@Ted The questions to me are do we expect the S&P 500 to deliver 16.08% annualized over the next five years and do long-short funds do what they're supposed to do in a downturn? I don't think it's fair to compare their returns to the S&P in a raging bull market. It would be better to look at risk adjusted returns, alpha, Sharpe, beta and downside capture. By that take, I would still agree with you that most long-short funds aren't worth the price of admission. Their fees tend to be too high and they don't always protect on the downside as much as they should. But there are a handful that are worthwhile.

@AndyJ: What do we call yours, apple picking ?
Regards,
Ted :)
The Average L/S Equity Fund Returns:
YTD: 4.06%
1yr. 14.98%
3yr. 5.41%
5yr. 6.45%
----------
S&P 500 TR:
YTD: 6.05%
1yr. 27.23%
3yr. 13.50%
5yr. 16.08%

Hey Ted, since you opened the door to cherry-picking data points, how about this one from 2015:
SPX +1.38
QLENX +16.79
The 15%+ difference was a lot of money!
This isn't a bad point for a retail or any other investor to be looking for hedged equity exposure, depending on circumstances. (For example, not everybody is a fed retiree, and capital conservation can be a very reasonable objective for those with crummy or non-existent pensions.)

@MFO Members: Objectives be dammed, your a retail investor ,not a trader or institutional investor. Here's just one example: The almost 13% difference between CPLSX and the Haystack is a lot of money.
Regards,
Ted
CPLSX: 2017 8.89%
S&P 500 TR: 2017 21.83%

"Click below to review the documents associated with Click below to review the documents associated with your account when it transitions to TD Ameritrade. to TD Ameritrade."
TDA did a poor job of documenting changes. Look at the info it gives for bank transition: "Scottrade Bank was acquired by TD Bank, N.A. and moving forward all bank services will be provided by TD Bank, N.A. ... There are no changes you need to worry about."
This is dead wrong, and I've never seen a bank acquisition that did not say clearly and explicitly that you need to worry about exceeding FDIC limits, because now there's only one bank where you may have deposits, not two (in case you were also a TDA customer).
So in the case of conflicting statements (here's your account handbook, and your fees won't change), I'd ask rather than hope for the best.
----
Here's the best indication I've been able to find that TF fees will remain the same ($17). It's in the notice to RIAs using Scottrade:
"Commission rates will remain the same for your current Scottrade® Advisor Services accounts. All accounts that transition to TD Ameritrade Institutional will receive the same equity, option, and transaction fee mutual fund commission rates"
Here's the Scottrade® Advisor Services fee schedule, including $17 for TF funds.
----
FWIW, here's a TDA PR statement from a year ago: "With our pending acquisition of Scottrade on the horizon, we have a unique opportunity to enhance that experience even further with lower pricing for all of our clients."
That's when TDA announced that it was lowering its equitypricing to $6.95/trade, matching Scottrade's. This is the way I read their transition page verbiage - that they'd already sync'd the commissions (as much as they were going to), and so Scottrade customers would continue to benefit from low commissions, the equity commissions. TDA also lowered its option prices at the same time, to almost match Scottrade's. The same $6.95, but 75c/contract as opposed to 70c/contract at Scottrade.

@msf. Yes, I saw that from 2012 but on the TD Ameritrade website could find nothing about any fees on selling a transaction fee fund. I guess I will just contact an office and ask them about the fees. My Scottrade brokers haven’t been of any help. I can’t handle $49.99 on both purchases and sales unless I make some type of adjustment in my trading methodology. Then again been adjusting continually since my INVESCO and Strong days. Back then you could literally buy and sell their in house funds day after day if you wanted and zero commissions and without fear of being banned. Albeit eventually Strong banned me from datelining of their international funds.
They say luck is a big element in the success equation. Part of the reason my account is seven figures to the better over the past 25 years of buy and hold in the S@P was I lucked upon those two brokerage firms at just the right time in the 90s. I am a big believer in the Luck Factor!

Also according to the Scottrade to Ameritrade transition hub - https://welcome.tdameritrade.com/ The fees for transaction fee mutual fund purchases will remain the same.

I read that page a little differently. Under FAQ there's this Q&A:

What are your plans for pricing or trade commissions?
As always, our goal is to deliver great value to all of our clients. Right now, that means no changes to low commission rates. Clients will continue to benefit from our $6.95 base commission rate for online equities. Any clients with negotiated commission rates will be honored at conversion.

What this isn't saying is that they will honor Scottrade's standard commission schedule for funds.
Take a look at page 5 of the Account Handbook that's linked to on the welcome page:

Funds   			Price
No-Transaction-Fee Funds	No commission
No-Load Transaction Fee Funds	$49.99
Load Funds			No commission†

You're correct that TDA doesn't have an extra short term trading fee for TF funds. But it charges $49.95 to buy and $49.95 to sell, making its round trips more expensive than Scottrade even with its extra short term trading fee.
This is somewhat old (2012) but I think still accurate, from Forbes:
"But because Schwab now only charges investors a transaction fee when they buy a fee-fund, Schwab is actually cheaper ‘round-trip’ than TD Ameritrade, for example. TD Ameritrade has a $49.95 transaction fee, but because it charges investors on both the buy and the sell, the ‘round-trip’ cost of buying and selling a fee fund is nearly $100."
https://www.forbes.com/sites/investor/2012/03/05/fund-trading-costs-the-abcs-of-transaction-fees/
With Fidelity charging $49.95 to buy most TF funds, no short term trading fee on TF funds and no charge to sell, Fidelity's short term round trips are even cheaper than at Schwab ($76 to buy) or Scottrade.
https://www.fidelity.com/mutual-funds/all-mutual-funds/fees

Does anyone know of a good stable "preferred" stock fund, especially in the Vanguard family.?

I would be very careful about preferred funds. Preferreds live in the space between senior debt (traditional corporate bonds) and common stock. Traditional preferreds are $25 par value stocks, while there are some hybrid preferreds that are $1000 par value.
European banks are pulling out of the $25 par market after recent legislation. So the supply of those offerings are shrinking.
Meanwhile, all the indexes tracked by the passive ETFs (and mutual funds) are concentrated in the $25 par market. And these ETFs have seen a pretty substantial inflow of funds as investors seek yield.
As a result, the $25 par preferreds are getting very expensive. Supply is shrinking, and demand from the passive index tracking funds increases as funds flow in.
To give you an idea of the effect of the passive $25 par funds + shrinking supply at that level, the average value of each Cohen & Steers holding is over $30M.
To compound matters, the passive index tracking funds do not lend their preferred holdings out for shorting. As a result, it’s very expensive to short these preferred stocks because they are very hard to borrow. So there is not a lot of short interest.
This serves to increase the downside risk should ETF/ mutual fund flows reverse out of preferreds. The index trackers will be forced to sell. Not only will buyers be scarce, but there won’t even be demand from short sellers looking to cover their shorts and take profits.
It’s a recipe for disaster in the next bear market.
I would look for actively managed preferred funds with smaller position sizes that can access the $1000 par market in addition to the $25 par market. These may not be class leading in returns, but they are much safer.

I did some research after posting my response above. Based on M* numbers, ARTKX beat OAKIX over 15 years, 10 years they are even, and OAKIX beat ARTKX over 5, 3 and 1 years. However, over all periods, ARTKX has better Alpha and Sharpe ratios for whatever it is worth. Having said that, both of them are good/great funds in opinion. ARTKX managers were trained/worked at Oakmark with Herro before going on their own with Artisan.

Sometimes brokerages' screeners/fund lists aren't easy to find without logging in. These should work:
TDA (it says that it offers 12,841 funds, 11,596 open to new investors):
https://research.tdameritrade.com/grid/public/screener/mutualfunds/screener.asp?method=new
E*Trade (9156 funds, 8581 open to new investors):
https://www.etrade.wallst.com/Research/Screener/MutualFund/
Fidelity: (12,228 funds [you have to check the "include closed fund" box], 11,001 open to new investors)
https://www.fidelity.com/fund-screener/evaluator.shtml#!&ntf=N&expand=$FundFamily
The number of funds offered doesn't matter much - lots of obscure, lousy funds inflate these figures. What matters is whether they have a solid selection of good funds and whether they carry the funds you own or want to own.
I like Fidelity, because their service is excellent, they charge nothing to sell any fund, and once you own a fund that they charge a transaction fee (TF) to buy , you can buy additional shares for just $5 per purchase (but you have to go through some tricks to do this). There are other reasons why I like Fidelity, but that's a good start.
I've used TDA (in fact, we still have $0.01 in an account there - don't ask). Until recently they had a great lineup of no-transaction-fee ETFs. A few months ago, they started charging transaction fees to trade all the Vanguard ETFs, and many of the iShare ETFs. In their place, TDA added loads of high cost, less well known ETFs. So their ETF numbers look good (hundreds of no fee ETFs now), but the actual offerings are poorer. A good example of why number of funds doesn't tell the whole story. We found TDA fine for mutual funds, but nothing special.
Often (this applies to Junkster, too) a brokerage will be able to hold a fund it doesn't offer for purchase, and you can even reinvest dividends and sell shares there. You just can't buy more. But not always - on rare occasions they'll be unable to even transfer in shares.

Interesting call on BRK.B Maurice. It may not be a mutual fund but it is concentrated and it's hard to argue with it's success. I'm not sure that I'd buy it here but I'd look hard at it during a market correction. One negative if you can call it that would be manager succession once Mr's Buffett and Munger decide to step away.
If you can forgive them for their Valeant sins SEQUX, the Sequioa Fund, might also be worth looking at. They only have 25-30 holdings generally and BRK A&B are a large part of them.

May be a good time to invest in value, seeing all the capitulations to growth: looking hard at RPG, PRDGX an "obvious" choice within the TRP house, etc.
If you've ever used "mean regression" as a mantra, how does that apply here? I agree with hank that "a decade is a pretty short period".
RPG and RPV go back barely a decade. Using VIVAX and VIGRX instead (going back to 1992), here are their last 10 year cumulative returns, their their previous 10 year cumulative returns, the cumulative returns for those 20 years, and their lifetime cumulative returns (11/2/1992 through 1/22/2018).
last 10 yr:    196.29% (growth) vs. 141.12% (value)
prev 10 yr:    44.05% (growth) vs.  76.08% (value)
last 20 yr: ;   326.80% (growth) vs. 324.55% (value) - a virtual dead heat
lifetime:        983.07% (growth) vs. 991.05% (value) - a virtual dead heat
You can get these figures from M*'s chart here (just tweak the date ranges).
Annualized, the first three are:
last 10 yr:  11.47% (growth) vs. 9.20% (value)
prev 10 yr:  3.72% (growth) vs. 5.82% (value)
last 20 yr:   6.10% (growth) vs. 6.06% (value)

Hi Davidrmoran,
Timeframes for the correlation coefficients don't matter. The ever changing and random character of the correlation coefficient and returns data demonstrate the futility in making market projections. It just can't be done with any accuracy or consistency. Change happens. That's why just being in the markets over long timeframes is a winning strategy.
The referenced data sets serve to reinforce the diversification concept in a very general sense. Given the overall market uncertainties, precision is simply not possible. Asset allocation mathematical programs that promise some optimum return at minimum volatility don't holdup over time. They fail because of change. Nothing more than a very general asset allocation is possible with some infrequent adjustments to follow a general, generic plan.
Thanks for your question. Sorry but I don't practice a tight discipline. When investing, there are few math derived "rules" that work all the time. Again, change happens!!
Best Wishes
After posting, I remembered a bit of wisdom from a Norm Augustine book that I own: "90 percent of the time things will turn out worse than you expect. The other 10 percent of the time you had no right to expect so much.” He made a ton of similar observations in his superior book with wisdom on every page. The book is titled "Augustine's Laws". The law quoted is number 37 from the 52 provided in the text. It took some serious hunting, but I finally found the book.

I am a 77 year old retiree and not a sophisticated investor. Had my selfdirected IRA for many years with Scottrade and it will transferred to TDA on February 23, 2018. TDA has “hundreds” while E*trade offers “thousands” of funds, but without an account in either company I cannot find out which ones they are. TDA charges $50.- for a transaction fee funds while I paid $17.- at Scottrade and don’t know what other fees may apply. I wonder if I would be best off with Vanguard which is known for low fees. I already have 3 Vanguard Funds and one Vanguard ETF. I also have one fund each from Fidelity, T Rowe Price, Oakmark, Mairs&Power and a James Fund. I am grateful for any advice I can get.

@MFO Members: The proof is in the pudding.
Regards,
Ted
YTD: RPG 8.24%
YTD: RPV 6.04%
1yr. RPG 33.68%
1yr. RPV 24.52%
3yr. RPG 13.03%
3yr. RPV 12.28%
5yr. RPG 17.59%
5yr. RPV 16.16%
10yr. RPG 13.68%
10yr. RPV 11.91%
(Source M*)

Simon said:
“I have an IRA with T. Rowe Price” - Good. It doesn’t get much better than these guys.
“and have some dry powder ready to buy on the next correction” - Not me. I believe the next “correction” from these levels will more closely resemble a trap door over a rather deep pit (maybe something out of Alice in Wonderland).
“I've been waiting an awfully long time” - That’s not your fault. It’s silly season in the equity markets.
“The obvious choice is PRDGX but it has lost a Morningstar” * - Don’t be seduced by the stars. Read the Prospectus and a couple recent annual or semi-annual fund reports to garner the flavor of the fund and how it invests. Always balance out the M* reviews with at least 2 other opinions. I like Lipper and Max Funds.
Suggestions:?
It’s a big fund universe. My own experience is limited to about a dozen families. But you did say you wanted answers based on personal experience.
(1) Dodge and Cox are deep value investors. Low fees. Solid long term performance. However, their flagship DODGX lost over 43% in 2008. (How strong is your stomach?)
(2) OAKBX doesn’t advertise itself as deep value, but in owning it and reading their commentaries for over a decade, I’m convinced it is run like deep value. They bought GM 4-5 years ago when you couldn’t give the stock away (slight exaggeration). It eventually paid off. The nice thing about this fund is it does a pretty good job hedging against steep losses. It lost 16.2% in 2008 - less than half as much as DODGX. I’ll point out that the former is normally classified as a stock fund and the latter a balanced fund. I’m not sure those distinctions mean a whole lot at this point in time. It’s more about your risk appetite and willingness to stick to your investment decisions.
The growth and value labels can be confusing. Sometimes value houses move into traditionally “growth” areas because they find the price attractive. And I suppose it could work the other way around as well.

Seems like good advice. Note, he also says:
In general, staying the course in a broadly diversified portfolio is the best strategy when all asset classes appear overpriced. If rebalancing is required to constrain portfolio risk, consider REITs and preferred stock. Good-quality preferred stocks yield about 5%, and many have yields that float with interest rates, so that they offer some protection if rates rise in the future. Mid-single-digit returns may seem unattractive relative to recent asset returns, but with valuations at current levels, low-single-digit returns could end up looking good.

Hi @larryB
I am aware of the traditional Black Swan definition. I've linked an Investopedia write regarding this, and have pulled a portion of the write, just below.
As to an out-of-thin-air Black Swan event; I surely won't have advance warning through my own means. But, I attempt to pay attention as to any possible triggers for such an event and this is the purpose of this post; to obtain other's view points.
Regards,
Catch

By Brian Bloch | Updated December 16, 2015
The concept of black swan events was popularized by the writer Nassim Nicholas Taleb in his book, "The Black Swan: The Impact Of The Highly Improbable" (Penguin, 2008). The essence of his work is that the world is severely affected by events that are rare and difficult to predict. The implications for markets and investment are compelling and need to be taken seriously.
Black Swans, Markets and Human Behavior
Classic black swan events include the rise of the internet and personal computer, the Sept. 11 attacks and World War I. However, many other events such as floods, droughts, epidemics and so on are either improbable, unpredictable or both. This "non-computability" of rare events is not compatible with scientific methods. The result, says Taleb, is that people develop a psychological bias and "collective blindness" to them. The very fact that such rare but major events are by definition outliers makes them dangerous.
Implications for Markets and Investing
Stock and other investment markets are affected by all manner of events. Downturns or crashes such as the dreadful Black Monday or the stock market crash of 1987 or the internet bubble of 2000 were relatively "model-able," but the Sept. 11 attacks were far less so. And who really expected Enron to implode? As for Bernie Madoff, one could argue either way.
But the point is, we all want to know the future, but we can't. We can model and predict some things (to an extent), but not others - not the black swan events. And this creates psychological and practical problems.
https://www.investopedia.com/articles/trading/11/black-swan-events-investing.asp

From July 30th, 2007: https://forbes.com/2007/07/30/pullback-panic-subprime-pf-ii-in_jk_0730soapbox_inl.html#4a7eccd8266e
macrotrends.net/2324/sp-500-historical-chart-data