For those waiting on better valuations to buy Equities, at what point would you be a serious Buyer? Do you have a specific plan in place?
What about Bonds (yeah, what about Bonds) - are any type/class of bonds worth holding in 2022?
Current S&P 500 PE Ratio: 25.85
Mean: 15.96
Median: 14.88

If you are on the sidelines congrats. Don’t see much fear in this market just everyone wanting to buy the dips. A lot of complacency. I guess that is what the past twelve years have conditioned investors to do. Should we actually get something more than a garden variety correction ala late 2018 and February/March 2020 would use a Zweig momentum buy signal to get back in. Worked like a charm after those two brief sell offs as well as the longer bear of 2008.
As for bonds the scary consensus is buy floating rate/bank loan funds as they are the place to be during periods of rising short term rates. Can’t argue with that ( and I have an allocation there) other than it seems a bit too pat and overwhelmingly embraced. If you get a really bad bear market in stocks/junk bonds, the floating rate/bank loan category will not protect you,

Without drilling deeper for month end distribution dates, month end NAV movements are always tricky to make sense of for fixed income OEFs but I see across the board both high yield and floating rate / bank loan funds are down on Thursday. It has been a long time since I have seen that happen. I hope this is not the start of something.

@MikeM, I can not reconcile your first paragraph and against the paragraph from the Q4 letter I had quoted. I am not looking for any reply / response. We have different expectations. I see what I see and shared. I am not looking to convince anybody.
In case my prior posts on GP and other managers did not make it obvious, I hire active fund managers for their business. I am not concerned about short term results. Since you mentioned about YTD results, you can look up GUSYX - M* says 25 percentile performance. I mention GUSYX because it is easy to see in it the paragraph I quoted. GISYX happens to be 8 percentile.
Years ago, Fund X made a mistake and when some of us asked for more information, they were dismissive about it. I was a novice investor at that time but I did not like their business practice and withdrew my investment. Others while were irritated by the fund’s FU mentality, stuck around. I never looked back at Fund X Co. As I said, I am not pulling my investment from GP but i am not increasing my investment. If I am not able to increase my investment to 5-10% of my PV, I liquidate. I go up to 40% of my PV. Making a temporary exception for GP.

It will be nice to track this strategy as we hit draw downs in the upcoming weeks, months, years...

Developing a strategy for managing your transition from “Accumulation” to “Drawdown” is critical. It’s a huge shift in your investment strategy, and it’s not something you should approach without a plan. Today, we’ll revisit our original retirement drawdown strategy and analyze how it’s worked since our retirement in 2018.

revisiting-our-drawdown-strategy

Some institutions provide investment account 1099s slightly early, i.e. in the fourth week of January. Vanguard sent me email yesterday (Jan 26th) saying my 1099 was available online. Though Fidelity originally said that it would provide the 1099 for my taxable account on Jan 22nd, it now says that I should check back on Feb 12 for a new date.
Years ago institutions had to send all 1099s out by Jan 31. As investments and tax laws became more complicated, this led to an increasing number of corrected 1099s being generated. More taxpayers wound up needing to file amended returns. So some deadlines were extended to February 15. (See, e.g. Notice 2009-11 extending a 1099 deadline starting with TY 2008.)
Beating the deadline by a few days is not necessarily a good thing. Better to get it right the first time than to risk having to correct it later.
FWIW, each year several T Rowe Price funds delay reporting until Feb 15. These are its real estate funds and also its small cap value (PRSVX) fund. My wild guess on the latter is that it sometimes reports non-zero amounts of Section 1250 gain. For its other funds, TRP says "late January".
https://www.troweprice.com/personal-investing/resources/planning/tax/preparation/tax-mailing-schedule.html

@BaluBalu :
Of the (7) GP funds with records of 3 years as of semi annual report date Oct 31 2021,
five have returns that are fairly close. The other 2, GPEIX & GPIIX trail. Both of these two were their first launches.
The 5 year returns also echo the same, both trail.
But as anyone knows this could turn around !?
Enjoying the ride, Derf

I'll note here that several smart and wise folks on this forum have stated -- some funds work great until they don't. RLSFX is a good example that has stumbled badly out of the gates in 2022. I invested in BLNDX despite my "rule" (ha) of not investing in funds less than 3 years old. Not a disaster yet but I'm watching it.
It started faltering after I bought (ha)

BIVIX has done quite well for the 4 year period starting 201801 -- APR of 20.1 and MaxDD of 14.4. I picked 4 years because BIVIX is less than 5 years old.
Screening for funds with a 4 year performance period starting 201801, APR of at least 20 and a MaxDD of 15 did not yield any funds in the Alt category. The closest I saw was SAPEX which has an APR of 17.7, MaxDD=14.6
Some select life of fund stats vs. SP500
APR 19.7 vs. 18.3 (impressive!)
MaxDD 14.4 vs. 19.6 (again very impressive)
Ulcer Index of 5.3 vs. 4.5

@MikeM : I'm thinking I'm more like a deer caught in the headlights ! Recently made a buy & then a day later looking to sell something else, growth, but couldn't pull the trigger !! Probably should start nibbling ?!
Do you own GP Contrarian ?

Hi @Derf. No, I never saw a reason to own more than 1 GP fund since I think they are all pretty similar with small tweaks in style (something David concluded also in one of his commentaries). The Contrarian Fund may be different to that thought - contrarian to that thought so to speak :) , but a minimal # of funds has been my goal the last couple years.

I think Contrarian is different from the others. It is more of a small cap value fund with a lower PE. YTD, most of their funds are down a good bit, but Contrarian has performed differently, dropping much less. I would agree that the remainder of their funds perform similarly.

I can empathize. I was "hot" for PRWCX for many years. Finally I landed with an RIA who transferred 1 stock of TRAIX(instl version of PRWCX) to me! Yes I am a Giroux groupie!

@MikeM : I'm thinking I'm more like a deer caught in the headlights ! Recently made a buy & then a day later looking to sell something else, growth, but couldn't pull the trigger !! Probably should start nibbling ?!
Do you own GP Contrarian ?

Hi @Derf. No, I never saw a reason to own more than 1 GP fund since I think they are all pretty similar with small tweaks in style (something David concluded also in one of his commentaries). The Contrarian Fund may be different to that thought - contrarian to that thought so to speak :) , but a minimal # of funds has been my goal the last couple years.

BIVRX YTD +18% !!!! Is it open ?

I have considered investing in this fund, but the potential volatility concerns me. I believe there was a very large price drop last year in a short period of time. Any thoughts on it being a decent investment if I hold for 10+ Years?

Jason Zweig, WSJ:
"I don't know whether we're on the cusp of a cataclysmic decline, or whether this is one of the market's normal see-saw rides.
What I am sure of is that after two years of being cooped up at home with nothing to do but stare at market charts, a lot of my colleagues in the financial media are bored stiff.
So reporters and editors will seize every opportunity to turn market molehills into mountains, and to extrapolate every drop into a correction or bear market.
As the markets buck and heave over the next few days, I would advise you to keep in mind one of Benjamin Graham's most important messages from his book The Intelligent Investor:
Price fluctuations have only one significant meaning for the true investor. They provide him with an opportunity to buy wisely when prices fall sharply and to sell wisely when they advance a great deal."

My feeling pretty much echoes David's on this one and my own from before. If you already own Global Reach, you probably don't need this fund as its allocations to micro, small, mid and large cap stocks are pretty similar. It's possible the fund's individual country weightings may eventually differ dramatically from the other funds, but country allocation is an unproven skill set at the manager and by the time they do prove or fail to prove it, this fund will probably already be closed. Moreover, that skill set will be incorporated into other funds as Global Reach is the mother ship for all of them. The most interesting new fund Grandeur Peak has launched in recent years isn't this one to me. It's Global Contrarian.

+1
Actually my previous post pertained more to bear markets than run-of-the mill corrections. I’m not attuned to the finer points, except bears tend to last longer - usually measured in years. That’s why many keep the cash reserve.
If the early morning numbers hold up or get worse, we’d probably be in correction territory in most
markets. Calling it a bear would be premature.
Qtr 1 of 2020 was somewhat unique. Huge 15-25% selloff across many asset classes in 2 or 3 months. WTH that was, I’m not sure.

“I suppose there are some investors who can change up their strategy from bull markets to bear markets but I haven’t met too many who can do so consistently. I’m a much bigger fan of creating a portfolio that takes corrections and bear markets into account when you create your investment plan. You should strive to create a saving and investing process that is durable enough to handle both up and down markets."
It’s an unanswerable question. Corrections are about as unpredictable as the weather. And they can vary as much in intensity as well.
I doubt if there’s any one good way to prepare. Maybe you shouldn’t even try? Many here, wiser than me, keep several years’ cash reserve on the side so they don’t have to withdraw portfolio money during a correction. Personally, I’m conservatively enough invested and diversified enough that I can continue withdrawing $$ during a multi-year correction without doing a lot of damage. There’s a cost to that in that I can’t take as much risk and reap as bountiful a reward during the the good times.
How often to expect? Geez. I’d like them more often - maybe every year or two - because I think the severity would tend to be less than if we go 3, 4, 5 years without one. And, there’s a school of thought (ie Grantham) that we’re spoiling for much worse than a routine “correction.” I’m not endorsing Grantham - just tossing that out there for thought.

General human behavior is something that rarely changes over time.
Irrational investors have caused or exacerbated bubbles and crashes for hundreds of years and will continue to do so.

Sigh. I would not want to quip too subtly for the room, but veteran business writer Peter Coy's report in toto is interesting not only about FAA imputed pokiness (all the moreso given OJ's take) but also about gov stymying of its own agency as Kudlow brags of and takes such pride in.
Especially since DSP can indeed readily solve things:
“This is very, very easily solved technically,” said Theodore Rappaport, a developer of 5G technology who is a professor at New York University’s Tandon School of Engineering. “It’s frustrating as an engineer” to see the old technology still in use, he said. The F.A.A.’s argument is that it couldn’t issue a new standard for radar altimeters without knowing in detail the design of the 5G equipment. Etc.
Kudlow's comical college history was on point for anyone familiar with his years of divisive rightwing free-market blathering in economics and policy as Trump's NEC head, and before --- here crowing about beating the gov agency crucially charged w air safety. Seriously.
A commenter makes the point plainly but without any classmate jokes about a former Porsche-driving SDS leader who (sort of) reversed course in life:
... Ajit Pai [FCC], Larry Kudlow, and the rest of the clown car went to Washington to let industry, in this case the communications industry, do anything they pleased. Maybe that was based on their childlike faith that markets cure all ills and government can only do wrong. But the result was that administrative agencies whose job was nonprofit things like, you know, not crashing airplanes had no voice in the Trump government, and businesses such as telecom has no one watching who cared about consequences. The result was predictable. The wonder is that no one has died as a result. Yet.

"I grew up in the 50s and 60s. Both parents harbored vivid memories of the ‘29 stock market crash and Depression through which they lived. So stocks were somewhat of a dirty word among many (if not most) working class families in my childhood years. Few of ordinary means owned them."
@hank- Exactly the same here. Given that, it would seem reasonable to think that the market action in the 50s / 60s would not be comparable to the present time, when everybody and their brother, experienced or not, is trying to beat the market.

Based on the fund’s history going back to its inception the “reconstitution” formula works well more often than not. SCHD has exceeded my expectations and leads its segment. The upcoming changes may be for the best as they have been most years. Just my opinion.

However, I do see human irrationality playing a big part in the markets of recent years. That includes not only equities, but assets like real estate, bonds, crypto. And further, that uniquely human ingredient compounds the difficulty of determining where true value exists and where’s there’s mostly fluff.

This time is really NO different, but perhaps worse just as you pointed out. Now we are facing several challenges: geopolitical (Ukraine, Taiwan, and to a lesser extent N.Korea), high inflation globally, and pandemic-induced supply chain issues. Feel like we are revisiting the spring old 2020.