From ProPublica:

Using stock deals unavailable to most people, Thiel has taken a retirement account worth less than $2,000 in 1999 and spun it into a $5 billion windfall. To put that into perspective, here’s how much the average Roth was worth at the end of 2018: $39,108.

https://www.propublica.org/article/lord-of-the-roths-how-tech-mogul-peter-thiel-turned-a-retirement-account-for-the-middle-class-into-a-5-billion-dollar-tax-free-piggy-bank
To put that into a different perspective, Romney's (traditional) IRA, disclosed as a 2012 presidential candidate, was valued at "merely" between $20.7 million and $101.6 million.
https://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-campaign-romney-ira/how-did-romneys-ira-grow-so-big-idUSTRE80N04E20120124
This is just so far over the top that I'm not going to offer any other quotes or comments. The figures speak for themselves, and the legislative proposals seem to be as expected.
https://www.wsj.com/articles/what-peter-thiels-roth-ira-means-for-yours-11625218209
WSJ: What Peter Thiel’s Roth IRA Means for Yours

It is understood that investing overseas has its inherent geopolitical risk. Given the worsening political climate between China and US since the Trump administration, we have reduced our exposure especially to China substantially after profited nicely in the last 10 years. Biden just signed an executive order to delist a number of Chinese companies from US stock exchanges that are considered doing business to benefit Chinese military.
Alibaba situation in spring should be a warning indicating the communist party is tightening its control of their private business. Jack Ma disappeared from the public for several months. Many suspected he was house-arrest until he behaves properly, i.e. no more bad mouthing of the communist party in the public. Chinese tech companies like to list themselves in the “rich” foreign stock exchanges. I believe Didi situation is the early sign of not so pleasant things to come.

One of a whole bunch (aka all) of the James Alpha funds
https://www.mutualfundobserver.com/2021/06/briefly-noted-58/
Aug 4, 2020 (Business Wire)
https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20200804005968/en/Easterly-Announces-Investment-in-James-Alpha-Advisors

-Easterly, an asset management holding company that owns stakes in third-party investment management businesses and assists them with strategic growth, announced today it has acquired an equity interest in James Alpha Advisors, LLC, a boutique asset management firm specializing in Global REITs and liquid alternative portfolio solutions for institutional and individual investors. ...
As a result of the investment, Easterly has assumed operational control of the firm. ...
[Darrell Crate, Easterly’s Managing Principal] helped to build an asset management powerhouse as Chief Financial Officer of Affiliated Managers Group (NYSE: AMG), established Easterly in 2009...

Which seems to bring us back to the thread AMG to Acquire Parnassus Funds:
https://mutualfundobserver.com/discuss/discussion/58434/amg-to-acquire-parnassus-funds

The path was a little more messy.
Rochedale Emerging Markets Portfolio, starting on Dec 11, 2011. It was reorganized into City National Rochedale Emerging Markets Fund on April 1, 2013.
It has been managed since inception by Anindya Chatterjee. On Dec 1, 2017 he (and the rest of his management team) moved to Fiera Capital, which the fund hired as subadvisor. The transaction completed on Jun 4, 2018 when Fiera Capital took over the entire fund, forming Fiera Capital Emerging Markets Fund.
https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/1026977/000139834417015414/fp0029454_497.htm
Chatterjee formed Sunbridge Capital Partners LLC in February 2021. The Sunbridge is acquiring Fiera Capital Emerging Markets fund and Chatterjee will continue managing it. Hence the name change.
This is all inconsequential to fund investors. I checked only because name changes like this one often indicate restructurings/acquisitions.

https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/1587982/000139834421014182/fp0066396_497k.htm
has new name, Sunbridge Capital Emerging Markets Fund, and other changes.

https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/1829774/000158064221003069/jaftglobalrealestate497s.htm
to Easterly Global Real Estate Fund

Should You Invest in Chinese Companies After China’s Didi Crackdown?
Regulators pounced on China’s biggest ride-hailing company after its U.S. IPO, raising questions about the risks retail investors face.
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2021-07-06/didi-stock-should-you-invest-in-chinese-tech-companies-after-crackdown
By Claire Ballentine
July 6, 2021, 6:54 PM CDT
Updated on July 7, 2021, 7:32 AM CDT
Didi Plunges Below IPO Price as China Cracks Down on Tech
Unmute
Didi Plunges Below IPO Price as China Cracks Down on Tech
The Chinese version of Uber had just started trading in the U.S. when regulators in Beijing stepped in and all but halted growth in its biggest market.
The actions that China’s cyberspace regulator took this week against Didi Global Inc. — in the name of domestic security — complicated the picture for investors betting on the country’s tech giants. Didi’s share price fell as much as 25% on Monday before paring some losses.
Last week, Didi pulled off the second-largest U.S. initial public offering for a Chinese firm, raising $4.4 billion in U.S. dollars. It had an initial 29% pop but then fell again, ending the day 1% above the IPO price with a market value of $68 billion. It’s not a household name in the U.S. yet, but Didi is ubiquitous in China.
Didi’s not the first Chinese tech giant to run afoul of regulators. In November, China pulled the Ant Group Co.’s Hong Kong listing, and soon after that, shares of Chinese tech companies fell globally out of concerns about tougher rules. Then in April, China fined Alibaba Group Holding Ltd. after a speedy investigation. Now, Beijing is planning to tighten rules in a way that would allow them to block Chinese companies from listing overseas, according to people familiar with the matter. That could potentially prevent giant firms such as ByteDance Ltd. from selling shares outside China.
The short answers maybe yes for long terms
I am buying more Etf (eem fxi mathewAsia funds)
instead of individual private stocks

Kiplinger's website is easily the most irritating page to wander around. The ad volume easily triples or quadruples the volume of their intended message content. By the time I finished the article I felt like I needed a shower. Their #1 pick which I bought a few weeks ago is already up over 100% YTD (not for me) so I'm not sure how much gas is left in that tank.

https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/896975/000119312521210622/d153325d497.htm
497 1 d153325d497.htm TWEEDY, BROWNE FUND INC.
TWEEDY, BROWNE FUND INC.
TWEEDY, BROWNE GLOBAL VALUE FUND
TWEEDY, BROWNE GLOBAL VALUE FUND II - CURRENCY UNHEDGED
(each, a “Fund” and, collectively, the “Funds”)
Supplement dated July 8, 2021
to the Prospectus (“Prospectus”) and Statement of Additional Information (“SAI”) dated July 29, 2020, each as supplemented or amended to date
Effective July 29, 2021, the Tweedy, Browne Global Value Fund and Tweedy, Browne Global Value Fund II – Currency Unhedged will change their names to “Tweedy, Browne International Value Fund” and “Tweedy, Browne International Value Fund II – Currency Unhedged,” respectively.
Accordingly, effective July 29, 2021, all references to Tweedy, Browne Global Value Fund in the Prospectus and SAI shall be deemed to be references to Tweedy, Browne International Value Fund, and all references to Tweedy, Browne Global Value Fund II – Currency Unhedged shall be deemed to be references to Tweedy, Browne International Value Fund II – Currency Unhedged.
There are no changes to the Funds’ investment policies or other features, and the Funds’ CUSIP numbers and ticker symbols will remain unchanged.
The Funds have always been managed as international vehicles. Tweedy, Browne and the Funds’ board of directors believe that the change of the term “Global” to “International” in each Fund’s name better reflects the composition of the Fund’s portfolio, given that each Fund invests primarily in foreign equity securities.
This Supplement should be retained with your Prospectus and SAI for future reference.
TWB-Sup-July 2021-1

In making these comparisons there are a few factors to keep in mind, for good or for bad ...
I believe Vanguard's portfolios are age dependent. That is, they follow glide paths. So depending on age, one person's "aggressive" portfolio could be another person's "moderate" portfolio, even if both are at Vanguard.
The model portfolio you provided is about 65/35 (okay, technically 64/36) according to M*'s instant X-ray. PRWCX is closer to 70% equity, counting 62½% domestic, 1½% foreign and 4½% misc. equity. Similarly, VWELX is nominally 70/30.
Vanguard likes to base allocations on market cap. In the domestic/foreign mix it does admit to a home town bias, shooting for a 60/40 mix (vs. the real world 55/45) if I recall correctly. The actual model portfolio is 67/33. Still, that is is a far cry from PRWCX's 97/3 and somewhat more foreign than VWELX's 88/12.
VWELX and Vanguard's portfolio have virtually identical standard deviations and VWELX had a worse max monthly drawdown ( 14.09% vs. 13.24%), though its worst calendar year wasn't as bad as Vanguard's (down 3.42% vs 4.65%).
PRWCX had a worse standard deviation than Vanguard's portfolio and a worse max drawdown, though it did have a significantly better worst calendar year than Vanguard did, up 0.62% vs down 4.65%.
I didn't mention Sharpe and Sortino ratios because these are measures of risk adjusted performance, not of risk alone. Based on the risk metrics (volatility, drawdown, worst year), I'm not inclined to say that PRWCX and VWELX showed less risk. But what one considers risk and how one measures it is largely personal.

Hi, guys.
Sorry for the long absence. I think the Semper + Brentview launch was a sort of "kindred souls" thing. I spoke at length to the guys involved and they seemed very much united in their view of each other and their relations with the investor community. Not sure that it's part of any larger plan, fyi.
Three things.
(1) on younger / more aggressive investors: you'd want to separate the monthly issue from the board discussions and, within the monthly issue, the commentary pieces from the fund profiles. My commentaries generally do have a fair risk-consciousness but a bunch of the profiled funds at nearly 100% equities and often in higher risk / higher return segments (EM value or microcaps). Even within those spaces, I tend to have more respect for managers who'd prefer not to impoverish you, since some people react poorly to losing 60% of the their money.
I did, by the way, try to arrange an alliance with a site dedicated to younger investors. They reached out to us, I responded and didn't hear back, then responded again and experienced more silence.
I anticipate two profiles for the aggressive in September: North Star Microcap and Baillie Gifford Long Term Global Growth. The former keeps popping at a top MCV fund and we're investing in the latter for Will's Roth IRA: he turns 21 next week and the Roth should have a 45+ year window. Dan Wiener, aka Dan the Vanguard Man, made a strong pitch for BG and has almost all of his clients invested in it.
(2) on August: at most we'll post the four pieces that are already essentially ready (an Elevator Talk with attorneys specializing in ESG disclosure issues, the T Rowe Price Retirement Blend series launch, Corbett Road Opportunity ETF and StandPoint Multi-Asset), perhaps with a short wine review as my monthly letter.
I read a really disheartening news story that makes me dislike VC and bitcoin even more: a VC fund is running a gas-fueled power station that (a) is providing power for bitcoin mining and (b) is dramatically warming Seneca Lake. They're response to "you're destroying the most iconic of the Finger Lakes" is "hey, we got the permits to do it!"
(3) on celebrating you: we have some of the MFO coffee mugs left and I'd happily share with you. Just drop a note to my david at MFO email and I'll take care of it as soon as I can.
Buying a 2018 Camry today after a failed search for an inexpensive but reliable used car for my son, Will. (10 cars, 10 test drives, three full mechanical reviews = 10 disasters waiting to happen. So I'm "selling" my Kia to Will and upgrading.) Chip and I head to Pittsburgh Monday, we visit my family Tuesday, head northward Wednesday to be with her family for her son's wedding ... then onto the Wine Trail! Thanks for the leads!
David

I recently inquired about Vanguard's Personal Advisor Services. I ran their suggested "aggressively allocated" portfolio through PV and then using it as a benchmark I compared their portfolio performance to a few of my present portfolio AA funds.
I compared their portfolio to stand alone asset allocation funds (PRWCX, VWELX, and VWINX). Two of the three funds (PRWCX & VWELX) out performed with less risk. You can substitute your choices. Here's the link
PV Link

@msf, amazing work. Thanks.
In the brain of an investor (me)... I would add that comparative math can ease or ulcerate the nerves.
If I am willing to take investment risk I often assess risk based on comparisons...to others...to the market.
I maybe incorrect, but my sense of upside capture and downside capture include this comparative data. How are my investments and portfolio doing compared to the market...compared to other funds I could choose? I look back historically (at past performance data) to infer what the future may hold. Will the data persist? Will future market conditions change enough to make past data obsolete? All of this is clear historically, but fuzzy when casting it's predictability into the future.
Portfolio Visualizer lets me collectively look at all of my holding as one risk much like an asset allocation fund. If you own more than one fund your portfolio is a "fund of funds". It is helpful to have individual fund data that @lynnbolin2021 often references, but it is maybe more important to run one's entire portfolio as a single risk profile.
PV's "metric" tabs lets one do this.
https://portfoliovisualizer.com/backtest-portfolio

>> The Ulcer Index is about half of the S&P 500 meaning half as risky.
Is that what UI means / is supposed to mean?

IMHO the answers are: no (it doesn't mean this) and yes (it is supposed to mean this).
Leaving aside what "risk" even means, I've never been a fan of using second moments (roughly, squares) to compute numeric values that supposedly quantify risk. (For anyone who has taken Physics I and forgotten second moments, here's a refresher on moment of inertia.)
Why square the drawdowns (retracements) before summing? The original writing defining ulcer index gives this explanation:

A better method [than merely summing] is to add the squares of the retracements, in order to penalize large retracements proportionately more than small ones.

If drawdown A is twice that of drawdown B, it is already being penalized twice as much by simply using its magnitude. Squaring that figure distorts this. And what is magical about squaring, as opposed to, say cubing, or taking the retracements to the 1.5 power? (These are all positive numbers we're using.) Why is squaring the appropriate "penalty"?
Over a four month period, consider a fund that loses 10% in the first month, but immediately recovers in month 2 and is flat for the remaining two months. Compare that with a fund that loses 5% in the first month, but stays down 5% over the full four month period.
These funds have the same ulcer index, but do they have the same "risk"?

In the calculation below, I dropped month 0 that established the maxprice for simplicity.
SQRT[(10^2 + 0 + 0 + 0)/4] = 5 = SQRT [ (5 ^ 2 + 5^ 2 + 5^2 + 5*2)/4]
The first fund had twice the drawdown, but for only 1/4 of the time. We can debate whether it presents exactly half the risk (twice as deep, 1/4 as wide). But ISTM that this fund presents less risk than the second fund, where you're sure to lose money no matter when you sell during this four month period. The amount at risk (i.e. risk of loss) is only half as much, so we do have to account for that as well.
Next, consider two funds, each of which recovers 1%/month. One has a 10% drawdown (so it takes 10 months to recover); the other has a 5% drawdown (taking 5 months to recover). The first fund plunges twice as deep and takes twice as long to recover.
My intuition or if you prefer, sense of risk, consequently says that the risk of the first fund is 4x the risk of the second. We can see this geometrically.
Think about it as triangles, where height is the drawdown and the horizontal axis is the month.

One triangle has a height of 10 (initial drawdown) and takes 10 months to decline to zero. The other triangle has a height of 5 (initial drawdown) and takes 5 months to decline to zero, after which the fund's performance is zero (flat).
I'm guessing that this is somewhat similar to what @lynnbolin2021 had in mind when writing:
The Ulcer Index measures the length and duration of the maximum drawdown over a period of time
But I could simply be projecting my own interpretation on top of this writing.
("Maximum" drawdown may have been a misstatement since UI uses actual drawdowns, not maximum. The original writing on UI offers this comment: "Some investors prefer to use the maximum retracement rather than an average. This reveals the worst experience over the test period, but it emphasizes a single event to the exclusion of all others.")
If one is familiar with the Gini coefficient, one is familiar with another metric that is calculated using area. Here, the cumulative amount of inequality is graphed. and the measure of societal inequality is taken as the area between perfect equality (the green line in the graph below) and the actual cumulative disparity (the blue line). Computationally similar to measuring the area of the triangles above - the area between the ideal (no drawdown) and the actual drawdown month by month.

my 'petty' proofing and query had only to do with whether the quote posted as from the WSJ was actually from the WSJ, given the 'typo'; no one here is served by inexactness, of which there is enough, much less suspect or sketchy origin …

@davidrmoran,
1) I provided you both an apology and an honest explanation of how the word “fund“ was accidentally transcribed to read “fun”. I than edited the sentence to correct the error. No need to beat a dead dog.
2) I haven’t always supplied bylines for articles appearing in The Wall Street Journal or Barron’s, believing the stature of those publications sufficient to lend credibility. From now on I will provide a byline if available. Expect you to adhere to that requirement as well.
3) “Full Professor - George Mason School of Business” wouldn’t normally conjure up the pejorative adjective “suspect”. Aside from this single article, do you have other evidence that Horstmeyer’s writings are unfit for sharing?
4) None of this is meant to exclude Horstmeyer or others from honest critique and criticism. That comes with the territory.

Hi @davidmoran
Sure, I can provide some clarity to some of the risk metrics. There is a nice tab in MFO Premium with the definition of most metrics. Here is a summary of a few:
STANDARD DEVIATION indicates the typical percentage variation above or below average return a fund has experienced in a year’s time.
Where standard deviation has limited value is that it does not measure direction. For example, the S&P 500 (SPY) will have a standard deviation that is very close to the inverse S&P 500 (SH).
DOWNSIDE DEVIATION measures a fund’s return below the risk-free rate of return, which is the 90-day T-Bill rate (aka cash).
DOWNSIDE CAPTURE compares the negative return of a fund, comprised of its negative month ending returns, to one of four indexes, over evaluation period specified, measured in percentage. So, compared to SP500, a Downside Capture of 80% means the fund retuned or "captured" only 80% of downside that the SP500 over the evaluation period specified.
ULCER INDEX measures both magnitude and duration of drawdowns in value. A fund with high Ulcer Index means it has experienced deep or extended declines, or both. Ulcer Index for money market funds is typically zero. Here is a link to a a good description of the Ulcer Index which also explains the flaws with using standard deviation (volatility) to measure risk.
MINIMUM ONE YEAR ROLLING RETURN: One of the metrics that I use are the rolling averages, specifically one or three year rolling minimum returns over the period. What this provides is the minimum return earned during the rolling time period. It is useful for comparing how well a fund recovered from some event such as the 2020 bear market.
For more information, please see:
https://www.tangotools.com/ui/ui.htm
https://www.mutualfundobserver.com/2017/10/rolling-averages-finally/
https://www.mutualfundobserver.com/2013/01/a-look-at-risk-adjusted-returns/
I hope this helps.
Regards, Lynn

@Baseball_Fan.... To be nice, I'll mention that Hussman's Total Return fund (HSTRX) only had 2 down calendar years out of 18, with a +5% average return over the life of the fund.
Not sure which of his funds you dabble with. His newer Allocation fund (HSAFX) has done kinda ok so far.
But yeah, he missed the Fed boat completely, and he never corrected/adjusted appropriately. Stubborn.

In the interest of petty accuracy and little else, according to his CV Horstmeyer is a full professor (as of February), and was a co-founder of the GMU Student Managed Investment Fund.
https://www.filesusr.com/ugd/3d3433_7004625502e5427fa5fb144f5abc2845.pdf

I watched the Jason Zweig video. My takeaways include these slogans (?) memes(?)
Don’t make buys based on someone on the internet and expect them to also tell you when to sell.
Your results depend less on how the markets behave and more on how you behave.
Speculating and gambling are not investing.
Information isn’t knowledge and knowledge isn’t wisdom.
Segregate yourself from hot trends.
Starting at about 19:00 I thought he went a little deeper into the wisdom well. He discussed what Ben Graham defined as an Enterprising Investor - someone who digs through Corp reports, examines products, finds value and invests in those companies. If that’s not you, or if that’s you but it turns out you don’t do it successfully **stop. Pick some simple funds and relieve yourself of the decision process.
His closing advice is to focus on your goals not on speculation and the one investment we should all hold is cash. (He then said he knew FD would take issue with that recommendation /snark!)
Consuelo closed with - know your limits - or as TS Eliot and I say - only those that go too far know how far one can go.
Also - I saw this summary on the Wealthtrack website:
“ For financial historians and serious market observers, the current era has all the signs of a developing market bubble.
Money is abundant, a wide range of financial assets have risen to record or near-record levels, and enormous amounts of money are flowing into stocks. Private equity funds are flourishing and bonds continue to attract huge sums.
Demand for residential real estate is soaring as are home prices. And despite recent dramatic declines, innovative products such as digital currencies have appreciated at breathtaking speed.
Speculative trading by individual investors has also increased as a new growing community of online traders has emerged as a potent market-moving force.
The combination of all of these forces caused me to reach out to this week’s WEALTHTRACK guest.
We’ll be joined by Jason Zweig, a leading financial journalist who since 2008 has written the widely read The Intelligent Investor column for The Wall Street Journal. Zweig will share his analysis of the current market climate and advice for investors”

https://www.kiplinger.com/investing/stocks/stocks-to-buy/603079/best-growth-stocks-for-the-rest-of-2021
11 Best Growth Stocks for the Rest of 2021
Growth stocks have started to pick up momentum of late. These 11 names are worth a closer look in 2021's second half.
Couple interesting ones out there