Anyone have experience with this financial management company out of Richmond, VA? They have three in-house funds. The oldest is DAVPX. Two new ones recently got their first morningstar ratings: DEOPX and DVIPX. All fairly small ($100-300M) and 30-50 holdings. Styles are LG, LV, and MG (which looks more all-cap).

I'll probably be around 15% - 20%of my overall portfolio in WMCNX and one of the above funds, with the rest stocks with a small slice of RSIVX for short term needs. I'm relatively young (40) and not terribly worried about near term volatility, just wanting to hedge a little...and I'm not a fan of bonds.

My fiancee, I suspect, would score quite highly on the grit test. She's as practical as they come (other than marrying me)...

Gotta love it!

I'm going to have to go back to MJG's thread about the role of luck in life...

But my present comments are gaining too much momentum in the serious dimension. My original objective was to introduce a little fun into the MFO exchanges.

I don't think anyone took it as other than a welcome diversion. We just like to discuss interesting concepts things amongst friends!
There was an op-ed critical of the grit studies and authors in the Washington Post
this morning. It dovetails nicely with what Crash said:

In education, rather than devising new approaches that actively engage students, we end up trying to get kids to work harder at the tedious status quo. In her research, Duckworth even created a task that was deliberately boring, the point being to find strategies for resisting the temptation to do something more appealing instead.
More broadly, consider Tough’s declaration that “there is no antipoverty tool we can provide for disadvantaged young people that will be more valuable than the character strengths . . . [such as] conscientiousness, grit, resilience, perseverance and optimism.”
Really? No antipoverty tool — presumably including Medicaid and public housing — is more valuable than an effort to train poor kids to persist at whatever they’re told to do? Whose interests are served by such a position?

washingtonpost.com/opinions/sometimes-its-better-to-quit-than-to-prove-your-grit/2014/04/04/24075a84-b8f8-11e3-96ae-f2c36d2b1245_story.html
There are some other criticisms of the study, primarily that grit seems to come at the expense of creativity and could lead to a stubborn persistence in the face of repeated negative results. I could also certainly see a sort of Charles Murray style misuse of the data.
Happy Sunday.

Not much attention is paid to properly managing a portfolio after retirement which, for some retirees, can be 30 years or more.
"Gliding " into retirement might be helpful to lower risk early on in a retirees distribution phase, but a bigger concern, after this glide path is achieved, is the longer term consequences of an overly conservation retirement portfolio such as out living your assets. The concept of slowly increasing a retiree's portfolio to the appropriate amount of risk over the "last" phase of life is hardly ever discussed by retirement planners. In a sense, part of the portfolio needs to return to "flight" and be exposed to risk so it can continue to grow so it's available when a retiree reaches their 80's and 90's.
Here's a thought...instead of being used as retirement dated funds these dated funds now represent the portion of a portfolio that a retiree will use for income as they glide into that date. In a sense, one would hold a portion of your portfolio earmarked for 5 year increments that stretch out over the 30 - 40 years of retirement.
A 65 year old retiring today would divided their portfolio into 6-8 target dates out into the future...
2015 fund (use for current distribution over the next 5 years),
2020 fund (glide into 70),
2025 fund (glide into 75),
2030 fund (glide into 80),
2035 fund ( glide into 85),
2040 fund (glide into 90) and
2045 fund (Slide into 95...home)
How much to allocate is another important consideration, but time would allow the longer dated funds time to grow and therefore requiring less funding than shorter dated funds which would be needed for income.
Just some thoughts on an alternative use for these target dated funds.

Reply to @Charles: Good point. These animals vary greatly, as you know, in their approach. Umm ... my earlier comment perhaps overlooks the "mandated" aspect - which may argue for over-kill on the "disclosure" side. Still, I wonder whether somebody who's invested in one of these only because they were legally "defaulted" into it is going to have the inclination or aptitude to decipher all the fine print.
Next SEC PROPOSAL: Require that all fund prospectuses be written in plain English at no higher than a 5th grade reading level. :-)

I'm under-impressed. If the buyers of these funds don't understand the risks based on a detailed "glide path" showing how the allocation changes over the life span, it's unlikely additional explanation of the perceived risk levels will help. Consider that we're looking at changes which occur slowly over a 15, 20 or 25 year horizon. (Under all but the rarest of circumstances, the glide path is one of decreasing, rather than increasing, risk.) T Rowe already provides allocation glide paths for their target date funds which seem not only adequate, quite helpful and illuminating as well. Regards
Ted, have you been drinking this morning? I never heard of a "Target-Data" fund - which is why I clicked on this link in first place.

FYI:
Regards,
Ted
http://www.fa-mag.com/news/sec-seeks-more-comments-on-target-date-funds-17519.html?print

FYI:
Regards,
Ted
http://www.fa-mag.com/news/vanguard-says-minority-of-high-speed-traders-may-abuse-17516.html?print

Hi Cman,
Thanks for your additional comments. I looked at using my domestic hybrid sleeve as a bench mark through an Instant Xray analysis and when adjusting the amount of cash (percent wise) held it Xrayed much to that of my portfolio as a whole. Performance wise they are tracking pretty close along with their allocations. I guees, with this, it can become a second bench mark to the primary Lipper Balanced Index that I am currently using. I have all my portfolio sleeves set up in a spread sheet for easy tracking. I track many items form percent gains by the day, week, month, three months, one year, three years and five years, yield, duration, P/E Ratios, % off 52 week high, plus some other good stuff I'd rather not write about.
I do like the Lipper Balanced Index because it is a recgonized standard by many. As you are aware many mutual funds use the S&P 500 Index as a bench mark even though some have issue with this ... It is a recgonized standard. I use it on the equity side of my portfolio as my standard and for the fixed income sleeve I use a popular bond indexed fund, and for the portfolio as a whole, know as my master portfolio, I have been using the Lipper Balanced Index.
Thanks again ...
Old_Skeet

FYI:
Regards,
Ted
http://online.wsj.com/news/articles/SB10001424052702303325204579463490033935638#printMode

@msf, I really don't understand what you are trying to get at because you have mixed up a couple of terms.
To standardize on terminology for the common case, consider bonds that pay interest on a regular basis than all at once at maturity and whose coupon rate is at market rate at issue so the price at issuance is the same as face vaue. The coupon rate by definition does not change (not considering floating rates, etc).
What is relevant to a future mutual fund buyer is the SEC yield. What is relevant to the bond manager and to the NAV is yield to maturity based on which the price of a bond in the secondary market is priced and the mark to market tries to estimate that.
Take a bond fund that buys only 10 year bonds as a simple example. Say it bought one such bond 5 years ago. The current price of that bond, assuming an efficient market, is similar to the price of another bond which has the same yield to maturity. So, for example, it may be similar to the price of a new issue of a 5 yr bond with similar credit risk. The current NAV reflects that.
The secondary market for bonds is not like equity markets. The liquidity is low and two bonds even from the same issuer separated by time may have different terms. So, it is more like buying real estate. You also have to find a buyer that wants the remaining duration bond. So, the spreads are higher. If any bond manager HAS to sell bonds, they usually take a loss. The mark to market does not capture this. It is more like the difference between an assessed value of a house vs the actual selling price when you have to sell it quickly.
If this manager buys another 10 year bond after 5 years, and the interest has gone up and the yield curve is not inverted, the SEC yield for the fund goes up at the time of purchase as does the effective duration of the fund which was 5 years before purchase. NAV doesn't change at that instant as cash is converted to face value. If the manager immediately sells the second bond, the SEC yield Fdrops to reflect the yield of the older bond with lower duration left and NAV drops by any loss incurred from spreads. The closer to issuance, typically the less of a capital loss. But the bond no longer gets the higher interest payout from the new bond.
If the manager sells the older bond instead, he will likely realize a larger capital loss from the spread that drops the NAV from last mark to market. The SEC yield for the fund goes up with the newer bond remaining but existing investors see the drop in NAV and panic and the outflow gets worse. This snowballs.
The situation is more complicated with a mix of bonds but no bond manager gains by HAVING to sell a bond in secondary market.
If you are pointing an exception or a special case, it is possible, but please do state the deviation from the above assumptions clearly without bringing in more variables than necessary to illustrate it.

"It’s a no-brainer, right? Owning bonds is bad when interest rates are on the rise.
Not so fast.
A review of past rising-rate periods shows that bond investments performed surprisingly well."
"Consider the performance from 1966 through 1981 of a portfolio of intermediate-term U.S. government bonds — those with five-year maturities."..........
"Yet, according to Ibbotson Associates data, such a portfolio produced a 5.8% annualized return in that period."
The author fails to mention the inflation rate during the 1966-1981 period in question.
So we don't know if the 5-year Treasury performed "surprisingly well."
Take for example a year in which inflation was 10%. In that year, a 5.8% return would be a terrible return, with a 4.2% negative real return, and loss of purchasing power.
During the period in question, there were some years with double digit inflation. Not sure that the author's points and conclusions are justified.

@msf: thanks for that great information about accessing Morningstar's annual calendar year data back thru 2004.
"If one is not going to do anything with the investment for many years, what difference does it make how it behaves in the short term?"....... "if one is not going to do anything with that holding, the short term loss doesn't matter (i.e. it doesn't affect the purpose of making that investment)."
This year Warren Buffett discussed his Will, and how he wants the money he leaves to his wife to be invested for her:
"But I’ve told the trustee to put 90% of it in an S&P 500 index fund and 10% in short-term governments. And the reason for the 10% in short-term governments is that if there’s a terrible period in the market and she’s withdrawing 3% or 4% a year you take it out of that instead of selling stocks at the wrong time"
What Buffett said gets to the reason to have fixed income investments in 'safe money', or at least in fixed income investments that will hold up in a bear market for stocks, and in an inflationary environment, which typically is very bad for bonds.
You said "if one is not going to do anything with the investment for many years....."
But we have no idea when the next big bear market will come. When it does, assuming one has just retired and no longer has a paycheck from a job, living expenses should be funded with that fixed income investment rather than selling equity mutual funds in a bear market. So we can't say that it will be "many years" before there will be a need for that investment.
If one could depend on that 'many years' scenario, then I would wholeheartedly agree, we wouldn't care about short term volatility

I have owned First Eagle Overseas Fund since 2001. I was lucky to get into the institutional class share without meeting the $1 million min.; the I class share as an expense of .90. I am very happy with it. However, First Eagle is changing. It added a high yield bond fund past few years and last year the income builder fund which, like the new fund mentioned by rjb, has a very high expense ratio (over 2.50%) but has a waiver for a limited time. Finally, paying a load for any fund simply cannot be justified. First Eagle is changing, adding new players on staff and funds.

@Jim0405: FYI: If his WSJ articles are free, rest assured I will link the beginning tomorrow
Regards,
Ted
http://www.jonathanclements.com/

0.2-0.3% loss?
With SP500 off 1.3? Tech off 2.6%?
That would indeed take a lot of diversification, as aggregate bonds were only up 0.2-0.3%.

Take any of the published 60/40 lazy portfolio with the typical large/small and value/growth split with allocation to international and REITs and the bonds in Treasuries and you will likely find them with around 0.3% loss.
People with diversification and large losses may have too many correlated asset classes in their portfolios.
The point, however, was that this was not a broad sell off globally as may happen in a correction, just the recent high flyers getting slaughtered.

Go to Yahoofinance, Enter your fund in the search box, select performance tab, scroll down to the annual total return history.
Here's link USSTX and a snapshot
finance.yahoo.com/q/pm?s=USSTX+Performance
Here's a snap shot of USSTX:

It's an interesting concept, but I'll be a little critical of it as a catch all.
My score ranked, seemingly, around the 20th %ile. I suspect it would have been lower if it weren't for the reason Charles mentioned. But asking questions regarding *if* you have the ability to stick with a task doesn't address *why* you may or may not do so.
I have several learning issues which limit my ability to stick with any one task for extended periods of time. While I score quite high on tests designed to measure ability to manipulate information, testing regarding my immediate processing skills and short term memory rank in the 12th and 4th %iles respectively. In clinical terms I have ADD inattentive type and some form of dyslexia. Physically, I have been told I lack gray matter in my prefrontal cortex. The upshot is that I am highly distractable, forget things easily, and can wander through my day in a daze going from one incomplete task to another repeatedly getting excited for a new task while literally forgetting all about what I was doing not :30 prior. I don't have "grit" as measured by this test.
Yet my non-gritty brain structure also has the ability to conceptualize theory and future results very well. Certain things just make sense. So I am able to set long term investment goals and stick to them because I can conceptualize the framework of the time value of money. While I get slightly upset when things go down, I know that this is a lifelong plan, and that today's results are not my portfolio 35 years from now. If my stocks and funds have bad days, I use my distractability and go find something else to do. It's pretty easy for me. Having most holdings in tax sheltered accounts where I might incur penalties for withdrawl also helps.
My fiancee, I suspect, would score quite highly on the grit test. She's as practical as they come (other than marrying me), but she is not theoretical and does not have an ability to project money's future time value. At least part of that is an over-conservative and anxious attitude towards money learned from her mother (while my grandparents had me charting stocks at 6 or 7, teaching me about ownership in corporations. Like much in life, upbringing is so determinative). She has no intuitive grasp of liquidity, for instance, so wants money in a bank where she can get it immediately, just in case, and doesn't conceive the problems that causes with inflation. She would be entirely incapable of watching a market crash if she knew what she were invested in. So she has agreed to let me handle all retirement and investment accounts. She sends money with each check, I invest it and give her a report every year at Christmas.
Different strokes for different folks and all, but you have to be adaptive to life's complexities. I'm not sure this test completely measures that ability.

USFIX also has exposure to equities (about 20%) which will hurt this fund in market downturns.
Maybe ST muni funds similar to NEARX or USSTX. Hogan's fund, VWLUX, I believe is also a long term muni fund, Vanguard offers VWSTX. NEARX has had only one negative year over the last 23 years. Its ER is .45%. For USSTX...no negative returns over the last 30 years with an ER of .55%. VWSTX...36 years without a loss with an ER of .20%.
Here's a 3 year chart of the three:

Plugging "all ass" =) into Multi-Search, I find:

And for "real ass" I get:

Although I know PAAIX has fallen from grace on the board, I think it offers a lot of what you are asking for, except maybe pure precious metals. Here was review last time I looked: Three Messages from Rob Arnott.

And, here is David's profile of T. Rowe Price Real Assets (PRAFX). It's had a rough time in this bull market, as you might expect.