While I'm a fan of using standardized periods (e.g. calendar years) for comparing funds because it prevents cherry picking, when it comes to looking at one fund's performance cherry picking may be what one wants. For example, one disregards year (and often month) boundaries when looking at max drawdowns.
With that in mind, AKREX lost 9½% in the year spanning Feb 11, 2015 to Feb 11, 2016 roughly matching the S&P 500. FWIW, CPOAX lost 16¾% over the same 365 days.
M* chart.
Also, as I've said before, an unusually hot (or cold) few months for a fund can make not only its past year performance look great (or lousy), but can also skew 3, 5, and sometimes even 10 year figures.
For example, if we back up just six months, and look at the ten year period between March 19, 2010 and March 18, 2020, we see that AKREX outperformed CPOAX. Similar result if we stick to calendar years (2010-2019). The 10 year comparison is skewed by a few months of hot performance by CPOAX.
M* 10 year chart (ending March 18, 2020; cherry picked to filter out impact of latest hot streak)
M* 10 year chart (2010-2019)

@Observant1: Vanguard required the medallion signature ? I transferred two accounts a few years back & no M.S. needed. Things do change !
Stay Safe , Derf

I like MaxFunds, and it's one of my go to resources. The problem here is that AKREX is being compared to funds that are riding 80% plus gains ytd on the backs of shopify, zoom and the like. That usually ends very badly. I'll take my "average" of plus 17%/year over the last decade with no down years and an SD under 12 for AKREX as compared to say CPOAX -- yes it has a 10 year average of 22.8, but with an SD 0f 19.51, including two down years. It does wonders when a fund is up 85% ytd!

Hi @wxman123,
AKREX, very concerned about valuation, price to sales of top holdings such as V and MA. While the fund obviously has done great, I'm not convinced that it will remain so when the Fed Reserve take the foot of the gas
Fund doesn't do much selling and I'm looking for a fund that might be more apt to buy/sell, be more nimble going forward especially if I am looking for an active fund mgmt and not "passive" indexing. Saw an interview and they asked Akre about valuations and when he would sell and basically he said never, stock would grow into its valuation, well maybe yes but maybe no.
We'll see what happens.
Good Luck / Best Regards,
Baseball_Fan

Thanks, not sure I see the issue but appreciate the explanation. If I could have only one stock fund AKREX would be it. Never a down year. Amazing 10 year sharp ratio and standard deviation. Up on average over 17%/yr for past 10 years and didn't get there by being up 80% this year. I also see that the fund picked up 3 new positions in 2020 in its highly concentrated 20 stock portfolio. This fund should not be compared to ARKW or other high flyers, though there is a place for those over time.

Answer: If you invest $750 every month for 20 years at a 7% return, it will be worth $390,712.50 https://www.saving.org/regular-savings/750/month
See also: $750 in 1955 is worth $7,273.82 today https://www.in2013dollars.com/us/inflation/1955?amount=750

The following is more impressive.
If investor A saved $1000 a month for 10 years at 8% annually from the age of 25 to 35 and stopped. The money is still invested for another 30 years at 8% annually without additional savings.
Investor B started at age 35 and save $1000 a month for 30 years at 8% annually. After 40 years Investor A (about 1.8+ million) will have more money than investor B (about 1.49 million)
It's the power of starting early + compounding.

Answer: If you invest $750 every month for 20 years at a 7% return, it will be worth $390,712.50 https://www.saving.org/regular-savings/750/month
See also: $750 in 1955 is worth $7,273.82 today https://www.in2013dollars.com/us/inflation/1955?amount=750

CDs (3.0 to 3.55% APY rolling off in ~3.5 years), 77%
on line savings, 5%, currently paying 0.60% APY
Dominion DERI account, 6%, currently paying 1.75% APY
IQDAX, Infinity Q, 5%
FPFIX, FPA Flexible Income Fund, 2%
ROSOX, Rondure Overseas Fund, 2%
AKREX, AKRE Focus Fund, 1%, phasing out aggressively
TGUNX, TCW Premier New America, 1%, phasing in during down days, will take this up to ~5% of portfolio
AWK, American Water, 1%
Obviously very conservative, current portfolio supports lifestyle/expenses, me thinks current market is a complete farce due to gov't intervention/manipulation and that within 5 years we will all be "investing" in sports gambling thru our phones to fund our retirement
Do own two homes clear, likely going to sell home in high tax, mis managed Illinois within a year or two, maybe much sooner and move to other home in the mountains of NC
Younger wife still working, good salary, me...not sure if I'm retired or not, not working, not looking but kind of miss the corporate battles but then during a nice day hiking or on the beach don't miss it at all, I'm in my late 50s
Posting for entertainment purposes only.
Good Luck, Good Health to all, go Vote as you see fit,
Baseball_Fan

Just wondering on your rationale for selling AKREX? By my reckoning it may be the fund of the decade when taking risk into account.

”I'm paranoid of me or TRP messing up closing account and giving me a check which I have to then send to broker.“

That’s understandable. I hate doing custodian to custodian transfers, fearing the one sending out the proceeds will misunderstand my instructions, close account and send out 100% to the recipient. So I usually scribble in the margin “Partial Transfer Only”. So far, after a dozen or so such transfers over the years - no problem. (Well ... err ... one once with Strong not sending the money)
Edit Should note that Price has on occasdion allowed me to transfer money in from other custodians online. But there have been occasions when, for whatever reason, it didn’t go through. So, generally I submit the work on paper.
VF -Someday when you have time maybe you could compose for us a “Selling Puts for Dummies“ guide. It’s something my feeble brain has yet to fully grasp. Possibly others would also like to understand the process better. While I’m not interested in doing such, some of my fund managers employ it - thus the interest in better comprehending.
Take care.

A pretty obvious academic exercise, but basically a straw man.

The key, here, is the ... sentence: once a portfolio is going to be rebalanced every year, the impact of decision rules is made null and void and the buckets are essentially just an asset allocation mirage, because the total amount of withdrawals is always the same (regardless of which asset classes it’s taken from) and the final allocation is always the same (due to the rebalancing).

The latter part of the sentence provides the explanation of why the two approaches come out the same. Hence my characterization of the substantially equal results as pretty obvious. However, the assumption that the portfolio be rebalanced annually, even if stocks and bonds are both down, is not realistic. Hence I take this theoretical equality to be a straw man.
If the cash bucket is to be replenished annually come hell or high water, what's the point in keeping more than a year's worth of expenditures in that bucket? In the real world, that cash bucket serves as a buffer for extended periods when both stocks and bonds are down. As Christine Benz describes the cash replenishing process:

In a good year for stocks, like 2013 or 2014, the retiree will be selling highly appreciated parts of the equity portfolio. If bonds have gained at the expense of stocks, the retiree would be lightening up on bonds. And if neither stocks nor bonds had appreciated, the retiree might allow bucket 1 to be drawn down, or even move into "next-line reserves" in the bond portfolio.

https://www.morningstar.com/articles/754593/retirement-bucket-basics-a-qa-with-morningstars-ch
You might have better luck with Moshe Milovsky's work, since he looks specifically at using the cash bucket without replenishing in down years. In a simplistic example, he shows that in the worst case (when the cash bucket is too small) the bucket approach can leave one with less. Fair enough, but is that an argument against the bucket approach or for allocating an adequate cash bucket?
He goes on to observe that in his example "there is a 60 percent chance [that a bucket approach] will be better off and a 40 percent chance [that a single balanced fund] will be better off. Indeed, the odds might favor [the bucket approach], but this is not a guaranteed way to avoid a poor sequence of returns."
https://www.thinkadvisor.com/2007/06/01/lesson-5-spending-buckets-and-financial-placebos/
P.S. Kitces describes the superiority of the bucket approach:

[A]s advocates of the strategy often point out, the bucket approach is arguably superior from the perspective of client psychology; it fits far better into our mental accounting heuristics, and makes the portfolio easier for clients to understand. Furthermore, clients may have an easier time staying the course through market volatility when they can clearly see where their cash flows will come from in the coming years, and that they truly have a decade or more to allow for any declines in the equity bucket to recover.
...
[E]ven if a bucket strategy merely produces the exact same asset allocation and portfolio construction, but does so in a manner that makes it easier for clients to stick with and implement the strategy, it is arguably a superior one.

(link)

Lance Roberts, Chief Investment Strategist, RIA Advisors
After having been in the investing world for more than 25 years from private banking and investment management to private and venture capital; Lance has pretty much “been there and done that” at one point or another. His common-sense approach, clear explanations and “real world” experience has appealed to audiences for over a decade. Lance is also the Chief Editor of the Real Investment Report, a weekly subscriber-based newsletter that is distributed nationwide. The newsletter covers economic, political and market topics as they relate to your money and life. He also writes the Real Investment Daily blog, which is read by thousands nationwide from individuals to professionals, and his opinions are frequently sought after by major media sources. Lance’s investment strategies and knowledge have been featured on CNBC, Fox Business News, Business News Network and Fox News. He has been quoted by a litany of publications from the Wall Street Journal, Reuters, Bloomberg, The New York Times, The Washington Post all the way to TheStreet.com. His writings and research have also been featured on several of the nation’s biggest financial blog sites such as the Pragmatic Capitalist, Credit Write-downs, The Daily Beast, Zero Hedge and Seeking Alpha.
Over the last couple of weeks, we have been discussing the ongoing market correction. As we stated last week:
“As shown in the chart below, we had suggested a correction back to previous market highs was likely but could extend to the 50-dma. So far, the correction has played out much as we anticipated.”
However, we also said:​​ “However, while we expect a rally next week, due to the short-term oversold condition of the market, there is a downside risk to the 200-dma, which is another 5% lower from current levels. Such would entail a near 14% decline from the peak, which is well within the historical norms of corrections during any given year.”
On Friday, due to the “quad-witching options expiration” (when all options contracts for the current strike month expire and rollover), the market gave up support at the 50-dma, as shown below.
The good news, if you want to call it that, is the market did hold a previous level of minor support and remains oversold short-term.
As such, the break of the 50-dma must recover early next week, or it will put the 200-dma into focus. That is currently about 7% lower than where we closed on Friday.

Your comments are pointed, ego-centric and certainly not generic. Don't post to any of mine. Please :)

ego-centric, wow, what a guy.
I have been reading plenty of articles and research about the bucket system and can't see its necessity and superiority.
Kitces is one of my favorite writers. See his (article)
quote below

many advisors and their clients use strategies that will avoid taking distributions from asset classes like equities during down years – for instance, setting aside “buckets” as a reserve against market crashes, and/or creating a series of “decision rules” that might simply state outright that equities will only be sold if they’re up, otherwise bonds are liquidated instead, and cash/Treasury bills will be used if everything else is down at once.
Yet when such a decision-rules strategy is paired with simple rebalancing, it turns out that the outcome is no better than merely managing the portfolio on a total return basis without the decision rules at all! The key, as it turns out, is that rebalancing alone already has an astonishingly powerful effect to help avoid unfavorable liquidations, as the process systematically ensures that the investments that are up (the most) are sold, and the ones that are down (the most) are actually bought instead! Which means in the end, we may not be giving rebalancing nearly the credit it deserves to accomplish similar – or even better – results than buckets and decision rules alone, and that such approaches are better purposed as explanatory tools for clients than actual systems for generating cash flows in retirement!

@Rbrt: FWIW: I don't know when you & wife plan on taking SS. I started my SS at 70 ,but was using deceased wife since 60 years of age, at a much lower rate. When I started my withdrawal I actually put a little more into the market as that SS works as a very nice bond return. AS for sleeping well, not a problem here.
Best to you & wife, Derf

That alleged TR advantage is premised on the basis of never touching your balance and allowing it to just grow and grow and grow. Tell me, who does that? Who just lets it sit there forever and ever? This constant battle between dividend growth/income focused investors and TR investors is a total waste of time and nonsense. Who cares as long as the investor is getting what they want.
Sure I can sell shares but there are no guaranties that I will always be selling them at an advantage. Similarly theres no guarantee that a dividend is safe and secure forever but it's more likely. And no where is it written that all income investors go after higher yields all the time.

IMO M* is almost always negative about dividend investors. One of the reasons I stopped subscribing. Seems to me that their TR story is wrapped up in the market of the 80's - 90's they grew up with.
On your other topic:
When it gets to the stage that you have to sell retirement assets because of need, or legal requirement, this is where I think about turning our IRA's into annuities. My wife is already in the TIAA-CREF ecosystem. And theoretically she will out live me.
The accumulation of retirement assets phase is one thing. The liquidation of those assets in the best possible way over the next thirty years is another phase altogether.

Geez - Looks like I stumbled into some extra work.
74, single, retired 22 years. Pension from State of MI in the upper 40s with a 3% annual increase on the original “base” amount. So the 3% annual increase doesn’t compound. Still it’s helpful. That’s an option I paid for in the working years. Social Security adds a bit more but only a fraction of what the pension garners. Had a 403B in workplace dating to the mid 70s, and converted it to IRA after retirement. Own a home with small mortgage and 10 years remaining. Plan to pay it off sooner so that the current payment will convert to a annuity-like income stream. No hurry, as the mortgage rate is well below what my funds generate.
Most years I draw 5-7% from investments to supplement the above mentioned income stream. And roughly every 5-6 years I’ll pull a larger amount out for major expenses like a new vehicle. The original nest-egg has more than doubled over those years (in nominal terms only) despite taking annual distributions. About 70% now in a Roth from 3 post-retirement conversions. I’m slightly more aggressive in the Roth. Some funds like TMSRX are held in both the Roth and Traditional IRA. The Roth is spread directly among 4 fund houses. The Traditional is 100% at TRP and really simplifies the annual RMD calculations.
I’ve always believed in diversifying not just among equity funds, but also into different asset classes, into “oddball” funds (like TMSRX, PRPFX) that might hold up better during an equity rout, and among three or more different fund companies (currently 4). My best guess is my holdings won’t suffer more than a 20% drop in any given year, nor lose more than one-third of their value over a multi-year stretch. That’s merely a guess. I’m comfortable with that degree of potential loss. Being invested directly with several houses is a throwback to earlier years when that was more common. I feel it exerts discipline on me not to “shop around” excessively among a near infinite number of fund offerings out there today.
I don’t run the M* analysis which breaks down total holdings into various assets as @Crash appears to have done. I have my own assessment of what each fund is likely to contribute (or take away from) the portfolio. So each fund is a separate entity with risk / benefit perimeters based on nearly 50 years investing in funds. I’ve always tried to have during retirement an “auto-pilot” portfolio that needs little tinkering. The 5 sleeves are: Balanced Funds (25%), Diversified Income (25%), Alternative Investments (25%), Real Assets (10%) Cash & Speculative (15%). Currently that last one is 2/3 in cash equivalents and 1/3 in 3 speculative equity fund holdings. So net-net cash is at 10%.
I don’t know if this helps anyone else. More important than what I or another here does is the importance of having some kind of plan. Once you have a plan continue to monitor performance and refine it as necessary. Should go without saying that I’ve gradually nudged the plan into a more conservative position with increasing years. My idea of a “good day” is beating the return on TRRIX, a 40/60 balanced fund I’ve long tracked, but don’t own. So If TRRIX falls 5% one day and my holdings only fall 4%, it’s been a successful day. I strongly recommend finding some fund you admire and which meets your risk profile. Compare your returns to that, not to what some anonymous poster on a board says he earned. You don’t know if it’s true or not. And you don’t know or fully appreciate the degree of risk involved in producing that return.
Best investing wishes to everyone.

Let's grant for the moment that a comparison between one year performance and eight year performance is unbiased. By this premise, when investing for the long term (say, at least four years), one need only look at a fund's most recent performance. There's no point in looking at long term performance since the implicit premise is that there's no historical bias from one year to the next.
(Never mind that the S&P 500 lost nearly 1%/year on average throughout the 2000s; we need only look at the 26% return for 2009.)
So let's use Dessauer's unbiased approach of gauging performance by looking at recent figures. But to really be unbiased, we should use the most recent figures, not stale ones from 2019. Sure those figures were most recent US Census annual data, but there's monthly data available from other government agencies.
Here's a page that uses monthly data from the US Bureau of Economic Analysis. This page finds that median household income dropped 1.5% from February through July, 2020.
https://finance.townhall.com/columnists/politicalcalculations/2020/09/01/draft-n2575434
The site links to a more detailed page. Like the report you cited, it too looks at Y/Y figures. It just uses more recent data. Voters need current factual information to guide them when they vote.
https://politicalcalculations.blogspot.com/2020/09/median-household-income-in-july-2020.html#.X24nfaL7xaS

The year-over-year rate of change for median household income confirms the sharp deceleration in this measure in both nominal and inflation-adjusted terms. Both measures are falling at the fastest pace observed to date in the 21st century.

CDs (3.0 to 3.55% APY rolling off in ~3.5 years), 77%
on line savings, 5%, currently paying 0.60% APY
Dominion DERI account, 6%, currently paying 1.75% APY
IQDAX, Infinity Q, 5%
FPFIX, FPA Flexible Income Fund, 2%
ROSOX, Rondure Overseas Fund, 2%
AKREX, AKRE Focus Fund, 1%, phasing out aggressively
TGUNX, TCW Premier New America, 1%, phasing in during down days, will take this up to ~5% of portfolio
AWK, American Water, 1%
Obviously very conservative, current portfolio supports lifestyle/expenses, me thinks current market is a complete farce due to gov't intervention/manipulation and that within 5 years we will all be "investing" in sports gambling thru our phones to fund our retirement
Do own two homes clear, likely going to sell home in high tax, mis managed Illinois within a year or two, maybe much sooner and move to other home in the mountains of NC
Younger wife still working, good salary, me...not sure if I'm retired or not, not working, not looking but kind of miss the corporate battles but then during a nice day hiking or on the beach don't miss it at all, I'm in my late 50s
Posting for entertainment purposes only.
Good Luck, Good Health to all, go Vote as you see fit,
Baseball_Fan

John Dessauer’s market review and update as of Wednesday September 23, 2020
The political bias is frightening. Voters need factual information to guide them when they vote.
The median household income for Americans grew at a 6.8% rate last year, the largest annual increase on record. In dollar terms, U.S. household income rose $4,379 last year to $68,709. This is nearly 50% more that during the eight years of Barack Obama’s Presidency. Obviously, that is what so many in the media don’t want you to know. Whether you like President Trump or not, his policies work, meaning benefit almost all Americans. Minorities did especially well. Median household incomes increased 7.1% for Hispanics, 7.9% for Blacks and 10.6% for Asians. That compares with a 5.7% increase for whites.
Income inequality, a big political issue, also declined in 2019. The bottom quintile’s share of income grew 2.4%, with many lower earners rising into the middle class.
“These income gains weren’t magical. Policy changes mattered. The Obama Administration’s obsession with income redistribution and regulation retarded business investment and economic growth.
https://johndessauerinvestments.com/weekly-hotline

"I do have a pet peeve in that it seems to me 90% of our allocation and fund discussions (for a very long time now) omit reference to the type of individual who might benefit from this or that particular type fund."
66, retired, with 20% of a $1M invested. Yes, in round numbers, my entire pot is something more than $200,000.00 right now. A quarter million is in sight, but I'll never get there. I'm MARRIED. ;) What I need from my allocation fund (PRWCX) is great management, performance, and the sense of reassurance I get knowing that in not-so-good years, I'll be getting SOMETHING from the bond portion of the portfolio. As for BRUFX: wife's Trad. IRA. Moved it from 403b with MassMutual. Those suck-holes charge too big of a redemption fee. And lately, the news broke that they are selling their retirement sleeve to another outfit, anyhow. But BRUFX was chosen for stellar consistency, safety, and solid performance--- even though it won't ever "shoot the lights out."

Here's a link to Matthews Asia's president/CIO resigning.
https://www.pionline.com/money-management/matthews-asias-presidentglobal-cio-resigns

Thanks Dennis. Still not much color on why he left. Timing seems odd. 3PMs all depart at same time, 2 other very senior execs leave a few months before after <2 years in their role. I'm back to the first post in this thread - what's going on over there? Might make sense to ask a lot of questions before investing in ANY of their funds.

Maybe value will have its day in the sun.

I've been hoping that for the last 5 years...I've never been so wrong!