Hi Guys,
Myths are resilient. They seem to be believed even when accumulating evidence doesn’t justify them. Such is the case with the sell in May flawed wisdom. Simply put, it is wrong. When investing, the historical database supports a buy and hold strategy. Here is a Link that documents that conclusion:
https://www.forbes.com/sites/rickferri/2013/04/08/busting-the-sell-in-may-and-go-away-myth/#58a398878808
From that article: “ The clear winner in this three horse race was a buy and hold investment strategy”. Indeed, myths are resilient, but the data shows the hard truth. So, stay the course!
Best Regards

FYI: Fidelity Investments®, one of the industry’s most diversified financial services organizations with more than $7.4 trillion in client assets1, today announced the launch of Fidelity Women’s Leadership Fund (FWOMX). The actively managed mutual fund is available with both retail and advisor share classes, with no investment minimums.
Regards,
Ted
https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20190508005124/en/Fidelity-Investments®-Launches-Fidelity-Women’s-Leadership-Fund

https://www.marketwatch.com/story/how-to-trade-stocks-as-trump-threatens-china-with-new-tariffs-2019-05-06
Opinion: How to trade stocks as Trump threatens China with new tariffs
By Nigam Arora
Published: May 7, 2019 10:04 a.m. ET
Share
The S&P 500 Index has five new support zones
Reuters
President Donald Trump
A question for investors today is how they want to react to President Trump threatening to put more tariffs on Chinese goods.
Let’s explore the issue with the help of a chart.
Chart
Please click here for an annotated chart of ETF S&P 500 ETF SPY, -0.35% which represents the S&P 500 Index SPX, -1.65% Please note the following:
• The Chinese are notorious for dragging out negotiations to get the best deal. Irrespective of your political leanings, Trump’s latest move seems to be in the long-term best interest of the U.S. and the stock market.
• The short term for the stock market is a different story.
• The chart shows five support zones. These support zones are based on a number of factors that have proven to be accurate in the past including how algorithms tend to trade as well as money flows.
• The chart shows the target zone for a potentially explosive rally on a short squeeze. If it turns out that there is a good trade deal soon, those who are short-selling now will be forced to cover at much higher prices.
• Expect stocks that are dependent on China to be affected more. These include Apple AAPL, -0.33% Starbucks SBUX, -0.13% Nike NKE, -1.23% and Yum China YUMC, -0.62% Expect less impact on Google GOOG, -1.29% GOOGL, -1.22% Amazon AMZN, -0.39% and Facebook FB, -0.25% Microsoft MSFT, -0.35% and semiconductor stocks such as Intel INTC, -0.04% AMD AMD, -0.98% and Micron Technology MU, -1.07% may be adversely affected.
• Expect Chinese stocks such as Alibaba BABA, -0.57% and JD.com JD, -1.00% to be adversely affected.

Both series of T. Rowe Price funds, "Target Date" and "Retirement", have glide paths. If you want static allocation ("target risk") funds, those would be Price's "Personal Strategy" funds.
Here are the glide paths for the Target Date funds and the Retirement funds. The former are more conservative.
Target Date glide path:

Retirement glide path:

The Personal Strategy funds are:
Income (PRSIX) - 40% equity (55% bond/cash, 5% alternative)
Balanced (TRPBX) - 60% equity (35% bond/cash, 5% alternative)
Growth (TRSGX) - 80% equity (16% bond/cash, 4% alternative)
This series is not to be confused with older allocation funds like TRP Balanced (RPBAX), with its somewhat more mundane allocation of 65% stock, 35% bond.

https://www.nasdaq.com/article/the-benefits-of-marketsensitive-portfolios-cm1143292
The Benefits of 'Market-Sensitive' Portfolios
Leland Hevner, May 06, 2019, 02:59:51 PM EDT
By Leland B. Hevner
President, National Association of Online Investors (NAOI)
In this article I discuss how a new investment type developed by the NAOI called Dynamic Investments makes portfolios “market-sensitive”. I then discuss the benefits of this development.

FYI: While stocks staged a remarkable comeback from Monday’s deep decline, they still closed in the red. A day later, and the sellers are back at it.
Long-suffering market bears, like John Hussman, have to be savoring this kind of action. After all, when things turn south, Hussman’s fortunes turn north.
In fact, riding the cred he earned from calling prior market collapses, his assets under management swelled to almost $7 billion. Now, however, after years of underperformance, that figure stands at a fraction of what it once was.
Hussman’s flagship $312-million Strategic Growth Fund HSGFX, +0.17% , which focuses on “the protection of capital during unfavorable market conditions,” has had a rough go of it during this relentless bull market, shedding almost 9% a year, on average, since 2014, according to Morningstar.
Regards,
Ted
https://www.marketwatch.com/story/ho-hum-a-65-market-plunge-would-be-run-of-the-mill-fund-manager-says-2019-05-07/print

Target date vs target risk:
http://fiduciarynews.com/2015/05/the-big-401k-fiduciary-question-target-date-or-target-risk/
Derf

@Derf, no mutual funds, all ETFs. They use mostly their own. Out of 20 ETFs in the portfolio, 14 of them are Schwab. There are a couple others, Vanguard, ishares , Vaneck.
I don't plan to make any changes right now. I've held it for about 3 years now. I plan to reconsider the robo when interest rates start to climb and the Fed starts to raise rates again. That would be because of the large, low interest cash position they hold. Who wants to hold 12% of their portfolio in cash making < 1/2 % when CDs will be climbing to 3, 4, 5% ?
Anyway, I think it's a decent option to consider for the hands off approach, especially for those who just can't help tinkering with their portfolios. But, there are other options too.
Oh, forgot to mention, a benefit to the Schwab Intelligent Portfolio is a very low cost personal advisory service. I haven't done that yet, but I might.

The Rochester family of bond funds are extremely high octane. When things work out, the funds can be fantastic; when they don't, the funds will go down in flames. Even by HY standards, they're quite aggressive.
If you want to know who was deep into Puerto Rican bonds, look no further. They're all managed "the Rochester way".
In 2006, this fund, then known as Oppenheimer Rochester National Municipals was flying high as the top selling muni fund. By 2009 it had crashed and burned. In 2014 it settled a suit alleging that the fund had misrepresented its risks. It wasn't until last October that settlement payments were made:
http://securities.stanford.edu/filings-case.html?id=104270
Apparently this action (or perhaps others) were enough to convince Oppenheimer to change the fund's risk disclosures on July 29, 2013 and to change the name of the fund itself from National Muni to High Yield Muni on Nov 27, 2013 (per prospectus of the same date).
While much of this is somewhat old history, I don't know how much has changed. Certainly Oppenheimer made many changes on June 29th of last year, dropping "Rochester" from the name of several muni funds. More importantly, it dropped five of the six managers from ORNAX.
Of course since then, Mass Mutual has sold Oppenheimer Funds to Invesco. Maybe these earlier moves were just preparation, or maybe they're more. Certainly the ORNAX manager overhaul goes beyond window dressing.
All that said, one can't deny its high (albeit erratic) performance. I hope it works for you.

@MikeM: Thank you for filling in the blanks for me concerning robo & personal account.
Your second thought on using TRP retirement fund, or in my case VG, may be the way to go. Three pot it ,Retirement 1/3- 2025 1/3 & 2030 the final 1/3
If I'm reading you right , you'd have 1/2 in TRP & run the other 1/2 yourself ?
Does Schwab use their funds in robo account ?
Good investing to all, Derf

"the Charles Schwab Corp. SCHW -1.60% chief executive"
@Ted: Nice work! You cant even be bothered to properly edit a sentence that you are plagiarizing without proper reference as to the source. How very professional.

Hi @Derf. I think you mentioned before you might invest in robo. Here's a few numbers from my experience that might help you. Just to qualify, the robo is about 62% diversified equity, about 22% bonds, 12% cash and 4% in gold.. My self managed moves around a little because I play with stocks. I would say on average it has been maybe 40% equity and the rest in fixed income and cash, mostly cash in form of CDs. Oh, have a little gold there also. So where I'm going with that info is the portfolios are certainly not apples to apples. But here's some #s:
4th Q of 2018, robo -5.5%, self -6.7%
YTD 2019, robo +8.5%, self +7.2% (as of 5/1)
Long term not sure what I will do. You (or I) may be better off, instead of a robo, just using a TRP retirement fund. I believe the 60:40 TRP fund has better results YTD than my robo. Slightly bigger drop in the 4th Q. The cash portion of the robo absolutely weighs on return when markets are moving up. But that's how Shwab makes it's money on the "free" robo.
Good luck to you.

Latest MFO Fund Family Scorecard gives AQR a "Lower" grade. Of AQR's 39 funds, 26 trail their peers since launch through April 2019 based on absolute return.

Fortunately, most of AQR's AUM is in just five funds: Managed Futures Strategy (AQMIX), Style Premia Alternative (QSPIX), Large Cap Defensive Style (AUEIX), Long-Short Equity (QLEIX) and Large Cap Multi-Style (QCELX), which have all bested their peers since launch.

But it's been a tough past year for two of these: Style Premia Alternative (QSPIX) and Long-Short Equity (QLEIX), each down 13-14%, particularly since alternatives tend to target investors with more moderate risk tolerance.

Morn'in.
This statement from the writer (Russel Kinnel is the director of manager research for Morningstar) is misleading, and I don't understand what he is attempting to portray. One hell of a discouraging statement (below in bold) for any newbie investor or others, too. Obtaining enough clear thinking about nominal/standard types of investments is much less complex than learning fluent Mandarin Chinese.
" Picking funds for an IRA is a little tricky. The limits on yearly contributions make it challenging to build a complete portfolio. Furthermore, it's wise to view the IRA as a complement to the rest of your portfolio rather than as a stand-alone entity. However, IRAs do have their own set of rules and implied investment horizon both on the accumulation and withdrawal sides."
Let us assume a new employee at small company "A" doesn't have any access to a 401k type plan. They choose to contribute to a Roth IRA. For 2019, if they can budget the amount, they are able to contribute $6,000. This amounts to $500/month for dollar cost averaging into chosen investments.
I'm placing just a few investment choices that come to my mind and are readily available at the Fidelity.
--- ITOT, U.S. centric, cost = $66/share
--- ACWI, Global equity, cost = $74/share
--- FCNTX, U.S. centric, active managed, cost = $13/share
--- FSPHX, U.S. broad healthcare, active managed, cost = $23/share
--- FBALX, U.S. moderate allocation, active managed, cost = $23/share
I find in about 15 minutes of light thinking, several investments for a younger investor that ARE NOT tricky or leave an incomplete portfolio for growth.
No wonder folks become turned off when considering investing.
Have a good remainder,
Catch

FYI: When Walt Bettinger’s 3 a.m. alarm sounds, among the first things the Charles Schwab Corp. SCHW -1.60% chief executive does is check how much net new money his company has pulled in over the past 24 hours. Last year, that was an average of $624 million a day—more than its three biggest Wall Street rivals combined.
Regards,
Ted
https://www.wsj.com/articles/how-schwab-ate-wall-street-11556474103?shareToken=st19482b034702426f9214435d6032710f

FYI: A decade after target-date funds were damaged during the financial crisis, they have re-emerged bigger than ever as retirement investments. But they still have vulnerabilities.
Regards,
Ted
https://www.wsj.com/articles/what-weve-learned-about-target-date-funds-10-years-later-11557108540?mod=article_inline

@Art- Well, since the funds that you mentioned are only 10% of your portfolio, that gives a much better overall picture. It's reasonable to surmise that the other 90% is invested so as to give you decent diversity. In that case, it seems perfectly reasonable to reduce a number of similar funds to only one or two. I'll leave the specific recommendations on that to the other folks here, who have a better idea of funds which are currently doing a decent job.
We, like Ted, are now disinvested in the general market except for a very small part of our resources. During our accumulation years we primarily used American Funds, and while they certainly have some excellent funds with reasonable ERs, I can't recommend that anyone invest in a load fund in this day and age.
Best of luck!

All ratings have been updated on MFO Premium site, including MultiSearch, QuickSearch, Great Owls, Fund Alarm (Three Alarm and Honor Roll), Averages, Dashboard of Profiled Funds, and Fund Family Scorecard. The site now includes several analysis tools, including Compare, Correlation, Rolling Averages, Trend, Ferguson Metrics, Calendar Year and Period Performance.

@ MikeM:From statement below you said,"
Over the last 5 years or so I've simplified my self-managed portfolio to about 8 funds that I feel good about. That's 1/2 the pot. The other 1/2 is in a well diversified robo.
Would you care to let the cat out of the bag, & report which did better for 4/th Qter 2018 ?
I'm thinking I may put some money to work in a robo or directed account.
Thanks for your're time , Derf

Mike, The funds listed are in a ROTH which is about 10% of portfolio. Thanks for your opinion.
Ted, Thanks for your opinion on the funds I listed.
Hank/Sven, TRP is looking like a good place to consolidate monies once I retire. Or buy TRP at Fidelity.
Old Skeet, I knew what you would say old friend. True to form.