Kudos, David, for discussing liquidity risk. It seems like the one risk I don't see discussed enough in the press. It also isn't analyzed particularly well or often enough in funds. It's funny to me no one else has complimented you on that part of your commentary yet. Understanding that risk I believe will become critical at some point.

I enjoyed / appreciated that portion as well. Possibly the most thorough look at market risk @DavidSnowball has ever put together (focused on fixed-income, but I’d expect spill-over to equity funds as well). Hadn’t yet read that part when I initially bumped the commentary over.
If you’re 10 or younger you’ve never lived through a real bear market. I hope there’s no one under 25 managing any fund. He / she would have been in high school when the last bear ended. Not clever enough to understand all the intricacies of the repo market. But it struck me as odd the need for massive infusions of cash in September. Article attempts to explain the implications. https://www.globalresearch.ca/federal-reserve-panic-september-2019-solutions-crisis/5693700

Yikes on the price thing. Charles had raised the ante to $120 to cover the cost jump we were hit with but seems to have missed one piece of text! I'll write him now.

As a time-kill, I chose the "target date 2040" category at random.
37 funds. Five year returns range from 5.0 - 7.9% a year. Maximum drawdown from 9.0 - 14.4%. Standard deviation from 7 - 11%. That strikes me as pretty vast differences for funds with such a similar goal.
That's especially striking in light of the funds correlation. I rank a matrix for all 2040, sorted by Sharpe and then chose every third fund (12 total) to analyze. That gaves me a equal sample to top, middle and bottom performers. The vast majority of funds had correlations to each other of 98 or 99. The biggest outlier was one fund-to-fund correlation of 91. The correlation suggests, to me anyway, that they've all in the same markets with small but cumulative differences in expenses, valuations and so on.
Back to my students,
David

Thank you, sir. It took two months to write because the system - the stuff under the hood - is so fiendishly complex that I kept having these "oh, I got it! No, I don't" moments. That might contribute to reader-avoidance.
Quartz did a special report on ETFs, which appears to argue that they pose a systemic risk. You need to pony up for the $100 annual subscription to read it, which I suppose I should do. They're generally pretty solid journalists and Iiquidity, along with the risk of a selling cascade, would have to be one of the two likeliest areas of systemic risk.
David

I agree with former Justice Potter Stewart who said: “I know it when I see it.”
Stewart’s remark was in regard was to pornography. However, the same might be said of market crashes and bear markets. Consider this: A person under the age of 10 or 11 in the U.S. has never experienced a bear market. Most under the age of 20 probably can’t remember one.
Geez - The linked article grossly oversimplifies matters. It’s not as neat as “One, two three. Now’s the time to jump back in.” As part of a third grade primer on investing it would suffice. A bear can last anywhere from six months to twenty years (as in the case of Japan). Better resembles a black hole than a merry-go-round.

JP Morgan ETFs:
https://am.jpmorgan.com/blob-gim/1383650763805/83456/2019 Exchange-Traded Funds Capital Gains Estimates.pdf

Yes, TRRIX looks good to me, apart from the paltry dividends. I still am enjoying my own mix. In order of size: PRWCX RPSIX PRSNX PTIAX PRIDX VEIRX (wife's 403b soon to be moved to TRP as a rollover IRA.) and lastly, PRDSX. .....In full retirement, and wife will commence work again in 2020. I'm paying monthly rent. Nobody wants to still be doing that in retirement, but it simplifies everything, with water and electric included. And I'm rid of a house the family had owned since 1959--- which I've hated for as long as I can remember. And snow is now a thing of the past for us. ...Though I did get caught in the rain on my walk today. 5 mins. from the house. The little guy here just lights up your heart when he smiles at you. We're sharing with cousins. It really feels like FAMILY. :)

Jeffrey Gundlach: The US stock market ‘will get crushed’ in the next recession
Julia La Roche
Yahoo FinanceDecember 2, 2019, 6:14 PM CST
Influential bond investor Jeffrey Gundlach, the CEO of $150 billion DoubleLine Capital, sees a scenario where U.S. stocks get crushed in the next recession — and likely won't recover for quite some time to come.
https://finance.yahoo.com/news/gundlach-the-us-will-get-crushed-in-the-next-recession-001139205.html
What else is new?...last time lost 55% dows to 5.5k
This time dows 10k to 15k bottom in 12 or 24 or to 36 months?

“we got the name wrong on our first try” or “we’re not achieving what our fund name suggests”?

I get your point. Not knowledgeable about these guys, so I’ll take a pass.
About 8-10 years ago T Rowe did the same thing with TRRIX. Changed name from “Retirement Income Fund” to “Retirement Balanced Fund.” I was fine with that. I took them at their word that the new name better reflected the fund’s existing framework. Possibly the “income” part of the original name was misleading to some investors and suggested a less risky approach than the fund pursues. Also (I think importantly) prevailing interest rates in the U.S. and globally had fallen steeply during the fund’s relatively brief existence so that less income was being generated from the bond component than earlier envisioned.
Another one that baffled me a bit was TRIGX. Initially it was named T. Rowe Price International Growth and Income Fund. Than (also about 8-10 years ago) they renamed it International Value Equity Fund. They gave the same reason: to more accurately represent the investment approach the fund follows.
Shakespeare might say, “What’s in a name ...?” For mutual fund managers who find themselves in the midst of an investor class action lawsuit, perhaps quite a bit. Case in point - Oppenheimer’s “Core Bond Fund” which lost 36% in 2008. http://shareholdersfoundation.com/case/oppenheimer-core-bond-fund-investors-class-action-lawsuit-05282009 One can surmise that the litigation, ill will and investor exodus occasioned by this episode did much to hasten the demise of Oppenheimer.

Hi @ Ralph
Nope, not too old; but some digging around is needed.
The link below (PREMIUM) should take you to the sign-up page for Premium membership.
I do read in the statement that membership is $100, this is NOW $120.
I will tag @David_Snowball in this, so that he may confirm the link and price are correct.
PREMIUM
Premium page #2, is more descriptive of Premium, but also has clickable links in the text to allow for membership.
PREMIUM PAGE #2
Mailing address: (for check payment)
Mutual Fund Observer, Inc.
5456 Marquette Street
Davenport, IA 52806
Take care of you and yours,
Catch

Good comparison. My 401(K) use Vanguard's TDFs. T. Rowe Price uses more actively managed funds - a bit more volatile but with a slight edge in returns.

From email received today:
IMPORTANT NOTICE REGARDING CHANGE IN INVESTMENT POLICY
December 2, 2019
Dear Shareholder of the Matthews Asia Strategic Income Fund (the “Fund”),
We are planning to change the name of the “Matthews Asia Strategic Income Fund” to the “Matthews Asia Total Return Bond Fund.” We think this new name will better reflect the Fund's investment strategy and objective. The Fund's total return investment objective will not change.

Wellesley (VWIAX) is better than TRRIX for performance + risk attributes + lower ER. See the results (here)

David, just want to say the "Pruning" piece in this months commentary was excellent. I often think about and hope that younger people coming to the discussion board are not swayed to think that posts about 'what did you buy and sell this month' are appropriate investing strategy or that 'fund collecting' is an investment strategy to follow. Your points are well taken.
I would love to see in a follow-up commentary the 10 best of the risk adjusted return funds. Those of course are likely the great owl funds, but it would be nice to see them highlighted in their categories.

Hi, Ben.
I've got three portfolios, which I can't much change.
My college's retirement account is through TIAA-CREF. That money can't be easily moved anywhere. Currently it's four funds, with most of the money in a lifecycle fund and a real estate income fund.
My supplemental retirement is through T. Rowe Price and my college cut their relationship with Price, so I can't add to it. Currently it's five funds, with most of the money in a lifecycle fund and EM value equity.
That's all easy because only two retirement funds are receiving monthly additions and I've simplified the others to stress the lifecycle core.
Finally, my non-retirement portfolio is 10 funds with I recently reduced by closing two positions (combined the two RiverPark income funds into one and eliminated Intrepid Endeavor in favor of adding to FPA Crescent and Brown Advisory Sustainable). The next question is whether to consolidate the two Grandeur Peak positions (Global Reach and Global Micro-cap, with a correlation of .94, Reach has a higher four-year sharp, Micro is more intriguing) and the two Matthews positions (Strategic Income and Growth & Income, with identical Sharpe ratios and .92 correlations between G&I and Seafarer, and a vastly higher Sharpe ratio for Strategic Income).
So, that might go to eight funds with four currently receiving monthly additions.
What do you think?
David

David Snowball's Portfolio Pruning Primer ("PPP?) contains a gem of a comedic sentence:
"You have no more prospect of keeping track of 15 funds running around your portfolio than you have of keeping track of 15 toddlers running around your house." Five minutes later, after I was done laughing, I thought to myself, "but wait, a minute, last time he posted his own portfolio it contained more than 10 investments, and that's more than the fingers on the hand recommendation? "
David, have I got that wrong? What am I missing?

“It’s been easy to be a bad investor for the past 10 years: the market’s relentless rise, fueled by enormous amounts of fiscal (hello, trillion-dollar deficits!) and monetary (hello, negative real interest rates!) stimulus, had made it likely that even a badly constructed portfolio booked acceptable – perhaps even double-digit – returns.“
- David Snowball

As noted before, often you don't need to rewrite the URL. Just put your ticker into the search box and it will (usually) take you to the brokerage page for your desired fund. For example, a search works for VFIAX or GLFOX but not for the institutional class GLIFX.
The modified URL does work for the latter share class though.
http://financials.morningstar.com/fund/purchase-info.html?t=GLIFX
https://mutualfundobserver.com/discuss/discussion/comment/117849/#Comment_117849

David's Dec 2019 Commentary includes a comment about mutual fund brokerage availability at M*, including:
"Brokerage information used to be part of Morningstar’s online profiles of each fund but they found limited user interest and dropped the feature."
FWIW, the following link (at least for the moment) continues to retrieve brokerage info. Substitute the symbol of the fund in which you have an interest for DODGX:
http://financials.morningstar.com/fund/purchase-info.html?t=DODGX