@MikeM,
Good read on creating a retirement "floor":
three-degrees-of-bad
And this,
Challenging the 4% Rule

@MikeM, In the article the author mentioned that the "newness" of TRLAX will rely upon the rolling average of TRRBX to determine its 5% payout. At least that is how I read it.
Quote:

Since the fund is new, it initially will base payouts on the five-year NAV history of T. Rowe Price Retirement 2020 Fund, a 15-year-old target-date fund that uses the same underlying strategy.

TRRBX which has been around since 2002 has a pretty stellar record (rank in category):

FYI:
Regards,
Ted
October 12, 2017
Dear WEALTHTRACK Subscriber,
This week marked the 30th anniversary of the October 19th, 1987 market crash when the blue chip Dow plummeted nearly 25%, behaving like the shakiest of emerging markets. It’s a stark contrast to the market’s current behavior which is eerily subdued and trading at record highs.
What caused the Dow to drop 508 points on that single day, now forever known as Black Monday? As Ben Levisohn wrote in his excellent article in Barron’s titled Black Monday 2.O: The Next Machine-Driven Meltdown:
“…experts found a culprit: so-called portfolio insurance, a quantitative tool designed to use futures contracts to protect against market losses. Instead, it created a poisonous feedback loop, as automated selling begat more of the same.”
Fast forward 30 years, and that type of automated trading program seems almost quaint. Quantitative, rules-based systems known as algorithms, computer- based trading programs and strategies have grown exponentially in number, trading volume and complexity since then. And as Barron’s Levisohn wrote: “…bear a resemblance to those blamed for Black Monday.”
How risky are the markets now?
That is the focus of this week’s WEALTHTRACK and our guest, a leading expert on risk. We’ll be joined by Richard Bookstaber, Chief Risk Officer in the Office of the Chief Investment Officer for the $110 billion University of California Pension and Endowment portfolios. Bookstaber has had chief risk officer roles at major investment firms ranging from hedge funds Bridgewater and Moore Capital to investment banks Morgan Stanley and Salomon Brothers. From 2009 to 2015 he switched to the public sector, working at the SEC and U.S. Treasury. Among his projects was helping build out the risk management structure for the Financial Stability Oversight Council and drafting the Volcker Rule which restricts proprietary trading by banks.
Bookstaber is also an author of two highly regarded books on financial risk. His most recent is The End of Theory: Financial Crises, The Failure of Economics, and the Sweep of Human Interaction. His first, A Demon of Our Own Design: Markets, Hedge Funds and the Perils of Financial Innovation, published in 2007 presciently warned of the perils of the explosion of financial derivatives, some of which he helped create.
In a 2007 WEALTHTRACK appearance he alerted us about the twin risks of high leverage and complex financial instruments. How right he was. On this week’s show we will discuss the new risks he sees in the markets now, some created by regulations created to solve the old ones!
If you’d like to see the show before it airs, it is available to our PREMIUM subscribers right now. We also have an EXTRA interview with Bookstaber about his new book, which can be seen exclusively on our website. Also, a reminder that WEALTHTRACK is available as a YouTube Channel, so if you are unable to join us for the show on television, you can watch it on our website, WealthTrack.com, or by subscribing to our YouTube Channel.
Have a great weekend and make the week ahead a profitable and a productive one.
Best regards,
Consuelo

FYI: If you started saving 30 years ago, you got a quick education in the worst Mr. Market can dish out. The Dow Jones industrial average plunged 508 points, or 22.61%, the worst one-day crash in history. Those who weren’t scared out of the stock market have done well: The Standard & Poor’s 500 stock index has gained an average 9.59% since then. But a few funds have done exceptionally well and are being run by the same management team today. Here are the stock funds that have done the best since Wall Street’s darkest day.
Regards,
Ted
http://www.investmentnews.com/gallery/20171019/FREE/101909999/PH
1. Federated Kaufmann (KAUFX)
2. Vanguard PRIMECAP (VPMCX)
3. Janus Henderson Small-Cap Value (JSIVX)
4. Wasatch Small Cap Growth Investor (WAAEX)
5. First Eagle Fund of America (FEAFX)
6. ClearBridge Aggressive Growth (SHRAX)
7. Gabelli Asset (GABAX)
8. Ariel Fund (ARGFX)
9. Heartland Value Investor (HRTVX)
10. Elfun Trusts (ELFNX)

FYI: Target-date retirement funds, which are designed to automatically shift to more-conservative investments as an investor grows older, have become a popular way for working Americans to save for retirement.
But the same firms that created these all-in-one funds have struggled to provide a solution to the next dilemma many people face: how to prudently manage a nest egg while drawing it down in retirement. So far, the industry hasn’t managed to attract much interest for “managed payout funds,” which make steady cash payments to fundholders while continuing to invest the remaining assets.
Regards,
Ted
http://www.marketwatch.com/story/will-these-new-retirement-funds-catch-on-2017-10-20/print

FYI: A 2015 study of global pension assets from Towers Watson revealed that the 16 largest pension markets in the world increased their allocations to alternative asset classes from about 5% in 1995 to 20% in 2015.
Regards,
Ted
http://www.etf.com/sections/index-investor-corner/swedroe-performance-fees-add-risk

@LLJB: Primecap may have had a tough day, but since investing is a marathon rather than a sprint, Primecap has a 30-year average annual gain: 12.49%.
Regards,
Ted

Something to add to the reading list: a good article from Alpha Gen Cap on Pimco CEFs: see the part about GAAP accounting's limited applicability to funds that are more total return-oriented/positioned, e.g., with big slugs of non-agency mortgages ... which dovetails with the point above about Pimco NAV gains.
Hat tip to HiddenPointe on the M* forum for the catch; I'd given up on Alpha GC based on what seemed to be mostly advertising articles (for a paid service they offer) without a lot of substance - I've signed back up now to receive their pieces again.

@Maurice: Did not find it under Great Owls, but one of Charles picks back in 2016. Actually was aware of it for some time, I just let my Fidelity fund ride til now. My account manager at Fidelity brought it up when I met with him this week, when I said I was looking for a replacement for FSCRX. Decided to look at it again and decided to pull the trigger. I do have two other small cap funds in another portfolio, both being small cap value (UBVSX and SMDV) and wanted to add more of a growth fund.

The stock plunge seems odd, considering the outrageous fees I’ve recently paid United for their shout haul flights.
That aside, I’d have given anything to be aboard this Air Berlin flight when they buzzed the tower recently. The carrier was shutting down after being forced into bankruptcy. Guess this was the crew’s way of saying ”goodby” (or something to that effect). :)
Apparently some didn’t think it too funny.
http://www.businessinsider.com/air-berlin-flight-flies-close-control-tower-germany-suspended-pilots-faa-watchdog-travel-jet-airbus-2017-10
(May need to hit the mute button bottom right for sound.)

This website will help you "get a human" at a variety of different companies when you call:
gethuman.com/phone-number
As an example, I typed in Eversource (my Electric Utility Company) and got this:

Robinhood will cover any fees charged by your old brokerage.

Only for your first transfer into Robinhood.
https://support.robinhood.com/hc/en-us/articles/115001535326-Stock-Transfer

FYI: Vanguard today launched two actively managed global balanced funds: Global Wellington Fund and Global Wellesley Income Fund. Vanguard, which manages $800 billion in multi-asset class portfolios, has appointed long-time investment advisory partner Wellington Management Company LLP to manage the new funds.
Regards,
Ted
https://pressroom.vanguard.com/news/Press-Release-Vanguard-Taps-Experience-And-Expertise-Of-Welllington-To-Manage-New-Global-Balanced-Funds-101817.html

It means that the share class has not existed long enough for the star rating, but that this rating comes from another share class. TUHYX started 5/19/2017, the fund started 4/30/17 (TUHIX)

FYI: Wall Street’s newest portfolio manager doesn’t eat, sleep, and looks at a million bits of data a day
Bloomberg News
AI is teaming up with investment managers.
In 2011, the computer system Watson easily defeated its human competitors in three rounds of the quiz show Jeopardy. A new exchange-traded fund argues it’ll do something similar on Wall Street.
The AI Powered Equity ETF AIEQ, +0.44% which launched on Wednesday, uses the big-data processing abilities of IBM’s IBM, +8.86% Watson to develop a portfolio of stocks that its sponsors argue will be able to offer results that aren’t only better than what human stock pickers would be able to deliver, but also the overall market.
In other words, your new portfolio manager is a computer program.
Regards,
Ted
http://www.marketwatch.com/story/a-new-etf-uses-ibms-ai-technology-to-help-it-pick-winning-stocks-2017-10-18/print

As per the initial registration link, tentative offering date is November 9.
https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/1689311/000168931117000012/cann1aa.htm

@davidmoran, two things:
(1) Some investors have had Pim multisector CEFs in general close to hair trigger for a few months now, because the monthly UNII/earnings reports have been showing lower distribution coverage - and this month's (which came out on Monday) was somewhat more brutal, with UNII falling quite a bit for several funds. PCI's been one that's been hit the hardest on that score. There's been a nice runup since the first very short-lived selling bout earlier that was an apparent response to one of those earlier data disclosures, so there'd prob'ly been some short-term valuation concern building after the recent runup.
(2) There was a really silly article on Seeking Alpha (which if I recall right, also came out on Monday) by some "advisor" who demonstrated in the piece that he doesn't understand CEFs or Pimco's strategies. It cast a shadow on PCI specifically. Appeared it was widely read, so it may have had an influence.
So the selloff started w/PCI but has since spread most of the way across the Pimco multi landscape, presumably because most have had lower distro coverage from income lately. (The average CEF investor is an individual investor who's in 'em for the income, so selloffs based on fears of income cuts are common.)
However, given the continuing, large NAV gains of '17, quite a bit higher than the sum of the distributions, there shouldn't be much doubt that most or all of the funds can meet the stated distributions for quite a while before there's a real question about it. They've likely got good cap gains on non-agency mortgages and other assets they can bring into the distribution stream if and when they want.
A lot of this stuff gets discussed on the M* CEF board.
-- AJ
P.S. The selloff started in the only Pimco multisector then trading at a discount.

Here's the list of ETFs being dropped:
https://www.tdameritrade.com/retail-en_us/resources/pdf/grid_etfs2017.pdf
I stand corrected regarding the old list. I checked the commission-free list as of Sept. 29th using the internet Wayback Machine ( https://archive.org/web/ ) and it showed about 100 ETFs.

Yeah - If that shown 1.74% ER at Lipper is accurate, that’s a whale of an ER biting into your returns. Only way it could possibly be justified (perhaps in part) would be if this is some type of exotic fund which utilizes short selling and/or foreign currencies. Those types of income funds would be expected to cost a little more. I don’t know enough about this one to determine that.
As others have suggested, many fine income funds have ERs far below 1.74%. I happen to like DODIX, which had an ER of around .43% last time I checked. If you’re a bit more aggressive, their DODLX has a higher, but still competitive ER. You won’t see the ER reflected on your statement. It’s mostly hidden from view, but still detracts from fund returns. Worse, some managers will take undue risk with a high ER fund in an effort to compensate for the high ER.
Interestingly, Lipper scores your fund favorably, giving it 4 (out of 5) for total return, consistent return and preservation of capital (but knocks it on expense). Possibly, Lipper knows something I don’t. MaxFunds, on the other hand, rates the fund 32% (poor). Max suggests a best case for the fund in the next year to be +9% and worst case -12%. Consider those to be educated guesses, at best. I’m not telling you to sell it, but think you are correct in looking at similar funds having lower ERs and also questioning whether this kind of fund best meets your needs.