@bee, what if you has no option in your pension plan other than an annuity? Taking a lump sum is often calculated a reduced value. I still has 10-15 years to go.

If you are participating in a 403(b) plan, ask your plan sponsor if there are 403(b)(7) options. If there are no 403(b)(7) options, you have a right to petition for these options. This usually requires a lot of work (on your part) and a little bit of luck, but is well worth the effort.
403(b)wise is a good source of information on 403(b) plans and has a discussion board where you can post questions. Might be a good place to gather information.
https://403bwise.com/
A Story:
https://403bwise.com/k12/story/129

@bee, what if you has no option in your pension plan other than an annuity? Taking a lump sum is often calculated a reduced value. I still has 10-15 years to go.

Sounds like insurers are pushing their agenda in Washington as they attempt to buy votes for this bill's passage.
I never understood why 403(b) plans were offered to non-profits when 401(k) plans were the preferred offering in the private sector. Insurers carved out their customer base by pushing 403(b) and are now are looking for additional customers.
Good article on the differences:
https://humaninterest.com/blog/403b-compared-to-401k-retirement-plans-for-non-profits/
and,
https://investopedia.com/ask/answers/100314/what-difference-between-401k-plan-and-403b-plan.asp
Most 403(b) investment options are variable annuities that have loads, management fees, sales fees, wrap fees, rider fees, early redemption fees...even rules that limited upside capture of market returns...feh! These TSAs are offered by insurance companies that, like AIG, are not immune to failing.
As a teacher, we fought long and hard to "force" management to offer 403b(7) investment options with low fee firms like Vanguard.
Any annuity (Insurance product) should be competitively priced and closely regulated.
Once you head down the (Annuity 401(k)) rabbit hole its expensive tunneling out.
Alternative:
Invest in low fee funds during your working years, then consider buying an immediate annuity with a portion of your investments to compliments your retirement income. This decision can wait until you are close to retiring and in fact even later into retirement if that makes better financial sense.

Getting back to @Crash and his original post...obviously utilities have "sucked' lately, but PRWCX is "positive on Utes over the next decade"...@Ted long standing call for "QQQ" (which exists) may be replaced with "UUU" (which doesn't exist).
If you have not listen to David Giroux commentary:
https://wealthtrack.com/how-david-giroux-delivers-stock-market-performance-with-much-less-risk/

Yes, I see PG&E and Eversource in PRWCX. The latter is my local electric company. No love there. This is from last December:
https://digboston.com/eversource-screws-mass-consumers/
Also reminds me of how often, all those years ago in my teens, I'd read in the paper that the insurance companies would approach that criminal--- Billy Bulger (not Whitey)--- whose official title was Insurance Commissioner, asking for rate increases year in and year out. Billy always just said, "Sure! Great idea!" Fox in charge of the henhouse. Same with all the federal agencies and regulators.

In large part this is why I left Merrill Lynch. Limited choices in fund families who do not participate in revenue sharing such as Vanguard. I went back to Fidelity where I had been for the five years previous to my moving to ML. I had to sell a number of funds I had at Fido when I went to ML. Since bought some if those back. I like especially how Fido sells many load fund families ntf and load free.

@Crash, my corporate credit card switched to MasterCard after years being with Amex. We travel overseas on business or on personal that we don't pay transaction fee either on Visa and MasterCard. Why use ATMs when you can obtain cash from your debit cards from grocery stores. BOA started to charge fee on ATMs as we consolidated our banking with a local credit union.

I've been in since 2012. Performance vs. peers is just fair to middling over the past 5 years. It looks good indeed, going back TEN years. More recently, it is a "cellar dweller" as we say in baseball. (But not about the Cubs any longer! ;) )

I am at the highest level of bond & cash in recent years. Don't see outstanding upside. More risk today with possible war with John Bolton on board. Remember Dick Cheney? Trade war is another.

FYI: (Click On Article Title At Top Of Google Search)
Stock investors have had a terrific 10 years: The Standard & Poor's 500 stock index has rocked along at a 9.73% pace through the end of February. Unfortunately, the taxman takes his toll — more on some than others. How did the 10 largest stock funds shape up after taxes? Here they are, ranked by post-tax returns. Dividends, gains reinvested through Feb. 28.
Regards,
Ted
https://www.google.com/search?source=hp&ei=1VG7Woz3CKSB5wKBxrm4Bw&q=investment+news++How+The+Taxman+Hit+10+Big+Funds&oq=investment+news++How+The+Taxman+Hit+10+Big+Funds&gs_l=psy-ab.3...2114.9882.0.11336.18.17.0.0.0.0.188.1580.14j3.17.0....0...1c.1j2.64.psy-ab..1.16.1422.0..0j35i39k1j0i131k1.0.zI6KcFOrdf4
1. T. Rowe Price Blue Chip Growth
2. T. Rowe Price Growth Stock
3. Vanguard PrimeCap
4. Fidelity Contrafund
5. American Funds AMCAP A
6. American Funds Growth Fund of America A
7. Dodge & Cox Stock
8. American Funds Fundamental Investors A
9. American Funds Washington Mutual A
10. American Funds Investment Company of America A

If she wants to eliminate volatility or risk of principle loss with some of her money you may want to talk with her about CDs. I believe they may do better than bond funds "for many years" going forward as you stated. Below I attached a link to Bankrate.com, but I'm sure you can build a ladder within Fidelity also. I know you can at Schwab.
https://www.bankrate.com/landing/cd-rates/?pid=semgdtexactbankrate&ttcid=bankrate|c|kwd-12967706|g|9005663&gclid=Cj0KCQjw-uzVBRDkARIsALkZAdn4hufz7A77qdsYgiOvc9oacUFBCfBqIzzxk2D533ZPnOTKMsgzNYIaAtIXEALw_wcB

Given the terms of the conversion notice and with Pimco A shares at the time not being LW, though, Fidelity customers were right to at least consider adding D shares to accounts in which they wanted A-LW privileges after conversion. In the end, however, with the change to LW across the board, it didn't matter.

Let me offer the thesis that strangely enough it may have mattered, though not for any reason I've seen mentioned.
NTF and lw arrangements come and go. Grandfathering tends to be more enduring.
For example, there was a period of time (around 2000?) when American Century dropped out of NTF programs completely for a few years as I recall. Perhaps even worse, it started adding load classes and (again from vague memory), allowed only existing (grandfathered) investors who had owned shares directly through AC to continue buying the NL class. Somewhat like what Janus has done with its lower cost D shares, which can now be purchased only directly, and only if you have held D shares there forever.
Because if this, I hung onto a minimal position in an AC fund I had purchased directly. I finally sold off my last shares just a couple of years ago. The nuisance cost to me was greater than the value in protecting against the small chance that AC would go the same route again and there would be an AC fund that I really wanted at that future time.
It is theoretically possible that at some time in the future, PIMCO likewise would drop its NTF/LW agreements but still protect those grandfathered accounts. Do I expect this? No, not given PIMCO's history. So I didn't open a PIMCO account to protect against this possibility as I had with AC.
Still, I hold onto a $1K Z-share position in a Mutual Series fund at Franklin Templeton. Even though FT has opened up its A shares to LW purchases, so one doesn't need a back door (grandfathered access) for them any longer.

Many load families, like many noload families, enter into bilateral agreements with individual brokerages to sell a class of funds NTF. For example, LCEAX is available NTF at Fidelity but is sold with a load at TD Ameritrade.. Likewise, the same noload fund may be sold without a fee at one brokerage, but you'll have to pay a fee at another brokerage. For example, HOVLX, NTF at TD Ameritrade, but Fidelity charges a fee.
The best thing you can hope to see in a prospectus or SAI concerning NTF load waivers is just that the fund is allowed to enter into these agreements with brokerages.
For example, Blackrock permits front end load waivers for shares sold through "Financial Intermediaries who have entered into an agreement with the Distributor and have been approved by the Distributor to offer Fund shares to self-directed investment brokerage accounts that may or may not charge a transaction fee".
http://quote.morningstar.com/fund-filing/Prospectus/2017/11/28/t.aspx?t=MDDVX&ft=485BPOS&d=b0560dd20f97785f3e555c63cbc03440 (MDDVX prospectus)
Similarly, PIMCO allows load waivers in its SAIs: "Each Fund may sell its Class A shares at net asset value without a sales charge to ... client accounts of broker-dealers ... with which the Distributor or PIMCO has an agreement for the use of Class A shares ... in particular situations in which the broker-dealer will make Class A shares available for purchase at NAV."
http://quote.morningstar.com/fund-filing/SAI/2018/3/23/t.aspx?t=PONAX&ft=497&d=081d50585090e2443fe13f6a9c05c8c4 (PIMCO SAI)
broker-dealer = financial intermediary
has an agreement = entered into an agreement
particular situations = self-directed brokerage accounts
Sure, nothing required PIMCO to offer A shares load waived at Fidelity or elsewhere. If it hadn't though, it would have been bucking an industry trend by moving from no load to load. That's what the industry was doing 20 years ago (e.g. American Century, Invesco adding loads), not now.
PIMCO was already selling A shares NTF, so this was simply a question of where, not if, A shares would be available NTF. Terminating NTF arrangements with brokerages would have been the bigger change; keeping the funds available NTF maintained the status quo.
Was there no plan at PIMCO, or simply no plan that the rep was at liberty to tell you about?

My own investing history goes back only as far as 2003. 15 years. The bull is long in the tooth. I had figured that uncle Donald's cukoo-nuts pronouncements were the MAIN factor in this topsy-turvy market, currently. Politics, not fundamentals. But the market has been disconnected from fundamentals for quite a while, it must be said. Don't mind me, I'm just typing out loud.

FYI: Real estate funds can play an important role in diversifying a portfolio, because real estate returns tend not to be too highly correlated with either the broader stock market or the bond market. Also, because real estate investment trusts tend to pay healthy dividends, these stocks are often seen as income plays. That has broadened their appeal in recent years, as low interest rates have left many investors seeking income wherever they can find it.
Regards,
Ted
http://www.morningstar.com/articles/857081/our-favorite-domestic-reit-funds.html

FYI: Buy and hold isn’t a perfect strategy. If you convinced somebody in the fall of 2007 that this was the right way to invest, they’d have a bone to pick with you, as they’d watch U.S. stocks crash by nearly 60% over the following sixteen months.
But if this person were able to hold on, even if they bought on the day that the market topped, they would have received 7.48% per year over the next 10.5 years. Not so terrible. The most recent decade actually worked out okay for investors, even if it wasn’t easy.
Regards,
Ted

My mom is freaked out by the market volatility this year and wants to take some money out of some of her Fido equity funds and put it into one or two Fido bond funds. She's looking for Fido bond funds with large dividends and seems to want to park her funds into these bond funds for many years.
I have some ideas of high dividend Fido bond funds that she could put her money into but I would also like suggestions from this board. Thanks in advance for any and all suggestions!

Now both GABCX and GADVX are available with a tf at E-Trade with a 25 basis point difference in expense ratios. Still hoping GADVX will go back to a ntf fund as it was several years ago.

Back in 2003, I bought a "zero" at a great rate, almost doubling my money over 10 years. I'm not finding quite so high a rate at that same source, these days. Anyone able to point me to a government-issued "zero" I can buy DIRECT, and denominated in dollars---like the last time--- bypassing brokers and mutual funds? Thanks. (I can't even BELIEVE how the Irish gov't lately sold a huge slug of "zeros" at a negative rate. I mean, it boggles me!)

" ... In fact, not a single mutual fund has beaten the market since 2009. "
There's your first clue that the writer is statistically challenged. Is the question about outperformance since 2009 (i.e. 2010 to the present), or since March 2009? The start of the bull market is often pegged as March 9, 2009.
Then there's the question of what "the stock market" means: S&P 500, S&P 1500, Wilshire 5000, MSCI All Country World Index (ACWI), .... For kicks, let's use the S&P 500. Growth of $10K (using M* charts) :
March 9, 2009 through March 23, 2018
VPMCX: $52,028 vs. S&P 500: $45,832
Jan 1, 2010 through March 23, 2018
VPMCX: $31,087 vs. S&P 500: $27,587
Though the lead question (regardless of starting date or market index implied) is not what the article is about. The article asks whether any fund landed in the top quartile every year since the bull market began. Again there's the question of whether this means calendar year or years ending each March 8th.
Then there's the question: top quartile of what? Peer funds (same category) or all broad-based domestic stock funds? But wait, it gets worse. While the article says that the universe studied was broad based domestic stock funds, it writes about two small cap energy funds that remained in the top quartile for five successive one year periods. Bzzt, wrong universe (of funds).
The bottom line is that, lousy writing and lousy analysis aside, it's starting with a lousy premise: that a good fund is one that lands in the top quartile year in, year out. That would rule out index funds.
VFINX (among large cap blend peers) ranked in the 54th percentile in 2009, 31st percentile in 2010, 38th percentile in 2012, 44th percentile in 2013, 29th percentile in 2016, 33rd percentile in 2017, and 29th percentile YTD. Since 2008, VFINX landed in the top quartile only 3 times (1/3).
Don't get ripped off by bogus metrics.
Edit: I was working on this as Catch posted other comments. Interesting that we both cited VPMCX. I was originally going to use FCNTX (another of Catch's funds), but while it outperformed the S&P 500 from 1/1/2010 on, it slightly underperformed since March 9, 2009. Still, a very good fund.

http://www.rfsadvisors.com/etfs-vs-mutual-funds/
How many mutual funds would you guess outperformed the stock market since the last bull run started nine years ago?