Hi @msf
You noted: "(Since this was a 403(b) to IRA rollover, it would not have been constrained by the once per year rule, though that didn't matter here.)"
From working with a friend a few years ago, this is my understanding related to what you wrote:
IRA one-rollover-per-year rule
Beginning after January 1, 2015, you can make only one rollover from an IRA to another (or the same) IRA in any 12-month period, regardless of the number of IRAs you own. The one-per year limit does not apply to: rollovers from traditional IRAs to Roth IRAs (conversions)Jun 18, 2019
My understanding of what your note is not: Example:
If one had several life time jobs, that resulted in 2, 401k's and 2, 403b's; this person could perform direct transfers/rollovers of these accounts into an existing traditional IRA without violation of the once-per-year rule.
As I understand, the once-per-year rule applies only to traditional IRA's, YES ???
Thank you for your clarification.
Take care,Catch

Absolutely agree. There's been a huge rush into passive vehicles that are market-capped (eg index funds) because of their low costs. Sadly, 'low costs' have become synonymous for 'index funds' -- so when folks pour into those vehicles, the funds have to buy the underlying shares at higher and higher prices. But when the markets turn south, most undisciplined folks may well panic and sell, thus accelerating movement to the downside in these stocks - and subsequently indices. IMO his comments on price discovery are spot on as well ... but I've been saying that for years as the Fed goosed equity prices during QE, QE2, Twist, etc, etc. anyway.
Give me an actively-managed fund with allocations/management style that I like and performance that works *for me* with reasonable ERs (such as PRWCX, PRBLX, VMVFX, various American Funds, etc) and I'll happily pay for it until things change.
I don't like market-cap weightings anyway. Or the herd mentality. :)

Hi @Junkster
As some of us have known who you are, for a number of years; there is no reason to feel you are pandering with the announcement. You have, with your book; benefited investors in the past and will continue to do so into the future; as well with your thinking and sharing here at MFO.
Hats off to you and thank you.
Catch

@Junkster
Regarding the new fund effect: https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=1101615

I cite detailed studies in my book by the Charles Schwab Center for Investment Research and also by Kobren Insight Group on the validity of the new funds effect. Also provide real time trade results on the new funds effect. Of course this was from what is now a mostly bygone era. But the effect is still there in some cases. A recent example being EIXIX - new fund in a hot sector. I would hate to think where I might be now had it not been for exploiting the new funds effect in the late 90s.
You must bring out the worst in me as I have never mentioned my book in all my years on this forum. I detest those that pander their books on forums. Most especially that master marketeer of his 1001 investment books on the Bogleheads site.
https://www.amazon.com/How-Trade-Living-Gary-Smith/dp/0471355143

Hi @larryB, For my CD ladder which has an average maturity of one year (with maturities ranging from three months up to two years) is found in my cash sleeve since the cd's I own are FDIC insured and I consider them to be a form of a time deposit. I have my real estate income fund (FRINX) a member of my hybrid income sleeve; and, if I owned a preferred secutities fund (such as CPXAX) it would be a member of this sleeve as well. I have placed my convertible securities fund (FISCX) in my hybrid income sleeve. In addition, I hold a good number of income generating asset allocation funds in this sleeve as well.

At the beginning of every mutual fund prospectus is generally a little seemingly innocuous sentence: Past performance is no guarantee of future results. So what if it's been hot in the past? The only question that matters to anyone reading this right now is--Will it continue to be? Time and again, fees or all-in costs have been the strongest most consistent indicator of future performance. Are low costs always the best predictor? No, that's why people come to this site. But Morningstar is absolutely right to ding this fund for charging a 1.5% expense ratio on $3.3 billion in assets when bond funds that specialize in non-agency debt can be had for much less.

To each their own. Over two and a half years in March 2017 here at MFO I said IOFIX has been a “wonder to behold since inception”. In 50+ years in the game have never once looked at a fund’s expense ratio. Long ago in my book I wrote about exploiting the new fund effect. I used actual real money trading examples from new funds from Strong and INVESCO. I would have hated to have seen the expense ratios of these new funds.

"... It attracted more capital in last quarter of 2017 than in the first six quarters of its existence. It ended the year with $1.6B, five times the level it started the year..."
Jeepers. Is that a lotta "dumb money," then? Thanks for replying, all of you. I track IOFIX but don't own it. I own PTIAX, which is not quite the same animal, but in the same ballpark, right?

I fail to see what relevance the last quarter inflows in 2017 has to do with now September 2019. IOFIX has trounced every bond fund in the multi sector, emerging market, high yield corporate and high yield muni, as well as the non traditional bond categories over the past three years with a 10.50% annualized return. There is no close second. I would think the dumb money is the money still waiting to initiate a position. When that occurs it may be time to run for the hills. In the meantime, its compelling story of being heavily invested in the ever shrinking legacy non agency rmbs arena continues.

FYI: For an investor whose story was featured in a best-selling book and an Oscar-winning movie, Michael Burry has kept a surprisingly low profile in recent years.
But it turns out the hero of “The Big Short” has plenty to say about everything from central banks fueling distortions in credit markets to opportunities in small-cap value stocks and the “bubble” in passive investing.
One of his most provocative views from a lengthy email interview with Bloomberg News on Tuesday: The recent flood of money into index funds has parallels with the pre-2008 bubble in collateralized debt obligations, the complex securities that almost destroyed the global financial system.
Regards,
Ted
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2019-09-04/michael-burry-explains-why-index-funds-are-like-subprime-cdos?srnd=etfs

I've been thrilled that a very small fund I invested in took off like a rocket when it acquired a new fund manager (Minyoung Sohn) a few years ago. The fund is up 81% over the last 3 years, and has frequently been the no. 1 performing fund in its category (per Barron's). I had visions of having found the next Peter Lynch--my fortune was just a few years away. And now I read on MFO that the manager has left. Bummer! So frustrating! And the new manager who will be the replacement does not appear to have any experience managing a fund on his own. The fund is MEIFX (Meridian Enhanced Equity Fund). The fund management doesn't provide a lot of detailed information on their operations (at least in the past) so I really have no idea what to expect in the future. Very frustrating!!!

Ted is the messenger with this link, not unlike any of us here who post a linked article, and there is nothing directed his way, for this write; for the following observation.
Perhaps those who read this may offer their opinion; either to the article or to me, too.
This is a bit of tongue in cheek; but a serious review of what we investors may read,see or hear on any given day.
My Sunday morning self-assessment: normal good sleep, 2 cups of coffee, blood pressure within normal readings, don't feel dizzy and can perform household duties without difficulty. Being a senior citizen, one may do these type of assessments to establish a baseline of normal; as muscle aches may only be from over doing physical work and feeling a little rough may not mean I'm going to have a heart attack or a stroke, but that I shouldn't have eaten so many baked beans to night before.
So, I read this article (twice) and come to the conclusion that either I am loosing my ability to process information properly or that this is a poorly written article that appears to be little more than an AD for Schwab and advisers to obtain fees. Perhaps I'm too ANAL or beginning to suffer from cranial/rectal inversion. I find that the data and numbers are very scattered and can't make heads or tails of any decent reference points. Those who are not investors might simply assume that they need an adviser, and that may be the case for many. On the other hand, one could invest in a moderate allocation/balanced fund that may be available. I have advised to this method over the years, to those who know me well.
From conversations over the years, I do know that offers to 401k/403b folks to have their accounts managed is growing; for a fee of 1% or so.
Conclusion: If I'm not following what this article is really about; then I need to consider that it is time to move all of our monies into FBALX. A 9.2% annualized return since inception in 1983 is a tough baseline return to beat from meddling with one's money.
Help me decide whether it is time for the FBALX tactic at this house.
Thank you for your time and comments.
Catch

FYI: Argentina imploded. Beijing let the yuan slip to the lowest in at least a decade. Global central banks signaled they’re spooked about slowing growth by rushing to cut rates. By almost any measure, August was a month to forget for emerging-market investors.
Consider the following: Developing-nation currencies had their worst August in at least 22 years, puncturing a carry trade bet that had just begun to turn positive. Investors yanked so much cash from exchange-traded funds that flows are poised to turn negative for the year. On top of that, dollar-bond sales fell to a 42-month low.
Regards,
Ted
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2019-08-30/emerging-markets-are-often-bad-in-august-but-rarely-this-bad

Vanguard was not listed because it declined to participate, as stated in the article. Also mentioned in the article is that Vanguard offers 1800 ETFs with no commission. This alone would make it worth my consideration if I were a big investor in ETFs.
Everyone is different and cares about different things, which is part of why the Kiplinger article was disappointing. It provided numeric scores of features with little in the way of explanation for readers to weight according to their own needs.
I'm almost exclusively a buy-and-hold fund investor, though I do dabble in ETFs (also long term).
Firstrade is excellent for funds because it offers access to advisor shares that you cannot get anywhere else (that I know of). I view its totally free trading as a nice temporary feature, much as it was at Scottrade, at Scudder (yes, it had a brokerage), at WellsTrade. Nice while you've got it, I just don't count on it lasting.
Years ago, Schwab seemed to offer more funds NTF or with lower mins than elsewhere. Many funds were offered under special tickers ending in "1Z" for this purpose. For example, CHH1Z is Schwab's pseudo-share class for buying CHNAX.
These days, it seems that either the fund company is making A shares available NTF through brokerages (as with CHNAX) without requiring a special ticker, or it's shutting down access (as with DWS funds class S, SCQGX offered by Schwab as SCQ1Z). Schwab offers a solid set of funds and has excellent service, but it seems to have lost the edge it had decades ago when fund supermarkets weren't as common.
To some extent, Vanguard seems to have taken its place. It offers some institutional class shares with lower mins than you'll find elsewhere (notably PIMCO funds @ $25K), and provides access to institutional class shares that you can't get from other discount brokerages (such as Diamond Hill funds like DHSIX).
I've used TDA and wasn't impressed with the fund offerings. Too high a cost for TF funds ($49.99 to buy or sell).
Fidelity offers institutional class shares on many funds with relatively low mins, especially in IRAs. Because it enables you to buy additional shares (once you have established a position) for $5/buy (and $0 to sell), this is very cost effective for the long term investor.
Thinking in terms of fund offerings (variety, min purchase, share class access, transaction costs) and quality of service generally, Schwab and Fidelity top my list. I wouldn't look to Vanguard just because it gives access to some unusual third party funds. But if I did have an account there to purchase Vanguard funds, I would take a closer look at its third party fund offerings, including 1,800 NTF ETFs.

FYI: Investors are piling into an exchange-traded fund that appears to promise protection at a time when stocks, and the economy in general, look to be their most vulnerable in years. The problem: The fund may actually be one of the riskiest investments in the market right now.
Related Data
The iShares Edge MSCI Min Vol U.S.A. ETF (ticker: USMV) has attracted nearly $9.5 billion this year, second only to the broader and much better known Vanguard S&P 500 (VOO). The iShares ETF has swelled 42% in the past eight months to $32 billion, and is now the largest of the low-volatility ETFs, more than twice the size of its next largest rival, the $12 billion Invesco S&P 500 Low Volatility (SPLV), which has also been attracting assets.
Regards,
Ted
https://www.barrons.com/articles/how-to-choose-a-volatility-etf-51567200240?refsec=funds

FYI: “I have been involved in the investment business for over 50 years,” reader Dave Goebel of Damascus, Ore., led off his letter in last week’s Mailbag, “and I can make absolutely no sense out of what is going on in today’s markets. Having lived through the years of double-digit inflation and interest rates in the early 1980s, it makes no sense to me how we can have over $16 trillion in worldwide bonds with negative yields, and 2) how the Federal Reserve can be concerned with pushing inflation up to 2%.”
That makes two of us. A 50-year man myself, I wonder what impulse leads the same human brain that spurned a 15% bond yield in 1981 to chase a subzero bond yield in 2019.
Regards,
Ted
https://www.marketwatch.com/articles/living-with-negative-intrerest-rates-51567187649?mod=investing

The subject is about money manager exhibiting traits of "domination" in attempting to alter behavior, rather than demanding profit.
Essentially, we are talking about gender/racial quota systems. Not legislated by public-legislators, but by trying to circumvent legislation and twist arms quietly behind the scenes. These latter-day "gnomes of Zurich" don't like the law, and are using investors money --- some who may well disagree with their aims -- to foist their "values" on others. Its very reminiscient of what the Chi-Coms are doing with their "social credit scores".
People placed in positions because of their race and gender don't belong on a board. Hey hon, you don't know what your are doing, but we need you to fill a quota. Oh, that guy over there with 20 years more experience, and has paid his dues. Tough patoot.
Discrimination based on race/gender by the Left is still "total crap".

FWIW saying, I'm receiving noticeably more investment-signal service solicitations these days, including from services I briefly dabbled with over 10 years ago and haven't heard from in AGES. The contrarian in me takes that as a warning sign for equities.

You have junk bonds at all time highs and now see where one of my favorite sentiment indicators the BofA bull/bear indicator gave a buy. The last time it went to a buy was January 3 of this year.

FYI: Over the last decade, the largest asset managers have gotten bigger and more powerful. Just five — Vanguard, BlackRock, Fidelity Investments, American Funds, and T. Rowe Price — control 55percent of the $19.3 trillion in total assets of U.S. mutual funds and exchange-traded funds.
But that concentration partly reflects the juggernauts that dominate passive investments, which are all about volume and keeping costs down. Indeed, BlackRock and Vanguard alone oversee $12 trillion in assets, if mutual funds tracked by Morningstar are included as well as institutional mandates.
A deeper dive into the data shows that competition in the U.S. asset management industry remains healthy. According to research done by Morningstar Direct for Institutional Investor, the top five active managers controlled only 22 percentof mutual fund and ETF assets as of the end of 2018. These figures have been fairly steady for at least the last five years. That’s a far cry from the 55 percent run by the top five when both active and passive are included.
Regards,
Ted
https://www.institutionalinvestor.com/article/b1gxz8xcd0vms3/Fears-of-a-World-Domination-by-a-Handful-of-Asset-Managers-Are-Overblown

FYI:
Regards,
Ted
August 29, 2019
Dear WEALTHTRACK Subscriber,
Volatile U.S trade relations with China are immediately reflected in the financial markets but what about the economic impact? Could they push the U.S. into recession? On our website this week we have a podcast on the topic with leading global economist and strategist Nick Sargen.
On the television program this Labor Day weekend we are revisiting a recent Great Investor show with a global value manager. He is a long time holder of Berkshire Hathaway, even though the stock has badly lagged the S&P 500 so far this year. It’s basically flat vs. the market’s around 15% gain. On a total return basis Berkshire’s stock has trailed for the past decade. Berkshire doesn’t pay a dividend. The S&P 500 does which makes a difference. Berkshire’s stock has risen by nearly 260% versus the market’s more than 300% total return advance in the decade ended in 2018.
Despite Berkshire’s stunning record since 1965, 21% compounded annualized gains, this is not the first time that the company’s shares have underperformed the market for a decade. It has happened several times in recent years.
Berkshire has outperformed the market by double digits in every trailing ten year period since 1978, but it hasn’t had a double- digit advantage since 2002, and in recent years it has underperformed the market in three ten-year spans.
Even Warren Buffett himself admitted the company’s glory days of outperformance might be over. In an interview in the Financial Times his response to the question: if Berkshire would be a better investment than the S&P 500 he said “I think the financial result would be very close to the same.” He went on to say “…if you want to join something that may have a tiny expectation of better (performance) than the S&P, I think we may be about the safest.”
At a $507 billion market capitalization and few places to deploy it in enough size to make a discernible difference to the bottom line, is Berkshire just too big?
Over the years Berkshire Hathaway has benefitted from sizable stock buybacks in some of its major holdings. In Berkshire’s 2018 annual report Buffett cited American Express where its holdings “remained unchanged over the past eight years,” but our “ownership increased from 12.6% to 17.9% because of repurchases…”
In the same his 2018 Letter to Shareholders, Buffett said the company itself “will be a significant repurchaser of its shares…at prices… below our estimate of intrinsic value.”
What else does Buffett have up his sleeve to enhance shareholder returns?
The company has never purchased a tech stock. It recently bought Amazon and Buffett heaped praise on CEO Jeff Bezos. Berkshire has also never paid a dividend. Could that be next?
We’ll hear from Tom Russo, an avid student of Buffett’s style of value investing with no intention of changing his approach. Russo is Managing Partner of investment advisory firm, Gardner Russo & Gardner where he oversees around $11 billion including his Semper Vic Partners fund which he launched in 1984 after hearing Buffett address his class at Stanford. Semper Vic has generated 14% compound annual returns since inception, handily outperforming the S&P 500’s 11% returns.
The global value manager focuses on owning a small group of exceptionally well managed brand name firms - 19 at last count - with dominant, almost unassailable positions in their mostly consumer-oriented businesses and then holding them pretty much forever. Berkshire Hathaway has consistently been one of his largest positions.
On this week’s show I asked Russo, given Buffett’s modest expectations for the stock’s future performance, if he is rethinking the position.
Don’t forget, if you are away this weekend, it’s easy to take WEALTHTRACK with you! The WEALTHTRACK podcast is available on TuneIn, Stitcher, and SoundCloud as well as iTunes and Spotify.
Thank you for watching. Have a great Labor Day weekend, and make the week ahead a profitable and a productive one.
Best regards,
Consuelo

Nick Sargen Podcast:
https://wealthtrack.com/trade-war-impact-the-markets-economy/

FWIW saying, I'm receiving noticeably more investment-signal service solicitations these days, including from services I briefly dabbled with over 10 years ago and haven't heard from in AGES. The contrarian in me takes that as a warning sign for equities.

@Old_Joe: You said, "But we held on and came out the other side in decent shape."
My question to you & others that were around in 2007-08. Did you make any buys with ( dry powder ) as the market bled DOWN ?
I believe I made 2 or three small purchases & then held on for dear life !! Today I wished
I had spent , invested, a few more bucks.
With that said ,how many here at MFO were using some of their dry powder as of late Dec. 2018 ? I confess I missed that one also.
Derf

In Oct 2008 I bought a house. Sold it 10 years later for a good profit.