IMHO, the suggested rationale that RMDs be eliminated (or at least pushed back a few years, say, to age 75) because some people (a) are working now so don't need the money (b) will need the benefit of longer tax deferrals on those few years of RMDs they take before they retire, is a red herring.
If that really is a problem, it can be easily addressed without making broad changes in RMDs that affect everyone.
To some extent, it is already addressed. If someone over 70 works for an employer that offers a retirement plan accepting rollovers, the worker need just transfer the IRAs into the retirement plan. That gets rid of any RMD so long as the person continues working for the employer.
"The vast majority would still need to withdraw money on a regular cadence but allowing the untapped portion to further compound." Those workers in this "vast majority" withdraw money (RMDs or more) on a regular cadence and leave the rest of the IRA untapped to further compound. Done! That's the way things work now.
For the few (the "unvast minority"?) who don't need any money while working, they pay their taxes on the modest annual RMDs ("tax a little now") for a few years while they continue to work. They're not required to spend those RMDs. So they move their RMDs to taxable accounts, where they "benefit from additional time for their investments to compound"
There's no need to create more opportunities to abuse the system, merely to address what is to a large extent (i.e. for the "vast majority") not a problem. And for the few who are substantially affected, there are more targeted ways of helping them.

The benefits for high-net worth investors if required minimum distributions (RMDs) are eliminated are hard to miss.... “Often times, these clients would prefer not to get taxed either because their income is very high or they would prefer to keep this money tax deferred for the next generation.

Agreed that the rest of the stuff is just noise. But some of the noise is worth listening to, such as the thought that sometimes simplifying things is a good idea.
So let's simplify the rules for inherited IRAs by eliminating stretch IRAs altogether. Five years and out (take the money from inherited IRAs over five years or less). The point of an individual retirement account tax shelter is to shelter your retirement assets, not your legacy. The opposite, getting rid of RMDs altogether, would just distort the retirement purpose even further.
Kitces:

From a tax policy perspective, the tax code provisions allowing tax-deferred growth for traditional retirement accounts (and tax-free growth for Roths) were created to help individuals and couples save for retirement, not their heirs. While this challenge is at least partially ameliorated by the fact that beneficiaries themselves are subject to Required Minimum Distributions after the death of the original retirement account owner, the fact that many/most retirement accounts are left to younger individuals of the next generation means that often the tax preferences for retirement accounts apply even longer for beneficiaries than for the original contributor!

https://www.kitces.com/blog/proposals-for-eliminating-stretch-iras-repealing-nua-and-the-3-4m-retirement-account-cap-in-the-fy2016-treasury-greenbook/

In 2011 the English government (using data from England and Wales) conducted a study to estimate the probability of an individual 50 years old in 2011 to reach 100 years of age. The results were 11.4% for males and 17.0% for females. These numbers if applied to the US, would imply that we might be significantly underestimating the income requirements during retirement.
https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/223114/diffs_life_expectancy_20_50_80.pdf

Normally when I see these tables, I just go ooohh, look at the pretty pictures.
But when there's coloring outside the lines, I take a closer look. The S&P 500 sector performance table shows eleven rows of sectors (plus a row for the S&P 500). The problem is that until 2016 there were only ten sectors.
This is how the chart looked through 2015.
http://www.usfunds.com/media/files/pdfs/researchreports/2016/Periodic-Table-of-Sector-Returns-2016.pdf

Here's State Street Global Advisors (SPDRs) current chart, with 10 sectors through 2015, and eleven sectors since.
http://www.sectorspdr.com/sectorspdr/Pdf/All Funds Documents/Document Resources/10 Year Sector Returns

I don't know where NovelInvestor got its figures or how it retrofitted the new Real Estate sector into earlier years. That should have been easy to do - Real Estate was simply carved out of Financials, so the other sectors' figures for the past decade should not have been changed. But looking at the NovelInvestor table, it seems they were.
https://www.reit.com/investing/investor-resources/gics-classification-real-estate
Just wait until the latest sector reorg hits these tables. With IT being split, Media being expanded, and other companies being moved around, it will be difficult to extend these new sectors back in time to create a "virtual" table of how these sectors might have done over the past ten years. (That's because there's ambiguity in how each of the companies would have been classified over the past decade as their businesses matured.)

I wasn’t soliciting advice. Just sharing something that hasn’t worked. Hope there’s room in the thread for some of those types of submissions as well. (The “hope is not a plan” was meant in jest. Nobody needs to tell me that.)
If somebody wants to start a thread on only what funds have been rising lately, that’s possible. (I think @Catch22 has in the past posted a very detailed chart which shows the hottest sectors.)
I’ve never been a momentum investor. That’s not to take away from those who subscribe to it. I do have a plan suitable for someone of my age, temperament, situation, and life expectancy. Intend to stay with the plan that’s served me well over the years.
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* What I will suggest here, however, that the experience I shared might point to very narrow (maybe even narrowing) market breadth. Is it possible that only a few hot sectors are driving those gains in the major indexes?

Hi Ted,
You referenced a terrific article that summarized the causes of a bubble formation. It provided ample charts as supporting documentation. Thank you for referencing this short, easy to read, and logical article that addresses a complex and highly interactive part of the marketplace. Booms and busts have always reflected our market economy.
Although I read the book many years ago, the article finds the same root cause for the bust feature of our markets as did "Manias, Panics, and Crushes" by Aliber and Kindleberger. Their model is that the investment crowd sees others making bundles of money and fears being left out of this wealth winning game. They borrow far too much and overspend. Too much money chasing too little product drives up prices. After some undetermined period, a few wise folks pullout and crashes follow. Hence the bubbles and crash cycle.
Although history never precisely repeats itself, the echoes of the past do. Our memories are short and we are slow learners too. Many successful FMO members do not follow that deadly pattern, but unfortunately many do. Good luck in understanding the market's puzzling timing mechanisms.
Best Wishes

Totally agree that health care will consumer much larger part of our retirement resources. We still have over 15 years fom retirement. In the meantime, we maintain an active lifestyle, routine exercising (swimming and walking), and eating healthy.

FYI: ( Make sure your watch the video, its very well done, along with the Sidebar "Tech Stocks Could Be Winners in Big Sector Shift.)
Tech Stocks Could Be Winners in Big Sector Shif.)
A Market Shakeup Is Pushing Alphabet and Facebook Out of the Tech Sector
Photo: Javier Jaén
Think of Big Tech and companies like Alphabet, Amazon, Apple, and Facebook come to mind. The firms dominate our digital lives, living on our cellphones and influencing how we interact with people, buy things, get to places, access information, and consume entertainment. Their market impact has also been huge: These four stocks have returned 33.7% annually over the past five years, on average, versus the S&P 500’s 14.5%.
Regards,
Ted
https://www.barrons.com/articles/a-market-shakeup-is-pushing-alphabet-and-facebook-out-of-the-tech-sector-1535762710

M FO Members: Fund manager David Berkowitz explains how since his fund's creation he managed to finish YTD in the 96 percentile, one year in the 96 percentile, and three years in the 100 percentile. David, in the immortal words of former Chicago Bears Coach, Mike Ditka "Who Ya Crappin’?
Regards,
Ted
http://www.riverparkfunds.com/focused-value-fund

Clearly. Trying to imagine why you would charge such a thing. Guess you have not studied in detail its changing fortunes the last few years. 5.5y ago DS mentioned its defensive stance to an extent (http://www.mutualfundobserver.com/2013/03/seafarer-overseas-growth-income-sfgix/) but not more recently (https://www.mutualfundobserver.com/2015/05/seafarer-overseas-growth-income-sfgixsigix-may-2015/). See also its M* star changes over time.
In any case it invests in EM; who would think "philosophy should protect capital in down markets" of any such vehicle?
It is fascinating to me to read that investments which do not pan out, or not quickly enough, are somehow the result of defocusing, as though effort and will and hard thinking and other notionally causal behaviors can and will preclude outcomes like @MikeM quoted. That's why I wondered if he doubled down on those overreacted-to stocks.
I have been reading Foster for years, back to Matthews, interesting guy. But some months, and longer, the bear eats you.

Harbor is saying that it will realize all gains in the portfolio this year. If all gains are realized, any attempt to optimize by selling lowest gain shares first would be pointless.
Still, I agree that the vast majority if not all of the net cap gains realized will be long term. That's for a few reasons:
- Very low turnover (13%), so on average, investments have been held for 4 years. Think of a portfolio filled with investments held 8 years then sold; half will be under 4 years old at the moment, half more. In any case, very few holdings owned for under a year.
- Net losses this year; YTD performance -2.73%. So holdings purchased this year may easily have dropped in value; at least enough so that short term losses should wipe out any short term gains.
- New management building a new portfolio - it's very unlikely that the new management is buying securities now just to dump within the fiscal year. They're not about to generate additional short term gains with their own purchases.
Here's the source for M*'s estimated 38% distribution.
https://www.harborfunds.com/HIF_manager_change_QA.htm#7
It's worth keeping in mind the dollar amount of the expected distribution, more so than the percentage. Harbor estimates that $9B will be distributed in cap gains: $4.5B already recognized, and nearly all of the $4.5B unrealized gains are expected to be realized.
The current AUM of the fund is $20.8B, so that comes out to 9/20.8 = 43%. (This is just slightly higher than the 41% one gets by taking Harbor's high end distribution of $27 and dividing by the current NAV of $64.94.)
So watch that AUM. As it drops (people sell), the $9B won't change, but the denominator will get smaller and smaller.

Ive held the fund for 24 years so lots of cap gains

'16 and '17 underperformance is fine as I'd expect him to lag in stronger years. The underperformance YTD is disappointing.
I do think, to some extent, he's been a victim of his own success. He took quite a bit of money in early then subsequently opened another fund, which I think was a bad idea... Too soon.

@MFO Members: They say timing is everything. It all depends what time period you invested with Mr. Foster. Year-to-date, three years, not so good. Five years a lot better.
Regards,
Ted

I'm not sure what you're saying here. Is it that Harbor should have fired Castegren in 2000, since that's the last good year you identify? In that case, perhaps it was Ivy International Growth (now Ivy Global Growth) IVINX that had the right idea. Ivy induced Castegren to quit in 2000 by refusing to close its fund.
More likely, it was Ivy, not Northern Cross that had no succession plan. I don't believe Ivy was expecting Castegren to quit. It plunked Reilly in as manager for 1.5 years, followed by McLachan for another year. Only then did it settle on a long term manager with Mengel. In those intevening couple of years, IVINX returned -17.26% (2000), -21.03% (2001), and -20.96% (2002).
In comparison, HAINX had returns of -4.97% (2000), -12.25% (2001), and -6.38% (2002).
For a frame of reference, TEMFX had returns of -3.67% (2000), -7.92% (2001), -8.64% (2002).
Northern Cross had a succession plan in place. For almost two years before Castegren died, starting Feb 2009, Castegren was joined by Ducrest, LaTorre, and Wendell. For the two years of overlap, and the two years following, HAINX put up good to very good numbers: 17th percentile (2009), 31st percentile (2010), 17th percentile (2011), 17th percentile (2012).
Those managers did not maintain their fine performance. However, the succession was planned and the fund continued to perform well through the transition.
The lesson to be learned is when a fund does not have a smooth succession plan (successful or otherwise), you may expect a portfolio overhaul and large amounts of cap gains realized. Harbor just fired Northern Cross. That's what caused the gains to be realized.

The real lesson was to sell the fund after the death of long-time fund manager Hakan Castegren in 2010. It was one of the top international funds before 2000. Unfortunately, Northern Cross didn't have a successful succession plan in place resulting in mediocre performance in the following years.

FYI: Below is a look at each country’s percentage of total world stock market capitalization based on Bloomberg indices. (We only include the 35 largest countries by market cap in the table.)
For each country, we show its current percentage of world market cap, where it stood on Election Day 2016, and where it stood ten years ago.
Notably, the US has just recently eclipsed the 40% level for the first time since 2005. At the moment, the US stock market makes up 40.01% of world stock market capitalization. Given dollar strength, gains in US equities, and declines in most international equity markets recently, it’s no surprise that this reading is at multi-year highs.
As the US’ share of world market cap has gone up, China’s share has taken the biggest hit. On Election Day 2016, the US made up 36.53% of world market cap, while China made up 10.21%. Since Election Day, the US has gained 3.48 percentage points, while China has lost 2.7 percentage points.
China’s drop has actually moved it into the third place ranking behind Japan, which currently makes up 7.59% of world stock market cap.
Behind the US, Japan, and China ranks Hong Kong (6.51%), the UK (4.49%), France (3.23%), Germany (2.91%), and India (2.83%).
Regards,
Ted
https://www.bespokepremium.com/think-big-blog/us-as-of-world-stock-market-cap-tops-40-again/

Thanks again @davidmoran
Re tutorial (noun) - Cambridge Dictionary
1. a period of study with a tutor involving one student or a small group
2. a period of study with a tutor and a small group of students
3. IT a document or website on a computer that shows you how to use a product in a series of easy stages:
Albeit, you used the adverb form of the word (which is rarely used). So to tie things together:
tutorially: in the manner of a tutorial (Collins Dictionary)
Here’s how M* describes Ms. Benz’s role and purpose: “Morningstar director of personal finance Christine Benz has developed a series of hypothetical portfolios for savers and retirees. These portfolios are offered as general examples for investors' reference. These portfolios are not personalized recommendations, nor are they investable products offered by Morningstar.”
Hope I’m not nit-picking. Just trying to understand why I should be particularly interested in her advice over, say, someone like Ol’Skeet here who does a great job explaining his long standing bucket approach or the folks at T. Rowe Price who present models by example. (ie - I can take apart a given target date retirement fund designed by them and visualize how much they allocate to different funds or sectors.) I’m not saying Christine Benz’s is bad advice. Just asking why she deserves more credence than someone else who’s equally (possibly more) experienced?
Nothing in Benz’s listed educational background (below) suggests any type of financial training or certification. All I see there is political science and East European history. Also, I’ve never thought of M* as an advisory firm. Always thought their forte was in statistical analysis of fund data. (But, I’ll admit to rarely looking at them.)
Christine Benz’s Experience (Linkedin) https://www.linkedin.com/in/christine-benz-b83b523/
Director of Personal Finance
Morningstar, Inc.
2008 – Present (10 years)
Director of Mutual Fund Analysis
Morningstar, Inc.
February 2006 – March 2008 (2 years 2 months)
Education
University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
BA, Political Science, Russian and East European Studies
Lyons Township High School
From Amazon https://www.amazon.com/Christine-Benz/e/B002PICOLS
“Christine (Benz) holds a bachelor's degree in political science and Russian/East European studies from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. She lives in the Chicago suburbs with her husband, Greg. She is an avid cook, a political junkie, and a long-suffering Chicago Cubs fan.”

https://www.morningstar.com/content/morningstarcom/en_us/model-portfolios.html
https://www.linkedin.com/in/christine-benz-b83b523/
dir of personal finance at M*, for some years

Thanks @davidmoran
Who employs her? (some company or agency, wealthy individuals directly, financial planners)?
40 years is a long time. If she’s wrong, you wouldn’t know for a long time. I suppose it doesn’t matter because there’s probably no legal accountability anyway.
3 years (advertised by some here) doesn’t serm very meaningful to me. In a 40 year span (first investment to time of drawdown) a 3 year streak (positive or negative) would appear trivial.