FYI: The Dow Theory is still flashing a “sell” signal. Before this indicator can turn bullish again, the rally that has taken the Dow Jones Industrial Average almost straight up since its Dec. 24 low must end.
That’s why bullishly predisposed Dow Theorists should be hoping for a market pullback.
The Dow Theory is the oldest stock-market timing system in widespread use today. It was created by William Peter Hamilton, the editor of the Wall Street Journal in the first decades of the 20th Century. Its popularity is reason alone to pay close attention, since a buy signal presumably would unleash a wave of new buying in the stock market.
The Dow Theory is also worth following because its long-term track record is enviable. This has been confirmed not only by my Hulbert Financial Digest tracking of Dow Theory newsletters such as TheDowTheory.com (edited by Jack Schannep) and Dow Theory Forecasts (edited by Richard Moroney), but also by academic studies.
Though individual Dow Theorists disagree on the specifics of how to apply the Dow Theory in any particular situation, there is a broad consensus on what it takes to generate a buy signal:
Regards,
Ted
https://www.marketwatch.com/story/dow-needs-to-give-back-some-gains-before-stocks-see-another-big-leg-up-2019-01-25/print

https://247wallst.com/commodities-metals/2019/01/24/as-world-and-stock-markets-remain-very-dangerous-4-top-gold-stocks-to-buy-now/
By Lee Jackson January 24, 2019 8:25 am EST
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Very quietly, gold and the gold miners consistently have pushed higher. Though naysayers constantly bemoan the fact that the precious metal offers no earnings potential, it does offer a safe store of value and always has.
The SPDR Gold Shares ETF (NYSE: GLD) is up over 7% over the past four months, after being hammered for almost half of last year. For sure the massive fourth-quarter sell-off sparked some of the buying, but a cauldron of political issues at home, combined with trade conflicts and geopolitical hot-spots abroad, have kept investors nervous, and with good reason.

“What's in a name? that which we call a rose By any other name would smell as sweet.”
Or in this case, stink as much. One can slap a Merrill Edge name on Banc of America, it's still a bank brokerage, conceived by a bank, launched by a bank, and (re)branded by a bank, multiple times.
NCNB Securities (the NCNB is for North Carolina National Bank) was created in 1986. It was rebranded NationsBanc Securities (when NCNB rebranded itself NationsBank), then NationsBanc Discount Brokerage, then NationsBanc Investments. After NationsBank Merged with Bank of America, it took on the name Banc of America Investment Services.
https://www.bloomberg.com/research/stocks/private/snapshot.asp?privcapId=4662254
"On my ME tax forms, and likely on yours, it always says Merrill Lynch, ... That was all I meant".
You meant that a brokerage (now called Merrill Edge), attached to a bank since its creation in 1986 "was not ever supposed to be a 'brokerage attached to a bank'" because it was renamed after a formerly independent brokerage?
You conflated two different entities, Merrill Lynch and Merrill Edge. I suggest leaving it at that, especially since efforts to explain this away seem to make matters worse.
Consider your assertion that this "Merrill Lynch Pierce et alia ... goes back way far". This is both irrelevant and misleading. Irrelevant because it wouldn't matter how long Merrill Lynch was an independent brokerage, whether for a day or a century.
Misleading if not erroneous, because (check your own citation here), in your grandfather's 1950s, the brokerage was known as Merrill Lynch, Pierce, Fenner & Beane. Since then, it has been known as Merrill Lynch, Pierce, Fenner & Smith. A fact that I doubtless have known since university when a classmate of mine mentioned it to me.
Regarding documents from ME, my account statements say "MLPF&S". "S" as in "Smith." While I don't know what was on your grandfather's statements, it was certainly something different.

meh, of course I meant Merrill Lynch Pierce et alia, which goes back way far, as you doubtless know and which was as noted above agreed-acquired in famous Sept '08 and completed the next year.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Merrill_Lynch
That was the bfd, one of them, at the time, and BoA made much about it to existing customers.
On my ME tax forms, and likely on yours, it always says Merrill Lynch, the same as it did for my grandfather in the 1950s. That was all I meant.

https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/709364/000094937719000008/trf-rsm497.htm
497 1 trf-rsm497.htm
The Royce Fund
Supplement to the Investment, Service, and Institutional Class Shares Prospectus Dated May 1, 2018
Royce Special Equity Multi-Cap Fund
The Royce Fund’s Board of Trustees approved a plan of liquidation for Royce Special Equity Multi-Cap Fund, to be effective on February 25, 2019. The Fund is being liquidated primarily because it has not maintained assets at a sufficient level for it to be viable. As of December 17, 2018, the Fund was no longer offering its shares for purchase.
January 23, 2019
RSM-ISI-CLOSE
The Royce Fund
Supplement to the Consultant and R Class Shares Prospectus Dated May 1, 2018
Royce Special Equity Multi-Cap Fund
The Royce Fund’s Board of Trustees approved a plan of liquidation for Royce Special Equity Multi-Cap Fund, to be effective on February 25, 2019. The Fund is being liquidated primarily because it has not maintained assets at a sufficient level for it to be viable. As of December 17, 2018, the Fund was no longer offering its shares for purchase.
January 23, 2019
RSM-CR-CLOSE

FYI: When I tell people that Warren Buffett follows the 5-Hour Rule and spends 80% of his time reading and thinking, they have an immediate and predictable reaction: “Well, he can do that because he’s Warren Buffett, one of the richest people in the world. I could never do that.”
While this response may help people feel better about themselves, it certainly won’t make them smarter.
Because the reality is: Buffett has spent most of his time reading and thinking since he was in grade school. Having more money or managing a large company doesn’t magically give you free time.
Having free time is never the default. People don’t just fall into huge blocks of free time unless they retire. Rather, free time is the result of strategy. It’s the result of looking at time differently.
Regards,
Ted
https://medium.com/accelerated-intelligence/warren-buffett-really-successful-people-say-no-to-almost-everything-ab78832ffebc

@msf: I did look at VBIAX originally, knowing it could be purchased as admiral class. Since I already had 4 Vanguard Funds VDIGX, VPCCX, VIG, VOO, which account for about 25% of portfolio and the American fund similar in return with strong team, opted to go that route. VOO AND VDIGX are my two largest holdings by the way.

Vanguards balanced fund which is closed to new investors

Vanguard closed the Investor share class of its index funds to most retail investors because it lowered the min of the Admiral class shares for these funds to $3K.
Check out VBIAX. It's open at Fidelity (with a TF, as always there), and you can even get in for less - just $2500.

Conservative 30-50% balanced fund HBLAX, similar to VWINX, but avaiable NTF outside Vanguard.

@slick,
Why did you choose it over say JABAX?
(I am now aiming at DSEEX and PONAX 50/50 but always interested elsewhere.)

For a retirement account and if you are looking for around a 50/50 allocation, one part of Wellington to one part of Wellesley is nice.

Whether @hank intended it this way or not, I'll take his post to convey the message that while Shakespeare penned a marvelous piece of rhetoric in which praise for Caesar was "buried" in language that ostensibly condemned him, the cited article is neither brilliantly wordsmithed nor does it employ a rhetorical device as implied by its headline.
What it buries are inconvenient facts. Such as index funds costing as much as 0.50% around 1980 (the start of one of the time frames used). And the oft repeated fact that one cannot invest directly in an index.
A more important fact, IMHO, that it ignores is that the rise in the use of index funds (and index ETFs) coincides with their use in wrap accounts. Those accounts charge the same 1% that the article is criticizing.

Some of the finest lines in the English language:
Friends, Romans, countrymen, lend me your ears;
I come to bury Caesar, not to praise him.
The evil that men do lives after them;
The good is oft interred with their bones;
So let it be with Caesar.
The noble Brutus
Hath told you Caesar was ambitious:
If it were so, it was a grievous fault,
And grievously hath Caesar answer’d it.
Here, under leave of Brutus and the rest–
For Brutus is an honourable man;
So are they all, all honourable men–
Come I to speak in Caesar’s funeral.
Full text: https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/56968/speech-friends-romans-countrymen-lend-me-your-ears

Perhaps, this money movement is driven in good part due to electronic trading systems with their repositioning of "hot" money. It will be interesting to see if fourth quarter corporate earnings and forward revenue projections can continue to support (and perhaps lift) current stock prices. It will also be interesting to see where the "hot" money flows during this week and if the electronic trading systems continue to buy stocks or if they begin to sell "booking some profit" thus driving stock prices lower.
By the way ... Old_Skeet's stock market barometer that follows the S&P 500 Index based upon its metrics scores the Index as being in fair value on the barometer's scale as of Friday's market close of 1/18/2019. With this, I'm thinking earnings are going to have to surprise to the upside with strong forward revenue projections for the Index to continue to move higher and move through the technical resistance levels. Otherwise, stock market volatility will be back in vogue.
Have a great day ... and, I wish all "Good Investing."
Old_Skeet

RPSIX is not a bond fund - as I understand the term commonly to mean. Never has been. The Prospectus (at last check) allows the fund to commit anywhere from 5-25% of its assets to Price’s Equity and Income fund (PRFDX). If you don’t already know, the latter is a stock fund. Normally that commitment is in the 10-15% range. Additionally, RPSIX invests in HY, EM and international bond funds. Technically, those constitute various classes of bonds - but to lump that type of broadly (and aggressively) diversified bond portfolio under the heading “bond fund” is taking an awful lot of liberty with the term IMHO.
So what is RPSIX? It is a diversified income fund. Always has been. Probably always will be. I get questions re whether it’s a good investment. Hard to answer. Instead of looking at its (somewhat lackluster) chart, I prefer to look at the actual holdings and percentages committed to various underlying funds. If I like most of the holdings and can see how they strengthen my overall portfolio in some way, than I don’t give a hoot how the fund performed in the recent past.
Hope the author of this dubious article has been more accurate in attaching that “bond fund” label to the other funds he’s discussing. To read his headline / opening one would think the fund companies were trying to pull the wool over investors’ eyes. In the case of T. Rowe Price, anyway, that’s not the case.
Qualifier: When I looked at T. Rowe’s “Historical Performance” link, RPSIX did in fact surface under the category “Bond Funds.” I think it would be better placed under “Allocation Funds”. If the author only looked at the category list and didn’t bother to read the fund’s “Prospectus” - than I can see why he believed it to be a bond fund.
Here’s the link to that list: https://www.troweprice.com/personal-investing/mutual-funds/historical-performance.html

@hank: my great uncle (d. 1950's) owned a still-running GE refrigerator that was so old it earned him recognition from the company. I recall it sitting on legs an having a round refrigeration coil on top. It kept on running despite his demise.

Ah, the good old days before appliances were smart enough to retire themselves early.

FYI: Lipper’s fund asset groups (including both mutual funds and ETFs) experienced net outflows of $14.2 billion for the fund-flows trading week ended Wednesday, January 16. Money market funds (-$15.0 billion) were responsible for the majority of the net negative flows as investors put money back to work. Equity funds (-$4.4 billion) also contributed to the overall net outflows, while taxable bond funds and municipal debt funds had net inflows of $4.3 billion and $946 million, respectively.
Regards,
Ted

FYI: Some bond fund investors received an unpleasant surprise in the fourth quarter of 2018, when stock market losses stung their bond portfolios.
For the most part, meaningful equity stakes in bond funds are rare. Most bond fund managers stick to bonds, or hold only tiny positions in common stock that might come from a bankruptcy restructuring, or from the conversion to equity of a convertible bond. Of the 280-plus taxable-bond funds that we rate, about one in 10 held more than a couple of percentage points in stocks as of its most recent portfolio, and only a handful held more than a five-percentage-point stake.
Regards,
Ted
https://www.morningstar.com/articles/908355/are-there-stocks-in-your-bond-portfolio.html

@hank: my great uncle (d. 1950's) owned a still-running GE refrigerator that was so old it earned him recognition from the company. I recall it sitting on legs an having a round refrigeration coil on top. It kept on running despite his demise.

@slick, @Derf and @hank: Have no fear Old_Skeet still plans to maintain his 20% allocation to cash within his portfolio even though thus far this year cash has been a drag on my portfolio's performance as stocks rebounded from being extremely oversold during the recent stock market swoon.
As Derf noted many mutual funds still remain down for the rolling one year period including my current year-to-date leaders noted above. However, I have some funds that are up for the rolling one year period. My three fund leaders for the rolling one year period are Alger Small Cap Focus Fund (AOFAX) +18.42% ... Franklin Convertible Securities Fund (FISCX) +7.05% ... and, Fidelity Advisor Real Estate Income Fund (FRINX) +4.20% plus some others as well including my money market mutual funds.
Because of all the uncertainity that presently exist in the markets (and economy) I plan to continue to roll with my 20/40/40 well diversified "all weather" asset allocation as one can never tell where the electronic trading machines (hot money crowd) will next position as I am sure it might surprise.
Wishing all ... "Good Investing."
Old_Skeet