Would the class view it more important to work with an excellent CPA rather than an advisor? I do.
Also, I remember a convo I had with my VP Engr in the late 90s. He and his wife were in their mid 50s at the time and had done well in their careers....told me that he saw an advisor who was like 20 years younger than him and had like 5% personal wealth than he had. VP felt that he should charge for his advice to the FA.... LOL.
Also, it's my firm belief that I would never take financial advice from anyone who didn't have some gray hair and who didn't have very substantial personal wealth.... just like I like my pilots to have some gray hair....

Schwab assigned a local FA(financial adviser) to me when I joined years ago. This guy is amazing and can tell you what funds to use, he even does CEFs, all for free. I don't need it so I don't use him but over the years I met with him twice just to find out his knowledge. Last year I was assigned to another FA and she is your typical saleslady, which is what most FAs are IMO.
I call it catch-22. If your knowledge is below average, you would not be able to know if the FA is good, if your knowledge is above average, you don't need one.
In the past anytime I have asked Fidelity or Schwab for advice I received a portfolio made of 8-10 funds that looks like computer generated.
My advice is to learn it by yourself, investing is really "simple" unless you want to complicate things...and most do. See ideas at https://www.bogleheads.org/wiki/Lazy_portfolios
You can just go beyond that. Example: select 3 index funds + 2 managed funds = done.

There was talk a while back about the pros and cons of either Fidelity, Vanguard or Schwab's in house financial advisors. Many of us worry our partners will be left floundering if anything happens to us suddenly. My wife has no interest in managing our big picture finances, although she is a genius on the little stuff.
@lynnbolin2021 probably did the most investigation and chose Fidelity and Vanguard, which use mostly mutual funds at fees of 0.3% to 0.5%. I have shied away from Vanguard having such poor results with their paperwork and accounts handling. My talks with Fidelity indicated they used many mutual funds in what seems like a computer driven process. Schwab will set up an "Intelligent Portfolio" in the same manner with dozens of ETFs, none of which seem to be their best ETFs in that category, and is heavily weighted to international equities.
I have thoroughly investigated Schwab's financial planning process using their recommended "Wealth Enhancement Group". This is the11th largest ( by AUM) money management firm in the US, and seems to buy up smaller ( ? less successful firms).
They have produced some high quality projections about Roth Conversions and cash withdrawals for us for free, hoping we will sign on.
They recommend a portfolio of dividend growth stocks that has a very good track record, equivalent or better than SCHD with slightly less risk. The fees are higher than SCHD's rock bottom ( 0.06%) but no more than a lot of actively managed funds.
Anybody use this platform as Schwab?

https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/1537140/000158064224000163/rondure-overseas_497.htm
497 1 rondure-overseas_497.htm 497
Rondure Overseas Fund
Investor Class - ROSOX
Institutional Class - ROSIX
(a series of Northern Lights Fund Trust III)
Supplement dated January 9, 2024 to
the Prospectus and Statement of Additional Information dated October 20, 2023
The Board of Trustees of Northern Lights Fund Trust III (the “Board”) has concluded that it is in the best interests of the Rondure Overseas Fund (the “Fund”) and its shareholders that the Fund cease operations. The Board has determined to close the Fund and redeem all outstanding shares on or about February 8, 2024 (“Redemption Date”).
Effective immediately, the Fund will not accept any new investments, will no longer pursue its stated investment objective, and will begin liquidating its portfolio and will invest in cash equivalents such as money market funds until all shares have been redeemed. Any required distributions of income and capital gains will be distributed as soon as practicable to shareholders and reinvested in additional shares, unless you have previously requested payment in cash.
Prior to or on the Redemption Date, you may redeem your shares, including reinvested distributions, in accordance with the “How to Redeem Shares” section in the Prospectus. Unless your investment in the Fund is through a tax-deferred retirement account, a redemption is subject to tax on any taxable gains. Please refer to the “Tax Status, Dividends and Distributions” section in the Prospectus for general information. You may wish to consult your tax advisor about your particular situation.
ANY SHAREHOLDERS WHO HAVE NOT REDEEMED THEIR SHARES OF THE FUND PRIOR TO THE REDEMPTION DATE WILL HAVE THEIR SHARES AUTOMATICALLY REDEEMED AS OF THAT DATE, AND PROCEEDS WILL BE SENT TO THE ADDRESS OF RECORD. If you have questions or need assistance, please contact your financial advisor directly or the Fund at 1-855-775-3337.
This Supplement, and the Prospectus and Statement of Additional Information dated October 20, 2023, provide relevant information for all shareholders and should be retained for future reference. Both the Prospectus and the Statement of Additional Information have been filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission, are incorporated by reference and can be obtained without charge by calling the Fund at 1-855-775-3337.

@msf,
The link you posted by Robin Powell stated the following:

1. Tactical allocation funds had an average expense ratio of 1.39% (they are very expensive) and an average turnover of 289% (trading costs are high and tax efficiency is low).
2. TAA funds on average had about 49% of their assets in U.S. equity, about 33% in bonds, about 15% in foreign equities, about 8% in foreign bonds and about 13% in cash.
3. TAA funds underperformed all benchmark indexes and had lower absolute and risk-adjusted performance. The average TAA fund had cumulative returns of 215% versus 486% for P1 and 406% for P2. They even underperformed the Barclays Aggregate Bond Index, which returned 242%.
4. TAA funds produced an average Sharpe ratio of just 0.10 versus 0.17 for P1 and 0.15 for P2. Their Sortino ratio (a measure of downside risk) was also much lower, at 0.14 versus 0.25 for P1 and 0.22 for P2.
5. Benchmarked against a seven-factor asset pricing model (the four Fama-French-Carhart factors of beta, size, value and momentum plus factors for foreign equities and domestic and international bonds), TAA funds had a highly significant (t-stat = 4.6) negative monthly alpha of -0.16 over the entire period. The negative monthly alpha was even worse, at -0.20% (t-stat = 5.2), over the period beginning in 2004.
6. TAA funds failed when needed most, during the Great Financial Crisis — over the period 10/2007-3/2009, they produced a negative monthly alpha of -0.37% (t-stat = 2.7).
It concluded that “Our findings indicate that tactical allocation funds did not outperform the benchmarks, and investors would have been better off with passively managed funds that followed benchmark indexes.”
Am I missing something on this tread?

If the orders were placed before 4 p.m. ET, the share purchase price should have been the NAV close that day.
Unless the transaction request was not in "correct form" - whatever that means.
From the prospectus:
How the Trade Date Is Determined
"If you invest through a financial intermediary and your transaction request
is received by T. Rowe Price or its agent in correct form by the close of the NYSE,
your transaction will be priced at that business day’s net asset value.
If your request is received by T. Rowe Price or its agent in correct form after the close of the NYSE,
your transaction will be priced at the next business day’s net asset value unless the fund
has an agreement with your financial intermediary for orders to be priced at the net asset value
next computed after receipt by the financial intermediary."

Happy New Year! What's your New Year resolution?
Mine is to learn something new...one of the many reasons I enjoy this site. Thanks to all that share their experiences and expertise with others.
Here are a few resolutions from some recent WealthTrack guests:
recent-wealthtrack-guests-all-top-financial-professionals-have-remarkably-similar-2024-resolutions
No new episode for this week.

" time tested magical thinking...". Too funny @wabac. lol
Wasn't there a fund years ago that was very successful in that it assigned placeholder identifiers for each stock, only looking at financial metrics/performance and took the bias of actually knowing which company it was... I guess those who look at Brand strength would disagree but again I recall this was an outperformer

@MSF. Thank you for your comments above. I did review your pros and cons before I made my decision last year. You have a wonderful ability to explain and tease out the issues with financial decisions for those who are not aware of them. My sister is a CPA and is a great resource for tax questions that I did not consider. Thanks again. Fundly

...one would have to take into consideration several factors if one decided to limit the number of funds.... key nan risk, reputation, scale and financial strength of the fund company, diversification within reason, drawdown performance, bench strength, age of fund managets....the more I read this thread the more I like TSUMX. Thornburg Summit fund.,. multi asset, invests to outperform inflation, some international exposure, create quote real wealth end quote. Keep it simple, stay invested, some funds too volatile and then you bail at the wrong time.... always...
Baseball fan

I can't locate any information that states CALF specifically avoids the financial sector (and/or any other sector). Here's the current Fact Sheet from Pacer.

Look here.

Starting with the S&P Small Cap 600 Index, CALF screens out financial companies with the exception of REITs

CALF versus AVUV here for those not familiar with etfrc.com

I can't locate any information that states CALF specifically avoids the financial sector (and/or any other sector). Here's the current Fact Sheet from Pacer.

My own opinion on the current holdings in a managed ETF, not sure it means to much other than looking backwards. Maybe CALF has avoided financial for now but could make it a high percentage going forward. Who knows. You have to have faith in the management and process more so than the current holdings, I think. Same for any ETF or mutual fund.
One interesting statistic on CALF and AVUV. CALF has 100 holdings. 73% of those holdings are also in AVUV which has 748 holdings. Obviously, they like many of the same SC stocks, but CALF is more concentrated.
FWIW, I've held QRSVX at different percentages for many years. A conservative SC that does well over time. I've more recently in the past couple months added both CALF and AVUV to my SC holdings.

For some reason, Financial Services industry allows sub par customer focused companies to survive far too long. May be when it comes to money matters humans have sticky behavior.

From @Tarwheel’s linked FT article
“My sense is we are approaching the end of the more intense period of outflows,” chief executive Rob Sharps said in an interview with the Financial Times. “In certain, very visible, aspects it was a very disappointing year. In particular, the flow picture and the business that we lost.”The active equity house has faced strong headwinds since early 2022, when poor performance in some of T Rowe’s largest growth equity strategies sent investors running for the exits.
-
As a subscriber to the FT I’m underwhelmed by the breadth and depth of its stories. Plan to cancel before it renews. Not a bad article. Superficial coverage ISTM. Chief Executive Sharpe and outside observers may not fully grasp the depth of the problem. No mention of investors disgruntled by poor service. And I wonder if they fully appreciate the mounting competitive pressures. To a lesser extent they are afflicted by the same phenomenon that has dinged banks - the ability and willingness of investors to shift funds from one institution to another with relative ease and speed using modern technology.
I was a bit surprised Franklin is the other house mentioned as hemorrhaging money. Albeit, I’m not too familiar with them. But a few of their ETFs have garnered my attention. They seem at least to be experimenting with some new approaches. Some, like LVHI have done well and receive high marks at M*.

The Week in Charts (12/27/23)
Put these charts on your wall. Topics:
0:00 Intro
00:23 Overbought! Oversold!
01:08 Credit Card Rates & Mortgage Rates
01:55 Fed Policy & Stock Market Returns
03:30 Mortgage Rates & Home Prices
04:20 The Stock Market Is Not the Economy
05:20 Bear Market Bottoms
06:39 Volatility is Mean-Reverting at Extremes
07:36 Markets Don't Follow a Normal Distribution
09:35 Bank Failures and Financial Crises
10:33 Increasing Concentration
11:59 What Happened Last Year = What Will Happen Next Year?
12:47 Cars Are Not Appreciating Assets
13:43 Past Performance = Future Results?
14:54 Just Buy What You Know?
15:54 Shorting Stocks Based on Valuation
17:07 Irrational Investors
18:38 Streaks
19:41 Profits Matter ... Eventually
20:41 The Workers Came Back
21:42 Bonds Have Risk
23:23 Buying a Stock Based on a Meme
24:34 Supply/Demand Imbalances
25:20 Makes Changes to Your Portfolio Based on Headlines
26:26 Rising National Debt
28:06 Big Returns, Big Drawdowns
28:59 Central Planning vs. Capitalism
29:53 Wall Street Predictions
31:10 Why You Need to Invest
32:21 There Is No Impossible in Markets
Video
Blog

Interesting article in Financial Times about TRP’s loss of investors. I’m one of the long term investors who’ve been bailing out. Although I still invest in TRP funds, I transferred our Roth IRAs from there to Fidelity a couple years ago. Convenience was a big factor because now all of our investments are with Fidelity. However, it was also due to a growing lack of confidence in TRP. A lot of my investments are in allocation funds, and I’m not pleased with TRP’s offerings, aside from PRWCX, which has been closed to new investors for a while. My wife and I have invested with TRP for more than 25 years, with more than $200K in our Roth IRAs, and they still wouldn’t let us invest in PRWCX.
So we invested heavily in TRPBX, which has been a major disappointment. It was considered a top moderate allocation fund when we started using it, but performance has steadily declined— which is ironic because PRWCX has been so successful. Much of the problem seems to be their asset allocation, with heavy stakes in foreign and emerging markets. Although the fund’s volatility is not bad on a day-to-day basis, it has been hurt by the high foreign allocations in down and up markets. TRP also started investing about 10% of its assets in hedge funds, which from my view hasn’t helped performance a bit.
We still own several TRP stock funds that have performed well, through the Fidelity funds network. However, we’ve ditched their bond and allocation funds. The Fidelity funds that replaced them have all had better performance. We’ll probably drop some of our remaining TRP funds if they don’t improve soon. At one time, I considered using TRP for all of our investments, but we decided to use Fidelity as well — and my Fidelity investments as a whole have greatly outperformed my TRP holdings.
https://www.ft.com/content/7cdd7cd9-f465-48ae-af18-aa8201f8fab8

Andrew Foster, a renowned portfolio manager and founder of Seafarer Capital Partners, shares his insights on why emerging markets are no longer a growth story. Foster emphasizes that the investment case for emerging markets lies in individual companies rather than countries.

https://youtube.com/watch?v=sFpirvQRBuE

Interesting guys.
I’ve felt rightly or wrongly that Dow 37,000 (reached 2 years ago) is a decent marker of sentiment and valuation. That’s about where it still is today (I’m guessing that’s about neutral today). So, FWIW, I’m pretty much stuck in neutral - where I’ve been all year long. I recognize the Dow doesn’t represent the greater market or have any special significance. But over the years it’s been a half-decent guide for me (of euphoria vs bust). At least as good as 75% of the market prognosticators.
Did unload BINC a few days ago and move into an IG short term (1-3 years) bond ETF. Not a market call. I expect the former will continue to perform well. Just trying to reduce overall risk profile as a decent year ends and with potential distributions in mind. It seemed as good a place as any to take a little risk off the table. (Equity exposure fell slightly from 48% down to 46% as a consequence of the move.)
I’m structured into 10 equally weighted static segments (all but one represented by a single holding), so selling / replacing any one position is a pretty significant move, Also limits my ability to add or reduce risk incrementally. So far so good. But it’s a relatively new methodology for me.
There are so many cross-currents regarding the financial landscape now it’s hard for me to form an opinion on the future course of the economy or stock valuations. Wars, Sino-tensions, disfunction in DC, consumer attitudes re prices, and the approaching elections. All of this has to weigh heavily on investor sentiment.

From @msf post,
"McWilliams is also the sole manager of T. Rowe Price's U.S. Risk Managed Dynamic Allocation SMA (separately managed account strategy)
https://www.troweprice.com/financial-intermediary/us/en/investments/separately-managed-accounts/us-risk-managed-dynamic-allocation-sma.html"
That is a useful link.
Here is my quick summary (but as msf suggested, read the fact sheet at the link above) -
In the four years since inception, the Dynamic Allocation strategy gathered $13.5M in assets. It has a hefty wrap fees. Aside from the small AUM, this essentially tactical allocation (equity and fixed income and no derivatives or hedging) strategy did not beat PRWCX and its draw down during 2022 was not good. Not sure what the strategy's limitation is to go to cash to limit risk. As of Sept, 30, 2023, the strategy was 100% in equities. (Fact Sheet: Approximately 50% of the portfolio is dynamically allocated between fixed income and equities, primarily through broad market index-based ETFs (and cash), to dynamically adjust asset allocation in response to short-horizon risk forecasts.)
Somehow, PHEFX managed to garner large AUM, given its infancy. In the first month alone it gathered $1B AUM and now has $3.1B AUM. I never thought TRP are a marketing machine but they are able to market this very well.
I will watch the manager's risk management in real time before increasing my current 1% of PV in the fund. Notwithstanding his 100% equity bias in the Dynamic Allocation strategy, PHEFX did alright against JHQAX during Sept and Oct equity market draw down.