Hi @Simon
While the tilt of Mr. Snowball's monthly commentary (over the years) and Mr. Bolin's current articles may be directed more towards capital preservation; one has the full discussion forum available here to seek any and all investment opinions with posting the proper question(s) to discover appropriate and proper suggestions that you may find worthy.
While some of the old farts who regularly post here may be 20+ years your age; do not assume they are not growth investors; or that their investment path has not included growth in their portfolio to arrive at it's current value.
The Start New Discussion icon and selecting either Fund Discussions or Other Investing is the start point to begin your query, of your topic.
I also suggest reviewing the Discussion board at least on a weekly basis to discover if a post is related to your inclination and investing style.
Regards,
Catch

“Optimism is as American as hot dogs and apple pie. Too much optimism, though, is about as good for you as eating a few dozen hot dogs and slices of pie. In a recent survey of 750 U.S. individual investors, Natixis Investment Managers found these people expect to earn 17.3% this year, after inflation. That might not sound like pie in the sky. The S&P 500 returned 18.4% last year, counting dividends, and is up 15.9% so far in 2021. Recent past returns always mold future expectations.
“Over the long run, however, the people in the Natixis survey anticipate earning an average of 17.5% annually, after inflation—even higher than for this year. That’s up from the 10.9% long-term return they expected in 2019, the previous round of the survey. It’s also more than twice the return on U.S. stocks since 1926, which has averaged 7.1% annually after inflation. It’s more than triple their 5.3% return over the same period after both inflation and taxes, according to Morningstar … The biggest winner of all over the 10 years through the end of May was Tesla Inc., up an average of 59.1% annually …”
Full story appears in The Wall Street Journal July 3, 2021

Hi guys, I copied and pasted Old_Skeet's Market Briefing for July 2, 2021 from the Armchairinvesting board with his permission. Thought some of you would enjoy the read. It read as follows:
This briefing is for the week ending July 2, 2021.
The Index Review
For the week the major market indices finished up for the week. The Dow Jones Industrial Average was up +1.02%. The S&P 500 Stock Index gained +1.67%, while the Nasdaq Composite climbed +1.94%. The Russell 2000 Small Cap Index gained +1.23%. The three best performing sectors for the week were technology +3.24%, consumer discretionary +2.07% and health care +1.99%. The 10-year US Treasury bond yield closed at 1.44% while the dividend yield on the S&P 500 Index was listed at 1.33%. Year-to-date the widely followed S&P 500 Index has gained +15.86%.
Articles Investment Interest
Morningstar: Q2 2021 Market Performance in 7 Charts
https://www.morningstar.com/articles/1045559/q2-2021-market-performance-in-7-charts
If the link fails, simply Google the article title and read through Google. Often times this works.
How investors should reload stock gun for second half of 2021
https://video.foxbusiness.com/v/6261767651001/
Global Regulators Try Again to Eliminate Money-Market Hazards
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2021-06-30/global-regulators-try-again-to-eliminate-money-market-hazards
Old_Skeet's Third Quarter Investment Focus
For the third quarter my investment focus centers in the following areas of my portfolio as I look for stocks to continue an upward path while most bonds, I think, will trend lower by year end. On the equity side I plan to buy around the edges in my growth & income area and especially in funds which pay qualified dividends plus some buys in my commodity strategy fund. In my income sleeve I plan to increase my muni income fund's weighting from about a 6% to an 8% weighting over time. Should the S&P 500 Index pullback into correction territory I most likely will open a special investment position (spiff) to play the swing. Funding for these buys will come from the portfolio's income generation which has averaged about 4.4%, per year, over the past three years along with a cash draw if needed. From my perspective, cash is the best "at will" call option there is. I use the below resource links to help me determine the better times to buy on the equity side of my portfolio as I like to add to existing positions, that are under step buy construction, during market dips and pullbacks.
Short Volume S&P 500 Index ... http://nakedshortreport.com/company/SPY
Breadth Reading ... http://indexindicators.com/charts/sp500-vs-sp500-stocks-above-50d-sma-params-3y-x-x-x/
S&P 500 Chart, Elder Impulse System ... http://stockcharts.com/h-sc/ui?s=SPY&p=D&b=5&g=0&id=p20881173280
Thanks for stopping by and reading ... and, I wish all "Good Investing."
Old_Skeet

Very interesting Bee!
As Malcom Forbes said years ago - “There’s more money to be made selling it than buying it”! It being mutual funds, in the case.

Re “the impending launch of a whole new series of funds from T. Rowe Price”

I have been very impressed with TROW as a stock holding...anyone own TROW?

https://morningstar.com/stocks/xnas/trow/quote
Quick comparison with PRWCX, TRRBX, & TROW over the life of TRRBX.
TROW Comparison

Enjoy Western New York! We, too lived in Rochester for five years well before the wineries became so popular.
A friend and I spent several hours in Konstantine Frank's basement "sampling" his wine with him in the 80's.
https://www.drfrankwines.com/
Frank singlehandedly developed the vinifera grapes in the area in the 1950's. When he started it was all Concord grapes grown for Welch's grape Jelly. I think his vineyard still has the best Chardonnays and Rieslings
A great read for the story of the vineyards there
"Summer in a glass" By Evan Dawson.
https://www.amazon.com/Summer-Glass-Coming-Winemaking-Finger/dp/1402797109

@davidsnowball and Chip, I hope you enjoy your Finger Lakes wine tasting experience. Living outside of Rochester, we have had many years of summer cottage rentals on the lakes and always toured the wineries. There are so many wineries now (100+) that I couldn't pick a favorite. Between Seneca and Cayuga is usually where we concentrate. That area has a great selection, and of course at the bottom of Cayuga is Ithaca, a wonderful little town with that college (Cornell) atmosphere you may appreciate.
edit: David, if you find a place that makes it, try the ice wine. really good... but expensive. They keep the grapes on the vine in the winter to freeze which I guess brings more flavor and sugar. Expensive process but a great final product.

For the life of me. I don’t understand the appeal of donuts in this day & age. What’s the nutritional value of a donut? What’s the calorie count? I think I can honestly say I haven’t eaten one in at least 25 years. There’s a legion of serious health complications associated with being seriously overweight.
No thanks.

How in the world can anyone short anything in this market ...
You might as well ask how in the world anyone can underweight anything in this market. Easy, because some securities perform better than others. Shorting just takes underweighting a step further. Do you remember 130/30 funds?

The rationale for the concept had a degree of logic. A 130/30 fund combines a gross long position of 130 per cent with a short position of 30 per cent, meaning it still has the same 100 per cent net exposure to the market as a traditional long-only fund.
However, long-only managers can only underweight, not short, stocks they do not like. This leaves little room to generate outperformance from these stocks, particularly if they are say, only 0.1 per cent of the index.

https://www.ft.com/content/fdbf6284-b724-11e2-841e-00144feabdc0
It doesn't matter whether the shorted stocks go up or down. What matters is that they don't do as well as the stocks purchased with the proceeds from shorting them.
That article goes on to note:

"The problem came when many asset managers discovered they did not have the necessary skills to short,” says Amin Rajan, chief executive of Create Research, a consultancy. “It’s a very specialised skill. It’s more a psychological than academic discipline.”

If one uses shorting to time the market rather than to magnify the impact of stock picking skills, it's easy to get burned:

While some mainstream fund managers periodically have shorted stocks - Mario Gabelli of the Gabelli funds and CGM's Kenneth Heebner come to mind - most have shied away from it.
The late 1990s story of manager Jim Crabbe and his Crabbe-Huson Special fund illustrates why. Crabbe-Huson Special (eventually sold to Liberty Funds Distributors, now part of FleetBoston Financial) adopted shorting provisions in the mid-1990s to guard against a downturn. But Crabbe got bearish early, going short on technology stocks just as they rocketed to new heights. From 1995 through 1999, the fund lost more than 20 percent, while the Standard & Poor's 500 index was up roughly 200 percent; years of gains in the fund were wiped out.

https://www.baltimoresun.com/news/bs-xpm-2002-10-13-0210120267-story.html

I had no idea.
The Washington Post
Personal Finance
Your retirement with Michelle Singletary.
A reality TV couple wanted to ‘bless’ Black people suffering financially. The FTC says it was a pyramid scheme.
A Texas couple once featured on an OWN network reality show “Family or Fiance,” promised people they could get a financial blessing of 800 percent in as little as a week.
It turns out they were running a pyramid scheme that targeted and then bilked Black people affected by the pandemic, according to two lawsuits filed against the Black couple.
In a joint complaint filed on June 16, the Federal Trade Commission and the state of Arkansas accused Marlon and LaShonda Moore of operating a pyramid scheme program called “Blessings In No Time,” or BINT. The Texas attorney general also has filed a lawsuit against the couple for scamming needy Black families.
For an upfront fee of $1,400 or $1,425, participants were told they could receive a return of $11,200 or $11,400 respectively — eight times their contribution to a “blessing loom.”
“In general, these schemes falsely promise a big return — or as BINT termed it, being ‘blessed out’ — following a modest initial payment,” the FTC and Arkansas complaint said. “In reality, however, very few consumers make any money. And the few consumers that do make money sometimes lose their profits by reinvesting in the scheme.”
Marlon Moore is known as DJ ASAP, which he says in marketing materials stands for “Always Serve A Purpose.” Participants said in interviews that the couple often chastised people for not recruiting enough. And in one call, they tried to discredit my reporting and warnings about pyramids schemes, one participant said.
Attempts to contact the Moores were unsuccessful.
Coretta Vanterpool of Florida said she lost close to $13,000. In total, Vanterpool said she and the family members she recruited were out $30,000. Others paid as much as $62,700 to participate in BINT, according to the FTC.
Vanterpool said she was told that an initial contribution of $1,425 would net her a “blessing” of $11,400 in seven to 10 days. To make even more money, she paid for multiple places on the blessing loom board. She was going to use the money to help pay down some of her $50,000 in student loans.
“They just made it sound so real, so nice,” said Vanterpool, whose nephew recruited her. “Since he received his first payment, he thought it was legit. A lot of people came in because they had been furloughed or they had lost their jobs. Their companies had closed. A couple of ladies were about to lose their homes. I met one lady through the group who was trying to get the money so she could pay for chemotherapy.”
The type of fraudulent schemes alleged in the complaint go by various names — sou-sou, gifting circle, money board, or blessing loom. The illegal operations borrow the principles of legitimate sou-sous, informal savings clubs that have cultural roots in West Africa, the Caribbean and other immigrant communities.
In the real-deal saving circles, groups are small. People pool their money, taking turns receiving a payout. But they don’t get back more money than they put into the pot. It’s more like a forced savings program with accountability partners.
The hallmark of an unlawful pyramid scheme hinges on two key elements: You are asked to pay an upfront entry fee with the expectation of a significant payout, and you have to recruit others to do the same.
Typically, people are relentlessly pushed to recruit. There are steps or levels of the circle or octagon that lead to a center, which is when you are supposed to get your payout. The core of the con is that you’ll get a substantial “gift” relative to what you put up from people joining after you. The whole enterprise eventually collapses, and the last folks coming in — the wide base of the pyramid — lose their money.
Here’s why these scams work. Some participants get the promised payout. They in turn share testimonies of their substantial gains. But after several rounds of this fraudulent scheme, the money dries up because not enough new people are recruited who are willing to make upfront payments.
I’ve been reporting the rise of illegal pyramid schemes since last summer as desperate folks started looking for quick ways to make money. Promoters often target certain communities in which they share an affinity. Black promoters, for example, have been exploiting the disenfranchisement that many African Americans are feeling, especially those who have lost jobs because of the coronavirus. The operators get recruits to drag in family and friends, fellow church members and co-workers.
The message of building Black wealth that the Moores espoused resonated with people, the lawsuits said.
“People were really vulnerable, just ready for any kind of hope,” one California woman who was involved in BINT said in an interview. “They were talking about building a Black community and building generational wealth. Those are the catchphrases now. They were just kind of selling people a dream.”
I asked Vanterpool how she felt recruiting family members who lost money.
“It hurts because I brought someone else into a situation that they didn’t have to be in when they were already suffering,” she said. “I’ve put in money that I really don’t have that I should have just used for what it was for and that was for my loans. Now I’m starting back at square one and hoping and praying that I’ll get this money back.”
Reader Question of the Week
If you have a personal finance or retirement question, send it to [email protected]. In the subject line put “Question of the Week.” Please note that questions may be edited for clarity.
Q: As a federal civil service employee, I heard that when I retire, I can’t specify which Thrift Savings Plan fund (e.g., C fund or G fund) I can withdraw from. It sounds like any amount I withdraw will be from all funds that I have invested in. Is this true?
A: For those not familiar with the federal government’s workplace retirement plan it’s called the Thrift Savings Plan or TSP, which is available to federal employees and members of the uniformed services, including the Ready Reserve.
TSP generally offers the same types of savings and tax benefits that many private corporations offer their employees under their 401(k) or similar plans.
If you have a TSP and will be tapping the funds, you should read “Withdrawing from Your TSP Account.”
You can leave your entire account balance in the TSP after you leave federal government service if the balance is $200 or more.
The options in the TSP include the following:
G Fund – Government Securities Investment Fund
F Fund - Fixed Income Index Investment Fund
C Fund - Common Stock Index Investment Fund
S Fund - Small cap stock Index investment fund
I Fund - International Stock Index Investment Fund
L (Lifecycle) Funds - A diversified mix of the five core funds (G, F, C, S, and I)
So, as to the question, can you withdraw from specific TSP funds? The answer is no. Distributions are taken proportionately from each fund.
When participants retire, they can specify whether they want to withdraw solely from their traditional (pre-tax) balance or from their Roth money. But, “the withdrawal will come from all of the funds,” said Kim Weaver, director of external affairs at the Federal Retirement Thrift Investment Board. “A participant cannot specify which fund she or he wants to withdraw from.”
Weaver said participants can rebalance their accounts with an interfund transfer if they want to, pre or post-withdrawal.
Two years ago, there were major changes to withdrawal options for TSP account holders. Here’s a Washington Post article that explained the changes:
Federal employees have more withdrawal choices for their retirement savings

@Jojo26

It may be wage-related for some, but how about those living paycheck to paycheck (or close to it), but they still have iPhones, iPads, go out to eat and drink regularly, and basically just spend frivolously 100% of the time

Are you with every American living paycheck to paycheck 100% of the time? Or are you just monitoring all of them from your Orwellian control tower at Fox News? Also, do you think it's possible for any young American to hold down a job and perhaps juggle their family responsibilities today without a cellphone?
Regarding who are the primary owners of iPhones, I would suggest reading this: https://nber.org/system/files/working_papers/w24771/w24771.pdf

The brand most predictive of top income in 1992 is Grey Poupon Dijon mustard. By 2004,the brand most indicative of the rich is Land O’Lakes butter, followed by Kikkoman soy sauce. By the end of the sample, ownership of Apple products (iPhone and iPad) tops the list. Knowing whether someone owns an iPad in 2016 allows us to guess correctly whether the person is in the top or bottom income quartile 69 percent of the time. Across all years in our data, no individual brand is as predictive of being high-income as owning an Apple iPhone in 2016.

While I know some poor people probably do buy an iPhone--for the same reason poor people used to want high-end Nike and Addidas sneakers--to pretend to be rich, most people buying these phones are middle-class or wealthy.

I’ll check those “default” settings msf mentions above. Learned to monitor the “reinvest dividends” setting after a small dividend was transferred into my cash account instead of being reinvested as desired. (It’s amazing that could even happen with a fund held only 3 days!) :)
After 30 years trading directly with fund houses, the Fido site seems much more elaborate & daunting.
Enjoying the challenge. Continue to assess how to incorporate new options / limitations into my approach. New to ETFs. Like what I see. As Sven points out, they can be traded w/o restriction.

Curious, which "analysts" do you follow, and do you find them reputable?

@Mav123: A few, but the ones I pay most attention to are some guys who call themselves Hedgeye. They're data dependent and have a straightforward system. Their details are on a subscription basis, which was a bargain a few years ago and is less of a bargain now ... but all it takes to justify the fee is a couple of trades. I run only a small part of the portfolio based on their analysis, but also like to consider it in more of a macro sense.
Their projections are good a lot of the time, but of course nobody's perfect.
They're fee-only for the detailed advisory service; they don't run your money. (I assume that's where the "reputable" question is coming from?)

Sounds like a good question for @AndyJ
My comment (which Andy cited) was based on background info from my general reading (WSJ, Barron’s mostly) and from investing in and watching some funds in the commodities / NR sectors. Also, it’s pretty general knowledge that NYMEX “bottomed out” at - (negative ) $30 per barrel 15-16 months ago and has now climbed to around $75 - a gain of over $100 on the futures markets in little over one year. If that’s not being “bid-up” I don’t know what is. Lumber doubled or tripled in price over the past year (but is now beginning to pull back). Copper’s been hot. Corn has sky-rocketed in the past year.
Some one-year returns:
PRAFX +44% (I recently sold)
BRCAX +46% (still own)
PRNEX +48% (don’t own)
I don’t know much about growth funds. I’ve owned some DODBX for many years. That house is value focused. After many disappointing years value has turned up, and DODBX is reflective of that. One (but not the only) factor in value’s turn-around is that many bank stocks occupy that area. Banks do fine when interest rates are rising, and so with the expectation of higher rates, banks have turned up.
Hope this helps.
Analysts? I don’t trust any of them. But I enjoy Randall Forsyth’s column is Barron’s the most. This week he’s looking at bonds, which he considers at present valuations to represent “return free risk”. (take with grain of salt)
I also subscribe to Bill Fleckenstein’s daily “Market Rap“. But I don’t consider him an analysist. He’s more of a market “pundit” and a “contrarian” if ever there was one. His customarily bearish views on equities, central bankers, and the investing herd serve to keep me “sober” and perhaps prevent me from taking on too much market risk.

Schwab's platform fee discsloure to 403(b) plans includes:

Transaction-Fee Funds (“Fee Funds”)
As set forth in the Commissions and Transaction Fees section of the Charles Schwab Pricing Guide for Individual Investors, Schwab charges clients a transaction fee for the purchase or sale of certain funds that are not included in the Schwab Mutual Fund OneSource® program. Some Fee Funds pay Schwab an annual fee usually equal to $20, but sometimes as high as $30, per customer position, typically subject to a quarterly minimum of $7,500 per fund. Rather than paying a per-customer account fee, some Fee Funds choose instead to pay Schwab an asset-based annual fee of up to 0.25% of the average assets held at Schwab.
When adding a new fund to Schwab’s platform, Fee Funds also pay Schwab a one-time establishment fee, which Schwab may waive. The amount of this fee generally does not exceed $10,000 for the first fund added and $2,000 for each new fund after that. To the extent any of these fees are paid out of fund assets, fees are included in the fund’s OER and are indirectly borne by the fund’s shareholders

https://www.schwab.com/public/file/P-5358937
Fidelity used to have a similar disclosure, but about 4 years ago switched to an "infrastructure" fee that obfuscates the cost. It recently won an appellate ruling that this was legal.
In any case, as @Observant1 stated, the $75 fee is applied to funds that won't pay for shelf space. In addition to D&C and Vanguard funds, Fidelity also charges $75 for some Schwab funds, including SNXFX and SWTSX.

“Now if Vanguard and Fidelity would expand access for their funds, I wouldn't need 4 or 5 brokerage accounts!”
Interesting comment. I’m spread out across 1 brokerage now + 3 fund companies. In retrospect it was a mistake to let most of that pile up at TRP. For many years I held a kind of reverence for them. I know some disagree, but spreading it out a bit seems like a good idea. I’ve toyed with getting something going at Schwab. I’ll wait and see.

I don't think TRP cares where you buy their funds. They saw their AUM stalling out and allowed Vanguard, Schwab and Fidelity to sell their funds etf. Apparently E-Trade and TD Ameritrade weren't generating enough sales, so they opened fund access to the Big 3. Now if Vanguard and Fidelity would expand access for their funds, I wouldn't need 4 or 5 brokerage accounts !

Thanks @carew388. There were brief times in my discussions when I thought I detected some animosity (maybe cultural clash is a better term) between the 2 firms. T Rowe wanted to keep me as much in the “fog” as to what had happened. Fido, on the other hand, seemed more open about what they knew. I’d say Fido’s mailing me copies of the bounced checks (unsolicited) sorta confirms that.

”If I recall correctly, TRP is a publicly traded company. It could be that large investors are pressuring the company to cut costs, leading to the decline in customer service. We invested directly with TRP for 25+ years, and their service has definitely declined in recent years.”

I’ve often wondered how that public ownership might play out - if at all. Assumed it would be on the fund management end. Likely it’s playing out instead on the client service end. Hard to think of any company where the client-customer end of the business hasn’t deteriorated. Humans are expensive to maintain due to their propensity to eat, along with the need for shelter, medical care, etc. A lot cheaper to have computers run the show - even perhaps at the cost of losing some business.

Is anyone looking around and deciding to bail or to substantially reduce their risk exposure?
***********************************
No. In fact I just bought into a Chilean electricity company. All the numbers and Analyst projections look good for that stock. SOMEONE'S been shorting the little booger ever since I bought-in, though. ORK! It's a tiny position. "Play money."
(hank:) "I agree things look bubbllish. But how you react depends on your initial positioning, as well as how diversified you are..."
I'm standing pat. And sitting pretty. I've not put anything into the IRA in the past few years. No earned income. So, letting it ride. The only activity is in my PTIAX. It grows, then after a while there's always a reason to "steal" from that fund, so it must grow back over time. But hey, it's just money. I'm as diversified as I want to be. My allocations are always a work in progress. For example, I'd prefer to own a bit more bond-ballast, but the Fund Managers have me in a bit (just a bit) more CASH than I'd prefer. My investing horizon extends beyond my own earthly existence. If someone has a magic pill to offer me, in order to get wifey to understand that, I'm ready. :)

There were about a dozen separate accounts because TRP created an account for each mutual fund, for some odd reason.
My understanding (read: no citations, I could be in mistaken) is that until sometime in the 80s(?), each mutual fund investment at any company was treated as a separate account with a separate account number. Similar to buying stock directly from a corporation. Two different companies, two different accounts.
I don't know about other companies, but in the 90s(?) Fidelity grouped these separate accounts together under a single "T account" number. It reported the accounts together on a single statement under a single T account number. But on the 1099 each fund still appeared as a separate account with its own divs and cap gains. (Contrast that with a brokerage statement where there's a combined set of figures for all the holdings.)
I looked at an old 90s statement and an old 90s 1099 to confirm this.
You can still find traces of this at Fidelity. On this Fidelity page describing direct deposits, click on the "Mutual Fund Account" tab in the middle of the page, and then look for "T account number".
https://www.fidelity.com/tax-information/direct-deposit
Whether the accounts were technically separate or not mattered. Until a few years ago, one could perform one 60 day transfer per IRA account each year. (Current law is one 60 day transfer, period, each year.) If your IRA accounts were separate, you could do a 60 day rollover of one, then later decide to do a 60 day rollover on another.

If I recall correctly, TRP is a publicly traded company. It could be that large investors are pressuring the company to cut costs, leading to the decline in customer service. We invested directly with TRP for 25+ years, and their service has definitely declined in recent years.

Not to beat a dead horse to death here ….
But, does anyone know (or have an opinion) on whether a company like TRP really cares whether or not you own funds directly from them? It’s occurred to me that those AUM figures take into account assets in the funds they run - not necessarily under their roof.
Quite possibly they view the client interface, particularly live phone reps, as an Achilles Heel they can do without. I recall much better personal service 10-20 years ago. Easier to get through to a supervisor as well. Obviously, the phone reps at TRP are (often) poorly prepared for the variety of concerns they need to field. Hard to fault the employee if not qualified for the job or given the tools / authority they need.