http://www.investors.com/etfs-and-funds/mutual-funds/winning-mutual-fund-focuses
Virtus KAR Small-Cap Growth Fund (PXSGX) may not be a household name. But it's a top performer. As of Dec. 31, the fund had outperformed the S&P 500 in the previous 12 months, three years, five years and 10 years. Here's how this fund kicks butt with a concentrated portfolio. Right now, it doesn't even half any holdings in four sectors.

It may not be like the dotcom bubble, but with s&p500 p/e ratio between 25 and 26, doesn't look like bargains to me.

Thanks @ Mike & Ol Skeet for getting this back on track. Agree it's a good article. I view most anything financial in the NYT times with a healthy dose of skeptism. They're great at a lot of things - but financial analysis and reporting isn't their forte. To the crux of the issue: I think where you run into problems is (1) trying to formulate a simple one size fits all approach to retirement drawdowns and/or (2) assuming the next 25 years will be like the last 25 years (interest rates, inflation, equity valuations, etc.).
I can't relate to the central question of how to survive "X" number of years on "X" number of dollars invested. Reason: I enjoy both a defined benefit pension with a partial COL rider and also a decent SS income stream. And, supplementary health insurance through retirement plan as well. Conceivably, these would provide for basic living expenses - though it would be a very "spartan" lifestyle without travel or other things that make retirement enjoyable.
In my highly atypical instance, even after taking distributions, retirement savings have roughly doubled over the nearly 20 years since retirement (albeit in nominal dollar terms only). At the same time, more than half of that has now been placed under the Roth umbrella, whereas at the time of retirement none was. Much of the reason for the increase is that the money was left largely undisturbed during the first 10 years.
As far as the article's mention that withdrawals are not linear or equal every year - I couldn't agree more. There have been years when I needed to take a larger sum - say as a sizable down payment on a new car or for unexpected home repairs - and other years when I've needed very little.
I don't envy those without a pension or other solid income stream in retirement. Not everyone would be satisfied with a somewhat spartan lifestyle either. As I look at the markets over the past 10-20 years, I'd not be eager risking a large retirement nest egg with an aggressive approach in retirement. Lots of warning signs IMHO. But, no one really knows. As I said at the start, the problem with these mathematical models is that the next 25 years could be markedly different than the last 25 - as others, notably msf, have tried to explain.

My current brokerage firm suggest that investors keep no more than five percent of their portfolio holdings in cash. Now, I just get a chuckle out of this because it suggest to me that they make more off of a more fully invested portfolio than they do one sitting on a lot of cash (say, 20% to 25%, or perhaps more). For me, holding about twenty to twenty five percent in cash has proved itself more than once during my lifetime during changelling market periods. My investment way has provided me ample cash to enhance my life style plus some extra cash that can be put to work during down market periods. Their way, there is a good chance you'll be selling assets in a down market to generate cash. Remember, their investment policy committee (IPC) works for their firm and what might be in their best interest; but, perhaps not so much yours. Becasue of my larger than their recommended cash holdings, I was asked to sign an acknowledge form that I was investing outside of IPC guidelines. Never signed it ... and, I still today don't intend to. I told them that if my holding of this amount of cash within my portfolio bothered them this much I would simply off load some of it to another holding place. This seemed to put a squelched to their issue with me. If it is their way only ... or the highway ... be prepared to move on. And, they know I will.

FYI: Sports marketplaces aren’t all that different from the investment arena.
Regards,
Ted
http://news.morningstar.com/articlenet/article.aspx?id=815090

"I'll note that I alone warranted a 375-word rebuke recently."
Show-off!

I'll note that I alone warranted a 375-word rebuke recently. The 3 of you combined can muster only 197 words? Pretty pathetic showing men. :)
Thanks to @msf for the analysis. Hope the personality aspects here don't obscure your contribution.

No, Education IRA, those with $2k max limit. Fortunately, I started the accounts for both kids around 2009 (the lowest point of market) and contributed for 3 years, and that 6 thousand has become approximately $12k in both accounts.
Contribution to them is after-tax money, so as you mentioned, they are somewhat like Roth IRAs.

Hi @mrc70
You noted: " my daughter's Education IRA"
Do you mean a 529 "education" account or does your daughter have a Roth IRA that will be used for education?
Thank you.
Catch

"My goal was not to tout Mr. Bengen, but much more importantly, to encourage you Guys to try a powerful Monte Carlo simulation for planning purposes."
To that end, you cited one of the most well known papers on retirement planning as evidence of how well Monte Carlo works, even though it didn't use Monte Carlo. I pointed out that Bengen found zero real world return patterns where a 4% drawdown would fail (over 30 years); your response was to disparage the original work you cited approvingly.
It's enough to make one wonder whether you read the paper.
Instead of comparing and contrasting methodologies, you continue to effuse about Monte Carlo. Bergen took a different approach using using actual returns, that virtually everyone here can understand and use to draw their own conclusions.
In contrast, Monte Carlo spews out magic numbers (not unlike M* star ratings) that leave one to one's own devices to interpret. As guidance you proffer that you consider a 5% risk acceptable, but you didn't give any reasoning, rendering this fact useless. (I wonder why you used these 30 year projections at all; as I recall you've indicated an age which suggests that a 30 year horizon is, shall we say, rather optimistic.)
Even the probabilities posted are meaningless because unlike Bengen, you didn't state the assumptions you used, such as the input values for mean and standard deviations of stocks, bonds, and inflation. Nor did you even apply the same asset allocation that Bengen used.
Did you consider skew and kurtosis (the S&P 500 exhibits both)? Do you think that most people using these "push a button" tools even understand that question? (No disrespect of MFO readers is intended; many have stated that statistics is not their forte.)
The fact that a program can do thousands of computations in seconds is not so much a demonstration of the usefulness of a program as much as it is a testament to the operation of GIGO. A scalpel is a great tool in the right hands; in other hands it can be destructive.
When all one has is a hammer, everything looks like a nail.

Hi @mrc70
You noted: " my daughter's Education IRA"
Do you mean a 529 "education" account or does your daughter have a Roth IRA that will be used for education?
Thank you.
Catch

JULY 6
Still wondering where the big money moves with many sectors getting the whack.
chg | %
ITOT -0.94%
FREL -1.82%
HEDJ -1.11%
FHLC -1.57%
LQD -0.26%
IEF -0.19%
EDV -1.30%
HYG -0.25%
Thinking about how many "part 1, 2, 3, 4's, etc." will I put up with before I "depart" our own investment parts.
Take care,
Catch

FYI: The chart below shows several issues investors struggle with all the time. It’s difficult to pick the best performing investment year after year, yet for many investors, it’s an annual event. They look for an encore, picking the best asset class last year with the hope of a repeat performance. Yet, betting on last year’s winner rarely works out.
Assets at the top of the chart one year could be at the bottom the next, and vice versa. Much of this is due to reversion to the mean. But over the long-term, those big swings even out. The chart shows annual returns for eight asset classes against a diversified portfolio. Diversification works to smooth out those big swings in the short-term. While you’ll never get the biggest gains of any year, you avoid the huge losses.
The table below ranks the best to worst investment returns by asset class over the past 15 years. Hover over the table to highlight the asset class returns.
Regards,
Ted
https://novelinvestor.com/asset-class-returns/

FYI: I recently argued that today’s stock market is not at all like the 1997-2001 dot-com bubble and that, in fact, the simple benchmark developed by John Burr Williams, the original value investor, indicates that investors can anticipate a long-term return on the S&P 500 that will be well above the return on Treasury bonds. Today, I look at another investment benchmark that suggests that stocks are not at all bubbly.
Regards,
Ted
http://www.realclearmarkets.com/articles/2017/07/06/stocks_still_dont_look_very_expensive__102761.html

CNRYX is available at FIDO w/TF $49.95; $2,500 min. initial investment.

Yes I have been reading up on this fund over the past couple of weeks too and am intrigued by it. I have followed Jain over the past couple of years. I'm curious what % of your equity portfolios does EM currently represent. I'm around 5 %

I'm 10% foreign. And SFGIX is my only dedicated EM equity fund. It's 3% of total portfolio. I've not been adding much at all. Mostly just watching, lately. Rich valuations. I'm re-investing all pay-outs.

Yes I have been reading up on this fund over the past couple of weeks too and am intrigued by it. I have followed Jain over the past couple of years. I'm curious what % of your equity portfolios does EM currently represent. I'm around 5 %

@AMatMFO See Mark's June 5 post.

As for the last month, if we assume the same sectors continued from May into June, Technology was hit pretty hard (-5+%) and Consumer Discretionary was down roughly the same as Healthcare was up. Industrials were up a little but not much. I looked at the SPDR Select efts and admittedly I just looked at the 1 month performance from right now, so it's not completely precise, but that's at least some of the cause. In the last month VOO was down half a percent or so. That doesn't totally justify 2% underperformance, more like 1% or so, which means either the imperfections in my estimate are the rest or the bonds had a tough month too, or both.
I think anytime you follow a system that mechanically rotates, regardless of whether it's among sectors, or in the market and out based on moving averages, or whatever, you're going to have periods where you're on the wrong side of things and you're hope is that you'll end up on the right side of things enough to do well. There's no question the fund has done well since its inception, but in some cases systems are designed to reduce volatility rather than specifically increase the return. In the case of this fund it seems the goal is increasing the return more than reducing volatility although at times I think it's been less volatile too.

I sold HIEMX a few months back which he ran from 2006-2016 which had superior results during his tenure. I had a wait and see attitude after he left, and decided to opt for SFGIX about 6 months ago. His new fund is not currently offered at Fido, but time will tell. I would be happy to invest with him again when offered, Im still slightly underweight in intl despite my adding in second quarter to all my intl funds. I recently brought SFGIX up to 25K so I can convert to inst. shares which is in process.

This is a little off-topic of emulation, but if anyone would comment I would appreciate your thoughts and views.
I am a fairly recent (2017) investor in DSEEX so I have not reaped the previous years benefits. I have no intention to liquidate or reduce my percentage invested but I am curious if anyone has thoughts on the recent meaningful "under-performance" of this fund to its benchmark, the S&P 500?
The sectors it is/was invested in (according to its website) have done relatively well, excluding tech recently! So why the recent 2+ % under-performance?
I am just trying to get a better understanding of DSEEX and what to expect under various scenarios, if that's possible!
Thx,
Matt