I have a sleeve (hybrid income) within my portfolio that holds mostly conserative allocation funds and account for just short of 20% of the overall portfolio. The funds held within this sleeve are AZNAX, FKINX, ISFAX, CAPAX, PGBAX, & PASAX.
I am very happy, thus far, with their performance over the years and have held one of them (FKINX) for better than fifty years.
Old_Skeet

Ted said: "Never confuse risk and volatility, they are not the same."
Yeah. I hear that a lot. Maybe, But, I'll submit that if you're 95 years old, they are very much the same.

>> 45 years it has returned essentially what the stock market has returned,
I must be missing something. Since origin, summer 1970, it has more than doubled SP500.

According to records, the S&P has returned about 10.5% since 1926, with returns reinvested; Wellesley 10.06% since 1970. That was what I was comparing. What the S&P has done since 1970, I don't know. I didn't even consider that. :(

>> 45 years it has returned essentially what the stock market has returned,
I must be missing something. Since origin, summer 1970, it has more than doubled SP500.
Wellington and DODBX have done notably better, but Windsor, FCNTX, and SEQUX have all done multiples better, Sequoia 6x or so. If I am reading the graphs right.
Some manager changes in there, of course.

@Leroy: Good choice, but a better bet Vanguard Fund is( VWELX 8.33% for 86 years) which has outperformed VWINX 1-15 years.
Regards,
Ted

After spending many evenings slicing, dicing, and contemplating a bunch of "set and forget" funds, in 2013 I bought Wellesley. It is 20% of my portfolio and I'm a happy camper.
Its long-term record, considering volatility, is hard to beat: Since inception in 1970 it has returned 10.06% annualized; its worst yearly return was in 2008 at -9.8%.
So for 45 years it has returned essentially what the stock market has returned, but with much less volatility (beta .53).

yup, those three sure have outperformed the last few years. but for CA funds, they seem to display a lot of volatility on the chart -- or at least compared to VWINX, they look like they do. thanks for the work!

>>>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.<<<<
Money is completely worthless it you have serious and debilitating health issues. I know some whose every day existence is a struggle and all the money in the world will not allow them " the freedom to pursue happiness " nor will it allow them "to do what we (they) want in their lives "

Thanks Ted,
Article leaves out the fact that alpha (relative out performance) is just one component of investing success just as hitting is merely one component of successful baseball. If alpha has diminished over the years what other strategies impacted excess return? One or two paragraphs regarding these other strategies / factors might have lead the reader to the bigger picture. If alpha only contributes 6% to excess returns today, what's responsible for the other 94%?
Finally, a list of a few modern day funds that still do consistently provide outsized positive alpha would have been worthy of reporting. The chart in the article reveals that alpha still contributes 6% to the SD of excess returns. What active funds consistently out perform their peers with regard to alpha? There must be a few alpha dogs out there still.
What are your alpha dog funds?

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&amp;url=http%3A%2F%2Fblogs.wsj.com%2Ftotalreturn%2F2015%2F03%2F03%2Fwhy-you-owe-your-freedom-to-jack-bogle-roth%2Ftab%2Fprint&amp;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!!