http://www.investors.com/etfs-and-funds/retirement/what-would-tom-brady-do-how-to-win-your-retirement-finance-game-by-playing-offense-not-defense/
Wells Fargo study shows that many 401(k) plan members play defense with their accounts. Data shows you build a bigger nest by playing offense. Here's how to do it sensibly.

@Junkster Loans?
Many HY funds continue touching Ytd and multi-year highs.Here's Sept 30th commentary from two such funds.
ARTFX +13.28 Ytd
Total Assets
$ 1.8 bil
Portfolio Composition (% of total portfolio)
TOTAL 100.0%
Cash and Equivalents 5.8
Bank Loans 21.6
Corporate Bonds 72.6
Since February 2016, there has been a substantial rally in the non-investment grade credit space,particularly in the beleaguered energy and metals/mining sectors. As a result, today there is no obvious area of significant value as almost everything is trading rich. However, we believe there are pockets of dislocation in the market in a variety of sectors, including energy and the lower-rated portion of the universe that continue to offer opportunity that is idiosyncratic and credit specific. We hold that this requires considerable caution and a focus on the underlyin business quality of each respective business. In addition, with the potential for rising interest rates, we believe the ability to flex into loans and away from bonds will act as a helpful risk mitigant.
https://www.artisanpartners.com/content/dam/documents/monthly-commentary/vr/2016/sep/ARTFX-APDFX-MCommentary-0916-vR.pdf
HYOAX +14.19 Ytd
Total Assets
$ 45.5 mil
Increase in LIBOR rates has created strong technical demand for loans ...over 50% of leveraged loans now trading above par
Low worldwide G bond yields will continue ..demand for HY and levered loans..
https://az768132.vo.msecnd.net/documents/22438_2016_10_18_08_51_54_627.gzip.pdf
RPHYX
And more on LIBOR from RiverPark/David Sherman and the Cohanzick Team
LIBOR has risen to 0.85% at the end of 3Q16,a level near, or in some cases above, the LIBOR floor for many loans. At the same time, credit spreads for high yield bonds have narrowed since their 1Q16 peak such that we are now seeing a convergence of yields between leveraged loans and high yield bonds ...
The increase in loans in our portfolio may temper market volatility and provide modest price appreciation if some potential technical changes play out.
We are neither bulls nor bears. That being said, we have decidedly become defensive in our portfolios. We are “not in Kansas anymore”. The confluence of mixed signals and everincreasing exogenous risk leads us to be cautious. We are optimistic about the quality and return of our portfolios consistent with the funds’ mandates. Further, we remain nimble to take advantage of the unintended consequences resulting from government action.
http://www.riverparkfunds.com/downloads/8340_RiverPark-Cohanzick 3Q16 Shareholder Letter.pdf

For "popular" read "big". 105 of the biggest. Why 105, not 100 or 150? Or even 106?

Not sure I understand the premise of the articles. Most POPULAR fund for YOUR retirement?
All it means is the Funds are available in most 401k plans, no? That does not make them popular, just because people have no choice but to buy them in the absence of another from similar category. That also does not mean they are for us.
Regarding Ad Blocker, it should have a "stop blocking for 10 minutes" option. Every page I visit on Kiplinger I don't want to have to say "don't block on this page". Nuisance.

Meanwhile back in the real world several categories of bond funds have double digit gains in 2016. Flight occurs way after the fact and prices have already been in a pronounced downtrend. That is what occurred with the Third Avenue High Yield fund and Sequoia Fund to name just a recent few.

https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/1376720/000139834416019748/fp0022085_497.htm
497 1 fp0022085_497.htm
STEWART CAPITAL MID CAP FUND
(a series of Stewart Capital Mutual Funds)
Supplement dated October 19, 2016 to
the Prospectus and Statement of Additional Information dated May 1, 2016
This Supplement provides new and additional information beyond that contained in the Prospectus and SAI and should be read in conjunction with the Prospectus and SAI. This Supplement supersedes any information to the contrary in the Prospectus, SAI, and the Supplement filed September 27, 2016.
The Board of Trustees of Stewart Capital Mutual Funds has concluded that it is in the best interests of Stewart Capital Mid Cap Fund (the “Fund”) and the Fund’s shareholders that the Fund cease operations. The Board has determined to close the Fund and redeem all outstanding shares on or before November 18, 2016 (the “Redemption Date”).
On September 27, 2016, the Fund stopped accepting new investments and stopped pursuing its stated investment objective. The Fund will liquidate its portfolio and will invest in cash equivalents such as money market funds until all shares have been redeemed. Any required distributions of income and capital gains will be distributed as soon as practicable to shareholders and reinvested in additional shares, unless you have previously requested payment in cash. Shares of the Fund are otherwise not available for purchase.
Prior to or on the Redemption Date, you may redeem your shares, including reinvested distributions, in accordance with the “How to Redeem Fund Shares” section in the Prospectus. Unless your investment in the Fund is through a tax-deferred retirement account, a redemption is subject to tax on any taxable gains. Please refer to the “Dividends, Distributions and Taxes” section in the Prospectus for general information. You may wish to consult your tax advisor about your particular situation.
ANY SHAREHOLDERS WHO HAVE NOT REDEEMED THEIR SHARES OF THE FUND PRIOR TO THE REDEMPTION DATE WILL HAVE THEIR SHARES AUTOMATICALLY REDEEMED AS OF THE REDEMPTION DATE AND PROCEEDS WILL BE SENT TO THE ADDRESS OF RECORD. If you have questions or need assistance, please contact your financial advisor directly or the Fund at (877) 420-4440.
This Supplement and the existing Prospectus dated May 1, 2016, provide relevant information for all shareholders and should be retained for future reference. Both the Prospectus and the Statement of Additional Information dated May 1, 2016, have been filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission, are incorporated by reference and can be obtained without charge by visiting www.stewartcap.com or calling the Fund at (877) 420-4440.

Hi @Old_Joe ...
47X1=47
Make that a product of 47.
Skeet

Don't overlook the fascinating coincidence that when multiplied by 1 it also equals 47!

Hi @hank and @Derf,
Thanks for making comment on the number 47 as indeed as it turns out to be a most interesting number and when divided into 100 provides the quotient of 2.12765.
The number 47 is said to be contained in Biblical Law.
Something to think on? Yes.
Have a great day!
Skeet

For a deeper dig into CEF opportunities, I might as well add another recent link on this thread, rather than start another post:
http://blog.alphaarchitect.com/2016/10/11/digging-deeper-closed-end-fund-investment-opportunities/

Closed end fund discounts and premiums are incredibly interesting to academic researchers because they represent a direct assault on the efficient market hypothesis (which roughly stated suggests that prices always reflect fundamental value). [...] So where does the research stand now and why are researchers still finding the the anomaly worth writing about? [...] The recent research involves four sometimes competing, yet often complementary theories:
Investor Sentiment (irrational investors)
Liquidity Based (the fund is more liquid than the sought after assets)
Manager Ability/Cost (access to smart managers vs their cost)
Rent-Extraction (another example of Wall Street hoodwinking Main Street)

Reader needs to scroll a little ways down this blog post to find the meat on the bones.

FYI: These mutual funds have the most assets under management in 401(k) plans, according to BrightScope.
Regards,
Ted
http://www.kiplinger.com/article/investing/T047-C009-S003-105-most-popular-funds-for-your-retirement-savings.html

One of the reasons that I own the number of mutual funds within my portfolio that I do (currently forty seven) ... (emphasis mine)

Nice number 'Ol Skeet. 47 turns out to be both a safe prime an Einstein prime and is of considerable importance to mathematicians, astronomers, film makers, and many others.
--- Forty-seven has been the favorite number of Pomona College, California, USA, since 1964. A mathematical proof, written in 1964 by Professor Donald Bentley, supposedly demonstrates that all numbers are equal to 47.
--- The 47-year cycle of Mars: after 47 years - 22 synodic periods of 780 days each - Mars returns to the same position among the stars and is in the same relationship to the Earth and Sun. The ancient Mesopotamians discovered this cycle.
--- In the 2009 film Star Trek, the Enterprise was built in Sector 47 of the Riverside Shipyards, and 47 Klingon ships are said to have been destroyed by Nero's ship, the Narada.
--- During the 2012 election, Republican candidate Mitt Romney made a comment claiming that 47 percent of Americans do not pay any income tax.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/47_ (On line 1, click related link. "This article is about the year 47. For the number, see 47 (number).")

"...we asked five leading investors to share their best ideas on where to invest $10,000 right now. (It makes sense for smaller sums, too.) We first quizzed them back in June, when we also asked exchange-traded-fund analyst Eric Balchunas of Bloomberg Intelligence to choose ETFs that came closest to the strategies and themes they highlighted. Some of the experts also run mutual funds that employ their strategies.
Among their summer favorites were out-of-favor emerging markets, and many ETFs tracking those markets have seen double-digit gains. How did our panel of experts do last quarter, exactly? Very well, thank you. Check out the results that follow each new entry below. For comparison, the Standard & Poor’s 500-stock index was up 3.3 percent from June 30 to Sept. 30."
how-to-invest-10k
Experts and Tickers mentioned in Article:
Barry Ritholtz:
-DFCEX - IEMG or EEMV
-VEMAX - VWO
Sarah Ketterer
-CIVIX - TDIV or DXJ
Mark Mobius:
-MCHI, EWZ
Rob Arnott:
-PXH, VGK, BKLN, EMLC, FEM or FNDE
Francis Kinniry:
-Use this $10K to re-balance your losers (re-balance your portfolio).
-Consider replacing high costs funds with low cost etfs to lowering investment fee costs.
-AOR

(x-posted to M*)
After much thought, I closed my sizable multiyear position in PRBLX last night at approx breakeven.
Reasons:
- Waiting for the WFC thing to settle, it's their newest #1 holding. (For an ESG fund, let alone on trust issues I'm not sure I even want them to hold it anyway, especially as largest holding in that concentrated fund)
- Slightly restructuring my equity allocations in the OEF portion of that portfolio, and will keep me from using other $$$ already allocated to market purchases to pay for new car when it arrives next month.
I may well go back into it down the road ... WFC aside, it's been a fine fund and has excellent long term record.

FYI: (This is a follow-up article)
A nightmare scenario has haunted asset managers for years: What if the flood of cash that's poured into debt mutual funds since 2008 suddenly reverses, leaving a field of financial-market carnage behind?
Regards,
Ted
https://www.bloomberg.com/gadfly/articles/2016-10-18/mutual-funds-get-surge-pricing-for-costly-bond-flight

line 1 in my risk profile ---ffrhx rphyx PRFRX whgix rsivx dlfrx DBLTX ostix gabcx WSHNX
-- Thanks Charles for your reply.
How would I delete one or more of the above symbols or the entire line from the Risk Profile tool to avoid duplication with other lines or clutter? I have several lines of fund symbols.
Thanks
Ralph

Hi Hank, Hi msf,
Thanks for your comments, especially those most recently made.
The active vs. passive management debate will remain a hot topic. While the overwhelming academic research concludes that passive is the winner on average and in the long haul, limited evidence suggests that active management can deliver superior returns and/or reduced risk over some periods. The secret sauce is to discover the right manager for the right timeframe.
That's not an easy task; what worked in the past need not work in the future. Fund manager Bill Miller is a great example. He outperformed his benchmark for 15 consecutive years and just a few years later scored in the bottom 1% of all active managers. Things change.
A successful active manager wins over some timeframe using a specific methodology that reflects his knowledge and his biases. Once again things like macroeconomic conditions change and the active manager is not flexible enough to either recognize the changes or to adjust his methods. That was Bill Miller.
If you favor active fund management, you must actively evaluate active managers. That's tough work, but necessary to capture the small percentage of fund managers who do beat their benchmarks. It's a changing group since persistence is not one of their basic characteristics.
Benchmarks are needed to challenge and test the quality of active fund management. For lhose funds that specialize in large companies, the S&P 500 Index seems to provide a respectable, albeit an imperfect measure.
I did know that a committee controlled the firms represented by the Index, and that a few changes were made annually based on rules and judgments. I am not aware of the weightings given to the formulaic portion of the decision process and the heuristic portion.
I am not adverse to having a human heuristic segment. For something as uncertain as company assessment and the stock markets, equations alone will never be perfect. But too much emotional heuristics can ruin a useful market tool. The balance is a difficult target, but the S&P 500 committee seems to have done an acceptable job. By rule, they must maintain a proper weighting in the 11 major sector categories. Nothing is ever perfect in the marketplace; a satisficing strategy must do.
Best Wishes.

This is a bit of a sidetrack, but is spurred by jstr's use of S&P as a prototypical index provider.
S&P's "indexes" do not have "systematic selection criteria", at least the way I would use that phrase: "entirely rules-based and containing no judgment".
See, e.g. "What Is an Index" http://alo.mit.edu/wp-content/uploads/2015/10/index_5.pdf
Unlike other index providers such as Russell, Wilshire, etc., Standard and Poor's has a human index committee that applies judgment in selecting securities for index inclusion. Notable is its criterion for removal: "lack of representation". This potential for subjective tinkering was out in full force at the peak of the dot com bubble:

The S&P 500 is often mischaracterized as a passively managed index of large stocks, but in 2000, its managers became seriously aggressive -- adding (and subtracting) four new stocks each month, on average. In the process, the index was systematically stripped of small and mid-sized value stocks from Jan. 28 to Dec. 11 in favor of large-cap growth stocks -- largely from the technology sector, and at exactly the wrong moment.

https://www.thestreet.com/story/1305526/1/make-a-bundle-on-the-sps-rejects.html
More recently, S&P made rule changes not to improve how well its index represented the market or the index's investability, but to improve S&P's bottom line:

In 2008 and 2009, S&P . . . tossed nine companies off the 500 for inverting. But four years ago [June 2010], S&P changed course, for business reasons. Companies were angry at being excluded, and index investors wanted to own some of the excluded companies. Moreover, S&P feared that a competitor would set up a more inclusive, rival index.

http://fortune.com/2015/11/23/pfizer-dow-jones/
Systematic selection criteria? Yeah, right.

The advent and growth of ETFs / index funds and the availability of funds that can focus on specific stock universe attributes in the 21st century, has validated / shed light on that ( Buffet's ) advice. Further improvement in computing power and growth of quantitative finance has also streamlined and improved the management process.
Take the S&P Mid Cap growth index / ETF for example. The MDY ( S&P Mid Cap 400 growth ETF ) was launched when Buffet / BRK-A started to become noticed in the mainstream ( mid 1990's ). ( It appears that ) the Mid Cap index has specific, systematic selection criteria for management of the index. Reading literature ( shareholder letters, anecdotal evidence contained in books and articles ) on Buffet's methods seems to belie a somewhat idiosyncratic and haphazard process in position sizings and weightings, asset holding periods, and the occasional use of sophisticated "derivative" products ( this can be said for Icahn also ). If Buffet's "genius / greatness" has been reflected in BRK-A's share price, then a buy & hold of the "diversified index fund" ( Mid Cap 400 ) definitely has had an edge for a couple of decades and from different starting points. https://docs.google.com/document/d/1Kv2UtpBp7OIK56ZzrkthnV1PDRUA9AmGS6hAmr3Tl6A/edit?usp=sharing
Application of this simple quantitative tactical strategy for example, has produced further excess, risk adjusted returns vs. buy & hold https://docs.google.com/document/d/1WLB4hOP8P15O8b10_P4VgHuuBQHHke_c3XjwAjiFqio/edit?usp=sharing
As the management industry migrates towards "passive" indexing, perhaps gone is the discretionary and esoteric based management style that once reigned in the 20th century ?

FYI: Looking for yield in a closed-end fund these days is like buying a pen at Tiffany's — you'll get what you're looking for, but you'll pay an awful lot for it.
But the preferred stock offerings of many closed-end funds could be a lucrative way to get yield at a reasonable price.
Regards,
Ted
http://www.investmentnews.com/article/20161014/FREE/161019955?template=printart