And only in leap years.

https://www.investors.com/etfs-and-funds/sectors/sp-500-top-stocks-own-in-years-best-time-december/
Now's The Best Time To Own Stocks (Especially These Eight)
MATT KRANTZ 08:00 AM ET 12/03/2019
December is the best time to own S&P 500 stocks. But some stocks are a bit better to own than the rest.

Japan's market has not recovered now for maybe 30 years?
But yes, nothing else is new. Maybe one thing. We still don't know who the last person will be who will say that and promptly market will correct, and then we will all remember him as THE guy.

The Matthews fund is pretty much sui generis. In the US market, I can find only two other funds that are vaguely comparable, Harvest Asia Bond and Aberdeen Asia-Pacific Income. One other Asia bond fund liquidated a couple years ago. That makes it hard to construct a meaningful peer comparison. Morningstar had it as "world bond," where it was a four-star fund then moved it to "emerging markets bond," where it is a four-star fund.
That said, it's a poor fit - for purposes of benchmarking - with the group. I checked the correlations between the six Great Owl EM bond funds, looking at both their correlations with one another and their correlation with Matthews. Their inter-group correlation is in the mid-90s, their correlation with Matthews is in the mid-70s.
I own shares and have since launch. I'm impressed with Ms. Kong and am persuaded by her argument about the shift in the world financial capitals from New York and London to Asia. Modest correlation to the US bond market, about .53.
"Strategic" was all the rage in fund naming once. Not so much now. These things come and go.
David

I agree with former Justice Potter Stewart who said: “I know it when I see it.”
Stewart’s remark was in regard was to pornography. However, the same might be said of market crashes and bear markets. Consider this: A person under the age of 10 or 11 in the U.S. has never experienced a bear market. Most under the age of 20 probably can’t remember one.
Geez - The linked article grossly oversimplifies matters. It’s not as neat as “One, two three. Now’s the time to jump back in.” As part of a third grade primer on investing it would suffice. A bear can last anywhere from six months to twenty years (as in the case of Japan). Better resembles a black hole than a merry-go-round.

“we got the name wrong on our first try” or “we’re not achieving what our fund name suggests”?

I get your point. Not knowledgeable about these guys, so I’ll take a pass.
About 8-10 years ago T Rowe did the same thing with TRRIX. Changed name from “Retirement Income Fund” to “Retirement Balanced Fund.” I was fine with that. I took them at their word that the new name better reflected the fund’s existing framework. Possibly the “income” part of the original name was misleading to some investors and suggested a less risky approach than the fund pursues. Also (I think importantly) prevailing interest rates in the U.S. and globally had fallen steeply during the fund’s relatively brief existence so that less income was being generated from the bond component than earlier envisioned.
Another one that baffled me a bit was TRIGX. Initially it was named T. Rowe Price International Growth and Income Fund. Than (also about 8-10 years ago) they renamed it International Value Equity Fund. They gave the same reason: to more accurately represent the investment approach the fund follows.
Shakespeare might say, “What’s in a name ...?” For mutual fund managers who find themselves in the midst of an investor class action lawsuit, perhaps quite a bit. Case in point - Oppenheimer’s “Core Bond Fund” which lost 36% in 2008. http://shareholdersfoundation.com/case/oppenheimer-core-bond-fund-investors-class-action-lawsuit-05282009 One can surmise that the litigation, ill will and investor exodus occasioned by this episode did much to hasten the demise of Oppenheimer.

“It’s been easy to be a bad investor for the past 10 years: the market’s relentless rise, fueled by enormous amounts of fiscal (hello, trillion-dollar deficits!) and monetary (hello, negative real interest rates!) stimulus, had made it likely that even a badly constructed portfolio booked acceptable – perhaps even double-digit – returns.“
- David Snowball

The third or fourth Capital One rep I spoke with said that some people are reporting problems with Firefox. So if you're unable to open an account, try a different browser.
Another problem: Capital One kept our "profiles" on file from when we had accounts many years ago. But it wouldn't let us access the profiles or create new ones (since we had existing profiles). We had to call to have the passwords reset.
Despite having closed accounts years ago, Capital One not only retained our SSNs, but data on linked bank accounts, phone numbers, etc. AFAIK, Capital One should have no need for external bank data once an account is closed. On the plus side, we didn't have to go through a validation process to relink a bank. Still, I'd rather they not retain information that isn't needed for legal purposes.

If we’re investing for a long-term goal — and most of us do have horizons of five years or more — then why are we so obsessed with the daily headlines and the gyrations they can spark in asset prices

Good point. But I wouldn’t consider five years “long-term”. I’ll go further and suggest that by-and-large this near term obsession with portfolio value / stock prices leads to more bad investing decisions than it does good ones among the investing public.

https://www.nasdaq.com/articles/rethinking-risk-in-equities-2019-11-25
Rethinking risk in equities
If we’re investing for a long-term goal — and most of us do have horizons of five years or more — then why are we so obsessed with the daily headlines and the gyrations they can spark in asset prices

Yeah - D&C seems to be a “stickler” on the medallion signature guarantee, even for small dollar amount transfers out - as I understand them. I’ll need to move a few K from Invesco after the new year to TRP and am already sweating it a bit. My guess is they won’t require the signature guarantee. Most seem not to for amounts under around $50,000.
My local CU’s been good about providing signature guarantees in the past. But many institutions, including some local banks, now refuse to provide one without substantial documentation and assurance directly from the institution you are coming out of - essentially “guaranteeing” the money is on deposit with them and will be provided. Apparently this reluctance stems from recent court decisions holding the agent granting the signature guarantee liable for any monetary losses stemming from misrepresentation / criminal intent.
Nuts - I’m old enough to remember when obtaining a medallion signature guarantee was a relatively simple matter. Over the past 25 years they have gotten harder to obtain. Best bet is bank where you do business. I’m told by those who issue these that requests for them are rare. It’s something they’re not very familiar with or comfortable granting.

Day trading is NOWHERE as productive (or fun) as it was 10 years ago or longer. Speaking as someone who paid for parts of his PhD via daytrading futures (who has both earned and lost 10s of thousands in a single day), I suggest he first learn about the markets, stocks, and human psychology before even considering daytrading. Frankly I think day trading is becoming fairly extinct given the rise of algos and technology that can out-wit an out-perform the individual human operator and would counsel him against daytrading with anything other than 'fun' money for an occasional kick .... life is too short to be staring at screens all day anyway :)
BTW sure, he can dabble in trading simulators, but trus tme, no amount of 'paper' or 'simulated' trading experiences will EVER prepare a person mentally for playing in the markets for real, live, and with real money on the line.

If your friend is 12 years away from retirement, why is he / she only now taking an interest in investing?
Not much to go on here. Does he have access to a tax deferred plan at work? (I suspect not based on your question.) Does he by chance look forward to a pension or some kind of “buyout” that will assist him? There are many different investment vehicles depending on type of work, tax status, etc. Others here know more about alternatives to the traditional 401K than I do.
Good advice from you to learn more. My biggest source of help in the early going was from co-workers who had been at the game longer. A good global stock fund sufficed for the first 20 years. But I was young enough than not to worry about every market flux. Your friend may not have that advantage.
I’ve found “learning” about investments / investing to be a slow multi-year process (a long learning curve ). One doesn’t just pick up a book or two and suddenly know everything. BTW - I like “The Only Investment Guide You’ll Ever Need” by Andrew Tobias as a good quick easy to read book for the novice investor. He’s updated it over the years. I recently did a quick re-read. Available in print or download at Amazon. Of course, there are longer more comprehensive books for the serious student.

Strip away much the text and what the writer is referencing becomes clearer:

Unlike Congress, the IRS has been working on the issue and took an important first step toward reducing RMDs for most retirees. ... Back in January, I observed that if the IRS recalculated these two-decade-old mortality tables and updated the rules, it would be modestly helpful but wouldn’t make that big a difference. ... Now that the IRS has formally proposed a change, it turns out this intuition was right. ... It seems very likely that this rule will become a final regulation sometime in 2020.

Embedded in the column is a link internal to M*:
https://www.morningstar.com/articles/909626/could-the-government-take-the-bite-out-of-rmds

One obvious thing to do would be to adjust the mortality assumptions that drive these RMDs, because they are going on 20 years old. In fact, President Donald Trump directed the Treasury Department to do just that, and when the government reopens, it will likely propose some adjustments. However, while life expectancy has increased, my back-of-the-envelope calculations reveal that such a change would not make much difference.

For a robust analysis, including copious links, see Kitces:
https://www.kitces.com/blog/irs-proposes-new-rmd-life-expectancy-tables-to-begin-in-2021/

@msf, that is what we have done in last several years. TDF forms the foundation and gradually consolidate other actively funds into TDF

But barring a serious recession, a 7% return is quite reasonable over the next 3-5 years

Wow, 7% return sounds a bit stretched.

About Russel Kinnel
Junk journalism - much ado about nothing I would suggest he use at least a five year time frame!!!
With a bachelor's degree in economics and journalism from the University of Wisconsin-Madison under his belt, Russel Kinnel began his career at Morningstar in 1994. Fifteen years later, Russ is now Director of Mutual Fund Research and Editor of "Morningstar® FundInvestor," a monthly print newsletter for individual investors. He also oversees Morningstar's Fund Analyst Picks & Pans, writes the "Fund Spy" column for the company's investment Web site, and pens a monthly mutual-funds column for "Kiplinger's Personal Finance" magazine.

For new and seasoned investors, the rule of "do your homework" still applies, eh? Read as much as you need for your understanding comfort level, and ask questions about a particular investment to be comfortable with the fit in your perception of risk tolerance and how the investment fits into a portfolio for your age and other financial circumstance. In the below case I knew there must be a typo. FAGIX had a loss of -5.79% in 2018 and is YTD about +15.4%. A -5.79% loss for 2018 became a -58% (very close number types with throwing away a decimal and rounding). Yup, we all have brain farts from time to time.
So here's the deal. I read the linked article from the perspective of a seasoned individual investor/boomer familiar with FAGIX. I also thought about the article from the perspective of a relatively new investor attempting to understand investments. Mr. Kinnel starts the write directing the reader to only the years of 2019 and 2020 and possible investment scenarios for the funds mentioned. He writes in the EXAMPLE below of FAGIX rebounding from a 58% loss.
FROM Russel Kinnel: As investors review their results for the year and plot a course for the future, some will no doubt be tempted to dump the holding that did worst and reallocate that money to the managers who did best. Yet a review of the greatest turnarounds this year suggests that your biggest winner in 2020 might be one of your biggest disappointments from 2019. At a minimum, be sure you aren't selling simply because the fund's style is lagging.

EXAMPLE from the article:Fidelity Capital & Income (FAGIX) is yet another Notkin vehicle. In this case, it's a high-yield bond fund that rebounded from a 58% loss to a 15.2% gain. As I mentioned, the equity version has higher highs and lower lows, but the drivers are similar. Notkin has about 20% of the fund in many of those same stocks as Fidelity Leveraged Company Stock, and his aggressive style is on display with his bond selection, too.
Good evening,
Catch

https://ragingbull.com/stock-market-basics/what-is-a-bear-market/
What Is a Bear Market?: Definition and Survival Tips
Jason Bond
·
November 20, 2019 at 7:00 AM
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A bear market is one of the most dreaded events in the world of stock trading. It can cause investor confidence to plunge to an extremely low level and make investing risky even for the most experienced traders. During a bear market, many investors rush to sell off their stocks in an attempt to avoid further losses, resulting in a devastating cycle of negativity. Inexperienced traders who don’t know what is a bear in the stock market may suffer lingering effects that last for years when they encounter one.

Seems like much ado about nothing. I have several brokerage accounts at Fido that just popped up like mushrooms in spring. Also have several accounts at Fido that have zero account balances for over 30 years. Tried to get them removed several times they can't do a remove. To each his own.