Crash,,,, check out the performance of PRPFX over all the trailing periods going back five years. Tell me,,, does that surprise you?

Be aware of MAGI phaseouts.
For some high income retirees, suggestion is to wait 3+ years for Roth Conversions.

I’ve been using Vanguard for my both my Brokerage and IRA accounts for over 10 years and have not had any issues. I do all my transactions online and have never needed to place a phone call to get something done. All my Buy/Sell transactions, money transfers to my bank, and IRA required distributions have been simple and without any issues. So I’m a happy customer.

I am considering doing Roth conversions over the next 4-8 years (from age 65-73).
With help from the standard deduction plus bonuses deductions ($2k + $6k) for tax filers over age 65 the 12% bracket has effectively just got wider:

the new $6,000 deduction is stacked on top of both the regular standard deduction — $15,750 for single filers or $31,500 for married couples filing jointly in 2025 — and the 65-plus addition. For instance, a 65-year-old single taxpayer who qualifies for the full $6,000 deduction would be able to deduct a total of $23,750 from these three tax breaks on their 2025 tax return. A qualifying 65-year-old couple could deduct up to $46,700.

source:
taxes/what-to-know-new-tax-law-2025
I am looking to fill the 12% Federal tax bracket ($48,475 for single filers for TY2025) with yearly Roth conversions over the next 4-8 years.
Anyone else see this as an opportune time to execute Roth conversions?
convert-a-traditional-ira-to-a-roth-in-retirement

The 1/5/99 event might want to come with an asterisk. Dinky linky.

In the two years leading up to March 24, 2000, the S&P 500 gained 38.1%.
The Dow hit its dot-com era peak in January 2000, but the Nasdaq and the S&P 500 didn’t top out until March. The S&P 500 hit an intraday high of 1,552.87 on March 24.
Over the next two years, the S&P 500 dropped 24.8%, but it held up relatively well compared to the 62.7% drop in the Nasdaq.
Following its March 2000 peak, the S&P 500 wouldn’t make new all-time highs again until 2007. However, it fared much better than the Nasdaq, which wouldn’t surpass its dot-com bubble peak until 2015.

One might wonder, what were the signals to sell in March 2000?

I’ve never invested in the S&P 500, although over the years some of my funds have held some S&P stocks. So the perceived valuation of the S&P is of little interest to me - although a lot of investors fixate on it. It is, however, of interest to me from the standpoint that if it were grossly overvalued (“nosebleed” territory) then it has the potential to crash and bring down the economy and / or a lot of non-S&P stocks along with it. So I don’t dismiss Barron’s or anyone else’s take on the S&P.
And I’m aware that in recent years there’s been more “empty” forecasts of gloom and doom for the S&P than there are likely to be empty beer cans outside a college frat party.
https://www.barrons.com/articles/trump-tariffs-inflation-economy-stock-market-risks-1a9aa88e?st=s8sZDa&reflink=desktopwebshare_permalink

The prevailing exuberance—and preponderance of nosebleed valuations—hasn’t been lost on the members of the Barron’s Roundtable

I support the idea that the SP500 would not perform as well in the next 10 years as it did in the last 10 years.
Unfortunately, valuations are not a good indicator of an accurate future performance or when markets will correct.
Many times the markets go down based on other unique situations.
2008-the MBS fiasco
2020-covid
2022-Fed rapid rate hike.
Prof Shiller created PE10(P/E over 10 years) which supposed to predict performance based on valuation better than PE
On 05/2012 (the link for this article doesn't work anymore)
Question: You have become famous for your cyclically adjusted 10-year price/earnings ratio. What do the latest numbers say about future stock market returns?
Shiller: we found a correlation between that ratio and the next 10 years' return.
If you plug in today's P/E of about 22, it would be predicting something like an annualized 4% return after inflation.
FD: reality, the SP500 made about 11% after inflation in the next 10 years (04/31/2012-04/31/2022). It was much better than countries with lower PE10 such as Emerging markets.

From the Roundtable article:
The prevailing exuberance—and preponderance of nosebleed valuations—hasn’t been lost on the members of the Barron’s Roundtable, most of whom expect the stock market to stall, or even sink, in the months ahead. Prices are too rich, they say. Tariffs will stoke inflation, and economic growth may look increasingly tepid.
********************
Sonal Desai:
At the start of the year, the dollar was probably at its second-strongest level in 40 or 50 years. Then, three developments took the air out of the rally: DeepSeek, a Chinese AI company, was reported to have much lower development costs than U.S. AI companies; the Germans stepped up their spending commitment on defense; and U.S. tariffs were announced. As a result, investors took profits in their dollar positions. Profit-taking accounts for the dollar’s decline.

Instead of the above thinking, a better way is to look at relativity and how to make money.

After the dollar’s steepest half-year drop in decades, investors see continued declines ahead.

The 24/7 media always love to make statements like this. Let's look deeper:
1) During 2020, the dollar fell more than in 2025.
2) The Dollar is still 45% ahead since 2014, including the last decline.
See the chart (https://schrts.co/BxMautbM)

Receding confidence in the dollar is driving investors to sell dollars and buy gold and other major currencies.

Gold usually goes up when the dollar declines; nothing new here.

The dollar is unlikely to lose its dominance quickly

I doubt the dollar will lose its dominance.
Is the euro going to take over? Europe has been in decline for at least 10-15 years.
China? Can anyone trust them?
No one else is big enough.
The dollar's decline means that international will do better.
Already in mid-February, the charts showed that VGK (Europe) + VXUS (international) are doing better. See the chart (https://schrts.co/egMBCBBW). All you had to do is buy more of what is doing better.
Bonds follow the same plan. See the chart (https://schrts.co/YvzfUvjq).
As a mainly bond trader, for the first time in my life I own a huge % in international bonds. My job is to invest based on current markets; I don't invest based on politics or narrative.
So, what to do next? Follow the markets, AKA current charts and prices.

@davidrmoran, I held JQUA in a roth at the inception of QLTY. I sold it roughly one and half years later and added the funds to CGDV. Why? It couldn't keep up with the others.
The total return of JQUA since QLTY began trading is 31.23%. Not a major difference from the other 3 (CGDV, TCAF, QLTY) but it was never my intent to keep them all.
Adding in JQUA here is the total return to date (7/11/2025) using the TCAF starting date.
CGDV 50.22%
TCAF 39.78%
SPY 40.68%
JQUA 35.59%
I will fool around with @Observant1 testfpl.io and see what I may be missing.

David,,,,I am only guessing but Detroit might have paid above market just to get anyone who would answer that phone call at 0700. I was hired after my sophomore year and that was only two years after the riots of 67. I earned that 37.50 !

At DavidrMoran. I gotta tell you that I earned every penny,,,, Detroit junior high schools in the early seventies were very interesting.

Sure; I taught English four years then, 9-12, at a rough Boston-area school though little like yours (Catholic prep but almost no admission standards), and was married as well to a public-schoolteacher (elem), and that is by some amount the highest per-diem I ever heard of for subbing. When I subbed local rich HS 20y ago the daily was only in the $40s iirc and I bet is typically below $200 now, not sure. Anyway.

I have written, every few months as necessary including within family since Bank of America has limits on electronic transfers, ancient Fidelity checks going back 15 or 20 years, dried and curled-up edges, without any problem whatsoever

From Professor Snowball's write on Matthews Asia and its returning CEO, MarK Headley:

Can Mr. Headley fix it? He thinks so. His simplest metric: if Matthews can reach around $12 billion AUM within three years, they’ve won.

I don't have 3 years to wait around for the Second Coming.
I especially appreciated Lynn Bolin's "Protecting Against Tariff-Induced Inflation."

The checks arrived today, 2 weeks after purportedly being shipped. Thanks all for the wise advice and support. I haven’t opened the parcel yet but there appear to be enough checks in it to last 25 years or longer.

@Vegomatic, do you have some link?
Most of Vanguard's equity ETFs have been passive and those do require daily disclosures. Why would that be an issue for indexed ETFs?
On the other hand, active equity ETFs are newer and daily disclosures had been a big issue. But after the SEC opened the floodgates a few years ago, , there are now nontransparent, semitransparent and transparent ETFs now.
Vanguard is starting to move into active ETFs.

for me its about liking the type of stocks that pay a dividend vs investing in them BECAUSE of the dividend. the dividend is just the natural outcome of investing in older stable companies. reinvest them if you don't want them.
it was also a much larger deal 50 years ago when IRA's, 401k's weren't the primary investment vehicle. today having heavy dividends doesn't matter because you aren't paying taxes each year on that income whether you reinvest or not. I like dividend payers as a portion of my investing (largely index funds for large cap) because of what they do. not because of the dividend. Luckily most of that happens in my 401k/IRA. I'd rather make my own income decisions.

"if it gets folks on the road to saving and investing, that's a good thing"
Absolutely. In our case it was an advisor who made his living peddling American Funds, which at the time had a hefty front load. However, his knowledge and advice went well beyond just American Funds ….

Same here. One day during my 2nd year on the job I was chatting with one of the older guys - about nothing really - when it dawned on me to ask him if there was anything else I should be doing for long term financial planning beyond mandatory contributions to the pension system. He said “yes” and gave me the name of a fella who sold Templeton funds at a “discounted” 4.17% load. Knowing nothing about investing I called the guy and he got me started contributing. Not a lot really. But that was more than 55 years ago. Einstein is said to have called compounding “The Eighth Wonder of the World.”
Dick Strong (of ill repute) also had a positive influence on me (in the mid 90s) Strong talked a good game. Based in neighboring Wisconsin I felt some familiarity. First heard the expression “Pay yourself first” from Strong. I think it might have been a company motto. Your first task every payday should be to invest something for your future. Unfortunately, Strong took it a bit too far and was found to have had his fingers in the cookie jar. :)

Thanks for the added information Yogi. I’m thinking checks may have become more digitized today than most of us realize. The image of some astute clerk sitting behind a desk with thick spectacles carefully comparing the signature on file with that scribbled on the check (maybe 50 years ago) is likely out the door however comforting the thought might be to some. Likely these checks are processed by robots. However, I have no doubt a robot very capable. Look at how good they’ve gotten at facial recognition.
One concern of mine is that if the checks fail to arrive soon I’d be loath to use one of the existing blank checks until the issue was somehow resolved. Thus the ability to pay off the invoice could be compromised / delayed even though no detectable fraud had occurred. In other words, it could muck things up.
Footnote: Still no checks as of July 9. Fidelity said they were mailed out June 20 June 26. E-Gads!

Great questions. I read Larry’s post in OT and the situation sounds like insanity. But I left Citi 15-20 years ago. It seemed then they were more interested in trying to (aggressively) sell me things than servicing the credit card account I had with them. I find Elan Financial more user friendly.
I come at the issue of credit from a different perspective than most. Years ago i got overextended with credit and it scared the *#A## out of me. So part of “recovery” was swearing off all credit. Interestingly, it was the same time that I began saving, running an annual budget and taking a real interest in investing. So even today I’m loath to use credit cards. Cash rewards don’t thrill me. I figure those are offset by a natural propensity to spend more when using credit rather than paying in cash or on a debit card.
Except for travel I don’t like to use credit cards. However, after I’d already committed to a large home infrastructure project a year ago I received an offer of 18 months interest free credit on a new card thru Fidelity / Elan. The contractor was willing to put the job on a credit card with no fee. Rather than pull the project money from investments all at once (as first planned) it seemed to make sense to fund the project with this interest free line of credit and then repay it over time. It worked this time as my investments have done very well over that time frame. And, now a year later, I’m about to pay the entire sum off.
I’ve always felt checks were very safe. Never ever had a problem with one. However in recent years, for better or worse, I’ve begun paying bills thru direct debit from my bank account. I was, however, a victim of identity theft 15-20 years ago and it may have been related to a newspaper subscription allowed to access my bank account. I’ll never know for sure. Law enforcement looked into it and believed it was a Russian based hacking operation. All they got was a few hundred dollars from one local bank checking account by running 3 or 4 bogus withdrawals. The bank made me whole. To @Old_Joe’s question - Yes, I do view checks as safer than authorizing direct withdrawals. But the difference isn’t great enough to dissuade me from using the latter.
After the above affair I subscribed to Identity Guard . They are excellent. I have a reasonably priced annual plan (pay once yearly). They are very good at notifying me of any suspicious activity, changes in credit rating, credit inquiries, newly opened lines of credit, etc.
Re “What's your perspective on the danger of hacking vs stolen checks?” I don’t have an intelligent answer. Two different birds. Neither is enticing. A “hack” implies a successful operation. But a stolen / lost check is only a first step. Any culprit still needs to make a withdrawal using such to be successful.