Currently helping my in laws rebalance their portfolios. They had no international exposure or bonds. Trying to figure out what the best t rowe price fund/funds to put them in since they have no brokerage window there. A bunch of options I'd put them in typically are closed.

Howdy,
Wifey and I have been at TRP for over 20 years. My rollover IRA is a brokerage account, hers is not.
I've used PREMX and RPIBX forever. Nothing fancy but when I'm advising someone I always lean to the cautious side. I can and have been bat-sh*t crazy with some of my investments but not for others.
and so it goes,
peace,
rono

"Tip: The retirement years pass by much faster than the work years."
Man, tell me!

@MikeM ... Nice work planning for your retirement. I can’t offer much help because my unorthodox manner has been to run the whole thing in “slow-mo” (conservatively positioned) so that even withdrawing a larger sum during down year(s) won’t ding me too badly. Perhaps it works better for me because of my steady pension or modest lifestyle. Don’t know. But no cash reserve beyond what’s committed to cash in the investment portfolio. Generally, I use distributions to rebalance things out. I don’t recommend this for others.
But I’d say you are on the right track based on some of the sharper people I’ve followed here or spoken to. Good job. The approach you are exploring is much more typical. And I suspect you are doing a much better job than most are at this stage.
Tip: The retirement years pass by much faster than the work years.

Love the concept. But PRPFX has really stagnated since gold topped in 2011.

@PBKCM,
It’s quite easy for me to check the fund’s recent performance, since I converted 100% of my holdings to a Roth on 1/04/16. As of today’s close (1/11/18) the fund has generated a 25% gain in just over 2 years. Coming right after a conversion, I couldn’t be happier. I often noted my trades / activities in the buying and selling threads in the past. If anybody cares to check the January 2016 pages they should come across that conversion date.
You are correct that the fund dropped off a cliff for a while. It was bound to happen. Hot money had poured in for several years as the fund’s (rather modest) gold and silver holdings propelled it higher than most other allocation funds. Folks seemed to feel they’d discovered a low risk way to make a lot of money fast. Of course, there is no such animal. When metals started backsliding (entirely predictable) these fly-by-night investors bailed enmass and moved on. It was at that time, with the price depressed, that I opened a small position in the fund and than averaged in over the next 2-3 years.
-
@LLJB - The Hierarchy of Disagreement
- Friendly (No sweat)
- Mild (Let’s agree to disagree)
- Considerable (You must be off your rocker!)
- Serious (Take a long walk on a short pier why don’t you?)
- Nasty (unprintable)
So with only a “mild disagreement” there’s no cause for concern.
:)
Regards

I believe Schwab's MM is at 1.2 or 1.25 now. I met with my Schwab guy yesterday and we talked about setting up a "safe-bucket" of 4 years needed withdrawal income when I start retirement. We both agreed setting up that bucket (still as an IRA) at an on-line bank like Ally or Synchrone would give slightly higher rates, maybe in the 1.3 range, and also have the CD option available. In any case, that is what I will be doing.

Recently, for my commodity exposure, held in my spiff sleeve, I went with PCLAX (and, it sports a 12% yield). It's Morningstar report is linked below. The fund has a number of share classes. Listed for review are the A shares. Years back I owed it's cousin fund PCRAX and, for me, it was a good performer.
http://www.morningstar.com/funds/XNAS/PCLAX/quote.html

Here’s how PRPFX invests:
Gold 20%
Silver 5%
Swiss franc assets 10%
Real estate / natural resource stocks 15%
Aggressive growth stocks 15%
Dollar assets 35%*
Total 100%
* Includes U.S. Treasury Bonds
I’ve had a mild (long running) disagreement with @LLJB who believes one should buy the assets, originally promoted by author Harry Brown, directly rather than paying Michael Cuggino a higher fee to do that for you. I agree - except that I’m not aware of a single poster ever who claimed to be doing that. I’m lazy. The thought of having to buy, transport, store and insure physical bullion, buy and sell stock ETFs, play in the international currency arena and do the regular record keeping (including taxes related to international currency trades) is daunting. Saying the fees are high in no way addresses the issue of diversifying across asset classes, which is what the fund’s about.

@hank, thank you for saying "mild" :), especially since I'm not sure we disagree as much as you think and because I far prefer sharing my opinion and letting everyone else decide what's best for them than attacking the choices people make because I think my opinion would somehow suit them better.
Anyway, I wouldn't suggest buying the assets that PRPFX holds in any way. It would be a pain as you highlighted and you'd always be months behind since they only have to be transparent once each quarter. My suggestion would simply be to allocate 25% each to equities (VTI), long-term Treasury Bonds (TLT), gold (I prefer IAU) and cash. Someone could certainly choose different etfs in order to have some foreign and/or emerging markets equities or to have shorter duration bonds if they have opinions about the direction of interest rates but that's a question of personal preference, confidence, goals and willingness to keep records. Speaking of record keeping, I think for years now brokers are required to report the cost basis of your transactions so the only real need to keep records is if you prefer to verify the accuracy of your 1099, which I do. I would rebalance once each year because the mutual fund must rebalance at least that often and your expense ratio using the etfs I mentioned would be 0.11% compared to the current 0.82% for PRPFX.
Just as a what if I also tried to duplicate the PRPFX allocations and back test the performance. I used IAU for gold, SIVR for silver, EWL for the Swiss stock market, IYR and IGE (7.5% each) for real estate and natural resources, RPG for aggressive growth stocks, TLT at 25% for long term treasuries and VTI at 10% for the remainder of dollar assets. The physical silver etf only became available in Aug 2009, I couldn't find anything else older and I didn't want miners, but my attempt returned 9.83% annually with a max drawdown of 8.79% and a worst calendar year of -4.49% while PRPFX returned 5.76% annually with a max drawdown of 12.52% and a worst year of -6.58%. I only rebalanced once per year which I'm sure made some of the difference and my expense ratio was 0.28%, which also helped. My use of IGE for natural resources probably isn't how they do things either, its sort of like buying physical gold vs. the gold miners, but it was simple.
Hindsight is always 20/20 so I'm certainly not trying to suggest my options are somehow better or that they will be better in the future, but if someone's interested in a risk parity approach then I think its worth considering the options. In fact, if someone wanted life made easy, people have created motifs at Motif Investing where you can follow the Permanent Portfolio or Ray Dalio's All Seasons Portfolio as a basket of stocks, something like a mutual fund without all the compliance requirements I guess. I've never used Motif so I can't say anything good or bad about it, just that I'm aware it exists and how it basically works.

Fund flows bother me a lot. They wreck havoc on a lot of funds. Look what happened to MFLDX as “investors” fled. And I’m aware PRPFX has suffered due to the fund’s huge investor exodus after gold cooled. Heck, management discussed the rapid decline in asset base in their fund reports about 3 years back and considered altering the fee structure (though I don’t recall in what manner) as a consequence.
Umm ... I’m a little sensitive on this point being a docile, long term, buy and hold type. And would prefer the “hot money” stay away from the funds I own. PRPFX is not a gold fund. Folks who want a gold fund should buy one.
Here’s how PRPFX invests:
Gold 20%
Silver 5%
Swiss franc assets 10%
Real estate / natural resource stocks 15%
Aggressive growth stocks 15%
Dollar assets 35%*
Total 100%
* Includes U.S. Treasury Bonds
Where I have a (I hope friendly) disagreement with @bee is in posting the fella with the seedy suit and bad hairpiece who’s using scare tactics to promote buying of gold and than somehow trying to link what he’s peddling to the Permanent Portfolio Fund. I see no connection whatsoever between his snake-oil pitch for gold and how PRPFX invests.
I’ve had a mild (long running) disagreement with @LLJB who believes one should buy the assets, originally promoted by author Harry Brown, directly rather than paying Michael Cuggino a higher fee to do that for you. I agree - except that I’m not aware of a single poster ever who claimed to be doing that. I’m lazy. The thought of having to buy, transport, store and insure physical bullion, buy and sell stock ETFs, play in the international currency arena and do the regular record keeping (including taxes related to international currency trades) is daunting. Saying the fees are high in no way addresses the issue of diversifying across asset classes, which is what the fund’s about.
Than there’s David Snowball’s very well documented commentary (roughly a decade ago) analyzing Cuggino’s returns across asset classes and finding the performance lacking. I can’t argue with that. I doubt Cuggino excels as a stock picker. If that’s what you want, invest in a proven equity growth fund. And his dismal results for his short term Treasury fund are easily retreivable. Again, if you want a top income manager, invest with one.
All this said, PRPFX does invest across multiple asset categories. If you like those categories as a diversification tool and don’t want to go through the trouble of investing individually in each asset class, than it’s a decent fund.

One of the things that might have caused some issues was I think they had an enormous inflow of assets, probably during the credit crisis, and then most of those assets left afterwards.
I also know the fund has its own somewhat more sophisticated take on what Harry Browne laid out as his Permanent Portfolio and unfortunately it hasn't helped them. If you compare the performance of Browne's 25% each equities, long term treasuries, gold and cash to PRPFX, Browne has beaten the fund by 100 basis points annually since inception even though cash has effectively been earning nothing for almost 10 years and Browne managed that excess return with a lot less volatility, a much lower max drawdown, a better worst calendar year and, of course, far better risk adjusted returns.
If I could get people to give me $20MM every year for a management fee I'm sure I could come up with a worse version of Ray Dalio's All Season's Portfolio and that's just what they make on the paltry $2.5BN they still have in the fund. Five years ago they had $17BN but they were charging less so they probably only got $119MM that year. I really chose the wrong career!

@Catch22

PRPFX apparently has been "bothered" by more than gold pricing. Too many internal holdings to look closer, as I don't get paid very much for this type of work.
@Catch22, The fund holds a significant amount in short term paper and treasury bonds. Both have yielded near nothing for many years. If you throw a lot of 2% yielding paper into a portfolio the net result will be lower than it might be with 100% in some riskier asset. No?
Gold is in my opinion very risky. In my own lifetime it’s varried in price between $35 and $1600. It’s currently around $1300. Doesn’t sound like something I’d throw 100% of my assets into - even if I believed it was going to go higher. Just too d*** risky.

FYI: Investors are slimming down equity stakes bloated by a nearly decade-long bull market, withdrawing $22 billion from U.S. domestic stock funds in a single week, Investment Company Institute (ICI) data showed on Wednesday.
The withdrawal, during the holiday-shortened week ended Jan. 3, marked the largest weekly retreat from the U.S.-based domestic stock funds in nearly four years, according to the trade group.
Regards,
Ted
https://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-mutualfunds-ici/investors-strip-most-cash-in-four-years-from-u-s-domestic-stock-funds-idUSKBN1EZ2JG

Maybe its not easy or possible to follow the fund's strategy precisely but its most certainly possibly to follow Harry Browne's basic Permanent Portfolio strategy at a much lower cost. I tend to think there's a time and a place for almost everything and I have no doubt the risk parity concepts will have their day. Grantham thinks that's somewhere between 6 months and 2 years in the future so I'm not sure I'd want to go there quite yet but I probably have a higher risk tolerance than many people.

It would be interesting to know his active share because for the last 10 years he's more or less hugged the S&P 500 the whole way. My guess is he has a reasonably high active share but his returns during the credit crisis were very similar and his upside since then has been the same. I guess we have to give him a decent amount of credit for only trailing the S&P by 24 basis points annually for those 10 years, and the big party he throws has to be worth something (if you're into that) but I think most of his outperformance was during the '90s. Since then I'm not sure he's been anything spectacular amid his ever growing stable of funds that have made him a billionaire.

estimates he has generated $23.5 billion in investment profits since then.
He expects to double that number in the next five or six years.

That depends on on a continuing bull market for the next 5-6 years. I don't think so.

FYI: Ron Baron started his mutual-fund firm in the 1990s and estimates he has generated $23.5 billion in investment profits since then.
He expects to double that number in the next five or six years. That’s not a market call, because the 74-year-old investor doesn’t make them. He expects to do what he has always done, which has involved beating the market long term at a point when most investors have given up on active management.
Regards,
Ted
http://www.cetusnews.com/business/Ron-Baron-Explains-His-Investing-Strategy--Company-Growth.HJXZ2rwx4G.html

FYI: Nearly three years ago, Schwab launched its free robo Intelligent Portfolio and today has over $10 billion in assets. Schwab did not disclose what was in it, so I bought one in order to write about it.
I was somewhat critical in my personal look at the Schwab Intelligent Portfolio as well as a follow-up revisit of Schwab months later. Though there have been some changes, it’s still a 16-fund sophisticated portfolio.
Regards,
Ted
http://www.etf.com/sections/index-investor-corner/simplicity-vs-schwabs-robo-portfolio

FYI: By virtually any measure, U.S. stocks are expensive. Under one especially harsh lens, the cyclically adjusted price-earnings ratio popularized by Robert Shiller, equities relative to 10 years of profits are more stretched than any time in a century, save the dot-com era.
But there’s still a methodology that bulls can take comfort in -- price not just to earnings, but to earnings growth. Favored by legendary investor Peter Lynch and known as the PEG ratio, the technique takes the standard valuation snapshot and adds time -- time for a stock to grow into its price.
Regards,
Ted
https://www.fa-mag.com/news/forget-cape-ratio--peter-lynch-tool-has-s-p-500-getting-cheaper-36555.html?print

FYI: S&P 500 sector weightings are important to monitor. Over the years when weightings have gotten extremely lopsided for one or two sectors, it hasn’t ended well. Below is a table showing S&P 500 sector weightings from the mid-1990s through 2012. In the early 1990s before the Dot Com bubble, the US economy was much more evenly weighted between manufacturing sectors and service sectors. Sector weightings were bunched together between 6% and 14% across the board. In 1990, Tech was tied for the smallest sector of the market at 6.3%, while Industrials was the largest at 14.7%. The spread between the largest and smallest sectors back then was just over 8 percentage points.
The Dot Com bubble completely blew up the balanced economy, and looking back you can clearly see how lopsided things had become. Once the Tech bubble burst, it was the Financial sector that began its charge towards dominance. The Financial sector’s sole purpose is to service the economy, so in our view you never want to see the Financial sector make up the largest portion of the economy. That was the case from 2002 to 2007, though, and we all know how that ended.
Unfortunately we’ve begun to see sector weightings get extremely out of whack once again.
Regards,
Ted
https://www.bespokepremium.com/sector-snapshot/bespoke-sp-500-sector-weightings-report-january-2018/

Wow - Just waded through Grantham’s dissertation. Kudos to him and those who understand all these charts and comparisons to historical (hysterical?) bubbles. Do my fund managers at Oakmark, Dodge & Cox or TRP engage in this type of micro analysis? I rather hope not. And this type of analysis seems far removed from the kind of common sense horse wisdom voiced by the likes of Munger and Buffett over the years.
Remember the OJ trial? “If the glove doesn’t fit, you must acquit.” When pieces of a puzzle no longer fit together it’s time to take a second look and exercise some caution. That’s all I’m getting to. When you’ve got prolonged 2 - 2.5% returns on “safe money” alongside double-digit returns on most everything else, it’s time to take a second look at the big picture. Two more parts of the puzzle - In our part of Michigan there’s “Help Wanted” signs everywhere. Yet wages and wage inflation remain very low. And during the normally slow winter construction season if you want a granite countertop professionally delivered and installed you’re looking at a 2-3 month wait after placing an order because they can’t keep up with demand. Trying to obtain decent skilled labor for renovation work during the hot summer months nearly impossible nowdays, with entire city blocks packed end-to-end with construction vehicles.
Despite the indications of a sizzling economy and years of stock market gains, interest rates at both the short and longer end (AA+) remain stubbornly stuck in the 2-2.5% range and wage inflation low. Couple the low wages with various entitlement curtailments (everything from public education to medical care) and the “average Joe” is worse off today than a decade ago. So, IMHO many pieces of the broader puzzle appear out of whack. I don’t recommend panic selling of investments. I do suggest a bit more caution be exercised, be it through raising cash, diversifying risk assets more broadly, concentrating more on funds known to have weathered financial storms well in the past, paying off debt, or just investing some of the recent gains in your own “infrastructure” (home, transportation, etc.).
I am not a financial advisor.

"Old Joe simply doesn’t realize that all of us in Michigan are geniuses"
@hank, @ Catch22-
Actually, by chance I've known quite a few Michiganders and Michigeese over the many years, and with only one single exception they've universally been intelligent (well, maybe a bit short of "genius") and lots of fun besides. :)