ytd VONE + STIP 50-50 = ½ x 25.48% + ½ x 5.38% = 15.43%.
That would not be the best way to do the calculation since the lack of rebalancing implicit in the arithmetic would see the equity allocation drift up toward:1.2548/(1.2548 + 1.0538) = 54%.
Still, that's well below FBALX's 72%. (M*'s analysis says that it average a 2/3 allocation to equity and that the current 72% is its high point.)
Here's a better approximation using Portfolio Visualizer, taking a 70/30 VONE/STIP portfolio, rebalancing monthly, and comparing it to FBALX.
The index fund blend had a comparable std dev (8.04% vs 8.06%), and a worse max drawdown (-3.21% vs. -3.07%). But it did noticeably better when it came to raw performance (16.56% vs 14.80%), Sharpe ratio (2.12 vs 1.91) and Sortino ratio (4.87 vs. 4.29).
Based on AUM, the most popular moderate allocation fund is American Funds American Balanced, once one adds up the assets in its 19(!) different share classes. At $223B, no other fund is on the same planet. The runner up, if one wants to call it that, is Wellington (VWELX / VWENX), half the size at $123B. Then comes Vanguard's index entry, VBIAX, half again as large at $60B, and then PRWCX at $53B.
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From the M* piece Yogi quoted:
" So, if you're investing for something six, 12, even 18 months from now, a 60/40 is probably a little too volatile for that."
Something that IMHO is key here is that these days the bonds are almost exclusively for ballast (dead weight to temper volatility) and just a smidgen of yield above MMFs over time. The less ballast, the longer one should expect to hold the fund. Currently I'm taking a little money off the table (something I rarely do, but equities have grown to be just too large a portion of my portfolio), so I've been looking at 50/50 funds. That's consistent with the M* quote, since I'm thinking of these as a place for cash for 12 or 18 months out.
The quote also brings to mind what I once read in literature from the former Strong Advantage fund STADX, renamed Strong Ultra Short, and then acquired by Wells Fargo. (From the frying pan into the fire?). That this fund (which was on the aggressive end of its category, with a fair amount of mid and low grade holdings) should not be used for money needed within the next year, but was better suited for money to be used in 1-2 years.

+1 to what @MikeM said. The emergency fund is not necessary unless for the sole purpose of teaching him a good principal. This also assumes that college is paid for as the best investment he can make is in himself and his future earning potential.

If this money is for retirement and not for a home or family in the next 10 years, the Roth is the best idea hands down.
I think if I was starting out and had 1 investment to start with, I would just buy QQQ and don't worry about diversification at that young age. Technology was a great investment 40 years ago, 20 years ago, 10 years ago and no reason to think differently in the future.
And I can't for the life of me think why a senior in high school whose only obligation for the next 4-5 years is to concentrate on a college degree, and being an only child with parents having good jobs as you described would ever need an emergency fund. It's not like he has to worry about losing his job and have to pay the families bills. This may be the best time of his life to invest as much as possible for the future without having other life-obligations that will certainly come in the future.
I'm very impressed with this young man wanting to understand finance at this young age.

I got a couple of my kids started when they were young, using UGTMs. They are adults now, so they have the accounts. With a relatively small pie to start with, I found it necessary to find MFs with low initial investment limits. If your grandson is ready to have a brokerage account and learns how to trade, the idea from yogi to use ETFs is perfect. One of my kids still has VIG that has appreciated nicely over the years. My inclination is towards a global growth fund, or at least a fund that has some international exposure. APFDX ($1K min) or BWBFX ($100 min) for global growth, AKREX for primarily US exposure. Many funds lower the starting minimum if the holder uses an Automatic Investment Plan. That strikes me as a good option for a new investor.

He should open a brokerage account(s) at Fido or Schwab.
With earned income, he should start Roth IRA.
In taxable account, he can use a total stock market fund (OEF or ETF) for now. He may also want to buy some stocks that he may be familiar with (GOOGL, DIS, MSFT, etc).
He can put some money into I-Bonds so long as the rates remain high (current 7.12% until May 1). A Treasury Direct account would be required.
Smart kid taking personal finance elective.

Howdy folks,
I could use your help. My grandson is an 18 yo senior in high school. He has a part time job and probably a few thousand in his savings account. At Christmas he asked me how he could start investing. Seems he's taking a Personal Finance elective in school. He stated that he wanted to be able to retire both early and well financially. His parents and grandparents have saved for his college and his parents are both only children. His other grandpa was in investment banker and his mom is currently a bank VP. I'm the dumb one of the bunch. He and his dad and I have already discussed starting with an Emergency Fund. How do you discount that for a kid living at home?!? Otherwise, he was good with having $1,000 to start some sort of investment.
What are your thoughts and suggestions? Roth? Where? How?
And realize that I plan to share this discussion link with him.
Thanks so much,
And so it goes,
Peace and wear the damn mask,
rono

@gk3105gklm Thanks for mentioning some "new players". I'm at YE and looking at my SC underperformers - MSSMX and WAMCX and reviewing WAMVX DVSMX CSMVX and during this exercise - throwing a few ETF's in the mix: RWJ IJT SLYJG and XSHQ
Edit Add: Latest Kiplinger (best ETF's for 2022) lists CALF as a SC Value recommendation along with DEEP . Both are up quite a bit YTD: CALF +43% and DEEP +38.94

@Sven ...my portfolio consists of 10% cash and FI holdings, 21% equity OEFs, and the balance being individual stock holdings along with CEFs and 2 ETFs (SCHD and DIVO). That last portion generates divi's of 4.5%. That, plus prudent fund profit taking generates sufficient cash for me.
I understand that bonds are (were) effective ballast, but I think a few high quality healthcare or utility stocks (or even banks) serve the same function. That bull market in bonds we had for the past 30 years was pretty nice, but I see nothing conservative in bond purchases at present.

So slow! Even Bloomberg has ditched most of their regular programming for the week. Mainly two old dudes gabbing all day (normal market tickers displayed of course). Some stale old recorded interviews. Will need to wait until January to get my regular fix.
But nothing stops these crazy averages from advancing. Interesting commentary in Barron’s this week by a regular contributor, Steven M. Sears. Equates the current red-hot futures markets with a gambling casino.
“The Options Market is Now a Casino” - You might be able to view once without subscription - depending on browser. https://www.barrons.com/articles/the-options-market-is-now-a-casino-heres-how-to-bet-wisely-51640165403

@gmarceau : By loaded up ,from your post, more than 5% of your portfolio ?
I bought a toe hold , less than 1% of my portfolio in GPGEX. It's nice to get in on the ground floor, but some worthy question have been ask about this new addition by the MFO community . The limited AUM was good news to hear.
Enjoy the ride, Derf

It’s been mainly value for me with a bit of growth just to participate and scratch the itch. 2020 was a fun ride for tech, but I left it in Sept and spent the majority of time in DODGX through my 401k and some other value based funds in a couple IRAs - MXXVX, PARWX, DHPAX, LZFOX. I have had some GPGCX and recently decided to load up on GPGEX as my main world stock fund. I don’t see another wild tech rally for a while outside from some IPOs in the next year that keep up their sales numbers.

Performance YTD of some popular Multi-Asset Funds:
50-70% Equity
VWELX 18.28
FBALX 17.74
FMSDX 17.02
JABAX 16.45
ETNMX 14.81
PAXWX 14.45
SWOBX 14.23
VLAAX 10.68
30-50% Equity
TAIFX 11.67
VWINX 7.71
MACFX 7.23
BAICX 6.34
OICAX 5.92
MTRAX 9.06
Much has already been discussed about the difference/similarities between "Balanced
and Multi-Asset".

https://www.morningstar.com/articles/1073089/how-did-the-6040-portfolio-do-in-2021
"'The reports of my death are greatly exaggerated,' says the asset-allocation standard.....through the end of November, the 60/40 has returned about 15%, and I'm using just a generic stock and bond 60/40 portfolio for an example here. So, about 15%. And so, real return after you adjust for inflation, even with high inflation, that's about an 8% real return, which is pretty great. I looked at the rolling 12-month real returns for the 60/40 since 2000. The median over that last 21 years is about 7.5%. So, it's actually outperformed its median real return over that time period. So, even though all this doom and gloom came true, it didn't derail the 60/40.....I think it's definitely not something for a short-term investment. With 60% stocks, you're going to have volatility. You could have drawdowns. In 2008, 2020 drawdowns were a little north of 20%. So, that's your downside risk. So, if you're investing for something six, 12, even 18 months from now, a 60/40 is probably a little too volatile for that. But I think if you have a long time horizon, it's a very good starting point, and it's proven very difficult to beat because the stocks and bonds, when it's like an investment-grade bond portfolio, really balance each other out nicely. And unless that correlation between those two really significantly changes, which it's hard to see how it would, though it could over shorter periods, I think it's a really good long-term investment, and it's definitely been a very hard benchmark to beat....."
And for those who want to venture out some more, look at evolving MULT-ASSET funds that include stocks-bonds-alternatives in the mix.

+1

I have copied a link to Kiplinger's presentation of ETF suggestions for the coming year. Several of the funds listed have had a least some mention on MFO. I was struck by the wide variety of funds discussed, many of which are very small and might well be considered speculative. Among the biggies are VOO, VYM, QUAL, and VDE; while some really small ones also make the list: DEEP and LRNZ are tiny. I have profitably owned the small-cap CALF, now at $400M AUM. PAVE gets a favorable write-up as do several other sector funds. Bond and income vehicles are well represented. The article takes a bit of a shotgun approach that may reflect the diversity of the ETF universe and the writer's desire to cover a lot of bases. Fortunately it's an article which can be read via scrolling as opposed to many K articles that require searching for a "next" button among the ads.
https://www.kiplinger.com/investing/etfs/603977/the-22-best-etfs-to-buy-for-a-prosperous-2022?rmrecid=1884004435&utm_medium=email

Actively managed ETFs have lower expense ratios and broader distribution than similar OEFs.
Fund firms launched active ETFs in an attempt to better compete against (gain AUM) passive ETFs.
There were 2,688 ETFs available to U.S. investors as of Nov. 24, 2021.
However, the largest 100 ETFs accounted for nearly 70% of the $7T total invested in ETFs.
This year, Vanguard Total Stock Market (VTI) received $40B of net inflows through Nov. which
constituted 5% of all ETF inflows.

I believe that 2022 will end higher than 2021 concludes, but it certainly won't be a smooth ride. It should be volatile during the first half of the year particularly.
With only a few exceptions, none of my year-end OEF distributions were reinvested. In early January I plan to trim 25% from a few individual stocks which ran up nicely the past 2 or 3 years. I plan to put the sum of these dollars into NVHAX, FRA and FRFZX, and then when the FED moves and the market vomits in response, I'll move that into a few holdings geared towards increasing my dividend income to include RQI, BME, EVT, DIVO, FLC, JPS and possibly ETNHX to make up for a down 2021. Other than floaters and preferreds, I have no conventional bond funds.

It’s nice not to be paying a 4%+ front load as I was with Templeton thru our only workplace option in the 70s. We accepted that as normal. Indeed, we were assured that the same fund(s) if purchased outside our privileged workplace plan would have cost us something like 7% in front-end fees.
The rapid growth of ETFs I guess is passé by now. But the advent of actively managed ETFs adds a new wrinkle - and perhaps complicates the cost analysis factor. I’d guess actively managed ETFs cost less on average less than their mutual fund cousins and can’t help wondering whether the added expense of mutual funds is justified.

From latest Barron’s -
“We're closing out another banner year for the fund industry, which has seen record asset flows …
Exchange-traded funds continued their momentum, gathering more than $900 billion of new money with two weeks left in the year, crushing last year's record of $500 billion in net inflows. Nearly 450 new ETFs were launched this past year …
“The ETF industry has grown to $7 trillion—still smaller than the $20 trillion in mutual funds, but the catchup seems inevitable. This year, we saw the first-ever conversion from mutual fund to ETF—first from Guinness Atkinson and Dimensional Fund Advisors, followed by JPMorgan and Franklin Templeton announcing similar plans for 2022. Yet in at least one way, the ETF industry is looking more and more like the mutual fund industry: It is embracing active management.”
“What the Future Holds for ETFs” / By Evie Liu
Barron’s - December 27, 2021

What Type Of Retirement Spender Will You Be?

One final study should be considered to help shed light on retirement spending patterns and which default assumptions could be appropriate for different types of retirees. In August 2015, J.P. Morgan Asset Management released a study about retirement spending by Katherine Roy and Sharon Carson.
Their dataset provides a “big data” analysis of 613,000 U.S. households led by people fifty-five or older who were estimated by the researchers to have managed most of their household finances through banking services at Chase (debit and credit cards, pay mortgages through bank account, etc.).
In analyzing the expenditures for their diverse consumer base, they identified four retirement spending profiles and an additional category of miscellaneous individuals. These are the profiles they found

https://retirementresearcher.com/type-retirement-spender-will/

I feel that the perceived decline in fund fees is largely illusory once one controls for: payment to advisors (which has been externalized, moving the source from 12b-1 fees and loads out of the funds to separate wrap fees); the increase in the relative number of index funds (which reduces the industry average cost but not the cost of each fund); the belated rotation by investors from higher cost funds to lower cost funds (thus reducing the dollar weighted industry average cost).
The ICI writes: "The decline in the average expense ratios of equity, hybrid, and bond mutual funds in 2020 primarily reflects a long-running shift by investors toward lower-cost funds or fund share classes."
https://www.ici.org/system/files/attachments/pdf/per27-03.pdf
To a lesser extent, there have been cost reductions due to economies of scale. That's a double edged sword, as larger funds have less agility and less ability to take advantage of small opportunities.
Certainly index fund costs have come down and for them agility is not a key concern. And the ability to invest in lower cost institutional class shares albeit with transaction fees, is a fairly recent improvement.
But if costs have come down so much, why don't we see more fund companies like American Funds or D&C focused on low cost funds? For example, in 1992, the ER of FCNTX was (per prospectus) 0.87%%. That was with around $6B in assets. Thanks to economies of scale - the fund now has $146B in assets - the ER has dropped to .... 0.86% (from Fidelity's current page for the fund).