@rforno,
Thanks for making comment.
What might be other options for the small retail investor seeking exposure in some privetly held companies through a mutual fund wrapper? Any suggestions you might have to offer would be appreciated.
For information purposes ... I have owned this fund since October 2011 with my total return in the fund being better than 80% and with annualized returns being about 12.7% as detailed in my last brokerage account statement. In addition, the yield on amount invested, for me, is about 4.5%. In this low yield environment I think I'll continue to hold it. While it might not be right for some I am pleased, thus far, with what it has done for me.
Again, I'd like to take a look at at some other options if you have a similar mutual fund to offer.
Thanks again ... for your comment.
Old_Skeet

Worth a read: nytimes.com/2016/09/25/business/your-mutual-fund-has-your-proxy-like-it-or-not.html

Hi Guys,
What a disaster! The chart tells a story of cumulative failure. It is an outright disgrace.
The failure that I perceive is not a national failure. It is the failure of the individual and/or the individual family unit. The USA is a prosperous nation with almost unlimited potential wealth for its citizens. Yet the wealth depicted in the accompanying chart is truly dismal for individual folks.
The opportunities exist, but our financial discipline fails us as individuals. We want and demand the storybook good life before we can afford it. Delaying gratification would go a long way to resolving this problem. The small numbers shown in the chart as a function of age demonstrate the issue. The problem would quickly desolve if we just practiced the saving discipline that many of us displayed until roughly the early 1980s. We seemed to toss frugality to the wind in that era and have never recovered from that reckless joyride.
Here is a Link to a nice PBS presentation that highlights some of the significant conflicting issues:
http://www.pbs.org/newshour/bb/why-so-many-americans-in-the-middle-class-have-no-savings/
My wife and I never succumbed to the temptation to overspend. We always saved about 15% of our gross income and invested wisely. I suppose that it was a wise decision to study the investment process. We did and we prospered. As a result, it is no exaggeration to claim we are chart busters. Some luck, some skill, but above all a disciplined saving and spending behavior.
I truly feel sorry for the median and below folks that are depicted by the chart. Those folks are in constant danger of being decimated by an unexpected negative happening that a few hundred dollars could easily cure.
Best Wishes.

I just went over to the government's TSP site and used their calculator to see what the "worth" in SS income of an equivalent annuity would be. Since I wanted a value for the bottom tier who may have almost no real savings or home ownership, I chose $1000/mo as their SS income. I think the annuity purchase closest to SS would be an increasing value payout with 100% survivor benefit. $400,000 would buy the annuity with a $1022/mo benefit. (Both members of a couple assumed to be age 66. Without the increasing component it would have been about $250,000. I don't know what the best price elsewhere would be.) Monthly benefit equivalents larger than $1022/mo would, of course, cost more if plugged into this calculator. Those of us with many times the savings required should appreciate the "ownership" of this tier to their "SS derived worth" even if, or especially if, the expense of annuities is up enormously due to low rates.

>> a striking resemblance to geometric average
right
>> you and many others don't care (yet).
Nothing for anyone to care about. The $58k or whatever it is does not weigh on anyone like some household or personal debt. What should be cared about (only) is percentage of GDP. This may be too high (lots of arguability here), or may not, but does show the problem of not paying for things (chiefly war activities) in real time.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Debt-to-GDP_ratio

FYI: More companies don't want you, or any other investor, to buy their stock.
Instead of listing their shares on a stock exchange, businesses are going private or never going public in the first place. Security company ADT, for example, pulled its shares off the market this spring after going private in a nearly $7 billion buyout. Uber, meanwhile, makes it simple for customers to hail a car, but investors can't easily buy a piece of the privately held company, which is valued at more than $60 billion
Regards,
Ted
http://bigstory.ap.org/article/7953517a32e9423ca8872a4371f252ba/how-incredible-shrinking-stock-market-affects-your-fund

Annualized - take a cumulative figure over any time period, and scale it to one year.
Investopedia's got this right:
http://www.investopedia.com/terms/a/annualized-total-return.asp
Note that I cite Invesopedia here not as an authoritative source, but as a readable one, in case my writing/typing/formulae below are unclear.
For example, if you have a cumulative return of 21% for two years, you scale it to one year by taking the square root (1/2 power): sqrt (1 + 21%) - 1 = (1.1) - 1 = 10%
In general, given a cumulative return over a period of Y years,
annualized return = (1 + cumulative return) ^ (1/Y) - 1
You'll notice a striking resemblance to geometric average:
1 + cumulative return = (1 + first year return) x (1 + second year return) x ...
Unfortunately, figures under a year are often "annualized" without compounding, e.g. a six month return of 5% is "annualized" to 10%, not to (1.05 * 1.05) - 1 = 10.25%.

Net worth? The Federal debt is $58,000 for each person who lives in the USA today including children and nobody cares (yet).

Gripe to the SEC (How to Read A Mutual Fund Shareholder Report):

Performance Table. Underneath the line graph is a table showing the fund’s annualized (or average annual) returns for 1-, 5-, and 10-year (or for the life of the fund, if shorter) periods.

Somewhere I've still got M-W's 2nd unabridged, on onion skin (from my parents). The last edition before they started including slang. If I can find it (not likely), I'll see what it says.
If one insists that average means (no pun intended) arithmetic mean: What was the average annual return of a fund that produced 50% and -50% returns over the past two years? 0% or -13%? Sure it's still a mean, but it's not the "usual" mean.
As for me, I'm still bothered by flammable. I get inflamed whenever I hear it :-)

I hate when people us the term "average annual return" in place of "annualized return." The two are nowhere near synonymous.

Defined pensions are a thing of the past. Only about 5% of workers have them and 50% of those work for gov't.

Speaking of fuzzy statistics, this number sounds way off. Pensions are declining, but not nearly that fast. As of 2011, 18% of private sector workers had traditional pensions, and 78% of government workers had pensions. (I've no doubt the figures have dropped in the past five years, but not by 3/4).

You are correct. I was thinking of union members.

Somewhere I've still got M-W's 2nd unabridged, on onion skin (from my parents). The last edition before they started including slang. If I can find it (not likely), I'll see what it says.
If one insists that average means (no pun intended) arithmetic mean: What was the average annual return of a fund that produced 50% and -50% returns over the past two years? 0% or -13%? Sure it's still a mean, but it's not the "usual" mean.
As for me, I'm still bothered by flammable. I get inflamed whenever I hear it :-)

Defined pensions are a thing of the past. Only about 5% of workers have them and 50% of those work for gov't.

Speaking of fuzzy statistics, this number sounds way off. Pensions are declining, but not nearly that fast. As of 2011, 18% of private sector workers had traditional pensions, and 78% of government workers had pensions. (I've no doubt the figures have dropped in the past five years, but not by 3/4).
http://www.bls.gov/opub/mlr/2012/12/art1full.pdf

The only way I see people surviving with such small net worth is,social security, food stamps etc and living hand to mouth. 46 million use food stamps.
This should give those of us with substantial net worth, SS and pensions pause to appreciate what we have.

That's a more accurate statistic. It's even worse that it looks when you consider that several millions of those people need food stamps while working. I agree with the sentiment - though IMHO it is better to try to give a hand up (however one feels that is best done) than to simply be thankful for one's own situation.

Reorganization:
https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/812015/000119312516718214/d174387d497.htm
497 1 d174387d497.htm THE AB PORTFOLIOS - CONSERVATIVE WEALTH STRATEGY
SUP-0106-0916I
LOGO
THE AB PORTFOLIOS
-AB Conservative Wealth Strategy
Supplement dated September 22, 2016 to the Summary Prospectus and Prospectus (the “Prospectuses”) dated December 31, 2015 for AB Conservative Wealth Strategy (the “Portfolio”).
At a meeting held on September 21, 2016, the Board of Trustees of The AB Portfolios approved the following actions:
Agreement and Plan of Acquisition and Liquidation
The Portfolio’s Board of Trustees approved, and recommended to shareholders for their approval, a proposal for the assets and liabilities of the Portfolio to be acquired by AB All Market Income Portfolio, a series of AB Cap Fund, Inc. (the “Acquiring Portfolio”, and together with the Portfolio, the “Portfolios”). The Portfolios pursue similar investment objectives and strategies.
If the Portfolio’s shareholders approve the acquisition, all of the Portfolio’s assets and liabilities will be transferred to the Acquiring Portfolio, and shareholders of the Portfolio will receive shares of the same class of the Acquiring Portfolio, except that Class B shareholders of the Portfolio will receive Class A shares of the Acquiring Portfolio, in exchange for their shares of the Portfolio.
The Portfolio will distribute to shareholders of record information about the proposed acquisition of the Portfolio by the Acquiring Portfolio and request their consent for the proposal. If approved by shareholders, the acquisition is expected to be completed in February 2017.
Changes to Principal Investment Strategies
The Portfolio’s Board of Trustees approved changes to the principal strategies of the Portfolio, which are anticipated to take effect on or about January 26, 2017 and remain in effect until the acquisition (or indefinitely if the acquisition does not occur).
The Portfolio will no longer seek to achieve its objective by investing in a combination of underlying mutual funds managed by AllianceBernstein L.P. (“Underlying Portfolios”), the investment adviser to the Portfolio. Instead, the Portfolio will seek to achieve its objective by investing primarily directly in securities and other investments, while continuing to invest a portion of its assets in certain Underlying Portfolios, in accordance with its targeted percentages in certain asset classes and investment styles.
This Supplement should be read in conjunction with the Prospectuses for the Portfolio.
You should retain this Supplement with your Prospectuses for future reference.
The [A/B] Logo is a service mark of AllianceBernstein and AllianceBernstein® is a registered trademark used by permission of the owner, AllianceBernstein L.P.
SUP-0106-0916I

The article is misleading because it omits "human capital"- the present value of all future income earned from labor". For most young people, human capital far exceeds their actual capital. Even for many seniors, human capital is not zero- some seniors are still working in their seventies and even eighties.

Human capital is not a part of one's net worth... Regardless, if accurate, these numbers are embarrassing...

I know you know this Hank but these values (medians) are not averages, they are just the middle.

A look at the word “average”, American Mathematical Society Blogs (May 12, 2012):

Average "has three mathematical meanings: it could be mean, mode, or median. This suggests that confusion, intentionally or not, is likely to happen when the word is used."

Indubitably.

If the figure above is representative of US general population, we are in trouble unless the they have a healthy social security and generous pension.

Defined pensions are a thing of the past. Only about 5% of workers have them and 50% of those work for gov't.
The only way I see people surviving with such small net worth is,social security, food stamps etc and living hand to mouth. 46 million use food stamps.
This should give those of us with substantial net worth, SS and pensions pause to appreciate what we have.

Great article. Many of the investments in the endowment are quite complex and very difficult for smaller investors to own (assuming they would want them). Minimums tend to be high and there's lots of legal restrictions imposed by IRS or SEC which impede liquidity and add tax liabilities for small investors.
If (for the above reasons) these investments are not in a financial assets manager's basket of offerings to begin with, it's difficult for the manager to add them to a target date fund.
Article suggests that a target fund dated 30 years in the future is comperable to a college endowment in investment horizon. I'm not sure that's true. However, assuming it is ... what percentage of small investors in that age group (say 20-35 years of age) actually elect to invest through target date funds? Is there a sizable market there to make such a diversified offering profitable for the financial services provider?
---
More thoughts after sleeping on this one: A big difference (which I think the M* article largely ignores) is that humans age - and that this life-long transition must be taken into account over one's ever changing investment horizon. That's where target date glide-slopes come into play. Most rational advisors wouldn't allocate an individual's money as aggressively at age 60 as the would at age 30-40. However, with a university endowment there would seem to be no need for such a glide-slope. Assuming the university continues to grow and prosper, it's endowment investment horizon should remain constant - allowing an aggressive broadly diversified approach for many decades - even centuries. Do I have it right? Or am I missing something in highlighting this difference?

http://www.fool.com/investing/general/2015/05/17/americans-average-net-worth-by-age-how-do-you-comp.aspx

One thing to consider is the imputed value of SS and pension. But that would be difficult to do.

I really like to see the endowment funds from all the major universities and how they compare to target-date funds, say 2000 till 2016.
Even among the target-date funds, some are better than the others just like 529 college saving plan.