"You may be thinking that, if passive is the way to go, you might as well make things even simpler. Why not just put your retirement money in the bank and forget it? While you can certainly do that, the results may be disastrous. If you want more than just Social Security for your retirement, you need your money to grow.
Consider this. In 1913, nine cents bought a quart of milk. In 1963, the same nine cents bought a small glass of milk. In 2015, nine cents bought seven tablespoons of milk. Clearly, putting money under the mattress doesn't work for the long term. The culprit of the declining purchasing power of that nine cents is inflation. The moral of this story is to make sure your money grows at least as fast as inflation.
That requires investing it. For example, it would require $13 today to equal the purchasing power that $1 provided in 1926. Had you put one dollar in the bank in 1926, you would have $21 today. Having invested the dollar in long-term bonds would give you $132. However, invested in the S&P 500 index (stocks), you would have $5,386."

I love this assertion that the past stock market's performance is prelude to the future market's performance. Let's assume that indexers are right and that stock performance truly is a "random walk," which active managers can't predict and therefore can't beat. Why accept the other notion indexers believe in then that in the "long run stocks always go up" if it is truly random? The 104 years of market history this author cites is less than a heartbeat in the history of the planet. Just because markets have gone up in the past is no guarantee they will go up in the future. Rising markets are not a law of nature like gravity in physics. There is no guarantee even that stock markets will continue to exist. There is a historical precedence for markets disappearing altogether as happened to Russia in the 1910s during the Russian revolution: https://the-international-investor.com/2011/st-petersburg-stock-exchange-1865-1917-diversification-pays-emerging-markets
Can an active manager predict when the next bubble will burst or some major geopolitical event is about to occur with any certainty? No, but they can at least react defensively to it when a blind mechanical index can't. What indexing's triumph proves is not that markets are efficient, always rising and therefore unbeatable. It proves that costs matter. Costs are the one thing in funds you can predict will have an impact with a fairly accurate degree of mathematical certainty. Not just expense ratios, but trading costs and market impact costs. But a low cost, low turnover actively managed fund with a manageable level of assets can be a better investment than a mechanical index fund.

Early this week, chip posted performance update through 4th Quarter 2016 in Search Tools on our main site.

I forgot that thread, but I must admit being fairly pleased going on 10 years with TD Ameritrade, starting back in my active futures / day trading days with ThinkorSwim.

Top article in this Google SEARCH
I will fondly remember the humble VF before he became famous and quoted in a global publication. We will likely be an easy to forget footnote in the life of VF !
Kevin

For a short term position, cost is secondary to market movement. Frontier market ETFs don't seem to offer an advantage aside from cost over OEFs. Meanwhile they have the usual bid/ask cost mitigating or perhaps dominating the ST management cost difference.

While the ETF options are more attractively priced, these index funds do face certain challenges in frontier markets, which is a relatively illiquid asset class. For example, when executing an index change, an ETF portfolio manager might face front-running and/or large market-impact costs. Turnover related to index changes could also result in capital gains distributions, as most frontier markets do not allow for in-kind creations and redemptions (the mechanism that allows ETFs to remove securities from their portfolio without incurring capital gains).

There is only one diversified "frontier" market ETF with more than 1/3 of its assets in frontier markets. FM. If one is recommending an ETF for this market segment, that shouldn't have been so hard to name.
ETF.com rates this the best frontier market ETF. That said, it also says that it is not particularly representative of this market segment, with a "poor tracking mean[ing] that realized holding costs are even higher." Overall, it rates FM an 'F' on a scale of A-F.
Why again are ETFs good in this market segment for ST trading? Again quoting ETF.com: "All three [ETFs in the market segment] trade poorly. FM sees the best volume most days, but it still won't be cheap to buy and sell." That may be excusable for a LT position, but is detrimental to use in ST trading.
I'm with Kevin on this one - if you get entertainment value out of these funds, that's fine. Otherwise it's a lot of research work for something that will not make a noticeable impact on your portfolio.

From Barrons "Investors Bear the Brunt of Merging Brokers"
"Consider the news this October that Scottrade will be acquired by TD Ameritrade Holding (ticker: AMTD). The deal set off a flurry of posts at Websites such as MutualFundObserver.com from worried investors about what this could mean for their fund portfolios. As one angst-ridden poster with the handle VintageFreak put it, “NO NO NO!!! Not TD Ameritrade.”
http://www.barrons.com/articles/investors-bear-the-brunt-of-merging-brokers-1484379375

One suggestion to think about Puddenhead, if your buy-out is taxable and you want to put it into retirement savings, a Roth IRA would be a better idea than a regular IRA, at least for the Roth IRA yearly max (not sure what it is now). If you get it before April I believe you can max both 2016 and 2017 with the money. Just a thought.

Puddnhead , I worked for a once great company, once the darling of the DOW, that downsized every year for almost 20 years. Went from 100k+ employees world wide to now just a few thousand. At different times they offered both buy-outs that were taxed as regular pay and buy-outs that could be rolled over into the company 401k or an IRA tax free. The difference was where the company was taking the money from to make the buy-out payment. Money coming out of the pension plan was considered tax free if rolled directly into IRA or 401k. Your employer should be giving you that very important information. I'm surprised Duke didn't tell you this :)

@davidrmoran, Thanks for this fantastic article:
"Es-cape-ing from Overvalued Sectors: Sector
Selection Based on the Cyclically Adjusted
Price-Earnings (CAPE) Ratio"
Kevin

Hi guys!
You're the best, Skeeter! It's your thread and everybody knows it but you. Keep up the good work, big guy!
Not much to say.....doing a lot of watching, but will say this: seems everybody is looking for a pullback. But....what if we don't get one? ..... really?......then, what will you do? Add more money or wait? I watched wealth track this morning......it's part 2. They seem to think things are getting better in the world. What is a good Japan fund? I haven't been over there in years. Might put a little in there. I see Josh Peters has a fund he's managing now: OARDX. Will keep an eye on it for a while. Also, at work they came out with a buyout package. Yep! They're going to pay us to leave. I feel like a politician being bribed......I like it!!! Also, where's Ted? The board seems slow without him around. Also, give me your best fund.....one you will die before selling. I want to make a list before going into an IRA and paying $2500.00 to open a fund. Now, with 401k, it's only $500.00, so I might add some before I retire. Why? Because I'm a lot like Bee. Also, is a bank loan fund or short term bond fund as good as a money market account for short term money? If so, what funds? Also, if I get lump sum (via buyout) and put into IRA, will I have to pay taxes? I assume "yes," but I had to ask. Anybody else been here before? Funny......at the meeting, about 100 people there....I might've known half of them. So many friends are gone. Didn't realize that. They leave over time and you forget. Got to stop before I cry in my beer.
God bless
the Pudd

Scottrade offers both CENTX (world allocation) and CINTX (foreign LB) for $100 minimums in taxable and retirement accounts + TF as Kevin described.
Kevin

aah...i trusted M* fund page which still does not list Scottrade.

While I find M*'s "purchase" pages (lists of brokerage availability) some of the least reliable (usually errors of omission), in this case M* was spot on.
The CENTX purchase page and the CINTX purchase page each shows the fund available at "Scottrade TF" as Kevin described.
Regarding CETAX, the M* purchase page shows that you can already get it at TDAmeritrade NTF. TDAmeritrade confirms this; there the standard $5K min is required.

EFEIX shows a concentrated portfolio of just 47 stocks, and 7 "other." I compared it to TRAMX: 71 stocks, 2 bonds and 1 "other." EFEIX shows a better 1 and 3-year record, but TRAMX has a longer record, showing 5 yr. perf. at 7.23%. It seems to me that it's not worth the headache of all of the deep research you'd have to do, in order to justify owning a Frontier fund. Expense Ratios are high. If you want to buy it as a short-term trade rather than a long-term investment, it might make you happy. I made money with TRAMX years ago, but it was dumb luck.

On the topic, I'd recommend the Hyman-McLennan interview about international markets/economies that's current on WealthTrack.
Mc made the point that foreign equities (he was mainly talking developed, as I understood it) look cheaper than the U.S., but that the valuation differential is almost entirely in the financial sector. Both still think the U.S. is the best value, for now. When asked the "one investment" question about foreign markets, both brought up Japan. (Hyman's recommendation came with currency hedging).

Scottrade offers both CENTX (world allocation) and CINTX (foreign LB) for $100 minimums in taxable and retirement accounts + TF.
Kevin

aah...i trusted M* fund page which still does not list Scottrade. Good to know, then it will be also available in TD Ameritrade.
Just checked at Scottrade, neither CETAX or CENTX is available NTF.

@kevindow

Scottrade offers both CENTX (world allocation) and CINTX (foreign LB) for $100 minimums in taxable and retirement accounts + TF.

Very helpful to know! Thanks for pointing it out. I certainly missed it. Best

Yes. I was hoping they'd do this. Especially since it is by any standards a tiny fund, $160 mln in AUM. This one's a keeper. Thanks, David_Snowball, for writing this up a few years back.

@davidrmoran,
Thanks for the Waggoner article. Here is an article in support of buying foreign equities:
The Case for Buying Foreign Stocks Now
Right now, I have the greatest confidence in the US economy, so most of our portfolio is positioned there. Our only foreign exposure comes from our EM funds: PXH, WESNX and SIGIX.
Kevin