Yet for years, as VF pointed out, it knocked the ball out of the park, was an M* analyst pick etc. For me, another piece of evidence that it is damned hard (not impossible, but damned hard) to pick a fund that's going to outperform.

I bailed on Harbor Int'l about three years ago. I also recommend FMIJX. Third quarter report just came today and I have linked it. I think the discussion will give you a good idea of how cautiously the fund is managed.
http://www.fiduciarymgt.com/funds/shrpt/qly_shrpt_063016.pdf

A few you should look at:
Matthews Pacific Tiger, Artisan Intl Value, Capital World Growth&Income (American funds), Polaris Global Value, Vanguard Intl Growth, Artisan Global Equity, Artisan Global Value
I have been investing in Matthews Pacific Tiger for 5 years, and have been happy with it.

You're 5 months late John. The time to load up on energy-heavy funds was in February when oil bottomed around $26. By my crude calculation it's now up about 70% from those lows. As I wrote on May 3: "I suspect the big gains in NR & energy are over for the year, but remain optimistic for PRNEX (and natural resources in general) looking out two or three years." http://www.mutualfundobserver.com/discuss/discussion/comment/77459/#Comment_77459
On that day (May 3) oil closed around $43-44 and PRNEX (the fund mentioned in the post) was sitting at about $32. That's about where both are today. So neither has moved much. In the intervening months since that post, oil touched $50 and PRNEX approached $35. I sold another 25% of PRNEX at the higher prices, so now have only a small position.
Energy analysts are divided of course, but there seems to be some consensus that oil will be in the $60 range in a couple years. Unfortunately, a 2-year time horizon seems very long for some. So John, you'll probably get paid to wait - but your gains will come in drips and drabs.

If you are looking for diversification, I would not use a fund that owns REITs and stocks of companies that have a lot of real estate. An example of this is Baron Real Estate. It is much more tied to the stock markets than just plain REITs. We have used Cohen & Steers for a very long time. CSRSX has been around since 1991 and has had management changes over the years but has been very consistent. Marty Cohen and Robert Steers retired in 2013. Vanguard VGSLX has minimal expenses and is an index fund. Also take a look at ICF which is the ETF version of Cohen & Steers. While international real estate may have some merits, it add another layer of volatility and risk that may not be worth it. Any of the above give you a quality, alternative investment. One thing to keep in mind, REITS are less subject to interest rate risk than you might think, since they can pass the added expense on through their leases to their renters. This is especially true in a very slow, careful increase in rates as we are likely to have.

He'll be right one of these years....

I've been debating whether to invest more into Real Estate. I have a foot-hold in TRREX (trow price) and TAREX (third ave, international) for many years; I bailed during the "great recession" and never went back in any meaningful way.
I'm looking for more "diversification" and "non-correlation", if you will, to go with my bond allocations. I know very little about "alt" funds and other such non-correlated vehicles.
I also understand REITs are sensitive to interest rates and supposedly rates will be rising sometime (soon?), but when and how fast; I certainly do not have a clue.
This investment will be in a TAXABLE brokerage account, so (relative) tax-efficiency is important. TRREX is not bad compared to others in the category.
I came across Davis RE (RPFRX.LW at FIDO) it has a very low tax-cost ratio and does not look too bad. If anyone has any suggestions or opinions on other worthwhile "relatively" tax-efficient REIT funds, please let me know!
The bottom-line question is, after a good run since the "great recession", is this a bad time to increase my Real Estate allocation (5%-7% of portfolio)?
Any thoughts are greatly appreciated!!
Regards,
Matt
fyi, Also, posted on M*.

That's an interesting webpage, one I've visited in the past. But casual viewers should use those Vanguard-collected status with care.
Consider:
The span of those 'average returns' is 89 years. "Averaging returns" is a mathematical exercise, but investors don't experience smoothed-over 'averaged' returns. They experience sequential, erratic returns. Certainly, 20- or 30-somethings might look at those average returns and reasonably conclude to go "all-in" to equities. -- But it may not make a lot of difference for a typical young investor --- as they have relatively little saved. Most or all of income often going for raising kids, placing a down-payment on a home, student-debt servicing, kids' college or for some, 'living large'. By the time many households get round to saving serious dough (many never do!) they may be in their 40's or 50's. Are average 89-year returns something they should expect? What about when they begin the distribution-phase and are withdrawing assets (via RMDs, etc). Should they count on historical 'averaged' returns, or make some reasonable (and conservative) estimate of future returns based on asset prices? I believe John Bogle and others do offer those estimates in interviews from time to time, based on today's prices as a "set-up" for likely prospective returns. Buying long-term Treasurys in 1982 would have reasonably generated a certain forward-return over 30 years. Buying long-term Treasurys today, prospective-returns will be much more compressed.
Even if an investor could obtain a GUARANTEE of receiving those average returns (say in the form of an insurance company annuity etc.) at the terminal date (89 years), if they had to wait 89 years to receive that payout, would they be alive to collect it? My point: 89-year average returns, even if 'guaranteed' are not meaningful for individuals, if one is pushing up daisies when the guarantee is due to them. Ask Japanese equity investors who bought/held in 1988 and are still well under-water today, 30 years later. -- Hey in another 59 years they may enjoy the fruits of their patience....
Then too, the Vanguard site lists the historical return on a 100% bonds portfolio as 5.4%. Consider AGG, which is a proxy for the total (non-junk) US bond market. Presently, the SEC yield on AGG is 1.72%, with an average coupon of 3.2% The average-price of the bonds trade $9 over par. Perhaps 89 years from today, average-returns may match that. Nobody reading this will be around then. What are the likely returns over the next 1,3, 5, and 10 years? --- This would seem to be more relevancy. Are forward returns, using today as a starting point, likely to be closer to 89-year historical, averaged returns OR the SEC yield?

A couple things:
I think the TERM 'multi-asset fund' (with or without income) is a creation of fund-industry marketing types.
Any old-fashioned balanced fund which emphasizes income is a 'multi-asset income fund'. (MAIF) I own one, its called Vanguad Wellesley.
Some newer MAIFs add in riskier sleeves-- junk, MLPs, whole-loan products, etc. etc. They are simply stepping out on the risk-spectrum. --- the higher the yield (i.e. the bigger the spread), the bigger the risk.
While I still own some VWINX, my thinking on hybrids (MAIFs or otherwise) has evolved over the past 3-5 years. I generally eschew them, in favor of single-asset products. I suspect that 'bundling' assets has the effect of obscuring how good the manager of each asset-sleeve within the 'bundle' is. [Take OAKBX, for example. The stocking picking was always very good, but Oakmark never had much of a bond desk. They usually loaded their bond-sleeve with Treasurys (US & Canadian) and that was it. The stock picking "carried" the fund overall for many years. Til it didn't.] How does an individual investor get comfortable that each of the asset-sleeves within a hybrid (or "MAIF) is at least average -- and hopefully above so?)
Then too, every asset class will encounter an investing environment with a lousy "setup". At those times, its best to UNDERweight such assets. Most hybrid products have allocation guidelines which require weightings stay within a certain range. Having witnessed 3 massive boom-bust cycles this century (tech, mortgage, energy), I am uncomfortable with "forced" allocations. The lower rates go, the more convinced I am, we are in the 'pleasant' phase of a 4th boom-bust cycle.
Another thing: all commingled products, MAIFs included, assess a MER equally, across all AUM in the fund. But is it really serving investors best to levy (for example only) a flat 1.25% for managing the equity-sleeve, and the same 1.25% for the bond-sleeve. -- Especially if that bond sleeve is often Treasurys, Agencies, and investment-grade paper. --- And especially now that bond coupons barely will cover that MER....). I mean you can find superlative dedicated-bond managers for ~0.50%. Paying 1.25% for the bond sleeve of a hybrid fund seems like you are paying for that bond manager's Alfa Romeo...
FPACX is a good example. It has a superior performance, granted (though performance seems to have suffered with growing assets). It levies a 1.09% on AUM. 34% if AUM is sitting cash. Institutional MMFs are paying NOTHING! I'm not arguing Romick isn't prudent in holding cash --- rather that he should not be charging investors 1.09% for the cash-sleeve. A hybrid can get away with this. Dedicated-asset funds are less prone to charging investors for NOT investing their money.
I'd much prefer to choose single-asset "best of breed" managers for the major asset classes myself. In some cases (say L/C US equities) the "manager" may be Standard & Poors (i.e the index). In others (foreign equities, S/C, REITs, bonds), active managers who persistently excel may be able to be identified. As an asset-class "smells bubbly", I can trim back, rather than relying on a professional allocator, who is frankly, not at all concerned if Edmund's nest-egg is halved due to a forced allocation in a hybrid product.
Just my opinion.

AndyJ is essentially correct; the Zack's information is outdated.
I'm a strong advocate of going to the source. However, the "rule" was no rule at all, but a proposed IRS regulation - having no force of law, just providing clues as to how the IRS would treat your rollovers. Here's one of the clearest discussions of proposed regs vs. final regs vs tax code (statutues) I've seen. It's from CCH and was written for accountants, not lawyers, so it does a good job at clarifying the law.
Tax Research: Understanding Sources of Tax Law
Subtitled: Why my IRC [statutes] beat your Rev Proc [IRS regs]!
In this case, the underlying statute (IRC 408(d)(3)(B)) was clear: if you have done a 60 day rollover within a year, you can't do another tax-free 60 day rollover of money from any IRA. The court ruling picked up on this wording. The IRS has put its own erroneous spin on the statue for years. It's been writing this into Pub 590 and letting people get away with it.
I'm wondering if there is still a loophole. The new IRS regs (and existing statutes) allow any number of rollover conversions, i.e. taking money from traditional IRAs, holding the money for up to 60 days, and then depositing it into Roth IRAs as conversions. All these serial Roth conversion could be recharacterized to traditional IRAs (and thus avoid taxes) so long as they were recharacterized prior to the tax filing deadline (including extensions).
So it seems you can do multiple 60 day rollover conversions, and ultimately get the money back where it came from. This isn't quite as flexible as the old 60 day bucket brigade (rolling over the same money from IRA to IRA), but it still have the effect of getting you access to some amount of money for an indefinite period of time (rather than 60 days per year).
As to extensions of the 60 day restriction, here's the IRS FAQ page on waivers (doesn't seem to help Gary):
https://www.irs.gov/retirement-plans/retirement-plans-faqs-relating-to-waivers-of-the-60-day-rollover-requirement

Hi @Ted,
Thanks for posting these daily blurbs. I enjoy reading them form time-to-time along with their spin.
Under reading the above US take ... it seems to me ... if stocks were to return to their winning ways then their rolling twelve month earnings number would be rising year over year and ahead of last years. All in reported earnings (TTM) for the S&P 500 Index closed out this past June at about $90.02 according to my Standard & Poors tracking. At the first of this year all in reported earnings (TTM) were projected to come in at $109.82 but actually came in as reported at $90.02 through June. This is a considerable miss in my book for a year ago as they came in at $94.90; and, with this, they fell short of their previously year's number by about $4.88.
I truly love the way some authors (and even Wall Street), at times, can put spin on things.
There might be some that are hyped up about the recent maket surge in it's price; but, if one looks at fundamentals we are currently back of where we were a year ago from an earnings perspective. As a seasoned retail investor I buy more from an earnings perspective and not as much from a price perspective. Stocks are indeed richly priced and not as a good of a buy today as they were a year ago.
Well let us just say, I did not drink their kool-aid on this one.

Hi @MJG , @Junkster , @Old_Joe
MJG, you noted:
1. "Your suggestion that “This Time is Different” rests on shaky grounds. Anyone who plays that investment style better have deep pockets and some evil desire to commit investing hari-kari. Deep pockets because it doesn’t happen all that often, and in the long run it is a Loser’s Game." and
2. "Perhaps it is different this time and outstanding bond returns will continue to challenge equities as your post suggests that as a possibility. I consider those long odds, and I do not accept that likelihood. Taking that position is dangerous; it’s a very long shot. Anyone who does accept that shot will be either a hero or a clown."
Not sure readers here will find clarity with the two bolds above, eh? I suppose the risk is the clarity. MJG, not picking on you; only referencing what you stated.
As I write this, I consider a new thread might be appropriate just for "this time is different, eh?"
I've noted the "TTID" thought here several times since the market melt. I am not trained in any formal fashion to speak or write about this thought to be taken as serious or that I could fully prove what I sense.
NOTE: We subject our investing to include, among other criteria, a reliance on memory(s). My retained or at least surface memory seems elusive too many times. I'm not one who can name a book and a page within which contains a particular quote. My brain plainly doesn't work this way. As long as this house remains active investors, I/we have to have our brains "into" the market places and outside influences, at a minimum of weekly observations, to help define pricing trends of the short, mid and longer terms. When the passion for this ebbs, VWINX or a similar fund will likely have all of the monies.
Rolling through my thoughts at this time are several item areas relative to investing at this house.
---technology
---central bank policy(s)
---demographics (baby boomers and the young with low education and low paying jobs)
---jobs/wage growth (being jobs of consequence, monetary)
---ongoing affects upon personal budgets since the market melt
---societal unrest
---pension funds, life insurance companies (many underfunded and scratching for returns.....as in hedge funds, alt. investments, etc.)
I'll comment only about technology, as related to labor force in the U.S. Technology will continue to negatively pressure the labor force in the U.S. relative to higher wages on a broad scale. As the U.S. currently remains a consumer driven economy, this will likely have a continued affect on GDP and many of the other measures used by the economic folks. This in turn may cause central banks to maintain an easy money policy longer than they choose. This may continue to affect those who don't trust or are not invested in the markets otherwise (boomers and their CD's).
I suspect Ms. Yellen and associated folks just shake their heads on some days. Some of these folks are also relying on past charts, graphs and trends. This isn't necessary bad, but I hope they are also flexible and adaptable and not locked into past habits. 'Course there are a whole bunch of folks who haven't a clue to what may be taking place with their invested money. This same group will likely only be able to rely upon some of this money for their retirement future. If a "this time is different" lasts for 5 or 10 years or; investment returns will be affected. K. I'm too hot from outside work in a steamy Michigan environment right now. I'm going to quit this for now to cool the brain cells, as they may not be allowing me to express here properly. Not my best day for attempting to write concise thoughts.
Thank you to everyone for prior comments.
Our current investment mix: IG bonds = 52%, Equity = 48%
Bonds
---all investment grade U.S., corp. and gov't.
Equity sector breakdown
---direct healthcare related 44.6%
---U.S. centered 24.4% (blend)
---European 17.2%
---real estate 13.8%
Regards,
Catch

A very good fund on a great run ... it doesn't have many years as high in the pecking order as this one, though, and the trailing P/E has creeped up to ~ 25, so I wouldn't empty the piggy bank at this point. I'm holding the shares I've had for a year-plus, but not tempted to add at this price.

FYI: If you want to dial back risk while maintaining exposure to the stock market, consider the $5 billion Jensen Quality Growth fund (ticker: JENSX ). During the stock market’s last collapse, in 2008, the fund fell 29% while the average large-cap growth fund tumbled more than 40%. Over the past three years, the fund has returned 12% annually, edging out the Standard & Poor’s 500 and beating 84% of large-growth fund peers. The fund has been on a tear more recently, returning 10.8% year-to-date, beating the S&P 500’s 7.3% gain while outperforming 99% of its large-growth fund peers.
Regards,
Ted
http://www.barrons.com/articles/todays-top-5-stock-picks-fund-beating-99-of-peers-1469009156#printMode
M* Snapshot JENSX:
http://www.morningstar.com/funds/XNAS/JENSX/quote.html
Lipper Snapshot JENSX:
http://www.marketwatch.com/investing/Fund/JENSX
JENSX Is Ranked #13 In The (LCG) Fund Category By U.S. News & World Report:
http://money.usnews.com/funds/mutual-funds/large-growth/jensen-quality-growth-fund/jensx

FYI: Fund managers are holding cash at the highest levels in almost 15 years. That could be a bullish signal.
Regards,
Ted
http://blogs.wsj.com/moneybeat/2016/07/19/cash-is-king-and-thats-good-for-the-rally/

Hi Junkster,
Thank you reading my post and contributing to the discussion.
I was not immediately aware of the roughly 2 decade market timeframe starting in 1958 that you referenced in your reply. At that referenced date, I had only started investing a couple of years earlier. But my information shortfall was easily rectified.
I simply went to the Internet and linked to the New York University Stern school annual returns listing. Here is the Link to that nice data summary:
http://pages.stern.nyu.edu/~adamodar/New_Home_Page/datafile/histretSP.html
Given the source, I presume this data package is accurate. I am not overwhelmed by the 10-year T. Bond returns over stocks even for that excellent period for the bond issues. The 10-year bonds did outperform stocks in 8 years of those 20-year annual periods. Even in that carefully selected timeframe, I doubt that the bond cumulative returns exceeded stock performance (I did not do the cumulative calculation).
But the Stern school did do both the arithmetic and geometric averages for the respectable 1966 to 2015 timeframes. From my perspective, that's a very meaningful period. For that extended time period the S&P 500 delivered 11.01% and 9.60% annual arithmetic and geometric returns, respectively. During that same period, 10-year T. Bonds produced 7.12% and 4.82% arithmetic and geometric annual returns, respectively.
Stocks win because they are risky and they generate returns both from dividends and price appreciation. It is certainly true that stock dividends have been contributing less to that total return than they did in the past. But the total return is what is most meaningful to me, and I suspect to many other investors.
This is not to say that fixed income is not a major portion of my portfolio. It is. Even at an age in excess of 80, I still have a 60/40 portfolio mix. Portfolios benefit from the diversification with low correlation coefficients between these two asset classes.
That portfolio split might be a tiny bit misleading since my wife and I both have social security and company retirement annual incomes. I count those as part of my fixed income segment since they are pretty secure with small incremental annual pluses. So the active portion of my portfolio is very heavily weighted in Equity and Balanced mutual funds.
Many thanks once again, and many good hopes for your portfolio management style. There are many ways to win at this game. Unfortunately there are many more ways to lose.
Best Wishes.

Interesting find on 50/50 of RPG/RPV out performing RPS but I suspect that they might be temporary and the next 5 or 10 years could be different. CAPE is a good find as welI, I don't own it but I do own DSEEX and am very happy with that fund. I also do like SPHD, the results so far have been excellent. I just wish it was Schwab ETF One-Source.

Why not go the traditional pension route? Not only don't I trust state pension/investment boards (or their political masters)
[and]
More pathetic, the clowns running many of these funds/programs are suckered by the allure of hedge funds, private equity, and other costly black boxes that eat up their returns after expenses and fees ...

Let's be clear here. Public, private - doesn't matter. It's not a matter of devious politicians. Private companies use the same hedge funds, private equity, and other costly black boxes, albeit in different mixes. While they tend to allocate less to alts than public pensions, they still invest significantly, and they allocate more to hedge funds than do public pensions.

Deutsche Bank’s [December 2015] survey data [] showed that ... Public pension funds had a median 29% allocation to alternatives and 7% to hedge funds; private pension funds, 17% and 10%, respectively; and sovereign wealth funds, 13% and 5%.

http://www.pionline.com/article/20160223/ONLINE/160229965/pension-funds-globally-increased-hedge-fund-allocations-in-2015-8212-survey
All of that was nevertheless peanuts compared with endowments and foundations, which allocated 48% to alts and 23% to hedge funds (ibid.)
Performance? Here too, politics doesn't seem to be what matters. From Private Pension Plans, Even at Big Companies, May Be UnderFunded Floyd Norris, NYTimes (2012):

The companies in the Standard & Poor’s 500 collectively reported that at the end of their most recent fiscal years, their pension plans had obligations of $1.68 trillion and assets of just $1.32 trillion. The difference of $355 billion was the largest ever, S.& P. said in a report.
Of the 500 companies, 338 have defined-benefit pension plans, and only 18 are fully funded. ...
The main cause of the underfunding at many companies does not appear to be a failure to make contributions to the plans. Instead, it reflects the fact that investment markets have not performed well for a sustained period.
...
Virtually all pension funds had assumed returns would be better, leaving them underfunded when their investments failed to perform as expected.

Finally, consider that companies often raided their private pension plans to inflate their profits.

in the 1990s corporations used a variety of accounting techniques, tax incentives, and other forms of manipulation to syphon money from pension plans and serve corporate purposes. [E.E. Shultz] provides an example called the “accounting effect,” where a company could reduce benefits by hundreds of millions of dollars and record the change as a profit. This practice benefited corporate executives, who were compensated by reaching certain profit targets, and shareholders, but in many cases workers and retirees, subjected to this deception and fraud, were cheated out of retirement income.

https://www.wmich.edu/hhs/newsletters_journals/jssw_institutional/individual_subscribers/39.4.Zurlo.pdf
As Norris stated, the problems now are due largely to many years of poor market performance - which affected your DC returns just as it affected DB plan (public or private) returns.
As a footnote, I gather that Vanguard would be counted among the so called "clowns". It created VASFX (alts) for pensions, endowments, foundations, and to use in its managed payout fund (VPGDX) - in some ways the closest thing Vanguard has as the retail level to a pension.

For years my husband had a Fidelity 457 plan. It was cheap if we wanted it to be. It allowed a large array of choices of Fidelity funds and had a brokerage window. We did fine with it. Now the plan is being moved to Voya with no information forthcoming on the plan and only the promise that it's better, just trust us. It appears there will no longer be cost sharing outside of a few core funds and that all fees outside this core will fall 100% on the employee. This happened out of the blue and we were notified with 2 months to decide if we will allow our money to be moved to the Voya Vacuum or we will roll it over and risk the loss of legal protection that might ensue. The employees had no choice in this and, of course, they are saying Obama made them do it with new fiduciary regulations. One current employee said that Voya might send "advisors" to roam the halls giving advice. I had that once in the University of Texas system. A type A guy seemed to think that getting people to churn their investments was a full time job. When I left the system, he seemed to think the best advice was to roll it all into a VALIC money market.

Hi Guys,
Indeed CALPERS has had a rough year. But that's not extraordinary. It's more the rule than the exception. Over the last 20 years, that agency has underperformed the equity markets in just about that entire timeframe.
As an investment agency CALPERS is a disaster. Why? They spend almost 50 million dollars each year in fees and hire about 275 "expert" consultant and advisor teams. It's certainly not that they aggressively pursue and deploy active managers. They do and have for years without outdistancing a poor man's portfolio.
There's a significant lesson embedded in those disappointing outcomes. It's not easy to even match the marketplace when attempting to add some Alpha. Even very smart guys with a deep bench are not often up to that challenge. An alternate strategy is obvious. Warren Buffett advocates it for his surviving family members.
Best Wishes.