What measurement, metric, guide or guru (if any) do you observe?
I don’t have any particular monitor - except I follow trends by looking at charts and can’t help thinking about the half-dozen or so serious corrections I’ve witnessed in my lifetime. I try and listen to all the educated pundits. But they appear largely largely clueless. Opinions are all over the place. There’s long time bear Shiller, of course. And Howard Marks sounds concerned. Ray Dalio was big into gold (defensively) a year ago. It’s finally starting to move. Even David Giroux has voiced concerns.
Here’s an October article on the Buffett Indicator
Following the media is, of course, counter-productive. In a downward markets the general tenor becomes bearish and the bearish prognosticators get rolled out. But in an up market, reasons abound why the bull will continue. I do feel Barrons comes closest to providing an accurate perspective - though both bulls and bears appear there.
Biggest concern? All the sharp downturns I’ve lived through began with higher prevailing interest rates. This did two things: (1) It buffered the downside for investors who held some bonds and (2) It allowed for the monetary authorities (ie “Fed”) to stimulate by lowering rates. With rates as low as they are now, the game has changed.
A second concern is all the “hot” money that has entered in recent years thru forums like Robinhood. Could make things interesting in a 20-30% selloff. Could exacerbate the problem.
One thought that occurs to me is that ultra low bond yields have pushed everybody and his neighbor into riskier assets. (TINA). One possible “out” here. The dollar could depreciate sharply thereby making those “nominal” paper gains worth less in real purchasing power. - in a sense justifying the higher prices. In that case, investors would be well served hanging tight.

Hi @Derf

The trick to truly active management is to take advantage of the periods when the market is
moving from below trend to above trend, (i.e. capture those above-trend returns) and then protect
on the downside when the market moves into drawdown

Is this not a goal of all investors? We've played our best over the years to achieve such a goal, having periods (years) of great work! and periods of OH crap!
Regards,
Catch

Howdy folks,
@Observant1 Not really. I've been investing with Matthews for almost 25 years. Managers come and go. feh.
good luck,
rono

Howdy folks,
Not quite yet. All these years and I'm still a fan of the House of Matthews. I've owned MPACX and MATFX and MCHFX for quite a while but scaled back when things got weird under Trump. Still don't know WTF they are up to but trust Matthews. Of the three, I prefer MATFX.
and so it goes,
and yeppers, keep wearing the damn mask,
rono

Howdy folks,
Responded earlier on my phone but the throttle monsters ate my postie.
Sorry about the typo. Indeed, my point is that Defined Contribution pensions can get pretty close to Defined Benefit pensions, IFF, there is a company match, there are investment choices, folks are educated on investing and they have sufficient time to accrue. Even when you're converting the old DB to a new DC pension, you can do it humanely and don't have to be assholes. When Michigan converted their state employees some 20-25 years ago, they forced everyone under 5 years. Above that you had a choice. They had a sliding scale but it was biased towards the retirement ages (i.e. 50, 55, 60, etc.). That said, the DC replacement started with 4% from the state and they will match your 3% up to 10% total. The best option I've seen for health insurance coverage is full for active duty employees and an medical savings account for retirement (with a match and investment choices). Damnit, it can work.
As for protocols to @Ben and @BenWP, sorry. This old geezer is trying but these newfangled computers . . . '-)
and so it goes,
peace and wear the damn mask,
rono

The goal of corporations over the last 20 or so years, increase profits for share holders. The result, destruction of the middle class and greater disparity between the haves and have nots.

I have owned VTMFX for several years and am generally pleased as a core holding.
It depends really on what you want to accomplish Growth? Income? and with what risk.
Almost 10% is in FAANG ( Nvidia not Netflix) so it will take a big hit when that party is over. The Bond duration is 4.2 indicating that the bonds here will drop with a rise in interest rates.
While VTMFX lost 20% during the Covid crash vs 30% SP500 in may get hit hard in a stagnation scenario, as the 10% FAANG will also be sensitive to rising rates.
The yield is nothing to write home about if you are interested in income.

It seems this thread is started to be dominated by FR/BL funds. It was not my intent to hijack this thread from the OPs original intent. MSF gave a more detailed analysis of MWFLX, according to M*. The OP is a Fido investor, and I am a Schwab investor, so we may not view funds quite the same as far as availability between these 2 brokerages. I have done some due diligence analysis of funds in this category, and I maintain a M* Portfolio Watchlist of funds that I am most interested in monitoring, but as I said above, the OP has to apply his own personal due diligence criteria, IF he has any interest in this category.
For full disclosure, I have invested in this category off and on for the last several years--SPFYX and SAMBX are 2 funds I have held in the past, before 2021. In 2021 I have owned several BL/FR funds including the following: AFRAX, EIFAX, MWFLX, FFRHX, and PRFRX, but currently I only own 1 fund from this category. At Schwab, their 2 BL/FR funds they recommend are FRFZX and SAMBX. The "hottest" and highest performing BL/FR fund YTD is OOSAX, likely a favorite for bond traders, but it has a somewhat checkered past and the fund investing strategy was changed significantly in 2020.
Because investors differ so much from each other in their investing style and due diligence approach, I am very reluctant to do much more than "suggest" this might be a category the OP "might" want to consider, and if interested he can do his own extensive due diligence. Good luck!

I've owned MCSMX for about 2 years and this is probably a good time to buy. I'm considering adding if it falls a but further. I'm a big believer in EM overall and this is another part of that market that is really not covered by many analysts and there few investment options as well. For those reasons and the fact I like the Matthews Asia products make it a great speculation vehicle!

Obviously a typo.
If this board were typical of the broader population, a defined contribution pension would be adequate. Lots of well informed and smart cookies here. However, John Q. Public, on a wider scale, is quite lax at planning. Most can’t plan 6-months ahead - let alone 30-50 years out. So they are left struggling in their senior years on SS and maybe a part time job.
One feature of well run and well funded DB pensions is the almost unlimited time horizon they have to invest over. Allows for greater risk/reward over time. Individuals can’t hope to match that. Our lifetimes are too short.

I have been using AAII off and on for a number of years mostly because they bring a different perspective to stock and fund analysis as opposed to M* and a host of buy-side analysts. I do not use their 'Shadow Stock' portfolio because it consists of too many stocks I know very little about and don't have the time to dig in to even though they claim to have good success with it. They also feature a number of different stock screening methods following the likes of Buffett, Lynch, etc. which are fun to play around with. I'm not impressed enough to shell out $2500 however.

However, if you are a conservative investor looking for a low risk floating rate fund you may want to check out MWFRX/MWFLX. It's standard deviation is 6.2%, according to M*, and during the market crash in March 2020 it lost "only" 8.35%, whereas RSFLX lost 14%.
Here is what dtconroe said about the fund in January 2020:
"The Bank Loan/Floating rate bond oef, that I would most likely invest in, is MWFRX/MWFLX. It is from a stable of bond oefs, offered by Met West, and it has an established history of being managed very conservatively, at least "conservative" for a sector HY bond category."
Since we are talking about HY bond funds, and the OP said to "Keep it coming", may I suggest also checking out OSTIX, a short term HY fund that according to M* is "[...] a unique high-yield offering with a strong risk-adjusted return profile, particularly over the longer term." It also rates the fund's risk as "low".
While its YTD total return is a respectable 5.14%, its 3, 5, 10 and 15 year returns range consistently between 5 and 6%. The fund's average effective duration is currently 2.28, and the standard deviation 5.74%.
OSTIX's consistent performance over the past 15 years recommends it as a possible long term holding. Thought it deserves to be mentioned.
Good luck,
Fred

One interesting ETF is XSOE Wisdom tree "ex-state owned industries" that focuses on companies not contaminated by state control, figuring they will preform better.

Let's say you have two CEOs in China. One runs a company that is state controlled and has a long-standing relationship with the government, which understands exactly how the company operates. Now let's say the other is the CEO of an upstart extremely popular tech company that has largely been ignored by the government for several years. The latter tech CEO has become extremely rich, powerful and influential in China's politics. Which company do you think the Chinese government will regulate more going forward so that its operations radically change?

https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/915802/000139834421020090/fp0069682_497.htm
497 1 fp0069682_497.htm
FINANCIAL INVESTORS TRUST: GRANDEUR PEAK FUNDS
Grandeur Peak Global Contrarian Fund
Grandeur Peak Global Micro Cap Fund
Grandeur Peak Global Opportunities Fund
Grandeur Peak Global Stalwarts Fund
(the “Funds”)
SUPPLEMENT DATED OCTOBER 19, 2021 TO THE SUMMARY PROSPECTUS AND
PROSPECTUS DATED AUGUST 31, 2021, AS SUBSEQUENTLY AMENDED
On October 19, 2021, Robert T. Gardiner announced future plans to change his role at Grandeur Peak Global Advisors, LLC (the “Adviser”) in connection with an extended sabbatical commencing on approximately July 1, 2022 (the “Effective Date”).
During the sabbatical, Mr. Gardiner intends to continue to serve as Chairman and member of the Board of Managers of the Adviser but, for a period of approximately three years following the Effective Date, he will no longer serve in a guardian portfolio management role for these Funds. Therefore, all references to Mr. Gardiner in the Summary Prospectuses and Prospectus will be deleted as of that date.
INVESTORS SHOULD RETAIN THIS SUPPLEMENT FOR FUTURE REFERENCE

I'm looking in the usual place for the TRP estimated distributions. No show so far. This week they usually publish. I also noted that by the end of November they usually have a closer estimate to the real numbers.
I used to be in BRUFX and never found any estimations, even when I called. I sold the fund a few years ago, mostly because of the estimated distributions being a state secret.
Dave

TRP is up now.
Waiting on Parnassus next -- they tend to do distributions early in mid-Nov.

@Derf: Yes, indeed. I organized pickets one year and carried my 2-year-old daughter on the line another. We had a number of strikes.
It's worth saying that before MI became a "right-to-work" state, the consequences for striking illegally (i.e., against a public employer) were not strictly enforced by the Employment Relations Commission or the courts for the period of time when the parties were still at the table negotiating. Nowadays, I could well imagine a different application of the law given the party in power and the polarization of the electorate. Indiana and Wisconsin, which also were strong union states, saw public employee bargaining rights and protections severely curtailed in the last 10-12 years. An effort to recall Scott Walker in WI failed and the residents of IN did nothing when Mitch Daniels, by executive order, terminated public employee rights to bargain. There has been a failure, maybe even an apathy, to prevent the erosion of the hard-won rights of labor, even though it was obvious what was happening. Michael Moore has some valuable insights on this lamentable process. I believe it was he who pointed out that the failure of all and sundry to stand up to Reagan's firing of the air-traffic controllers set the tone for the all-out attack on labor and union members we have witnessed in the past 40 years.
The Lutheran pastor Martin Niemöller's 1946 confessional poem regarding German apathy in the face of the Nazis, contains this verse:
Then they came for the trade unionists
And I did not speak out
Because I was not a trade unionist

I'm looking in the usual place for the TRP estimated distributions. No show so far. This week they usually publish. I also noted that by the end of November they usually have a closer estimate to the real numbers.
I used to be in BRUFX and never found any estimations, even when I called. I sold the fund a few years ago, mostly because of the estimated distributions being a state secret.
Dave

I use to be a fan of MWTRX, but stopped owning it a couple of years ago--glad I did after seeing its abysmal 2021 performance. I am not a fan of Intermediate Core/Core Plus funds which have struggled overall in 2021. If I was only interested in a well known and established Intermediate Core/Core Plus fund, to replace MWTRX, I would tend to lean toward DODIX. If you are looking for a lower risk and safer fund, then PTRIX, is a logical choice. Overall, sticking in this category, I personally like ANBEX. I will just add that I don't like PIMIX as a possible replacement for MWTRX--I consider PIMIX as a previously great fund, built on its performance shortly after the 2007/2008 financial crash, but it has ballooned into an AUM bloated fund, that now has to dabble in more risky assets to try and produce its income. Just recently PIMCO introduced PEGIX, a cousin of PIMIX in the multisector category, run by some of the same good PIMIX managers, and PEGIX is a very attractive newcomer, with great promise. I personally am focusing on shorter duration funds, that should do better in an inflationary market, and it is hard to find those in the Intermediate Core/Core Plus category.

Here's an NPR piece about how Ford raising his workers' wages helped to create the middle class. It concludes with the statement:

[A] century after Henry Ford started paying $5 a day, it's not at all clear that today's employers and workers can reach a similar bargain and reboot a 21st century version of the working middle class.

https://www.npr.org/2014/01/27/267145552/the-middle-class-took-off-100-years-ago-thanks-to-henry-ford
Just maybe it can happen.
This will benefit not only workers now but when they retire. The Social Security Primary Insurance Amount (what you'd get if you retired at your Full Retirement Age) is based on your past earnings, adjusted to the year you can first retire (minus 2). That adjustment is determined not by inflation, but rather by the rise in average wages.
So as the quality of life for workers rises over time (the so called "American Dream"), so does the value of one's SS benefits.
https://www.ssa.gov/oact/cola/awifactors.html
I'm cautiously optimistic about consumer discretionary. Not the Tiffany's, but the Disney's. Sure, costs at places like Disneyland will rise, but as in Ford's time maybe now many people will be able to afford that vacation or that night out at Applebee's that they've been putting off. And not just because of the pandemic.

@bee
Agree. One should/may choose over many years to continue to adjust an equity portfolio, as industries and offerings change; to match what one and others "use/want/need".
These methods are part of our continued/current exposure to healthcare as with FSMEX and other broad healthcare; as well as technology areas.
Excuse the serious drift of this thread.............
Catch