FYI: For many years, I’ve been asking people what money means to them. Typical responses have been words like “freedom,” “security,” “survival” and “happiness,” the kind of words that pack a real emotional punch. My take is that money is stored energy that allows us to do what we want with our lives. And though it does not bring happiness in and of itself, it brings the freedom to pursue happiness.
What does all this talk of freedom and happiness have to do with Jack Bogle? Well, in 1975, Jack brought the first index fund to the public through Vanguard Group. Since then, the assets in stock and bond index funds have grown to about $3.9 trillion, according to research company Strategic Insight
Regards,
Ted
http://blogs.wsj.com/totalreturn/2015/03/03/why-you-owe-your-freedom-to-jack-bogle-roth/tab/print/?mg=blogs-wsj&url=http%3A%2F%2Fblogs.wsj.com%2Ftotalreturn%2F2015%2F03%2F03%2Fwhy-you-owe-your-freedom-to-jack-bogle-roth%2Ftab%2Fprint&fpid=2,121

I've got a handful of them also.
I do wonder about Kiplinger's choice of tickers, though. "A" shares for American Funds? That family's got a whole slew of R- classes (R-1, R-2, etc.) specifically for 401K funds; I doubt that many plans offer the "A" shares.
And "B" shares for Blackrock Equity Dividend? Years ago I actually had a 401K plan that offered B shares, but generally it's just tiny company plans that did that, "B" shares are highly disfavored now, and the Blackrock fund's B shares are closed (possibly excepting existing investors, though I haven't checked).
Fidelity, Vanguard, American, some T. Rowe Price, D&C. The usual suspects. Interesting to see that aside from American, load fund families are barely represented on the list. One each of Oppenheimer, Morgan Stanley, Goldman, MFS. No Putnam.

Why would they rewrite the objective unless they wanted to change it. This is a well respected fund that has done very well over the years. So why do anything different?
Or, as 00by stated, this is lawyer speak.
Take a snapshot of their holdings now and another one in the future. See what if any changes have occurred.

Let's assume that the S&P500 is overvalued. What's to say it couldn't become a lot more overvalued. You can lose a lot of cash by shorting. Shorting is a high risk and speculative activity. You can make more in the long run (decades) by taking good risks, rather than being big roller of the dice.

If you went on things like valuation, you would have either sold a lot of things too early in the last few years or missed things that didn't seem appealing from a valuation standpoint. I can come up with quite a few examples of things that I thought seemed expensive that I didn't get into and they've only gotten more expensive. Church and Dwight (CHD) is one that definitely comes to mind, there are a number of others.
Again, my view is to own the best ideas and just hold them long-term and reinvest dividends and there are things that I've tried to trade in the last few years, would have just been better off sitting and holding instead and that's really what I've decided to do. I have a great deal of respect for those who can sit and trade, I just find the route I've taken to be far less stressful and actually, much more enjoyable than micromanaging.

Mr. Studzinski noted:
In 2008, we had a period of over-valuation in the markets that was pretty clear in terms of equities. We also had what appears in retrospect to have been the deliberate misrepresentation and marketing of certain categories of fixed income investments to those who should have known better and did not. This resulted in a market meltdown that caused substantial drawdowns in value for many equity mutual funds, in a range of forty to sixty per cent.....
>>>So, would the summary be, that the big melt of 2007/2008 came from the liars and cheats who outfoxed the educated believers. That the greed factor by some, although aware of the liars/cheats hoped to be on the good side of trade and get out "just in time"? IMO, this is the likely broad answer; while most were left out in the cold.
The markets will always harbor some liars and cheats. The psychopaths who troll through investment land, always hoping in the "greater fool syndrome".
So, this time is different; in some aspects and remains the same in other aspects.
As to his note regarding capital preservation; this must always be a consideration within one's investments, no matter what form the investment. This has been discussed over the years, at both FundAlarm and MFO.
What caused the market melt?
@hank Have fun, knowing you two will, in the warm south. As your blood chemistry has become tuned to the "cold" you are going to feel way too hot for your stay, eh?
Knowing you will suffer through this bodily reaction, too.
Regards,
Catch

as much as i fear the bio bear, going back to 2005 via FBIOX, near as i can tell, there's never been a correction where you had to hold "for years" before you got out of the hole if you bought at the top. are you talking about some pre 05 mania? i mean, if nothing else, it looks to me like the wildly up has been going on for at least a decade.

I have followed Lewis Kaufman who ran Thornburg Developing World Fund
for about 3 years. Good EM fund performance while carrying approx $ 2.3 bill.
Kaufman has a strong performance and investment reputation at Thornburg.
Just saw tonight in the MFO "mger changes" section that he has joined
Artisan Funds and will start his own autonomous investment team for
EM stocks.....by "mid 2015"
Getting a chance to own a new Lewis Kaufman EM stock fund where assets
will be (much) lower & where he gets to call his shots will be a good thing.....
No load but maybe 1.75 % exp ratio (IMO)...?
I will be interested in following this opportunity as it unfolds this summer.........

TOTL should easily attract large amounts of AUM and daily trading volumes.....
Gundlach is the "golden boy" du Jour and has been strong from a return basis
over the past few years......
I agree to wait a quarter or two before entering ..TOTL should perform as well
as the other MBS-leaning funds Doubleline manages. I think as time goes by
TOTL will look more like a unconstrained bond fund than a MBS ETF
TOTL at 55 bps is cheap as compared to Doubleline other fund options.

I have seen several biotech manias in my investing career......
They seem to last several years, both wildly up and morbidly
down....big beta but only 50 % of the time with alpha.
Biotech is great innovation for major global needs.
No denying that breakthrough Rx are here to stay.
Just don't get in on the wrong side to the slope of the trend
line in this sector or you will need to own these funds for years.
Good trade around plays.....but too much beta for core position
for most but MD/Ph.D type of investors......
IBB and FBIOX are the ones I follow.

FYI: Tables comparing investment returns are nothing new. Fund companies and other financial institutions have used them for years to argue for or against different investing ideas. Though, the problem is most tables are either stuck inside a PDF file or quickly become a giant mess of colored tiles that make it hard to read. I thought I’d take the concept, clean it up, and take it a step further.
Regards,
Ted
https://novelinvestor.com/15-year-look-asset-class-sector-country-returns/

It would be a completely different story if the graphic were of sector funds and dated back beyond 15 years. Sector funds exhibit more trend persistency from one year to the next and extended periods of outperformance. Technology funds in the 80s and 90s made many a trader/investor rich as have health/biotech funds over the past 15 years. You only have to get rich once in this game....and then hold on to it!!

Preachin' to the choir here :)
We started our kids in IRAs when they were in their early teens, 2K was the max. Now at age 37 and 32 they have 160K and 130K respectively all in Roths (converted from trad IRAs). It's kinda our annual 'gift' to them. Keeps money out of Washington, too.
Their spouses, however, had no such plans established for them and so, even tho they have started plans now, they probably will never fully 'catch up' due to the early compounding. They're talking 401's and 403's to supplement.
My biggest concern right now is getting our two kids to participate more in the selection of funds as there will come a day when we can no longer do it. Our daughter in particular does some reading, and I gave both of them charts showing values at various percents over time (both accumulation and deposit.) To their credit they seem to understand the M* 9-box matrix (imperfect as it is), they know to look at the ER and the risk ratings, to look for stock overlap, and they like the "committee" approach employed at D&C and Primecap, for example. Hey, maybe I didn't do such a bad job :)
Anyway, it's been a fun 20-25 years.
best, hawk

FYI: The most treasured fantasy of investing is the belief that winners can be picked. If you put together enough computers, enough data and enough talent to find the secret, you’ll have the key to consistently picking winners. Riches beyond imagining wait behind the door it unlocks.
But reality interferes.
Click the graphic below to view a color-coded, rank-ordered list of asset class returns over the last 15 years. Last year we showed it as a roulette wheel, which it really is, but this year we’re showing it as you would see it presented by most students of investing.
Regards,
Ted
http://assetbuilder.com/company/2015_annual_letter.aspx

Hi @Ted
Likely for yourself, too; but over the years the biggest challenge I have found with trying to get folks to put aside monies for investing was to change their spending habits.
One change that did help a lot was the, although slow, introduction of 401k plans into company plans. This addition made saving and investing easier.
I always tried to help with the understanding of compounding of investing profits. One of the most critical parts for growing monies, eh?
There remain too many I know who would comment about once a year over the past 30 years that; "I want to get together and talk about investing." I had one such comment 3 months ago and I recall the comment from the same person, starting 25 years ago. The couple has put aside some monies with an adviser (my understanding), but they have mostly lost the value of compounding time. Instead of investing earlier in their lives, they did things and purchased "stuff" that have little value today and these items did not greatly enhance their lives.
I know you fully understand all of this. Just some personal notes.
Take care,
Catch

Please keep in mind that both pharmaceutical and biotech stocks were flat for almost a decade and started to move in the right direction only three years ago.

"generate reasonable dividend yield without undue price risk" = 1.86%
VFSTX - Average effective maturity 3.0 years
http://finance.yahoo.com/echarts?s=VFSTX+Interactive#{"range":"max","scale":"linear"}
If you buy now at 10.70, be aware that there have been several years where it has been below that number.
The other factor is inflation. With inflation and taxes and VFSTX at 1.86% you are not making money.

I'd like to hear other's thoughts on these ideas:
Like many investors, I've been concerned about the portion of my portfolio that is intended to generate reasonable dividend yield without undue price risk. Especially since interest rates are at all-time lows, and are bound to come back up (eventually). A rise in interest rates will cause the value of bonds and bond funds to fall.
What I'd like to do is buy the bonds directly and hold them to maturity. In that case I'd be collecting the dividend payments and ignoring the paper loss of value, since I'd always get my principal back at maturity. But with individual corporate bonds there would be a risk of default which would be hard for me to mitigate by buying lots of bonds. No risk of default if I buy treasuries, but I can't stand the anemic yields. And I don't have much knowledge on how to buy bonds and know I'm getting good prices.
And so bond funds with low durations are my current vehicle of choice. They can have a zero or negative return year when interest rates rise. But lately I've come to the conclusion this risk can be ignored, as long as you're willing to hold the fund at least 2-3 years, and it's this that I'd like comments on.
Take a look at this graph of the federal funds rate, especially from 1990 on:

Periods of rising interest rates were: 1994, mid-1999/mid-2000, mid-2004/mid-2006. In all these cases, the rising rates resulted in a flattening or slight reduction in total return, as reflected in this graph of the Vanguard short-term corporate fund:

And if you continued to hold through the year following the completion of the rising rate period, you would have recovered most or all of your paper loss. Hence my thinking it's probably best if you just ride it out. (But sticking with low-duration bonds, of course)
Thoughts? Thx!

I think I will keep my PJP up 13.95% ytd five year average total return 33.47. Just wish I had bought it five years ago instead of two. You could not go wrong with almost any health care fund or etf in recent years. Lots of great funds and etfs to choose from.

Jeff Vinik is going to own Tampa, before it's over, local politicians on board....
Guess that's ok, He has Vision and lots of money (backing Him), Tampa will be the playground it Should have been all these years...
Wish Jeter/Vinik could get ahold of the Rays...but would be political problem with The Yankees in Tampa

As a sentient (or at least semi-sentient - my wife made me say this) carbon-based life form (yo, Spock), I can assure you, based on over 35 yr. in a profession in which personal benefit could be in conflict with the best interests of those served, fee for service or commission-based reimbursement poses stresses difficult to resist. There is a pressure to increase the services offered or the products recommended. Ultimately, I opted for the reduced income and the reduced stress of an employed position, where my recommendations were not financially altered.
OTOH, if the adviser, taking a small percentage of my investment portfolio, sucks down over a month's worth of income yearly, regardless of the quality of the advice, the eye I turn towards them is definitely jaundiced.
I plan to send my lovely wife to meet a Garrett network member to discuss her age 70 options to see if the adviser meets my standards, since the situation is moderately complex. I hope the result is positive, so I can get an opinion regarding the next 30 years.
The unfortunate reality is that honest financial investment advisers probably can't make a decent living. I may want to buy 3 or 6 hours of advice a year, and even at $500/hr (and, yes, I would be complaining loudly), it is less than any percentage-based advisory service. OTOH, I'd trust the hourly advice more, since I'd presume they were trying to earn my money.