This morning April 13th looks to be Give Back Monday as the stock futures are down here in the States but up in Europe as I write around 7:30 am ESDT. This is really not unexpected as the S&P 500 Index is at the top of its channel (2700 range) by my thinking and will pull back to the 2500 range and trade near term between these ranges

Howdy folks,
@FD1000 mentioned the revolution occurring in education. F2F to virtual. My Econ 101 Prof was so good they taped him in the early 80s and ran his tape for years. Why should I pay thousands in tuition when there's no classroom interaction. Even if I can video chat with the Prof it's not the same. Tuition needs to be cut by 50%. Oh, and scrap intercollegiate athletics once and for all and focus on education.
My huge fear on the k12 front is computers and internet access for all the kids. Damn, we already have to import educated workers and we have so many brilliant people that are simply not receiving the education. Another reason why we need universal education. A step in that direction would be to erase the interest and penalties on all the federal student loan debt. Have them pay off the principal.
And so it goes
Peace and Flatten the Curve
Rono

I worked over 35 in IT in several sectors and I can tell you there is still a lot to do and especially eliminating high paying jobs. Just think how many jobs were gone in investing where indexes, computers and simple to more sophisticated processes can do better LT.
Why a degree should cost that much? students who can learn via the internet, should pay a lot less. We can use the best professors to record the best courses, no need to use all these buildings from dorms to food courts, stadiums and more. We can cut faculty members and so on.
The last company I worked for ordered all the workers to work from home and they cut building rents from 4 floors to one floor. Most employees love it and saved on gas, clothes, driving time and work productivity went up.
We are just at the beginning of this process. Computers and robots will start taking away higher paying jobs.
Another idea that was implemented successfully only in a handful of companies. Cut your management by half. Managers are huge distraction and overhead by creating additional processes to justify themselves. Hire the best employees and pay them more. I have seen it so many times in IT, a great developer is cheaper than 2 mediocre ones and accomplishes more when you look at a project life cycle.
The stock market is looking months away, it's a pretty good indicator of the future. What we are seeing now is the above process speeding up. It exposes what are the real necessary jobs/businesses and what are not so much. CEOs are paying attention and will follow with it...unfortunately.

The entire investing world has been telling us to invest in short term bonds since the great recession. It pains me greatly to see how short term bonds have performed against long term bonds.
Of course I'm not invested in a fund that's returned 8% over 5, 10.5% over 10 and 8.5% over 15 years. Because I listen to reason and reason said if you owned long dated bonds in your portfolio then you are an idiot.
Well, fact of the matter is I AM an idiot, but for the exact opposite reason. As long as I do not invest in WHOSX, it will continue doing well.

It is hard to imagine a more backward conclusion than this. Who on earth does he think is offering active, non-transparent ETFs? Oh, yes, the mutual fund companies.
American Century, Fidelity, T. Rowe Price ... The mutual fund companies have faced two major impediments. One, an antiquated regulatory system designed in 1940 and periodically patched since then. That system imposes a series of direct and indirect expenses on OEFs (state registration fees and taxation of realized capital gains, e.g.) that ETF regulations do not. One fund company president who is looking to transition one of his smaller funds directly into a non-transparent ETF estimates that regulation and the fee structure for middlemen represent over half of all of the expenses his firm bears. Two, the "mutual funds are dinosaurs" mantra that caught on with the media, anxious for stories, and advisers anxious to "add value."
There are 656 ETFs that are three years old or less; dozens more were launched and liquidated or "repurposed" (the Drone ETF becoming the Cloud Economy ETF) in the same period. Of those 656, nearly 400 are no economically sustainable. That cutoff there, established by people who study ETF liquidations, is $30M AUM.
And whose funds are rolling in the cash? Looking just at these younger funds that have drawn $1B or more: JPMorgan, State Street, Vanguard, Deutsche, Franklin, BlackRock, Principal. Which is to say, old-line mutual fund companies. (As an aside, most also have a captive adviser workforce whose "recommended" list of ETFs are in-house products.)
Among the 25 largest newer ETFs, only two come from the upstart community: GraniteShares Gold (BAR) and GlobalX US Preferred (PFFD). Global X is owned by Mirae Asset, a Seoul-based firm that also owned Brown Brothers Harrison and the BBH Funds.
I don't know whether, a generation hence, PRWCX will be structured as an OEF under the '40 Act, an ETF under the Precidian Rule, both or neither. But I do know that the firms with the global reach, global recognition and multi-trillion asset bases that dominate the fund industry are more likely to cast the CNBC favorites of the world into deep shadow than vice versa.

This is what Marks said on March 3rd (link).
"These days, people have been asking me whether this is the time to buy. My answer is more nuanced: it’s probably a time to buy. There can be no unique time to buy that we can identify. The only thing we can be sure of today is that stock prices, for example, are a lot lower in the absolute than they were two weeks ago."
On March 3rd the SP500 was less than 7% down for year-to-date. Marks started buying way too early and what is known as falling knives. Marks claims that he is using intrinsic valuation, after just 7% drop for the longest bull market, how much intrinsic valuation can you find?
But my main problem that you will find anything you like in most of his memos. Do nothing, it's too expensive, buy now, prices can go lower/higher and many what ifs to cover any angle.
BTW, buying on the way down isn't recommended, IMO a better way if to start buying and keep buying only on the way up. When you buy lower and lower and the price goes down you will lose more money.
Do You realized that Marks hardly ever quantify his memos because when you do that you actually have to put the time and analyze the numbers :-)
I was trained from an early age at school that saying no isn't enough, you must come up with a good example or a solution. With that in mind, see below.
If you want to read great memos from a manager that actually manages money please read David R. Giroux who manages PRWCX. Giroux can invest in stocks + bonds and navigate market extremely well and why PRWCX performance for 3 thru 15 years is in the top 3%. The following (link) is PRWCX 12/31/2019 annual report. You will find so many specific ideas and additional numbers/estimates.

@davor, I have averaged in as well. I brought my equity allocation up to 43%/44% range and it is currently at 48% through growth from the recent stock market rebound. When it hits 49% I'll trim back to 47% by eliminating an equity position from my equity income sleeve most likely LCEAX. Currently, I'm positioning money on the income side of my portfolio. Perhaps, by the end of this quarter I plan to bubble at 10% cash, 45% income and 45% equity and ride from there into the 4th quarter. Once, I reach the 10/45/45 target asset allocation all income that the portfolio generates will go into the cash area of the portfolio. Currently, all income goes towards building the income area. In time, I plan to move back to my 20/40/40 allocation, in steps of course. But, right now, for me, Surf is Up so ride the wave that the FOMC & Treasury are currently making. But, don't throw caution to the wind either. What i'm doing is throttling my asset allocation to take advantage of current market conditions. I'm thinking most of the leverage money is now gone (or greatly reduced). I've been watching the money flow on SPY and it continues to be in an up trend. On March 6th my money feed in the barometer read 23. Today it reads 75. Can it cut the other way ... Absolutely.

@Old_Skeet OK. I understand. My personal uncertainty relates to the near term path the stock market will take before it resumes a long term upward trend (and from how low a point the rebuilding process will commence). The balance point in my portfolio is 55% stocks. As of today, I am at 54% due to some investing in stocks done on the initial trip down. As the uncertainty regarding the pandemic's duration has become clearer, my personal uncertainty about the stock market's near term path has increased. So, currently I am only investing 2% of my March cash reserve balance each week into stocks, bonds, or hybrids. Next week, that 2% will go into bond funds.

Here are a few recent episodes:
March 27th:

April 3rd:

April 10th:

A depressing as heck article. A few questions I have though are: The author discusses the real and expected unemployment numbers and compares them to the Great Depression, but he doesn’t ask about the duration of that unemployment or expected duration. There’s a huge difference between a 25% unemployment rate for three months and three years for instance and the impact that will have. How long will this scenario last is a vital question? Also, he doesn’t examine the nature of employment itself and how that’s changed since the Great Depression. Back then people had trades and jobs when they were working often for life, often in the same locale. Today we have a gig economy where Americans are used to switching jobs and relocating for work. How will that factor into the equation? Then there’s technology itself and how that’s changed our consumption patterns. Will Americans stop clicking Buy when it’s so easy even if the economy worsens? Also, regarding fiscal spending versus previous eras, I wonder how they would look if you inflation adjusted past spending, debt and GDP numbers?
@Charles

I had a neighbor once tell me that stocks had to go up because everybody's retirement depends on it.

The only thing is a significant percentage of Americans have little to no savings so this really isn’t true.

@FD1000

The price is always right

I don't think the price was always right when the market bid up Pets.com, Adelphia Communications, Enron, Worldcom, Washington Mutual, Lehman Brothers, tulip bulbs, etc. throughout history in past manias. But there are those who believe what you are saying. They're called efficient market theorists and would recommend only buying a total market index fund. I don't really understand, though, if you believe that, why you're posting on this board, which is devoted primarily to actively managed funds with managers who don't believe the price is always right. Those two philosophies--the price is always right or the price is often wrong and there are ways to get an edge on the market through active management--are incompatible. So if you don't mind my asking, why are you here?

The price over time is right as reflected in the SP500.
Sure, there is a way for managed funds but over LT the SP500 performance is better than most managed funds.
BTW, I have posted for years now that QQQ has been a better performer because the big high tech companies are winning so big.
The SP500 is also a global index and gets about 40% of its revenues from abroad. QQQ is even more global with about 50% of its revenue from abroad.

FXAIX didn't perform better because it didn't have a lower ER all these years. The main difference between me and others is that I supply numbers and not just narrative;-)

It would be very time consuming to find ER for previous years but from memory, Fidelity lowered ER for their index funds years ago to compete with VG.
From M*, for 5 years average annual as of (04/08/2020) [...]
It's a surprise that VOO with lower ER had lower performance than VFIAX

VOO is a bit of a distraction, because it introduces an additional layer of differentiation (ETF share class vs. OEF share class) and because its ER was lower by just 1 basis point for one year. Amortized over five years that amounts to nothing more than a rounding error. Still, it's good to see an acknowledgement that an S&P 500 index fund with a lower stated ER can have lower returns.
That's important because it puts lie to the statement that "FXAIX didn't perform better because it didn't have a lower ER". Certainly ERs affect relative returns, but they're not dispositive, especially when the magnitude of a difference between funds is small.
"It would be very time consuming to find ER for previous years." So sometimes you don't "supply numbers". That's okay. But you presented a numeric claim, viz. that FXAIX had a higher ER all these years, without checking the numbers. That calls into question numbers posted without citations and links.
VFINX ER from current prospectus and from 1998 prospectus
2019: 0.14%
2018: 0.14%
2017: 0.14%
2016: 0.14%
2015: 0.16%
2014: 0.17%
1999-2013: between 0.17% and 0.19% (interpolation)
1998: 0.19%
1997: 0.19%
1996: 0.20%
1995: 0.20%
1994: 0.19%
1993: 0.19%
1992: 0.19%
1991: 0.20%
1990: 0.22%
1989: 0.21%
1998: 0.22%
FXAIX (and predecessor fund) ERs from:
current prospectus [On July 1, 2016, FMR reduced the management fee ... from 0.025% to 0.015%],
2011 prospectus [On February 1, 2011, FMR reduced the management fee ... from 0.07% to 0.025% ],
2005 prospectus [Fund shares purchased prior to October 1, 2005 and not subsequently converted to Fidelity Advantage Class are deemed Investor Class shares]
2004 prospectus [Effective April 18, 1997, FMR has voluntarily agreed to reimburse the fund to the extent that total operating expenses ... exceed 0.19%.]
1997 prospectus (showing actual expenses for 1988-1996)
2019:       0.015%
2018:       0.015% (per 2019 note)
2017:       0.015% (per 2019 note)
2016:       0.020% (per 2019 note and averaging over half year)
2015:       0.025% (per 2011 note)
2014:       0.025% (per 2011 note)
2013:       0.025% (per 2011 note)
2012:       0.025% (per 2011 note)
2011:       0.025%
2006-2010: 0.070% (per 2011 note and 2005 prospectus showing YE 0.07% ER)
2005:       0.090% (per 2005 note, weighted avg of share class ERs)
1998-2004: 0.190% (per 2004 note)
1997:       0.190%
1996:       0.280%
1995:       0.280%
1994:       0.280%
1993:       0.280%
1992:       0.280%
1991:       0.280%
1990:       0.280%
1989:       0.280%
1988:       0.280%

As of market close April 9th, according to the metrics of Old_Skeet's stock market barometer, the S&P 500 Index is now at fair value with a reading of 153. This is in the midpoint range of the barometer's scale. This past week, the short volume average increased, a good bit, from 55% to 68% of the total volume for SPY. It seems, the shorts are betting against this rally. The VIX (which is a measure of volatility) fell and went from a reading of 45 to 41. This is good. During the shortened week the stock Index's valuation gained ground moving from a reading of 2489 to 2790 for a gain of 12.1%; but has a decline of 17.6% off it's 52 week high. However, it up 21% off its 52 week closing low of 2305. I'm thinking that we have seen most of the nearterm gains stocks have to offer and we move mostly sideways (with some upside) but within a trading range form here through summer. Let's hope these gains stick and the shorts get squeezed. The three best performing sectors this week were real estate, materials, and, financials.
From a yield perspective, I'm finding that the US10YrT is now listed at 0.73% while at the beginning of the year it was listed at 1.92%. With the recent stock market swoon the S&P 500 Index is currently listed with a dividend yield of 2.14% while at the beginning of the year it was listed at 1.82%. As you can see there is a yield advantage for the stock Index over the US Ten Year Treasury. With this yield advantage, for stocks, during the month of March I favored my domestic equity income funds over my fixed income funds for new money; and, I expaned this sleeve from four to six funds. My domestic equity income sleeve gained +8.7% for the week while my global equity income sleeve gained 7.4%.
Since, I now have more than a full allocation to equities, at 48%, I've now started to buy on the income side of my portfolio. Since, cash will likely pay very little, in the form of yield, I have changed my asset allocation. My new asset allocation is 10% cash, 45% income and 45% equity. This is to take advange of the nearterm rebound that bonds are expected to receive now that the Fed's have begun to buy bonds and just within the past few days they started to purchase in the high yield sector. My fixed income sleeve gained +2.8% for the week while my hybrid income sleeve gained +6.3%. Plus, bonds will pay more in the form of yield over my money market funds which gained +0.01% for the week. This equates to about a one half of one percent yield which is hardley enough to cover purchase loss due to inflation.
My three best performing funds for the week were PMDAX +14.9% ... FRINX +12.8% ... and, LPEFX +11.7%.
Thanks for stopping by and reading.
Take care ... be safe ... and, I wish all ... "Good Investing."
Old_Skeet
Please note: The next barometer report will be made at the end of the month unless there is a barometer reading change from fair value.

Why tech will continue to lead for decades to come. I worked in IT over 35 years in different sectors from retail, to banking, finance, mutual funds to healthcare. There is no way to stop this trend and it's getting faster. How long it took Walmart to be dominated? compare it to Amazon. BTW, Amazon is a tech company and I can argue that WM is one of the best retail companies because of its great IT for many years.
Value investing was easier years ago when a good manager can find undervalued companies under the radar but in a digital, global, free data world it's a lot harder. High tech squeezes every corner in every business. To acquire the next customer for high tech companies is very cheap, sometimes pennies because the infrastructure exists already and digital is very cheap compared to actual stores and humans.
Some sectors are harder to break such as banking and finance but even they have been going down by joining the big tech. How long can you deceive clients by promising them better performance when a computer is cheaper and better. You can transfer now money to any person in seconds for free, just several years ago you had to pay a commission and took several days.
There are always new upcoming tech companies and when they do something well they explode very quickly because 1-5% lower price for the same (sometimes better) service means a lot. You can see it on Amazon if one company offers the same product for $1 cheaper and if the service is good it will take a huge % of the market. A reasonable customer will always pay less.
Real estate is another slow sector that will be more computerized.
The only sector that holds steady is healthcare, it gets more expensive with no end in sight IMO. There is no way to solve the HC issue in the USA. We can start a new thread on this.

Interestingly, the SPDR Tech ETF, XLK, leaves out Amazon because I imagine Standard & Poor's categorizes it, foolishly in my view, as a retail or consumer stock, yet the SPDR tech sector ETF still crushes the S&P 500 without it. One can imagine how much more the tech ETF would've crushed the S&P 500 if Amazon was also included. VOOG does have a big chunk of Amazon with a 5.8% weighting. My thoughts on Amazon as a $1 trillion company is, A, how much bigger can it get, i.e., when does the law of large numbers kick in, and, B, what happens to its supply chains due to covid as well as the trade war and C, is there some young upstart company that could threaten its business in some way? Retail probably not, but cloud computing--that seems a more competitive space. Finally, is it possible regulators may eventually attack it for the monopoly it really is? It is a $1 trillion company with a trailing p-e ratio of 89 and a forward one of 69 when the long-term avaerage p-e for stocks is about 15. The response of analysts who've all become converts to the stock is that it will "grow into" that p-e ratio. Will it?

Here is a little more detail on the types of high yield bonds and about other financial products the Fed will now be buying:

In a move that surprised some investors, the central bank will also expand its bond-buying program to include debt that was investment-grade rated as of March 22 but was later downgraded to no lower than BB-, or three levels into high yield. It’ll also buy exchange-traded funds, the preponderance of which will track investment-grade debt along with some that track speculative-grade debt. Together, the programs will support as much as $850 billion in credit.
.....as well as fund the purchases of some types of......collateralized loan obligations and commercial mortgage-backed securities.

https://washingtonpost.com/business/on-small-business/fed-to-buy-junk-bonds-and-lend-to-states-in-fresh-virus-support/2020/04/09/1baf9420-7a60-11ea-a311-adb1344719a9_story.html

@davidrmoran Not only what VOOG excludes but includes. Without doing too deep a dive, VOOG has a 32% weighting in tech stocks. VOO has a 21% weighting. Although I don't think VOOG breaks out sectors like the S&P 500, the tech sector isolated by itself from the S&P 500 has dramatically outperformed it since 2009: https://morningstar.com/etfs/arcx/xlk/performance
I would imagine this tech effect would be even greater in VOOG because it probably only owns the growthiest tech names, not the loser ones like Hewlett Packard all those years, the one tech company value managers found attractive. VOOG, for instance, has almost double the weighting of Amazon of VOO. RPV's tech weighting is a mere 2.3% and its financials is 34%. As I said above, the real story here isn't really just a growth versus value one. It's a tech sector versus financial sector one. To the extent that tech stocks are overvalued as some like Netflix I would argue are, the value managers will win. To the extent the financial services sector gets disintermediated by the tech sector--talk for instance of Amazon managing money soon or other tech companies doing banking--than the growth sector will win. The past ten years have been about Amazon, Google, Microsoft, Facebook and Netflix ostensibly taking over the world. If you believe that trend continues, you go growth. If you don't, you go value or cash.

I still say: they should have instituted a 4 or 5-month rental / mortgage holiday.

@davidrmoran: if you are lazy, then I must surely be irredemiable. In any event, I do not have the time to pull those numbers either.
However, when I was younger and had more time (but less money to invest) I did a set of analyses comparing historical cumulative returns for domestic and global value and 60/40 balanced funds on successive rolling intervals, and found that a small (but reasonably-sized number, hidden in plain sight) set of actively-managed, value-tilting funds beat the market.
My familial background also instilled in me the practical wisdom of buying a dollar for $0.75. My academic and professional backgrounds have made me students of transience and hype, and thus suspect of markets and tautological arguments about rationality and invisible hands. I recall a classic series of articles appearing in the Administrative Science Quarterly ages ago which evaluated whether "the market" necessarily allowed the "best" ideas to survive (you can guess the conclusion, since I'm noting them here). LewisBraham's examples of the short and long term impact of extraordinary popular delusions are well known, and certainly strike a cord with me: I fear the madness of crowds. Even Adam Smith had his doubts! Certainly, if we wanted to get into politics we could question the notion as to whether "the market" or "voting machines" have produced the "best" political leadership for our country by any reasonable standard.
In any event, to each his or her own: that's what makes a market. You may end up benefitting from my ignorance in the immediate, near, and / or long run. In which case, you will be having a drink on me. In the interim, I have adopted a system for investing that is in accord with my values and experience. If it keeps me in the market, I surely benefit. And, ultimately, I'm always updating my prior.

Well, HYD up 5+% so far today.