To Hank, thanks for clarifying my in-kind transfer question. While I may still invest in some of TRP's better (open) funds, it will be simpler to consolidate within one brokerage. While not suggesting any (stress) equivalency with your situation, I experienced two examples of where persistence paid off in the face of front line customer service ignorance/poor training. I was given a penalty/interest bill for something that was not clearly covered in the regs. I appealed and paid what I believed was the correct (i.e. much lower) amount. Then, despite hours and hours on the phone, customer service stood firm until . . . I escalated to a manager and pointed out that I had remedied my situation months before and had already proved it, she immediately did a u-turn and I was in the clear. Prior to speaking with the manager, customer service seemed either not to understand the regs and/or perhaps were poorly trained. The second example was with my phone carrier which changed its terms to make its service much more expensive. I called and informed them that I would have to terminate my service. I mentioned that I had been a faithful customer for 10 years and that to replace me will cost them more than keeping me. At first, the CS person balked. Ten minutes later, she called back and informed me that they had reinstated my account for 3 months of service at no charge. Hang in there!!

“Is anyone out there looking around and deciding to bail or to substantially reduce their risk exposure?”
In short - Not here.
I agree things look bubbllish. But how you react depends on your initial positioning, as well as how diversified you are (plus lots of other factors). I try to look at “worst likely downside” for things I own. If I’m comfortable with that, than fine.
Probably more troubling than that initial downside, would be the persistency or length of the downtrend. A 7% yearly loss for 5 years would hurt more than a one year loss of 20% followed by some up years.
Was glad to get a second chance to add a bit to my mining fund at Invesco this week. NAV fell back down to where it was 3-4 months ago. I did bail from PRAFX couple weeks ago (and it’s continued rising). Shifted that to a good global infrastructure fund. But that’s related to my outlook on the two sectors rather than a fear of markets in general.
-
FWIW - Watching the charts … energy & broad based commodities look high, Value looks decent - but a lot of “hot” money’s been moving in this year. I wouldn’t add to it if already exposed. . Small caps have been bid up by the fanatics at Robinhood. EM is probably good longer term but may go down before up. Some observers I watch like EM bonds better than equities. I think the dollar will weaken. But I’ve been mostly wrong on that for years.
At this point it’s largely about gaming the central banks (and Fed) and anticipating how long they might allow a steep market slide to persist. My firm belief is they will continue to flood markets with easy money if necessary to keep the ship upright. (That doesn’t mean we can’t see a 20+% selloff in some equity markets nearer term. )

We just completed a transfer-in-kind from TRP to Fidelity for our Roth IRAs. There were about a dozen separate accounts because TRP created an account for each mutual fund, for some odd reason. We were not charged any fees, and the funds showed up in our Fidelity account in about two days. No shares were sold. We initiated the transfer through the Fidelity website and it was very easy using their on-line forms. The only hassle was having to enter and double-check each account number.
We also rolled over our 401K accounts from old old employer about the same time. That was much more involved because the accounts were invested in proprietary funds with Prudential. We had to sell all of the shares in both accounts and get them to mail checks to Fidelity using overnight service. That process took 3-4 days and we lost some money due to market fluctuations but I’m glad to have it over with. Now all of our investments are with Fidelity, making them either to track and manage. It will really help when we have to start making required minimum distributions in a few years.

I just revisited Grantham's January 5 article. His best guess at that time:

My best guess as to the longest this bubble might survive is the late spring or early summer, coinciding with the broad rollout of the COVID vaccine. At that moment, the most pressing issue facing the world economy will have been solved. Market participants will breathe a sigh of relief, look around, and immediately realize that the economy is still in poor shape, stimulus will shortly be cut back with the end of the COVID crisis, and valuations are absurd. “Buy the rumor, sell the news.”

According to Grantham, it's time to look around (and bail).
So, I'm looking around. The economy is in much better shape than I expected it to be at mid-year and its potential appears brighter than I expected. The Fed and other central banks are continuing to be supportive. And, there is momentum behind an infrastructure bill that has the potential to provide substantial long needed investment in the backbone of the country. Are valuations really likely to collapse in the near future based on valuations being "high"?
One of today's headlines:
Haters everywhere in stock market after S&P 500's big first half
A few brief excerpts from that Bloomberg article:

...the S&P 500’s 14 per cent rally (is) putting it on course for its second-best January through June period since 1998.
In the 27 years when gains in equities were this strong through the first six months, three-quarters of the time stocks continued to march higher by December.
...pushing against the wall of worries are the growing numbers of retail traders who bought the dip during the pandemic bear market and have since become the staunchest allies of this bull market.
The trade-off households face between equities and other asset classes favors equities through year-end given anemic money market and credit yields

I plan to continue harvesting year-to-date gains to restrict my risk exposure.....if the market continues to offer them (that process has provided a substantial boost to my "rainy day" cash on hand so far this year). But no significant other trimming is in the offing....
Is anyone looking around and deciding to bail or to substantially reduce their risk exposure?

We’ve had our accounts with TRP for more than 25 years. We decided to move everything to Fidelity for simplicity and because their customer service is much better. Every time I call TRP I get put on lengthy holds. I like their funds but I can still own them through Fidelity with better service and options.

Same here. Somehow TRP customer support has falling behind other large brokerages and the pandemic does not help. They need to hire more people and upgrade their hardware and bandwidth in order to stay competitive in this business.
Fidelity provides the best balance of what we need online or speaking with a live agent. My asset transfer experience from TRP to Fidelity was done electronically and took 2 weeks for in-kinds transfer.

Wow! I just transferred in-kind our entire Roth IRAs for my wife and I. Hope we don’t encounter similar problems. So far it seems to be going smoothly but we didn’t buy or sell any funds. All were direct transfers in kind.
We’ve had our accounts with TRP for more than 25 years. We decided to move everything to Fidelity for simplicity and because their customer service is much better. Every time I call TRP I get put on lengthy holds. I like their funds but I can still own them through Fidelity with better service and options.

Just keeping an eye on the evolution of the tug-of-war between fossil fuels and renewable energy. Fossil fuels are having a better year so far (at least judging by my investments). The continuation of the multi-decade transition towards renewable energy appears critical and clear. But, it doesn't appear to me the time for fossil fuel investments has fully passed (I still own gas powered cars and a house heated with natural gas). Anyway....

“Supply will likely remain tight for the next two or three years as the industry makes up for the lack of new supply investments in 2020 and catches up with robust demand growth,” said Whistler.

https://bnnbloomberg.ca/there-isn-t-enough-natural-gas-to-calm-down-a-global-price-rally-1.1621711

The largest single holding (1/6 of the portfolio) is T. Rowe Price Dynamic Global Bond (RPEIX / RPIEX). That's where the magic may be be coming from.
A simple 18/82 blend of VTSAX and RPIEX produces a portfolio with
- lower standard deviation (3.84% vs 5.06%),
- higher Sharpe ratio (1.18 vs. 0.81),
- double the Sortino ratio (2.51 vs 1.26),
- max drawdown 60% less (1.74% vs. 4.68%),
- virtually identical correlation with the US equity market (0.66 vs. 0.67)
and an annualized return ½% better: 6.09% vs 5.50%
See Portfolio Visualizer comparison.
So far, I haven't been able to come close to this performance when substituting a different bond fund. There are a variety of other factors to consider. Rotation to value could account for some recent underperformance by the growth leaning TMSRX. The somewhat higher volatility (compared with my custom portfolio) could account for its relative underperformance in 2018 (a down year for the fund and my portfolio) and its relative outperformance in 2019 and 2020 (up years).
Just quick observations. I haven't looked into RPIEX yet, or taken more than a cursory look at the Portfolio Visualizer data.

I figured since Giroux has touted the utilities sector as purchases for PRWCX , TRP could give him a separate utilities fund. Give him two assistant portfolio managers, put some of his utility picks from PRWCX in the new fund, and he could spend about 15 minutes a day running the fund! There probably wouldn't be many asset constraints. TRP had talked about Giroux running a 40/60 type balanced fund a few years ago, but it's never been launched.

More interesting, I think when examining a fund like this one is how well it held up during past periods of market stress and how well it recovered after them.

Or - See how it holds up against your own other investments during times of stress. I track a lot of funds for informational purposes. But IMHO nothing compares to owning a small bit of a fund for a few months or years to see how it fits in with your other investments. Suspect that for some TMSRX serves a purpose (primarily moderating volatility / downside risk). For others not. Not everyone invests the same way.
Yes - I’ve also gotten the sense TRP is trying to market this as a substitute for a bond fund. At least in the very early going that was the “sell”. And I’d agree with most here that’s not how they really intend the fund to act or what investors should expect.
This isn’t something TRP has a lot of experience with. I’m curious why they even went with it knowing the challenges? Suspect market forces are “a funny thing” if you’re a big player like TRP. (I’ve owned the fund almost since inception.)

Interesting take on the drop in value of Bitcoin / Crypto - currencies :

Not much moves cryptocurrency markets like Elon Musk tweets -- except, perhaps, the idea of another crackdown in China, the world’s second-largest economy. From a trading ban on domestic exchanges to squeezes on power-consuming digital currency miners, Chinese regulators have tried to tamp down risks related to the stratospheric rise of Bitcoin and its peers for years. Yet a recent flurry of official reminders has traders nervous about more possibly to come as President Xi Jinping seeks to reduce financial risk in the economy and meet the country’s ambitious goals for combating climate change.

how-china-rivals-elon-musk-in-rattling-crypto-markets

Hey Lewis. You wonder. Reminds me of Robert Kessler recent talk on wealth track. Cash is NOT trash. I remember seeing him maybe 40 years ago on a TV investment show stating to buy 30 year zeros. That's when I was a young buck watching TV after working at the local Texaco.
So who knows like I said prior, I have no idea if the fool is the person in or out of the market at this time. I'm certain there's a fool on one side of that equation though
I'm thinking there is no way fed can pull back on the reins... market would go splat
Best regards
Baseball Fan

Some quotes from GMO's Peter Chappinelli:

Many have wondered aloud whether GMO is not giving enough credit to some of these high growth new-business-model “disruptors.” First, we have all sorts of models that take current optimistic growth forecasts into account. Many are deserving of their current high multiples --- we absolutely concede that somewhere in the Global Growth basket sits “the next Amazon.” Unfortunately, they’re ALL being priced that way, and that is a bridge too far.
We also remind ourselves that during the month of May, the S&P 500’s real earnings yield (the inverse of P/E minus inflation) dipped into negative territory, the lowest in 40 years. Even at the height of tech bubble mania this scary event did not occur.
Combine that sober statistic with the negative real yields being offered by sovereign bonds, and you may come to see why we are loathe to recommend a traditional 60/40 mix. There will come a day when global equities and government bonds are fairly valued and should deliver a “normal” real rate of return. Today, however, is not that day.

On an every-day experience level we just came back from Safeway having purchased a favorite flavor of Hagen-Daz ice cream. I thought that the cartons looked a bit smaller than before. Sure enough, down from 1 pint (16 oz) to 14 oz. We have no idea what the price was before, but even if it hasn't increased at all, we just saw a 10% price increase.
I've been occasionally commenting on this sort of thing here on MFO for at least a year now, only to be reassured that the government statistics haven't picked up any major price increases in food, other than the usual variations due to supply issues.
You can say whatever you want to, but I loudly call BS on the government figures.

Old_Joe : I think you had a price increase of 12.5 % , without paying more !
Enjoy the treat, Derf

The price increase due to shrinkage was 14.29% (1/7).
You are getting 7/8 as much for the same price. So you have to pay 8/7 as much to get the same amount. (If the size had shrunk by half, so that you were getting half a much for your dollar, I think people would agree that the price had doubled.)
Alternatively: For price $P, you were getting 16 oz, and you're now getting 14 oz.
Old price per oz = $P/16. New price per oz = $P/14.
New price/old price = ($P/14) / ($P/16) = (1/14) / (1/16) = 16/14 = 8/7 = 1 + 1/7.
This shrinkage occurred a dozen years ago. It's not government figures one might call BS. :-)
https://freakonomics.com/2009/03/12/the-pint-size-recession/

You are in the same situation we were a number years ago. We were mostly lucky that the market stayed most flat during the transfer process. We had to reinvest quickly to maintain the same % allocation. It is your call when to make the rollover. If there is sizable $, I would ask the administrator if partial rollover is allowed.

Our 401K is currently invested in proprietary funds with Prudential. So, we can't do an in-kind transfer of funds. In my experience from previous rollovers, it takes at least 7-10 days for the money to show up in my IRA. In theory, we could get lucky and the markets could drop during that time lag, but it's never worked out that way in various rollovers I've done over the years.

My wife and I are trying to rollover the funds in our workplace 401Ks since we both retired several years ago. We are trying to consolidate all of our accounts at Fidelity, where we both have IRAs. The problem is that we have to liquidate or sell all of our 401K funds and then wait in limbo for the checks to arrive at Fidelity to reinvest. We would prefer to keep our funds invested. Every time I have rolled over funds in the past, I’ve come out for worse. That is, the markets rose during the time period while I was waiting for the rollover check to arrive and be available to reinvest.
In these days of instant electronic transactions, it’s ridiculous that rollovers can’t be handled instantly or at least within the same day. I’ve seen too many instances over the years when the markets make huge shifts in a few days. Why should investors have to wait in limbo? We could lose thousands of dollars waiting for a check to arrive.

At the request of a Reader, I expanded upon an article looking at the "Best Moderate Mixed-Asset Funds" to look at all Mixed Asset Funds by Lipper Category.
Risk, Annualized Return, Risk Adjusted Return, Consistent Return, Capital Preservation, and Tax Efficiency Ratings over the past seven years are used to select the "Best" Funds. I limited the initial search to no-load funds open to new investors with fees below 1.5%, minimum life of seven years, fund family ratings of average or better, and with at least $100M in assets. To refine the list, I limited the funds to those available at Charles Schwab. The "Best Funds" is a list of 35 funds in 10 different Lipper Categories.
https://seekingalpha.com/article/4435746-the-best-mixed-asset-funds
I learn a lot from comments and often find new "Best Funds" from Readers. Please feel free to offer your suggestions.

Surprise! Surprise! I am now informed by this brilliant piece of writing that a person’s public persona is often more admirable than their not-so-public side. I had no idea!
@MJG - I don’t get it. On one hand you submit a post trivializing the ebb and flow of financial information and opinion (noise) - something most of us visit mfo to partake of. You call this “nothing.” Than you turn around and submit in the “Other Investing” category this trivial solicitous piece about Bill & Melinda’s marriage ending after 27 years, (longer than my own lasted) and Warren Buffet having experienced family problems.
So … this completely off-topic deviation into the personal lives of well known financial heavy-weights is supposed to be somehow of importance to us as an investing community? But the trends in interest rates, inflation, equity valuations or central bank policies are of no consequence?
Have a nice day. (and I agree with @Derf.)

All the daily humdrum is simply noise. Rather then helping to make a wise investment decision it simply adds to the confusion by providing a plethora of information, some wrong, some right, that makes the investment decision more likely wrong. The solution is simple enough. Avoid that info.

--- All the daily humdrum is simply noise. Does one need to establish a different time frame, other than daily? Would a different time period be more beneficial? How does one learn, without sorting the noise?
--- some wrong, some right. With the understanding that one must have
at least a self-proven base of critical thinking skills to determine what may be wrong or right. Again. Learning curve, from exposure for comparison.
--- Avoid that info. Hmmm..... Could be a moment of: "Dad, why is there thunder after lightning?" "Oh, that is just the way things happen." Versus, an explanation of the event. With the exception(s) of the full "doomsday" scenarios (which most here would likely agree is "noise"), you didn't offer any personal examples of what you consider to be noise; and whether there are many times trinkets of useful knowledge imbedded within. If I didn't pay attention over the many years; I would never have learned about what is likely noise, versus viable information; how to sort the wheat from the chaff, as to who/what is credible and not just speaking/writing hot air. I don't know how one is to learn, without having exposure to "humdrum" to establish a baseline of value.

Women earn more in the marketplace over men. Why that unexpected outcome? They are not slaves to the daily news! They are not motivated by all the unnecessary activity to act unwisely. Surely doing nothing can not be the proper action. But it is. Winning in the investment world is to ignore the excitement. Just do nothing. That simple strategy will win in the long haul in most all instances. Of course, exceptions exist. That’s what makes the marketplace work, it seems as if luck is a more dominant factor than skill.

--- Dang !!! I suppose I could do "bold highlight" on the whole write; but that would serve no purpose. Not being formally trained in this topic area, I"m only able to offer personal observations; as is the case for 99.9% of us. From age 3 to age 30 appears to be a time frame to discover a fully formed thinking human. Whatever the developmental stage at age 30 may likely be the baseline until the end. Whatever social exposures (wounds and victories) and formal education, or not; have greatly shaped the individual at this point.
But wait, there's more.
What about the left brain, right brain theories; and what motivates one's thinking process? Is this function only from body chemistry, or is this part of one's DNA string?
The possibilities are endless. One may consider then, that a successful male investor over enough time may be as good as a woman investor; but that they don't know they are functioning from their "feminine" side of prescience and intuition. So be it !
From the movie, "August Rush".
The music is all around us, all you have to do is listen.
Regards,
Catch