I’m only beginning to understand the limitations advancing age imposes on your ability to invest. Been slowly taking risk off the table over past year or so. It’s been a good year - but my 10% exposure to “real assets” (notably energy) really stings as of late. No place to run IMHO. Gold’s hot - but you can lose a fortune overnight with the stuff. Cash returns are paltry. Most bonds are dicey at these rates. You younger ones (under 60 or 65) still have time to recover after a big downdraft. Indeed, you’d be wise to stock up on equities should prices drop very far.
I favor global over domestic equities and so have shifted some to RPGAX from domestic funds recently. Sold my real estate fund earlier this week after a 25%+ YTD runup. Been hot for several years. I know from past experience this sector is prone to big, long-lasting swings. Steady / falling rates have provided a tailwind for the real estate sector. Fed and central banks can continue trying to hold interest rates down. But at some point they lose control. Ask yourself why you’d lend your money to somebody who promised to give you less back in 5 or 10 years than you lent them? Crazy.

Hi @Puddnhead,
My fund managers must be thinking along the same lines as you when it comes to energy as I am close to a double weight without putting a spiff (special investment) in place myself.
In the past, LALDX has been one of my holdings within my income sleeve. I closed it when interest rates began to rise a few years back and moved the money into the formulation of my CD Ladder. At this time I have no plans to return to LALDX. However, come December when I have a CD mature I'll be looking at options including expanding my position in PCOXX as it is now yielding more than most currently offered 12 to 24 month CD's. With this, I've got a couple months to ponder on this.
I wish all ... "Good Investing."
Skeet

When I've spoken with them about it, the Invenomic folk certainly seem sanguine about their fees, perhaps because they've been seeing strong inflows and rising interest among European investors. No evidence yet that the summer instilled any particular humility.
Morningstar says that fees for this sort of strategy are usually 1.7% (institutional) - 2.0% (long-short overall).
Fee waivers are rarely cancelled, but often have clawback provisions that allow a fund to continue charging higher-than-normal fees after its assets have grown; they get to keep overcharging on the large fund to make up for years of subsidizing the small fund.
For what that's worth,
David

"Merrill edge ... only costs are to buy private bonds, which can range from 10 to 20 bucks/trade for small investments buy 5k-20k."
Except for:
- Treasury auction bonds: free at most brokerages, $29.95/trade at ME (since they're not avail online)
- Secondary muni government bonds: $1/bond, $10 min
- Government agency bonds: $1/bond, $10 min
Of course "free" bond trades just mean that the commission is built into the price. Merrill Edge even discloses this in black and white.
Which brings us to markup. How good are the prices you get on bonds at Merrill Edge? For example (I just spot checked Calif. 10 year munis that were not zeros):
CUSIP 13077CU28 (AA, 7 yr maturity) Price/YTW:: ME: $109.668/2.175%; Fidelity: $109.284/2.231%
CUSIP 219764PA9 (AA, 10 yr maturity) Price/YTW:: ME: $109.924/1.467%; Fidelity: $109.799/1.488%
Bond inventory online?
ME has 10,000+ bonds (it sells no new issues online), including corporate, treasuries, agencies, and munis. 3,000- munis, fewer than 600 in California.
Fidelity offers 65,000+ bonds (including160 new issues). 50,000+ munis, including 7,000- in California.
The last time I compared Schwab with Fidelity on bond prices was around a decade ago, and my impression was that Schwab was slightly more expensive, but that may have changed.
Even with stock/ETF trades, all brokerages are not created equal. A zero commission rate does not guarantee you'll come out better.
https://www.stockbrokers.com/guides/order-execution
Vanguard stopped charging commissions on ETFs for all customers, not just Flagship customers a year ago. Unlike Merrill, and most of the other brokerages, for Flagship customers it offers a limited number of free TF fund trades annually. It's been doing that for many years. What changed fairly recently (a couple of years ago?) is that Vanguard increased the annual number of free trades.

What Schwab is doing is IMHO unique (so far) - no min balance, ETFs and stocks, and backed by a large institution that should be able to continue this indefinitely (especially since it makes money on all the free cash in its lower paying MMFs). In that sense I differentiate it from Firstrade. The latter strikes me as more like Scottrade, which for some time sold all mutual funds without a fee, but couldn't sustain that.
It will be interesting to see when Fidelity matches Schwab. Those two seem to move in parallel, e.g. both dropping their TF rates from $75-$76 down to $50 within a year(?) of each other.

I think this is the incident that I was referencing. Certainly, it does not identify TRP as pro-Republican or pro-Democrat. Sorry if I gave that impression:
In 2003 Republican Senator Michael Oxley tried to pressure mutual fund firms boards of directors into voting for a Republican to head the ICI, the trade association representing fund companies. T. Rowe Price found itself on the “wrong” side of the fence in that political dust-up, supporting the than Democratic leadership of the ICI.
Some relevant excerpts from the linked article:
“At issue are allegations that the committee's chairman, Ohio Republican Michael Oxley, has threatened to investigate the mutual fund industry unless the ICI brings aboard a Republican to succeed its president when he retires. ... The fracas blew into the open Feb. 15 when The Washington Post, citing unnamed sources, claimed in a story that Mr. Oxley and some staff members were pressuring the ICI to hire a prominent Republican. ”
“The push, the paper claimed, was part of a broader campaign by Republicans to place party loyalists in top jobs at corporate lobbying offices and trade associations. Citing six unnamed sources, both Republican and Democratic, the Post reported that certain members of Mr. Oxley's staff suggested the congressional probe ‘might ease up if the mutual fund trade group complies with their wishes.’ “
“At the heart of the fracas is the fact that ICI president Matthew Fink and his likely successor, executive vice president Julie Domenick, are both Democrats.House Republican leaders have been trying in recent years to get more Washington professional and trade associations to hire Republicans as leaders, a campaign that has been dubbed the ‘K Street Project.’ “
“Meanwhile, the fracas has caused some roiling within the ICI. At a mid-February board meeting, representatives from The Vanguard Group in Malvern, Pa., T. Rowe Price Associates Inc. in Baltimore and Capital Management and Research Co. in Los Angeles expressed support for the organization's leadership.”
-
Where’s the link? @Ted has provided one that works better than mine did. See Ted’s follow-up post to access this Investment News article from March 10, 2003.

FYI: If you start reasonably early, set aside adequate savings, and invest in a semi-sane manner, it's hard to go terribly off track with investments in the years leading up to retirement. But decumulation--the process of figuring out how to position your portfolio to deliver desired cash flows in retirement--is another ballgame.
In retirement, a separate set of variables comes into play. Issues like asset allocation and the quality of the investments you choose are still important (which is why you still need an investment policy statement) but so are factors such as how--and how much--you'll spend from your portfolio on an ongoing basis.
Regards,
Ted
https://www.morningstar.com/articles/808697/how-to-create-a-retirement-policy-statement

CNBC-West is trumpeting this story Sunday night. And Asian markets are weaker on the news. Note: They not only propose to delist Chinese stocks on the exchange, they would also prohibit government pension funds from owning Chinese stocks.
Sounds to me like an attempt to scare investors away from China (and Asia in general) and thereby push the U.S. stock market even higher. Sure to hit a political storm if they try it. Suspect they won’t actually pull the stunt. Should they, other than rocking global equity markets near term, I doubt it would impact long range valuations or investors’ (global) returns over coming years.
Can’t help noting that T. Rowe is about to roll out a China fund. In the past they’ve gotten some flack from conservative pols who viewed them as liberal politically. Can’t recall the exact context or issue. One of their better fixed income managers, Mary Miller joined the Obama administration as an Undersecretary of Treasury in 2012.

I have been using HY Munis for years.

I don't pay attention to MM or CD and all my cash sub is usually in HY munis. In 2018-9 I have used OPTAX and ORNAX. Sure, I know the risk and volatility and still invest in HY Munis. I invested usually at 99+% in stocks+bond OEFs and none are cash,MM,CD investments. I just keep several thousand which is about 2 months of our expense in the last 30 years while I was working and now at retirement. If we need more I just sell shares.

In comparison, my three step CD Ladder has a current yield of 2.6%.

@Old_Skeet,
Where did you find CD ladder with 2.6% yield? Many brokerage such as Fidelity offers 5 years ladder (4 CDs) with 1.88%. A sizable reduction after Fed rate cut.

FYI: (This is a follow-up article.)
The $4 trillion exchange-traded fund industry has, for the last 27 years, operated via a quirk in the law. After some dramatic back-and-forth this week, the Securities and Exchange Commission has finally changed that.
The 2,273 ETFs on the market today have essentially been created via a loophole in the law that governs mutual funds and other investment products for individual investors. The much-hyped and long-awaited “ETF Rule” was supposed to change that, making it easier for companies to create new products. After canceling an open meeting scheduled for Wednesday to vote on this proposed regulation, the SEC announced on Thursday that it has in fact adopted the ETF Rule, more officially known as Rule 6c-11.
Regards,
Ted
https://www.barrons.com/articles/will-the-secs-new-etf-rule-benefit-investors-51569519577?mod=djem_b_Weekly Feed for Barrons Magazine

"the people back the anti-tax pols"
@hank- Yes, here in CA we had exactly that situation. A fixed fuel sales tax as the primary funding source for our highways was steadily being eaten away over the years by ever-increasing better mileage of vehicles, transition to electric and hybrid technology, and general inflation.
Once-decent roads were really going to hell, and yet there were always anti-tax groups who refused to deal with reality, and kept hoping for the road-fairy to fix things. A few years ago we finally were able to overcome that mentality, and already we're beginning to see significant improvement, and long-delayed maintenance finally getting done.
Ignored in all of this anti-tax crusade is the fact that at least with road maintenance taxes the maintenance and improvement creates good paying jobs for lots of workers, and secondary effects for jobs in the manufacturing of all of that enormous and complex road building equipment. That stuff is really impressive, and the great majority of it is built in the US.

@Crash. Ditto on deplorable MI roads. We often remark on how much better the surfaces are when we travel to other states. The other day we returned to DTW and took the shuttle to our parking lot. The short ride was so rough that I said, "Well, we know we're home," and other shuttle passengers nodded in agreement.

I thought the roads in Arizona were terrific when I visited about 5 years ago. Wondered if McCain maybe pulled some strings in D.C. to get the funding? Problem in Michigan is the people back the anti-tax pols. And there aren’t many road builders willing to work for free.
Apologies @Puddenhead. This thread has really strayed.
Re investments
- I’ve avoided even short term bonds after the pullback at the short end, which temporarily boosted their return. Mostly MM and ultra short for me as far as the cash sleeve goes. That said, I continue my allocations to RPSIX, DODLX, and PREMX. S*** - Your fixed income $$ has to go somewhere.
- Just slightly overweight the miners. About 4-5% vrs a normal 2-3% weighting. I’m optimistic for gold. Think it will really break out one of these days, but it can be awfully painful to own shorter term. Plus, what I “think” will happen doesn’t always.
- Otherwise, normal weighting in a conservative, diversified portfolio.

It is marketing driven effort in an attempt to gather new assets. There are simply too many ETFs just like mutual funds. There must be enough demand to keep some of them afloat for several years, then survivorship of these products takes over.

I didn't have any problem. Vanguard gives you the option of going directly to the "personal investor" site, which I have not elected to do. So vanguard.com just brings me to the corporate portal, where I select "Personal Investors" to get to the familiar home page. From there, there is a login link in the upper right corner, or one can log in directly from that investor home page by scrolling down to the username/password boxes on the left.
Vanguard has provided free stock/ETF/MF trades for Flagship customers for many years. About a year ago, Vanguard terminated trading of virtually all explicitly leveraged ETFs on its platform and eliminated commissions for online trading of all non-leveraged ETFs.
https://mutualfundobserver.com/discuss/discussion/42948/vanguard-brings-unrivaled-access-to-etfs-with-launch-of-industry-s-largest-commission-free-platform
Bond trading (aside from new issues) still carries a commission ($1 or $2/bond, depending on your Vanguard level), which is not waived even for Flagship customers.
https://investor.vanguard.com/investing/transaction-fees-commissions/cds-bonds

FYI: Cumulative assets in the U.S. exchange-traded fund industry zoomed 90% during a nearly five-year period through last month and now hover around the $4 trillion mark, but this amazing growth story has a downside in that 24% of ETFs closed during that period and another 7% are rapidly declining, according to statistics from investment research firm CFRA.
CFRA last month bolstered its in-house research chops when it acquired data-and-analytics firm First Bridge Data LLC, and CFRA today held a media call that utilized First Bridge’s research muscle to provide an in-depth look at the winners and losers in the ETF space during the period from December 2014 through August 2019.
Regards,
Ted
https://www.fa-mag.com/news/roughly-25--of-etfs-closed-during-past-five-years-51860.html?print

"Maybe they can actually close a fund one day."
I don't think that they know about this "closing" thing. It's a fairly new concept, and they aren't noted for quick embracement of this new stuff.
That said (in jest) American has done very well for us over the years.

I too hold GFAFX and I've been asking myself, do I hold just an expensive index fund? But it's done fine so far so I'll keep it and see what happens.

What pops out immediately from JABAX's portfolio is that its equity sleeve is large cap growth, and has been at least leaning that way for the past five years or longer. See here. We've been in a long period, virtually the whole tenure of MPinto, where growth has outperformed value.
This raises the questions (1) whether its good performance has been due in part simply to this bias, and (2) whether this is where the manager is comfortable investing or whether he would shift to value (and under what conditions)?
It's hard to answer #2. To address #1, I ran a quick analysis using Portfolio Visualizer.
I ran back tests from May 2005 to the present, comparing JABAX with VWELX and with 60/40 mixes of VOOG & VBTLX (to check JABAX value add vs. index funds) and VOOV & VBTLX (for VWELX value add vs. index funds). Rebalanced quarterly.
From best to worst annualized returns:
VOOG/VBTLX: 10.43% (growth mix)
VWELX: 9.74%
JABAX: 9.32%
VOOV/VBTLX: 8.36% (value mix)

You will have slightly different results is you punch in VWENX instead of VWELX, if the admiral shares go back that far. Has a lower fee/higher yield.

The very first paragraph I wrote in this thread was:
"I generally suggest caution when evaluating a fund with recent poor performance. That recent performance distorts the longer term figures."
The same applies to funds with recent good performance. One gets a different perspective by disregarding a recent, disproportionately bad (or good) period and looking at longer periods that came before. Now three years (2017-19) is not just a very recent 6 month or one year span that can be lightly disregarded. But there was a significant management change in 2016 that justifies looking at the pre- and post-Smith periods separately.
Your mother and daughter are in fact doing half of that. They're looking at the post-Smith period exclusively (3 years) or the mostly post-Smith period (5 years). You're doing that also, with your 5/4/3/2/1/ytd figures that virtually ignore the Smith period.
Again repeating myself, all of this may suggest that Pinto is a great manager (better alone than with Smith). But it also cuts against your statement that the key to the fund's performance is the way he manages the stock sleeve. If the stock sleeve were the key, one would expect similar relative performance across consecutive multi-year periods, those with and without Smith.
Cherry picking says that the selection of time periods is made by seeking especially good (or bad) periods. That's not what I did. I selected time periods based on management. Which makes sense to do on general principle, let alone to test the hypothesis that "growth a la Pinto" was the key.

You asked for an analysis, I provided one. That's all. As I wrote before, the fact that JABAX leans consistently toward growth suggests that the pond it fishes in plays a significant role in its performance. Aside from Puritan (more on that below) the fact that you selected for comparison funds that lean toward value calls attention to its growth style.
"Growth, but growth a la Pinto, look to be the key." Are you sure that it's growth a la Pinto that's the key? Prior to the last three years, the fund was still good, but somewhat less so. Smith left three years ago. Coincidence? Pinto took over the responsibility for asset allocation and others took over the bond sleeve.
Before 2017 the fund had some fine years, but not in the top decile. Since Smith left, it's been nothing but. While that data suggests that someone is adding value now, it also suggests that Pinto's stock sleeve management skills are not the key. They haven't changed, have they?
Take the five year period ending when Smith left (3/31/11 - 3/31/16). Your mom and daughter's $10K would have grown to $14,177 with JABAX, and to $14,692 with FPURX.
See M* chart.
Or the three year period 3/31/13 - 3/31/16. There JABAX ended with $12,112 vs. FPURX's $12,722. (One can edit the start date in the M* chart to get these figures.)