Yes this would be a total cluster if trump includes alibaba and tencent as most EM funds hold these stocks in large quantities. It has driven performance for many funds over the past few years. let's hope not. Still it will be up to Biden on whether to enforce it and I bet he doesn't. China would retaliate over this

@bee
As I recall, Accipiter from way back, built much of the program functions here. Tickers with 3 or 4 symbols could be linked and name shown when hovering over the symbol, as well as not remaining in black text.
I asked about this several years ago, when this feature disappeared. I do believe that some functions of the original program were no longer supported from required/necessary changes at the server.
But, David and/or chip will be able to provide information for this.
Take care,
Catch

near the 30% low end of the 30-50% category
"near" is good. It allows for fuzziness and the possibility of bouncing around the figure in a way that "on" 30% and "holding" 30% don't.
holds 30% equity
sitting on the lowest edge of 30-50% category
The iShares AOK website shows the benchmark index is S&P Target Risk Conservative Index. This Index construction shows a 30% equity allocation (2020 prospectus p. S-2)
Quoting from that section of the prospectus:

As of July 31, 2020, the Underlying Index included a fixed allocation of 30% of its assets in Underlying Funds that invest primarily in equity securities and 70% of its assets in Underlying Funds that invest primarily in bonds. As of July 31, 2020, the Fund invested approximately 32.27% of its assets in Underlying Funds that invest primarily in equity securities, 66.98% of its assets in Underlying Funds that invest primarily in bonds and the remainder of its assets in Underlying Funds that invest primarily in money market instruments.

Actually that isn't quite correct with respect to the index holdings. The Underlying Index did not have a fixed allocation of 30% of its assets in ... equity securities as of July 31, 2020
As with anything else, if you want an authoritative definition, go to the source. According to S&P, the index had a 30% allocation in equities as of April 30, 2020. It rebalances only semiannually, at the end of April and at the end of October.
Equities tend to outperform bonds. So between semi-annual rebalancing dates, statistically equities will be above the target allocation (and bonds below) on more dates than the opposite. Of course that wasn't true during the GFC, hence the low equity numbers for 2009-2010. Since then (a lot more years), equities have outperformed.
Regarding the annual statements - it would help if you would provide links to validate your figures. As it turns out, your "equity" figures in the early years are off because you didn't count real estate securities. For example, in the 2009 annual statement, instead of looking at the Management's Discussions section (p. 3) you could look at the actual details of the holdings in the Schedule of Investments for the fund (p. 16).
That shows iShares Cohen & Steers Realty Major Index Fund grouped under Domestic Equity (17.86%). Add in the International Equity holdings (5.81%), and one gets 24% equity. Still a far cry from 30%, but enough to illustrate why all figures are subject to verification.
(M* also considers real estate to be equity; it says that VGSIX is virtually 100% U.S. equity.)
Look at 2018. While M* may say that only 28% of the fund was in equity that year, the SEC filings tell a different story. The 2018 Annual Report says that equities amounted to 30% of the fund as of July 31. And the Semiannual Report says that equities came to 32% of the fund.
As I've explained above, the first year or so of this fund are outliers because bonds outperformed the equity market. (Also the fund was tinkering with its allocations as evidenced by the fact that it invested in real estate back then.) Likewise, you have implicitly labeled these years as outliers. Whether it's because they're not "near" 30% equity or they're not "on" the 30% edge, they're outside of your normal historical range.
Finally, as to the point that funds that bop around a boundary between categories could show up in a different category from what you're expecting: sure, I explained that in my first response. That goes for global vs. domestic, value vs. blend, etc. One can even use this to one's advantage as I illustrated in another thread. In looking for value funds near the value/blend boundary, one might search for value funds with a current blend portfolio style and for blend funds with a current value portfolio style. This doesn't catch all funds, but it's a good start.

Cheap money and those investing on margin..... I don't have any data about how much hot money is in the market place; using margin or otherwise.

"Margin debt—the amount of money borrowed against stockholdings to play the market—hit a record $722 billion in November, its first record high in two years. That sounds scary. But margin debt often hits record highs as the stock market rises, making it a notoriously bad timing tool. What’s more, margin debt as a percentage of the overall value of the market is now near a 15-year low, which suggests that investors aren’t overextended just yet. What has changed is the pace at which investors are adding to their debt. It’s up about 50% from its spring low, and that kind of surge has happened only six times since 1960."
From a Barron's article last week.
I was able to read this without a subscription. Link

Ya, wifey likes to remind me that we should give away money to family members in foreign countries after the New Year, every year, because..... it makes her feel good to throw away money? I dunno. Sometimes we must negotiate and compromise with each other: "No." ... Or: "That makes no sense. It would make sense to do "X" THIS way, instead, though. Let's do it this way, instead."
After a good Market year, we began last year to give ourselves permission to take and use SOME of our profits. Growing up not just dirt-poor, but shit-poor, leaves its mark on everyone who suffers through such an upbringing. So, between us, priorities are quite different. The truism that "spenders and savers attract each other" is certainly true in our case. And though we have a nest egg, "wealthy" could not ever be applied to ourselves.
But as for me: when you're finally where you want to be, the other stuff isn't such a big deal. So, our portfolio will never light the world on fire, either. But we DO use January on the calendar to "take some off the top" and use it for what we've decided upon. But after a bad market-year, we certainly do not need to take that stuff "off the top." That would be like shooting yourself in the foot. I suppose after all these years, I should be accustomed to wifey's inability to plan ahead. Her limit on that score seems to be about 3 weeks. And then things might change entirely. Good thing I'm the "money man," between us. :)

The fact that AOK has dipped as low as 27% does not mean that historically its equity allocation has been under 30%. You seem to be conflating single moments in time with "historical" positions.
What does "historical" mean anyway? "the last 5 years" is a minority of the lifetime of this fund that's been around since 2008.
I have reclassified on my watch list as 15-30%.
It's currently at 31.75% equity (as of Dec 31), and rose as high as 32.5% equity as of July 31, according to its most recent annual statement.
There are always going to be problems running screens with "hard filters". I've posted on more than one occasion that IMHO it makes little sense to screen for funds that have never had a losing year. Which would you prefer: a fund that lost 0.1% in one year and made 10% or better in all its other years, or a fund that made 3% year in, year out? That's an example of a problem with any hard filter.
As far as AOK goes, according to Lipper there are only a total of 10 ETFs including both
"Mixed-Asset Target Allocation Moderate" and "Mixed-Asset Target Allocation Conservative" categories. So it's no big deal to watch all these funds.
http://www.funds.reuters.wallst.com/us/screener/screener.asp

The obvious problem being that there are funds that sit on 30% equity historically. Basic only allows a hard filter for either 30-50 or 15-30 screens. An investor searching for 15-30% equity may find a suitable fund sitting on the lowest edge of 30-50% category that gets screened out in basic. AOK is an example. In the last 5 years they dipped as low as 27% equity but classified today as 30-50% by M*. I have reclassified on my watch list as 15-30%. AOK is a good fund IMO. Seems to me this would affect the funds performance reputation as M* is quoted often. There is no perfect world, just worth noting. I am sure also applies to 50-70%. I will pay more attention going forward.

There's hysteresis built into the classification system. That is, if a fund has been holding 25% equity and moves to 35% equity, M* does not immediately change its category. It waits (three years or more) to see how permanent and how significant the change is.
https://www.morningstar.com/articles/306244/why-is-my-funds-style-box-different-from-its-categ
(This talks about style drift but it could just as easily been talking about a fund changing stock/bond allocations as changing large cap/small cap allocations.)
The point here is that one can't look at an average over time and determine how the fund is classified. The classification is "path dependent" - it depends on how it got there. A fund that hit 30% from 25% and stuck there would likely remain in its 15% to 30% category, while a fund that hit 30% from 35% and stuck there would likely remain in its 30% to 50% category.
If the fund is bouncing back and forth between a tad under and a tad over 30%, there would be no reason to change its category. Even if those oscillations miraculously averaged exactly 30% equity.

They introduced new Balanced Fund categories a few years ago. You can find the above under
Allocation Funds - 15 to 30% Equity
Allocation Funds - 30% to 50% Equity

For the past four years neither trust nor verify has worked very well. :(

Thanks for that, @msf. Will remember to check that source in the future.
Since last March we have really done no shopping at all personally, but rather relied on Instacart for delivery. We had never used a food delivery service before the current situation.
That has been an interesting experience. A size difference in a product that we have been buying for years might not have been obvious if we were personally shopping, but is very striking as we unpack items from a bag. Breads and various baked goods have been seemingly getting smaller with each delivery. Granted, our food shopping may not be reflective of the average American "shopping basket" used to "measure" inflation, but there is absolutely no way that food inflation in the stuff that we buy is not really rampant.
While price changes may not be immediately or glaringly obvious, the packaging sizes really have an immediate impact.

I noticed MEASX several years ago.
The fund performed exceedingly well within its category the first three full calendar years.
12-31-2016
3 Yr return: 10.9% (top 2% of category);
standard deviation of 8.91%
MEASX seems to be in a slump since 2017.
05-31-2020
3 Yr return: -13.8% (bottom percentile); 5 Yr return: -4.0% (bottom percentile);
standard deviation of 21.40%
Note: Morningstar moved MEASX from the 'Pacific/Asia ex-Japan Stock' category
to the 'Miscellaneous Region' category sometime after May 31, 2020.

SWAN might minimize its losses on its own but it’s not going to provide protection to existing positions like TAIL will.

True, perhaps, but in order to use TAIL as protection to your portfolio as a whole you would need to own a ton of it, and it simply is not a great long-term holding IMO. It has suffered a 14.27% drawdown and TAIL's webpage itself notes that "Cambria expects the fund to produce negative returns in the most years with rising markets or declining volatility." The only way I personally could see TAIL being a sensible choice is as part of a market-timing strategy, and that mostly doesn't work. For the core of my portfolio I'd much prefer to ride the market and limit losses with SWAN or even MNWAX.

You are confusing price momentum with growth. A value or blend stock can also beat the S&P 500’s returns. They can also have price momentum. Growth is about revenues, cash flow and earnings versus the benchmark and industry peers and it’s forward looking, not from five or ten years ago.

I have owned it since the Covid downturn. Although the yield is not as attractive now, I have no intention of selling, but will buy more if we have a dip. My only issue with it is that the bid/ask spread is usually larger than I like. Several years ago, I spoke to an advisor at Capital Wealth Planning in Naples, FL (the subadvisor of DIVO) about opening a separately managed account using this strategy. I hesitated to pull the trigger because it would entail buying many stocks at what was then an all-time high. I did some digging to look for an ETF or mutual fund that had the same strategy and discovered DIVO. I feel more comfortable owning this because I am in control of when to add and when to trim. And unlike the separately managed account where the distributions get paid more sporadically (per the advisor there), DIVOs dividends are paid regularly. A lot less complicated to own DIVO.

The other noteworthy AQR fund is Diversified Arbitrage (market neutral), ADANX, but the expense ratio keeps on rising; now at 2.32%. The rest of AQR funds are getting expensive to own. This fund, however, is leading two competitive funds in the same asset class:
AQR Diversified Arbitrage, ADANX YTD 25.5%
Arbitrage, ARBFX, 5.4%
Merger, MERFX, 5.0%
While the AQR funds are having high expense ratio, their performance in 2020 have not been consistently good versus their peers. The founder of AQR funds, Cliff Asness, a former hedge fund manager, lets his politics spill over his business in recent years. Wish he stay focus on the AQR funds and brings them to be more competitive in the mutual fund universe. Performance-wise, as note by AndyJ above, they are not consistently good.
Think I will stick with T. Rowe Price funds.

nah, I disagree, it doesn''t even out...I'd take my chances with a slowly rising sea way before I went into some rat hole crime infested city led by Marxists and politco cronies looking to suckle of the teet of other's savings and hard work. Criminals and punks wilding and looting...ya that's a good idea, let's defund the cops...
I'll be putting my house up for sale outside Chi town in the next two months after 25 years...sell into this epic bubble....property taxes are 5x as in home in Asheville, for 1/5 the land and 1/3 the home value...too many taxing districts, now local school looking for more, more , more thru tax referendum, putting out feelers. Good Luck, they are insane asking for more tax revenue when so many out of work etc. Selling more video gambling licenses, trying to build large casino, selling weed...needs the tax monies to keep the socialism going...as all the folks with means and companies leave...
So ya, I still wave old glory and believe in living right and being free.
Good Luck to all,
Baseball_Fan

Just noticed recently that AQR Long-Short and Market Neutral, about which much was typed here several years ago while they were soaring at a time not much else was doing anything, are now negative since inception (per M* growth of $10k charts).

I held FAIRX with 2 other funds (OAKBX,SGENX) for about 8-9 years from 2000 to 2010. I held FAIRX for about 8 years and OAKBX,SGENX about 9 years. It's part of my system of finding good risk/reward funds until they don't keep up and sell them.
Similar case to PIMIX, held it from 2011 to 01/2018 and since then maybe just a for a short trade but not for moths. PIMIX is a still a good fund but not the way I do it. See my bond thread(link)

The S&P 500 through the lens of Presidencies:
stock-market-by-president
If you need to spend your money within the next 3-5 years... keep it in cash (or ST Treasury Bonds).
@davidmoran, If you can avoid the powerful persuasions of fear and greed over the middle term (3 -10 years) by following rules...we all need personal investment rules...then equities over the long term looks promising.
The 10 year rolling average of an index such as the S&P 500 is pretty impressive.
In Percentage Change (last update 2016):

Source:
https://bespokepremium.com/think-big-blog/rolling-1-2-3-5-10-and-20-year-sp-500-performance/
In Percentage Returns (10 year rolling average):

There are two major takeaways from the chart below:
1. Historically, once the long-term mean has been breached on the up-side, annualized returns have remained elevated above the mean for an average of almost 18 years.
2. Historically, once the long-term mean has been breached on the down-side, annualized returns have remained subdued below the mean for an average of almost 10 years. This is significantly lower relative to the time-frame on above mean returns.

Source:
https://credentwealth.com/blog/10-year-annualized-rolling-returns