I’m trying to get “grounded” at Fidelity.
1. RPGAX has now been moved there “transfer in kind”. if I buy additional shares now (NTF at Fido) do I need to wait 60 days before I can sell any shares out of RPGAX, or would the commission (penalty from my viewpoint) only apply on the newly purchased shares? Did recently add to RPGAX (this month) before the transfer, if that makes a difference.
2. If you sell a NTF fund and than turn right around and buy it in a few days, is that a violation or would it result in added fees? Dumb as it sounds, I’d sold a bit of PRWCX at Fido last week in a futile effort to keep from having a “delinquent” account after an asset transfer failed to execute.
Thanks

Best to keep in mind how today's inflation number is calculated - year over year - and what was happening a year ago.
Hank's right about the usual inflation-related investments having already been bid up, starting months ago. In the case of the analyst group I follow the closest, it was about nine months ago they recommended getting into inflation assets -- specifically with the jump in the official numbers in mind, the numbers that would be coming in the quarters ahead, set up by the lowflation/deflation of late Q1/Q2 of 2020.
I could be a little wealthier now if I'd gone into that trade more heavily back then, instead of cautiously.

I listened to a number of "analysts" and the recommendation back last year to get into growth. Curious, which "analysts" do you follow, and do you find them reputable?

+1

+1

+1 I'll be breaking in a new brokerage, Ally, this coming week. Ally has no ntf funds: every no load fund purchase is charged $9.99, but apparently there are no load-waived funds either. Obviously, I won't be purchasing JABAX or MDLOX there, but their policy could be useful for funds like SVARX OSTIX DODIX etc. I'll provide details later after my account is funded and I've actually made some purchases.

Schwab's platform fee discsloure to 403(b) plans includes:

Transaction-Fee Funds (“Fee Funds”)
As set forth in the Commissions and Transaction Fees section of the Charles Schwab Pricing Guide for Individual Investors, Schwab charges clients a transaction fee for the purchase or sale of certain funds that are not included in the Schwab Mutual Fund OneSource® program. Some Fee Funds pay Schwab an annual fee usually equal to $20, but sometimes as high as $30, per customer position, typically subject to a quarterly minimum of $7,500 per fund. Rather than paying a per-customer account fee, some Fee Funds choose instead to pay Schwab an asset-based annual fee of up to 0.25% of the average assets held at Schwab.
When adding a new fund to Schwab’s platform, Fee Funds also pay Schwab a one-time establishment fee, which Schwab may waive. The amount of this fee generally does not exceed $10,000 for the first fund added and $2,000 for each new fund after that. To the extent any of these fees are paid out of fund assets, fees are included in the fund’s OER and are indirectly borne by the fund’s shareholders

https://www.schwab.com/public/file/P-5358937
Fidelity used to have a similar disclosure, but about 4 years ago switched to an "infrastructure" fee that obfuscates the cost. It recently won an appellate ruling that this was legal.
In any case, as @Observant1 stated, the $75 fee is applied to funds that won't pay for shelf space. In addition to D&C and Vanguard funds, Fidelity also charges $75 for some Schwab funds, including SNXFX and SWTSX.

I think there is definitely a rivalry between Fido, Vanguard and even Dodge & Cox. From what I can tell ,Vanguard and Dodge & Cox funds are the only funds that Fido charges a $75 transaction fee to purchase !

Vanguard and Dodge & Cox choose not to pay distribution fees to be included on a brokerage firm's platform.
"Brokerage firms, for their part, have scant incentive to make it any easier to buy Vanguard products. Not only does Vanguard compete against their funds, but Vanguard has never paid for fund distribution. Fidelity and other brokerage firms have long chafed at Vanguard’s refusal to pay for distribution. Some fund companies pay more than 0.15% of fund assets to be on Fidelity’s platform, for instance. Those fees are increasingly important to brokerage firms as expense ratios decline and investors migrate out of actively managed funds to low-cost index products."
“'Vanguard doesn’t compensate us for the services we provide,' a Fidelity spokeswoman told Barron’s. 'That’s why there’s a higher transaction fee for its funds,' she added, referring to the $75 fee that Fidelity charges to buy a Vanguard fund, well above its normal $49.95 rate."
Link
N o M a r k e t i n g C a m p a i g n s
"Another important distinguishing characteristic of our firm is that we rely primarily on word of mouth to sell our Funds—you have never seen an advertising campaign for Dodge & Cox.
We neither pay for distribution nor pay brokers to sell our funds."
Link

Yeah ... lots of folks find the hassle of running a fund really unattractive. That partly explains the huge level of merger & acquisition activity. My general sense that is mid-sized managers - the 10-50 fund folks - are in the worst spot. Boutiques have at least a shot because they've got an institutional identity and, sometimes, a trusted name above the door. Behemoths are doing fine. It's the undistinguished folks in the middle - the Wells Fargos of the world - who are shedding funds and management teams, often by off-loading them to other advisors.

“Now if Vanguard and Fidelity would expand access for their funds, I wouldn't need 4 or 5 brokerage accounts!”
Interesting comment. I’m spread out across 1 brokerage now + 3 fund companies. In retrospect it was a mistake to let most of that pile up at TRP. For many years I held a kind of reverence for them. I know some disagree, but spreading it out a bit seems like a good idea. I’ve toyed with getting something going at Schwab. I’ll wait and see.

There were about a dozen separate accounts because TRP created an account for each mutual fund, for some odd reason.
My understanding (read: no citations, I could be in mistaken) is that until sometime in the 80s(?), each mutual fund investment at any company was treated as a separate account with a separate account number. Similar to buying stock directly from a corporation. Two different companies, two different accounts.
I don't know about other companies, but in the 90s(?) Fidelity grouped these separate accounts together under a single "T account" number. It reported the accounts together on a single statement under a single T account number. But on the 1099 each fund still appeared as a separate account with its own divs and cap gains. (Contrast that with a brokerage statement where there's a combined set of figures for all the holdings.)
I looked at an old 90s statement and an old 90s 1099 to confirm this.
You can still find traces of this at Fidelity. On this Fidelity page describing direct deposits, click on the "Mutual Fund Account" tab in the middle of the page, and then look for "T account number".
https://www.fidelity.com/tax-information/direct-deposit
Whether the accounts were technically separate or not mattered. Until a few years ago, one could perform one 60 day transfer per IRA account each year. (Current law is one 60 day transfer, period, each year.) If your IRA accounts were separate, you could do a 60 day rollover of one, then later decide to do a 60 day rollover on another.

Not to beat a dead horse to death here ….
But, does anyone know (or have an opinion) on whether a company like TRP really cares whether or not you own funds directly from them? It’s occurred to me that those AUM figures take into account assets in the funds they run - not necessarily under their roof.
Quite possibly they view the client interface, particularly live phone reps, as an Achilles Heel they can do without. I recall much better personal service 10-20 years ago. Easier to get through to a supervisor as well. Obviously, the phone reps at TRP are (often) poorly prepared for the variety of concerns they need to field. Hard to fault the employee if not qualified for the job or given the tools / authority they need.

To Hank, thanks for clarifying my in-kind transfer question. While I may still invest in some of TRP's better (open) funds, it will be simpler to consolidate within one brokerage. While not suggesting any (stress) equivalency with your situation, I experienced two examples of where persistence paid off in the face of front line customer service ignorance/poor training. I was given a penalty/interest bill for something that was not clearly covered in the regs. I appealed and paid what I believed was the correct (i.e. much lower) amount. Then, despite hours and hours on the phone, customer service stood firm until . . . I escalated to a manager and pointed out that I had remedied my situation months before and had already proved it, she immediately did a u-turn and I was in the clear. Prior to speaking with the manager, customer service seemed either not to understand the regs and/or perhaps were poorly trained. The second example was with my phone carrier which changed its terms to make its service much more expensive. I called and informed them that I would have to terminate my service. I mentioned that I had been a faithful customer for 10 years and that to replace me will cost them more than keeping me. At first, the CS person balked. Ten minutes later, she called back and informed me that they had reinstated my account for 3 months of service at no charge. Hang in there!!

Interesting analysis here: https://ft.com/content/479b9dd2-c738-4310-8b1e-afdfbd3921b0
There appears to be only 800 Tapanuli Orangutans left in Indonesia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tapanuli_orangutan Most investors won't care--free markets, orangutans' "personal responsibility to survive," they had their chance, etc.--but some will perhaps. Two of the related companies that are the alleged culprits are Jardine Matheson, with its mining, palm oil and hotel interests in Indonesia, and related subsidiary Astra International. BlackRock and Vanguard are major holders of course, but there are also concentrated holders familiar to this board--First Eagle funds, Seafarer funds, and Tweedy Browne.

We just completed a transfer-in-kind from TRP to Fidelity for our Roth IRAs. There were about a dozen separate accounts because TRP created an account for each mutual fund, for some odd reason. We were not charged any fees, and the funds showed up in our Fidelity account in about two days. No shares were sold. We initiated the transfer through the Fidelity website and it was very easy using their on-line forms. The only hassle was having to enter and double-check each account number.
We also rolled over our 401K accounts from old old employer about the same time. That was much more involved because the accounts were invested in proprietary funds with Prudential. We had to sell all of the shares in both accounts and get them to mail checks to Fidelity using overnight service. That process took 3-4 days and we lost some money due to market fluctuations but I’m glad to have it over with. Now all of our investments are with Fidelity, making them either to track and manage. It will really help when we have to start making required minimum distributions in a few years.

CV19 caused tightness in the toilet paper supply chain in my supermarket last spring/summer. One package per customer. Hoarding and furloughed tree fellers in the PNW's forests contributed to rationing. Not sure if this affected timber prices. Either way I was too late, like when oil went negative $30 per barrel. As for fossil fuels versus renewable energy, here's a report on hydrogen: https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/w3ct1hsk

I just revisited Grantham's January 5 article. His best guess at that time:

My best guess as to the longest this bubble might survive is the late spring or early summer, coinciding with the broad rollout of the COVID vaccine. At that moment, the most pressing issue facing the world economy will have been solved. Market participants will breathe a sigh of relief, look around, and immediately realize that the economy is still in poor shape, stimulus will shortly be cut back with the end of the COVID crisis, and valuations are absurd. “Buy the rumor, sell the news.”

According to Grantham, it's time to look around (and bail).
So, I'm looking around. The economy is in much better shape than I expected it to be at mid-year and its potential appears brighter than I expected. The Fed and other central banks are continuing to be supportive. And, there is momentum behind an infrastructure bill that has the potential to provide substantial long needed investment in the backbone of the country. Are valuations really likely to collapse in the near future based on valuations being "high"?
One of today's headlines:
Haters everywhere in stock market after S&P 500's big first half
A few brief excerpts from that Bloomberg article:

...the S&P 500’s 14 per cent rally (is) putting it on course for its second-best January through June period since 1998.
In the 27 years when gains in equities were this strong through the first six months, three-quarters of the time stocks continued to march higher by December.
...pushing against the wall of worries are the growing numbers of retail traders who bought the dip during the pandemic bear market and have since become the staunchest allies of this bull market.
The trade-off households face between equities and other asset classes favors equities through year-end given anemic money market and credit yields

I plan to continue harvesting year-to-date gains to restrict my risk exposure.....if the market continues to offer them (that process has provided a substantial boost to my "rainy day" cash on hand so far this year). But no significant other trimming is in the offing....
Is anyone looking around and deciding to bail or to substantially reduce their risk exposure?

- To the OP, that sounds like a horror story.
- I am planning to in-kind transfer a TRP mutual fund (custodial IRA) to Fidelity. If I transfer all the assets in the account, will I be charged an account closing fee? TIA.

It feels like “to Hell and back”. :)
Re your question. It’s $20 at TRP for each closed out account. However, they only applied it to my 5 “liquidate all shares” orders ($100 total). The “transfer in kind” orders were not charged. I wish I’d had the foresight to combine the 3 shorter term bond funds (via exchange) before submitting the paperwork. Would have saved $40.
During my estimated 7-8 hours on the phone with TRP over a week (counting hold times) I tried to shame them into reversing the $60 in fees on the 3 transfers for which checks bounced. Said they’d “call back”. (But I’m not holding my breath.)

Thanks folks.
Today (Saturday) is the first time in 10 days I’ve logged in to my Fido account when the news wasn’t worse. Actually improved overnight. Possibly, the discussions with 3 different reps yesterday helped. Notably, the earlier mentioned restrictions now apply only to my Traditional IRA. On the Roth & non-retirement accounts they’ve disappeared.
@msf questioned the “bounced check” restriction. While not posted to my account, it was related to me by a rep at Fido’s trading desk after being transferred to him with some fund specific questions. I do believe it’s on file there - but is likely such an infrequent (and serious) infraction that it’s not mentioned elsewhere. The “free ride” likely refers to the small position I’d opened in a favorite stock (mostly for fun) that was sold by Fido only 1-2 days later.
Fido mailed me copies of TRP’s 3 bounced checks. They were written on an account at Mellon Bank of Delaware. They are stamped: “Return to Maker - Reason S”.
Here’s a copy & paste I pulled from my Traditional IRA at Fido this morning:
Free Ride Violations – 1 Violation in last 12 months
Good Faith Violations – None in last 12 months
Liquidation Violations – 1 Violation in last 12 months
Hoping to buy back into those mutual funds and the ETF next week. The stock was temporarily depressed when I bought it. It’s bounced back to the point now that I likely won’t buy it again.
FWIW (unrelated): I’m sharing a link to a 2020 informational piece at Fidelity regarding their dollar “threshold” as to when a round trip in one of their funds is likely to get you into trouble. That’s an area I’ve been trying to nail down as I do tend to increase / decrease exposure to certain positions fairly often. If the (monitored) threshold really is $10,000 (as their memo suggests) that’s good news for a lot of us.
https://www.fidelity.com/bin-public/060_www_fidelity_com/documents/mutual-funds/2020-08-31-Excessive-Trading-Policy-Web-Post.pdf
PS - Try to be kind when talking to the reps at TRP. It’s not their fault things are so off the rails there. I actually apologized Thursday to a young lady after raising my voice in frustration. Her kind response assured me I was being tame compared to some of the interactions.

Schwab seems to have the clearest description of violations and how they can/must be treated by the broker ("creditor" in the regs). The rules come from Regulation T, and in particular §220.8 covering cash accounts.
https://www.schwab.com/resource-center/insights/content/stock-settlement-why-you-need-to-understand-t2-timeline
I found this part interesting:

Extensions
At Schwab, if you fail to make payment on a purchase of stock or deliver shares for a sale of stock within the designated time frame, you will receive a notification asking that you take action.
If you fail to act upon notification, industry regulations require that Schwab either request an extension, or buy back or sell out the position, as well as mark your account with a freeriding violation. Your account may also be placed on a 90-day settled-cash restriction, or incur more severe penalties, including account closure or removal of electronic access. Again, Schwab clients can request a one-time exception (i.e., once in the life of the account) to remove the restriction.
Schwab doesn't grant extensions for trades in retirement accounts (IRA's, SEP's Keogh's, etc.), or accounts with existing trading restrictions.

I suspect that Schwab doesn't grant extensions in IRAs because of the stringent law against borrowing in IRAs. But that wouldn't seem to preclude waiving the 90 day restriction imposed.
Reg T itself says:

(d)(1) Unless the creditor's examining authority believes that the creditor is not acting in good faith or that the creditor has not sufficiently determined that exceptional circumstances warrant such action, it may upon application by the creditor:
...
        (iii) Grant a waiver from the 90 day freeze.

Certainly there are exceptional circumstances here. If the freeze is important to you, it's worth poking Fidelity about their applying for a waiver.
All of this is bringing back memories of a vaguely similar experience I had with Fidelity. In an IRA I set up an auto purchase of a TF fund. I set the amount to be the available cash in the account. The system permitted this order to go through even though there was a $5 TF added. (Fidelity says that "If the cash needed to fund your automatic investment is not available in your core position, your scheduled transfer will be skipped", so this should have been caught.)
"Fortunately", the purchase was for one of the few OEFs with T+2 settlement. I worked with Fidelity and they agreed that if I were to sell $5 of another holding the next day, a fund with T+1 settlement, that would cover the shortfall. Both trades would settle on the same day.
According to Schwab, that still constituted a liquidation violation:

If an option or mutual fund is sold the day after a stock is purchased, a liquidation violation will be charged even if the proceeds settle on or before the purchase settlement date.

https://help.streetsmart.schwab.com/edge/1.22/Content/Unsettled Funds.htm
Fidelity never informed me that I had committed a liquidation violation.

This is an interesting development for ESG investors. The Engine No. 1 ETF will be seeded with $100 million, has a 0.05% expense ratio, invests like the S&P 500 and will finally vote the right way on ESG issues: https://etf.engine1.com/ That means if it gets a suitable amount of trading volume, it could easily compete with Vanguard's and BlackRock's S&P 500 ETFs, which generally vote against ESG shareholder activists.