SMEAD Capital Management was previously headquarted in Seattle before moving to Phoenix.
The firm's founder, Bill Smead, was sometimes a guest on a locally-produced finance show.
Bill Smead's thoughts and comments were often very insightful.
The firm's original fund—Smead Value Fund—had performed extremely well until that time (>10 years ago).
I really liked Smead Value Fund but avoided it because of the high expense ratio.
I haven't been following the fund or the firm closely in recent years.

Interesting.
Earlier in the week I off-loaded a small basket of individual stocks (BRK-B about 40% of the lot and 5 other). The old expression "If you can't stand the heat ..." comes to mind. There's a reason mutual funds were invented and rose in popularity. Proceeds were redistributed across my fund portfolio and also used to beef up the dedicated cash position from below 20% to 22%. (There's substantial additional cash / bond exposure inside the diversified portfolio holdings). I'm coming off 3 very good double-digit years. No need to push limits at this time.
My "cash" position is split between PAAA and AGZD. The former holds short term collateralized debt similar to JAAA. The latter tracks a high quality intermediate / long duration bond index while cancelling out interest rate risk with shorts on treasuries. I recognize these, especially the former, are riskier than CDs. Should produce a percent or two over money market funds longer term.
BTW - Conventional wisdom says the risk markets will continue to roar until we get close to the mid-terms as the Admin pulls out all the stops. Probably correct. But not willing to risk life savings on that bet at this age.

how does a rightwing value fund manager talk about trump, who has destroyed his stock picks in multiple sectors? easy, he talks about problems manifesting from a window exactly 2-5 years past ! (and not just because its on fox )
further, smead touts his smaller int'nl fund offsetting some underperformance with no attribution at all .
its sad, because smead used to produce thoughtful insights on both sectors and specific names, but his disconnects lose a lot of credibility.
https://smeadcap.com/tv-appearances/fox-business-bill-smead-on-tarriff-threat-disruption/

I wouldn’t disagree at all. I have been overweight CD’s for years. I am in preservation mode and not a yield chaser.

@Crash- Since you mention a 4% divvy and I believe that you like income, you might be interested in knowing that I just picked up a couple of non-callable 3.7% FDIC CDs at Schwab, one for 1 year and 1 for two years.
One was Wells Fargo and the other was Goldman Sachs. Seems like at least a couple of the big boys are not thinking that the Fed will be lowering rates significantly for a couple of years. I thought that was interesting.

We are unwinding our gold position slowly after a meaningful gain over last several years. Gold is near $4,800 per ounce. Gold does not produce earning and dividend, but it serves as a trading instrument in this environment.

If it is about national security, this administration is not negotiating with Greenland and Demark properly. Respect must come first in real negotiation, not threats. Leasing part of Greenland is possible just as many Pacific islands have done that with US since WWII.
Some suggested that this administration is panicking on rare earth metals. Greenland is impractical to mine in light of the climate. Refining and producing high purity grade rare earth metals will take many years to developed. US gave away the technology to China many years ago. And now US is stuck with no raw materials and lack of infrastructure to refine these critical materials.

[snip]
@Observant1 - I went through a similar exercise a year or so ago looking for global stock funds w/o much Mag7. Not easy to find.
FPACX might work. Many people seem fond of it. And it holds only three of the Mag7 - Alphabet, Meta, and Amazon. Those constitute "only" about 20% of the total equity in the fund (10% / 50%). Excellent returns and a moderate max drawdown (-21%). But its ER is over 1% and it was holding (as of Sept) 40% in cash.
FEBIX might also work. It doesn't seem to hold any Mag7. Very good returns and a "low" max drawdown of 16%. It is way underweight in tech and way overweight in consumer defensive. And it holds 9% in gold - I'm not a fan of that but many others are. Biggest question mark may be recent manager/analyst turnover.
I just took a very quick look at a few of the funds to see if anything jumped out at me. Nothing did.

Thanks for the info.
The account where this fund will be held is at Fidelity.
The following four funds were under consideration after the initial screening process.
M* places these funds in the "Global Moderate Allocation" category
except for SGENX which it classifies as "Global Moderately Aggressive Allocation."
SGENX - NTF, load-waived, 1.10% er
SGENX gained 31.57% in 2025 vs. "only" 17.66% for FPACX.
SGENX allocated 11.0% of its portfolio towards gold bullion as of 09-30-25.
Gold gained ~67% in 2025 which was its best performance since 1979.
On Dec. 11, 2025, First Eagle announced it would acquire Diamond Hill by the third quarter of 2026.
PE firm Genstar Capital acquired First Eagle from Blackstone, Corsair, and their co-investors in August 2025.
FPACX - $49.95 TF, 1.06% er
Top-decile category returns for the trailing 3Y, 5Y, 10Y, and 15Y periods.
Three long-tenured portfolio managers have invested over $1M each in the fund.
IFAFX - NTF, 0.63% er
Top-decile category returns for the trailing 5Y, 10Y, and 15Y periods.
There are ten portfolio managers total with four managers that have more than 10 years of tenure.
Eight managers have invested over $1M each in the fund.
VGWLX - $100.00 TF, 0.43% er
Top-quintile category returns for the trailing 5Y period (11/02/17 inception date).
Sub-advised by Wellington Management.
One portfolio manager has invested over $1M in the fund while the other manager has invested over $500K.
I asked Fidelity if the TF could be waived or reduced but was informed that this was not possible.
IFAFX vs. SGENX vs. FPACX
https://www.portfoliovisualizer.com/backtest-portfolio?s=y&sl=26yMudA0dEmABdTOAvcl8F
FPACX vs. AMECX (IFAFX info was inaccurate)
FPACX had higher CAGR, Sharpe, and Sortino ratios with lower volatility and max. drawdown.
https://testfol.io/?s=keoymL8x3O8
My top choices are FPACX and IFAFX.

It's an interesting discussion which various board members have touched on elaborated on over the years. First, we need to agree on / define what the bucket approach espouses. Many conflate this with standard portfolio allocations (% to cash, % to equities, % to bonds or commodities, etc.) As I understand it (and as the opening of the video suggests) the bucket approach is mainly about stashing a large cash stockpile in a bucket to cover anticipated near-term needs. 3-4 years' worth of cash is often used. Typically, there's a second "moderate risk" bucket (perhaps to meet needs 3-6 years out) which you wouldn't need to tap until bucket #1 is exhausted. This approach allows you to carry additional risk in your remaining buckets knowing you won't need that money soon. Additional risk should equal additional reward. I have no quarrel with that approach. Makes sense. The expectation is that during market downdrafts you can keep your hands off the riskier bucket(s) and live comfortably off the near-term / intermediate term buckets. There are no guarantees - never are in investing.
I've never subscribed to that approach. The difference may be in having a defined benefit plan that pretty much covers essentials. But some of my "one-bucket" thinking relates to carrying a more conservative portfolio than I suspect most here do. Also, I try to pull larger sums for major expenses when times are good. Let it ride and rebalance when markets swoon. Again, there are no guarantees. Other than the current year's budgeted needs I don't hold a cash stash. That said, a healthy allocation to fixed income is part of the one bucket approach. Yes, doing it this way does ding you if you need to draw a large sum out during a nasty market slump. The counter to that is that during normal times you're not committing an inordinate amount of your portfolio to low yielding cash.
I suspect there's not as much difference as sometimes attributed to the two different approaches. I'd never argue my one-bucket method works better than the multi-bucket brigade does, although that seems to be the (attached video) speaker's argument. I'll add that while it sounds good in theory it would take nerves of steel to be stoically drawing down your near-term / intermediate-term bucket(s) over a 3-5 year span as your long-term bucket declined 50% in value!
Time to run the blower if I can figure out where the driveway is.

How about the European Union collectively flip this doofus a giant bird. They should also tariff the snot on the largest American firms that have knelt at the altar of gobshit (a play on Anna's godship) and revoke any agreements that let those companies set up tax evasion strategies in their countries. Nothing gets his attention like money.

How many countries officially, if only on paper--- moved their HQ to Ireland to get in on that 12.5% corporate tax? Too many. And I can't imagine everything connected to that fact can be undone. It was, at the beginning of that reduced tax offering many years ago, a chickenshit thing to do, in my estimation, and I'm an Irishman. Undercutting the rest of Europe. Offering sweetheart deals. Companies like Johnson Controls and other big corporations ought to be paying more, not less.
Anyhow, I have just read here that an Agreement b/w Orange and van der Leyen has been frozen over the talk about owning Greenland, and the escalating aggressiveness, his insistence on having it.
Is this going to be more TACO, in the end? When will the military tell him, at last, to go fuck himself? And why are we even talking about this?
1) Epstein Epstein Epstein.
2) he's tearing NATO apart in such a way that he can't be legally accused of working for the enemy, namely, his uncle Vlad. Someday, we'll find out just what was the kompromat that Vlad's got on the Orange Filth.
.....Anyhow, it looks like some Repugnants on The Hill actually will oppose him on this thing.

@Derf
PRFCX is not precisely a clone of the equity sleeve in PRWCX. There's surely enough similarity to think of them in the same ballpark. (But I'm looking at the portfolios dated 30 Nov, '25 at Morningstar.) You're 5 years ahead of me, not that it matters at this stage.
I've been in PRWCX since 2014 and can't imagine giving it up. 2025 was its worst performance year, ever: 55th percentile among peers. I note a curious item listed in the PRCFX portfolio: an aggregate of a pile of different stuff, and as of 30 Nov, its size jumped by 2,225.99%. There must be a record somewhere of just which stocks are in that big un-labeled bag, eh? I suppose it's an indication that the size of the AUM has grown substantially.
I was attracted to PRCFX by its lead Portf. Mngr. and its YIELD. A rather hefty yield compared to most other balanced funds. I'm able to add new money to my portfolio just in dribs and drabs these days; a heftier yield which pays monthly makes growing my total easier, because it all gets reinvested, apart from the slug I remove each January. PRCFX is 13.43% of my total. I'm letting it ride. In a couple of years, I'll run into RMDs. The size of my taxable account will be growing quicker, then. I plan to move the lion's share of the RMDs just over there on the other side of the wall.

@crash, i made a mistake on my statement above (correction made). Capital preservation is #1 objective. BTW, i invest with D. Sherman funds as they have done well and minimize the risk. At Fidelity, they charge $49.95 for initial purchase. Additional purchases can be done for $5. Schwab has similar fee schedule. I use this approach to build a large position over.a year or so. Institutional shares of OEFs have lower expense ratio that pay for the transaction fee itself. I hold RSIIX for over 5 years.
Single country ETFs are inherently volatile due to the lack of sector and company diversification. If the top 10 holdings are over 50%, the fund is very concentrated. Panama is in frontier market i believe. The other thing to watch out for is the small daily trading volume (getting narrow spread between bid and ask prices). I prefer broadly diversified OEFs and ETFs (typical daily trading volume at 100K to several millions shares).
@Derf, we don’t own any PRCFX since we have PRWCX. For last several years, we have been reducing PRWCX as part of our risk reduction. US and foreign bonds are more attractive at this point.
Quite honestly i am not qualified to advise you on the amount of risk you should assume. Think a financial advisor may serve you better.

What could possibly go wrong between now and then?

mmm...What could possibly go wrong under Biden?
The highest inflation and cost of living in four decades.
The worst one-year bond losses in forty years.
The largest number of criminals entering the country.
The biggest expansion of useless DEI jobs.
That wasn’t theoretical. That was real.

Uranium has been rising for over two years with all the hype about nuclear power.
A Sprott ETF is certainly one idea but less risky might be a general energy and natural resources fund like GRHAX which has chunks of Uranium silver Gold and Energy
As I have mentioned before SII Sprott Common Stock is also up dramatically but does not depend on one of these markets as they have ETFs in all of them
NLR a "nuclear" ETF has Uranium but also power producers and even some utilities
Probably less of a volatile ride until Trump pulls the plug

Having two co-managers working with Romick for over 10 years gives confidence for the future investment. In addition, Landecker and Selmo run the FPA Equity fund FPAG, a global ETF without the fixed income component. We pair FPAG with FPA flexible income fund.

Read a book titled “American Kompromat” by Craig Unger which details Trump’s long history with the KGB. He was turned in 1987 after he went bust (again), but he had been doing business with the Russians long before that. This book details how the KGB first spotted Trump as a potential asset, how it cultivated him, arranged his first trip to Moscow (1987 with pictures to prove it) and pumped him full of KGB talking points. Well worth the read!
Much of what Trump has been doing is exactly what Putin would like to see.

Yes, I'/ve been saying that. Even back 10 or 11 years ago, during the 2015-16 campaign, Orange Don, Jr. volunteered to tell an interviewer they had no problem getting money for this or that--- from Russia.
*******************************
In another direction:
Trump's Venezuela oil money is being held in bank accounts controlled by the U.S. government, with the largest account located in Qatar, according to multiple reports. The funds come from the sale of Venezuelan oil following the U.S. seizure of control over Venezuela’s oil assets after the capture of President Nicolás Maduro in January 2026.
Qatar’s role is described as a neutral and secure location to hold the proceeds—initially $500 million from the first sale—helping to prevent seizure by creditors or legal claims from foreign companies with past grievances. The Trump administration argues this setup ensures the money can be used to benefit Venezuela directly, funding government operations, food, medicine, and small businesses through auctions managed by Qatari banks and overseen by the Central Bank of Venezuela under U.S. conditions.
However, transparency concerns have emerged. Critics, including Sen. Elizabeth Warren, argue that placing the funds offshore in Qatar lacks legal precedent and resembles a “slush fund” with insufficient oversight. They question the lack of congressional input and warn of potential misuse by Venezuelan interim leaders like Delcy Rodríguez to consolidate power.
While the administration claims the move stabilizes Venezuela and bypasses years of financial isolation, the decision has sparked debate over accountability, presidential authority, and the precedent of holding seized foreign assets in offshore accounts.
(Nothing to see here, move along.............)

“In markets, inflection points are only recognisable in retrospect — sometimes years later.
But it looks more and more like US stocks hit an important turning point on the last Wednesday in October.
Up until that point, tech and consumer discretionary sectors had led the market, and highly speculative stocks
of all sorts were popular. Since then, leadership has passed abruptly to solid old-economy sectors: materials,
energy and consumer staples.”
“Most importantly, though, October 29 was when investor enthusiasm for heavy investment in AI peaked
and began to fall. Meta reported earnings that day, and announced a big increase in spending.
Investors hated it and the stock tumbled.
In the six weeks since, Nvidia, Microsoft, Oracle and Broadcom have fallen significantly.
The loss of speculative appetite has extended beyond AI.”
https://archive.ph/uu6z8#selection-1997.0-2009.527

From the above: "Nobody sees this as a rally drive by the fundamentals,” said one market participant in London. “It’s more of a retail investor bandwagon.”
I dunno... that sure isn't @rono 's take:

Industrial demand is huge. Silver is the best conductor and reflector and a great antibiotic. Solar paste goes into every solar panel. It's in all EVs and AI electronics. Also used in photography and medicine. None of these users gives a rats ass about price. No silver - no production.
All this demand faces a restricted supply. Artificially low prices over the past several decades have discouraged exploration and expansion of silver mining. Seventy percent of all silver comes a a byproduct of lead, zinc and copper. A new mine is 7-10 years out. And unlike gold, silver gets used up in industry. Gold never goes away. Silver does.

Donald J. Trump's stated rationale:
“'We have subsidised Denmark, and all of the Countries of the European Union,
and others, for many years by not charging them Tariffs, or any other forms of remuneration,'
Trump wrote in a Truth Social post on Saturday.
'Now, after Centuries, it is time for Denmark to give back — World Peace is at stake!'”
“'Many Presidents have tried, and for good reason, but Denmark has always refused,' Trump wrote.
'Now, because of The Golden Dome, and Modern Day Weapons Systems, both Offensive and Defensive,
the need to ACQUIRE is especially important,' he added, referring to his plan to build
a missile defence system for the US that would mimic Israel’s Iron Dome.”
https://archive.ph/DEFBd#selection-1969.0-1973.255

Obama did not promise to cut premiums; he promised to cut the rate of growth in premiums. ...
Years ago when Obama was making his $2,500-reduction claim, he didn’t always make it clear that he wasn’t talking about a straight price cut, but rather a slower growth of premiums than what would have happened without the ACA or other changes to the health care system. In other words, the president claimed that premiums would increase at a lower rate than they had been expected to before.

https://www.factcheck.org/2015/10/bush-misleads-on-premium-growth/

While health care costs have continued to increase since President Obama signed the Affordable Care Act into law in 2010, they’ve done so at a slower rate than in the years before the law was passed.
A 2021 study published in JAMA found that out-of-pocket healthcare expenses increased at an average of 3.4% a year from 2000-2009 and 1.9% a year from 2010-2018, after the ACA.

https://econofact.org/factbrief/fact-check-have-healthcare-costs-risen-faster-since-the-affordable-care-act-was-passed
There are valid criticisms of the ACA. Growth rate of premiums is not one of them. A valid complaint is that the ACA originally had little in the way of total healthcare cost containment. Another is that the cliff on premium subsidies (sharp drop to zero subsidies if income goes $1 over 400% of poverty level) left insurance unaffordable for some. Under Biden, the latter was addressed until the current Congress let the enhanced subsidies lapse.
https://www.kff.org/affordable-care-act/inflation-reduction-act-health-insurance-subsidies-what-is-their-impact-and-what-would-happen-if-they-expire/
See also: A Critical Analysis of Obamacare: Affordable Care or Insurance for Many and Coverage for Few? (2017)
Abstract: https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/28339427/
Full paper (28 pages): https://www.painphysicianjournal.com/current/pdf?article=NDMwMg==&journal=104