>> the 5-manager setup that’s partially to blame. Perhaps there’s little coordination among the competing members? And (just a guess) they’re probably relatively inexperienced people.
You really think these are plausible conditions in a shop like TRP?
But are we looking at the same fund?
https://www.troweprice.com/financial-intermediary/us/en/investments/mutual-funds/us-products/multi-strategy-total-return-fund.html
15y and 16y at TRP. One a division director of research. "Just a guess." Not finding the other three managers. M* also lists 2 guys.
... highly flexible investment approach in an effort to provide strong risk-adjusted returns, pursue positive returns through various market environments, and maintain low overall volatility. The fund has broad discretion in seeking investments and utilizes a wide range of strategies ...
Highly flexible with broad discretion. Lots bonds and cash (~89%) w stock tweaking, at a glance, which evidently accounts for the benchmark.
Wacko Equity / FI year-end holdings lists, w problematic headers and categorizations.
>> Maybe somebody should call them?
Sure, go for it; they can declaim the webpage subsections over the phone.

https://www.nytimes.com/2022/03/03/opinion/biden-economy-inflation-jobs.html
According to the long-running Michigan Surveys of Consumers, a plurality of Americans say that their personal financial situation is better than it was a year ago. This is consistent with estimates suggesting that despite inflation most people saw rising real income in 2021. You can quibble with the estimates, but it’s clear that no major group is substantially worse off. And it’s worth remembering, for historical context, that blue-collar real wages declined steadily for most of the Reagan era, which didn’t stop voters from seeing that era as one of economic triumph thanks to strong job growth.
partisanship triumphant:
Republicans ... feel worse about the economy than they did in June 1980, when unemployment was above 7 percent and inflation was 14 percent.

The war is only two weeks old. With so many US / western European businesses exiting / suspending their Russian businesses, either these businesses anticipate the ever increasing Russian sanctions / trade embargos will continue for a long, long time or these businesses do not have a good sense for the their ability to do business in Russia / Ukraine / Belarus in the near future and thought taking a write off of big chunks of their Eastern European assets in Q1 would be a good idea. Is it a moral message (I am reading in the press) businesses are trying to send to Putin or is it an exercise in business outlook and the resultant balance sheet / income statement (i.e., financial statements) impact? What is the primary driver?

You are welcome
This editorial colleague does plain language financial work for a living

Sometimes I get to a point where the numbers just boggle my mind. At those times, I might as well be a bobblehead doll.
@Baseball_Fan
Sorry, the link won't open for me. But I read that excerpt. Assumptions are being made there which I differ with.
"Bitcoin will end the use of financial rails and money as weapons in geopolitical conflicts."
Money as a "weapon" is what killed South African Apartheid--- slowly, TOO slowly. But it worked. The same boycott tactic is NOT so successful with regard to the Israeli Occupation of Palestine, because AIPAC is quite successful with their propaganda and because so many MISCONSTRUE what's in their bibles.
I'd say that a country's own national currency is not so much a weapon, as it is a tool, a standard. An above-board transaction-implement that is universal, belonging not just to SOME. And without controls, you get scumbags planting ransomware on computers that can only be removed by extortion, using... bitcoin.
********************************
"When one side takes actions to cut off an entire nation, the ordinary people of that nation are the ones who suffer the most, not the “oligarchs,” tyrants and despots. Financial sanctions hurt ordinary people, the vast majority of whom do not have any stake in the system or the nation, or any share or interest in geopolitical conflicts."
But ordinary people DO have a stake. Governments have been busy over the course of several decades, DIVESTING themselves of their proper responsibilities by "farming out" services to the private sector. The result is a lack of accountability, dysfunction, gradual decline in the level of service. Government stops operating like a government...... By the same token, when citizens disconnect themselves from what's happening in the corridors where decisions get made, they shoot themselves in the foot. which is where we are today. It's a vicious circle: people divorce themselves from any sense of obligation and responsibility beyond their own vested interests. Politicians pander to those vested interests. Those whom politicians protect and give advantages will vote for those particular politicians. the Big Picture gets lost in the shuffle. Ethics gets lost in the shuffle. Any sense of the Common Good gets lost in the shuffle. Like it or not, we ARE all connected. It has become too easy to ignore that fact, just within my own lifetime.

The notion that Bitcoin isn’t controlled by oligarchs like nations’ currencies are is laughable. It creates a might is right free for all in which whoever owns the most Bitcoin controls the currency. A currency for the wealthy and by the wealthy libertarians who have and seek no regulatory checks, government control or taxation. With national currency in democracies at least the ordinary people, the voters, have some say in that currency’s fate. Everyone’s vote ostensibly counts equally and we can elect officials who want to strengthen the dollar or weaken it. But much like at a corporation where whoever has the most shares has the most say in governance, crypto’s ownership and pricing have already been cornered and controlled by a handful of wealthy individuals, i.e, oligarchs. While oligarchs also run the U.S. today there are at least a few checks, the voting booth being one. Also, if Bitcoin wins, the dollar as the world reserve currency and the U.S. by proxy loses. If the dollar fails because of crypto, you can kiss the rest of your portfolio goodbye.
In other words, meet the new boss, same as the old boss but now with less regulation: https://suissegold.eu/en/posts/could-a-group-corner-the-bitcoin-market

Fascinatingly, about 1% of Bitcoin owners own about 70% of all outstanding Bitcoins. This contrasts with about 3% of the global population owning about 70% of global wealth. Interestingly, the difference between Bitcoin ownership and other financial asset concentration is not that much.
Shifting to the green portion, the top 0.71% of Bitcoin owners own 55% of the cryptocurrency, while the distribution is slightly smaller for owners of other financial assets. The top 0.71% of owners of euro and dollar denominated assets own about 41% of all the wealth.

Hi @Crash, not disagreeing with you, not agreeing, do respect your opinion...candidly not sure of my position on Bitcoin...see blurb cut out of article by Akin Fernandez..."Bitcoin will end the weaponization of Money and financial rails must end" read it and please provide your thoughts??
Best Regards,
Baseball Fan
https://bitcoinmagazine.com/culture/bitcoin-will-end-the-weaponization-of-money
Bitcoin will end the use of financial rails and money as weapons in geopolitical conflicts. For all civilized people, it is not and cannot be acceptable that a single "side" controls the banking rails (SWIFT) or consumer credit and debit cards (Mastercard, Visa). When one side takes actions to cut off an entire nation, the ordinary people of that nation are the ones who suffer the most, not the “oligarchs,” tyrants and despots. Financial sanctions hurt ordinary people, the vast majority of whom do not have any stake in the system or the nation, or any share or interest in geopolitical conflicts.
The Canadian government cut off the truckers from financial services, and cut off anyone who supported them. Now in Canada, some people are withdrawing their money from banks and moving it to jurisdictions where the rules are less dangerous to ordinary people who happen to have an opinion that is different from the dictator there. What they should be doing is moving their money into bitcoin, where the only rules are the rules of the network, which everyone knows in advance, not to another jurisdiction with arbitrary rules and fraudulent money.
In Bitcoin, there is no fat, white-haired oligarch controlling the supply of money. This means there is no one who can unilaterally steal the value of your savings, as the central banks currently do. It means that once you have bitcoin, you know its value in the future. There is no one who can declare that “the supply of bitcoin has now doubled.” This is what happens with the U.S. dollar and all other fiat. Even if there were no confiscation or deplatforming laws in Canada, and “your money” was safe there, the fiat system would still be stealing your stored value from you by design, day by day.

@davidrmoran - The Off-Topic posts are not allowed to appear anywhere other than the actual OT section. This was a compromise that David made some years ago, when there were a fair number of complaints from posters who did not want to see any OT stuff mixed in with the financial posts. It was either that or get rid of the OT posts altogether. The general idea was that those interested in OT discussions would know where to find them, and those who are not interested (evidently the majority of posters) would not have to sort through them.
That compromise depends upon the poster to use good judgement in selecting the posting category, and that has really worked quite well. Lately I've noticed a few OT posts in the financial categories, but they've generally been uncontroversial and pretty harmless.
OJ

As we all know there are many subtleties to overall financial and economic situations. Sometimes there is even disagreement between "experts" in the fields.
As we also know from years of discussion here on MFO, the great majority of individuals cannot even construct a reasonable picture of their own personal financial situation, or make reasonable projections in that area.
How then could we expect these very same people to understand national and international financial and economic matters with any degree of accuracy?
a) They really don't care.
b) If information isn't presented to them via some kind of "social media" it isn't real anyway.
c) No amount of information presented via the MS media is going to be read or believed in any case.
So let's put the responsibility for all of this exactly where it belongs:
People- Ignorant and Proud of It.

See some talk about Bitcoin and rubles here
Some running to Bitcoin to hide assets, escape the collapse in the ruble, some to make it easier to cross borders as a refugee
Do remember my post from 2 years ago regarding high grade rubies. Don't be surprised if market for high grade gem stones takes off. Inflation is weakening all currencies in real terms, real threat of Cyber warfare crippling financial network
What happens if Russia escalates, demands removal of NATO weapons back to old borders etc with threats of nuclear war?
Many more refugees?
Like I said then you could shove a million bucks of gem stones into your sock and no one would know
Crazy
Baseball Fan

Will consume Buffet’s entire letter eventually (because I truly enjoy financial writing). But was motivated here to quick-read a couple articles. Sounds like he’s “wary” of valuations.
A quote from the letter:
“Deceptive 'adjustments' to earnings -- to use a polite description -- have become both more frequent and more fanciful as stocks have risen," Buffett wrote. "Speaking less politely, I would say that bull markets breed bloviated bull...."
Source

Most of the talking financial heads on CNN and PBS say it will take weeks to months for the Russian economy to collapse, esp if Europe has to continue buying millions of nat gas and oil
Having shut down their nuclear plants ( what were they thinking???) they are very dependent on Russia

Some pundits have coined it the”Russian Rubble” - Some synonyms for rubble if interested.
Financial distress may cause irrational leaders to resort to ever more irrational acts. Let’s hope that doesn’t happen in this case.

FWIW: Here is a current evaluation of the general financial scene with respect to developments in Europe.
Link to Schwab Article
Note: I previously posted this in "Other Investing", but it seems to fit here nicely.

Yessir. Thanks for that, OJ.

FWIW: Here is a current evaluation of the general financial scene with respect to developments in Europe.
Link to Schwab Article
Note: I previously posted this in "Other Investing", but it seems to fit here nicely.

FWIW: Here is a current evaluation of the general financial scene with respect to developments in Europe.
Link to Schwab Article

I have noticed several things about Yahoo Finance (YF) data:
1. Data-feed errors are generally not fixed. This I have noticed at other sites too. Reason probably is that it is pointless to correct data-feed errors manually as the next data-feed refresh may just restore those. Fund families whose data are involved don't care - this I KNOW from my prior emails to YF and fund families.
2. Yahoo Finance does process some of its data. Adjusted-prices is something unique to Yahoo Finance (and Stockcharts, etc). Not everyone is sold on this concept (others do Growth-of-10K). Another area is Treasury rates ^TNX, ^TYX, etc where YF doesn't follow the typical 10x rate scale convention (CBOE, Stockcharts, etc) and that leads to some fantastic transient error in that data at YF on some afternoons.
3. I also suspect that in adjusted-price calculations, YF rounds results to 2 decimals in EACH step. This rounding error then propagates and becomes noticeable for periods larger than 10 years. Conceptually, the results from adjusted-prices and Growth-of-10K should be closer to what they actually are.
Under Data Disclaimer, Yahoo Finance provides multiple sources of its data.
https://help.yahoo.com/kb/finance-for-web/SLN2310.html?locale=en_US
"US quotes are real-time for NASDAQ, NYSE, and NYSE American when available from Nasdaq Last Sale and if not available it will appear delayed from the consolidated tape. See delay times for other exchanges below. Quotes are updated automatically but will be turned off after 25 minutes of inactivity.
Financial statements, valuation ratios, market cap and shares outstanding data provided by Morningstar.
Company profile data provided by S&P Global Market Intelligence.
US equities and global index historical data and daily updates provided by Commodity Systems, Inc.
International historical chart data and daily updates provided by Morningstar.
Analyst estimates, earnings, corporate, economic events, non-US IPO, and insider transactions data provided by Refinitiv*.
Top institutional and mutual fund holders provided by Vickers-stock.com.
SEC Filings and US IPO data is provided by EDGAR Online, a division of Donnelley Financial LLC.
Sustainability data provided by Sustainalytics and Morningstar.
Upgrades and downgrades provided by Benzinga.
Corporate governance scores provided by Institutional Shareholder Services."

Recovered from SA :
Bigger picture: Current market fears are centered around sanctions, though the first wave of them appeared to be quite targeted and not that economically damaging. Measures from the U.S. were leveled against two of Russia's largest financial institutions, three members of Russia's elite, as well as sovereign debt, but left the crucial energy sector untouched.
Good thing the sanctions didn't hit energy as gas in the USA is rising fast enough.
Does the USA import oil from the Bear ? It seems I read somewhere (we) do.
Will the sanctions effect Russia MF's ?
Trying to enjoy the ride, Derf

Given that M* provides a figure for FGMNX's 2021 performance and Yahoo reports N/A, perhaps it is how Yahoo transcribes numbers and not M*'s data that is the problem? Or perhaps Yahoo calculates its own figures (e.g. adjusted closing prices) from data provided by M* and it just doesn't know how to program accurate financial calculations?
Then there's FGMNX's YTD performance as of now (Feb 22, 2022 close). The authoritative figure from Fidelity is -2.42%. The M* figure on the fund's quote page is -2.42%. Yahoo's fund summary page reports -2.43%.
One of these is not like the others.

https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/935015/000119312522048733/d293939d485apos.htm
Excerpt:
Principal Investment Strategies
The Fund’s investment team employs a fundamental investment process to construct a diversified portfolio of securities of undervalued, primarily non-US small companies. The team seeks to invest in what the team considers to be high quality, undervalued companies with strong balance sheets and shareholder-oriented management teams.
The team’s investment process focuses on four key characteristics:
■Undervaluation—Determining the intrinsic value of a business is the heart of the team’s research process. The team believes that intrinsic value represents the amount that a buyer would pay to own a company’s future cash flows. The team seeks to invest at a significant discount to its estimate of the intrinsic value of a business.
■Business Quality—The team seeks to invest in companies with histories of generating strong free cash flow, improving returns on capital and strong competitive positions in their industries.
■Financial Strength—The team believes that investing in companies with strong balance sheets helps to reduce the potential for capital risk and provides company management the ability to build value when attractive opportunities are available.
■Shareholder-Oriented Management—The team’s research process attempts to identify management teams with a history of building value for shareholders.