I have had excellent customer service with Vanguard and my Scottrade brokerage for over twenty years so I guess it's where you are and when you interact that makes the difference,

it is not an easy call on the balance of risk and reward over long investment period. Question for most investors is getting the market return good enough?

Domestically, it's become an easy call for me. For the past 4 years or so I was in ARTLX, it seemed each year at distribution time that the IRS was the big winner. Along with other concentrated mutual funds I have owned over the years with high active share, I learned the hard way that many (most) times it does not translate into a fund that beats it's benchmark. Now, I mostly go the Index route and when I want to go to Las Vegas and play the concentrated active fund machine in my taxable account, the ER must be under 50 basis points and the turnover under 15%. Even then I limit my bets.
Mona

I have been a Vanguard customer for many years now, and have rarely had any problem with any transaction I wanted to do, or phone rep I was interacting with. Sorry you have had so much trouble; I do not think it is representative of Vanguard, however.

thanks....but as a group, these seem not worthy of a wager. Sounded like a good idea at the time though.

I think it'll be better for MF investing when more broad-based funds start taking normal positions in a few renewables companies as part of a more diversified portfolio. Not many do that now, but maybe the conventional outlook for alt energy will change with the tax credit extension and the push for more solar and wind capacity by "normal" utilities.
The solar panels, in my case at least, are a steadier, much less risky investment - essentially locking in the elec rates when they were installed for the next 30 years, with the utility raising rates almost every year.

Amen to that! Unless you want to eat, drink, sleep, and breathe the markets 24 hours a day. And I mean that literally. Over the years have seen all these investors congregate in the same funds such as the aforementioned Whitebox as well as other *crowd* favorites ala RSIVX, ARIVX, MFLDX, WAFMX, RPHYX, AQRNX, and the granddaddy of them all PRPFX. Not exactly a prescription for a wealthy retirement. I just hope it won't be the same sad story with the latest fave GPMCX.

Actually in that collection I don't think MFLDX and certainly AQRNX don't belong. One did a shareholder unfriendly thing, and one is shareholder unfriendly period.
RSIVX, I think people are bashing out of proportion. No one said it did not have any risks. People expecting RPHYX out of RSIVX without reading prospectus going to be dissapointed.
Still a believer in ARIVX. Never owned WAFMX and GPMCX
Now two funds I own and who belong are FVALX and INTLX. Luckily for me have held them forever and will continue to hold "forever". With FVALX manager didn't time the S&P 500 puts correctly or it would be breaking even. Hard to be Value Fund and time the short incorrectly. I'm in for the long haul in these two.
The one dissapointment for me has been ICMBX. Expected it to have held up much better.
Finally, got lucky with WBLSX to OTCRX switch at Vanguard. I feel for WBMAX investors.

Even Warren Buffett has bad years. BRKA is down 14% this year.

In addition to the recent Paris climate agreement, the US Congress unexpectedly agreed to extend tax credits for solar and wind for another five years. This may provide an unexpected boost to the industry, which has seen a fairly impressive growth in year over year power generation capability in the US. As the cost per kilowatt hour for both wind and solar is decreasing rapidly, and the companies in this industry are maturing, this is something that I will be looking at for 2016 as a flyer.
Anyone have funds focused in this area that I might consider?
thanks,
press

Hey little5bee, had the same trouble moving money from Schwab into Vanguard. I gave up in the middle and reversed the whole thing. The second try, several years later, went better( with cash only) went better, but the service is nothing like Schwab. Go Blue!

@larryB A few years ago, I attempted to move some money from Schwab into Vanguard. Vanguard lost my application...twice! Decided it was not worth it and would just pay the TF for Vanguard funds at Schwab.

@VF - I know you saw it coming, sorry to offend. I asked Charles because I thought he was one of the believers.
I have to wonder though if Mr. Buffett has been right all along. Just stick your money in an S&P 500 index and go live your life. If the smart people in the room with all the toys and tools can't get this stuff right who do I think I'm fooling. Some pondering I must do.

Amen to that! Unless you want to eat, drink, sleep, and breathe the markets 24 hours a day. And I mean that literally. Over the years have seen all these investors congregate in the same funds such as the aforementioned Whitebox as well as other *crowd* favorites ala RSIVX, ARIVX, MFLDX, WAFMX, RPHYX, AQRNX, and the granddaddy of them all PRPFX. Not exactly a prescription for a wealthy retirement. I just hope it won't be the same sad story with the latest fave GPMCX.

Great question by OJ. Just too many unknowns. To answer it requires answers to at least some of these basic questions:
1. Are commodities (including energy) a leading indicator of something bad coming down the road that will eventually infect all major risk assets including stocks?
2. How will the geopolitics among global producers finally play out? (This one seems to be the thrust of OJ's question.) Umm ... what would the proposed "carpet bombing" of certain areas in producing nations do to world oil supply? We're already blowing up tankers in the region without much effect on global oil prices.
3. How serious are the industrialized nations about curbing CO2 emissions?
4. How rapidly will alternative energy sources come on-stream? One example is the hydrogen fuel cell. In theory, cars could run on water.
5. How many more warm winters will the U.S. (and much of the industrialized world) experience over the coming decade?
Just a few questions few of us can get our heads around today. Yet 25 years from now the answer to OJ's question will seem perfectly obvious and we'll wonder how we missed it.

If I remember correctly, Mr Redleaf asked to be benchmarked against the best endowment performance, like Yale. Suspect by that measure, it's not done that well the past 1-2 years. Still, believe the TacOps fund is pretty young. Maybe just 4 years old.

I used to be a big fan of the Manning & Napier target date offerings. Their performance has only been average (or worse) over the past five years. Not sure what is going on, but I believe they may have had (in the past) one shot successes with holdings such as Hess.

@bee - Thanks for the information. I was familiar with VTMFX, but not with USBLX.
These don't really fit my current needs (as explained above) or my style, but would be a nice fit for some people. Like you, I generally prefer to control my own mix (separate stock and bond funds), though in recent years, I've become more open to global funds (as opposed to separate foreign and domestic funds), and even to world allocation funds (balanced funds on a global scale).
It depends on what value they bring, and how well they fit into my portfolio.

Thanks for the positive comments on the (now) Baird team.
Hardly a performance chaser. Just playing year end tax games and have cash on hand.
This is one of those unusual (but not extremely rare) years where a good year is being followed by a flat year. Pent up cap gains in funds are being realized, resulting in distributions sometimes exceeding share appreciation (virtually zero for the year). In those cases, it's better selling before dividends are distributed.
For other tax reasons (and also that I expect more stability in shorter munis than shorter taxable funds), I'm looking more at short/intermediate muni funds than taxable funds. Seems a good idea to diversify in the space (literally avoiding putting all of my "eggs" in a single basket, i.e. fund), so I'm poking around.
Regarding PRFSX - as you wrote, it seems a conservative, solid fund. M* likes it (gold rated), which could be a negative mark for some here :-). Though with an SEC yield of 0.62%, I think bank accounts (1% taxable) are better for now - guaranteed principal, and may even pay more if/when inflation (or Ms. Yellen) makes a showing. Savings accounts may be interesting to watch over the remainder of the year.

The Fed has talked this one up, so it'd be surprising if they don't move now.
But all the blather about it over the past years is coming mainly from the financial press, most of whom have never had any idea what they're talking about.

I skip the ultra short, because they pay so little that a taxable bank account (paying 1%) is clearly better.
In the short to short/intermediate range, I use VMLTX/VMLUX as my benchmark. It's toward the upper end of the range in duration (2.5 years) and maturity (3.1) years. That (plus very low fees) gives it one of the higher SEC yields (0.94%) and one of the higher 1 year returns (1.05%). All while maintaining a AA average rating (many funds tend to be A or BBB).
Using those criteria (solid SEC yield, good 1 year return indicating some stability, and A or better credit), I'm finding few alternatives. What I do see are:
NEARX (SEC yield 0.79% as of 9/30, 2.6 year duration, 2.7 year maturity, A rated)
FSTFX (SEC yield 0.85% as of 11/30, 2.8 year duration, 3.2 year maturity, A rated)
BRMIX (new fund, 2.2 year duration, 2.7 year duration, per M*)
I'm curious about the latter - it's a new fund from a fine bond fund house (Baird). But it isn't using their usual managers. Rather, two of the three managers came over from BMO this year, where they'd been managing BASFX.
Like Baird funds in general, it is allowed to hold some junk (with this fund, 10%, including D rated bonds). But looking at its holdings, most bonds are trading at a premium, or at worst a very slight discount, to par. That suggests that these are all high grade bonds, and the portfolio has little credit risk.
The managers seemed to do well with BASFX (which is itself another fund to look at - it's available load waived, but the risk is new management, which is one of the reasons for looking at BRMIX instead of BASFX).
At least there seem to be choices for good short term muni funds.

Didn't recall that. Thanks. Sounds like this latest problem was just the last straw.
You noted: "It's not clear that "CEO for 24 years" was exactly correct (there were a couple firms, a couple titles and a gap)."
Hence the very careful wording on Third Ave's web page: "Mr. Barse has led investment boutique Third Avenue Management LLC for more than two decades ..."
Not necessarily continuously since 1991, and not as CEO. The WSJ took this and reinterpreted it as:
"Mr. Barse had led Third Avenue since 1991, according to the company’s website ..."
and captioned its picture as: " David Barse, ... chief executive since 1991"
FWIW, the Reuters article got it right (or at least different): "He had been CEO of Third Avenue since 2003"
I've got to read more carefully.

I was going to say something similar - Danoff and Primcap seem to move somewhat out of sync - one fund can do better for a few years, then the other takes the lead. Hard to say one is better than the other - they seem to be complementary in the large cap growth space.
Agree also on getting rid of blend, but unlike David, feel you can better do this if you hold value. That is, I would not bet on growth vs. value (or vice versa), but keep a good counterbalancing fund.

There is, I think, some evidence that Mr. Barse was hard to love. It's not clear that "CEO for 24 years" was exactly correct (there were a couple firms, a couple titles and a gap). It's pretty clear that TAM has been in turmoil for years, which makes a "fire the coach" reaction understandable - especially if the coach has been assuring the board that there was no problem with values on the illiquid securities ... or the concentration in the illiquid securities. And, in this case, over half of the board had a substantial investment in - which means lost a lot of their own money in - the Focused Credit fund.
Here's the sort of caution we'd written back in February:
In sum, the firm’s five mutual funds are down by $11 billion from their peak asset levels and nearly 50% of the investment professionals on staff five years ago, including the managers of four funds, are gone. At the same time, only one of the five funds has had performance that meets the firm’s long-held standards of excellence.
Many outsiders noted not just the departure of long-tenured members of the Third Avenue community, but also the tendency to replace those folks with outsiders. The most prominent change was the arrival, in 2014, of Robert Rewey, the new head of the “value equity team” and formerly a portfolio manager at Cramer Rosenthal McGlynn, LLC, where his funds’ performance trailed their benchmark (CRM Mid Cap Value CRMMX, CRM All Cap Value CRMEX and CRM Large Cap Opportunity CRMGX) or exceeded it modestly (CRM Small/Mid Cap Value CRMAX). Industry professionals we talked with spoke of “a rolling coup,” the intentional marginalization of Mr. Whitman within the firm he created and the influx of outsiders.
David