Hi Guys,
What a disaster! The chart tells a story of cumulative failure. It is an outright disgrace.
The failure that I perceive is not a national failure. It is the failure of the individual and/or the individual family unit. The USA is a prosperous nation with almost unlimited potential wealth for its citizens. Yet the wealth depicted in the accompanying chart is truly dismal for individual folks.
The opportunities exist, but our financial discipline fails us as individuals. We want and demand the storybook good life before we can afford it. Delaying gratification would go a long way to resolving this problem. The small numbers shown in the chart as a function of age demonstrate the issue. The problem would quickly desolve if we just practiced the saving discipline that many of us displayed until roughly the early 1980s. We seemed to toss frugality to the wind in that era and have never recovered from that reckless joyride.
Here is a Link to a nice PBS presentation that highlights some of the significant conflicting issues:
http://www.pbs.org/newshour/bb/why-so-many-americans-in-the-middle-class-have-no-savings/
My wife and I never succumbed to the temptation to overspend. We always saved about 15% of our gross income and invested wisely. I suppose that it was a wise decision to study the investment process. We did and we prospered. As a result, it is no exaggeration to claim we are chart busters. Some luck, some skill, but above all a disciplined saving and spending behavior.
I truly feel sorry for the median and below folks that are depicted by the chart. Those folks are in constant danger of being decimated by an unexpected negative happening that a few hundred dollars could easily cure.
Best Wishes.

I just went over to the government's TSP site and used their calculator to see what the "worth" in SS income of an equivalent annuity would be. Since I wanted a value for the bottom tier who may have almost no real savings or home ownership, I chose $1000/mo as their SS income. I think the annuity purchase closest to SS would be an increasing value payout with 100% survivor benefit. $400,000 would buy the annuity with a $1022/mo benefit. (Both members of a couple assumed to be age 66. Without the increasing component it would have been about $250,000. I don't know what the best price elsewhere would be.) Monthly benefit equivalents larger than $1022/mo would, of course, cost more if plugged into this calculator. Those of us with many times the savings required should appreciate the "ownership" of this tier to their "SS derived worth" even if, or especially if, the expense of annuities is up enormously due to low rates.

It has recovered, yes, but still lags well behind OAKBX and FPACX (say) for 10y and 20y, and behind FPURX and VBINX for 10y.

We're live. You can check out our September issue in the new layout at http://www.mutualfundobserver.com/issue/september-2016/
Please let me know if you have any problems with it.

FYI: More companies don't want you, or any other investor, to buy their stock.
Instead of listing their shares on a stock exchange, businesses are going private or never going public in the first place. Security company ADT, for example, pulled its shares off the market this spring after going private in a nearly $7 billion buyout. Uber, meanwhile, makes it simple for customers to hail a car, but investors can't easily buy a piece of the privately held company, which is valued at more than $60 billion
Regards,
Ted
http://bigstory.ap.org/article/7953517a32e9423ca8872a4371f252ba/how-incredible-shrinking-stock-market-affects-your-fund

Annualized - take a cumulative figure over any time period, and scale it to one year.
Investopedia's got this right:
http://www.investopedia.com/terms/a/annualized-total-return.asp
Note that I cite Invesopedia here not as an authoritative source, but as a readable one, in case my writing/typing/formulae below are unclear.
For example, if you have a cumulative return of 21% for two years, you scale it to one year by taking the square root (1/2 power): sqrt (1 + 21%) - 1 = (1.1) - 1 = 10%
In general, given a cumulative return over a period of Y years,
annualized return = (1 + cumulative return) ^ (1/Y) - 1
You'll notice a striking resemblance to geometric average:
1 + cumulative return = (1 + first year return) x (1 + second year return) x ...
Unfortunately, figures under a year are often "annualized" without compounding, e.g. a six month return of 5% is "annualized" to 10%, not to (1.05 * 1.05) - 1 = 10.25%.

Gripe to the SEC (How to Read A Mutual Fund Shareholder Report):

Performance Table. Underneath the line graph is a table showing the fund’s annualized (or average annual) returns for 1-, 5-, and 10-year (or for the life of the fund, if shorter) periods.

Somewhere I've still got M-W's 2nd unabridged, on onion skin (from my parents). The last edition before they started including slang. If I can find it (not likely), I'll see what it says.
If one insists that average means (no pun intended) arithmetic mean: What was the average annual return of a fund that produced 50% and -50% returns over the past two years? 0% or -13%? Sure it's still a mean, but it's not the "usual" mean.
As for me, I'm still bothered by flammable. I get inflamed whenever I hear it :-)

I hate when people us the term "average annual return" in place of "annualized return." The two are nowhere near synonymous.

Defined pensions are a thing of the past. Only about 5% of workers have them and 50% of those work for gov't.

Speaking of fuzzy statistics, this number sounds way off. Pensions are declining, but not nearly that fast. As of 2011, 18% of private sector workers had traditional pensions, and 78% of government workers had pensions. (I've no doubt the figures have dropped in the past five years, but not by 3/4).

You are correct. I was thinking of union members.

Somewhere I've still got M-W's 2nd unabridged, on onion skin (from my parents). The last edition before they started including slang. If I can find it (not likely), I'll see what it says.
If one insists that average means (no pun intended) arithmetic mean: What was the average annual return of a fund that produced 50% and -50% returns over the past two years? 0% or -13%? Sure it's still a mean, but it's not the "usual" mean.
As for me, I'm still bothered by flammable. I get inflamed whenever I hear it :-)

Defined pensions are a thing of the past. Only about 5% of workers have them and 50% of those work for gov't.

Speaking of fuzzy statistics, this number sounds way off. Pensions are declining, but not nearly that fast. As of 2011, 18% of private sector workers had traditional pensions, and 78% of government workers had pensions. (I've no doubt the figures have dropped in the past five years, but not by 3/4).
http://www.bls.gov/opub/mlr/2012/12/art1full.pdf

The only way I see people surviving with such small net worth is,social security, food stamps etc and living hand to mouth. 46 million use food stamps.
This should give those of us with substantial net worth, SS and pensions pause to appreciate what we have.

That's a more accurate statistic. It's even worse that it looks when you consider that several millions of those people need food stamps while working. I agree with the sentiment - though IMHO it is better to try to give a hand up (however one feels that is best done) than to simply be thankful for one's own situation.

Reorganization:
https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/812015/000119312516718214/d174387d497.htm
497 1 d174387d497.htm THE AB PORTFOLIOS - CONSERVATIVE WEALTH STRATEGY
SUP-0106-0916I
LOGO
THE AB PORTFOLIOS
-AB Conservative Wealth Strategy
Supplement dated September 22, 2016 to the Summary Prospectus and Prospectus (the “Prospectuses”) dated December 31, 2015 for AB Conservative Wealth Strategy (the “Portfolio”).
At a meeting held on September 21, 2016, the Board of Trustees of The AB Portfolios approved the following actions:
Agreement and Plan of Acquisition and Liquidation
The Portfolio’s Board of Trustees approved, and recommended to shareholders for their approval, a proposal for the assets and liabilities of the Portfolio to be acquired by AB All Market Income Portfolio, a series of AB Cap Fund, Inc. (the “Acquiring Portfolio”, and together with the Portfolio, the “Portfolios”). The Portfolios pursue similar investment objectives and strategies.
If the Portfolio’s shareholders approve the acquisition, all of the Portfolio’s assets and liabilities will be transferred to the Acquiring Portfolio, and shareholders of the Portfolio will receive shares of the same class of the Acquiring Portfolio, except that Class B shareholders of the Portfolio will receive Class A shares of the Acquiring Portfolio, in exchange for their shares of the Portfolio.
The Portfolio will distribute to shareholders of record information about the proposed acquisition of the Portfolio by the Acquiring Portfolio and request their consent for the proposal. If approved by shareholders, the acquisition is expected to be completed in February 2017.
Changes to Principal Investment Strategies
The Portfolio’s Board of Trustees approved changes to the principal strategies of the Portfolio, which are anticipated to take effect on or about January 26, 2017 and remain in effect until the acquisition (or indefinitely if the acquisition does not occur).
The Portfolio will no longer seek to achieve its objective by investing in a combination of underlying mutual funds managed by AllianceBernstein L.P. (“Underlying Portfolios”), the investment adviser to the Portfolio. Instead, the Portfolio will seek to achieve its objective by investing primarily directly in securities and other investments, while continuing to invest a portion of its assets in certain Underlying Portfolios, in accordance with its targeted percentages in certain asset classes and investment styles.
This Supplement should be read in conjunction with the Prospectuses for the Portfolio.
You should retain this Supplement with your Prospectuses for future reference.
The [A/B] Logo is a service mark of AllianceBernstein and AllianceBernstein® is a registered trademark used by permission of the owner, AllianceBernstein L.P.
SUP-0106-0916I

I know you know this Hank but these values (medians) are not averages, they are just the middle.

A look at the word “average”, American Mathematical Society Blogs (May 12, 2012):

Average "has three mathematical meanings: it could be mean, mode, or median. This suggests that confusion, intentionally or not, is likely to happen when the word is used."

Indubitably.

Thanks all. Can't wait to see the result. By the by, I use accessibility font overrides in IE11 and my green ribbon actually wraps around in order to fit the page.
Edit to add that I went back and looked at the blue vs. the green ribbon with my settings. The wrap inside the green seems related to the actual width of the blue ribbon. If so, widening the blue ribbon without changing the text might remove the wrap around inside the green ribbon. (i.e., I'd better stay out of this for now.)

It makes me feel that those who are on target to hit 1million or more dollars for retirement are going to be severely penalized with taxes and less in SS benefits. The politicians will have cover to do this since the majority of their constituents are represented in the numbers above. Scary.

FYI: (Scroll To Download Report)
Regards
Ted
https://us.spindices.com/spiva/#/reports

If the figure above is representative of US general population, we are in trouble unless the they have a healthy social security and generous pension. Over the past 20 years define pension plans have largely been replaced by define contribution plan, i.e. 401(k) and 403(b).
I work for a company that offer both a pension plan and 401(k), but the pension plan grows slowly (invest conservatively and I have no control) and the company's contribution is too many (1% of my salary). The bulk of the company's contribution goes into my 401(k) and that I am grateful.

http://www.fool.com/investing/general/2015/05/17/americans-average-net-worth-by-age-how-do-you-comp.aspx

One thing to consider is the imputed value of SS and pension. But that would be difficult to do.

I really like to see the endowment funds from all the major universities and how they compare to target-date funds, say 2000 till 2016.
Even among the target-date funds, some are better than the others just like 529 college saving plan.

Stable value funds are generally available in 401(K) in large companies. It provides a slightly higher yield than money market with a fixed NAV of $1. I used it in the past to park my cash position and the one available has low ER.
For retail investors, I would recommended low cost, short term investment grade bond funds instead. Any funds with ER above 0.10%, it will erode the already small yields. Last time I reviewed Vanguard they have several short and ultra-short term bond and bond index funds with YTD return about 2-3%. Not too bad given money market funds pay next to nothing.