"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.

Congrats on your coming retirement Art. I'm about there myself, but will probably work part time to ease into retirement.
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. The 8 self managed funds include equity and fixed income funds. About 20% of that is in 1 balanced fund, PRWCX. I am not a believer in duplicating funds in categories or asset classes but to each their own. I also believe a 1 fund portfolio can be a fine idea coupled with a cash bucket in retirement. That 1 fund would be a target/retirement fund. How simple is that, but I don't think that is what you are looking for.
You, having 7 world/global funds, tells me that you and I have different portfolio building ideas, so I can't offer much help. 1 or 2 of those would be fine in my mind (or none depending on what else you hold). You can't go wrong with TRP (I'd pick PRGSX fwiw), and maybe even holding one of the Grandeur Peek funds might make sense IF they were different enough from TRP.
Good luck to you.

AKREX co-manager Saberhagen left 4/25/19 https://www.morningstar.com/funds/XNAS/AKREX/quote.html
Given the 4% turnover for AKREX that may not be an immediate concern, but the departure was unexpected.

Tend to agree with Ol’Skeet that number of funds doesn’t matter a lot. Getting the number down may well be a sign that you’ve successfully identified the funds that are most aligned with your own personal needs. So I suggest you view a lower number more as a measure of how well you’ve identified the right funds for you rather than a goal in itself.
A few things important to me in adding or culling funds (highly subjective criteria):
- Low fees
- Diversification across fiduciaries (fund houses or other)
- Diversification across asset classes
- Moderate exposure to international markets
- Superior downside protection relative to peers
Absent from my list is performance. Perhaps that’s due to it being so obvious a consideration. In addition, capital preservation becomes more important in retirement - especially later on. I’ve always strived to keep the number under 20, believing that meets my needs and is fairly easy to get my head around. Currently I hold 15 funds across 4 different management houses. In addition, I have one ultra-short bond fund that I treat the same as cash.
RPGAX is one of the 3 balanced funds I own - the only one with significant international exposure. I suspect the choice has as much to do with my preference for T. Rowe Price as with anything else. But RPGAX is a good fund with reasonable fees.

Hi @Art:
I tend to look at things in a different color of lens than most on the board. I'm thinking, this is because of my baackground being a former credit manager of a fairly large wholesale distribution company servicing the Carolinas, parts of Virginia, Tenn and Georgia. We would not let any one customer become more than 1 percent of our gross revenue nor carry more than two percent of our receivables. To keep the DSO low we required pre payment on special (non stock) items, as most were not returnable, along with good discounting for timely payment of invoices such as 2% ten days, net 30. Our larger and better customers just about always paid taking their discounts.
One might ask ... How does this have any light on your investment portfolio? It's simple. Even in my cash area of my portfolio I will not put more than a couple of percent of my portfolio into any one security weather it be a CD or money market mutual fund. Then moving on to the income area I keep the upper limit at a two to three percent range as well with two exceptions. In the growth & income area, I also have a cap on how much, percent wise, I'll hold in a single position. This also applies, as well, to the growth area of my portfolio.
If one or even a few funds falter then there are a good number of others that can continue to propel my portfolio. After all, funds do change managers and they have styles and strategies that move in and out of favor during market cycles as well. Think growth vs. value, small vs, large, domestic vs foreign, varrying regional allocations, varrying stock vs bond allocations, etc.
Not knowing more about your goals, positioning along with whatelse you own and in what percentages I find it hard to make comment on which funds you should "can" and which ones you should keep. There possibly could be tax issues that might need to be considered along with some other things as well.
Generally, the more risk associated with a fund the less of it I'll own in realation to other funds held within its sleeve, its area, and my portfolio as a whole. Take the growth area of my portfolio which now accounts for about 15% of my overall portfolio and holds a total of 12 funds with these being divided among four sleeves. The two largest sleeves are my large/mid cap sleeve and my global growth sleeve at about 30% each. The two minors are my small/mid cap and specialty & theme sleeves at about 20% each. Generally, for a three member sleeve, I'll run about a 50/30/20 percent mix. An example. In my large mid cap sleeve I'm 50% SPECX, 30% AGTHX and 20% AMCPX.
With all of the above being said ... I'm thinking you should do as you feel best and discount the thoughts of others (mine included).
If you want to reduce the number of holdings held within your portfolio I'm sure you have good reason to do this. Likewise, I have good reason, as well, to govern they way I do.
I'm also thinking, they are all good funds. Why "can" any of them?

Retirement within 1 year. I want to reduce the number of funds I have. Thought I would see what the collective thinks.
IVWIX or RPGAX. Keep or sell one of these world allocation funds.
ARTGX or PRGSX or FWWFX. Keep or sell which one these world large stock funds.
GGSOX or GPROX?

Krugman: “What all this tells us is that Republican positioning on economic policy has been in bad faith all these years.”
Nothing new here. Don’t need Paul Krugman to know that. Have already noticed they believe they can “scrounge up” 8.5 bill in unused funds to erect a glorified 18th or 19th century wall - apparently without raising taxes. While same folks can “explain away” food for hungry kids because: “there's no demonstrable evidence“ it helps their performance.
https://www.romper.com/p/trumps-budget-manager-says-feeding-hungry-kids-hasnt-been-proven-to-help-their-performance-45235
(By the way, the fella who did all this explaining has since been promoted.)

This looks at past motives, which appear to have considerable momentum:
https://www.nytimes.com/2019/05/04/opinion/the-sabotage-years.html

FYI: When I was a junior analyst at Sanford Bernstein nearly 25 years ago, our betters drummed into our heads that everything in the investment world went back to normal and that John Templeton was right when he said that the four most expensive words in the English language were “this time it’s different.” Bernstein had a sophisticated computer model that we referred to as the black box; its job was to tell us worker bees the most statistically cheap sectors every month. Like good worker bees, we would more or less automatically buy the stocks in those sectors and sell stocks in the most expensive sectors. The black box minted money for the firm and its clients for decades, precisely because everything did eventually return to normal. Cheap auto stocks appreciated to fair value, expensive tech stocks returned to average, and the investing world was good—safe and predictable. It was indeed dangerous to think “this time it’s different.”
Regards,
Ted
https://www.barrons.com/articles/reversion-to-the-mean-is-dead-investors-beware-51556912141?mod=past_editions

The Oaks : $1 trifecta 13-9-3 = $7,021.80 !!
Derf

Thank you Shadow
OPEN END FUND - have to do more in-depth study.
A little knowledge comes out at a time.
This link gives more history and description to a unfamiliar function!
https://www.bloomberg.com/graphics/2019-etf-tax-dodge-lets-investors-save-big
I posted it a month ago.