What people are thinking: "Bruce is going to get his old magic back...".
(I say this as a former long-term holder of FAIRX; who bailed after a couple of years of watching Bruce do a lot of weird stuff)

Something made me think of this today. I was on board those many years ago when it was the hottest thing going, the manager the focus of much adulation. Seem to recall I exited with a gain, but one much reduced from the top. Its fall from grace is old news. Hard to believe the following though:
--The fund still has over $1 billion AUM.
--Over one-third of those assets belong to the manager.
--80+% of the fund is invested in a single security.
--The fund charges 1% per annum for the privilege of ownership. (To a large extent the manager is paying himself.)
--Over the past 10 and 15 years the fund's returns land in the bottom 1% of its category (according to you-know-who).
--You-know-who accords the fund its Silver medal. (Huh?!)
Investing is such a personal endeavor it's difficult to understand what some people are thinking.

Having recently (re)opened a Schwab account, I have a different set of observations vis-a-vis Fidelity. While my first impressions of Schwab below are largely negative, keep in mind (as I do) that using a new site is a learning experience and that I'm inclined to look first for things I know I can do at Fidelity as opposed to looking for new things.
Changing default fund cost basis from average cost to actual cost (mutual funds):
- Schwab requires paper form
- Fidelity allows change online
Power of attorney form filled in office:
- Schwab requires me to go to third party for notarization
- Fidelity will notarize on the spot
New issue treasuries, expected (indicative) yields
- Schwab does not provide - Fixed income desk suggested looking at recent trades
- Fidelity and Vanguard give ballpark figures (actual yields not known until auction)
Trading mutual funds, fixed income with desktop application:
- Fidelity Active Trader Pro supports
- Schwab ThinkOrSwim does not support these trades (per webpage, link below; I haven't downloaded and tested)
https://www.schwab.com/trading/thinkorswim/compare-platforms
Fixed income pricing ($1/bond):
- Schwab has $10 min commission
- Fidelity has $1 min commission
Fixed income quotes
- Schwab quotes prices including markup (it seems), so yields are "true"
- Fidelity quoted prices are before markups - shown only on trade page - so yields appear higher, but are actually the same
- Schwab does not show YTW figures for all bonds, effectively forcing sort on YTM
- Fidelity facilitates sorting on YTW
- Depth of book presentations are similar (pop up windows)
- Fidelity opens new tab for trade, leaving bond search window intact
- Schwab uses existing tab for trade and "back to search" button resets search instead of restoring existing search
Mutual fund research - sites are comparable, basic stuff and docs; neither offers M* reports. Schwab used to provide M* reports years ago.
If you're a trader in stocks, Schwab may be superior as OP stated. For my interests (largely OEFs and bonds, some ETFs), so far Schwab isn't impressing. Though that could be due to lack of familiarity.

Here's The Barron's Daily take on her letter to investors:
Cathie Wood, the architect behind the ARK fund, has a delicate task in her latest letter to investors. The fund came to prominence with big gains in 2020 when the broader market was tanking. Now she has to explain both why her funds haven’t been doing well lately, and how they will do better.
It starts with Wood pointing out that her flagship fund, which focuses on “disruptive innovation,” is 72% below its peak while the S&P 500 is hitting all-time highs. The reason given is that the S&P is driven by just a few stocks, and the ARK fund has been hurt more than others by higher interest rates—implying that her high-growth picks have been disproportionately hit by weaker risk appetite for the past few years.
Of course, Wood famously sold Nvidia before it went on its spectacular run. And she recently started selling Tesla just as it started to climb more aggressively. These are both the very kinds of companies that fit the bill for ARK.
It’s a lesson for investors everywhere. Sometimes you can be right about big ideas and still get the timing wrong. Or, in some cases, you have the right idea and pick the wrong stocks. Getting timings right on market moves is very hard.
Second, it’s really hard to beat the market as an active investor, especially when the S&P 500 is up 26% over the past year. Even Warren Buffett’s vast wealth can largely be explained by compound interest—he has basically matched market returns for the past two decades.
There’s one more thing worth remembering when reading Wood’s letter. And it’s that her job is more about convincing investors to join her—getting the best returns for her investors is a secondary consideration. Recent outflows suggest it isn’t going well. She may well be right about the future and her stock picks may turn out to be excellent. The hard part is convincing others to join her.

@davidrmoran, I tried PV for 10 years, and the results were closer to your results. I double-checked TestFol and its numbers are the same as before.
It looks that TestFol has some error in the data for XLG and its numbers for XLG are consistently lower (compared with PV).
New picture with PV:
3 Years IVV < OEF < XLG
5 Years IVV < OEF < XLG
10 Years IVV < OEF < XLG
That is what I was expecting because SP500 has become increasingly concentrated in mega-stocks. But at the time of my previous post, I didn't suspect errors in TestFol, so simply noted that the results were unexpected.
Edit/Add, 7/11/24. I contacted TestFol on this issue. It acknowledged the problem for XLG and fixed it promptly. Interestingly, my old linked runs now show the updated data for XLG (and they are now close to those from PV), but those for OEF and IVV are unchanged (i.e. I didn't have re-run those TestFol).
Many have now started using TestFol because after the recent update, FREE Portfolio Visualizer (PV) is quite limited or unfriendly. As this is sort of off topic for the OP, I won't post more here, but interested posters can find details at,
https://ybbpersonalfinance.proboards.com/post/1550/thread

>> 10 Years IVV < XLG < OEF
??
Not when I graph TR $10k growth at Fidelity; rather, what you'd expect:
XLG $39,782; OEF $36,332; IVV $33,403

I compared SP50/XLG, SP100/OEF, SP500/IVV. All 3 had comparable SDs, but,
performance-wise, XLG < OEF < IVV.
I didn't expect that despite their ERs of 20 bps, 20bps, 3 bps, respectively.
TestFol XLG OEF IVV MAX
Edit/Add. Performance for other timeframes,
3 Years IVV < OEF < XLG
5 Years IVV < OEF < XLG
10 Years IVV < XLG < OEF

Not apples to apples, but a comparison where the manager uses an alternative strategy using specific stock picks compared to the same strategy using representative index ETFs would be Leuthold Core Investment, LCORX versus LCR. I would assume LCORX is picking their best stock picks represented in the LCR indexes.
Amazing to me, but using PerfCharts, it shows starting at LCR's inception, Jan 2020, to today, a bit over 4 1/2 years, LCR and LCORX both have the exact accumulated return, 39.6%. The trend lines don't lay exactly on top of each other, but close, and they end up with the same return.
I don't know what to make of this other than management's preferred stock picks (LCORX) don't return any more or any less than a comparative index (LCR). The gain or loss is in the management process.

T. Rowe Price debuts its first tax-free municipal bond ETF (TAXE)
BALTIMORE, July 10, 2024 /PRNewswire/ -- T. Rowe Price (NASDAQ-GS: TROW), a global investment management firm, announced today the addition of its first federally tax-free fixed income exchange-traded fund (ETF) to its active ETF roster. T. Rowe Price Intermediate Municipal Income ETF (Ticker: TAXE) began trading today on the NASDAQ exchange.
The Intermediate Municipal Income strategy focuses on investment-grade intermediate-term municipal bonds with a weighted average effective maturity of four to 12 years. T. Rowe Price Intermediate Municipal Income ETF is co-managed by James Lynch and Charlie Hill, who collectively have 53 years of investment experience, and have served in portfolio management roles for other T. Rowe Price intermediate-term municipal bond strategies. This ETF is a new strategy, the first of the firm's fixed income active ETFs that is distinct from existing T. Rowe Price mutual funds.
T. Rowe Price Intermediate Municipal Income ETF (Ticker: TAXE)
Seeks the highest level of income exempt from federal income taxes consistent with moderate price fluctuation
Net expense ratio is 0.24%
< - >
https://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/t-rowe-price-launches-its-first-active-tax-free-bond-exchange-traded-fund-302193635.html

...
It's down to FDSVX or PRWAX. Tip of the cap to @stillers for drawing my attention to funds I had missed.

Thanks man! We've built what we regard as the best portfolio we've ever had in our 40+ years of doing this. FDSVX and PRWAX are core holdings in it. Here's hoping whichever fund you select is as kind to you as these two have been to us!

It's pretty sad and going on for years. Be scared of US LC, especially the MAG 5-6-7
But let me sell you NOW Value, SC, EM and CEFs.
Wait, last Dec the "experts" told us that the Fed is going to cut 5-6-7 times, buy Treasuries. VGIT is finally at 0.2% YTD.
It's amazing how these "experts" get paid and have a job.
Sure, one day it will happen.

@Stillers, the money was previously invested in tech funds, so moving to growth seems appropriate. Good point about the inflation news, OTOH, if it's good news . . .
I look at the last three years to see how the funds have behaved since the end of ZIRP. And when I run them through Portfolio Visualizer I'll start the clock at January 2022 for an even tougher challenge. I think the issues of inflation and interest rates are likely to be with us for a while.
I did have to look at five and ten year returns to insure that the funds I am testing have performed at least as well a AMAGX over those time periods. I then looked for funds with an active share over 50. That left me with FDSVX, PRWAX, and FTRNX which I am examining now.
I am at 30% bonds, 10% cash. Most of the bonds are low duration floaters. But I'll leave that for another day. That's about as high as it will get for me given what I have in IYK, FSUTX, and GLIFX.

Tough choice for us between FDSVX and FBGRX but settled on the former. PRWAX is one of the most underrated LCG funds. We would own any of them over AMAGX.
Other thoughts:
Not sure of your situation, but if this is new money, might not be the best time to plow into Growth after its epic, current bull run. FWIW, we have recently reduced overall stock exposure including Growth and may go to all Cash if things start getting ugly en route to Nov. Also, if plowing money in this week, we would at least do some before/after Thu/Fri CPI/PPI announcements. They've been market movers this year.
We always look beyond 3 years of performance and think that everyone should. If its the same manager(s), not sure why anyone wouldn't.
Baron's Growth funds can run very hot/cold. We're likely done with that family of funds because of it.
ERs are important but TR is obviously far more important (to us at least). A great, managed LCG fund will run ~.50-.80, as do the ones I listed. Coupled with a LCG index fund at ~.02 and you're at half that. FWIW, our weighted portfolio ER is .46. If ERs though are a primary driver for you, looks like AMAGX's ER of .91 is the highest of the bunch here and almost double FBGRX's .48.

"Simplification" of the IRA continues. Why the scare quotes? Every time I make progress on the equity side there's some new bond fund popping up. Cleaning up that mess should be next summer's problem.
Today I sold three different tech funds, TDV, FSCSX, and CCIZX. Proceeds will go into something available at Fido like AMAGX, maybe GQEPX, something growthy, but probably not an index. The growth fund goes with FDVV and FMILX.
If anyone wants to opine on a good growthy fund at Fido, chime in.

IMO, the best "growthy fund(s) at Fido" that are Fido funds are:
FDSVX - Growth Discovery (we own)
FBGRX - Blue Chip Growth (owned in a/c's we manage)
FCNTX - Contrafund (have owned in the past)
FSELX - Select Semis (we own)
FSPTX - Select Technology (we own FSELX instead)
FSPGX - Growth Index (we own VIGAX instead)
Note that FMILX is a LV fund that is currently acting like a LG fund;
and the best non-Fido "growthy funds" funds are :
PRWAX - TRP All Cap Opportunities (we own)
GSIHX - GQG Partners International Opportunities (we own)

Thanks for sharing. Missed FDSVX the first time around. It is closer to what I'm looking for. PRWAX didn't make the first cut because it has only been a four-star fund these past three years. So I'll take a look at FDSVX and the four stars today to see what turns up to run against AMAGX.
A semi's fund is a consideration figuring a few beans on the side could grow into a largish bean stalk before we need to take distributions. But it would only be a few beans to start with.

This looks like the variation of the housing disaster we had only 15 years ago. That was not too long ago and how the mechanics are already in rinse and repeat cycle. I guess greed never sleeps.
As a society, we admire / glorify people that commit white color crimes. The more blatant ones get elected to public offices.
(A easier fix would be to require the originators and underwriters to hold a percentage of the loans that they originate / bring to the market.)

Fed Debt is $34T now. Fed Debt in 20 years = ??. What would that CAGR be?
More bonds being sold each year + probable increased interest rates on both existing debt rolling over + new issued debt. Many existing debt at 2% rolling over to 4%.

If CAGR matters most over the last 20 years.....I wonder what the CAGR of the Fed Debt will be over the next 20 years?

My primary reasons for becoming a Vanguard customer were: 1) good low-cost actively-managed funds;
2) firm had strong reputation; 3) firm was mutually owned vs. publicly traded.
I was never fond of Vanguard's investor website even after it was redesigned.
I seldom contacted Vanguard for assistance but did experience several suboptimal interactions.
Dan Wiener (The Independent Adviser for Vanguard Investors) chronicled Vanguard's customer service
issues for years. Regardless of the new CEO, I'm not confident these long-standing issues will be
ameliorated in the near-future. Updated commission and fee schedules (effective July 1) suggest
Vanguard is prioritizing "nickel-and-diming" investors rather than improving customer service.
Consequently, my two Vanguard accounts were recently transferred to other brokerages.

@WABAC,
Looks like you already own FDVV and FMILX and are recent additions. I think you also already own AMAGX. Why not increase those? GQEIX is also a good fund - not sure if you already own it.

I bought AMAGX for the taxable account because I thought it was the best available where the taxable is. At Fido I'll sort out the funds that have five stars for the previous three years, then I'll pop those into MFO premium for one last slice and dice.
FDVV and FMILX are about where they need to be until I can offload some other stuff.

Above-the-fold article on this morning's WSJ website. Also mentioned are concerns over new fees nickle-and-diming customers and how growth of AUM not leading to customer service/interface improvements.
(gift link)
https://www.wsj.com/personal-finance/vanguards-die-hard-customers-have-a-message-for-new-ceo-the-service-is-abysmal-c2da0491?st=79tslq2qz4mj6bi&reflink=desktopwebshare_permalink
Vanguard ranked last out of eight major brokerages for customer satisfaction with website performance and mobile apps in a recent survey of 2,700 investors conducted by Investor’s Business Daily, which is published by The Wall Street Journal’s parent company, Dow Jones. The asset manager has acknowledged the problems, which some analysts chalk up to an underinvestment in technology.
Former CEO Tim Buckley, who announced his retirement in February, said in 2019 that the firm would spend $1 billion a year to improve its technology. Vanguard rolled out a modernized app in 2021, but customers weren’t impressed and complained of bugs and dumbed-down functionality.
“The complaints go back years and years,” said Daniel Sotiroff, a research analyst who covers Vanguard at Morningstar. “Part of the issue is their size and how fast they’ve grown. It’s hard to turn the Titanic.”
< - >
For investors having web or tech issues, the lack of night or weekend service is a particular point of frustration. Vanguard’s customer-service line is open Monday through Friday from 8 a.m. to 8 p.m. Eastern time. Rivals Fidelity and Charles Schwab both offer 24/7 customer service by phone.
“They’ve always tried to keep costs low and service has suffered as a result,” said Jeff DeMaso, editor of the Independent Vanguard Adviser, a newsletter. “Long wait times are an issue.”
< - >
There’s a theory, and I’m not the only one to come up with it, that they’d rather move people onto the personal advisory service where they make more money or they’re just as happy if they go to another brokerage,” said Allan Roth, founder of Wealth Logic, a financial-planning firm.