• Oceanstone -0.23 29.7
• FPA International Value -0.42 15.9
• Pinnacle Value -0.45 10.9
• FPA Crescent -0.51 17.8
• Cook & Bynum -0.52 10.1
• Beck, Mack & Oliver -0.66 18.1
• Aston River Road Indep Value -0.70 5.3
• Oakseed Opportunity -0.91 20.2
• Bretton -0.96 21.0
• Yacktman -1.08 24.3
Oceanstone, F P A Crescent, and Beck, Mack & Oliver Partners make the cut. Since Aston and Pinnacle are small cap value funds, you might ask how they did against 60% of the Vanguard Small Cap Value (VISVX) index. That target would be down 1% on the down (both did much better than that) and up 16% on the year (neither's closer, though Pinnacle is a lot closer).
For what discussion it spurs,
David

Reply to @Charles: Is that a technical financial term? We had similar technological terminology in electronics...

So while broker-dealers were about half the size of the credit mutual fund industry in 2007, according to the quantity of assets they owned, today they’re only about 1/20th of the size. And those broker-dealers are still the only real liquidity providers in the market.
But neither of the two buy-side bond market giants (Blackrock and Pimco) seem to have been able to make such a system work
This is one reason why the two big bond investors arguably pose a systemic risk: if either one of them were to suffer substantial withdrawals, the selling pressure on the market would be so enormous that the entire bond market could pretty much cease to work.
Sovereigns, however, are another story — they need to borrow in size, and they have historically relied on liquidity issues to ensure that they get the cheapest possible rate. (That’s the main reason why US Treasury bonds have the lowest yields in the world, on a swapped-into-dollars basis: it’s all about the liquidity, not the credit risk.) The great bond liquidity drought is arriving at the worst possible moment for G20 sovereigns which are already struggling with unprecedented levels of bonded debt. It’s always liquidity that kills you, not insolvency: it’s the inability to roll over your debts as they come due.
http://blogs.reuters.com/felix-salmon/2013/11/05/when-bonds-dont-trade/
It always starts in the credit markets. The irony:
"Liquidity is drying up across the bond markets. Regulations designed to curtail banks’ leverage have had the unintended consequence of also sharply reducing their ability and willingness to make markets in corporate and even government debt. New regulations on the leverage ratio that will reduce banks’ repo funding books threaten to make matters even worse and to spread the drought from credit markets to rates, the underpinning of all financial markets. Secondary markets are close to a breakdown that will soon imperil the primary markets on which companies and sovereigns depend for funding. All that is masking the decay is the extraordinary actions of central banks.:
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
An unintended consequence of regulations designed to _prevent_ the next crisis.

Hi Guys,
You’ve frequently heard that a picture is worth 10,000 words. That is often true, especially when making investment choices. Pictures, more likely diagrams and charts, shorten, organize, and crystallize the sometimes scores of inputs that are assembled and assessed when formulating an investment decision.
Scores of statistical inputs tend to overwhelm our restricted cognitive powers. Visualization lessens the load. In the 1950s, researcher George Miller proclaimed “The Magical Number Seven, Plus or Minus Two”. He was defining the limitations of our cognitive capacity. That’s the primary reason why our telephone numbers contain 7 basic digits.
In complex circumstances, visualization offers great power directed at simplification. In his informative book " The Behavioral Gap”, author Carl Richards uses an extensive array of napkin sketches to illustrate investment principles and decision making wisdom. In 2012, the Advisor Perspectives published an article by Richards that presented some of his favorite investment guideline drawings. Here is a Link to that summary article:
http://www.advisorperspectives.com/newsletters12/The_Best_of_Carl_Richards.php
I totally enjoyed and learned from it. Please visit the reference. If you liked that sampler, you might want to access Richards website which offers a more complete catalogue of his sketches. Here is the Link to those diagrams:
http://www.behaviorgap.com/sketches/
The genesis for the Behavioral Gap concept and text is illustrated in the following drawing from Richards’ website:
http://www.behaviorgap.com/sketch/behavior-gap-original/
In the tradition of Daniel Kahneman, Richards’ strongly believes that we fall victim to our own behavioral biases. These shortcomings operate to truncate our portfolio returns; recognizing them proffers the potential for improved portfolio performance.
Richards says: "...decisions should be made on principles not on our feelings about what's going to happen...". Yet we allow our emotions to compromise time-tested investment principles. Some folks believe that it’s not what you know that matters, it is more governed by how well you know yourself.
The Richards diagrams that I referenced might just help in your investment decision making. I hope they do.
The drawings are fun stuff, and are simultaneously an investment teaching tool. There’s a lot of financial wisdom rooted in these child-like simplistic drawings. It doesn’t get much better than that, especially if you deploy some of their lessons in your investment program.
Best Regards.

Hi Guys,
There are numerous investing behavioral biases that ruin our overall portfolio performance. Only identifying negative impact factors disproportionately increases our fears and likely contribute to us embracing a more conservative approach than is warranted by market conditions or our long-term goals.
We need some positive reinforcements. More than a few investors have fallen behind their personal saving for retirement power curve, especially when considering historical market return averages. Even if these averages are repeated in the near future, the retirement portfolio shortfall will persist.
A more aggressive approach is signaled. That suggests that some portion of the portfolio should be committed to active fund management. However, most active managers fail to match Index returns; but some do and generate positive excess returns. The key is to develop screening criteria that recognizes these winners.
How do we find these superstar performers? Certainly we seek fund managers who have registered positive excess returns during a major portion of their investment career. No manager outdistances the markets each and every year.
Some industry research has indicated that even the most successful fund managers only outscore their benchmarks about 70 % of the time. Nobody is perfect; a 70 % record is exceptional even for a Warren Buffett-like manager. Individual past performance does matter although it does erode over time as market conditions change.
Also, low fund fees and low annual portfolio turnover rates are traditionally strong signals for potential mutual fund outperformance. This is not new news, but are necessary components to a disturbingly short selection criteria list. We seek a wider criteria diversity to choose more wisely.
Some professors from middle America universities provide an additional candidate set based on their extensive research. In that research, they demonstrate that mutual funds that are guided by leaders who have earned financial PhDs yield higher annual returns than those that are controlled by non-PhD educations. The findings are statistically meaningful. Further, they find that those PhDs who have published extensively in respected journals add incrementally to the excess rewards.
Here is the Link to the study:
http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=2344938
I extracted the reference from the CXO Advisory Group website, The CXO team asked the following question: “Do Ph.D. Holders Make Better Money Managers?”. CXO answers “Yes” to that question. The CXO assessment is restricted to their membership ranks so I referenced the paper itself.
Although I have only read the Introduction and the Conclusions sections of this academic work, the study appears to be comprehensive and credible. Enjoy and profit from its findings. It provides yet another needed fund selection criteria to a rather short set. It should facilitate the sorting quagmire.
Let me close with a cautionary warning. Obviously, the research is statistical in character. Exceptions exist with a Bell-like shaped distribution. Yes, on average, PhD leadership moves the rewards average in the positive direction. But there are some PhD managed funds that are persistent losers. A few of these are disasters, like the Titanic increasing speed through the ice flow field.
Like doctors, all financial PhDs are not equal. Exceptions always exist, but PhDs do appear to boost returns. In the complex investment world, absolute guarantees are nearly impossible. The MFO membership can readily identify several of these exceptional loser PhDs.
Best Regards.

Technically, there is (as I read it) a back door into RPHYX. It's just not one that people here would be likely to use.
If you work with an adviser or financial planner who had clients with money in the fund as of June 21, 2013 (the closing date), you're allowed to invest via that adviser. See the prospectus.
There are often back doors to closed funds, ways to avoid loads, that work for some people. This is why I don't join the chorus in saying that sites like this, or M*, should not cover load funds or closed funds. They are still interesting, they may be available (albeit to just a few), they may give insight into strategies or particular managers (who sometimes manage similar funds for other families).
It's also why I take a notice that a fund is closed not as a rejection, but as a challenge. :-)
It's also why I'm not sure there's too much value in adding such a notice on the site - depending upon your situation, YMMV.

Hi Mark,
Thank you for reading my post. I hope you visited the Buffett reference. Ad hominem remarks always command a reply.
I mostly agree with Buffett’s investment advice. Also, I mostly agree with BobC’s investment advice. I made that perfectly clear in my posting to BobC. His response was excellent. He most assuredly does not need you to defend him in this ad hoc manner.
Since you took no exceptions to the substance of my submittal, I presume you agree with it to a large extent.
I practice both men’s investment philosophy of long-term commitments, infrequent trading, abstaining from daily crowd misbehavior, and cost containment. Although I do subscribe to the WSJ, I do not watch any of the business-oriented TV shows regularly. It is a rare and exceptional news day when I do view them.
There are two primary differences between the way I interpret Buffett’s and BobC’s market wisdom. On the larger scale, Buffett is famous and has a published track record. It is marvelous. Without disrespecting BobC’s market wisdom, he has neither from my perspective. Buffett has earned his wizard status; BobC is presently earning his with his clients.
On a lesser scale, Buffett was offering his wisdom to a broad generic audience freely. In its original format, BobC was offering his advice to a limited client audience for a fee. Free and fee are the operative differences. I simply expect more definite guidance as the pay-scale increases. Often, active mutual fund managers do not deliver to those expectations. That’s sad, but true.
By way of analogy, imagine that you are ill and seek medical advice. Very likely your wife might suggest taking a couple of aspirins and some rest. That commonplace advice is free. If you visit a doctor and he offers the same advice, you would very likely be an unhappy camper. To properly earn his fees, you would expect a more refined prescription. That’s what I would expect from a financial advisor.
I harbor no issues with BobC’s investment philosophy or style. It is very similar to mine. Even if I did take exception to his investment policies, I respect his prerogative to do so. That’s what markets are all about as a price discovery mechanism.
I never consider giving grades. In the investment world, performance and forecasting are far too transient and unstable. Change happens too quickly and too often.
I hope this clarifies my position. I believe BobC fully understands my position. Given your overarching prejudice against my postings, I’m not sure you ever will. That too is sad, but true.
Best Wishes.

Hi David,
Once again congratulations on yet another hugely informative and comprehensive monthly commentary post.
Each month I conclude that the current post is the high-water marker for your outstanding summaries; every following month you prove me wrong. The current column outdistances all preceding submittals by a substantial margin.
The scope, breath, and depth of each edition continually astonishes me. Each month your commentary contains more actionable fund investment ideas and opportunities than the monthly financial magazines do.
It is not just the bulk of the material that is amazing, it is more so the quality of the reporting. If an investor can not extract useful insights from your clear presentations, that investor definitely needs a private financial counselor.
I’m sure all MFO members truly respect and appreciate your dedication and your analyses. On rare instances we might disagree with your findings, but we benefit from its introduction and from the exposure to the wide variety of options that are explored in your columns.
It is hard to imagine your extensive time commitment. The effort must reward you with satisfying pleasure that you helped a body of individual investors. The marketplace is a confusing and perplexing challenge, and we need all the help we can absorb.
There is little doubt that we all make better investment decisions because of your careful and fair reviews of the many (sometimes overwhelming) investment options that are accessible. Your emphasis on risk control is particularly noteworthy.
Thank you so very much. Please continue the march.
Best Regards.

Nice distribution this month @ about a 4.35 % annual rate.Thanks to David and other posters to alert many of us to this fund and it's purpose in our investment and everyday financial planning.
Dividend and Capital Gains Distributions RPHYX
Distribution
Date Distribution 10/31/2013
NAV 9.98 Long-Term
Capital Gain 0 Short-Term
Capital Gain 0 Return of
Capital 0 Dividend
Income Distribution 0.0364
Total 0.0364
10/31/2013

Reply to @davidrmoran:
Hi Davidrmoran,
I hear your frustrations loud and clear with respect to the investment golden rule that “Don’t look at past returns to gauge future performance” is a bit overdone. It is.
I do it all the time. Financial and investment decisions are awash in an endless array of statistical data. Statistics is the mother’s milk of investing. Typically I use the past history to establish an expected base return rate as an evaluation point of departure. Next, I adjust this base rate based on more refined analysis and conditions.
When considering active fund candidates, we are seeking positive excess returns, Alpha, from the fund’s management team. So, when reviewing the manager’s performance record, past returns are an integral portion of the assessment. Surely it is not the sole evaluation component. Low cost, low portfolio turnover rates, manager tenure, and the depth of the firm’s research bench are also vital assessment factors.
Also, when considering a fund purchase, the overall market state, bull or bear, is another critical factor when judging an entry time. Again, statistical considerations are an important part of the decision choice. The market’s 200-day moving average status, the market’s Price-to-Earnings ratio relative position (Bob Shiller’s format), and the various forms of the equity high-low Logic Index (Norm Fosback’s formulation) aid in that judgment. All these statistical assemblies are compared to historical standards.
I was sloppy when I endorsed the Boglehead’s version of the Past Returns axiom. The version that I really accept is “Don’t look at past returns to GUARANTEE future performance”. Nobody can guarantee future outcomes. Past managerial performance does provide some guidance in that regard. If an auto manufacturer has a superior car reliability record, it is highly likely that it will continue that distinguished tradition; but it is never a full-proof guarantee.
Congratulations on your long-standing FLPSX decision. I too purchased that fund in the mid-1990s. It has proven to be a rewarding ride. Our choice, however, is only prescient in hindsight. Hindsight bias is always right. When I selected FLPSX, I was impressed by Joel Tillinghast’s credentials, but I never anticipated that he would be at the fund’s helm for this extended timeframe or that he would become a superstar within the Fidelity ranks. I suspect I was more lucky than prescient at that stage of my investment career.
Given Tillinghast’s other Fidelity assignments, the FLPSX fund is now team managed. I’m not sure that I’m comfortable with that change in terms of future fund prospects.
Thank you for your commentary. It allowed me to more precisely outline my position on the cloudy and maddening “future performance” restriction in all fund literature.
Best Wishes.

Hi Guys,
A pair of articles recently published by Forbes yields both conventional and unconventional investing and portfolio advice.
The conventional advice was provided in an article by Laura Shin. She erroneously titles the article “10 Investing Tricks That Will Help You Outperform Most Investors”. Her list is really not “Tricks”; they are conventional wisdom. Here is the Link to the Forbes piece:
http://www.forbes.com/sites/laurashin/2013/10/29/10-investing-tricks-that-will-help-you-outperform-most-investors/
The list was generated by the Boglehead group and directly represents John Bogle’s world financial views. They are all common sense and commonplace. The list truly does not contain any Eureka moments. Given the huge size of the Boglehead organization, it does however reflect the wisdom of the crowd.
I particularly like the cautions to “Don’t look at past returns to gauge future performance” and “Never try to time the market”. How we do asset allocation is within our control; future returns reside in the realm of fog uncertainty and are not in our control. Market timing requires both an exit and an entry timing decision to generate positive excess returns. Since market direction is not within our control, if the decision odds have roughly a 50/50 success probability, the likelihood that both components of the decision cycle are correct is only 25 %.
To expropriate an ancient market axiom, it is time in the marketplace, and not market timing that generates a healthy retirement portfolio. Consideration of the retirement portfolio leads to the unconventional advice.
This Shin article appeared in Forbes about a week ago. I believe it has been discussed on MFO earlier, but it does warrant another visit given its unconventional recommendation. Here is the Link to the Forbes article:
http://www.forbes.com/sites/laurashin/2013/10/21/the-counterintuitive-investing-trick-that-could-make-or-break-your-retirement/
The short piece references the research completed by Wade Pfau. His insights are based on Monte Carlo computer simulations. They explore the significance of the sequence of market returns during retirement, not simply the average return value, in terms of portfolio survival odds.
Pfau concludes that a downward thrust of returns immediately following retirement can destroy retirement plans since recovery is a daunting challenge. An upward thrust of equity rewards during the early retirement years makes the long-term portfolio survival prospects almost bulletproof.
Based on his findings, Pfau recommends a shift to a heavy fixed income portfolio asset allocation during the early retirement years as a defensive measure, with a gradual shift to a more aggressive equity position as retirement progresses to protect against the erosive impact of inflation.
Please visit the referenced articles. One does not offer any Eureka moments, the other does. Both are worth the minor reading time commitment, and cost nothing more. Enjoy, learn, and prosper.
Best Regards.

From Seeking Alpha
Fink: "Bubble-like" markets have returned
"It’s imperative that the Fed begins to taper," says BlackRock chief Larry Fink. "We’ve seen real bubble-like markets again. We’ve had a huge increase in the equity market. We’ve seen corporate-debt spreads narrow dramatically.”A check of the scoreboard finds the S&P 500 ahead 24% YTD after a 13% advance in 2012. The high-yield bond spread to Treasurys is just 444 basis points - about the lowest in years, but not as tight as the 250 bps seen in the late 90s or in the months leading up to the financial crisis (though absolute yields were far higher then).Earlier: 2013 is on pace to surpass 2000 as the biggest year ever for equity fund inflows.
| 9:09 PM|
More from Bloomberg
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2013-10-29/blackrock-s-fink-says-there-are-bubble-like-markets-again-1-.html

I have owned HSGFX for many years, and have suffered like the other holders (about 5% of my portfolio). Based on John Hussman's education, he is very smart - you don't get into Stanford grad school without extremely high scores. This most likely translates into a high IQ >135. I have a degree in chemical engineering and an MBA (finance), and I read (and understand) his weekly newsletter. I think it's well written and very insightful. I think he is absolutely correct in his analysis of the markets. However, like others I think his investment model is flawed and overly complicated. My investment model enables me to participate in the upside gains and I maintain a trailing "stop limit" buy order on ETF SPXU (3x S&P negative) as insurance against the market tanking. The general investing public is buying and selling without any regard for value. Eventually there has to be a day of reckoning, but why not take the ride up. His biggest mistake was not getting into the market after the big 2008 crash. I know about his stress testing... That proved to me his business instincts are not great - if common sense disagrees with your financial model, please go with the common sense. Please realize that all of these models have ton of assumptions...
Buffet:
"Success in investing doesn't correlate with I.Q. once you're above the level of 25. Once you have ordinary intelligence, what you need is the temperament to control the urges that get other people into trouble in investing."
”Beware of geeks bearing formulas.”
It takes a really smart guy to really mess up an investment portfolio - read When Genius Failed. Some of the smartest guys in finance bankrupted their fund, and needed to be rescued by the fed. The trades were so complicated no one could figure them out. A fund manager with average intelligence and good business instincts would likely never have this problem.

And ... I didn't see the other link. Actually appears to be from the Financial Times - a more respectable source than CNBC (What isn't?). I'd say the music here is better than the article. I don't pay much attention to bullish articles like this or bearish ones for that matter. Anything can happen and usually does. Confucius say: "He who attempts to time markets is lost."

Few of us know the date that our will matures, so if you are physically able to work my investment advice is to go back to work doing something you kind of enjoy ( but at least is not drudgery.) A part or full time job reduces what will surely be a rising need for income from investments for most people. You can then average into a portfolio matching your low risk tolerance by working with a fee only, trusted financial advisor. If a job or financial advisor is not in your future , I would keep three years of expenses plus an amount to cover unforeseen expenses in ultra safe, cash like investments. With the balance of the funds, you can average into a low cost conservative allocation fund such as VWINX ( there are other funds but watch for expense ratios ,allocation to high yield and/or government bonds, and tax liability.) Until you are 62 , I would avoid totally any asset class that tanked this past May when interest rate began to rise. Good luck to you.

Reply to @STB65: "Please, Ted, pick me a few good indexes." Here are three for starters.
SPY: (Up 25.37%) YTD: Tracks S&P 500
MDY: (Up 28%) YTD: Tracks S&P 400
QQQ: (Up 28.37%) YTD Tracks 100 Largest Non-Financial Stocks Listed On NASDAQ

Perhaps I'm out of date (no surprise), but I thought Vanguard had the least costly annuities of the major firms, (This is the time for any posters with good recent data to advise me otherwise - I'm getting a bit old) and I was planning to use them whenever I finally decided I needed one.
If you have a large enough account, I think you can get some personal attention. Tough to trust the advice of anyone you haven't known for a long time, but I assume that young people at full service brokerages are 1) relatively inexperienced and 2) dependent on commission income.
My personal bias is that the market is near a short term top and bonds are horrible, so there is no financial rush to make a decision. Charles is 75% correct. Check out M* charts on PMHDX vs Whitebox before you go all in. If I didn't need the money too badly, I might put a good chunk into PMHDX and look at Grandeur Peak funds for the non US portion.

Hi Guys,
I want to thank all of you for responding to my commentary.
I appreciate your attention and efforts. Your comments are lively, enthusiastic, and thoughtful. They are both stimulating and educational. I certainly learned from them. I firmly believe that these types of exchanges help all of us to a higher level of financial understanding.
Also, thank you for mostly focusing on the specific subject matter, and not how it was expressed.
Enough. I have a fatal attraction to the World Serious.
Best Wishes.

Reply to @MJG:
----
"Greed and fear are two ubiquitous human emotions. In all human interactions it is a challenge to control them. One obvious way to control greed is to a-priori set a goal of accepting average market returns. That acknowledgement easily leads to accepting a passive Index investment strategy."
Try telling that to clients who probably are on the phone every time the market tanks - I have to imagine that Bob has dealt with this a thousand times and has reassured the same people over and over again over time and will have to keep reassuring those people again and again in the future every time the market goes South. I don't know about BobC, but I've talked to an advisor or two who has to be both investor and psychologist.
You continually preach the gospel of not listening to the noise, not heavily trading, etc, but you have to realize that you're NEVER going to get this across to the majority of the population.
Even the greatest investors will occasionally give into emotion and puke up a position - OR they'll give into ego and not give up on a bad position, despite a bad situation (Bill Ackman and Herbalife this year.)
It's happened throughout time and it will happen for many eons to come. If the market tanks, people will throw stocks out. Again and again. And after 2001/2008, people have less trust (and far less of an attention span) then they ever have in the past. As I've said, the average holding period of a stock has gone from years to days. You talk about investing in indexes, that isn't going to change anything in terms of people's emotional responses in regards to investing. Market tanks, market tanks.
People will just throw out an index etf. I strongly believe that having the average person hold an index ETF is not going to change their intolerance for market volatility. They'll have less expenses (if they even care about that) and will dump just as quickly.
If anything, I think investing in what people know is likely a far better way to approach investing in a way that is less prone to emotion. If there's a product or company that someone knows and likes, that's a great way to get them started in investing. The Peter Lynch "Invest in What You Know" theme is a great way to get a young person who has a connection to a product or company (Coke, Disney, whatever) involved in investing and I think that's it's not a bad way to KEEP adults involved with the market.
---
"I hope you alerted your clients about the historically poor performance of long-short funds. "
Past performance is no guarantee of future results, and that goes for anything - the market, gold, real estate (housing can keep going up forever and so can every other asset class....) The products in the long/short category have improved quite a bit in the last few years (3-5+ years ago, they were terrible), but I have a feeling that there could be more and more terrific funds in this category over time and a number of people would still be screaming from the rooftops about how anything aside from long-only is an unholy no-no.
Yep, forget giving managers more tools. I'm not saying that people should devote large blocks of their portfolio real estate to these funds, but I continue to not agree with some people who continue to go on and on against these funds. I think it's rather clear at this point that neither side is going to convince the other. I'm happy with the performance of these funds, people don't have to own them.
Additionally, if a Marketfield (to use an example) is less volatile than the market - but still delivers double digit returns on average and has demonstrated significant downside protection - that may not deliver market-beating returns over time, but over time I'd be willing to guess someone (especially someone 50+) will be far less likely to throw out Marketfield at the wrong time due to the emotions you so frequently discuss than they are likely to throw out an index fund. If you are focused on keeping people involved in the market, a fund that has the tools (whether the fund will avoid the next 2008 is, like anything else in investments, not a given or guaranteed) to largely side-step 2008 and then gain more than the market in 2009 is going to appeal to the average person, whether you think it's the right investment or not.
----
"There are no new insights here."
And you have discussed emotion, not listening to day-to-day noise and other subjects you discuss in the post above previously at length.
Also, BobC may have not had the time to go into great length and detail. I'd rather he offered something than nothing.
I don't disagree with you on a lot of what you say, but you continue to preach for change in the way that people emotionally deal with investing that is never going to happen en masse. Financial education at the high school level would lead to some improvements, but people are always going to throw out stocks at the wrong time. Hell, I've done it. You try to learn from it. I'm sure I will do it again in the future.
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"For a long term investor, it’s a comfort to know that the equity markets return positive rewards about 70 % of the time annually, and that these same markets return an annual rate that is about 6 % over inflation."
And absolutely none of that is guaranteed or a given going forward. I have really worked at having a much longer term view with my investments, but who knows.
I have strong views on what I believe are future themes going forward (and I think everyone has their own views on what may be themes going forward) and I hope that, over a multi-year period, those themes play out and I'm right. That - and nice dividends - allow me to be less focused on the day-to-day, but I really don't think anything in investing is a given in the short-term or long-term.
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