@carminusa: I not clear if your already are invest in Wellington, but here are some Moderate-Allocation Funds suggested by M* If I were you I'd stick with VWELX, 8% + returns for over 86 years.
Regards,
Ted
M* 5 of Our Favorite Moderate-Allocation Funds:
http://news.morningstar.com/articlenet/article.aspx?id=693877

Hi guys (Mark & Scott),
I was off the board most of the weekend and with this I am sorry about the slow response.
You both make some good comments; however, the three year (19.9%) and five year (12.3%) performance for the fund (LPEFX) place it within the top ten percent of its category. During the past year, or so, many private equity firms have been under government review and with this the performance of private equity has somewhat waned.
I think LPEFX is a neat specialty fund to own and it has put some good money in my pocket over the past five years. During this time it has put about 33% of what I have investested back into my pocket plus I am currently carrying 49% in unrealized capital gains. It has indeed been a good cash cow. Plus there is no K-1.
And, although it might not be right for you … for me … it’s a keeper.
Old_Skeet

FYI: After 15 years the Nasdaq Composite Index has returned to its dot-com-era record, just as the bull market is looking tired.
Many money managers warn that U.S. stocks are overdue for a pullback. They are shifting money to stocks in Europe, Japan and even developing countries.
Yet some who correctly foresaw the 2000-2002 meltdown say U.S. stocks are less risky today. Their reasoning: Although stock prices are high, interest rates and inflation haven’t gotten to the levels that killed bull markets in the past.
Regards,
Ted
http://blogs.wsj.com/moneybeat/2015/04/26/why-this-old-bull-market-may-not-be-ready-to-die/tab/print/

It is a shame that you didn't enjoy your younger years. I try not to tell myself, "just wait until retirement", but I do try to make the most of the present.

My mindset was shocked by Black Monday 1987. After a year of investing into a plain stock mutual fund I saw over $2000. dwindle to about $800 overnight. What did I do? I pulled out my money and started educating myself. Within six to eight months I was back in the market, this time better diversified and I knew what to look for. I continued to read and listen to radio financial programs, including Bob Brinker. I didn't always see eye to eye with Mr Brinker but I built a foundation. I felt the tech bubble and saw the euphoria before it burst. My moves saved my portfolio a lot as I was only down about 18%. Then, years of dollar cost averaging. I learned that it is not the amount of money you earn, but the amount of money you spend that matters. Money not spent is more for investing.
I believe bleak moments in history show a path.

Hi Dex,
I made a decision to take an early pension (defined benefit) at age 51 after 27 years of service. If anything will be different for those younger than you and I it will be that defined benefits will not be a common component of retirement.
I will not qualify nor did I significantly contribute to SS. I needed to combine my "defined benefit" with a one time opportunity to buy and "extra annuity" to make my budget work. Budgeting, saving and thriftiness is what has allowed me to consider retirement at 51 and it will be that same attention to personal finances that will serve me well going forward.
I moved to a no income tax state, bought a condo in 2012 for $35K that has tripled in value in three years. I drive multiple 20-25 year old cars...that's plural. I furnished my place mainly by finding good deals on Craigslist and the like.
After 50 I started reminding my 50+ year old friends that:
"Today is our last best day...and tomorrow will be our next last best day."
In other words, If you have a desire to do something...do it today. There are no guarantees when it comes to tomorrows.
Thanks for the thread.

@Junkster, regarding your thoughts on old age, perhaps you are correct in general but remember that stuff happens once you get past the age of 50 or so. I was doing well then all of a sudden I was fatigued. Type 2 diabetes. Diseases have a way of changing your life's course. Anyone can come down with something out of the blue so it's a lottery. I still hold a positive mind though.
I'm not disagreeing with your statement, just adding some additional thoughts. I don't wish for anyone to get sick.
Good to see you here more often lately.

Could not agree more. And keep that positive mind! Superb health or not, I realize I am just as susceptible as any other old timer to a heart attack or stoke or whatever at my age. Still, would never want to relive my youth as life is far better now than ever.

I agree with you there. My older years have been great. I would not want to go back either.
Comment: I wish we could just get the last part of a message using the quote function instead of copying the whole thing. I'll post a comment in tech side. ( I see that it does display what I want. It looked like the whole thing was going to post )

Our only disagreement is about enjoying life when you are young because it will suck at 55+. At 68, life has never been better - both financially and health-wise. No way would I want to go back to my younger years. They sucked!

You get off my lawn also ( the 55+ was for those born after '55).

Dex, love that someone here has finally talked about their annual expenses in retirement. I live in a real low cost of living region of the country and all my *single* friends that are retired live *very* comfortably off $32,000 to 42,000 yearly. Some even travel to wherever. The key is being debt free. Our only disagreement is about enjoying life when you are young because it will suck at 55+. At 68, life has never been better - both financially and health-wise. No way would I want to go back to my younger years. They sucked!

First this is for the younger people. Not the first half of the baby boomers ('14-55) or those older.
Give up the idea of retiring comfortably. You don't have a defined pension plan, little in 401K, social security will be pushed out further, a VAT will be instituted to help with the debt (and Obamacare).
I own my home (no mortgage), truck and travel trailer, single (no debt). I retired in '07 at 51 and since then I averaged $27,000 in spending - that includes health ins and taxes. I'm estimating I will spend an average of $38,000 (includes $30,000 for a new truck) from '16-25.
I did a line item budget for this period. After '25 I grow expenses at 4%
Even with a small pension (13,000) and social security I estimate that only 6 years will be cash flow positive (from pension & SS I'm starting it at 63) starting in '19. I do use conservative estimates for capital growth 5%.
Now the younger people will not have a defined pension and will have to take full SS later or early at a reduced rate. I doubt the workforce will have many 65 y.o. in int or even 62.
The small pension and a good amount of savings that allowed the numbers to work.
So, abandon all hope and enjoy life while you are young. It will suck when you 55+.

@Ted Thanks to the linkster for the kind words. I have been investing in the stock market since the late 90's. (I was a late convert from line of thinking that says investing in stocks is just for gamblers.) Most of that time has been lived in the blue and red zones of the chart above. One important lesson from those years has been that most of my trades during periods of market turmoil have proved to be mistakes when viewed through the rear view mirror. So, I latch onto nuggets like the one above that put things in perspective.

"1. ‘It can’t go up forever,’ or ‘We are overdue for a downturn or a correction.’"
It cannot go up forever, but theoretically, it can go far further than anyone could expect. It really strongly appears to me that Central Banks are absolutely of the view that economic Winter has to be held back at all costs. I'm not saying that they will be successful, but they will push their theories until things get disorderly.
QE (and as I've noted, market didn't even have to go down much and there was a Fed governor the other day talking about the potential for more asset purchases - I thought the market would have to drop 15-20% for that conversation to even start) and ZIRP will not in and of themselves result in a sustainable recovery or fix underlying problems that need to be addressed.
This is not saying that stocks can go up forever, but there's a lot of variables and reflation or bust clearly seems to be the theme of central banks. Again, I'm not saying that stocks go to the moon, I'm simply saying that - for some reason - central banks this time around seem as if they are going to take this to the limit.
If it doesn't work, they'll never admit it - problems are "transitory" and theories don't work because there "wasn't enough". With those views, things will - I think - be taken to the limit until they get disorderly. What that looks like we'll have to see, but I still think this period ends badly. I think in some ways with ZIRP and QE this is the ultimate bubble and it would not surprise me if the global economy looked very different on the other side.
2. ‘Because the bull run has been long, any decline is going to be big, too.’ - This is a patently false premise. Duration of a bull market is not the determining factor in the severity of corrections. Valuations and economic conditions are the primary drivers.
Variables.
3. ‘The Federal Reserve is serious about raising rates now, and that’s going to end the rally.’ - The first part of his statement is probably true. The second part does not necessarily follow.
Who knows what the hell they want. You have different Fed governors saying different things every other day. The Fed can say that they want to raise rates, but they said that a couple of years ago, too. It gets to the point after several years where it looks bad that ZIRP is apparently still a need and does kind of go against their often overly optimistic economic projections. If that looks bad, imagine how it will look if they raise rates 50 basis points and then have to backtrack and lower rates again. That would be a clusterbleep of epic proportions.
The Fed is ultimately "data dependent", but there is a real, strong element of "baffle them with BS" that is becoming more and more apparent with each passing year. As far as I'm concerned, this is a MOPE - management of perspective economy and the Fed is trying to manage the market's view of the economy for as long as they continue to have credibility. You should not be trading based upon what Yellen, Bullard or anyone else says on any given day because guess what? They could very well say something entirely different two days later. And all the discussion about the Fed raising rates might meet resistance with economic reality.
4. ‘The government will screw this up.’ - This is a silly argument. Governments come and go depending on the outcome of elections.
Of course they will. As far as I'm concerned, a lot of what government does these days is simply "hot potato" - hope they can buy time by financial engineering and other garbage in order to get to hand things off to the next person. Or, they hope they can throw enough money at problems that they don't have to actually go through the difficult task of having to solve them. And hey, it's a lot more popular to throw money at problems than to make difficult decisions - until things fall apart again.
5. ‘The market is overpriced.’ - This is probably true in general. However, it's a straw-man so "all-inclusive" that it's easy to knock down.
Meh. It depends on so many factors.
6. ‘You can’t lose money in cash, so I will wait until the next downturn passes.’ -
Well, you can if the government decides that ZIRP and QE aren't enough and decide to step it up to things like NIRP and devaluation.

@dicksonL
Finding my username in your post.....not knowing your other holdings or whether your IRA(s) has access to a brokerage feature, to allow you to place your monies just about anywhere; I can only add to what msf noted with a few trinkets of thought regarding your questions.
With the following in mind; per Mr. Snowball's "statement of the obvious", that "We cannot vouch for the accuracy or appropriateness of any of it,"
This is my/our view from this house; but will not be appropriate for everyone regarding a taxable acct. or a tax sheltered acct. as noted for your 401k and IRA(s).
You noted: " Since IRA acct can go more aggressive, for tax free growth for 6 more years( a lesson I learnt only 2 years ago) before RMD kicks in, I am tweaking my portfolio, making more index based in taxable and aggressive in IRA. my 401k with ltd. choice is on s&[email protected]%"
>>>I will presume you are stating that your IRA holdings may be invested in whatever without current concern about taxation. Aggressive, for me; has a different meaning. Aggressive could perhaps imply a portfolio of 100% in equity investments.
I agree with msf regarding the choices you noted in your taxable account; and agree that one should place whatever is most tax efficient for your choice of holdings into this area.
As for the tax sheltered accounts; one does not have to be concerned with taxation at this time; so one may "fiddle" with whatever is most appropriate for their risk/reward investment emotion. Buy and sell when you need or choose to without regard to current tax from the transactions. This, obviously; is the nice part of tax sheltered holdings. In the end, per current tax policy; we/you will pay tax on the withdrawals at an ordinary income rate at the federal/state level, yes?
A brief overview would be that you may choose to be aggressive with your investments in both types of account holdings; leaning towards the most tax efficient for the taxable account, eh? Two choices were noted in your post and in msf's reply about tax efficiency. I do not have a direct opinion of either of your choices. You noted replacing one with another. Perhaps you may decide to keep the original fund, but move some of this money to the other fund, too. I have not looked at the funds, so I don't know how similar they may be regarding the investment style/holdings.
The majority of our holdings are within tax sheltered accounts; so we have not been concerned about tax efficient holdings. Our main goal has always been captial preservation (money to live for another day, to take advantage of the long term compounding effect) and capital appreciation in whatever form it may arrive, be it income/yield or price appreciation. This goal, of course; is regulated with our own value of risk and reward from the investments.
Currently, we are about 65% equity within the broad U.S. and Europe areas. In June of 2008 we were at 90% investment grade bonds. Our portfolio is ever changing and may be slightly aggressive for some near or in retirement; and will remain in place, until we feel the investments are no longer working/happy.
Only my 2 cents worth.
Take care,
Catch

The fund's performance is fine (two years in the top 5%, two years in the bottom 5%, strong start to 2015)

But how do you benchmark something like this? All Royce funds have style creep -- how can you (for example) benchmark a hypothetical fund that can hold 30% international small- and midcap stocks against the US small cap index (which is exactly the kind of thing Royce does all the time)?
In this case, what is the benchmark? And, can you trust Royce/Legg Mason to not change the portfolio strategy every 3 years to boost market performance or capture flavor-of-the-month investing trends?

This study (http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=2597122) documents that the active share measure, which has attracted so much attention in the past few years, has no performance predictive power once the analysis is done carefully. This is a real problem given that many financial advisors and consultants use this measure to pick funds for their clients. In addition, some funds seem to heavily advertise having high active shares, potentially misleading investors.

From the SEC, Microcap Stock: A Guide for Investors (2013):

The term "microcap stock" applies to companies with low or "micro" capitalizations, meaning the total value of the company's stock. A typical definition would be companies with a market capitalization of less than $250 or $300 million.

That's quite a distance from Royce Micro-Cap Opportunity's billion dollar boundary. The portfolio, as currently constructed is about two-thirds microcap and one-third small cap. The portfolio's average cap is $720 million.
The fund's performance is fine (two years in the top 5%, two years in the bottom 5%, strong start to 2015) but its asset base is nonexistent, perhaps a reminder that the world doesn't need two dozen Royce clones. I suppose the remaining is a futile marketing gesture given the Royce also runs Royce Micro-cap and Royce Micro-cap Discovery.
David

Hi Hank,
The consensus wisdom from successful football coaches is that wins are generated by superior defense. A ton of expert investing professions are similarly persuaded. That’s why so many financial advisors talk about playing defense. That’s why so many articles are written that outline X number of ways to practice defensive investing.
After reading the referenced Jaffe article and your post, I feel that both you guys are on the same exact page. The way to superior end wealth is to avoid the many inviting pitfalls that do substantial harm to portfolios.
You are in substantial agreement with the six common axioms that often misguide over-reactive investors, both the professionals and the amateurs. “Don’t just do something, just stand there” is not bad advice. Even famous speculator Jesse Livermore realized that “The big money is made by the sitting and the waiting, not the thinking”. He believed that only a fool trades frequently.
Oaktree’s Howard Marks sure advocates defensive investing in his “The Most Important Thing” white paper to clients. I referenced it recently. Here is the internal Link to my original post:
http://www.mutualfundobserver.com/discuss/discussion/20477/placing-constraints-on-yourself
On page 2 of the Marks paper, he concludes that “The most important thing is investing defensively”. Later he proclaims that “If we avoid the losers, the winners will take care of themselves”.
Jaffe is simply restating ways to avoid wealth robbing mistakes. He did not invent these pitfalls. They have been recognized for decades and have been fully documented. However, the evidence suggests that the identification and warnings have not plugged the hole in the dam. These same mistakes, plus others, are made daily.
Just the other day, one of my sons worried that a large market drop was eminent because of the huge run-up in prices (number 2 in the Jaffe piece). Well, he just might be right, but the uncertainties are such that he just might be wrong. A total jump switch is almost never a good idea. Some modest incremental adjustment is likely more appropriate action given his feelings (intuition, gut, whatever).
I do not take issue with the cautionary articles that frequent our investment media. Do I benefit from them now? Not much, given my years of exposure to these warnings. But that is not the situation for many younger investors. Even reminders serve a purpose.
The referenced article is a reprint of an earlier March submittal from Jaffe. Perhaps his writing pen had just run dry momentarily and this is just a space filler. Perhaps MarketWatch feels that the article has exceptional merit, and warrants a reprint. Like all market decisions, we get to choose our own interpretation.
Best Wishes.

Yes, since at least the 1970s, surely. The slow erosion of the social contract between management and labor. My own aunt worked as a secretary at Monsanto for 800 years. You NEVER see that kind of loyalty from either management nor labor, today. Labor jumps to get what it can, because labor is increasingly desperate. In so many places, benefits are simply not there, not offered. Globalization has depressed wages, too. All quite deliberate.

Hey OJ - I'm with you in hoping that the 90%+ group share their secret. All I can figure out is that I recognized few, if any, of the fund symbols. That's largely because I haven't had a fresh idea in years. Basically, have stayed with the same 5 or 6 fund houses and pretty much the same dozen funds for well over a decade now. I guess in the past 3 years I've added just one new one (PRNEX).
Possibly they benefitted from a superior knowledge of those fund symbols and were able to identify funds a computer might overlook.

Yes, the tax statement will show foreign tax paid, and you can credit it against total taxes due in the USA. I've seen that on my Matthews statements over the years, and maybe Seafarer. But I was trying to say that I do not believe that "foreign tax paid" as it appears on the tax statement necessarily means you've paid all that's due "on that score," already. (Like getting "qualified" or "non-qualified" domestic dividends. Whatever that means.)