Black swan is perhaps a bit too strong right now. But, ankle biting geese upon the investment markets can cause a scare here and there. Ever been chased by a protective goose? They can be very serious creatures.
I've become more of a technical investor with a big dose of leftover "what are the fundamentals of this investment world today"?.
Does the market place remain a hugh pile of other folks money seeking profits, or does some real value exist, somewhere?
Is this just a chase, chase, chase?
It is apparent that the really big money does much care one way or another about what is going on in politics, in general, yes? The U.S bombing North Korea or North Korea bombing Guam; well, that might change a few things for a week or so, eh?
Interest rates (still touchy/feely as to central bank actions) remain low, inflation remains low and the yield spread between the 10 and 30 year Treasury's has continued to shrink.
Spread between 30's and 10's:
---Feb. 3, 2017 = .62%
---July 21, 2017 = .57%
---Nov. 10, 2017 = .48%
---Dec. 1, 2017 = .39%
---Jan. 19, 2018 = .27%
For a period during much of 2016 the spread remained about .6%.
http://stockcharts.com/freecharts/perf.php?$UST30Y,$UST10Y&p=5&O=011000

Appears to be pretty much all in for equity, choose your sector(s); be they broad based or more focused.
I remain of the mind set that mergers and acquisitions will expand and that some companies may do share buybacks; and whatever else one may consider to increase equity pricing above and beyond what may be considered normal or overbought levels. I do review RSI (relative strength) levels and many are rich right now.
We remain directed more to the large cap/growth without any direct investments into mid/sm cap; although these are inside of many fund holdings.
What say you about the forward direction of global equity markets?
Thanks and take care,
Catch

Hi guys!
Last week, in The Economist, they had a piece on India.....the great lie of the middle class in India. It's not China of 20 years ago. E-commerce in India in 2017 was about that in China for a week. US companies can't make any money there. GDP per person is $1700 --- and 80% of the people make less. 3% of the population own these 5 things: car or scooter, TV, computer, A/C or refrigerator. Top 1% make $20,000 --- good paying jobs are thin. Education is very poor.....1 in 9 is illiterate. Most US companies aren't selling basics, so they can't make money. Slick said a while back India was not a buy. From what I read, good call!
God bless
the Pudd

I moved some DSENX into DLEUX a few months ago, a small amount to start. My thought was; I like the CAPE theory, so if there is better value in Europe then CAPE should work well there. Maybe better than US.
If I compare the US version to Europe, The U.S version has done better, but not by a lot. But I take that with a grain of salt because domestic stocks have all been on a tear. so maybe not a good comparison. If I compare it to FEU, a broader Europe ETF, it under performs substantially over the last 3 months, 1.7% to 6.1% for FEU and by about 5% over one year, 23% for DLEUX versus 28% for FEU.
I don't know what it all means over this short time, but I don't have a huge stake in DLEUX to give it much worry. I don't plan to move any more DSENX to DLEUX at this point, but I'm not going to sell either. Still an experiment.

EMs (bonds and stocks) are highly cyclical. Conventional wisdom over the last 40-50 years has been that EM stocks will outpace more modernized economies over the long haul. Sir John Templeton used to make that point. However, during the decade or so that I owned his funds, his more sedate TEMWX did much better than the EM heavy TEGOX, which had higher fees and a lot more volatility.
I don’t think anyone really knows. At my age I’d maybe play them if they looked beaten up enough to catch a nice bounce. But I don’t want to own EM on a protracted basis - particularly the stocks, which can drop 30-40% before you can say “ouch”.

I've given up guessing. So far, the stock market has played the metaphorical crowd witnessing Trump shoot someone in the middle of 5th Ave. Move along, nothing to see here.
Longer term, an extended shutdown will harm the economy. But that could just be a slowing, rather than a stall. And the market could shrug that off as well (despite profits being lower than they might otherwise have been).
Who knows? But I guess that's why you asked.

Let's put the pieces together:

To Satisfy Its Investors, Cash-Rich Apple Borrows Money (NYTimes, April 30, 2013)

Apple said last week that it planned to distribute [$100 billion] by the end of 2015 in the form of paying increased dividends and buying back its stock ... By raising cheap debt for the shareholder payout, Apple also avoids a potentially big tax hit. ... In some ways, the bond issue is a response to that tax situation.

Instead of Apple paying its taxes, it's getting doubly rewarded - paying a fraction of the taxes it was liable for, and mollifying its shareholders with cheap money made possible by Fed-inspired low interest rates.
If Apple had better use for that money than buybacks, it would have done something else. As it turns out, prior to repatriation, Apple was already spending tons of money domestically.
Apple's $350 Billion U.S. Economic Contribution Was Already In The Cards
(Forbes, Jan 19, 2018, opinion by Chuck Jones; no, not that Chuck Jones)
Finally, we need to be clear on what "offshore" means. It doesn't mean that the money was actually in overseas banks or investments. It just means that Apple couldn't spend the money domestically. It could, and did, invest that money in Treasuries and corporate securities (curious, since it was floating its own paper at the time - perhaps even making a profit on that arbitrage?).
Beware the $500 Billion Bond Exodus (Bloomberg Businessweek, Jan 17, 2018).

“The term overseas cash can be a bit of a misnomer, as it doesn’t have to be overseas and in fact a lot of it isn’t”

FYI: Apple’s announcement on Wednesday that it will repatriate most of the estimated $274 billion that it holds in offshore earnings is great news for the United States. Uncle Sam will get a one-time $38 billion tax payment. The company promises to add 20,000 jobs to its U.S. work force, a 24 percent increase, and build a new campus. Another $5 billion will go toward a fund for advanced manufacturing in America.
C’mon. What’s with the long face?
In December this column warned that hysterical opposition to the Republican tax bill was a fool’s game for Democrats that could only help Donald Trump. Yes, there were things to dislike in the legislation, from both a liberal and a conservative perspective.
Regards,
Ted
https://www.nytimes.com/2018/01/19/opinion/clueless-versus-trump.html

I used WellsTrade a long time ago to buy FT Advisor shares. Then years ago they severely limited the funds you could buy, going from one of the most open platforms to one of the more limited ones. They also overhauled their website, making it difficult if not impossible to even figure out what was available. And they imposed the highest exit fee I've seen (I think it was $95). Nevertheless I left.
The only off brand brokerage that I think I was happy with was Scudder. For a brief time, 1998-1999 (and with a sufficiently high balance) they provided free trades on all the funds they sold, and as I only vaguely recall, fine service. "Preferred Investment Plus" for taxable accounts, "Retirement Plus" for retirement accounts. Then Zurich/Kemper/Scudder moved the whole operation to DLJDirect, effectively closing it down.

Thanks. Funds that I'd looked at in the past for friends and relatives included Bernstein Short Duration funds (Calif., NY), which were also marketed under Alliance Bernstein (now AB). The AB Advisor shares had similar costs to the Bernstein offerings, while the AB load classes had higher ERs.
I must not have checked these out for awhile, as they were liquidated about nine months ago. (You probably posted this and I missed it.)
https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/832808/000119312517021341/d331564d497.htm
My experience with all second (or third) tier brokerages is that their service isn't the greatest. When I use any of them, it's for a limited purpose (such as access to lower cost shares).
Firstrade has an interesting background starting out as a neighborhood brokerage in Flushing, Queens, NYC - with a large Chinese community (somewhat analogous to the Richmond district in San Francisco).
2007 Press Release
Invetopedia review/background

FYI: The following chart shows the distribution of future return assumptions that state and local pension funds were using to value their liabilities as of February 2017:
The average expected return was around 7.5%. How can any large fund, much less a pension fund with a conservative mandate, expect to generate such a high return in the current environment? Where exactly would the return come from? Certainly not from anything in the fixed income universe:
Regards,
Ted

Maurice, have you been able to discover the holdings in VGWAX? The Vanguard website shows the 10 largest, which is 14.5% of total. But if one digs for more details Vanguard tells you that this fund has no holdings of bonds or of stocks! Or of cash reserves either.

"However, SEC mandated reforms were implemented at the time which further restrict the type of investments the retail funds can make. Many (most?) became government-backed money market funds. These changes made the retail funds much less profitable."
Brokerages and mutual fund companies seem to have done their best to confuse matters. They certainly made it appear as though people were being forced to accept lower returns.
If you were already investing in a US Treasury fund (e.g. PRTXX) or a US government fund (T. Rowe Price did not have one), nothing changed. If you were invested in a prime fund (i.e. one that could invest in corporate paper and other non-US government securities), things may have changed.
Financial institutions were reluctant (perhaps prohibited, I'm not sure) to allow you to use a fund that could freeze redemptions as your core/transaction/checking account. So they had two choices - convert their "core" fund offerings from prime to government, or require you to pick a different fund (a government fund) as your core account. They went with door number 1.
TRP changed Prime Reserve to Government MM (PRRXX), Fidelity changed Cash Reserves to Government Cash Reserves (FDRXX), etc. But T. Rowe Price also did something else. It took its high minimum (higher yielding) retail prime fund, Summit Cash Reserves, lowered its min to $2500 (dropping the "Summit" high min part), and renamed it Cash Reserves (TSCXX). So one still had a prime fund available; arguably a better one than Prime Reserve.
Here's T. Rowe Price's description of the changes required and what it did:
https://www4.troweprice.com/mmr/content/dam/money-market/articles/MMF Reform_US_04-12-2016_Update_v2.pdf
TSCXX wasn't forced to change anything. Here are the portfolio compositions as given in the April 2014 and October 2017 reports.

   Security Type     2014    2017
Commercial Paper      53%     52%
Muni Obligations      28%     23%
Foreign CDs (USD)      7%      5%
Treasury Notes         6%      9%
Domestic CDs           5%      3%
US Treasury Bills      1%      4%
Other (net)            0%      4%

Back in the old days - like the 1950s through the 1980s - one of the best if not best leading indicators of the stock market was the action of the Dow Jones Utilities Index. Two of the more prominent examples were the peaking of the Utilities in November 1972 and January 1987. I quit following this indicator after 2000 and have no ideal if it still has validity. However, with sentiment indicators at extremes not seen in generations, I would be wary of the stock market.

@Crash: I was wondering if you were still holding on to PNM after regulators rejected the increase. I've got solar panels, so I don't help you much. I pay about $150 per year to them for all my electricity. With sun 300+ days per year, it works nicely :)

I note that my single-stock utility, PNM has "slud" downward badly in 2018, as Dizzy Dean might have expressed it. Before the end of 2017, the company raised its dividend. Third or 4th time since I got in, in Sept. of 2015. The NM regulatory body was not being helpful to shareholders, preferring to adjust a rate agreement already signed-onto by the parties concerned, including the environmentalists. Last 2 days, the stock rose nicely. We've already removed some of our stake with a decent profit, for traveling purposes. I sent them another check 2 days ago. PNM's yield is NOT among the high-fliers in the utility sector. But we are still ahead of the game. I initiated at $25 and change. Today, it's at $37.00.

Hello, @Catch22: The three I've zeroed-in on are: PTIAX, TUHYX and RPIHX, though the latter is "global," not strictly domestic. ...PTIAX is mostly MBS. ... TUHYX is corporate junk. ...RPIHX is corporates, with just a bit of bank loans. What they spit-out and distribute to shareholders right now is considerably higher than the monthly div. from PRSNX.
I bought (EM) PREMX in 2010, late for the 2009 go-go-full steam ahead party in EM bonds. I bought initially at $13.26, and have never seen PREMX at $13.26 again. But I've reinvested everything, and along the way, I pulled a huge chunk out to re-deploy into a more normal diversified portfolio. PREMX has made serious money for me, despite the share price remaining below my initial purchase-price. I added a bit to it after end-of-year 2017 cap gains and dividends in my other TRP funds. And PREMX has not disastrously imploded on account of the Venezuela holdings.
...When share price sinks, yield rises, I understand. I see that PRSNX holds bonds in many cases in places like DEVELOPED Europe, where bonds are yielding less than 1%. I'd like to get more than PRSNX is offering. My timing might be all wrong, but timing the market is a thing I never tried to do. I started investing in 2003, and do not play around much with my portfolio--- though the current portf. is quite different from the way it looked 15 years ago.
Yield:
RPIHX 5.78
TUHYX 4.75 (30-day)
PTIAX 5.51
PRSNX 3.41
I'm not worried at all about finding a bond fund to replace PRSNX which is of a similar sort.

Tax reform package and utility companies......I'd read through some of this article before thinking about a pure utility investment at this time. I recall that Michigan utilities had to submit their plans regarding rates and such going forward yesterday (Jan 19); as to the benefit to customers.
https://www.forbes.com/sites/greatspeculations/2018/01/11/utility-stocks-and-tax-reform-what-investors-need-to-know/#31c75d554d82

Howdy @Crash
Have you a yield number from a bond fund which you consider to be high enough, to suit your needs, at this point in the bond(s) investment cycle?
PRSNX indicates a current 30 day yield of 3.5% and a trailing 12 month yield of 3.41%. The yield is already increasing, yes?
If one is seeking a 20% yield increase from this fund this would = about a 4.2% yield, a 30% yield increase would = about 4.55% yield. Would these yields satisfy your yield/dividend requirements for a bond fund of this style?
With a active managed bond fund, one would hope that management would be able to keep the price decline of the fund to the minimum as bond yields increase.
This would be the trade off for a higher yield at this time, a reduction of pricing for the fund (less value to the investor, but perhaps a wash from a higher yield).
Regards,
Catch

FYI: Miller Value Partners’ Bill Miller holds the record for being the only mutual fund manager to beat the market for 15 years in a row. One way he did it is by investing in new technologies that the Wall Street establishment thought were crazy at the time – Amazon, Google, and Facebook among them. His latest “crazy” idea: Bitcoin.
Regards,
Ted
http://wealthtrack.com/bill-miller-on-investing-in-disruptive-technologies-including-bitcoin/
M* Snapshot LGOAX:
http://www.morningstar.com/funds/XNAS/LGOAX/quote.html
Lipper Snapshot LOGAX:
https://www.marketwatch.com/investing/fund/lgoax
LGOAX Is Ranked #43 In The (MCB) Fund Category By U.S. News & World Report:
https://money.usnews.com/funds/mutual-funds/mid-cap-blend/miller-opportunity-trust/lgoax

FYI: More than most sectors, utility stocks have felt the sting of rising interest rates.
While the Standard & Poor’s 500 is up nearly 5% this year, the utilities in the index are down 4.5%, besting only the real estate group, which has lost 5%.
Still, utilities, which were yielding about 3.6% late last week, remain attractive to income investors. With rates so low, these stocks serve as bond proxies.
At a time of rising rates and strong economic growth, though, investors are more apt to move from the sector into riskier parts of the market. And higher bond yields pose competition.
Regards,
Ted
http://www.cetusnews.com/business/Don’t-Chase-High-Utility-Yields.B1tqTUeBf.html