For those who might think that they absolutely need a tech fund I would suggest that you take a look at the Josh Brown article Ted linked earlier today.

Thanks for the nudge.
I like the observation that there's no such thing as purely passive investing (though IMHO investing in, say, the Wilshire 5000 comes darn close), just degrees of passivity. Having pointed out that the S&P indexes are constructed by committee of course I'd agree with the statement :-)
Regarding the girth of the technology sector, the article says that technology currently constitutes "almost a quarter" of the S&P 500 market cap. "Something had to be done, I suppose, before the IT sector became 27%, 30% and so on."
In March 2000, technology represented over 1/3 (34.5%) of the market cap. Regardless of whether the circumstances were different then, a bald appeal to the size of numbers doesn't make the case.
NYTimes, Aug. 6, 2016, When Every Company Is a Tech Company, Does the Label Matter?
Nor are individual companies near record market weight. In 1932, AT&T alone constituted 13% of the total stock market. It was so large that S&P declined to include it in a predecessor of the S&P 500. NYTimes citing J. Siegel, Stocks for the Long Run.
So on the one hand, technology has become so all-pervasive that one benefits from it in virtually every fund, and on the other hand, "pure" technology companies are nowhere near their market peak, either individually or collectively. Which lets everyone read whatever they want into the current situation.

Hi @Mark
Agree.
I read, last week, the initial article linked within the "Reformed Broker" link. These changes will possibly affect some funds and/or indexes. Regardless of the "new" category names, the tech. has been inside of many funds and indexes of many equity flavor types.
Ted asked me (Jan. 6) about our holdings seeming to be "lite" on the tech. side; and the below is a broad sample of choices I grabbed to indicate the overall inclusion of tech. in so many places.
>>>Reply: Correct at this time, as to no direct "tech" holding; but with the broad based etf's and/or funds one will discover enough tech. of some form; mostly of the large cap. type and of course, the FANG kids show up just about everywhere, except a bond fund. Tis everywhere in some form.
A few samples of various tech. inclusions by percentage of the fund:
--- ITOT = 24%
--- VTI = 25%
--- SPY = 26%
--- FHLC = 25%
--- ACWI = 21%
--- FSPHX = 32%
--- GPROX = 21%
--- FPURX = 28%
I've been in and around tech. all of my adult life; and have always kept an eye to this area. One of my first exposures to the early life of what is nano and micro tech. today was a week of training of "how to remove and replace a defective integrated micro chip".
The class was taught by a NASA engineer from Houston. A micro what? These were mostly the 8 leg variety that had just begun to be used on integrated circuit boards in the newest versions of cryptographic equipment; the repair of which would be my livelihood for the next several years, and indirectly connected to me to a few folks that fully triggered my investment perspectives and forward directions.
ADD: I'm inclined towards large cap. tech., with mergers and acquisitions, but this may play well towards the smaller cap. companies.
Take care.
Catch

For those who might think that they absolutely need a tech fund I would suggest that you take a look at the Josh Brown article Ted linked earlier today.
http://thereformedbroker.com/2018/01/15/breaking-up-tech-indexes-doing-what-the-economy-wont/

FWIW, M* lists 49 technology funds, 4/5 (39) are LCG. It classifies 1 of these as supporting, 8 funds are called specialty, and the remainder are unclassified.
At one of the (technology) startups where I worked, the HR person told me that most people were pouring 401k money into Ultra (TWCUX). It was the closest thing we had in our plan to a technology fund. (I think it was about 45% technology then, it's 1/3 now.)
So maybe those are a few votes for technology as a core fund, or maybe they were simply following Peter Lynch's advice - invest in what you know. Though they were also violating another rule of thumb - don't double down on where your job is.

I can't comment on PRGTX, have never invested or looked into it.
I own DSEEX/DSENX and I pair it with AUEIX/AUENX as my LC core holding. These are long-term investments for me and I do not worry if they under-perform short-term.
I don't view them as safe-havens in a downturn, I do believe the combo will perform better in a downturn and over a full market cycle than the S&P500 itself.
Not sure if this answers your question or helps! I'm sure others will comment.

Thanks @MikeM,
I think I agree with everything you said there Mike. I’d just as soon play the tables in Vegas as own much gold. Hold it indirectly through several funds of course, but as far as dedicated p/m funds go - perhaps 1 or 2%. Don’t know how PRPFX gets away with it - but far less volatility than I’d expect for a fund with 25% in precious metals.
Yes - I did own both HSGFX and HSTRX for a few years in the 2000-2005 period. The latter was actually a pretty good fund and is the one I remember holding around 10% in gold and p/m shares.

Thoughts followed by explanations:

• I'm not fond of using global in lieu of foreign + domestic
• The funds listed are all good but are all of one type; you might want expand your search
• VMVFX is rare, if not unique, for good or for bad

Companies that invest internationally pay foreign taxes. In most cases, including most global funds, they declare your net income after those taxes on your 1099, and so you pay taxes (in a taxable account) on your net earnings. But if over 50% of a fund is foreign and if it chooses to do so, it can declare your gross income (before paying those taxes) on your 1099, and give you a foreign tax credit.
If you just deduct that amount, you're in the same place as if the fund itself had just declared your net income. However, you also have the option (in a taxable account) of getting a dollar for dollar credit - that's worth more. Many if not most global funds don't give you this option. Foreign funds do.
I prefer to invest in foreign funds (to control foreign exposure on the portfolio macro level) and domestic funds with a good slug of foreign companies (to enable fund managers to tweak my foreign exposure). That way I get the benefit (some would say drawback) of delegating tactical foreign/domestic allocation to fund managers, while maintaining control over the larger picture.
All three funds mentioned are off the (M*) chart on the growth side, and nearly off the chart in average company size (giant). Which explains their appeal to Ted. This part of the market has done so well for so long that it's easy to forget there are other companies out there.
Here's an article (with lots of numbers) on the Fidelity site that compares value and growth performance (domestic only) between 1990 and 2015 (26 years). If you don't want to read it, just look at Table 2 - it measures outperformance of growth or value (in basis points) in rolling five year periods. From 2005 on, growth "won" virtually all periods. Yet over the 26 year period, value came out better on average.
https://www.fidelity.com/learning-center/trading-investing/trading/value-investing-vs-growth-investing
On the value, and somewhat smaller cap, side, you might look at PGVFX. Exclude 2017 and its five year performance (2011-2016) matches that of MGGPX, with significant stretches of differing performance (sometimes better, sometimes worse). You can see that clearly from this chart. The point is that there's more to investing than giant cap ultra growth.
Some funds tend to drift from domestic to global over time. Some of the Mutual Series funds did that. MDISX renamed itself from Discovery to Global Discovery, MQIFX changed from Qualified (originally designed for tax-qualified accounts) to Quest. Both were originally domestic value funds. I'm not suggesting those.
Another fund, this one worth considering, that is following a similar arch is FLPSX. While M* still classifies it as a domestic fund, it may be the widest ranging fund you'll find. Which may be part of why one looks at global funds. Foreign stocks and domestic stocks each comprise 40%-50% of its portfolio (with more domestic). ARTRX has a very similar ratio, though its domestic allocation is a tad higher, just above 1/2. PRGSX is even more domestic, with 58% of its holdings onshore.
Finally, VMVFX is an oddity because it is a hedged fund. It launched as the dollar was rising smartly, so that hedging contributed significantly to its outperformance. This is not to say that it isn't a fine fund, but that one where the numbers must be scrutinized more closely when comparing with other funds.

If you trend GLD and PRPFX, the 2 move in tandem. So, it could be argued PRPFX is a conservative way of owning gold, I think. I think you would own a fund like PRPFX for the same reason you would own a conservative balanced fund like maybe GLRBX, although over time I think a plain vanilla fund like GLRBX would have been a smoother and more lucrative ride. But in any case, it all comes down to being comfortable in how it fits your portfolio view.
What does that mean, PRPFX was "over-weight" gold? The weight within the portfolio doesn't change.

Mostly valid points @MikeM ...
With a combined 25% benchmark weighting to gold and silver, PRPFX will respond more to price changes in those metals than most funds having little or no exposure. Metals tend to be wildly erratic “assets”, which explains your preference at one time for this fund over owning GLD or a dedicated p/m fund. A bit like adding some water to your single malt to dampen the effect. I placed assets in quotes because there was a good thread here about 5 years ago debating whether gold should even be considered a “financial asset”.
Sounds like you had a reasonably good experience with PRPFX and moved out when momentum reversed. As with any open-ended fund, heavy selling by shareholders over short periods can ding returns, hurting those who stay behind - but there’s no way that I know of to prevent them, and I've occasionally engaged in the same practice to lock in a quick gain.
Adding a volatile investment to an otherwise conservative fund will affect returns during both the up and down cycles. Hussman, for example, once held significant mining shares in HSTRX. On the surface it appeared a mild mannered income fund. But in 2007 it outpaced the competition with a near 13% gain; than lost 8.37% in 2013. Suspect you’ll find those numbers track the performance / underperformance of GLD. (If memory is correct, p/m shares represented near 10% of the fund at times,)
I’ll go out on a limb and say I like gold / miners at the moment. In part that’s because most everything else appears so expensive. That said, timing the metals is a fool’s errand and I have 0% confidence in my outlook. Consequently, I currently maintain only a “token” foothold in a dedicated p/m fund.
Re “Overweight” (First mentioned in this thread by @PBKCM):
Unless a fund rebalances every day, rapidly rising prices for a particular asset might move that asset to a temporary overweight position relative to benchmark - until the manager rebalances. Don’t know how frequently PRPFX rebalances, but doubt it’s every day. So I’d expect that the fund went temporarily overweight gold for a stretch simply because it was appreciating much more rapidly than the fund’s other assets.

I have VMVFX for a nearly 50-50 split world stock fund and like it -- owned it since inception due to its fees, composition, and allocation --- not b/c it's called a 'minimum volatility' fund.
For world stock exposure you could also look @ sector funds/companies that include large (30-50%) allocations to global stocks, such as some of the TRP funds.

In a slightly related area, BFOR, the "GARP" ETF that follows the Barron's 400 index, failed to keep up with the S&P 500 in 2017. I haven't owned it for more than two years. However, I have found the M* wide-moat ETFs, the domestic MOAT (+23.16%) and the international MOTI (+30.16%) to be thoroughly rewarding funds to own.

Hello.
This is Old_Skeet's market barometer report for the weekending January 12, 2018.
Last week, I reported that the 500 Index was overbought with a reading of 134. This week the barometer dropped six more points to a reading of 128 which falls into the extremely overbought area on the scale. With this, it seems investors have been buying in advance of an anticipated strong 4th quarter earnings reporting season. Generally, a lower barometer reading indicates there is less investment value in the Index over a higher reading. Last year the lowest recorded barometer reading took place during the Trump Bump with a reading of 131 for the weekending of 2/24/2017.
For the week short interest for SPY was up from 2.7 days to cover to 2.8 days.
Within the major sectors of the 500 Index the lead pack consisted (as the week ended) of XLE, XLF & XLY. XLK faltered and has now dropped back form lead pack status and was replace by XLF. Within the lead pack my money hound remains XLY (and has been for some time). Back in late fall I put money on the Christmas shopper and with the new tax overhaul package that has recently become law the consumer seems to still be spending.
Within the global compass the lead pack consisted (as the week ended) of GSP, EWJ & VTI. EEM has now begun to falter and was replaced by a new hound VTI. My money hound remains GSP (commodities) and has been for some time. It has had a good run but I'm thinking this might follow a seasonal pattern soon to be ending. I'll stay with it as long as it is a good producer and might declare it a keeper and move it to the speciality sleeve from the spiff sleeve.
I am currently only putting spiff investment money on one hound at a time within each compass as I limit myself to only three open spiffs at any one time within my portfolio. However, another strategy that I have used in the past is to put investment money on each hound found in the lead pack. Since, the lead hound investment strategy is meant to complement other portfolio positions in the form of special investments (aka spiffs) I am at this time investing only in the lead hound strategy. I let my investment remain on the money hound(s) as long as they can maintain lead pack status. Should a money hound began to falter and fall from the lead pack then the investment is closed and a new investment position is opened on another lead hound felt to have good legs. Thus, it becomes my new money hound.
The process, for me, continues until I get tired of watching the hounds run or the investment momentum is lost and I close out the spiffs.
Another strategy listed above by @MikeM known as the Leadership Strategy was used by Old_Skeet for a number of years. I moved away from it because it mostly centers around a a style oriented strategy plus a few other holdings. I favor the sectors of the 500 Index and the holdings of the global compass over it because my strategy takes me back to my days (many years ago) where I'd do some weekend betting at the dog track.
My dog track strategy (years back) was that I'd bet three dogs in most races to win, place or show. This gave me a good number of chances to have a dog, or dogs, place in the money. Generally, I only bet the first eight races as I found the later races harder to pick the money dogs.
Reminder, both the stock and bond markets are closed on Monday for Martin Luther King Day.
Thanks for stopping by and reading.
Have a good holiday weekend ... and, most of all I wish each of you ... "Good Investing."
Old_Skeet

FYI: The members of Barron’s 2018 Roundtable arrived at our annual gathering in a jolly mood. And why not? U.S. stocks returned an impressive 20% last year, and are off to the races again this year, propelled by expectations of good economic growth and robust corporate earnings.
Our panelists, who spent Jan. 8 talking with the editors of Barron’s at the Harvard Club of New York, generally expect more of the same in the months ahead—more gains for equities, large-cap and small, as the global economy enjoys the most coordinated level of growth since the Eisenhower administration, notes Epoch’s William Priest. Few things these days, on Wall Street and elsewhere, merit that comparison.
Regards,
Ted
https://www.barrons.com/articles/bright-outlook-for-the-economy-and-stocks-1515812439

@VintageFreak and others,
Hi guys,
To beat the bogey you've got to be in that faster moving sectors of the Index that are beating bogey. In this case EQL. The reason I use the 90 day time frame is that it cuts down on the number trades one makes and the ride seems to be a little longer. I've been with XLY for better than three months as my money hound. You could use the 30 day time frame, as well, but look to make more buys and sell transactions. The 30 day time frame will help you spot trends as they develop. Sometimes they materialize into a 90 day trend and sometimes ... well ... they just don't.
I'll be writing more on the barometer reading along with the 500 Index compass and the global compass over the weekend. There are a couple of new lead pack hounds now found in both compasses as some hounds have begun to falter and pullback as they seemed to have become winded. Perhaps. they will again pick up the pace ... perhaps not. But, my money hounds remain XLY in the 500 Compass and GSP (commodities) in the global compass.
So, check back later this weekend for Old_Skeet's weekly barometer and compass report.

@VintageFreak, this explains a similar strategy. Pretty much own the hottest sector(s) until they're not.
http://investwithanedge.com/market-leadership-strategy

The Market Leadership Strategy always has two holdings with nominal weighting of 50% each. Based on the rankings, one of the positions can be a money market fund. This strategy will buy the top two (2) ranked funds and hold them as long as they are ranked as a top-5 fund. If a holding drops below #5, the strategy will sell it and purchase the highest ranked style not already owned.

Hi, Ron.
The Navigator just aims people at (mostly) external pages. Is the problem that you're getting 404 - page not found errors or external pages that seem stale? I used Seafarer as an example and clicked through all the links. USA Today and US News were both 404s, and Chip is working to solve that. None of the working pages contained stale data.
The two internal links - to the discussion board and commentary - both worked fine, though the most recent profile of SFGIX is 2015. That reflects the fact that Andrew's fund has gone beyond our universe (small, new, undiscovered), closed, and earned Morningstar recognition.
If you could give an example of the difficulty you experienced, we'll try to make it right.
As ever,
David

Hi @Hank,
If go to PortfolioVisualizer.com and run a backtest of a portfolio consisting of 1/3 SPY, 1/3 GLD, and 1/3 IEF (rebalanced quarterly), and plot it against a benchmark of PRPFX, the charts look virtually identical from Sept 2015 thru Dec 2017.
Same is true from Dec 2004 through April 2011.
But from May 2011 through Aug 2015, PRPFX underperformed SPY/GLD/IEF by 4.75% per year. Undoubtedly because it was overweight gold.
I am glad for PRPFX investors it seems to be back on track to providing diversified returns!

"A bipartisan group of U.S. senators met with administration officials this week to discuss legislation to spend $1 trillion to improve infrastructure."
That sounds like the Donald's campaign promised that he walked back many months ago. CNN recently reported: "A White House official said on Tuesday the current proposal -- set to be unveiled in the middle of January -- would propose spending at least $200 billion on infrastructure projects over the next decade, with the hopes of spurring an additional $800 billion in state and local funding."
That's just $20B/year. To put that in perspective, $20B is about what he'd like to spend on protecting American shores. Not from rising tides and water surges and intensified storms in the decades to come, but from surging immigrants. That's also about what it may cost to build a few miles of subway in NY (Second Ave. Subway - $17B and growing).
The article seems somewhat conflicted, saying on the one hand that "Engineering and construction companies are a late-cycle industrial play" (i.e. this is cyclical), and on the other hand that "You can make a multi-year argument that there is pent-up demand for things like waterworks and roads and bridges and highways,"
The need is there and has been there for many, many years. Even the full $1T would close only half the $2T gap (ASCE figures).
Late cycle might be an argument that in good economic times the government has more money spend on that need, but the government just added an extra projected $1.46T to the national debt over the same ensuing decade. So it's not clear if even $200B let alone $1T could be budgeted.
I think infrastructure is a good niche to invest in for the long term, but IMHO the way to do it is with global funds that can move money back to US companies if and when the US gets its act together.

Have some cash div coming 15th....still don't know what to do.. Looking at OIH and UNIT

Schwab has always used cash accounts as, well, cash cows. It lards its "Intelligent" Portfolios (robo accounts) with cash, and it offers little in the way of interest for its core/transaction accounts.
Those are the accounts being addressed here. No broker (at least that I know of) offers prime MMFs for use in core accounts because of their potential illiquidity. Vanguard switched from offering VMMXX to VMFXX when the new MMF regulations kicked in. So we do need to be fair here. That said, VMFXX is yielding 1.24% (Jan 11, 2018). I'd mentioned FDRXX for Fidelity IRAs (0.95%) in another thread. Both way ahead of Schwab.
If you want the higher yields (and slightly higher risk) of prime MMFs, wherever you invest, you'll need to explicitly buy them. As Schwab writes in the disclosure statement: "You should also consider higher-return options for funds that are not needed immediately, as yields on any of our Cash Features [core account options] may be lower than those of similar investments or deposit accounts"
Schwab appears to be making mostly minor changes to its core account offerings. As I read it, Schwab is phasing out one option, while increasing insurance on its FDIC bank sweep option and adding higher interest tiers (rates not disclosed) on its bank sweep and "Schwab One® Interest" options. (Schwab One® Interest is where your cash is held by Schwab as a general obligation of the company, like "Fidelity Cash".) The option that's getting phased out would let you use one of Schwab's MMFs (sweep share class) as your core account. So all that remains to use for a core account is cash (no MMF) - cash in a bank, or cash held by Schwab.
Schwab is adding more tiers to the interest rate schedule for these two options. The highest tier is now at $1M, for all the good that does. The tiers will be at:

• Balances of $0 to $24,999.99
• Balances of $25,000.00 to $99,999.99
• Balances of $100,000.00 to $249,999.99
• Balances of $250,000.00 to $499,999.99
• Balances of $500,000.00 to $999,999.99
• Balances of $1,000,000.00 or more

Schwab had been using one bank for the bank sweep. So your cash was FDIC-insured "only" up to $250k, or $500K if it was a joint account. It will begin using two banks, so your money (if owned jointly) could be insured up to $1M (2 x $500K), getting you close to that $1M tier - a point that Schwab makes in its disclosure.
Much of the rest is boilerplate about bank insurance, which type of Schwab accounts can use which sweep features, etc.
The only negative I see in the change is the phasing out of a Schwab Sweep Money Fund as a core account option. For example, one will not be able to open an account using SWGXX, the "Sweep Class" shares of its Government Money Fund. That class is currently yielding 0.65% according to Schwab. To show how even here Schwab milks these core accounts, the fund's Investor class shares SNVXX currently yield 0.91%.

Love the concept. But PRPFX has really stagnated since gold topped in 2011.

@PBKCM,
It’s quite easy for me to check the fund’s recent performance, since I converted 100% of my holdings to a Roth on 1/04/16. As of today’s close (1/11/18) the fund has generated a 25% gain in just over 2 years. Coming right after a conversion, I couldn’t be happier. I often noted my trades / activities in the buying and selling threads in the past. If anybody cares to check the January 2016 pages they should come across that conversion date.
You are correct that the fund dropped off a cliff for a while. It was bound to happen. Hot money had poured in for several years as the fund’s (rather modest) gold and silver holdings propelled it higher than most other allocation funds. Folks seemed to feel they’d discovered a low risk way to make a lot of money fast. Of course, there is no such animal. When metals started backsliding (entirely predictable) these fly-by-night investors bailed enmass and moved on. It was at that time, with the price depressed, that I opened a small position in the fund and than averaged in over the next 2-3 years.
-
@LLJB - The Hierarchy of Disagreement
- Friendly (No sweat)
- Mild (Let’s agree to disagree)
- Considerable (You must be off your rocker!)
- Serious (Take a long walk on a short pier why don’t you?)
- Nasty (unprintable)
So with only a “mild disagreement” there’s no cause for concern.
:)
Regards