About LPEFX, with a 5.5% front-end load and a 1.59% ER I personally don't find anything interesting about this fund at all. That'a a 7.09% deficit from the start that an investor w/o access to a load waiver has to jump over to even begin to make any return. Also, assuming M* (and this is one BIG assumption) has this dog placed in the appropriate category, the fund trails it's category badly. I'd pass and just hold a few of the entities outright but to each their own. Disclosure: I own BX & KKR.

#3 touches on....but #1 in everyones plan should be NO Payments, and small utilities bill only.....everything else is minor Except Money Saved...which if it don't have..... probably Too Late for you

David shared a copy of his quarterly shareholder letter with me earlier this week. It's posted on the RiverPark site now and it's worth reading.
I came away from it with two strong impressions:
there may be emerging structural problems in the investment-grade fixed-income market. At base, the unintended consequences of well-intended reforms may be draining liquidity from the market (the market makers have dramatically less cash and less skin in the game than they once did) and making it hard to market large fixed-income sales. An immediate manifestation is the problem in getting large bond issuances sold, a potential problem might be the emergence of a roach motel issue if things get rocky. That is, it might be easy to get in but impossible to get out of some safe issues.
Mr. Sherman is very cognizant of the need to have portfolios that could ride out a storm without the need to liquidate holdings; better than half of RPHYX will roll off to cash with 60 days and a quarter of RSIVX is invested in the same securities as RPHYX is. His argument is that given the challenges facing large bond issues, you really want a fund that can benefit from small bond issues. That means a small fund with commitments to looking beyond the investment-grade universe and to closing before size becomes a hindrance.
Some of his concerns are echoed on a news site tailored for portfolio managers, ninetwentynine.com. An article entitled "Have managers lost sight of liquidity risk?" argues:

A liquidity drought in the bond space is a real concern if the Fed starts raising rates, but as the Fed pushes off the expected date of its first hike, some managers may be losing sight of that danger. That’s according to Fed officials, who argue that if a rate hike catches too many managers off their feet, the least they can expect is a taper tantrum similar to 2013, reports Reuters. The worst-case-scenario is a full-blown liquidity crisis.

The article goes on to express concern that holding elevated cash levels is a poor response since panicked withdrawals could quickly exhaust even an elevated cash stash (see 'Total Return Fund, PIMCO" for details), leaving managers "out of both cash and choices." The better solution, they argue, is building "organic liquidity" into the portfolio. Which, I believe, is what Mr. Sherman has done.
Hope your weekend has started well. It's cold and rainy here, which is keeping me out of the garden and close to the keyboard.
David

Let's see: active share provides a model contrary to AQR's business model. AQR's researchers re-run analyses of the A/S data which (surprise!) shows that AQR's business model is the right one. Fidelity, with a regrettable number of closet index funds, does the same. In the past, such analyses have sometimes misrepresented the data (commonly by complaining that it's misleading to compare funds to a single benchmark like the S&P500, which is true but which is not what Cremers and Petajisto did).
Does that mean they're wrong?
Nope. It means that they have a vested interest in the results and, consequently, their conclusions need to be viewed as one voice in a debate between partisans rather than as a dispassionate judgment.
Other voices in the debate include Callan & Associates, which looks at product-pairs (two funds run in the same style by the same management team) and concludes that the more-focused of the funds tends to have significantly higher A/S, alpha and beta. They conclude that A/S is a useful predictive construct, but only one of many you need to consider.
A more-partisan response comes directly from Cremers and Petajisto who allege that AQR, like the others, misrepresents their benchmarking strategy. "They were able to replicate the main results in our paper, showing strong evidence that active share has been strongly predictive of mutual fund performance once you adjust for the benchmark performance.”
My own take, as you know, is that active share makes logical sense: if your portfolio closely replicates the portfolio in your benchmark index, your portfolio has an extremely low prospect of producing results that differ from your benchmark's. That is, if my actively managed fund is the S&P499-Plus-One, it's likely to track closely the S&P500 index - and to lose out based on the drag of fees and indirect costs. That said, merely being different clearly does not automatically translate to being better. That leads to our focus on a bunch of "soft" factors like whether the portfolio strategy makes sense, the manager can articulate his approach to risk-management, the advisor communicates clearly, the insiders are deeply and directly invested in the strategy and the fund (or strategy) has negotiated rocky markets in the past. None of that is perfect, but collectively it seems to point in a generally good direction.
For what that's worth,
David

This is only going to be offered to accredited investors. However, it is interesting from the standpoint of allowing to invest in KKR funds without investing in KKR itself and the K-1 that comes with it.
I'd like a fund of funds that can invest in private equity funds across multiple companies and is a mutual fund.
I'll continue to stick with OAK and BX, the latter having become a larger position than I initially planned given that stock's volatility.
Also, with the KKR fund, there is a two year lockup.

@MJG
1. "I can be succinct in response."
A: Yes, and it would greatly facilitate dialogue if you would endeavor to be so more often.
2. "I never claimed that any of your comments are "incorrect". "
A: Here's what you said: "You are in substantial agreement with the six common axioms that often misguide over-reactive investors ..."
3. "I consistently respect everyone's market perspectives."
A: What one says and does are two different things. To profess respect - but than proceed to inundate a discussion with one's own doctrinaire perspective(s) may not be respect.
4. "Everyone is free to express an opinion."
A: We agree here.
5. " In this instance I surely did not challenge your analysis."
A: See #2 above.
6. "I likely overreacted ..."
A: "Overreached" is a better word. My analysis did not address what steps (if any) an investor should take. It focused only on Jaffe's analytical approach.
7. "I wanted to emphasize the primary importance of defensive investing ..."
A: Than we were not on the same page. There was no reason to address your remarks directly to me. My purpose was merely to highlight the superficial nature of the article, separating out the accurate statements from the false or exaggerated assumptions.
Thanks for your response.

@dicksonL
Finding my username in your post.....not knowing your other holdings or whether your IRA(s) has access to a brokerage feature, to allow you to place your monies just about anywhere; I can only add to what msf noted with a few trinkets of thought regarding your questions.
With the following in mind; per Mr. Snowball's "statement of the obvious", that "We cannot vouch for the accuracy or appropriateness of any of it,"
This is my/our view from this house; but will not be appropriate for everyone regarding a taxable acct. or a tax sheltered acct. as noted for your 401k and IRA(s).
You noted: " Since IRA acct can go more aggressive, for tax free growth for 6 more years( a lesson I learnt only 2 years ago) before RMD kicks in, I am tweaking my portfolio, making more index based in taxable and aggressive in IRA. my 401k with ltd. choice is on s&p500@0.17%"
>>>I will presume you are stating that your IRA holdings may be invested in whatever without current concern about taxation. Aggressive, for me; has a different meaning. Aggressive could perhaps imply a portfolio of 100% in equity investments.
I agree with msf regarding the choices you noted in your taxable account; and agree that one should place whatever is most tax efficient for your choice of holdings into this area.
As for the tax sheltered accounts; one does not have to be concerned with taxation at this time; so one may "fiddle" with whatever is most appropriate for their risk/reward investment emotion. Buy and sell when you need or choose to without regard to current tax from the transactions. This, obviously; is the nice part of tax sheltered holdings. In the end, per current tax policy; we/you will pay tax on the withdrawals at an ordinary income rate at the federal/state level, yes?
A brief overview would be that you may choose to be aggressive with your investments in both types of account holdings; leaning towards the most tax efficient for the taxable account, eh? Two choices were noted in your post and in msf's reply about tax efficiency. I do not have a direct opinion of either of your choices. You noted replacing one with another. Perhaps you may decide to keep the original fund, but move some of this money to the other fund, too. I have not looked at the funds, so I don't know how similar they may be regarding the investment style/holdings.
The majority of our holdings are within tax sheltered accounts; so we have not been concerned about tax efficient holdings. Our main goal has always been captial preservation (money to live for another day, to take advantage of the long term compounding effect) and capital appreciation in whatever form it may arrive, be it income/yield or price appreciation. This goal, of course; is regulated with our own value of risk and reward from the investments.
Currently, we are about 65% equity within the broad U.S. and Europe areas. In June of 2008 we were at 90% investment grade bonds. Our portfolio is ever changing and may be slightly aggressive for some near or in retirement; and will remain in place, until we feel the investments are no longer working/happy.
Only my 2 cents worth.
Take care,
Catch

The fund's performance is fine (two years in the top 5%, two years in the bottom 5%, strong start to 2015)

But how do you benchmark something like this? All Royce funds have style creep -- how can you (for example) benchmark a hypothetical fund that can hold 30% international small- and midcap stocks against the US small cap index (which is exactly the kind of thing Royce does all the time)?
In this case, what is the benchmark? And, can you trust Royce/Legg Mason to not change the portfolio strategy every 3 years to boost market performance or capture flavor-of-the-month investing trends?

Hi everyone,
I use LPEFX for my exposure to listed private equity firms. Currently, LPEFX makes up about four percent of the growth area on my portfolio and I am thinking of raising this, over time, to about six percent.
I have linked the fund’s fact sheet along with its M* report for those that might have an interest in private equity.
http://www.lpefund.com/documents/pdfs/alpsredrockslistedprivateequityfund-fs-20141231.pdf
http://www.morningstar.com/funds/XNAS/LPEFX/quote.html
I wish all … “Good Investing.”
Old_Skeet

FYI: Mutual-fund managers like to say that investors pay them to make “the tough decisions.” But one of the toughest decisions a fund manager can make is the one most of them never take: to turn away more money.
Regards,
Ted
http://blogs.wsj.com/moneybeat/2015/04/24/funds-when-closing-time-doesnt-come-soon-enough/tab/print/

This study (http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=2597122) documents that the active share measure, which has attracted so much attention in the past few years, has no performance predictive power once the analysis is done carefully. This is a real problem given that many financial advisors and consultants use this measure to pick funds for their clients. In addition, some funds seem to heavily advertise having high active shares, potentially misleading investors.

FYI: No one wants to be a statistic, but when it comes to retirement preparedness and confidence, everyone falls somewhere in the spectrum.
You’re either part of the 58% of workers who are at least reasonably confident about having enough money for retirement, or you’re in the parts of the populace that are significantly more nervous about their future. You either have a financial plan, which is boosting your confidence, or you lack a plan, which is holding your outlook down.
Regards,
Ted
http://www.marketwatch.com/story/5-things-you-need-to-have-a-successful-retirement-2015-04-24/print

OOPS.
http://i1.wp.com/boingboing.net/images/is_it_fucked.png?resize=328,457

Admittedly making some possibly unfounded assumptions, $1.5B x 8.5% = $127.5M cash to lend, while making a few pence on the ETF management. Looks like a pretty good business plan to me, and, if they can only make 4.7% on the cash, they match the .4% management fee the other robos charge. Is this a great country, or what??
They give you the free lunch, but then you gotta drink the Kool-Aid. Darn.....

From the SEC, Microcap Stock: A Guide for Investors (2013):

The term "microcap stock" applies to companies with low or "micro" capitalizations, meaning the total value of the company's stock. A typical definition would be companies with a market capitalization of less than $250 or $300 million.

That's quite a distance from Royce Micro-Cap Opportunity's billion dollar boundary. The portfolio, as currently constructed is about two-thirds microcap and one-third small cap. The portfolio's average cap is $720 million.
The fund's performance is fine (two years in the top 5%, two years in the bottom 5%, strong start to 2015) but its asset base is nonexistent, perhaps a reminder that the world doesn't need two dozen Royce clones. I suppose the remaining is a futile marketing gesture given the Royce also runs Royce Micro-cap and Royce Micro-cap Discovery.
David

For $40,000 in 19 holdings? 71.5% share to self and 28.5% to other fund houses? total=100% crazy

How interesting! I suffer from John's issues as well. My in-head approach to his example is 120 x 10 =1200, less 100 = 1100, less 20 =1080. More than one way to skin el gato.

Although I am just a student, here is my 2 cents.
Human advisers tend to concentrate on the major categories of US Stocks, Foreign Stocks, and Fixed Income. If a portfolio has 10% or more in the "Other" category, it is certainly a robo adviser. If the portfolio has less than 10% in the "Other", I bet that it is a human. This strategy gets 7/8 correct. It looks like there is one robo that is using a simpler, human-like allocation.

Your suspicions would appear to be well-founded. Here is the Schwab robo-portfolio as shown in Ted's MarketWatch Quiz Link, from the "Can You Tell A Human Financial Adviser From A Robot?" posting.
Schwab Robo-Portfolio

@hank, I had lots of issues with explaining my answers. In math for example, I had figured out ways to do the computations in my head using shortcuts. Ex: what is 120x9=? 9x100=900. 9x20=180. Answer is 1080.
The teachers hated it. I was supposed to use their system to figure out the problem which took much more time than the system I had. Perhaps much if this came about because I was in the generation of students that went back and forth between the old math and the new math.
Algebra was very hard for me as you might imagine.