Looking at a 5 year chart visually tells a cautionary story as well:
A 72% 1 year investment gain in GDXJ...
merely breaks even for a 3 year investment in GDXJ...
and is little consolation to a 67% loss to a 5 year investment in GDXJ:

FYI: Gold has gone gangbusters this year, rising with jitters about everything from a weak global economy to the possibility of a President Trump.
After gold's best first-half of a year since 1980, gold-related funds are piled atop the leaderboard for returns. The average fund that invests in stocks of gold miners has returned more than 70 percent in 2016, for example. Such glittering performance has drawn even more investors, and nearly $21 billion has poured into funds that buy either gold bars or the stocks of mining companies in the year to date through August, according to Morningstar. In 2015 investors pulled $2 billion out of those same funds.
Regards,
Ted
http://www.bigstory.ap.org/article/5f021dd9651a459b9faeae1b26aa89ed/after-huge-gains-even-gold-fund-managers-advise-caution

I took a look at the American Funds Class F-1 offerings on the Fidelity platform. Nothing seems remarkable, except for their Target Date offerings.

We have been working with clients for more than 30 years and have seen a boatload of changes in the fund industry. As one poster noted, advisors have been able to use F-1 shares for many years, but individual investors could not. But the fact is that fee-only advisors have been the ones using this option, not the commission folks. It is always frustrating for us to see a new client come in with their account statements that show 4-6 American Funds, with a ton of overlap, thinking they are diversified. What was their "advisor" thinking? Pretty obvious, seems to me. Also know that for years, American Funds were "top shelf" options in many commission-based brokerages, meaning the rep earned a higher percentage of the gross commission if she/he pushed those products to clients. Not sure if this still happens, but the fund companies paid the broker-dealers to get on that top-shelf list. While American Funds, by and large, have been an ok group, their numerous large cap US funds are pretty-much defacto index funds when you compare size, number of holdings, Beta, STD, and other measures. And they fared about the same as the S&P 500 in the 2007-08 meltdown. There are certainly much worse load fund families out there.

The party's over.

Unfortunate but true. Time to sit back and wait for another 2013-like bargain.

I pay $180 odd right now for FIOS phone, cable and internet. In Feb I'm up for renewal and my bill will go up $60. Have a decision to make.
Charging $300 is too high. If that happens, will give up my landline and TV and then pay whatever I need to for internet.

Maybe I've had one too many tonight, but I can't make $180 and $60 come to $300, no matter how many times I add them together.
---

@VF, call and ask for retention packages and incentives. Tell them you are gonna bail, absolutely. They will come up with something, believe me.

Yes - That worked with DTV for us once. They substantially lowered our monthly rate for a year. Suspect it would work for VF. Solves the problem for a while - perhaps not a long term solution.

For an allocation fund whose performance has hugged the return of the S&P 500 for the past 10 years, go for the Bruce Fund (BRUFX). It's by far my biggest MF holding.

Don't you wish Bruce Fund offered a cash position? I have my H.S.A with Bruce and would like to park some of my money in a cash position instead of having to redeem shares when I need to pay for health related expenses.
I do love the Spartan website. Old School. I have automated my contributions by using the bill pay services offered through my bank's checking account and I have learned to tempered my enthusiasm for redemptions since the US mail is the only method available for receiving withdrawals.
I'm hoping all of these "old school hurdles" are too much trouble for the "above average high tech" investor to except and it remains the fund less traveled.

For an allocation fund whose performance has hugged the return of the S&P 500 for the past 10 years, go for the Bruce Fund (BRUFX). It's by far my biggest MF holding.

Switched from ARTHX to ARTRX about 18 months ago when I thought Yockey's fund was flagging and I am very happy I did.

Our underground cables date back to the early '60s. So pretty worthless. We receive DirecTV satellite (owned by ATT) with a decent package (but no HBO or premium channels) for under $90. Use Cricket wireless 4g (owned by ATT) for Internet & phone. Cricket costs $65 a month, including 10 GB of data, hotspot for multiple connections, and unlimited calling/long distance. XLink connects the cell phone to our regular phones & answering machine. Works well. The device: https://www.amazon.com/Xtreme-Technologies-BTTN-Bluetooth-Gateway-Black/dp/B0018NWQPK/ref=sr_1_1?s=electronics&ie=UTF8&qid=1476032748&sr=1-1&keywords=XLink
A couple small providers offer Internet via antenna. Setup & equipment are expensive, and they're still not competitive with Cricket, unless you need a lot of of bandwidth.
On the larger issue, I don't follow many trends. But utilities and REITS have been in the news this year because of outsized returns. Seems investors have been piling into them for their yields and as a replacement for low yielding bonds. Often, by the time the average investor hears of these trends they've pretty much run their course.

Hi Guys,
I am watching a lot of baseball on TV recently. When I was much younger, I loved the game. My enthusiasm has cooled somewhat with age. In the school yard I remember making small change bets that overtime eroded my lunch monies and filled the pockets of the juvenile bookies.
The wager, with a few minor variations, went something like this. The bettor could select any 3 ball players for today's games. Those 3 players must get a total of 6 hits to win the wager. The payoff was 5 to 1 so a dime could get you 50 cents if you chose wisely.
Back in yesteryear, common choices were guys like Stan the man Musial, Ted the thumper Williams, and jolting Joe DiMaggio. But even that all star group failed far more often than they succeeded. It's a tough assignment to choose not just one winner for the day, but three combined winners. It took many losing experiences, and finally a review of hitting stats to convince me of the futility of that game within a game. Those experiences probably nudged me to become more familiar with statistics.
With just a little imaginative mind stretch that early lesson can be applied to portfolio management decisions. Active fund managers fail to beat their benchmarks consistently just like ball players fail to get more hits than make outs. Statistically, it's much easier to select one such winning manager than a group of them. As the number of active fund managers increases in any given portfolio, the likelihood of that group as a whole outdistancing an Index benchmark decreases. More in numbers does not equate to more in results.
This logic leads to an investment rule: minimize the number of active managers in the construction of a portfolio. If average market returns are not attractive enough for your goals ( they are not if you elect to hire active managers ), then limit the number of active managers to improve your odds of bettering an all Index portfolio.
I'm a very slow learner. That's now my operative rule. What do you think?
Best Regards.

Concur that $300/month for combo package is a bit too much.
We eliminated the landline and replaced it with a cell phone plan (2 lines with 1Gb data plan - $80 Verizon). Don't have to pay for long distance calls. Cable TV and Internet package from Comcast for $90.
One can shop around and prices is dropping as more competition is available. Depending where you live cable service may not be available. Same goes for cellular services.

@hank,
This is through their U-verse package ... here is the 800# ... 877-403-2042 ... don't forget to ask for their specials. While this is available to me in Charlotte, NC ... it is not in Murrells Inlet, SC. You will just have to call to find out avaibality.
My U-verse TV (200) @$82.50 along with internet @$27.00 and phone (nationwide calling) @$24.90 are all delivered through the phone line. This was the special rate for me @$134.50 which has now ended. My new rate will be $143.50 going forward.

One also needs to consider securities lending fees generated by the large ETFs which may make them essentially free to own:
http://www.forbes.com/sites/simonmoore/2014/08/29/securities-lending-makes-some-etfs-free/#23f36f4c2b44
Kevin

I have AT&T and pay $143.50 which includes all taxes and surcharges for internet, tv and phone. My cell phone is billed under another plan.

With MUB at $111....I will pass on Muni's CEF's.

FWIW, I've been looking off and on at AICFX (F-1 class) which could already be purchased without an advisor.
I've a small HSA that I likely won't be adding to (hard to get a decent HDHP in my county). Until one's account reaches five figures, most HSAs that offer investment options are not economical (fees too high and/or too much cash must be left in a low interest account).
But I found one HSA that only requires a nominal amount left in cash, and offers AICFX as one of its investment options (it seemed like the best on its short list of funds).
So there have been ways to get access to some F-1 shares even before this announcement. They're just quirky and hard to find.

"While I wouldn't pay a wrap fee, one presumably isn't tied to one (possibly bloated) fund family, so a lucky adviser might earn his 1% by skilled diversification."
@STB65 - an excellent point, more so now than in the past. In days of yore, it was not uncommon for load families to waive their loads for exchanges from other load families. FINRA still has a page on this, it's called Net Asset Value Transfers:
http://www.finra.org/investors/alerts/net-asset-value-transfers-look-you-leap-another-mutual-fund
For conspiracy theorists, it may be that the fund families started dropping this en masse when wrap accounts became popular. Wrap accounts offered a similar feature ("free" transfers between families), but bigger fees (in the long term) for advisors.
These days, I'd expect a good advisor (who is using load funds) to use families with a broad range of funds so that keeping money within a family would not be a problem. To the extent that AF funds are bloated, that seems to be a family-wide characteristic. So if this is viewed as a problem, one would not likely be attracted to the family at all. And if not, then AF has a good set of funds to move between.
@Alban - As Rekenthaler states in his column (see link above) a small wrap account isn't going to get serviced well. Quite possibly larger accounts as well, as Kitces discusses in his recent (August) column: "Why Reverse Churning Is About To Become A Big Advisor Problem" (i.e. advisors kicking back and letting the fees roll in - the opposite of traditional churning).
https://www.kitces.com/blog/reverse-churning-in-advisory-accounts-problems-for-fiduciary-advisors/
IMHO the only way to resolve conflicts of interest that will arise regardless of the method of compensation is to require the client's interest to come first. Period, end of story. Being somewhat less cynical than VF (though growing more so year by year), I still choose to believe that most people (including advisors) are decent and honorable and will do the right thing.

I pay $180 odd right now for FIOS phone, cable and internet. In Feb I'm up for renewal and my bill will go up $60. Have a decision to make.
Charging $300 is too high. If that happens, will give up my landline and TV and then pay whatever I need to for internet.
I think this barron article signaled market top.

F-2 class have lower ERs and no 12(b)-1 fees. (Edit: Presuming you don't *want* to hold ETFs. For some things I prefer an OEF.)
One has to believe AF managers deconflict purchases so that (to use your hypothetical) if 4/9 managers all want to own XYZ, the fund will not suddenly have a 30% position in that one stock.

The F2 class E/Rs strike me as ludicrously high vs. the ETF alternatives which now exist.