Several differences between OAKIX and FMIJX.
1. OAKIX has suffered outflows and may have reopened in order not to sell stocks to cover.
2. FMI management seems to close funds much sooner that Oakmark. FMI large cap closed years ago with only a few billion. They've since reopened but they appear to close down funds with a lot less AUM.
Just my opinion

You are of course correct. But that's difference between the fund management and stewardship and not the portfolio :-)

Several differences between OAKIX and FMIJX.
1. OAKIX has suffered outflows and may have reopened in order not to sell stocks to cover.
2. FMI management seems to close funds much sooner that Oakmark. FMI large cap closed years ago with only a few billion. They've since reopened but they appear to close down funds with a lot less AUM.
Just my opinion

What I like about DSENX is that its stock selection is based on mathematical model instead of human selection subject to emotions and other drawbacks. The model for CAPE index was back tested for at least 15 years and it shows very good results comparing to SP500.
If I could find another mutual fund or ETF based on math. model with similar consistency and outperformance of benchmark for at least 10 years I would be happy to jump in.

Recent Article (3/21/2017)
Big Oil muscling in on Shale:
From Article:

If the big boys are successful, they’ll scramble the U.S. energy business, boost American oil production, keep prices low, and steal influence from big producers, such as Saudi Arabia. And even with their enviable balance sheets, the majors have been as relentless in transforming shale drilling into a more economical operation as the pioneering wildcatters before them.
and,
At Bongo 76-43, Shell is drilling five wells in a single pad for the first time, each about 20 feet apart. That saves money otherwise spent moving rigs from site to site. Shell said it’s now able to drill 16 wells with a single rig every year, up from six in 2013.
With multiple wells on the same pad, a single fracking crew can work several weeks consecutively without having to travel from one pad to other. At Bongo 76-43, Shell is using three times more sand and fluids to break up the shale, a process called fracking, than it did four years ago. The company said it spends about $5.5 million per well today in the Permian, down nearly 60 percent from 2013.

Article Link:
https://bloomberg.com/news/features/2017-03-21/big-oil-s-plan-to-buy-into-the-shale-boom

I'm not agreeing that these funds are creating a conflict of interest. M* has been selling advice for years. If that didn't bother you, neither should this.
M* is foremost a data collection service. You want to know how a fund performed today, or how much it costs, or what's in its filings, M* has that data. It aggregates that data within fund and across fund.
Within fund - what's its YTD, 1 year, 3 year performance. How does that look graphically. Across funds - show me the same data side by side for two funds, for three funds.
Then it takes this data and applies a small amount of judgment, by creating categories and classifying the funds. This is a thankless task; it's virtually impossible to build a classification system for anything without avoiding corner cases. Here, some funds that don't fit neatly into on category or another.
But they do a decent job, and they are not without a competitor. If you don't like the way M* has classified a fund, you can cross check with Lipper. Now S&P (the last time I looked) takes an entirely different approach. It doesn't try to describe what a fund holds, it tries to describe how a fund behaves. So you could have a large cap value fund being classified as small cap blend, simply because it's been moving that way. Different approach, one I'm not fond of, but certainly a form of competition as well.
The star ratings are purely mechanical based on these classifications. As far as subjective ratings are concerned, M* has competition. Go read Zacks. Then you can take another look at M* and consider who is really looking into funds diligently.
These are not funds of funds. Reread what I wrote - M* is hiring the managers, not buying the funds.

couldn't but notice M* rating comment "single person running fund" and "key person risk". Wonder if they apply the same yardstick to other funds. NOT!

I know. I'm sure they don't say the same thing about Giroux with PRWCX, or with PTRAX when Bill Gross was the sole manager all those years.

In last month's Elevator Talk, Paul allows that he'll pursue for SFVLX some investments that are riskier than what would be appropriate in SFGIX.
If you want to limit downside, consider a fund that hedges its equity exposure. There are three possible hedges: a hybrid fund that holds bonds (often flagged "Total" or "Multi-asset"), a fund that's willing to hold a lot of cash, or a fund with a formal hedging policy. I screened for open, retail funds with the lowest downside deviation over the past five years. Here are 14 of the 15 "best" (the other was an institutional fund). Ten of the 14 have peer-beating returns over that period. Remember: these aren't recommendations, these are just a set of funds that meets one of your criteria that you might want to learn a bit more about.
David
GuideMark Emerging Markets GMLVX - 98% equity exposure
Capital Group Emerging Markets Total Opportunities ETOPX - 45% equity
Deutsche X-trackers MSCI Emerging Markets Hedged Equity ETF DBEM - hedged equity
Harding Loevner Frontier Emerging Markets HLFMX -95%
ICON Emerging Markets Fund ICARX - 88%
New World Fund NEWFX - 84%
Amana Developing World AMDWX - 87%
AB Emerging Markets Multi-Asset ABYEX - 47%
Fidelity Total Emerging Markets FTEMX - 63%, a Great Owl
Lazard Emerging Markets Multi Asset EMMIX -47%
Baron Emerging Markets BEXIX - 92%
Calamos Evolving World Growth CNWIX -80%
Seafarer Overseas Growth and Income Fund SIGIX - 90%, a Great Owl
iShares Edge MSCI Min Vol Emerging Markets ETF EEMV - hedged equity

FYI: Measures of stock valuation have been flashing caution for months. Humans are finally starting to take notice.
Fund managers now say stocks are the most overvalued they have been in nearly 20 years, according to a survey done last week by Bank of America Merrill Lynch.
Regards,
Ted
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2017-03-21/record-number-of-fund-managers-say-u-s-equities-are-overvalued

@MFO Members: It's been about 20 years since I first linked Max Gunther's Zurich Axioms to the FundAlarm Discussion Board. One of the major problems I see on the MFO Discuaaion Board is that many members don't take enough risk. Here's what Max Gunther had to say about risk. " Put your money at risk. Don’t be afraid of getting hurt a little. The degree of risk you will usually be dealing with is not hair-raisingly high. By being willing to face it, you give yourself the only realistic chance you have of rising above the great unrich."

The biggest risk is not taking risk. I agree. The problem is easy to convince someone who started investing in 1990, not 1999. Blaming the investor is the easiest thing to do.
Trading is not always speculation. And it is not "market timing". Ask those who got out of the market the last 2 times it went down 50%. Don't just say they never got back in soon again. They slept well and someone has to produce proof they are worse off today. And until the next 50% correction.
"If you had invested $X in year Y...." is all available in hindsight. In the real world things work differently. When I'm 80 (nah, I don't think I'll live that long, I couldn't afford it, but dream with me a bit...) and I don't have responsibilities, sure I'll go to Vegas.
PS - by the way I've never been to Vegas. I know, I suck.

I like your approach @Ted and I believe you are correct in your assessment of risk-averse MFOers. Your three top fund holdings revealed in a recent thread show that you walk the walk. For my part, I put a slice of my active portfolio into PTIAX for diversity's sake, but you won't see me agonizing over or discussing bond durations or other arcane metrics fixed income investors revel in. According to my age, I should have 25% equity exposure, but it's closer to 75% because I believe I'll be around for 20 more years, a long-term target. I realize what the risk is.
A few years ago my TIAA advisor showed me a graph depicting a line going straight up from 2000 to 2014. It represented the performance of TIAA's fixed income portfolio returning 5% per annum. Stocks came nowhere near that level of performance. I felt kind of dumb until I realized that no one could have told me in 2000 to put everything into bonds and I now doubt many TIAA investors achieved that extraordinary performance. I've done fine in equities despite periods of lagging performance and I've enjoyed the ride. 2008 was a sickening time, but it didn't last forever and it provided a great time to put more money into stocks.

@MFO Members: It's been about 20 years since I first linked Max Gunther's Zurich Axioms to the FundAlarm Discussion Board. One of the major problems I see on the MFO Discuaaion Board is that many members don't take enough risk. Here's what Max Gunther had to say about risk. " Put your money at risk. Don’t be afraid of getting hurt a little. The degree of risk you will usually be dealing with is not hair-raisingly high. By being willing to face it, you give yourself the only realistic chance you have of rising above the great unrich."

I'm getting exposure to this sector with PRMTX. Rolling averages for all time increments over the last fifteen years are all rolling positive.

@ Congratulations, you beat me to the Merriman article, but in the future you should link like this:
1) Paul Merriman: Have Value Funds Become Too Valuable?
2) Give An Introduction:
For many years I have advocated that investors overweight the equity side of their portfolios toward value funds, which very often outperform more popular growth funds.
3) When possible always link in printer-friendly format.
Regards,
Ted

Have to say I'm like @AndyJ. Only MAPIX remains in my portfolio and Asia no longer feels like the go-go region it was 25 years ago. Seafarer and Grandeur Peak got my Matthews dough.

Similarly, I swapped MACSX for Seafarer...and also found a place for 2 GP funds. I do still have MAPTX, as it was my first experience with Matthews and still serves a unique purpose and accounts for itself very well. I am contemplating MINDX also, for an area I think will shine over the next 20 years purely due to demographics, and Matthews is where I would turn for that expertise.

Have to say I'm like @AndyJ. Only MAPIX remains in my portfolio and Asia no longer feels like the go-go region it was 25 years ago. Seafarer and Grandeur Peak got my Matthews dough.

@briboe69, How about SGENX? I own both IVWAX and SGENX. The performance and risk profile are comparable.

A great fund, I've owned it for 20 years. I'm a little concerned about asset bloat with SGENX, so I also own FEBAX since there is a lot of overlap between the two. My four largest holdings in order are PRWCX, FEBAX, IVWAX, and SGENX. My main goal is capital preservation first, growth second, despite being only age 45.

The link is a nice try, but is talking about something different - money in employer-sponsored plans (e.g. 401(k)s). With all due respect to LLJB, I think you might be advised to ignore it, at least for now. Especially given your question asking to clarify whether 401(k) assets count in this IRA question.
Short answer - they don't; that's why I'm suggesting you pay no attention to 401(k) rules for now.
The only way your wife's 401(k) plan could mess with the IRA Roth conversion is if your wife rolled over the 401(k) money into an IRA (the existing one or a new one) before doing the conversion. Don't do that, and you're fine.
Dolphin's got it exactly right.
==========
Other details include:
- Since this is wife's first Roth IRA, she'll have to wait five years to get post-conversion earnings out without taxes
- If converted money is withdrawn in less than five years and wife is under 59.5 at the time, then there's an extra penalty. (The reason is that this is viewed as a backdoor for getting money out of the original IRA before age 59.5, which would have that penalty.)
Here's a description of the general 5 year rule for all Roths (explaining the first item above):
http://fairmark.com/retirement/roth-accounts/roth-distributions/tax-free-distributions-from-roth-iras/
Here's a description of the Roth conversion/early withdrawal penalty issue (second item):
http://fairmark.com/retirement/roth-accounts/roth-distributions/distributions-after-a-roth-ira-conversion/

I like to have a variety of bond funds since you can often find bargains in one segment of the market while others are rallying. For the past few years I've been picking up shares of GIM and now it's finally paying off. Patience and faith required!

FYI: Years of experience have taught me that to be a successful active investor requires a very specific set of characteristics, and that many investors attempting to actively manage their portfolios today lack the emotional and personality traits necessary for success.
Investors with passive portfolios—assuming they are adequately and broadly diversified—face only one real point of failure: reacting emotionally to a market selloff and selling their holdings, often near a market bottom.
But investors who use actively managed strategies face two points of failure:
Regards,
Ted
http://jimoshaughnessy.tumblr.com/post/158366040139/successful-active-stock-investing-is-hard-here

Sorry, IMO lack of courage of your convictions. I still have hope they will sell out of WFC. Trump + Low borrowing + Stock Purchases is behind most of market gains, and especially in financials. It is not due to manager prowess. So let's not say his decision to not sell WFC worked out in the best interest of shareholders. That's not different than saying he knew another stock was going to go up 100% and decided not to overdo idealism and bought that stock.
“People thought socially responsible investors were do-gooders doomed to fail,” HTF is he a do-gooder? Oh of course. Staying in WFC is also helping society.
Dodson doesn’t envision hiring a successor at the Endeavor fund any time soon.
“If you’re wondering about a precedent, I would like to point out that Warren Buffett is still managing Berkshire Hathaway and he is 86 years old,” he wrote in last month’s letter. “I’m only 73, so I have a long way to go.”

WTF? Buffett has enough successors at BH.
Just like so many articles, it is meant to excuse the manager. Finally, no mention of WFC beyond opening shot. Why even bring it up in article? Only to gloss over it?
It is wrong to sleep with your neighbors wife. Doing to the contrary once in a while is not not overdoing morality. WFC should have been sold.
PS - Cannot resist calling out the over-the-top bullshit. "The thin boyinsh looking money manager" WTF?!?!?!?! If he is boyish looking then I'm a fat 3 month old baby.