i Guys,
We think deeply and often talk about our strategies to outperform the various markets, but our success rates are close to dismal. No, I’m wrong! They are dismal. Only about 5% of us manage to win this challenging task! Why?
We underestimate the many factors that both influence the complex marketplace while we consistently overestimate our abililiries to evaluate them. That is a recipe for disaster, and disaster is indeed the common ending. It seems like the less I try to outplay this game, the better I do. These days I just ignore the daily predictions and their predictors. This works for me. Trying harder generates poorer outcomes for me. What works for you?
Here is a Link to an article with a few insightful and interesting comments and statistics.
https://www.aei.org/carpe-diem/more-evidence-that-its-really-hard-to-beat-the-market-over-time-95-of-finance-professionals-cant-do-it/
I especially liked the following paragraph:” Similarly, over the 15-year investment horizon, 92.43% of large-cap managers, 95.13% of mid-cap managers, and 97.70% of small-cap managers failed to outperform on a relative basis.“
I wish you all successful investing and realize the huge odds against that global outcome. We can’t all be winners.

Hi Guys,
We think deeply and often talk about our strategies to outperform the various markets, but our success rates are close to dismal. No, I’m wrong! They are dismal. Only about 5% of us manage to win this challenging task! Why?
We underestimate the many factors that both influence the complex marketplace while we consistently overestimate our abililiries to evaluate them. That is a recipe for disaster, and disaster is indeed the common ending. It seems like the less I try to outplay this game, the better I do. These days I just ignore the daily predictions and their predictors. This works for me. Trying harder generates poorer outcomes for me. What works for you?
Here is a Link to an article with a few insightful and interesting comments and statistics.
https://www.aei.org/carpe-diem/more-evidence-that-its-really-hard-to-beat-the-market-over-time-95-of-finance-professionals-cant-do-it/
I especially liked the following paragraph:” Similarly, over the 15-year investment horizon, 92.43% of large-cap managers, 95.13% of mid-cap managers, and 97.70% of small-cap managers failed to outperform on a relative basis.“
I wish you all successful investing and realize the huge odds against that global outcome. We can’t all be winners.

T. Rowe Price presented opportunities for 2021 on equities and bonds:

The financials and energy sectors could offer particularly attractive shorter‑term value opportunities in 2021, according to Giroux:
Financials: Steepening yield curves have improved net lending margins, and the reserves set aside to cover expected pandemic loan losses appear to be larger than needed, Giroux says. European banks appear especially cheap based on price/book value multiples, Thomson adds.
Energy: A broad collapse in capital spending should reduce excess oil and gas supplies, potentially supporting prices, Giroux predicts. An easing of the pandemic could boost travel in 2021, reviving demand. However, the longer‑term outlook for traditional fossil fuel producers remains challenged by renewables and regulatory pressures.

https://www.troweprice.com/financial-intermediary/be/en/thinking/articles/2020/q4/global-market-outlook-managing-other-side.html

PIMIX had a sizable drawdown in 2020, -11.3% and finally recovered for the year. So the risk aspect is higher than expected. Performance-wise the fund is way way too big and trailed other bond funds for last several years.
PRSNX had a smaller drawdown and recovered quicker. 2020 was a unusual year where the boring total bond index fund performed quite well. Will see how bonds will do this year with higher inflation, but Fed will keep rate flat for another year.

Although, I no longer post on the MFO board I still visit and read it. The last time hank visited was December of 2020. His extended absence gives me pause. With this, I'll be keeping him in my thoughts and prayers. Hopefully, he will be back soon. Skeet
Here is a link to the last post made by hank. https://mutualfundobserver.com/discuss/discussion/57465/which-of-these-2-funds-is-riskier-safer-over-the-next-1-3-years-dodfx-vs-dodix

Well I watched WAITING FOR SUPERMAN, so I guess I'm now allowed to state opinions again. It throws a ton of different issues into the air, so commenting intelligently on them would take as long as the documentary. While some may choose to disagree, I saw a lot of things which agreed with what I was saying: Kids who are willing to work hard have involved parents, and who operate under reasonable levels of discipline; self-applied or otherwise, are likely to be successful. Others will tend not be. Pretty much what I said going in.
Yes, there are systemic problems. Yes, not all teachers are 'good', work hard, etc; just like any other field. The film strongly implied that unions were a major problem. Is it worth my time to point out that many of the very worst state educational systems (per the documentary) do not have unions while some of the best do? Is it worth noting to anyone that my home district, and the one in which I taught for twenty years, was 50% minority, provided free lunch to a huge percentage of its population, and was famously the inspiration for the NY Magazine article "Welcome to Newburgh, Murder Capital of NY".
https://tcf.org/content/commentary/welcome-to-newburgh-murder-capital-of-new-york/?session=1
Yet despite all of this, Newburgh integrated its schools by being one of the first NY districts to institute 'magnet schools'. While there were initially parochial schools; in time, ALL kids attended the public schools in Newburgh. People didn't flee because discipline was enforced and the educational program was superior to anything around. It was not uncommon for the very best students to graduate with a year of college credit. In my senior year, out of a class of approximately 1000, we ended up graduating 850; not the 300 and something suggested by the SUPERMAN documentary. Many of those who did not graduate chose to drop out as soon as possible and go to work. This was especially a problem with the latino population.
Tenure is proclaimed to be a problem, and it can be in some cases...but...one has to ask why, after three years of observing, a district gets itself saddled with a poor teacher? Can part of the problem be poor administrator oversight? Or maybe good candidates don't grow on trees and districts have to take what they can get? Why would that be? As for getting rid of tenured teachers, the hitch seems to be that you have to document the problem, and that seems to be difficult for administrators to do (which comes back to that oversight issue).
And if kids are being "passed along" and the school "failing" as a result, it's not the teachers doing it. In these cases, they are instructed to pass the kid along. Why would unions have any effect on THAT? If you abdicate your responsibility, have no standards, refuse to accept failure or impose consequences, how could you possibly expect a favorable outcome? We absolutely need to fix the system and get good people in there, but there is no simple and painless fix.

@wxman123. Thanks much for sharing this one.. i wasnt aware of it. So Im curious what is your strategy for when you sell this fund? Its had a great run since November.

some detail
https://www.nytimes.com/2021/02/07/opinion/covid-biden-economy-stimulus.html

racq: "Thanks for the links; I'll take a look at the movie (documentary?)."
Yeah, documentary, like I said in my prior post...
The first was deeply dived into in the iconic, must see, 2010 documentary, Waiting for "Superman". Despite its critics, hard to express/expose the deep rooted issues and possible solutions any better than that.
https://www.imdb.com/title/tt1566648/
Pretty shocking to me that someone who made the previous post that you did, in which you stated
"David, if you're not a teacher (and have never been one?), you can't begin to argue the issue with any insight..."
is the same person who now states (in effect) he's not seen this landmark documentary.
So, allow me to say, please STOP posting anything else about this issue until YOU get up to speed on the now 10+ year old documentary that crystalized the US education system issues for the world.
BTW, I know probably 50 retired teachers and NONE of them has NOT seen this documentary. So you're the first.
This may all sound a bit "snarky" but here's the thing...I searched this thread for the one word that MUST appear in ANY discussion about the root problem(s) in order that I spend any real time on it. Amazingly, that word does NOT appear anywhere in this thread. If/when it does, I may engage in the discussion further.

I dont know if you can access this page from Bloomberg without a subscription but it addresses the equity duration issue less comprehensively in the context of bond duration as well
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2021-02-06/danger-lurks-in-global-markets-transfixed-by-rising-bond-yields?sref=OzMbRRMQ
"Equity duration is a bit trickier to grasp. Some use dividend yields to calculate how many years it will take to get one’s capital back without any dividend growth, with more time equating to higher duration -- broadly speaking, a lower dividend rate means a higher duration."

To add to my prior post, I would suggest the first couple on my list (if you're interested in it) to look at closely for your stated purpose of diversification would be PTIAX and one of the HY munis. They will however NOT get you the global exposure you seek, but they will give you diversification.
Note that World bond and/or EM bond funds can be VERY difficult categories to do well in. I tend to get my little bit of foreign bonds via other bond bonds, NOT a dedicated World bond fund. DODLX, cousin to DODIX(?), may be one of your best options there.
https://fundresearch.fidelity.com/fund-screener/results/table/overview/averageAnnualReturnsYear3/desc/1?assetClass=TBND&category=IB,EB,XP,WH&mStarRating=4,5&ntf=&order=fundType,ntf,mStarRating

I'm confused by what is being debated here.
It seems that some may be concentrating on how to solve the BIG, LT education system issues, while others may be concentrating on the immediate, urgent need to address the issues of reopening schools due to COVID. I dunno, bit I do know my head hurts trying to determine that.
If so, I suggest that these are TWO vastly different issues and debates that, though not mutually exclusive, should be debated separately.
The first was deeply dived into in the iconic, must see, 2010 documentary, Waiting for "Superman". Despite its critics, hard to express/expose the deep rooted issues and possible solutions any better than that.
https://www.imdb.com/title/tt1566648/
The second is chronicled pretty nicely here:
https://www.future-ed.org/what-congressional-covid-funding-means-for-k-12-schools/
I do NOT want to get into this debate any further than to suggest reading that link and understanding that the bulk of the "money being thrown at the problem" in the next stimulus bill is primarily to combat the unique issues related to COVID, and IMO, essential to solving those issues. Solving the deep rooted education system issues is a whole 'nother story, and one that the average person who is/was NOT a teacher (or have a bio akin to mine), may not be fully aware of had they not watched the referenced documentary.

Crash asserted nonsense and I called him on it with substantiation. Then he started handwaving about a just society but calling for more flunking of kids.
Whatever.
Racqueteer, this may not be the best month to trot out the tired bootstraps argument yet again. It does remain perennially popular among some of us nonminority types, and even among some minorities too. Why can't everyone be like the Jews and the Asians and others similarly situated? What racism? What structural inequality?
As for my career, I have been a teen worker, HS teacher, university TA, and most recently sometime HS coach and sub. Also parent and grandparent. Also married to an elem-schoolteacher for a decade. I do know the gut feeling of being in a difficult classroom. It all can be very discouraging, not to say difficult to have insights about.
But I know that this is pernicious crap at the talk-radio level: 'You can't solve real, significant problems --- not at the root --- by throwing money at those problems.'

The problem, to me, with BOTH sides is the unwillingness to bend from some absolutist stance. To my way of thinking, everyone is entitled to a fair chance. That may entail more help to some individuals than others. Ultimately, however, good intentions aside, I can't MAKE someone do what is necessary to be successful. And, like the reality or not, the society in which one lives has a huge impact on the outcome. Money is almost certainly an issue, but attitude on ALL sides is as well. "Throwing money" at a problem isn't the same thing as properly funding productive strategies. If we as a society were actually serious about the issue, we'd have better pay in hard to staff districts than in affluent ones. We have just the opposite. Further, it would be more 'help' to struggling students to have classrooms which are orderly (disciplined) than not.
Having spent almost 30 years teaching mostly chemistry and physics in a heavily minority district, I know that I was drawing my classes from about half the population. Even THAT population was underperforming its potential; a situation which became WORSE over my career, Discipline issues became a greater and greater issue as time went by; since the schools didn't want to have 'bad statistics'. This despite the fact that, in a class of 1,000 students, there were probably only a dozen kids accounting for 75% of the serious instances. Instead of controlling THOSE kids, 'we' lightened up on enforcement and the problem spread.
I don't want ANY kids to fail, but the reality is that, if you set standards, SOME will not meet them. The 'solution' isn't to lower the standards so that EVERYONE 'succeeds'. If you don't end up actually KNOWING anything, how is that 'succeeding'? Anyway, by all means, make it possible TO succeed, but don't expect that you can make everyone DO it.

ITCSX is open at Schwab No load /with a fee - annual returns going back ten years within .05 -.15 basis points below PRWCX - Most likely as a result of the slightly higher ER .

I always just used to think of Santoli as the guy who interviewed Art Cashin, but it seems as though Art's wisdom is now more frequently coming through him, as Art's air time dwindles. Here's a worthy take of his on the current state of the markets. YMMV.
https://www.cnbc.com/2021/02/06/mike-santoli-handicapping-the-markets-upside-from-here.html

There is little accountability for stock market predictions.
Wrong predictions from individuals or firms are often forgotten in the future.
Here's a little context.
Link1
Link2
“Nearly everyone interested in common stocks wants to be told by someone else what he thinks the market is going to do. The demand being there, it must be supplied.”
-Benjamin Graham

Thanks for posting this, Observant1 - the first link, especially, is a thorough study of faulty predictions both positive and negative. As they say - nobody knows.

I never listen to any predictions. As a trader I only pay attention to prices, charts and trends lately and NOW. They tell me in real time what the market is doing. In the last 10 years I was invested at 99+% of my money at 97% of the time. The key for me is to invest all my money all the time and no cash, BUT, when risk is high to be in a high % of cash for days to several weeks.

FD! Out of curiosity, you say you are invested 97% of the time - but not always in stocks, right? When you say the “market” it’s any and all markets, isn’t it? I’m not judging, just looking for clarity.

There is one option available to some to get into PRWCX: rollover part or all of a 401k to TRP and they’ll let you invest your rollover in their closed funds. You’ll then have an IRA invested in PRWCX.
You can transfer assets to/from an existing IRA to increase your investment. To take it a step further, (I haven’t done this but a Fido rep didn’t see a problem with it) if you want to invest outside your IRA, you can do an in-kind distribution of as little as one share (paying any applicable taxes/penalties) to a taxable account.

Feb 5th, 2021 episode:
RYSEX is ranked #58th by US NEWS (Vanguard Funds are ranked #1,2,&3):
https://money.usnews.com/funds/search?category=small-value

Also, @FD1000 might better explain SVARX (ER around 3%).