FYI: The chart below shows several issues investors struggle with all the time. It’s difficult to pick the best performing investment year after year, yet for many investors, it’s an annual event. They look for an encore, picking the best asset class last year with the hope of a repeat performance. Yet, betting on last year’s winner rarely works out.
Assets at the top of the chart one year could be at the bottom the next, and vice versa. Much of this is due to reversion to the mean. But over the long-term, those big swings even out. The chart shows annual returns for eight asset classes against a diversified portfolio. Diversification works to smooth out those big swings in the short-term. While you’ll never get the biggest gains of any year, you avoid the huge losses.
The table below ranks the best to worst investment returns by asset class over the past 15 years. Hover over the table to highlight the asset class returns.
Regards,
Ted
https://novelinvestor.com/asset-class-returns/

Not sure why 3-month returns are of any consequence. Any fund can have a terrific quarter, but that is no reason to own it. ARTIX had a good quarter as noted, but it has struggled terribly the last 3 years. My concern is that the large number of trend followers will start piling in international funds at the wrong moment. Core holds for us are ICEIX, MAPIX, ODVYX, SIGIX, VEA, and BISMX depending on the risk level of the portfolio. We could not be happier that we first bought ICEIX (IVVYX) many years ago. It has been a star, flying under the radar, which is fine for us.

Yes I have been reading up on this fund over the past couple of weeks too and am intrigued by it. I have followed Jain over the past couple of years. I'm curious what % of your equity portfolios does EM currently represent. I'm around 5 %

I'm 10% foreign. And SFGIX is my only dedicated EM equity fund. It's 3% of total portfolio. I've not been adding much at all. Mostly just watching, lately. Rich valuations. I'm re-investing all pay-outs.

Yes I have been reading up on this fund over the past couple of weeks too and am intrigued by it. I have followed Jain over the past couple of years. I'm curious what % of your equity portfolios does EM currently represent. I'm around 5 %

This is a little off-topic of emulation, but if anyone would comment I would appreciate your thoughts and views.
I am a fairly recent (2017) investor in DSEEX so I have not reaped the previous years benefits. I have no intention to liquidate or reduce my percentage invested but I am curious if anyone has thoughts on the recent meaningful "under-performance" of this fund to its benchmark, the S&P 500?
The sectors it is/was invested in (according to its website) have done relatively well, excluding tech recently! So why the recent 2+ % under-performance?
I am just trying to get a better understanding of DSEEX and what to expect under various scenarios, if that's possible!
Thx,
Matt

" A fellow named Bill Bengen initially used that [Monte Carlo] calculation discipline when he concluded that a 4% annual drawdown rate resulted in high portfolio survival odds for an extended retirement period."
Not exactly. He concluded that a 4% drawdown rate resulted in certain survival, not merely a high probability of survival: "no client enjoys less than about 35 years before his retirement money is used up." Survival is typically taken in financial publications to mean lasting 30 years.
More importantly, for the most part he used actual not statistical data. He looked at rolling 50 year periods, starting with 1926 (i.e. 1926-1976) and ending with the 50 year period 1976-2016. Monte Carlo had nothing to do with this.
You may well ask: what "actual" data did he use for years that were in his future (his paper was published in 1994)? Well here he did use statistical data. But of the simplest kind, again no Monte Carlo simulation. He merely "extrapolated the missing years at the average return rates of 10.3 percent for stocks, 5.2 percent for bonds, and 3.0 percent for inflation - a concession to the 'averaging' approach, but one that was unavoidable."
Bengen used actual returns over multiyear spans (i.e. he did not assume that year-to-year returns were random and independent). He filled in missing data by using constant annual returns (i.e. no variation of returns). Everything Monte Carlo is not.
Quotes are from Bengen's original paper, cited in the NYTimes article linked to by MJG. See Figure 1(b) in that paper for how many years a 4% drawdown rate would last if started in any year from 1926 to 1976.

I have found what has worked well for me and my family over the past years was to take a sum equal to no more than one half of the five year average return of the portfolios. For me, this currently computes to a little more than 4.75%. In this way principal grows over time. This is how I ran my parents money in their retirment years and now run mine. And, this is how I am schooling my son to continue to run things when he takes over the management of mine and my wife's assets. If the full factor (currently 4.75%) is not needed it can simply be invested or accrued for times a greater sum might be needed.
Think about it ... Because, for those that have reached critical mass, it works. The secret is to control spending by living within ones means. For those living in retirement that have not reached critical mass times ahead could indeed become most difficult.

Hi guys!
I will say only this: in our retirement package, you had to be 55 with 10 years of employment. Also, it was not offered to office people. Also, not to engineering personnel. At our plant (we have 20 worldwide), this is the second time in 10 years they have done this with us. Other plants have had packages also, so it must be something they can do at their discretion to pare down production as necessary. 'Cause we're non-union? Who knows?
God bless
the Pudd

Yes you have a point Sven. I'm guessing it should have been offered to employees with 20 years or more of service. That would take away age discrimination.
Happy 4/th,
Derf

I really like my equally weighted S&P 500 Index fund (VADAX) as it is cost effective for me to buy through Invesco's nav exchange and purchase program. When I choose to load equity ballast within my portfolio this is the fund I most often use. It is probally not for everyone but it has worked well for me through the years. Currently, it makes up about 5% of my large/mid-cap sleeve found in the growth area of my portfolio. Should we get a nearterm pullback in the market I will most likely become a buyer of this fund as all of the other eleven funds held in the growth area currently are at full allocation accounting for about thirty percent of my portfolio's equity allocation.
From a style orientation it consist of a mix of about half large caps and half mid caps stocks and at times a slight representation to small cap stocks. Year-to-date it trails the cap weighted S&P 500 Index; but, over longer periods of time has out performed it. Plus, it rebalances every quarter something the Index itself does not do being cap weighted.

Fidelity targeted about 7 percent of its workforce, all of them employees who were age 55 or older and had been with the company for at least 10 years.

Isn't that constitute age discrimination?

@Shostakovich why have you held on? I'm asking as someone who's still in FAAFX -- I sold my (larger) FAIRX holding about two years ago. FAAFX is about 7% of my portfolio and I figure (very tentatively) that I might as well hold on at this point. I agree with the above, but he still seems like a guy with the capacity to be brilliant. Can he learn from his mistakes, is the question?

I have no idea if the firm will be proven right or wrong but it would obviously be more useful to know what to invest in rather than being told what won't work. I personally don't anticipate ever investing in a cd paying less than 2% but might invest in a lower paying investment with excellent liquidity.One possible approach for the next 10 years invest in a relatively high paying safe investment such as a 5 year cd with a low penalty for early closeout i.e with decent liquidity and close it out when the market drops 25% which is something that will probably occur at least once in the net 10 years.Yes, i recognise that this strategy might not work but would be pleased with other suggestions

Hi @David_Snowball
Yes, I recall the fund you mentioned and Mr. Arnott; with the connection to Pimco.
I watched this fund for a few years wondering where it was traveling to and why it held the chosen investment sectors. I don't watch anymore.
This link = composition and other choices:
https://nb.fidelity.com/public/workplacefunds/composition/OSBX?fundId=OSBX&planId=50405
This link charting PAAIX against PONDX:
http://stockcharts.com/freecharts/perf.php?PAAIX,PONDX&n=2576&O=011000
I couldn't recommend this fund or advisement from this organization; as I don't find performance of consequence.
I wondered in the past where the managers have their monies invested.
Regards,
Catch

Research Affiliates are Rob Arnott's group. They've been around 15 years and specialize in smart beta and asset allocation strategies; to their great credit, they've been warning that smart beta strategies (low vol, for instance) got too popular to actually generate decent returns. Arnott's argument is that only three smart beta factors, including size and value, are likely to have any enduring virtue.
About the best real-world test of their approach is PIMCO All Asset Fund (PAAIX) which is the go-anywhere fund they manage for PIMCO. Four-star, $20 billion, analyst rated as Gold, top 4% over the past decade despite a bad slump from 2013-15. By MFO's measures, since inception it has substantially higher returns, lower volatility, smaller max drawdown, quicker recovery time and better Sharpe/Sortino/Martin ratios than its Global Macro peer group.
On whole, they're responsible for about $200 billion and are well-respected though certainly not right all the time about everything.
If they're marketing anything, I'd guess it's their free asset allocation tool. It's so complex that Charles swooned in delight when he first saw it. I mostly backed quietly away.
Cheers,
David

Mr. Berkowitz is unapologetic for the poor returns, noting he always has promised his investors ultra-concentrated, often contrarian bets and high volatility was a likely result.
“The people who had the smoothest ride were those in Bernie Madoff. Life is not smooth,” he said.

Except this isn't exactly true. In the past before he was a celebrity Berkowitz would often comment about holding cash and the importance of "absolute returns" as opposed to relative returns versus the market. I actually think the fund's strategy shifted as it got bigger from buying small to mid-sized value stocks with a margin of safety to large high risk stocks that could absorb the liquidity that was being thrown at the fund on a daily basis. In other words a small ignored bank with a clean balance sheet can be a lot safer than AIG and Fannie Mae. The results with the former tend to be dead money or nice returns, the latter terrible or great returns. I'm pretty sure if I were to map the standard deviation of this fund before it had a ton of assets and after when it was buying these big high risk names you would see that it became much more volatile.

“Spending 30 years analyzing equities is a really great way to understand credit,” Mr. Berkowitz said.

Actually, many would say the opposite is true, that analyzing credit first is a better way to understand stocks and their unique balance sheet vulnerabilities than vice versa.

@MFO Members: For a couple of years, 1998-1999, Grand Prix Mutual Fund was the hottest thing since sliced bread, and investors were willing to pay a front-load of 5.5% and an expense ratio of 2.5%. Bob Zuccaro's fund returned 111.8% in 1998, followed up with a 147.8% return in 1999. The fund was up 70% until March of 2000 when the Nasdaq crashed and died
Regards,
Ted
Grand Prix's Big Mo:
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2000-05-28/grand-prixs-big-mo
Bob Wins The Bobby Prize:
https://www.forbes.com/forbes/2004/0920/246.html:
NY Times Article: (Roy Weitz, FundAlarm Founder, comments.)
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/04/09/business/mutfund/for-a-few-tech-stars-time-for-a-second-act.html

Funds often have multiple share classes designed with additional fees to be sold NTF.
T. Rowe Price has "advisor class" shares, e.g. PAVLX (the 12b-1 version of TRVLX). Years ago I purchased $5K of an advisor class fund (costing me an extra $12.50/year, pre-tax) from a bank's brokerage in order to qualify for some service I wanted. I figured $9 bucks/year wouldn't break me. It still sells this share class.
This time, TRP is offering its "normal" retail shares NTF. ISTM that TRP might choose to absorb the platform costs because: (a) it may give them more AUM (could still be profitable, though less so than selling directly), (b) larger fund companies cut special deals with brokerages to reduce platform fees, and (c) there is some small cost savings for TRP by servicing a single omnibus account from each brokerage as opposed to servicing all the underlying accounts separately.
If you haven't seen Fidelity charge more than Schwab for the same fund, you haven't looked at N&B funds. Fidelity offers N&B "trust" shares NTF. These shares have an extra 10 basis point 12b-1 fee (and may add extra expenses on top of that), vs. the investor shares you'd buy directly from N&B or from Schwab NTF. For example, NBSSX is NTF at Schwab. If you want to avoid a transaction fee, at Fidelity you'll have to buy NBFCX; NBSSX carries a transaction fee.

Long term TRP funds holder (though made the mistake of selling PRWCX :-)). Earlier directly, but via TDA for the last few years. TDA started offering TRP funds NTF for the last few years though I do not remember whether it 2 or 3 or 4 (have to check when I bough them - I bought some of them as soon as they were offered).

Old_Joe:

Has TRP recently gone the NTF route with a number of brokers, or am I missing something here?

TD has also been offering TRP funds NTF. My guess is for about two months, but I'm unable to confirm how long because TD doesn't have that information easily available when I asked.

FYI: Investors have pulled more than $16 billion from the Fairholme Fund in the past six years, but that isn't stopping the fund manager from making concentrated bets on extreme value plays.
Regards,
Ted
http://www.barrons.com/articles/bruce-berkowitz-bets-big-on-sears-fannie-mae-and-freddie-mac-1498764299
M* Snapshot FAIRX:
http://www.morningstar.com/funds/xnas/fairx/quote.html
Lipper Snapshot FAIRX:
http://www.marketwatch.com/investing/fund/fairx
FAIRX Is Ranked #196 In The (LCV) fund Category By U.S. News & World Report:
http://money.usnews.com/funds/mutual-funds/large-value/fairholme-fund/fairx