For what it's worth, Bob Brinker sent out a stock market Buy Alert ("market attractive for purchase") two days ago on Wednesday evening to his Market Timer newsletter subscribers. I don't subscribe, but I know somebody who does. Brinker rarely gives a buy or a sell signal, sometimes going years between signals.
I remember his signal to buy the Nasdaq 100 in 2000 during a pause in the tech stock debacle. The markets resumed plunging and those who bought on his signal and held on had to wait 15 years to break even.

Dead Cat Bounce?

Depends which cat you mean.
- Oil's been dragging bottom for over a year. Suspect we're plumming the bottom somewhere in the $25+ area.
- I'm not convinced re stocks. And the move today doesn't look that convincing to me. Could rally for a few days than fall back.
- Gold's unpredictable. Might as well go to Vegas and throw your money on the craps tables. I'll agree, however, with those who believe financial chaos and a weaker dollar tend to bolster its attractiveness. Having a bit of exposure has helped me in recent months.
Disclaimer: I'm not an expert. My forecasts over the years have a 50-50 success/failure ratio. I am not a market timer and do not normally attempt to time markets nor have I ever been affiliated with any market timers or market timing strategies.

As in past history of investment products that can't go wrong, I have a feeling that the fool proof diversification models used by the Robo models will be surprised by the close correlation of the decline in world markets ( including the U.S. markets ) and the returns will suffer for it. For the premise was that emerging / international market performance was supposed to offset / be uncorrelated to a decline in U.S. market ( by emerg / int'l rising ala QE schemes and monetary stimulation or such that has happened in the past ) . Yet the world is mired in a deflation of commodity prices and persistent slow or negative growth. Many brilliant investors have built reasonably big positions in the international markets over the last 4 -5 years with little to show for it ( Ray Dalio being one ).
A fair amount of fanfare and assets flowing into these Robo accounts over the last couple years ... Reminds me of the tech bubble funds ...

FYI: fter five years in the business, robo-advisor Betterment thinks it has a handle on what stresses out ETF investors and what works in de-stressing them.
Regards,
Ted
http://www.investors.com/etfs-and-funds/etfs/what-are-etf-investors-asking-big-robo-advisor-in-a-tough-market/

vkt:
I will simplify what you have written a bit. Selecting the preferred presidential candidate from amongst the Republican and Democratic nominating races is as easy as "ABC":
ABC = Anyone But Cruz
All of the candidates in both parties certainly have their warts and their detractors but a Ted Cruz presidency would be an unmitigated disaster. He represents the lunatic fringe of the Republican Party, an evangelical nutcase without any understanding of or respect for the constitutional separation of church and state - one of the most important foundations of this country. He is also the meanest, nastiest, and most destructive person to serve in the Senate in the past 30 years, and that is truly saying something. His entire senatorial career has been to obstruct and destroy - he is an anarchist. Fortunately, he is as hated in the mainstream Republican Party as he is outside of it and I doubt his nomination would attract significant support or money from mainstream Republican sources. Unfortunately, the misanthrope Koch brothers would gladly pick up the financial slack but that is probably where his support would end.

vkt, Nothing like that that either my husband or I can remember. We never bought anything for the car anywhere (except gas the Chevron station down the street). Not important anyway. Maybe it was insurance or DMV. And, maybe I did do something that I don't recall. I paid cash for the car two years before I got the Amazon card.

Stockman's been calling for another Great Depression, starting now, for at least five years and quite possibly closer to twenty. He was never level-headed. He's the guy who brought magic asterisks to the federal budget back in the 80s...

Small value funds require a lot more patience and the willingness to double down when value is out of favor. Most of the gains made in the last 10 years for small value happened in 2003 and 2013. Maybe it's better to be in a massive small cap index fund which is a lot less likely to liquidate. I'm still plugging money in WSCVX, though.

If you are making a case for The Great Depression (1929 to 1939) Part Deux, I disagree. I see this as "just another bear market" - one that will (typically) last between 18 to 24 months, one that began in May/June 2015 in which we are now about 9 months into. We are in agreement that the markets will grind lower but we differ with regard to duration. I see another 9 to 15 months whereas you seem to be saying that we have many years remaining.

Technically, it will look more like what you are saying because you are looking at it from a stocks point of view. The new reality will be lower stock growth rates BUT people look at things relatively. In the past if 8% looked good, now 5% will look good.
I am looking at it from a macro point of view. That will overshadow the stock environment. Profits will be harder to grow in most areas. Fewer individuals will have $ to put into stocks.
This is not a depression, not stagflation, just stagnation.

DlphcOracl you have been as spot-on as anyone here so far. For purely selfish reasons I hope your prescient analysis continues unabated. The more blood in the streets the better where no one wants to ever buy again. One place I differ is the duration of the bear. In my 600 worthless trading/investing books (now culled to around 300) it was said the typical bear lasts around 10 to 11 months. Remember, we have had a lot more bear markets than just 2008/early 09 and 73/74. Here's something I dug up from google Over the past 66 years, there have been 13 bear markets, lasting an average of 14 months and declining a total of 24.6% before recovering. By contrast, the 14 bull markets since 1949 have lasted roughly 44 months on balance, each growing an average of 117.3%.
Regardless kudos to you and remain flexible and open to changing conditions to your scenario. Price always leads us out of the bear as the bearish data is at its peak months and months after the bottom. For instance, junk bonds bottomed in December 2008 and that was many months before the actual default rate topped.
Edit: Before you respond I can almost read your answer. i.e this last bull was not typical and ran for a lot longer than 44 months and hence this bear will also last longer and run further than 14 months. I am sure many wouldn't disagree with you on that.

If you are making a case for The Great Depression (1929 to 1939) Part Deux, I disagree. I see this as "just another bear market" - one that will (typically) last between 18 to 24 months, one that began in May/June 2015 in which we are now about 9 months into. We are in agreement that the markets will grind lower but we differ with regard to duration. I see another 9 to 15 months whereas you seem to be saying that we have many years remaining.

Bottom line: We have a long way to go to the downside before the true nature of this deja vu financial crisis is fully understood and market valuations adjust appropriately. The only sane financial commentator that fully understands this is Joe LaVorgna, the Managing Director and Chief U.S. Economist for Deutsche Bank Securities.

Depending upon what analysis you look at -technical, fundamental, micro or macro economics - you will come up with different reasons; which will be wrong.
My way of thinking is what I have posted in the past we are in a sea change that people are not talking about - free trade, population growth, robotics, AI, free movement of money and movement of mfg to lower cost areas causing deflation and hardship for worker.
So, I'm expecting a slow grind - years.
The EU can show us what to expect a VAT to deal with the debt (for awhile) and social programs, a smaller fragile middle class etc.

If I recall from some papers in the past, both small and value show a premium that portfolio theory cannot explain because they are less volatile rather than more volatile. Larry Swedroe isn't correct on that point.
I find these studies over decades and decades of history as if longer is necessarily better. Given how much industry compositions have changed over years and the trading instruments have changed, none of the arguments of the past such as small cap being less liquid hold. IWO or IWM is as liquid as SPY.
One big evidence of the futility of such statistics is that currently small caps especially in growth have become proxies and so highly correlated with biotechs. In periods where BioTechs do well, small caps will do well and the opposite. Why that implies anything regarding small caps in general is beyond me.
Sometimes statistics become replacements for lack of insight.

It took a few years for me to realize diversification was needed in my bond funds as well as equity funds. This, plus the earlier thread on PAUDX reinforces that.

Volatile fund, but great long term record. After 2008 it bounced back, up 37% in 2009. Not for the faint of heart, but if Dan Fuss weren't 82 years old, I'd be looking at buying it now.

@davidrmoran, the answer to your last question is in that same post I pointed to earlier which gives example of how and when they might differ. A low volatility fund can score very high or very low depending on its returns through time relative to index. Think about it. And yes, you would see the difference if you thought about it for a while. I don't really think you are giving enough time to think about this before jumping into questions/conclusions. Ok if that is your style but please do not expect me to keep explaining and correcting. It is tiresome.
It is a valid question to ask as to how one would use this. So I will answer that as it would be useful to many to consider
The way I would use it in the future would be as one more input into fund selection. Typically, fund selection uses a number of factors, performance, tax efficiency, manager reputation, etc. So you land up with a number of potential candidates or a short list for most asset classes.
Out of these I would look at RARE grades if available or I can calculate them to see if any of them scored low. If they did, then I would suspect that perhaps the manager was streaky in his performance or only did better in specific market conditions. If the fund seems like a good one otherwise, I would take a look again at the performance charts to see if he had some small periods where he did well but not so much otherwise. This is different from just looking at 5yr or 10yr results as people who have read should have understood by now. If that was the case, I would skip it even if it was highly rated because none of these ratings consider this fact about the fund. Or if I really wanted that fund for other reasons or didn't have a choice say in a 401k, then I would wait for a time when the manager was underperforming the index than overperforming to get in with a big lumpsum. This is different from whether the market was down. If my plan was a regular DCA, I would not get into such a fund with low RARE grading because, it is likely that a lot of my purchases would likely do better elsewhere missing the streaky performance.
This is more about minimizing opportunity costs in getting into a better fund not in minimizing losses as people who have understood the metric would clearly see.
If the rating was good - B or better - then it would reassure me further about the fund that I had shortlisted that I wouldn't get shortchanged because I happened to jump in at the wrong time. So I wouldn't heistate to get into such a fund if other factors about the fund checked out.
If the only potential candidates for that asset class from other considerations and availability were in the C region or below in RARE grades, I would just buy an index fund or ETF instead for that allocation.
Every year or so when I take a look at my funds, I would reassess the funds in the same way as if I were selecting them and see if the original assumptions still hold. I am not in the camp of hanging on to a fund for decades to give the manager a chance. It is too late then if the manager has failed. If a fund has not met my realistic expectations of the fund for selection in 3-5 years, then the fund is out. My expectation if I have done the selection carefully is that I really would not need to make any changes but I am not one to believe I should not change and just hang on.
But that is just me adopting this additional information to make a more informed choice. Some people throw darts or chase returns or pick the latest fad fund and pray their selection was good. My effort here is to share that additional information with people who think more like the former than the latter.

@old_skeet, isn't that true of any ranking? I don't know of any ranking or rating that will guarantee a certain performance (or lack of) especially in a single snapshot of some time period. Perhaps the problem is in what you expect from a ranking whether it is US News rankings or Morningstar rating, or Lipper ranking or Zacks or whatever. There is bound to be false positives or false negatives otherwise we wouldn't need 8000 funds. Each ranking explains the metrics used to rate them and they are correct in those dimensions.
Comparing such rankings to RARE grades is even worse. I have taken a lot of pains to explain that this ranking is an evaluation of how the fund stacks up in one dimension, not a ranking of best fund or even an indicator of what a fund might return in some period of time. Yet people seem to be thinking that.
Lipper ranks funds in 5 dimensions. Would you say a fund is a Lipper 5 in tax efficiency but it is #256 in some other rankings and so the latter ranking is suspect? That is the same as comparing to this grading.
@davidrmoran, you said "I do realize that RARE is necessarily about investor patience,". This is absolutely not the case. It is, in some sense, a ranking of how investors with the same patience level will fare with a fund depending on which period of the fund they were patient in. Along with an observation that they will see very different returns even if they waited for the same period whether it is 3 yrs 5 yrs or if one were to calculate it for 8 or 10 years. Some funds do better at rewarding all similarly patient investors but investing at different times (as would naturally happen) better than others. This is what the grading here is about. This difference really needs to be understood.

I have a small toehold in it, but may sell it - not that impressed with management. First, they completely missed the previous runup in renewable energy (in 2013); they had zero renewables or close to it for most of that run. Second, the overall reward:risk, imho, is just okay for what it is, but not that impressive. But it isn't nearly as risky as the cap-weighted etf's out there, so it may work fine for a small position over a period of time.
PRBLX is good - don't own it now, but have owned it most of the time for > 10 years - but if action on climate change is a thesis you want to pursue, it's not what you're looking for. It's a best-in-class generalist fund, almost always with commodity energy exposure and nothing in any sort of alternatives.
One of these days someone somewhere is going to hire a firm like Wellington to run an ESG-with-lots-of-E moderate allocation fund, and it'll be a big hit.

Too expensive for my tastes on both ER and 12(b)-1 fees but I do like many of its holdings. If you want ESG fund, maybe look at PRBLX which has done better than this one for the past several years and is cheaper, too. It's more US focused, though. (I own it)

9/25 of LCC and LCV had lead manager changes in the last 8y. Top tier to bottom tier.
Did not check LCG after I saw Danoff got an X:
'Toxic : Very poor returns relative to index for most investment periods except for an insignificant percentage of intervals so unless investors caught that interval would have suffered significantly relative to the index'
I'm not the only buy-hold investor who likes to know who's running a fund and if there is a change. Investopedia points out that manager "performance data that goes back only a few years is hardly a valid measure of talent. To be statistically sound, evidence of a manager's track record needs to span, at a minimum, 10 years or more." An extension of what I was querying in this RARE methodology. I cannot find exactly how M* accounts for tenure, only that they do.
Investopedia do go on however to note a study that individual-manager added value accounts for less than a third of performance, which I hadn't read before, and if true speaks more to your take re persistence / consistency, institutional approach / method. (Maybe this is a claim you are not making explicitly; don't mean to misattribute based on my inferences.)
Is it reasonable also to conclude that reduced volatility is being measured here, so if you are not buy-hold you are advised to look for lower volatility?