Hi Guys,
These exchanges suggest a considerable misunderstanding of my posts. I'll accept responsibility that I did not clearly state my position or intent. Sorry about that failure. Someday I'll learn to express myself more precisely.
In no way did I mean to be critical of anyone's investment policy or tactics. That's far above my pay grade. We all have specific investment objectives that are unique to each of us. More power to the individual investor. We choose our own pathway to wealth and happiness.
I failed to clearly distinguish the difference between an active investor and a day trader. A day trader is definitely an active trader, but all active traders are not day traders. I'm not sure that I can precisely define an active trader. How many trades per year or what average holding period defines an active trader? Any inputs to this question are highly encouraged.
The 1% number that has been linked to my posts comes from an earlier reference that I made on these postings. For completeness, I repeat it here:
http://www.marketwatch.com/story/almost-no-one-can-beat-the-market-2013-10-25
That brief article opened wth the following paragraph:
"Year after year, decade after decade, evidence has piled up that neither individual nor professional investors can outperform broad market indexes consistently over long periods of time."
The author specifically noted that only about 1% of the active investing public (that included active individual investors and mutual fund managers) generate positive Alphas relative to a fair representative benchmark.
I assumed that that statistic is approximately accurate. It need not be exactly right! That statistic speaks to the hard challenges for all investors. It is goodness to be in that limited grouping. Old Skeet managed to fall into this highly successful, elite group. More power to him. I only meant to praise him for overcoming difficult odds. Hooray for Old Skeet!!
Sorry that my writing style did not make my good feelings for Old Skeet's success more positive.. I wish his success for all of us.
Best Wishes

@David: So the color coding does not align with the 1-5 ratings?

Hi @Old_Skeet, I'm just wondering why you chose the Lipper Balanced fund to benchmark your performance. Since it's an index created out of the largest 30 balanced funds and weighted by AUM (I believe), you end up comparing your portfolio to other mostly active funds. Presumably those funds, in total, have a similar asset class weighting to yours even though the range of the funds that make up the index seems to be fairly big. It also means the very large funds, like American Funds Balanced and Vanguard Wellington, carry more weight in the index than most others. I didn't do all the math so I can't say for sure but it looks possible that these two funds account for more than 35% of the index.
I track my performance against a collection of benchmarks, partly because my asset allocation adjusts more than yours does over time, but I just use a 60% Total Stock Market or Total World Stock Market and 40% Total Bond Market as my 'balanced' benchmarks. I'm wondering whether you might have better reasons than I did for choosing the Lipper Index?
Thanks in advance and congratulations on your results!!

Hi folks,
Old_Skeet did not have any intentions what-so-ever to start a riff in this thread. But, know it seems one might be forming (let's hope not). In addition, I have a few comments.
I am not a day trader by any means; however, form time-to-time I will position my portfolio to take advantage of what I am finding to be the faster moving currents within the markets and weight accordingly and to reduce risk as well when I feel it is warranted. In today's time it is hard to beat (from my perspective) the flash crowd through day trading activity although a few might be successful most, by my thinking, will fail. I have seen a good number of what I consider to be relative smart people lose a good bit of money day trading with some experiencing life changing events (and not for the good). Day trading is not for me and I have never ventured into any form of activity that might be considered day trading. Asset positioning is something very different. My high school engineer buddy was a day trader that lost a considerable amount day trading. Today, he is an indexer.
Since, some of my portfolio holdings have changed since December 2015 that was recently posted for reference by mfs, I'll update it with current positions and post it under the thread "What Are You Buying Selling and/or Pondering?" in the near future. Know, since my retirement I have been moving towards expanding my footprint in hybrid type funds for more than one reason. From my thinking this is making my portfolio more adaptive to the ever changing market conditions and increasing the portfolio's capacity to generate income. For those that might be able to do a look back to some of the old published portfolios I am sure you will easily find there has indeed been some holding changes.
Peace ... and, it's time to move on.
Skeet

I'm familiar with the paper you just cited. Its Table 1 summarizes other papers. Only in that table, in the entry where it summarizes the paper I quoted, does one find the 1% figure you attached to Skeet.
So once again I ask, why are you lumping Skeet in with day traders?
If you're not, then the 1% quote is irrelevant. For that matter, do you have any evidence that the paper you just cited is relevant to Skeet? It says that "Many hold poorly diversified portfolios." Really, do you think that this sounds anything like Skeet?
Old_Skeet's New Portfolio Asset Allocations (2016)
http://mutualfundobserver.com/discuss/discussion/24926/old-skeet-s-new-portfolio-asset-allocations-2016
You might want to take a closer look at another paper cited (indirectly) by the Marketwatch column: the 2010 Barras, Scaillet, and Wermers paper. You'll need to read the paper itself, not just the two sentences in the article referenced in Marketwatch.
The authors "find that 75% of funds exhibit a zero alpha (net of expenses)". So it's still not that hard for fund managers to outperform the market by enough to cover expenses - something that index funds can't do.

Hi Msf,
I specifically quoted from the Link that you discussed because of its brevity. MFOErs are busy folks and might not be inclined to read extensive documentation. Barber and Odean generated many documents that illustrated the futility of frequent trading. These included summarizes of their own studies as well as industry and academic works. Their documentation is often very extensive.
Here is a Link to one such survey study:
https://poseidon01.ssrn.com/delivery.php?ID=324008102071125095121123001096091092127013047085066030022006029120125110111114126108121034058014030047028087107017083080083069058066022051042120001093126080002011009017091099018123028093003020089116098026071106066082068022120015066030076121110&EXT=pdf
The conclusion from this 54 page report is presented immediately below for individual investors:
"They trade frequently and have perverse stock selection ability, incurring unnecessary investment costs and return losses. They tend to sell their winners and hold their losers, generating unnecessary tax liabilities. Many hold poorly diversified portfolios, resulting in unnecessarily high levels of diversifiable risk, and many are unduly influenced by media and past experience. Individual investors who ignore the prescriptive advice to buy and hold low-fee, well-diversified portfolios, generally do so to their detriment."
That's not me talking. It is Barber and Odean. Actually, I'm more optimistic than they are. There are many exceptions with returns far above a disappointing average.
Best Wishes

From Bloomberg - "Nir Kaissar is a Bloomberg Gadfly columnist covering the markets. He is the founder of Unison Advisors, an asset management firm. He has worked as a lawyer at Sullivan & Cromwell and a consultant at Ernst & Young."
Prospectus (of sorts) for Unison advisors LLC :
http://unisonadvisors.com/Unison-ADV-Part-II.pdf
It is dated 2012, at which time Mr. Kaissar appeared to be the primary owner.
"As of March 26, 2012, Unison managed $18,241,839 on a discretionary basis and $0 on a non- discretionary basis"
For comparison, T. Rowe Price (whom Mr. Kaissar tales a mild swing at) recently reported assets under management of $861.6 Billion. https://www3.troweprice.com/usis/corporate/en/press/t--rowe-price-group-reports-first-quarter-2017-results/jcr:content/article-pdf/pdffile/jcr:content
I've found in my near 25 years with Price that they are often early in their market prognosis - sometimes painfully early. But that they are seldom wrong.

Much of what Philidor did was to serve as the preferred pharmacy for Valeant's drugs. That meant that you could take a Valeant coupon to Philidor and get a brand name drug for a small copayment. I should know - I got a drug that goes for around $1200 for about $35 there.
Once Philidor closed down, Valeant moved its program to Walgreen's. Hardly a fly-by-night pharmacy.
http://www.valeantaccessprogram.com/
While this is common practice among drug companies, the federal government considers it a kickback, and prohibits the use of coupons if you're covered by Medicare. Thus Valent (and other drug providers) add the footnote:
"This offer is not valid for any person eligible for reimbursement of prescriptions, in whole or in part, by any federal, state, or other governmental programs, including, but not limited to, Medicare (including Medicare Advantage and Part A, B, and D plans), Medicaid, TRICARE, Veterans Administration or Department of Defense health coverage, CHAMPUS, the Puerto Rico Government Health Insurance Plan, or any other federal or state health care programs. "
Here's an article in Modern Health Care about these coupon programs, how they work, and how they're actually raising the cost of drugs to all of us.

Hi Old Skeet,
Congratulations on your investing success story. But not many share your experience. According to much investor research and many research conclusions, it is a rather rare happening.
That observation is "in line with research by Brad Barber of UC Davis and Terrance Odean of UC Berkeley who found that only about 1% of active traders outperformed the market. The more frequently people trade, the worse they do."
It's traffic that you are in that rare 1% grouping. Here is the Link that I extracted that quote from:
http://www.marketwatch.com/story/almost-no-one-can-beat-the-market-2013-10-25

Did I miss Skeet saying he was a day trader?
That's what the 1% figure from Barber, Odean, et al. is referring to. (It's notable that the quote is from the Marketwatch columnist, not the academics, and cites no paper. In other places in the column, the columnist gives links. That omission allows me a bit of play in pulling actual research to conclude that "active" trader meant "day" trader.)
Quoting from Barber, Lee, Liu, Odean, "Do Day Traders Rationally Learn About Their Ability" (October 2010):

Day trading is the purchase and sale of the same stock by an investors on a day. We argue that these intraday trades are almost certainly speculative. ...
We are not the first to study day trading, though the sample of day traders we study is much large and the time-series much longer than those in prior studies. The one exception to this generalization being [another paper by] Barber, Lee, Liu, and Odean who identify a small subset of day traders (less than 1% of the day trading population) predictably earn profits.

@shostakovich That depends on how you define legit. There are a lot of activities a business can engage in that are perfectly legal that are still signs of bad corporate governance and mismanagement. Much of Valeant's business I think is legal. The constant M&A activity done via leverage, the absence of R&D, the laying off of staff and jacking up drug prices were probably all legal, but not a sustainable or ethical business model. The activity with mail-order pharmacy Philidor is probably illegal and could prove a real avenue for prosecution. But this is a real business for the most part that is now dangerously overleveraged. If they could pay down a significant amount of that debt and its valuation stayed where it was now, it would now be a legitimate value investment worthy of owning if an investor doesn't care about ethics.
The thing is how does a fund reach Sequoia's level of concentration in a highly priced overleveraged stock with lots of governance problems without its money managers recognizing those risks and either reducing the position or selling it outright. If it was just a small 1% position in a 100 stock portfolio it wouldn't have been a big deal. But Sequoia allowed Valeant to grow to be in excess of 25% of the fund, and added to the position as these scandals broke. How can any manager claim to have done full due diligence on a position of this size and not recognized these risks posed a threat? And how can any manager claim at the time it was a good value stock? In 2015 when Sequoia's ownership of it peaked, the stock had a p-e ratio of 58, a price-book ratio of 5.5 and price-cash flow of 14.3. Those valuations were all in excess of double the average stock's in the S&P 500. And it was highly leveraged at the time and remains so. Today it's price-cash flow is 2.1. If it can get out from under its debt load, it will be a great value stock.

Hi Old Skeet,
Congratulations on your investing success story. But not many share your experience. According to much investor research and many research conclusions, it is a rather rare happening.
That observation is "in line with research by Brad Barber of UC Davis and Terrance Odean of UC Berkeley who found that only about 1% of active traders outperformed the market. The more frequently people trade, the worse they do,"
It's terrific that you are in that rare 1% grouping. Here is the Link that I extracted that quote from:
http://www.marketwatch.com/story/almost-no-one-can-beat-the-market-2013-10-25
There are dozens of such reports, all with similar conclusions. I particularly selected that reference because of its title. The title says it all: "Almost No One Can Beat The Market". Indeed you are in a very rarified atmosphere.
You make an excellent closing observation. Many MFOers greatly enjoy the investment challenge. That's a terrific reason to actively participate. Unfortunately, the assembled performance data demonstrates that it is a costly practice for the major fraction of most of us. Perhaps it would be less costly and more healthful to commit to some outdoor physical exercise or to do some indoor book reading.
But there are exceptions that motivate us. Again, a hearty well done to you!
Best Wishes

Please find the following links to our first-ever Zoom Webinars ... both sessions generated positive feedback and follow-up ... several questions in first session especially. As touted by chip, thought the process was easy, which bodes well for future sessions.
Please fast-forward past the funny looking host with spectacles at beginning! Will be sure to better align camera angle next time. The sound, intro charts, and live demos though came out well.
I've included link to our intro charts as well, which includes summary of concurrent chat session questions/comments.

• MFO Premium Search Tools Webinar Recording - Wednesday, 16 August 2017, 3 pm Eastern
  
• MFO Premium Search Tools Webinar Recording - Wednesday, 16 August 2017, 8 pm Eastern
  
• Intro Charts

Thank you all for attending and your continued support!
As David discussed in this month's commentary, gentle reminder that we will be providing a live, interactive walk through of the MFO Premium screeners and analytics.
Throughout our intention will be to highlight unique insights those tools provide individual investors and financial advisers … and the attendant benefits to themselves and their clients.
Plan on about 1 hour. There are two sessions scheduled for this coming Wednesday, one at 3 pm eastern, and one at 8 pm eastern.
If you have not already received a registration confirmation, you can register directly via the links below:

• MFO Premium Search Tools Webinar - Wednesday, 16 August 2017, 3 pm Eastern
  
• MFO Premium Search Tools Webinar - Wednesday, 16 August 2017, 8 pm Eastern

Hi Guys,
If the market wizards are depending on the investing public to make wise decisions they will be sadly disappointed. Our crystal ball is not just cloudy, it is cracked. Test data demonstrates time and time again that it is not that we suffer from a lack of knowledge, but that we misinterpret what we know, or, even more troubling, what we think we know is just not so.
Here is a Link that presents some data and discusses our knowledge/interpretation shortfalls:
http://www.newsweek.com/how-ignorant-are-americans-66053
In a closing paragraph, the author concludes that " We suffer from a lack of information rather than a lack of ability.” I disagree. I believe we have plenty of information but fall short in our ability to properly interpret that huge information base.
A very long time ago I served in the US Army. At one stage in my military career I administered, scored, and discussed results with the troops taking these tests. In all aspects, the outcomes were disappointing. We think we know more than we actually do.
The good news is that I believe we often recognize our shortcomings and adjust accordingly. I suspect that is why, in the investment world, we overwhelmingly default to Index products. Unlike those on MFO, many folks don't check the financial marketplace on a regular basis. They are satisfied with near market returns minus some modest fees.
In several,ways, these folks are smarter and more efficient than those who choose to invest time and effort in this challenging task. The outputs of that daunting task have not proven to substantially reward its practionaires with outsized profits. It is not that we lack information, and not that we lack ability. It is that we are trying to predict the unpredictable.
Best Regards

Here is the fixed link to the MFO thread on developed small caps:
http://www.mutualfundobserver.com/discuss/discussion/34561/investing-in-developed-markets-think-small

Calling seems like the best idea. Here's what I see when I try to do an exchange from a fund I have in an HSA account with TDA (I don't keep spare cash on the brokerage side) to GMLVX. This is from the order comfirm page, right before finalizing the order:

Details About the Fund You're Selling
Open for Investment: 	 	Closed to New 	
Transaction Fee: 		No 	
CDSC Charge: 	 	 	0.00% 	
Cut Off Time: 	 	 	4:00 PM EST 	
Settlement Date: 		T+1 	
Redemption: 	 		None 	
See prospectus for more information. 	
Details About the Fund You're Buying
Initial IRA Minimum Amount: 	0.00 	
IRA Subsequent Amounts:	0.00 	
Open for Investment: 		Yes 	
Transaction Fee: 	 	Yes 	
Cut Off Time: 	 	 	4:00 PM EST 	
Settlement Date: 	 	T+1 	
Redemption: 	 	 	None 	
Purchase Fee: 	 	 	0.00% 	
CDSC Charge: 	 	 	0.00% 	
Sales Charge:  	 	0.00% 	
See prospectus for more information.

The problem is that this is what I see whether I enter GMLVX, or a DFA fund (e.g. DFCSX, see MFO thread on developed small caps), or other institutional class funds that aren't readily available.
FWIW, MOWNX shows up as an NTF fund with a $2500 min on the order confirm page, otherwise it appears the same as well. Advisor-only shares, like WASYX (see this MFO thread) show up NTF, $0 min on the order confirm page, but their TDA fund pages likewise say "Not Available through TD Ameritrade"
Maybe if I pressed the "Place Order" button the system would even accept the order. The question is whether the order would actually go through. Again, calling seems like the best bet - just hope you get someone who digs a little deeper than reading off the same screen.

This write is DATED: March 24, 2016
Two large hedged etf's, HEDJ and DXJ were funky, along with other OEF's during the 18 month or so period noted by the author.
Chart of both of the above since the publish date of the article. They are not loud barking equity return dogs:
http://stockcharts.com/freecharts/perf.php?DXJ,HEDJ&n=350&O=011000

FYI: The financial whizzes cocooned in the serene offices of the Sequoia Fund atop one of New York’s iconic office buildings seem far removed from the noise of the city far below.
But the 47-year-old mutual fund known as much for its ties to billionaire Warren Buffett as for its uncanny stock picks that created massive wealth for clients — retirement funds, pension funds, university endowments and regular-Joe investors — has had to descend from its lofty perch in the past two years and rescue its good name.
Regards,
Ted
https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/capitalbusiness/an-epic-winning-streak-on-wall-street--then-one-ugly-loss/2017/08/11/137fc2dc-7637-11e7-8839-ec48ec4cae25_story.html
M* Snapshot SEQUX:
http://www.morningstar.com/funds/xnas/sequx/quote.html
Lipper Snapshot SEQUX:
http://www.marketwatch.com/investing/fund/sequx
SEQUX Is Ranked #245 In The (LCG) Fund Category By U.S. News & World Report:
https://money.usnews.com/funds/mutual-funds/large-growth/sequoia-fund/sequx

My usual threshold question before I go past screening a fund is to check whether I could buy the fund. Are these shares available to you? (So far, I haven't found any back doors to invest without using an advisor, though M* claims that it is available through TIAA. I don't have access to the TIAA brokerage fund list, so I can't verify.)
The next thing I do is check manager tenure - are the performance figures meaningful (especially since you placed emphasis on ten year performance)? One notices that the managers changed completely less than three years ago, and that the fund is subadvised by Goldman Sachs. That suggests a possible subadvisor change in 2015.
A quick check of the SAI says that " on October 9, 2015, ... the name of the GuideMark® Large Cap Value Fund was changed to GuideMark® Emerging Markets Fund."
For completeness, a review of the last prospectus (July 31, 2015) before the name change confirms that GuideMark® Large Cap Value Fund (GMLVX) had been subadvised by Barrow, Hanley, Mewhinney & Strauss, LLC. That's a good management shop. Vanguard employs them for some of their funds, such as VASVX and VWNFX. But EM it's not.
Everyone should read a fund's prospectus, though even without that one can see this change on the M* fund performance page, where M* classifies the fund as LCV through 2015.
Edit: Out of curiosity, I ran the same screen - below average (or better) risk, 3 and 5 year performance in top quartile, ten year performance in top half. The elephant in the room, NWFFX, passes this screen, as does HLMEX though that fund is closed.

This is a strange one, but I think this is what you were missing- M* categorizes the fund as 'Large Value' until 2016 when it became an emerging markets fund. The fund was sub-advised by a firm called Barrow, Hanley, Mewhinney & Strauss until late 2015 when Goldman Sachs became the sub-advisor and put managers on the fund who came to them in a mid-2014 acquisition. I went back to the SEC filings from 2015 and indeed, the fund was called the GuideMark Large Cap Value fund and it's holdings were all big US companies until late 2015. I guess that means anything more than 18 months of performance comparison to emerging markets is meaningless.

MFO has favorably reviewed a number of emerging market funds in recent years. Among those with at least five years of history are Fidelity Total EM (FTEMX), City National Rochdale (CNRYX), Seafarer G&I (SIGIX) and Driehaus (DRESX). Using MFO Premium, each of these funds looks good but GuideMark EM (GMLVX) seems to look better than each of those (with CNRYX a close 2nd.)
I used Morningstar and MFO Premium to examine performance. Morningstar rates CNRYX a 5 star. For funds with below average risk but with 5 year and 3 year returns in the top quartile, it is 1 of 7 funds. Adding a requirement of 10 year performance in the top half, it is the only fund. It shows up extremely well using the MFO Premium tool. Its MFO Ratings, MFO Rank %, Ulcer Index and Bear Market Ratings show an EM fund that protects on the downside while delivering top tier returns.
What am I missing?