I'll step aside from previous years equity markets performance during September and October for whatever reasons; and note that the next 2 full months will remain a full political battle for the future of this country, that the middle east is still 'on fire', that the Ukraine continues to attack within Russia with drones, that the U.S. has stated that Iran should not provide drones/missiles to Russia and that Russia continues to destroy important targets in Ukraine. There likely remains 20 other items that are not in the 'big' news, at this time.
POSTED: September 3, Tuesday at 9:30 am.
ADD: you may use the link to follow the sectors markets when the U.S. markets are open. One may bookmark this page or save the link to your electronic device for future views.
Major global and U.S. etf categories This list is set with %Chg column (daily), which will indicate near real time changes while the U.S. markets are open; being from most positive to most negative returns. The right side of this data provides 'technical' buy/sell indicators (opinion).

My results == 2 of the last 4 years Sept was down, 4 of the last 4 years Oct. was down. You would think the odds say Oct should be up this year or will it be a self fulfilling outcome due to all the stories, comments? One other item, over the last 4 years I've never been up more than 7 months of the year. 3 years were up 7 months and down 5, 1 year (2022) up 5 months down 7. This year I'm already up 7 months so far. (This is not scientific detail as my spending and hence monthly outcome is different from anyone else but gives me a ball park picture of how Mr. market behaves.

Thanks for the explanation. My biggest bond fund holding is FADMX, followed by FTBFX, FCNVX, PTIAX and FAGIX. I’ve stuck mostly to Fidelity funds for simplicity and ease in rebalancing. I also have a considerable number of CDs and Treasuries in ladders extending out 5 years. Now that interest rates are dropping, I’m reinvesting maturing issues into bond funds.

BF,
No pension or any other safety net here.
As to planning tools, the only one I use is the M* portfolio which I started using about 7 years ago when I realized that I had way more cash than I thought I had which meant I was unrealistically risk shy.
I have only spent on what I needed and had worked when work was available. All the good things that happened to me are not because I planned any of them. My success rate of my long term planning is near zero if not zero. I do not plan for financial outcomes, and hence, I do not need to use any tools. May be I fall under your category of "wing it as man plans and God laughs."

except when you’re over 75 the number of years you have to fund left are less than 20 and very possibly less than 10

This is a nice feature I learned from @msf years ago. In the long run, it help to build sizable positions in institutional shares of OEFs. The $5 spend pays itself many times over from having lower expense ratio.
Does Schwab offers similar fearure ?

I’m in rare agreement with @Baseball_Fan on this one.
Yes, over the long haul markets go up. Equities beat cash and bonds over very long periods. It’s been demonstrated that dead investors outperform living ones. But there are always lurking the unknown / unexpected downdrafts. When these ”ripples in space time” do occur investors often react irrationally. Dump and run is pretty common unless maybe you’re a ”steely-nerve” manager at a big investment house, hedge fund, pension fund or endowment with a sizable amount of your AUM locked-up for years.
Most of us mere mortals invest in the real perceived everyday world. Setting a 25-30 year time horizon and then shutting your eyes is harder than it might sound. The fact that we are visiting this site is proof we haven’t shut our eyes to our investments. When a ‘29 or 2,000 or ‘08 comes along, it feels like the morning after drinking a bad bottle of booze. Lying flat on the floor, common sense and rationality often fly out the door.

The website, "A Wealth of Common Sense" has a unique chart that displays the annual returns of the stock market for any given start date (since 1993) and number of years. Very interesting.
https://awealthofcommonsense.com/2024/09/31-years-of-stock-market-returns/

AND MaxFi and an everything you'd ever want to know LINK. Well, perhaps; but there's even a link to the Bogelheads and a discussion there. And don't miss the videos, too. SCROLL down the multi link page.
All I want is a real portfolio returns list that can be verified from prior years. If one finds that list, please link here. Thank you.

@mark. Thanks for sharing that link. Mr .Kotlikoff convinced me his product is not for me. Having been retired for almost six years I have figured out that the finances of retirement are an always moving target that will defy precision modeling ,,, even from a Harvard economist who has published 3.64 million articles.

After several years of high inflation and geopolitical conflict, we sold the entire gold position.0, IAU, this summer. It was very volatile but we held on that resulted a modest gain.
If we venture into precious mretal, not so much the miners, we will use a more diversified vehicle such as PRPFX as @hank suggested above.

Thanks @Mark. Your link provide content may be useful for investors. I look at MaxiFi several years ago and decided it was not for us. We have relatives who work in wealth management business. From what I see over the years, their returns are really pedestrian in light of high fees they charge.

I couldn't open the link but googled Kotlikoff and found it on his substack page.
You get what you pay for. Fido is free. MAxFi (Kotlikoff) costs $89 a year, but you only need to run it once and then maybe a few years latter. They will save your data as best I can tell
I have been pretty impressed by MaxiFi, and consider it money well spent, although it is best for people who are making decisions prior to retirement like "can I afford to retire now" or when to take Social Security
I suspect most people would come at spending decisions on irregular basis ie "Can I afford that trip this year"
MAxifi tells you what the max is you can spend every year. A little strange, as I assume most people worried about retirement are having trouble saving enough, not overspending in retirement

It has been years since the annuity rate was anything.
Yea, options aren't great on the where-to-go front. Perhaps short-term a little F and, yes, S. At no time before have I considered TSP to be too limited but, now, it does. Maybe I am becoming limited faster???

Kinnel seems to imply you have to subscribe to M* Institutional database to run the screen. I haven't tried it in Fund investor. But why publish articles for individual investors based on a screen only available to high end clients?

It was never possible to replicate his screen at the M* retail level. Years ago he wrote how to approximate his screen with Premium Screener and with some third party screeners.
https://www.morningstar.com/funds/making-fund-screeners-fantastic
Here's the 2017 "Fantastic 43" version that he mentions.
https://www.morningstar.com/funds/kinnel-43-fantastic-funds
In it, he answered your question "why include closed funds" in much the same way that @WABAC did: "Many people still own them and want to know if they still make the grade."
He stated the purpose of his (then) $25K limit on min investment as "to help you get a list you can use."
Comparing how one could use the old Premium Screener as described in the piece with today's Investor screener reveals just how far M* has fallen in supporting retail users.
M* used to have a whole series of articles each with a different screen that Premium subscribers could run. They even contained a link to run the screen. Here's one example (via Wayback Machine):
Finding Stock Funds with Big Yields
Unlike Kinnel's "Fantastic" and "Thrilling" series where he gives all the results, these other pieces named only a few of the results (3 of 19 in the Big Yields piece). While somewhat helpful, they carried a whiff of a sales pitch, telling you that if you were a Premium subscriber you could see all the results.
"That's where Morningstar's Premium Fund Screener comes in."

Well that's disappointing, though the limit was so low that it doesn't really affect much.
... and losses in US Mail are cited as reasons
If you've got a problem, don't fix it (improve USPS), avoid it.
The USPS lost one of my refund bonds a few years ago. That was a pain to replace. Wait months to ensure bond was really lost before one can request a replacement, wait for replacement to arrive in the mail (with luck), then mail it back to convert to electronic form.
It's not just paper savings bonds that are being discontinued. You used to be able to have the Treasury Dept retain part of your refund to buy electronic savings bonds (this didn't increase your $10K limit). That's also being eliminated. No great loss there.
The newest draft of Form 8888 contains this little What's New item:

Purchase of savings bonds discontinued. The program allowing for your refund to be deposited into your TreasuryDirect® acccount to buy savings bonds, as well as the ability to buy paper bonds with your refund, has been discontinued. Form 8888 is now only used to split your direct deposit refund between 2 or more accounts or to split your refund between a direct deposit and a paper check. For more information go to https://treasurydirect.gov/research-center/faq-irs-tax-feature/.

https://www.irs.gov/pub/irs-dft/f8888--dft.pdf

If you don't like TRAIX as an example of a fund share class that slipped through the cracks, here's another share class that Kinnel missed: NCRLX.
Kinnel requires just one manager to have invested $1M. It doesn't even have to be the longest tenured one. For example, in VEXPX, only 1 of 9 managers has $1M invested, and it isn't the most senior one. Likewise, in NCRLX, one of the managers, Bradley Tank, has $1M invested. That's enough.
There's also the matter of the fund outperforming its benchmark for the duration of a manager's tenure. Here too, Kinnel doesn't say that has to be the longest tenured manager, just one with at least five years on the job. So I looked at performance during Tank's stay. He started in April 2009.
The M* performance chart (set for "month end") shows that for the past 10 years (from Sept 2014 through Aug 2024), NCRLX modestly outperformed its benchmark index, 1.79% annualized to 1.57% annualized. I compared the performance of NCRLX with AGG between April 2009 and Aug 2014 and it was no contest. Portfolio Visualizer shows that NCRLX returned a total of about 50% while AGG returned just half of that.
That's not a misquote or an error on my part. The vast majority of the difference came from 2009. That's confirmed in the 2010 prospectus. For all of 2009, NCRLX returned 18.13% vs. 5.93% for the US Aggregate Bond Index.
The other screening criteria:

• Lowest quintile expense ratio in category (i.e. fee level - broad): low (per M* screener)
  
• M* risk lower than high: Above average (per M* screener)
  
• M* medalist (Bronze+): Bronze
  
• Parent pillar better than average: Above average
  
• Share class accessible to investors with min not more than $50K: Accessible at Vanguard w/$500 min
  
• Not a fund of funds: holds nearly 900 individual bonds
  
• Rated by M* analysts: 100% analyst driven

How did Kinnel miss NCRLX?
My guess is that it was because he was looking at the "official" min for shares. But all that is required is that the share class be accessible somewhere for not more than $50K.
With respect to expense ratios, he was clear in saying that the figures come from the prospectuses. With mins, he didn't impose that restriction. Possibly because lots of funds are available through brokerages with lower mins than stated in their prospectuses.

Thank you for the summary, @observant1.
Two points are of particular concern.

US debt to GDP ratio was probably 50% or 60% but is now at 120%.
The Fed balance sheet has grown 10 times during the past 20 years!

Thank you racqueteer. Great handle by the way. I used to enjoy playing racquetball in my younger and much more mobile years. My wife and I are considering pickle ball now that we are empty nesters.

Despite the recent flood of criticism, I've been using 2 covered call funds for a number of years and feel they serve their function quite well within my portfolio. I do prefer funds which write calls to a nominal portion of the portfolio. DIVO (a Great Owl) and QQQX offer a 4.46 and 6.79% distribution respectively, which I do not reinvest.

The criticism is interesting considering some of the other things that are popular, and touted, around here.

Well, everyone has to do what they’re comfortable with. If I would show my top 5 holdings, folks here would think I’m nuts.

:)