Yup, fascinating, and typical American industrial history.
I think I have met, at my in-laws' house (and their funerals probably), more than one Wallace Barnes, each of course successively descended from the original ancestor.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wallace_Barnes
My kids had part of their college educations paid for from sales of B over the years.

150 years ago, the park system in our local town was bestowed to the city and its residence by the wealthy industrialists whose success was due in large part to its local workforce.
https://connecticuthistory.org/mr-mrs-rockwells-park/

Small world.
I'm originally from Central CT and lived near Bristol.

It seems so much good could come from all of this excess wealth, yet if such good exists, it appears under reported.
A little off topic from this thread, but on the topic of what to do with excess wealth...
150 years ago, the park system in our local town was bestowed to the city and its residence by the wealthy industrialists whose success was due in large part to its local workforce.
https://connecticuthistory.org/mr-mrs-rockwells-park/
I'm sure this happened throughout the country at the time.
A generation later the factory work went overseas, the three family homes that once housed factory workers now are filled with section 8 housing recipients.Those less fortunate dwell in these same parks.
We really have lost our way.

@JonGaltIII : "Separate note: when evaluating many "top performing" SC funds, the mean reversion 10+ years ''
Would you care to comment more on that statement. Are you talking from the high point to mean or low point to mean ? Also, does this statement work for growth as well as value ?
Thanks for your time , Derf

I own WAMCX and MSSMX ... the latter can be much more volatile and has had a tough year. I wasn't aware of CSMVX but @gk3105gklm keeps mentioning interesting funds to me. To your question... it depends on if you can stomach the volatility in SC for the increase in returns over the SPY. It probably wouldn't be a "main" component but I understood your question to be ... any percentage. Yes would be my answer. A smaller percentage. Separate note: when evaluating many "top performing" SC funds, the mean reversion 10+ years

+1 @Crash. The "Best-laid plans" phrase comes to mind when I hear an idea that has to extend for many years of due diligence to be successful. I know I don't have that mental stamina.

@MikeM -
Personally I don’t care for online editions of various publications like Barron’s or the WP. Not sure why - but they seem to be laid out more like a website - “links on top of links.” In addition, I had a bad experience many years ago getting one publisher to stop charging my card after I cancelled the subscription..
Amazon pioneered the Kindle reader(s) and sells subscriptions to most anything, although tracking them down on Amazon’s site is sometimes difficult. These Kindle subscriptions read more like a regular newspaper or magazine (front page to end). Essentially, you keep “turning” pages. In addition, there’s an easy to pull down index accessible from anywhere you might be.
Prices for subscriptions are often a bit higher, One nice feature is you can go to your Amazon account and cancel anytime. And they refund the remaining balance same day. One drawback, I suppose, is the Kindle publications don’t update throughout the day. OK with me. And some readers complain about missing charts - particularly with IBD. No - I’m not a Kindle or Amazon salesman! Just trying to be helpful. The type of subscription format is really a matter of user preference.
Devices? The Kindle app is supported by virtually any device. I have the app installed on my ipad. Works fine. Still - being the “finicky” type, I feel I get a superior reading experience from my dedicated (Amazon) Fire 8-9” tablet. The refurbished ones are cheap and quite nice - like new.
-
Since they’re a bit hard to track down on Amazon, here are direct links to a few financial publications available in Kindle format.
WSJ
Financial Times
Barron’s
IBD
The Economist

Some of these deals that I have seen are for 1-2 years! If find those (they flash for a while periodically), then may be get a new subscription in the name of a family member and cancel the current one.

The ICI has a somewhat provincial perspective when it comes to fund history. Though its fund timeline does start with Adriaan van Ketwich's 1774 pooled investment vehicle the Eendragt Maakt Magt ("unity creates strength") trust, the ICI can't seem to acknowledge that this was a CEF. Rather, it gives the 1868 creation of the Foreign and Colonial Government Trust as the precursor to the US fund model.
https://www.icifactbook.org/21_fb_app_b.html
While this was the first fund in an Anglo-Saxon country, the Dutch fund came nearly a century earlier.
K. Geert Rouwenhorst (Yale School of Management), The Origin of Mutual Funds
In footnote 6, that paper adds that there was an even earlier (1773) plan for a similar vehicle, but it's not known whether it was ever actually launched.
The ICI timeline goes on to give 1924 as the date of the first mutual funds in Boston. The Massachusetts Investors Trust was started in 1924. It seems that whatever other 1924 funds the ICI has in mind didn't survive, as the Putnam Investors Fund (1925) is often given as the second oldest surviving "modern" fund.
Whether CEFs ever "caught on" is somewhat subjective, but consider:

A "veritable epidemic of investment trusts afflicted the Nation" before the Stock Market Crash of 1929. By 1924, over $27 million had been invested in investment companies, up from less than $15 million in the prior year. In 1925, investment trusts holdings double to $150 million. Some 140 investment companies were formed between 1921 and 1926. A new investment company was being created every other day in 1928. "[B]y 1929 they were being created at the rate of almost one a day." The assets of investment companies rose to over $1 billion in 1928. Another $2.1 billion was added in 1929. Between those two years, the number of investment company shareholders increased from 55,000 to over 500,000.
Almost all of these enterprises were "closed-end" investment companies that invested in securities rather than producing a product or service.

Copious footnotes omitted. Jerry W. Markham, Mutual Fund Scandals - Comparative Analysis of the Role of Corporate Governance in the Regulation of Collective Investments, Hastings Business Law Journal, Volume 3, Number 1 (Fall 2006).
Similarly, the late Harold Bierman Jr, Distinguished Professor Emeritus of Management and Finance at Cornell, wrote that "By 1929, investment trusts were very popular with investors. These trusts were the 1929 version of closed-end mutual funds."
https://eh.net/encyclopedia/the-1929-stock-market-crash/

YBB just turned me on to this link. And I just looked. IRL.
Many years ago, pre-divorce, I was in this CEF and got out with a small profit. The discount is not as high as it might be, compared to the past year's average statistic, but the distribution rate is quite good. The Republic of Ireland remains in the EU. Cross-border crap with Northern Ireland is still being worked out, post-Brexit. I dunno if they'll ever find an answer to THAT one, apart from recognizing all the time and effort that's gone into regularizing relations between Stormont and Dublin. They both continue, of course, to use separate currencies.
https://www.cefconnect.com/fund/IRL

For sure, msf is our main go-to guy. His contributions over the years have been enormous. My thanks also!

Thank you again. Similar forecast on future return have been posted but Schwab provided detail analysis that others lack. What can income investors do with negative returns in coming years?
By the way, I congratulate you to find time to take more college class? Your knowledge on these financial matter really shows that contributed to the depth of discussion on this board. Thank you.

Do you have to sell the Roth because your Vanguard holdings are unavailable at TRP?
If so, you may want to consider exchanging your Vanguard holdings for ones which are available at TRP prior to the transfer.
This should enable in-kind transfers of your Roth assets from Vanguard to TRP.
With in-kind transfers, your Roth will not be "out of the market" which may or may not be beneficial.
I transferred my Roth IRA from Fidelity to Vanguard a few years ago.
Prior to the transfer, I exchanged my Fidelity holdings to enable in-kind transfers.
This worked out well for me but "your mileage may vary" as some like to say.

"Our forecast is to have a negative return on US stocks over the next seven years. I strongly believe that will be accurate."
GMO's largest equity fund, GQETX, and probably has more than 50% of all their equity AUM.
https://www.gmo.com/globalassets/documents---manually-loaded/documents/fact-sheets/quality-fund
https://www.gmo.com/americas/investment-capabilities/mutual-funds/

I took it early.
My wife was lucky enough to get a job in her field in another city. But two of my three careers would not have easily translated to the environment in our new town. Not to mention that the job market was rougher then.
I decided I would rather have the time to myself than work a crappy job that would pay me little more that my SS check, just because.
My back isn't what it used to be. I get cluster headaches at certain times of some years. I wouldn't hire me.
I'll be out in the garden. I think we had about twelve different species of butterflies this year. And then there are the native bees and wasps. I might start a photo log for next year.
I guess you could say that there is something like a strategy. I take some of the dividends from some of the funds in my taxable account. And I leave my IRA account alone. Haven't had to worry about tapping my wife's accounts.

I think you guys understood when I said “I have followed Grantham's various public pronouncements about equity returns for the past 10 years,” I only meant I noted his pronouncements (and prepared a watch list to validate his pronouncements.) Luckily, I never invested in line with his pronouncements.
Finally, I respect money managers’ skills, even those whose ways of marketing I do not agree with, Grantham included. One just hopes one never comes across a Madoff or his variants.
Good luck to all of us in our effort to fine tune our BS radar.
Wishing you all healthy investing!

I have seen several posters thru the years providing detailed spread sheets comparing taking at 62 and investing vs wait and collect the benefit at a later date. Most "take it now" analysis forgets to reduce the investment portfolio by the tax owed on the SS benefit since most retirees collect other sources of income. They also fail to factor in the tax owed from the SS income + cap gains from the investment each year. If one waits to receive benefits, the base benefit will increase risk free.... this year at a 8% + 5.9% COLA with zero taxes owed obviously. The higher the base, the higher the COLA increase for the rest of your life. Possibility exists for significant COLA next few years. The other side of the coin is longevity... which IMO trumps everything. Most of my good friends died suddenly.

I pity the poor soul who has followed Grantham’s advice over the past 10 years or so.

FWIW,
I and everybody I personally know invest based on our view of the future - I.e., personal predictions - and within the limitations life imposes on us. Agree that prediction in this context is not the same as certainty of outcome.
I have followed Grantham's various public pronouncements about equity returns for the past 10 years. A few years after one such pronouncements, his firm's then deputy CIO (Ben Inker?) was asked in a Morningstar interview why their funds did not reflect those pronouncements and he came clean saying that they never got around to investing in line with those pronouncements. Lucky for their fund shareholders.
The linked article in the OP includes the following: "Our forecast is to have a negative return on US stocks over the next seven years. I strongly believe that will be accurate." [Bold added] He may turn out to be correct about negative returns for SPY or VTI from now until October 2028 (7 years?) but not IMO because of currently known facts. I am invested in SPY and am not reducing it based on the quoted statements but I will understand if somebody at MFO wants to reduce or even liquidate their SPY or other US equity holdings based on those statements.
Nobody should take the above personally. No offense is intended.

@sma3 - Thanks for posting the Bloomberg interview. Had forgotten I’d viewed it recently.
Yeah - Hussman’s a perma-bear. Somehow think Grantham’s a little sharper. GMO must have some good supporting talent & research capability. A bit more here than just some old man crying wolf. Hope he’s wrong. I’d like everybody to be rich, and making money has been easy for many years now.
March 2009 is when things started to move. Dow has climbed from around 6,000 than to over 36,000 of recent. Just 2 or 3 brief hiccups along the way. The thing some of us who survived ‘07-‘09 might think about is whether at 15 years additional age we’d be willing / able to ride out a storm like that again - possibly something worse. Not a prediction. Just something I thought might add some balance to the general euphorism here.
@Old_Joe / A nickel for your subscription is in the mail. Am confident I’ll get my money’s worth.