@FD1000
As noted earlier:
" to help with thinking and motivation regarding their hard earned money.

The various pieces of the article have been discussed here, too; over the years."
If there are pieces of the article that get some folks off their arses to take some action towards investing, all the better.
No, it is not the perfect write.
Hell, 90% of the folks I've talked investing with for 40 years, never get far off of their arse to take GREAT positive action to their monetary futures.
If some word or words gets someone motivated, to become more curious and study, all the better. Most of us at some time prior to having more time in the investment seat have moved forward from the words or a phrase discovered in a book or publication.
We have not a clue as to what, the majority of the 3,000 or so members here, they have knowledge of, regarding an investing background or desire.

None of the rules will make you wealthy. The best way for an average person it to start saving earlier and keep saving monthly thru 401K(or similar) for years. The more you save the better you will be. Basically, if you start early to meet your employer matching amount, then increase the amount by half of your raise annually to at least 15% you will be in a great shape.
#1: Put It All In One Fund-for most investors it's a good idea and why most 401K have target funds
#2: Create Your Own Yield-most average investors can use great Multisector+NonTrad bond funds for higher yield (examples: PIMIX,VCFIX,SEMMX,IOFIX,JMUTX,JMSIX). For advanced investors who don't mind the high volatility PCI,PDI

#3: Don’t Buy A Long-Term Care Policy-correct
#4: Cut Your Portfolio Management Costs-correct
#5: Pay Off Your Mortgage Rapidly-absolutely not. Do the math and decide based on the numbers. In 2012, at the lowest mortgage rates, I took home equity loan for 5 years at 1.99% interest with zero fees. We didn't need it but it was a no-brainer to know that I cam make much more than 2% in the next 5 years.
#6: Moonlight-no if you can. Select a profession that pays well
Basically, the article is average at best. It missed the most important rule of saving early and at least 10-15% for years. It failed on what bond funds to buy (not all bonds are treasuries) and CD,MM are not a good option. The rest was the easy part.

Help me connect a few dots, is Dennis Barran = @openice ?
For me, just reading and trying to understand, the fund seems like a 'great until it's not' fund. There have been several leveraged funds acclaimed here over the years but most if not all don't sustain and disappear over time. I hope this one is different and has the magic formula, but alas, not for me.

Forgive me if I'm repeating a piece of the puzzle that's already been stated but I think the Venture Capital Fund is leveraged a bit more than 2:1 and that's what's driving the outsized returns, that's the secret sauce. I haven't quite figured out how they managed to only lose 22 or 23% at the end of 2018 but I guess that suggests they did a good job picking stocks or they cut their leverage in between public reporting dates and we can't see that anywhere. At the end of Q3 2018 they were something like 217% long and at the end of Q4 2018 they were more like 270% long, which is probably why they recovered from the drawdown so quickly.
M* reports the portfolio exposures incorrectly because they account for the swaps the fund uses in the "other" investments but they don't account for the notional value of those swaps. M* counts the fund's asset allocation to these swaps based on the profit or loss the fund has on the swaps but the notional value is what really matters, not just the profit or loss. You can see the notional values of the swaps by looking at the fund's quarterly schedule of portfolio holdings at sec.gov/edgar.
Just my humble opinion but because of the leverage the Leland fund uses you can't really do a performance comparison with the Primecap fund, which uses no leverage, and call it apples to apples. I'm also not sure what you intended to compare, @openice, because POAGX started in 2004, not 1984 (that was Vanguard Primecap, VPMCX), POAGX has more than $10 billion of AUM, VPMCX has more like $69 billion, and I can't figure out what period of time your performance figures relate to, the roughly 9.5% for each of the 3 funds you were comparing. It doesn't seem to be the 3 years I thought you were suggesting for either POAGX or VPMCX.

@msf, Aren’t Treasury’s federal tax-exempt?

But let’s go back 20 years to early 2000, when the S&P 500 was at roughly 1500.
If you had bought then and held until now, that works out to be an average annual return of just 4%.
4% is better than zero… but it’s hardly anything to write home about.
[This return doesn’t factor in dividends, taxes, fund management fees, or inflation… but those effects all largely offset one another.]
...since 2000, the S&P 500 has returned just 4%, while a 20-year government bond would have paid you 6.9% over the same period. That’s a HUGE difference of nearly 3%.

A most slanted "analysis".
The nominal rate of return of VFINX, including dividends and management fees was about 6.2%. (A $10K investment on 1/22/2000 would have been worth $33,232.15 on 1/21/2020 according to this

M* chart.)
The article notes that the S&P 500 figures would have been lower after taxes. Mysteriously though, it doesn't likewise take note of the ordinary income taxes that would have been owed on interest paid year in, year out by long term bonds.
Sure, VFINX spins off taxable divs, and they're significant. A fact that article chose to ignore. Still, only part of VFINX's gain would have been taxed annually. In addition, starting in 2003 those divs would have been qualified, thus taxed at the lower cap gains rate. As would its appreciation have been taxed as cap gains upon sale at the end of 20 years.
Now let's talk about reinvestment risk. Had you purchased a Treasury in 2000, you would have received taxable interest of 6.9% on that principal each year. But you would not have gotten 6.9% on your reinvested interest. You would have ridden the yield curve all the way down to 2% over the next couple of decades.
Put together the taxes and the decline of rates on reinvested interest, and that 6.2% return on VFINX begins to look pretty good. And that's including the (lack of) returns through the "lost decade".

But let’s go back 20 years to early 2000, when the S&P 500 was at roughly 1500.
If you had bought then and held until now, that works out to be an average annual return of just 4%.
4% is better than zero… but it’s hardly anything to write home about.
[This return doesn’t factor in dividends, taxes, fund management fees, or inflation… but those effects all largely offset one another.]
...since 2000, the S&P 500 has returned just 4%, while a 20-year government bond would have paid you 6.9% over the same period. That’s a HUGE difference of nearly 3%.

A most slanted "analysis".
The nominal rate of return of VFINX, including dividends and management fees was about 6.2%. (A $10K investment on 1/22/2000 would have been worth $33,232.15 on 1/21/2020 according to this M* chart.)
The article notes that the S&P 500 figures would have been lower after taxes. Mysteriously though, it doesn't likewise take note of the ordinary income taxes that would have been owed on interest paid year in, year out by long term bonds.
Sure, VFINX spins off taxable divs, and they're significant. A fact that article chose to ignore. Still, only part of VFINX's gain would have been taxed annually. In addition, starting in 2003 those divs would have been qualified, thus taxed at the lower cap gains rate. As would its appreciation have been taxed as cap gains upon sale at the end of 20 years.
Now let's talk about reinvestment risk. Had you purchased a Treasury in 2000, you would have received taxable interest of 6.9% on that principal each year. But you would not have gotten 6.9% on your reinvested interest. You would have ridden the yield curve all the way down to 2% over the next couple of decades.
Put together the taxes and the decline of rates on reinvested interest, and that 6.2% return on VFINX begins to look pretty good. And that's including the (lack of) returns through the "lost decade".

I remember those (80's) years well. My family had some A rated bonds that were paying north of 10% interest.
The article's message (although unwritten) brings forward a good reason to have a portfolio that is built upon both stocks, bonds and (yes) cash. Bank then I had a bank money fund that paid well along with some CD's that were held in an IRA account. It was not hard at all to get eight ... ten ... and even twelve percent on fixed investements back in the 80's. Stock dividends, in gereral, were higher back then than they are today as well.
Have a good one ... and, most of all ... I wish all "good investing."

I put more emphasis on the last 3 years. When I compare RPHIX,ZEOIX,SEMMX,DHEIX(link)
RPHIX has inferior numbers to the other 3.
DHEIX is the only one with 80+% in investment-grade rating. I can't buy DHEIX at Schwab but I can buy DHEAX with no fees.

Not just T. Rowe Price.

Vanguard, the largest passive-fund manager with $3.8 trillion in assets, is likely to become the largest active manager as well within a few years. Currently Vanguard boasts $1.37 trillion in active mutual fund assets, well ahead of Fidelity and only $179 billion behind American Funds, thanks to a higher growth rate on strong inflows at a time when most such funds are seeing outflows.

and

“We think it’s more appropriate to compare ‘high cost vs. low cost’ funds, instead of active vs. passive.”

It's the economics, stupid :-)
https://www.inquirer.com/business/vanguard-jack-bogle-passive-active-mutual-fund-etf-20190527.html
(FWIW, I hold actively managed funds in both houses.)

I own about 1/3 of these funds and also held Magellan which I sold at one point. THe only way to avoid these funds if you have invested for a long time would have been to decide that if a fund was written up it was too late to invest in. I guess I performance chased at a good time. Most of these funds have surely been written up often and I might argue on merit. Of course most are too big these for those who visit the site though I suspect a good fraction are closed to new investors because many are shareholder friendly

Good points. Magellan under Lynch is legendary. Nuf said. Being largely with TRP past 25 years, I’m no stranger to PRMTX, a great fund that jumped on the technology revolution early and rode it. A good friend has owned it as long as I can remember. To my disadvantage, I’ve never fully trusted the tech sector. But I did hold PRMTX for about a year following the drubbing it took in 08. Can’t stand success. Bailed out after some crazy 25-30% gain in rapid time.
Would guess Jerry’s success more related to being a patient long term investor rather than jumping into every high flying fund he hears of.

but finpr0n articles like this don't make that distinction too often, or clearly.

Sad but true. Sundays (when this went up) tend to be “lighter” reading days. That said - the article is badly (and misleadingly) titled. Being perhaps the “hottest”, “juiciest”, or “fastest moving” funds of the past few decades in no way makes them the “best.” I think readers here are smart enough to figure that out on their own.
I’d liken reading this to gazing at some photos of $200,000 sports cars you’ll never own, tropical vacation spots you’ll never visit or gorgeous women (or men, as the case might be) you’ll never meet - let alone marry. I don’t see the harm in looking - especially if you’re older than 18 and presumably competent to make decisions for yourself and to discriminate between “fluff” and serious financial journalism.
-
I’ve rechecked to make sure @equalizer posted the title correctly. He did. The article’s author is John Waggoner. His work often appeared here and on FA when he wrote for USA Today prior to retiring several years ago. Waggoner endured his share of slings and arrows back than, as many writers do, but was by and large recognized as a serious and accomplished financial writer.
“John Waggoner ... was a senior columnist for InvestmentNews and, prior to that, USA TODAY's personal finance columnist for 25 years. He has written for Morningstar, The Wall Street Journal, and Money magazine. Waggoner has also written three books on finance and investing. He has an undergraduate and graduate degree in English literature and is working on his Certified Financial Planner designation. He lives in Vienna, Virginia.” https://www.kiplinger.com/fronts/archive/bios/index.html?bylineID=532

Hi @bee
A fairly common sense write across a range of money matters. Thank you for posting.
This is the type of article I pass along to others to help with thinking and motivation regarding their hard earned money.
The various pieces of the article have been discussed here, too; over the years.

Seems like most of the funds on this list invest in sectors. I personally wouldn’t want a large percentage of my portfolio in sector funds, despite their past performance. So that would involve rebalancing unless you didn’t mind having a large percentage of your portfolio in a few sectors. Sector funds also tend to be more volatile and can go out of style for long periods— such as energy the past 10 years or technology in the early 2000s.

(link)
See quotes below:
Recession risks, which had been elevated during the middle part of 2019, have diminished in recent months...As a consequence, we are now more confident in our baseline forecast that the current window of weakness for global growth will give way to a moderate recovery during 2020.
We will tend to favor U.S. duration over global alternatives, given the relative value and potential for capital gains in U.S. Treasuries and the scope for further Fed easing in the event of a weaker-than-expected macro outcome. While we are broadly neutral on the U.S. dollar versus other G10 currencies, we generally will favor long yen positions in accounts where currency exposure is appropriate
In addition, in asset allocation portfolios, we will look to be overweight large cap over small cap equities.
We favor both U.S. agency mortgage exposures and non-agency exposures. We believe agency mortgage-backed securities (MBS) offer attractive valuation, reasonable carry, and an attractive liquidity profile in comparison with other spread assets. We see non-agency mortgages as offering relatively attractive valuation along with a more defensive source of credit and carry and better market technicals than generic corporate credit exposure. We will also look to have select commercial MBS (CMBS) exposures. U.K. residential MBS (RMBS) also looks attractive on a relative valuation basis.
In currency strategy, we look to be overweight a basket of emerging market currencies versus the U.S. dollar and the euro.
We will tend to favor curve steepening positions in the U.S. and in other countries. U.S. Treasury Inflation-Protected Securities (TIPS) look attractive on a valuation basis
we continue to expect real U.S. GDP growth to slow to a 1.5% to 2.0% range in 2020, from an estimated 2.3% pace in 2019...We look for a modest U.S. reacceleration in the second half of 2020. China’s commitments in the Phase 1 trade deal to purchase $200 billion of additional U.S. exports over the next two years should also support growth in the second half of 2020.
We see euro area growth at around 1.0% in 2020. On balance, we see core inflation remaining close to 1.0%.
The U.K. is set to formally leave the E.U. at the end of January...we expect U.K. GDP growth of 0.75% to 1.25% in 2020,
Japan: We expect GDP growth to slow to a 0.25% to 0.75% range in 2020 from an estimated 0.9% this year...Inflation is expected to remain low in a 0.25% to 0.75% range
China: We see GDP growth slowing into a 5.0% to 6.0% range in 2020 from an estimated 6.1% in 2019.

End of Quote.
======================
What the above means to me?
1) Load on securitized bonds which I have been doing for years (PIMIX,VCFIX,IOFIX,EIXIX. For cash sub use SEMMX)
2) Continue to use US LC as my main equity position which I have been doing for years already
3) If you want to invest in equities abroad go with EM.
4) I will not use TIPS and I don't believe that curve steepening will affect my Multisector funds that much.

One thing about Scott Burns is he has been singing the 2 fund portfolio for years. See here from 2006 - https://scottburns.com/four-milestones-for-successful-investing/. My impression is that the Boglehead philosophy is now a 2 fund portfolio - but back in 2006 it was at least 3 funds, or maybe 5 with a REIT, SV & V lean.

"I dare say a "cyclical" bull market has little meaning to a retiree or anyone within 5-10 years of retirement. 20% pull backs are what people worry about when you use your savings for income or are planning on a retirement date."

@MikeM- This "cyclical bull market" concept with major unspecified pull-backs strikes me as so much baloney. Viewed from that perspective, there has never been anything other than a "cyclical bull market", as long as you adjust the time frame to whatever you need to make that appear to be true.

I dropped Money magazine and Kiplinger's after I got more experience and learned the hard way that most of their "where to invest your money NOW" articles were 3 to 6 months too late.
The one Kiplingers publication I have found worthwhile is Investing for Income. It costs a lot more about $200 a year but has some decent ideas about income vehicles. It is rather static as the portfolio has not changed much over the years. It is rather risky for an income portfolio but I think it's audience is people who need 7% a year.
Some of the recommendations the editor has ridden all the way down as he included a number of small energy companies that almost went bankrupt. Using stop losses would improve his results significantly.
Worth a look.

@catch22, good chart to illustrate the point. In the last 10 years or more, the US large cap growth stocks have dominated the market over the value stocks. When will that switch the lead, no one really know until the report earnings start to reverse, but that has not been the case.

@VintageFreak, when @Simon says the bull market will last another 15 years I believe he refers to a 'cyclical bull market'. A confusing play on words I think. There can be numerous bear markets within this cyclical bull.
I'm with you. We are do for a "secular" bear market (a 20% or more drop) because of valuations. Whether this happens in a month or a year, it will happen. Just needs some catalyst to start the trend. I dare say a "cyclical" bull market has little meaning to a retiree or anyone within 5-10 years of retirement. 20% pull backs are what people worry about when you use your savings for income or are planning on a retirement date. IMHO

There’s two separate themes running here, seems to me.
One theme is the long running debate: Active vs. Passive management. That’s been thoroughly debated / raked over the coals here and elsewhere over the years. I have nothing to add.
The other theme seems to be the “gouging” of fund investors by way of “advisor” fees, management fees and operating expenses. Geez - How many here pay an advisor to oversee their fund holdings? He tosses out a 1% figure for management fees (but doesn’t cite it as an average). Even though I’m in actively managed funds, only two (both classified as “alternative investment”) breach the 1% expense ratio: TMSRX and QVOPX. All three from D&C carry ERs under .50%. At TRP my ERs range from .25% for TRBUX to .94% for RPGAX (excluding TMSRS mentioned earlier).
I also think the author may be confused. He references “fund operating expenses” but seems to equate them with a fund’s management fee. As I understand it, operating expenses include trading costs, record keeping and the like. They do exist - but aren’t part of the ER that you and I see. Further, he appears to view the 12b-1 fee as outside the expressed ER, whereas it’s actually part of the expressed ER.
Than there’s this : “ Management fees, on the other hand, pay the salaries of the analysts and other personnel who actually run the fund. They are not capped by law, but investors should be suspicious of funds with fees above 1%.“ ? Those costs would seem to fall under “operating expenses”.
Having a degree in journalism doesn’t seem to get you much now days.