Been in and out of gold/precious metals funds over the years. In the wayback years.........well, I better not tell ya.
I don't recall a RSI of 13.6 for much of anything since 2008. A reading of 30 or less is considered a nominal low point for "watching" and a reading of 70 is moving towards the overbought area.
'Course, sometimes these trends have longer legs; not unlike a value stock/fund in a downdraft and the value continues to improve, except for those invested at a higher price.
But, as I posted on Sunday; many sectors in the broad commodity sectors are quite weak. Perhaps the big money is getting ready for an unwind and then a short term profit run.
Ya won't always be bitten by a barking dog; but caution should be observed as shown next, plus or minus a small blip:
NUGT today = -32%
DUST today = +31%
GDX chart, 1 year
Take care,
Catch

When I have been asked about various investment products or vendors, I always attempt to get these "folks" to do their own work/research, too.
Too many friends/relatives I have talked with over the years are too lazy; in spite of the fact that they were good enough to have saved monies to invest and that expressing to them that you worked hard for this money and this money should work hard for you going forward, they don't even want to ask some simple questions about how much of their invested monies with vendor "x" would be their NET return.
A recent example is brothers (beneficiaries) whose mother passed away and the account was evenly split into active accounts from this money for the brothers. None of the investment holdings were changed; the "advisor" only sent letters showing the investments and values once each month. The advisor never sent an introduction letter explaining his fees or methods for "deciding" what would be proper investment areas.
Four of the 5 brothers have kept their accounts in place. One asked for the account to be closed and the monies be moved into a credit union account to be used or invested as desired. I asked about the management fee and what discussion had taken place as to whether the investments for the remaining 4 brothers was suitable to and for them.
They, of course; didn't know. Apparently the advisor fee is 1% of total account value, transaction fees(?) and they're not sure how to decide about investment areas and remain at the "whim" of the advisor. Two of these folks are very "tight" with their spending habits (stuff on sale, coupons for grocery shopping, etc.), but won't take the time and the infomation offered via the internet to get an "idea" of what to do. Guessing their time is limited after clipping coupons.
Example two is for 2 young men (25-30 y.o.) I encountered a few years ago. They worked for an insurance company and were selling their products and approached me. They briefly explained this and that. I asked about a variable annuity (no life insurance frills, etc.) offering and whether they had a cost/fee schedule in plain wording. Well, no........but............ I explained (all I knew about from the top of my head) that I was aware of a variable annuity product from Fidelity that allowed for investments in 57 active managed mutual funds and that my cost would be the E.R. of the mutual fund, plus an annual fee of .25%. How do your similar products measure against this? Well, they were not able to provide any data of value. I am sure they wanted their foot inside my money door to "help" me with their products. But, for every one of me; there will be 99 others with few questions and these 2 salesmen likely will sell something to a few of them.
Lastly, one could hope for a "plain black on white", 1 page form of all expenses one will encounter doing business with person "x" for investment product "y".
One hopes that enough folks with needs and help in this area happen to have a decent person hold their hand through an investment process. I do not begrude anyone "making a living" with helping folks with their investments. It is indeed a special area of knowledge that too few folks have any clue.
I suspect many here field questions about investments, from friends and family.
I/we, at this house, are glad we are a tiny bit smart in this area; and have the "devil's advocate" questions at the ready. One can not expect the proper answer without the proper question.
Just my inflation adjusted 2 cents worth of jabber.
Catch

Morning @Ted
Thank you for this article. Many of these areas have been discussed over the years at FundAlarm and here; but there are summary items in this article that are of value for all investors.
Take care,
Catch

Folks might I suggest ... and, if you have the desire ...
Edward Jones has offices in most towns throughout the good old USA ... Why not visit one and meet with one of their advisors, face-to-face, to get the scoop first hand on their Advisor Solutions program. I am not in their advisory program because I felt I'd be taking a pay cut as my portfolio, at last review when compared to their growth & income model(s) was out performing theirs plus I'd be giving up control of my investments and my ability to hire and fire fund managers, positon my portfolio to my choices plus I'd have to pay the advisory solutions management fee ... and, in addition, I'd have to sell funds with large capital gains (TAXES) to make the switch unless I opted to do this in my IRA.
I have been a client of Edward Jones for more than twenty five years and the only account fees I remember to have ever paid myself was the annual fee ($30.00, perhaps now $40.00) on my self directed IRA. And, with building the account(s) to a good size I now have no account, or wrap, fees and many of my purchase transactions are at nav or reduced commissions. Generally, once you buy into a fund family you can do nav exchanges into other funds within that family of funds without a sales charge.
Perhaps you should just get the scoop first hand from them, if interested, and not off the board as I feel some of the information provided by some other posters is not what I have experienced.

Right. VIG is fine. Just depends which vehicle one likes better.
As for the fee of .20% vs. .10%, from what I understand, the existence of "front running" by traders adds a hidden but very real cost to any index etf -- a cost of maybe .2% or more per annum. So truly, the old fashioned open end fund -- at .20% -- may be cheaper.
However, the actual results over the past 5 years show an annualized advantage to VIG of right around .1% exactly -- hmmmm.
another good alternative: SCHD.

It seems that there is no set aum standard for having advisory help, you have to find what works best for you and research the person that will be advising if that is the route you decide to take. When I inherited a portfolio almost three years ago, it was larger than I was used to self managing, so hired a CFP at Merrill whom I knew for about 5 years. I pay less than .75%, AUM fee, get access to Institutional fund class funds, thus a lower ER on many funds and advice as often as I want. I like the idea of a second set of eyes and sometimes we disagree, but I make the final decision in the long run. Sometimes I was right and sometimes she was right, it all balances out.
Only disadvantage is they don't sell all funds like a fund supermarket or discount broker, perhaps that is why those houses charge more for managing or advising. I do still have a small acct at a discount broker for those times I do want to buy a fund ML does not sell. Just my $.02

"For starters the advisory fee at Fidelity is stated as "between 0.63% and 1.7%" according to the link msf provided."
Charles wrote: "So, they [EJ] charge you 1.5% each year to manage your life savings". I simply responded with the same phrasing, figuring we both knew what that meant. The article states that EJ "charges up to 1.5%", so apples to apples, EJ still looks cheaper than Fidelity.
" I don't think that either Charles or I (I'm sure about me) were suggesting that EJ or anyone else (e.g. Fidelity, Schwab etc) other than the issuing fund company were collecting the loads charged."
Charles continued: "Will sell you American's front-loaded funds, which takes 5.75% off the top (and Edward Jones pockets)." It sure sounded like Charles was suggesting that EJ collected the loads.
You may have meant something different, but your article quote was: "Jones last year earned $49.4 million in revenue sharing from sales". Those are loads (and/or trailing commissions, another form of loads, per SEC). That's $49.4 million of loads collected by EJ. (Well, technically collected by American funds and "shared" with EJ, hence revenue "sharing".) That's why I noted that this amount was in addition to the servicing fees received by EJ from the funds.
-----
@Maurice - what Fidelity suggests with Premium services is that you "Talk to your [Fidelity] financial consultant about a referral to an independent, registered investment advisor who can provide customized portfolio management, advice, and specialized products."
It seems Fidelity Premium Services does not provide advice - you need to go elsewhere and pay for it.
No pressure for high rev products at Fidelity? When I moved an annuity out of Fidelity, they called me at 6:30 in the morning local time, and spent a half hour trying to talk me into undoing that. They even got an annuity specialist on the line midway through the conversation.
The products for which reps get the highest compensation, i.e. trailing fees, are Portfolio Advisory Services (PAS) and annuities.
I figure that's why my rep kept reminding me for a few years that I could offload all my portfolio management work onto PAS. He gradually accepted my statement that I prefer to do this myself, and has since gently tossed a product idea or two my way from time to time. A much improved working relationship.

I wouldn't say I am afraid to spend money...I just don't like overpaying for things...or paying anything at all, if I can get it for free! Although I still get alimony and am still in a high tax bracket (thank you, divorce attorney), I decided several years ago to learn how to extreme coupon. I have always used coupons, but at an "amateur" level. What I do now is "professional" shopping...I have shopped many times and actually earned a little money for shopping. I get so much stuff for free or cheap, I have to give it away to friends, family, and food bank! I also use several shopping apps, where I can earn free gift cards. It takes a lot of time, but I'd much rather do this than pay Uncle Sam 40% of what I'd earn at a job. With the money I save, I splurge on travel, golf, clothes and jewelry. My bf, also retired, works part-time at a golf club which is part of a network of golf clubs, so we enjoy traveling around the state and playing different courses for free.

NOBL looks great. I like the fact that it is a compact portfolio, and I like the fact that it is equal-weighted. Also I can live with the .35% management fee.
In the same vein is the open end fund VDAIX, where the index requires only 10 years of consecutive dividend increases vs. 25 years for NOBL. Management fee is .20% and it holds a cap-weighted gaggle of 181 names.
I would not consider QVAL. I am unfamiliar with the quantitative screens it uses, although I have little doubt that they have all back-tested very well. To me, these somewhat esoteric screens add uncertainty and violate the KISS principle. Further, it is billed as an actively managed etf which not only gives humans a chance to mess it up, but which costs .79% annually. My guess is that over time it will lag the others mentioned here for that reason alone.
I feel that chances are all of these mentioned will do fine. The phrase "6 of one half-dozen of the other" comes to mind, but for a certain type of weirdo (present!) it is fun and interesting to split the hairs. Thanks for pointing out NOBL, scott.

However, having been burned myself a few years ago in OPGSX, I'd rather track these things than own them. Just a very tough way to make a living.

I'm on board with you Hank. Gold and PM miners are the essence of speculation investing IMO. I jumped on the band wagon a bit back in the old FundAlarm days (USAGX, UNWPX, TGLDX). May be the worst advice I ever followed here. My own fault for jumping on. On the other hand, I'm sure some will say they've made money with PM's. They are better at it then me.

Yikes - After holding up very well earlier in the year, SGGDX appears to have entered a nose-dive. Down 12% YTD and 32% over 1 year. The other gold fund I track, OPPGX, is doing even worse.
I'm agnostic on gold. We've gone round and round on this one in the past. Nothing to add here that I haven't previously said. However, having been burned myself a few years ago in OPGSX, I'd rather track these things than own them. Just a very tough way to make a living.

For the next 10 years, which of the 2 would you choose......QUAL or VLUE ?

My fear or lack of fear in spending varies with the conditions. If the markets are raging ahead and my IRA has been increasing at 7-10% annually, I'm inclined to splurge more (on vacations, home improvements, etc.). The past couple years the IRA's been stuck in a rut. That's partially due to some longer-term speculative plays that haven't yet worked out, but also due to slower growth in the major equity and bond indexes. So the IRA hasn't grown much the past year or so. As a consequence, I'm less likely to spend.
Another concern is the intense political rhetoric about curtailing SS which seems to ebb and flow. We're also dependent on a couple DB pensions, so the speculation re SS and pension solvency both have an impact on our thinking. While I can control our investing and spending, I have no control over what the politicians and courts do in regard to those other two matters. Probably a dumb response - but there's an emotional component to all this that's hard to escape.
I was probably 45+ when we finally got down to hard-tacks and paid off all our revolving credit and instituted an annual written budget. It was than that savings really increased. The first few years were excruciatingly difficult for us. Drove worn out vehicles and curtailed discretionary travel among other things. In retrospect, it was the smartest thing we ever did.

let's see. i stopped smoking not for health reasons but just because ciggies got too damn expensive. gave up drinking for other reasons -- sigh -- but doing that gave me an excuse to no longer go to bars, so i'm saving a ton of money that way. no more liquor store expenses either. constitutionally, i don't like going out to eat, so i bet that saves me some money right there. just got rid of my cable TV service, moving over to the Kodi home theater thing (which is giving me fits).
my town is small, so i bought an electric bicycle to do all my errands with. haven't started my car for short hops in a few months. bought and modified a bike cart so i could take my dog to the park and elsewhere w/ me.
several years ago, before leaving town for several months, i hid $4k somewhere in the house and have been unable to find it. i've spent hours searching, to no avail. it's driving me crazy.
similarly, during y2k, i took $10k in small bills and hid it in a strong box. then i forgot about it, until 8 years later, when i saw the strong box and wondered to myself, hey, i wonder what's in there. lo and behold ....
but i digress.
i will wait until i'm sweating bullets in the heat and my dog is nearly comatose before i turn on the stupid, electricity-sucking air conditioners.
often being pound wise and penny foolish, i will spend hours on slickdeals looking to save a few cents. most recent ***big*** find: norizal anti-dandruff shampoo, which dropped from $10 for 7 oz to $8.07 with amazon subscribe and save. yeah, man!
refuse to buy organic meat a/ because it costs so much more and b/ because deep down i believe the organic label is just another ploy and/or marketing scheme.
love thursdays, when the weekly supermarket circulars arrive. i grab em, hop in bed, and begin looking for what's on sale that i normally buy. 75% of what i get is from these circulars.
and on it goes, much to the dismay of my loved ones ...

Hi @Charles and all expressing thoughts in this thread.....
Not picking on you in this thread; but this group of words you wrote,"caught" my eye.....
"But markets have simply not supported their hedges."
This style of wording are what I might expect to read in a market report from a fund manager during a down period.
They may also be words I could udder to myself or my spouse attempting to explain or rationalize a rough/down period in our personal portfolios.
IMO, all investors are hedged with or against a position(s).
Over the past few years we have greatly reduced our bond portions, moving to mostly U.S. centric, broadbased holdings at first, with particular direction towards more various healthcare postions. Within the last year more bond postions were sold with more direction towards the Euro area.
Hedging, be it at a fund level or personal level; is establishing an investment(s) based upon, at the very least; thinking and thought about what one determines at the time to be themes or movements and trends.
I am not able to use an algo device to support whatever I see with investments. I must use personal assessment of factors here and there; and can readily throw in a batch of technical data and charts, at least to the extent that I understand what I am viewing.
To fit my view of the fund types in this discussion and the management methods is that rather than "markets have not supported the hedges"; is blaming the markets for the failures.
I wouldn't get away with this type of thinking at this house. I would deserve and get a selfie arse kick and would expect the same another.
For whatever their knowledge, experience and the machines provide for these fund type managers and still they miss the "investment return" boat; at this house, with this failure status, there would be some very serious introspection to determine the problem area(s).
We're still "hedged", err, I mean invested, in areas of our choice for reasons we currently believe to be valid.
Just my 2 cents worth.
Catch

@MikeM - I didn't say I was being smart. It is "unconscious bias". I'm thinking "at least the guy is not an ass****". So I own him in my "alternative" slot. Him donating to charity is not reason to buy him. However, that prevents him from being my first candidate to sell when taking a tax loss. I would put John Montgomery in the same category, Thankfully have had much better luck with my Bridgeway holdings.
Hindsight is always 20/20. I haven't owned HSGFX for 10 years. I have actually owned HSTRX for that time though. I thought I bought HSGFX about the time he could start being "right" again. Morningstar had summarily dissed him. Seemed to be good time. I was thinking lot of people would dump the fund based on M* comments. So I started creeping in.
Obviously I was wrong. So as I said, I keep rectifying my mistake a bit at a time. I could try rectifying it all at once but with my luck it will go up 20% the day I sell all my shares.
As I keep telling people. "Hurry up slowly".
Now, I'm not sure we should call these funds "market timing" funds. They do seem to have some plan at work. The one irony in WBMAX Q1 report is this. They make a point about not being simply short given their negative view of the markets. The fact of the matter is, if they done exactly that, the fund would have performed better. Right now it is performing like a 2X short fund compared to the S&P 500.

"Morningstar and Barron's ninth annual survey of perceptions and usage of alternative investments sheds some much-needed light on decisions taking place at advisory firms and intuitions. (The survey was conducted in the spring of 2015 and covered the 2014 period.) '
"The survey highlights some astonishing trends at a time when alternative flows are starting to moderate. While organic growth rates for liquid alternative mutual funds during 2014 are still larger than any other broad Morningstar Category, they were the slowest on record since 2008, at 12%. But the survey shows that advisors aren’t all doom and gloom and may be looking to allocate more into alternatives over the next couple of years. But the pace at which institutions appear to be withdrawing from alternatives does raise an eyebrow."
http://news.morningstar.com/articlenet/article.aspx?id=691385&SR=Yahoo

VF, if donations to charity were a reason for sticking with Hussman, and I've seen you state that before, wouldn't it be more effective to just donate directly to those charities yourself while investing with a winning manager? Then at least 100% of your donation, or expenses, goes to a good cause instead of 66% and 34% into his pocket.
From what you stated, you seem to be happy paying for no-BS and a charitable individuals expenses. When in actuality, everything he has said for the last 10 years has turned out to be BS in investment sense. You don't mention how or why this fits your investment plan.
You are right about the silence on Whitebox though. Much like all the ballyhoo about Marketfield just a year or so ago. Which makes me feel even more strongly that none of these market timing funds are worth a hoot. They will look good until they're not.

Good points LB. Again, not in either of these funds so no skin in the game. I once thought "alternative" funds sounded cool, but now think they are useless, or at least not needed in a portfolio. At least for me.
Hey, I think that is what Ted has been saying all these last few years... Smart guy. :)

I do believe "rate hike delay" has been stated here many times from the non-professionals, eh?.............for the past several years.
Sidenote: Canada's central bank dropped rates again this week. The cb's have their fingers crossed to attempt to weave some economic magic. Things are just different, as is usual/normal after a major market melt; but just a bit more over the edge this time as some areas were never allowed to properly normalize............being let the trash side of companies, investment sectors to "die".
We're just running on the outside edge of the "money machine"; trying to skim a little piece for ourselves.
Have not felt more like being a gambler during the past several years, with investments. Probably just an aging thing, eh???
Take care,
Catch