FYI: Gold has gone gangbusters this year, rising with jitters about everything from a weak global economy to the possibility of a President Trump.
After gold's best first-half of a year since 1980, gold-related funds are piled atop the leaderboard for returns. The average fund that invests in stocks of gold miners has returned more than 70 percent in 2016, for example. Such glittering performance has drawn even more investors, and nearly $21 billion has poured into funds that buy either gold bars or the stocks of mining companies in the year to date through August, according to Morningstar. In 2015 investors pulled $2 billion out of those same funds.
Regards,
Ted
http://www.bigstory.ap.org/article/5f021dd9651a459b9faeae1b26aa89ed/after-huge-gains-even-gold-fund-managers-advise-caution

We have been working with clients for more than 30 years and have seen a boatload of changes in the fund industry. As one poster noted, advisors have been able to use F-1 shares for many years, but individual investors could not. But the fact is that fee-only advisors have been the ones using this option, not the commission folks. It is always frustrating for us to see a new client come in with their account statements that show 4-6 American Funds, with a ton of overlap, thinking they are diversified. What was their "advisor" thinking? Pretty obvious, seems to me. Also know that for years, American Funds were "top shelf" options in many commission-based brokerages, meaning the rep earned a higher percentage of the gross commission if she/he pushed those products to clients. Not sure if this still happens, but the fund companies paid the broker-dealers to get on that top-shelf list. While American Funds, by and large, have been an ok group, their numerous large cap US funds are pretty-much defacto index funds when you compare size, number of holdings, Beta, STD, and other measures. And they fared about the same as the S&P 500 in the 2007-08 meltdown. There are certainly much worse load fund families out there.

For an allocation fund whose performance has hugged the return of the S&P 500 for the past 10 years, go for the Bruce Fund (BRUFX). It's by far my biggest MF holding.

Don't you wish Bruce Fund offered a cash position? I have my H.S.A with Bruce and would like to park some of my money in a cash position instead of having to redeem shares when I need to pay for health related expenses.
I do love the Spartan website. Old School. I have automated my contributions by using the bill pay services offered through my bank's checking account and I have learned to tempered my enthusiasm for redemptions since the US mail is the only method available for receiving withdrawals.
I'm hoping all of these "old school hurdles" are too much trouble for the "above average high tech" investor to except and it remains the fund less traveled.

For an allocation fund whose performance has hugged the return of the S&P 500 for the past 10 years, go for the Bruce Fund (BRUFX). It's by far my biggest MF holding.

Our underground cables date back to the early '60s. So pretty worthless. We receive DirecTV satellite (owned by ATT) with a decent package (but no HBO or premium channels) for under $90. Use Cricket wireless 4g (owned by ATT) for Internet & phone. Cricket costs $65 a month, including 10 GB of data, hotspot for multiple connections, and unlimited calling/long distance. XLink connects the cell phone to our regular phones & answering machine. Works well. The device: https://www.amazon.com/Xtreme-Technologies-BTTN-Bluetooth-Gateway-Black/dp/B0018NWQPK/ref=sr_1_1?s=electronics&ie=UTF8&qid=1476032748&sr=1-1&keywords=XLink
A couple small providers offer Internet via antenna. Setup & equipment are expensive, and they're still not competitive with Cricket, unless you need a lot of of bandwidth.
On the larger issue, I don't follow many trends. But utilities and REITS have been in the news this year because of outsized returns. Seems investors have been piling into them for their yields and as a replacement for low yielding bonds. Often, by the time the average investor hears of these trends they've pretty much run their course.

Hi Guys,
I am watching a lot of baseball on TV recently. When I was much younger, I loved the game. My enthusiasm has cooled somewhat with age. In the school yard I remember making small change bets that overtime eroded my lunch monies and filled the pockets of the juvenile bookies.
The wager, with a few minor variations, went something like this. The bettor could select any 3 ball players for today's games. Those 3 players must get a total of 6 hits to win the wager. The payoff was 5 to 1 so a dime could get you 50 cents if you chose wisely.
Back in yesteryear, common choices were guys like Stan the man Musial, Ted the thumper Williams, and jolting Joe DiMaggio. But even that all star group failed far more often than they succeeded. It's a tough assignment to choose not just one winner for the day, but three combined winners. It took many losing experiences, and finally a review of hitting stats to convince me of the futility of that game within a game. Those experiences probably nudged me to become more familiar with statistics.
With just a little imaginative mind stretch that early lesson can be applied to portfolio management decisions. Active fund managers fail to beat their benchmarks consistently just like ball players fail to get more hits than make outs. Statistically, it's much easier to select one such winning manager than a group of them. As the number of active fund managers increases in any given portfolio, the likelihood of that group as a whole outdistancing an Index benchmark decreases. More in numbers does not equate to more in results.
This logic leads to an investment rule: minimize the number of active managers in the construction of a portfolio. If average market returns are not attractive enough for your goals ( they are not if you elect to hire active managers ), then limit the number of active managers to improve your odds of bettering an all Index portfolio.
I'm a very slow learner. That's now my operative rule. What do you think?
Best Regards.

I think VF meant to write ARTWX, instead of ARTGX.
https://www.artisanpartners.com/individual-investors/investments/global-equity-team/global-small-cap-fund-artwx.html

Correct. Sorry. ARTWX.
I own all Artisan funds except the emerging markets ones in my Fido portfolio. Not reinvesting dividends and prudent trimming has generally worked out for me with my Artisan holdings. Patiently waiting to purchase more shares of the funds. Its just that Yockey's been bothering me for a while. Some people don't have to wait till they are 65 to retire (e.g. Nicolas Cage, Denzel Washington). It's okay to go away. I'm wondering if Yockey belongs to that club.
A man's got to know his limitations. Even Peter Lynch sorta "went away" I think. Artisan needs to poach some international managers.

@hank,
This is through their U-verse package ... here is the 800# ... 877-403-2042 ... don't forget to ask for their specials. While this is available to me in Charlotte, NC ... it is not in Murrells Inlet, SC. You will just have to call to find out avaibality.
My U-verse TV (200) @$82.50 along with internet @$27.00 and phone (nationwide calling) @$24.90 are all delivered through the phone line. This was the special rate for me @$134.50 which has now ended. My new rate will be $143.50 going forward.

I have AT&T and pay $143.50 which includes all taxes and surcharges for internet, tv and phone. My cell phone is billed under another plan.

Schwab has it 56% USA.
Derf

$300 a month is insane but I’m sure there are plenty of people out there who may be paying close to that.
Every time my Internet/Cable package is up for renewal with Comcrap, I negotiate a new deal. Don’t know if this is an option for @VintageFreak with FiOS - there are also 3rd party services that will negotiate for you for a fee of 50% of the savings.

"While I wouldn't pay a wrap fee, one presumably isn't tied to one (possibly bloated) fund family, so a lucky adviser might earn his 1% by skilled diversification."
@STB65 - an excellent point, more so now than in the past. In days of yore, it was not uncommon for load families to waive their loads for exchanges from other load families. FINRA still has a page on this, it's called Net Asset Value Transfers:
http://www.finra.org/investors/alerts/net-asset-value-transfers-look-you-leap-another-mutual-fund
For conspiracy theorists, it may be that the fund families started dropping this en masse when wrap accounts became popular. Wrap accounts offered a similar feature ("free" transfers between families), but bigger fees (in the long term) for advisors.
These days, I'd expect a good advisor (who is using load funds) to use families with a broad range of funds so that keeping money within a family would not be a problem. To the extent that AF funds are bloated, that seems to be a family-wide characteristic. So if this is viewed as a problem, one would not likely be attracted to the family at all. And if not, then AF has a good set of funds to move between.
@Alban - As Rekenthaler states in his column (see link above) a small wrap account isn't going to get serviced well. Quite possibly larger accounts as well, as Kitces discusses in his recent (August) column: "Why Reverse Churning Is About To Become A Big Advisor Problem" (i.e. advisors kicking back and letting the fees roll in - the opposite of traditional churning).
https://www.kitces.com/blog/reverse-churning-in-advisory-accounts-problems-for-fiduciary-advisors/
IMHO the only way to resolve conflicts of interest that will arise regardless of the method of compensation is to require the client's interest to come first. Period, end of story. Being somewhat less cynical than VF (though growing more so year by year), I still choose to believe that most people (including advisors) are decent and honorable and will do the right thing.

I'm never going to purchase a fund and say it is forever. I will evaluate the fund performance, manager, ER, etc. together and decide to buy and how many times to buy.
So it does not matter to me if ER of NL shares is higher. I will NEVER buy a load fund. It is just ridculous to have 5.5 shaved off the top

FYI: (Click On Article Title At Top Of Google Search)
To an outside observer, it may seem ironic that the exchange-traded-fund manager most beloved by profit-seeking investors is built like a nonprofit organization. The Vanguard Group manages $3.5 trillion in assets, yet because it is shareholder-owned, there’s no pressure from Wall Street or private stakeholders to drive profits—it operates at cost. That, plus its tremendous scale and efficiency, allows it to offer its products and services for less than its for-profit competitors.
Regards,
Ted
https://www.google.com/#q=Should+Vanguard’s+ETFs+Be+Even+Cheaper?+Barron's

My experience with the American Funds choices (no load, presumably) which my university 403b plan forced me into in place of the former TRP options hasn't been a success, although I'm sure the B-school professors meant well with their choices.
While I wouldn't pay a wrap fee, one presumably isn't tied to one (possibly bloated) fund family, so a lucky adviser might earn his 1% by skilled diversification. OTOH, I admit I have grudgingly (never "gladly") paid the 0.25% for a fund manager unavailable otherwise. If I've got my country school math right, the 0.25% fee might take 10 yr or longer to balance the 5% load, assuming some of my current (American fund) returns.
As I gradually drift toward Vanguard, individual stocks or ETFs, or index funds, this is an irrelevant point.

Real Estate Weekly Review: REITs See Biggest Weekly Decline In 2 Years
Oct. 7, 2016 6:51 PM ET
Hoya Capital Real Estate
Summary
The REIT Index retreated by 5% this week following 2% decline last week. All sectors were lower. REITs are now up only 3% YTD, down 13% from its recent highs.

With graphics and charts
http://seekingalpha.com/article/4010922-real-estate-weekly-review-reits-see-biggest-weekly-decline-2-years
Article featuring Cohen and Steers ,the company. Bloomberg.com Charles Stein
September 12, 2016
Cohen & Steers Inc., this year’s top-performing money manager, has prospered by satisfying the appetites of investors who crave higher yields.
Assets at the company, which specializes in real estate investment trusts and preferred securities, rose 17 percent to $61.5 billion in the first seven months of the year, driven by market appreciation and more than $4.5 billion in net customer deposits.
The company’s oldest mutual fund, the $6 billion Cohen & Steers Realty Shares, returned more than 12 percent annualized over the past 25 years, compared with 9.2 percent for the S&P 500 Index. The fund, up 12 percent this year, has a dividend yield of 2.5 percent, superior to the payouts on the 10-year Treasury note or the S&P 500. Its performance is similar to the Vanguard REIT Index Fund over the past three and five years.
“Higher-yielding REITs are attractive in a low-yield environment,” said Alec Lucas, a Morningstar analyst who follows the real estate fund.
The attraction extends beyond the U.S. With bond yields depressed throughout the developed world, Cohen & Steers’s president and chief investment officer, Joseph Harvey, told analysts on a July conference call that investors “are scrambling for yield and we believe our strategies will continue to benefit.”
The firm pulled in $840 million during the second quarter from its subadvisory business in Japan through a partnership with Daiwa Asset Management. Most of the money went into U.S. REITs, which are popular in Japan.
The $6.8 billion Cohen & Steers Preferred Securities and Income Fund, which has a dividend yield of 5.3 percent, gathered $1.4 billion in deposits in the first seven months of 2016, data from Morningstar show. Preferred shares, considered a stock-debt hybrid, tend to appeal to income-oriented investors.
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2016-09-12/year-s-top-money-manager-gets-boost-from-yield-starved-investors

The F-1 (or F) share class has existed since 2002. The only thing changing is that you can now purchase the existing F-1 share class without going through an advisor. So if you were working with an advisor nothing has changed on the fund side.
The advisor may now have to be more honest, but American Funds is not changing what the advisor can sell you or the cost of those shares.
IMHO people aren't wising up. Just the opposite. They gladly pay 1%/year in wrap fees forever rather than pay a one time 5% fee of the purchase amount (with free exchanges within the family).
Wrap fees have supplanted loads as a way for advisors to make their fees palatable while extracting more money from their clients. Wrap fees function like C shares, but advisors can advertise that you won't pay a load.
Likewise, noload investors gladly pay 0.25% in perpetuity rather than a one time fee of a few bucks per purchase.

This basically means they are acknowledging active management is worthless. Loads which are wrong in first place add insult to injury.
I'm sure ER is jacked up on those F1 class shares.

That's all a tad cynical, don't you think?
If opening up sales channels is an acknowledgment that active management is worthless, then is closing some sales channels (e.g. converting from a no load family to a load family) is a declaration that active management is great? Perhaps it is simply a way of optimizing business, taking into consideration effects on sales force (brokers/advisors), cash flows, AUM, performance, etc.?
American Funds has for many years sold its funds in both load and no load share classes. If, say, Fidelity, did that, would they also be wrong? Oh wait, they do, e.g. FFRHX & FFRAX. As do PIMCO, American Century, and various other fund houses.
American Funds has been selling F shares since 2002 (they became F-1 in 2008 when AF launched F-2 w/o the 12b-1 fee).
I checked the 2003 EuroPacific Fund prospectus. The F shares were indeed slightly more expensive when they started out: They had a 12b-1 fee of 0.25%, while the A shares had a 12b-1 fee of just 0.14%. So the F shares were11 basis points more expensive.
But by 2008 when F-2 launched, both A and F-1 shares had a 0.25% 12b-1 fee, and virtually ERs. It looks like they jacked up the load share class fee, not the other way around.

Typically F-2 shares carry transaction fees, even when purchased through an advisor. For example, here are Scottrade's pages for EuroPacific Growth F-1 (AEGFX) and F-2 (AEPFX). At Scottrade both are sold only through advisors. The F-1 class is listed as NTF, the F-2 as TF.
If you had direct access (i.e. no advisor required) under the same terms, would you pay the transaction fees for F-2? I would, but I invest long term and look at total cost. I believe some people here have written to the effect that they would not pay a fee to purchase a fund. The point is that access to cheaper institutional shares doesn't come for free.
Sometimes it isn't even a matter of higher mins for the institutional (lower ER) share class. It may be strictly a matter of TF. For example, at Fidelity, in an IRA, you can purchase the I (institutional) and N (retail, 0.25% 12b-1 fee) share classes of AQR large cap funds with the same $2500 min. AUEIX & AUENX, AMOMX & AMONX, QCELX & QCENX.

If I recall correctly, somewhere in the 1990s or early 2000s, American Funds F shares (before they split into F-1 and F-2) were available through some second tier brokerages. That is, not Fidelity or Schwab, but some of the more obscure brokerages of the time.
Regarding loads and advice. Over at M*, John Rekenthaler wrote a column a few years ago (that I cannot seem to find) detailing why loads can actually work better (read: cost less) than other forms of compensation for small investors.
What I could find was a more recent paragraph by him summarizing his position (with which I concur):

While most financial writers--and many if not most of this column's readers--believe that commission-based advice is inherently worse than advice that is purchased by ongoing fees (mostly asset-based, sometimes flat), I do not. A front-end load fund that is bought and held for the long term is a relatively cheap investment and often a relatively good one at that. What matters is not the payment structure for the advice, but if it is offered solely in the client's best interest and comes at a fair cost.

Emphasis added.
He goes on to sketch figures comparing access and costs of wrap accounts vs. loads, though in the broader context of discussing the new DOL fiduciary rule.
http://ibd.morningstar.com/article/article.asp?id=718083&CN=brf295,http://ibd.morningstar.com/archive/archive.asp?inputs=days=14;frmtId=12, brf295
Since I don't seek advice (heck, I actively run away from anyone pushing advice at me), this "back to the future" sales channel of American Funds is attractive to me, as it may be for many people here. But it won't work for everyone.