I was thinking about Romney as I wrote that, @msf. A few years after this IRA was news, another wealthy candidate complained that the system was rigged, although he probably didn’t know at the time that the Electoral College was the fix. I have lowly mutual funds in my Roth and I do not have an elevator for my cars, as Romney’s house in SoCal apparently does.

I think Giroux is one of the best managers and why I post about PRWCX so much as a good allocation fund option (with VLAIX).
I actually bought GE as a trade because of Giroux in 2019 and made money but so far he is wrong.
A true story, in 2000 I had the pleasure to work with two retired gents from GE and Lucent. The first guy had 6000 shares of GE at 60 each worth $360K and the second guy had $300K in Lucent and that was most of their money. The market was going down in the next 2-3 years and both refused to sell any share. I was begging them to sell. The first guy lost 2/3 of his money, the second guy lost everything. Along the way, each had many reasons not to sell.
This is why they say keep your winners and sell your losers.

@hank: It’s likely that the rich don’t even worry about RMDs because their wealth is not tied up in tax-deferred accounts. I agree with @catch22 that doing the paperwork is not worth my time. I’ve been obliged to take distributions for about 8 years, lump-sum for a while, and monthly over the past 3 years. If I’d been taking mine at year end, I could have had more choice. Fully agree with the sentiment that just leaving the money to grow guarantees nothing.

... with PRWCX, based on returns over the past 20 years, starting with a 4% initial withdrawal amount (inflation adjusted), and requiring the worst year to come first, one may have a 98% chance of surviving 30 years.

Superb number-crunching from @msf. Suspect he carries a slide-rule day and night. :)
Can’t help but wonder if it’s similarity possible to calculate the % chance that PRWCX will produce the same (or better) rate of return / drawdown assurance over those next 30 years as for the past 20? That aside, I would never bet against Giroux - though he’s already been at the helm 14 years and will be a bit grey-haired in 30 more.
Fans of PRWCX might be interested to know that even in the current dismal market it’s been consistently besting my stalwart benchmark fund, TRRIX. It is currently off only about 5% YTD compared to TRRIX’s 6% loss. That’s pretty amazing considering that longer term PRWCX is the more aggressive fund and usually outperforms TRRIX by a long shot. I suspect that speaks, in part, to the diminishing value / appeal of fixed-income investments.
My only suggestion would be that in the overall picture I think it more prudent to look at what a more diversified portfolio (focusing more on underlying assets) might generate long term than to focus on one or a handful of funds.

I can't believe it never dawned on me that GEnworth had been part of GE.
I believe they were the last LTC provider to sell policies that you could completely pay for over a fixed number of years. More costly up front to do this, but it protected you from large premium increases once paid off. As carew388 noted, the industry was discovering that it had mispriced policies, so all insurers were implementing massive premium hikes.
GE spun off Genworth in 2004. However, it was stuck with reinsurance liabilities of at least $15B. Today it still owns legacy reinsurance companies carrying these liabilities.
The partial divestiture of GE Capital that I'm more familiar with came after the GFC. As part of Dodd Frank, the Financial Stability Oversight Council designated AIG, Prudential, MetLife, and GE Capital systemically important financial institutions. Like TBTF banks, that meant more regulation.
"In April 2015, GE announced that it intended to sell most of GE Capital over the next 18 months to 24 months in an effort, in part, to no longer be designated as systemically important."
https://fas.org/sgp/crs/misc/R42150.pdf
People surely know of Synchrony Bank, formerly GE Capital Retail Bank, and Marcus (Goldman Sachs) Bank, formerly GE Capital Bank. These were some of the institutions that GE Capital sold off. What's left of GE Capital is still owned by GE. It just ain't what it used to be.

what's interesting is to not use longest time frame but to set the start date to 2007, so you're going into retirement at a very bad time. i did it w PRWCX. started with 1 mil and at the end of 2019 you had 780k with a max drawdown of 55%, at the 10th percentile. scary. but at least you still had money. oh -- did retirement of 20 years. thanks for posting this!

I could not figure out where to set a custom start date. I'm pretty sure I clicked all the options. What am I missing?

There is a tendency to use this tool as black box oracle. I'm not faulting the use of a simulator to run models per se. Rather I'm suggesting that people may not fully appreciate what is being modeled.
The Monte Carlo simulation engine of PV does not appear to allow a user to pick the starting date for the simulated runs. When one specifies a range of dates (which one does by setting "Use Full History" to "No"), one is specifying the data set (annual returns) from which the simulator randomly selects returns. It doesn't mean that the simulated runs start with the 2007 performance.
By selecting 2007 to 2019, you're telling the simulator to use one of 13 annual returns for each year in each run. Which means, among other things, that a run of 20 years must duplicate the returns from some years, since it needs 20 1 year returns and it's got only 13 years to choose from.
See "Historical Returns" in the "Methodology" section of PV's FAQs.
The simulator does have an option where you can tell it to start with the worst year (or worst two, or worst three, or ...). So if a simulated run of 20 years has returns r1, r2, ..., r20, and r5 is the worst, the simulator reorders the returns as r5, r1, r2, r3, r4, r6, ....
Better, but not perfect, because the worst run in your data set may not be in the simulated run. Still, this is much better than nothing.
---------
Numbers:
If you use this option with QQQ over 30 years with an initial withdrawal amount equal to 4% of the portfolio (subsequently inflation adjusted), then the simulations say that about 5% of the time your portfolio doesn't survive 30 years.
2007 was not the worst time to start retirement. The S&P 500 returned 3.53% that year, and QQQ returned 18.7%. See graph. If one is looking for a poorly performing data set, one would be better off excluding 2007 and starting with 2008.
Running the model with data from 2008 through 2019, 5% of the time the portfolio doesn't survive. Add in the requirement that the first year in any simulated run is the worst, and 6% or so of runs don't survive. Not a big difference.
For kicks, I ran QQQ, 4% starting withdrawal (inflation adjusted) for the lost decade (2000-2009). Less than 1 in 5 survive for 20 years, barely 5% survive 30. Expand the data set to the past 20 years (2000-2019), and about 7 in 10 survive 20 years; a bit over half survive 30. That doesn't include starting each run with the worst year which would make things worse.
Not comforting figures. Forget about getting the original investment back (perpetual withdrawal rate). According to the model, assuming returns over the next 20 years are like the past 20, there's a good chance that the money won't even last at all.
OTOH, with PRWCX, based on returns over the past 20 years, starting with a 4% initial withdrawal amount (inflation adjusted), and requiring the worst year to come first, one may have a 98% chance of surviving 30 years.

I've always been a proponent of defense investing as a long-term allocation in my accounts. Have held several individual stocks over the years and also own FSDAX.

The top really has blown off of this sector. Seems like a good opportunity to build a position in a fund like FSDAX

I've always been a proponent of defense investing as a long-term allocation in my accounts. Have held several individual stocks over the years and also own FSDAX.

GE sold off the financial unit many years ago I believe.

what's interesting is to not use longest time frame but to set the start date to 2007, so you're going into retirement at a very bad time. i did it w PRWCX. started with 1 mil and at the end of 2019 you had 780k with a max drawdown of 55%, at the 10th percentile. scary. but at least you still had money. oh -- did retirement of 20 years. thanks for posting this!

I could not figure out where to set a custom start date. I'm pretty sure I clicked all the options. What am I missing?

yeah, she has always given some prudent conservative advice with way wacko and foolishly conservative advice
for years
dogmatic to boot

I often X-Ray my stuff using their tool. (Premium.) OK, so today is a week-end. That might have something to do with it. But the changes in the numbers are quite significant, in a good way. How do I know if I can trust them? (Well, can we ever be sure, completely?)
The new X-Ray (6:15 p.m. Eastern Time on Friday) has moved my portfolio's P/E from 1.0 to .77 and that's pretty big, in a good way. P/B is .70. ... PROJECTED EPS over the next 5 years has jumped from 1.18 to 1.30. And (current) Yield is 1.44. That last number is up, just a bit. (All of this is compared to the SP500.) I'm sitting wondering how I could be so smart--- because I'm NOT.

PRWCX's manager David Giroux chimes in on GE:

What about some nonutility stocks?
We are bullish on General Electric [GE].
GE is a controversial name lately.
We didn’t own it until recently. I’ve known [new CEO] Larry Culp for about 19 years, from when he ran Danaher [DHR]. I don’t think Larry has ever failed at anything, and we’re confident he will turn around GE. I don’t own GE for the upcoming quarter or the upcoming year; I’m looking at free cash flow in 2023 or 2024, and think this stock can double or triple over three to five years. It’s hard to find situations like that in the marketplace.

t-rowe-price-fund-manager-david-giroux-stock-picks-disruption-51570818202

what's interesting is to not use longest time frame but to set the start date to 2007, so you're going into retirement at a very bad time. i did it w PRWCX. started with 1 mil and at the end of 2019 you had 780k with a max drawdown of 55%, at the 10th percentile. scary. but at least you still had money. oh -- did retirement of 20 years. thanks for posting this!

Great point...thanks. Wonder if starting in the year 2000 (tech bubble) had more dire results. The perpetual Withdrawal Rate would surely be lower (for both starting years) and maybe a better data points to use for this 2020 start year scenario.

what's interesting is to not use longest time frame but to set the start date to 2007, so you're going into retirement at a very bad time. i did it w PRWCX. started with 1 mil and at the end of 2019 you had 780k with a max drawdown of 55%, at the 10th percentile. scary. but at least you still had money. oh -- did retirement of 20 years. thanks for posting this!

Using Portfolio Visualizer's Monte Carlo Stimulation feature, I back tested some of the funds I hold in my portfolio. As defind by PV, the Perpetual withdrawal rate is the percentage of portfolio balance that can be withdrawn at the end of each year while retaining the inflation adjusted portfolio balance.
@MJG's link here - https://portfoliovisualizer.com/monte-carlo-simulation#analysisResults
At the website, I switch Portfolio Type to "ticker". I entered the tickers one at a time and made the portfolio weight 100%. This provide me with stand alone data for each fund that I hold. I may later combine funds and weight them to see if the combined funds provide better overall results.
As I enter the phase of life where I will be spending some of these assets (using the 4% rule), I wanted to see how these funds fared as stand alone (asset concentration) and in combination with one another (asset allocation). Stand alone funds that provided the highest perpetual withdrawal rate at the 10th percentile (worst market conditions) were healthcare funds - VGHCX, PRHSX, FSMEX. This sector has historically had great risk adjusted returns. The big question is will they continue to be great funds to own into the future. I think so. Others that provided good withdrawal rates were - PRMTX (Communication & Media Tech Sector) and FSRPX (Retail Sector). Asset allocation funds that I own that did well were PRWCX (70 stocks/30 bonds) and VWINX (40/60). In fact, VWINX had a higher perpetual withdrawal rate than its sister fund VWELX when looking at the 10th percentile (worst market conditions).
Owning funds that have historically provide the best perpetual withdrawal rate in the worst market conditions (10th percentile) seems like a worthy review. Edited: adding criteria like "worst years first" makes your results even more sobering. Let me know your thoughts and how your funds fared using this criteria.

Hi @rforno
You noted:

" in 'safe' bonds earning piddling amounts"

Is/are the piles of debt too large across most bond areas? Yes. Will a day of reckoning arrive to blow up the debt markets? The potential exists.
Catch

Absolutely. Ten, twenty years ago bonds were considered safe. But today and going forward? That's why I put 'safe' in quotes. :)

A bit academic, but worth pushing through during lockdown:

Our goal in this paper was to pick apart the two most common and simple factor approaches, Value and Momentum, defined in terms of the earnings yield and the 6-month trailing return, respectively. In future pieces, we intend to use our new toolkit to illustrate the many ways in which their underlying signals can be improved, in ways that we’ve been using in live portfolios for more than 20 years. Examples of the kinds of improvements that are possible include: refining the definitions of the factors, using quality screens to avoid companies with poor “holding” growth, and selecting for companies with disciplined capital allocation practices via shareholder yield and other factors. We will also continue to explore the effects that portfolio concentration, risk management, and rebalancing have on factor strategies through time.

Paper:
https://osam.com/Commentary/factors-from-scratch
In Podcast Form:
https://osam.com/Commentary/wwos-podcast-factors-from-scratch

Thanks for posting. HWIAX is one of Old_Skeet's laggards. It was a deep value fund which had been faltering. Thankfully, it was a very small position within my portfolio which I establised a few years ago when the good times were rolling. I never added to it awaiting deep value to recover. I'm thinking I'm going to let it roll into HWHAX which has about a 6.5% yield and see how things go.
I've got another deep value fund that I've been wataching as well (TEQIX). Opened to watch and keep up with how deep value was performing. It's been a laggard as well ... but, doing better than HWIAX.

The fund is closing, not shutting down. Normally it's not surprising to see a fine performing small cap fund close. However, a fund with just $13M AUM (and a corresponding ER a bit south of 3%) would be more likely to shut down than to close.
Perhaps this is being done to give the new manager some breathing space?
The original manager (16 years) just left.

Effective as of May 1, 2020, Mr. Richard A. Barone will no longer serve as a portfolio manager of the Ancora Income Fund and Ancora Special Opportunity Fund. Accordingly, all references to Mr. Barone as portfolio manager in the Funds’ Prospectus, Summary Prospectus and SAI are hereby removed.
Also effective as of May 1, 2020, Mr. James Bernard, CFA, and Kevin Gale will serve as the new co-portfolio managers of the Ancora Income Fund, and John Micklitsch will serve as the new portfolio manager for the Ancora Special Opportunity Fund.

https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/1260667/000116204420000277/ancora497202005.htm
It is curious that this supplement, detailing a May 1 change in management, is dated May 7th. This might have been an unexpected change.