@msf - I would say you are essentially correct. I checked a couple different sources before posting that comment and none explained it like you have. While technically not “compounding”, you are correct that the effect is the same as compounding as long as the investor reinvests those payouts.
Of course, looking at the situation I was trying to illustrate, at the end of 6 months the equity investor had a 20% gain in his pocket and the guy with the Treasury bond had a 1% gain. :)
Now, if the equity investor decides to reinvest his 20% gain back into equities (in effect seek to compound his return) there’s no guarantee he’ll make any money on the reinvested proceeds. He might even loose money. To the contrary, however, the bond investor’s 2% yearly return (*on his original investment only) is guaranteed by the government.
I’m not sure what all this proves - if anything. But thanks for the explanation.
-
P.S. To answer your question ... Reinvesting that 2% payout on your own might be a “better” deal (if rates were to rise) but it might not be better (if rates were to falll even lower and you had to reinvest for less than a 2% yield.)

Just do the same thing I described, but point-to-point. Identify each segment of time where the top five don't change. For each segment, compute the total return using Portfolio Visualizer (PV), setting the start and end dates ot the segment. Then combine the total returns by multiplying, as illustrated below.
PV gives you the growth for each segment. It shows what the final value would be starting with $10K. For example, if it shows that you start with $10K and wind up with $12K at the end of a segment, you've got 120% of your starting value (and your total growth is 20%).
Suppose your top five stocks remain the same from Jan 2014 to June 2015, and then you've got a different top five from July 2015 to the present. If PV says that $10K grew to $12K in the first period, and that $10K grew to $180K in the second period, you combine them as:
$12K/$10K x $180K/$10K = 1.2 x 1.8 = 2.16. That is, $10K at the beginning grew to $21.6K at the end; equivalently, your total return was 216% - 100$ = 116%.
---
I am beginning to wonder what you're trying to do here. Even if the data you want existed (it doesn't because funds don't publish their holdings daily; they're only required to do so quarterly), it would be highly unstable. One stock might fall out of the top five merely because it grew slightly more slowly than the number six stock. Index funds have "buffers" to mute this sort of thrashing; here you're amplifying the effect.
I produced a list of top five equities for my example fund, FCNTX on half-yearly basis using the fund's (semi) annual statements. You can see the problem I described as well as another one - multiple classes of a company.

	YE2013	6/2014	YE2014	6/2015	YE2015	6/2016	YE2016	6/2017	YE2017	6/2018	YE2018	3/2019
GOOGL	7.30%	3.60%			3.30%	3.20%	3.70%	3.70%	3.50%	3.20%		
GOOG		3.70%	2.80%			2.90%	3.20%		3.20%			
FB			3.30%	3.90%	4.90%	5.70%	5.80%	6.80%	7.20%	7.30%	5.60%	6.39%
BRK-A	4.10%	4.30%	5.00%	4.40%	4.20%	4.80%	5.40%	5.00%	5.20%	4.60%	5.80%	5.18%
AAPL	3.40%	3.10%	3.40%	4.00%	3.40%			3.40%				
MSFT										3.50%	4.30%	4.43%
WFC	2.80%	3.30%	3.50%	3.60%	3.30%							
AMZN	2.60%	 				3.60%	4.10%	4.60%	5.10%	6.60%	6.70%	6.90%
BIIB				3.00%								
UNH											3.80%	
CRM												3.60%
Total%	20.20%	18.00%	18.00%	18.90%	19.10%	20.20%	22.20%	23.50%	24.20%	25.20%	26.20%	26.50%

Alphabet (formerly Google) split into two share classes in early 2014. So what was a top holding of FCNTX was halved. In some periods, both share classes remained in the top five, pushing out another top five stock for no other reason than you were effectively including only the top four stocks (since Google took up two slots). In some other periods, it looked like the exposure to Google got cut in half, for no other reason that one of the two share classes missed the top five cut. Sometimes it looked like Google was "sold off" completely (e.g. June 2015), even though the fund held a lot of Google stock.
This thrashing didn't represent a change in exposure to Google. Such thrashing happened simply as a result of what you asked for.
Notice also that the fraction of the fund that the top five stocks represents ranges from 18% to 26.5%. Viewed this way, "top five" seems rather arbitrary. I might look at the top 20% of holdings, or come up with a more elegant metric for "high conviction" holdings. I'm not sure what "top five" signifies from an analytic perspective.
Here are the (semi) annual reports from the SEC site that I used to create the table above:
12/31/18 https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/24238/000137949119000865/filing706.htm
6/30/18 https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/24238/000137949118004082/filing706.htm
12/31/17 https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/24238/000137949118000849/filing706.htm
6/30/17 https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/24238/000137949117005591/filing706.htm
12/31/16 https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/24238/000137949117000981/filing706.htm
6/30/16 https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/24238/000137949116005364/filing706.htm
12/31/15 https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/24238/000002423816000025/Main.htm
6/30/15 https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/24238/000072257415000288/main.htm
12/31/14 https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/24238/000070420715000083/conmain.htm
6/30/14 https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/24238/000002423814000041/Main.htm
12/31/13 https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/24238/000087846714000111/contrafund.htm

I had to go back and check, but U.S. Treasury notes do not compound. Here’s an explanation:
“A $10,000 treasury note with a seven percent coupon rate pays an investor $700 per year interest in two semi-annual payments of $350 each. The interest from notes and bonds paid out to investors is simple and does not compound.”. https://www.sapling.com/8173138/interest-government-bonds-simple-compounded
So a 2% 10-year Treasury over its lifetime would yield only 20% total return

Consider a 10-year zero coupon Treasury that you buy for $10K and pays you $12K (20% increase) at maturity. That's clearly a 20% total return.
Is a 2% 10-year Treasury that you buy for $10K and that puts $100 into your pocket every six months, instead of your waiting 10 years to get any interest, really no better?
Consider a bank that pays monthly interest on a savings account. Its APY is greater than its APR; the calculation assumes you'll reinvest the interest though you're under no obligation to do so. Now consider a second bank that pays annual interest. Its APY is equal to its APR, because you've got only one payment per year. There's no opportunity to compound within the year.
That's the same as the situation with coupon bonds. The hypothetical total return (yield to maturity or YTM), is calculated like APY - it assumes that you'll reinvest the coupons (interest) at the same rate until maturity. Of course if you don't, then you'll only get the coupon rate (analogous to APR). But you'll have that cash in your pocket, cash that could be earning more interest.

Thanks @Ted for sharing that figure.
I had to go back and check, but U.S. Treasury notes do not compound. Here’s an explanation:
“A $10,000 treasury note with a seven percent coupon rate pays an investor $700 per year interest in two semi-annual payments of $350 each. The interest from notes and bonds paid out to investors is simple and does not compound.”. https://www.sapling.com/8173138/interest-government-bonds-simple-compounded
So a 2% 10-year Treasury over its lifetime would yield only 20% total return. Had you bought the S&P index on January 1 and sold it at the end of June you’d already be farther ahead than had you purchased the 10-year Treasury on the same date but held it until June of 2029.
I realize that many invest in bonds of lower credit quality and having higher yields. And likely not many on the board hold their bonds to maturity. However, in terms of relative value (the 10 year bond vs. equities) something just doesn’t add up. If equities are supposed to offer a growth premium over safer government backed paper based on their added risk (known as risk premium) than that would suggest that either: (1) equity valuations are greatly overextended or interest rates are absurdly low.
(I suppose there’s a third possibility: that stocks were severely underpriced going into 2019 on a relative value basis. Does anyone seriously believe that?)

@Old_Skeet - Thanks for commenting. One of the main problems with bonds is that virtually all of us own them either directly or indirectly. I know I do. Bonds are everywhere. If you own a balanced or asset allocation fund you likely own a great many. There’s a reason why the balanced fund came into existence. It relates to the conventional wisdom which says that when equities decline in value bonds appreciate in value, helping to compensate for the equity losses. However, with rates now so low, bonds wouldn’t seem to have the degree of offsetting value (vs stocks) they would have had 10 or 20 years ago.
If you are investing in bonds for “income” than you (or your fund managers) are probably not holding a lot of U.S. government paper. My initial comment pertained to the U.S. 10 year, which if held 10 years to maturity should generate about 2% per year. I suspect you’re banking on a much healthier income stream than that 2%. There are bonds that produce much more than 2% of course. However, the lower you go on the credit scale the more closely linked to the fortunes of equities those bonds become. And the less immune to carnage during a steep stock market slide they become.
No other single investment class that I can think of so permeates the financial markets as do bonds. They affect mortgage rates and thus the affordability of housing. They affect auto loans and thus the automotive industry. They’re intrinsically linked to the dollar’s value in the foreign exchange markets which affects the prices we pay for everything from clothing and smart phones to gas and oil. And, for older investors, bond rates affect the ability to grow their assets and maintain a decent standard of living during the retirement years.

msf, that's helpful but I was hoping for something that would look at it in real time, for lack of a better term.
For instance, it would look at the top 5 for 2014. Then if the position went out of the top 5 it would assume it's sold and the new stock would be added for performance tracking.

“I also suspect bonds are being purchased, whether management really wants to or not; by pension funds and insurance companies to cross their fingers they'll have enough money to pay future obligations.”
Hi Catch. I didn’t read the linked article either. I’m not into ETFs at all and have little interest in bonds - except to notice (accidentally) tonight the very low 10-year yield. Bonds generally do well (better than their coupon would suggest) in a declining rate environment, which they’ve had now going back 20-30 years - or about half our investing lifetimes! And, of course, lower rated bonds tend to track the equity market more than the investment grade bond market - so they’re not a reliable indicator on their own.
You may be right. On both the bond side and equity side it could be a case of “hold your nose” and plunge ahead as you would under normal circumstances. However, I think it begs credulity to think a savvy pension manager or insurance company portfolio manager would willingly forgo 20% equity returns to lock in 1.94% fixed on a 10 year note just because that’s how they’re supposed to invest. :)
Strikes me as a really unusual and unsustainable situation at the moment. But what do I know? The world turns over completely every 24 hours.

Howdy @hank
NOTE: I didn't read the linked article, just my 2 cents worth.
Here is a one year chart for a decent intermediate term bond fund. The fund consists of investment grade corps and some government stuff. The fund moves long term in the upper 10% of its category.
One can view the bonds moves since the equity market whack Dec. 24, 2018. This fund's performance is typical of the better managed similar funds. The average return YTD runs about +7%.
I'm not surprised by either the equity or bond runs; as money is cheap. Also to the bond favor side currently is safe haven monies, not knowing what may come from DC land at any given "tweet". I also suspect bonds are being purchased, whether management really wants to or not; by pension funds and insurance companies to cross their fingers they'll have enough money to pay future obligations.
This very same play has taken place before; during a few periods after the market melt.
LOW yields, higher prices. This is where the bond money is being made, I personally don't care what the yield is, AS LONG as it is going down for price performance return. As with equities, this bond price run will have its life span, too.
And to the delight of the balanced funds that hold both the right equity and bonds; WELL, the best of both worlds right now, for full support of these type of funds, YES?
Peek through the trees, you're near a wonderful fire workers display tonight, eh?
Take care,
Catch

The incredible divergence between equities and interest rates makes absolutely no sense. The 10-year Treasury sits at 1.94% as I write. (How much pot does one need to smoke for that to appear a decent return on your money?) The S&P is up over 20%+ for the first 6 months of the year. I like (and own) PRWCX. But the conservative fund is up nearly 19% YTD. Even Giroux must be bewildered.
Conventional wisdom says the markets and the economy won’t go into the tank before the election. Conventional wisdom is often wrong. My best guess? Look out below!

https://www.fa-mag.com/news/3-reasons-assets-are-flooding-into-bond-etfs-45758.html
3 Reasons Assets Are Flooding Into Bond ETFs
July 3, 2019 • Ron DeLegge
This year’s robust performance for the global stock market has stoked so much attention that it has distracted focus from other strong performing assets. Look no further than bonds, where fixed-income exchange-traded funds recently surpassed the $1 trillion mark in assets.

@Alex: Thought you might enjoy reading the story behind Brown Advisory.
Regards,
Ted
https://www.forbes.com/sites/antoinegara/2019/05/28/the-oracle-of-apopka-meet-eddie-brown-one-of-wall-streets-greatest-untold-stories/?ss=etfs-mutualfunds#19278daf60c0

Confused --- what is the relationship b/w Brown Capital and Brown Advisory?

Yeah, always with the 'excellent record'. I myself never saw and still don't see a really compelling reason to own it over 30-, 20-, and 10y spans in preference to say TWEIX and FCNTX. Not even a smoother ride, particularly. And there must be more than one Vanguard fund to hold as well, if not in preference to all.

No institution provides flawless service. In this respect, what matters is how often glitches happen, and how well they address them.
For example, while Fidelity automatically calculates and distributes the RMD for my inherited Roth IRA annually, one year I noticed that the figure it gave for my RMD was about 4x as high as it should have been. Fidelity acknowledged the error (which has only happened once in many years) and corrected it immediately.
At Merrill Edge, I submitted a paper(!) form for a partial Roth conversion exactly a week before Christmas last year, and it was executed in two days. But this year, when I submitted the identical request (only the number of shares was different) right after Memorial Day, nothing happened for two weeks. I contacted Merrill Edge, and they claimed they were experiencing high volumes of requests. Sure, lots of people must be doing tax loss harvesting, Roth conversions, etc. in June.
I've a relative in the process of moving managed accounts into Vanguard's hybrid human/robo program. I was asked to help in the process (participate in the calls). Could have been the luck of the draw - which reps and advisors we were dealing with - but I was impressed with how well the process was handled, how tax concerns were addressed, how Vanguard did not insist on converting everything now into Vanguard funds (that will be done over time). And how they modeled a dynamic drawdown strategy where the amounts withdrawn would vary within limits based on performance.
I've used Schwab off and on for decades. Absolutely no complaints. Great service, and only four blocks from me. I've just not found a compelling reason to keep both Schwab and Fidelity, so I'm gradually moving away from Schwab. (Schwab does provide an ATM/debit card with no foreign exchange fee and worldwide rebates; this is the only unique feature that interests me but it's not enough to dissuade me from consolidating.)
If one is going to use Merrill, they have pretty good bonuses for moving accounts. Every so often they'll offer 50% more. Between now and Sept 5th they're doing even better, with bonuses that are 2/3 to 100% more than their usual offers.
Fidelity offers 2 years worth of (300-500) free stock/ETF trades depending on the amount moved, but no cash. Schwab doesn't appear to have any significant offers going, but rumor has it that they will match other offers. Vanguard being cheap, is, well, cheap - no offers, ever.

We use TD Ameritrade since 2011 because at the time they were the only brokerage where you could get TRP funds with no transaction fees. TRP funds are 80% of our investments currently.
Before moving to TDA, we were primarily invested directly through TRP and would not hesitate to do that again. But, currently I don't see any benefit to it as we have easy access to non TRP funds with lower minimums than required by TRP's brokerage.
Also, closing our 5 TDA accounts would trigger account closing fees which TRP would not compensate us for despite the amounts involved. The fees TRP pays to TDA for our TRP funds would easily be paid back to TRP in savings in a fraction of a year.

Hi sir we have
Schwab - great services fees reasonable but trading slightly expensive
Vanguard - has so many private bonds.... Great mf and fees for bonds very cheap... Little costly to buy bonds and individuals stocks ETFs funds
Boa Merrill edge - probably very good free trades but limited amount of bonds
We use all three but 401k and sep-ira in Vanguard firm because of so many bonds, easy trading Platforms and many free Vanguard etf funds trading opportunities... Also soeasy to sell privately owned bonds in Vanguard

I have no familiarity with Fidelity or Vanguard other than they have some pretty good fund and ETF options. But for the most part you can get any of those options through Schwab if you wanted. Same for TRP funds. But, that probably doesn't stand out as unique to other big brokerages, like Fidelity, Vanguard and TRP.
All my experience is with Charles Schwab where I rolled most of my 401k and pension-lump to an IRA when I left my long time employer. That was about 5 years ago. At the time I wavered keeping everything in my employer's 401k at TRP or transferring everything to an IRA at TRP or transferring to CS. I chose CS for a few reasons:
1- maybe the biggest reason was they had a local office. I much prefer a human, 1 on 1 sit down than phone or computer contact. I ended up being linked to a very nice guy who has gained my trust. He is often just my sounding board for ideas I have. He calls or emails about every 6 months or so to check in and see how things are going. And best of all, I don't pay a dime for the advice, feedback and help! Schwab does offer many different options for paid advisory including a very low cost advisory service linked to their robo portfolio. I do have money in the robo, but at this time I haven't gone the advisor route. They also offer the standard 1% fee where they manage everything in your financial life. Not for me but maybe for some.
2- the product selection, everything from 1000's of funds, ETFs, banking products like MMs, CDs, credit cards, checking and savings accounts, numerous managed portfolio options.
3- the option to have multiple accounts at one place. My mind tends to like "buckets" or separating money for different purposes. A separate 3 year retirement withdrawal account with MM, CDs, treasuries that is linked to my credit union checking account is an example.
4- the online and local learning seminars to just hear new ideas or learn different skills and options (I'm not great at it, but I like to dabble or "play" in stocks and there was plenty of info on that along with a trading platform to manage buys and sells).
Just some personal reasons for where I ended up. At 65 I'm still working full time but will probably go part time or quit altogether soon. Good luck Art.

FYI: Ample resources, a valuation-driven process, and an excellent track record earn Dodge & Cox Stock a Morningstar Analyst Rating of Gold.
Regards,
Ted
https://www.morningstar.com/articles/935013/a-contrarian-masterpiece.html

@Art: I'd throw Schwab in the running also.I've been with them for a number of years & had only ONE problem. I rolled 2 401-k's into Vanguard in 2018. I do find VG hard to operate in. Maybe it's just me ? I don't think you can go wrong with the above mentioned.
Both VG & Schwab have notified me that it's time to take RMD's.
Happy 4/TH to All, Derf

I think that David was comparing the fund houses, not the brokerages. Fidelity has done a good job at improving its bond funds, and it has the occasional fine equity fund. But overall, and especially for equity/hybrid funds, I would go with T. Rowe Price over Fidelity.
Here's M*'s latest set of reports on target date fund series by some of the largest families. (Premium membership required).
https://www-prd.morningstar.com/articles/847110/morningstar-targetdate-fund-series-reports.html
I think anyone can access the reports it links to; here are the links for reports on three different series of target date funds:
Vanguard: https://news.morningstar.com/pdfs/STUSA04OVV.pdf
Fidelity: https://news.morningstar.com/pdfs/STUSA04OLH.pdf
T. Rowe Price: https://news.morningstar.com/pdfs/STUSA04OMN.pdf
And a more detailed report on the T. Rowe Price Retirement Target Date Funds; however this report is three years old.
https://mpera.mt.gov/Portals/175/documents/EIACPacket/20170126/V.d.Morningstar_Addendum.pdf
Note that T. Rowe Price has two different series of target date funds, which it calls Retirement Funds and Target Date Funds. The former are more aggressive.
https://www.troweprice.com/content/dam/fai/Collections/DC Resources/Target Date Solutions/GlidePathComparison.pdf
You're asking about brokerages though, and that's a different question. A nice thing about Fidelity's brokerage is that you can now get both Fidelity funds and T. Rowe Price funds NTF.
As far as brokerage services are concerned, Fidelity is way ahead of the others. Vanguard's comes in for its share of criticisms, but they've improved over time. It seems reasonably competent though not first tier in variety of services or quality or even hours of operation. I haven't used T. Rowe Price's brokerage, and I dare say few have unless they're primarily Price fund investors. It's more of a convenience offering by Price for its fund investors than it is a full fledged brokerage.
Fidelity is especially suited for decumulation, because you can pay a one time transaction fee to set up your position in a cheaper institutional share class of a fund, and you pay nothing to sell shares periodically. (Schwab has a similar pricing structure).
Vanguard is of course better if you want Vanguard open end funds. Many Vanguard funds are not available through Fidelity, and those that are cost $75 to buy (as opposed to Fidelity's customary $49.95 charge for most transaction fee funds). Also, Vanguard provides access to some institutional class shares with lower minimums than at Fidelity. Finally, if you have over $1M in Vanguard funds, you get 25 free transactions per year, which you can use to buy and sell transaction fee funds of other families through their brokerage.

If you go to the MFO Search box at the top of the Discussions page and enter BIAWX, you'll find that several members offered takes on the Brown Advisory fund in April. To wit:
The write-up on Brown Advisory Sustainable Growth is very revealing. I was pleasantly surprised to find that the 33 stocks held by the fund are practically household names, ones that I feel very comfortable owning: Microsoft, Danahaer, American Tower, Amazon, Visa, Intuit, Alphabet, Thermo Fisher, Ecolab, Verizon Analytics. The top ten constitute 41% of assets, so the managers have conviction. My personal bogey for a LCG fund is AKREX; however, BIAWX edges out Akre over most time periods. AKREX is more tax-efficient, so shareholders in taxable accounts may be realizing some additional gains compared to the Brown fund.