Were you investing in 1986, 2000, 2008, 2020 and 2022? Market drops happen much faster than rises. And sometimes they take many years to recover. The S&P actually lost money from 2000-2010.

Fund companies define quality inconsistently using different measures.
Obviously, this can be problematic.
Larry Swedroe references a paper which differentiates between academic
and industry definitions for quality investing.
https://www.etf.com/sections/index-investor-corner/swedroe-differing-definitions-quality

Swedroe references the same article as the Robeco people.
One finds lots of academic papers on funds and accrual strategies, but I find very few references to funds actually looking at accrual strategies, besides the quality funds from Invesco.
Mutual Fund Premium does not track any of the academic definitions, so far as I can tell.

You're correct that these quality funds are not inexpensive.
The funds' P/E and P/B data is below.
I didn't search for P/S or P/CF data.
Valuation Metrics - 12/31/2024
FQAL - 27.93 P/E; 6.65 P/B
QUAL - 29.31 P/E; 8.90 P/B
SPHQ - 29.68 P/E; 17.14 P/B
JQUA - 22.89 P/E; 5.53 P/B (1/31/2025 data)
IWB - 28.45 P/E; 4.82 P/B (iShares Russell 1000 etf for reference)

The mentioned funds are more expensive than many large-cap index funds weighted by market capitalization.
But they're not overly expensive.
FQAL - 0.16%
QUAL - 0.15%
SPHQ - 0.15%
JQUA - 0.12%

Institutional investors can certainly influence an index. Average Joes contributing to their 401K's can certainly shift their contribution directions, and their base holdings...but usually not until the damage has been largely done.

@JD…. You are so right. As an older retiree I spend too much time with the financial and political news. Went out to lunch with adult daughter yesterday to a somewhat pricey establishment. It was jumping with folks who did not look the least bit uncertain,,,, Funny thing was the bar had a big screen with news (not the government channel) but no one noticed. Lots of smiling faces but that might have been the Margs. As the Beetles said in 1968,,,,,,,, Life Goes on!

The Other Side of Value:The Gross Profitability Premium
Robert Novy-Marx
June, 2012
Abstract
Profitability, measured by gross profits-to-assets, has roughly the same power
as book-to-market predicting the cross-section of average returns. Profitable
firms generate significantly higher returns than unprofitable firms, despite having
significantly higher valuation ratios. Controlling for profitability also dramatically
increases the performance of value strategies, especially among the largest, most liquid
stocks. These results are difficult to reconcile with popular explanations of the value
premium, as profitable firms are less prone to distress, have longer cash flow durations,
and have lower levels of operating leverage. Controlling for gross profitability explains
most earnings related anomalies, and a wide range of seemingly unrelated profitable
trading strategies.

The 10 year 3 month yield curve has inverted again.
https://www.cnbc.com/2025/02/26/federal-reserves-favorite-recession-indicator-is-flashing-danger-again.html

Brokerage Consolidated 1099 may include Supplemental Info (not sent to IRS) that has all transactions for the year. Schwab includes it in its paper mailing, but I have to download it at Fido.

Of course the “Economic Policy Uncertainty Index “ is at its highest level since 1985,,,,, every aspect of our society is uncertain from one hour to the next. The only people who aren’t experiencing UNCERTAINTY aren’t paying attention.

This has more to do with brokerages than mtual fund companies, but why do the brokerages no longer send out an annual report that wraps up all 12 monthly statements into one document? I don't get paper reports at all anymore, but I'm about to give up keeping tabs on the monthly brokerage PDFs in favor of just downloading a CSV file of each year's transactions.
I do have spreadsheets that show every investment transaction I have ever made, and they are accurate. And of course I get 1099s evey year and save them. Does the IRS even care about these account statements if you get audited?

The Economic Policy Uncertainty Index is at its highest level since 1985 outside of the COVID-19 pandemic.
U.S. Monthly EPU Index
FRED (select max timeframe, modify frequency to monthly)

The market can go down anytime regardless of inflows.
Furthermore, market corrections (defined as 10% - 20% losses) can occur for seemingly no reason at all.

VWELX inception is 1929, DODBX 1931, FPURX 1947. These aren't funds-of-funds, but allocation/hybrid stock-bond funds. Generally, firms' equity groups handle stock portion, fixed-income groups the bond portion. Funds-of-funds formally evolved much later.

It has been in the news that DOGE IT kids were confused.
SSA may track beneficiary benefits under the original recipient's DOB, so that could be 100+.
Some SSA systems use COBOL programming (an ealy language for business programming) & unknown/blank age just defaults to 150. It doesn't mean that those are getting payments.
SSA has said that where the current living or dead status is unknown, it routinely stops payment for 100+.

@Anna

Oh my, all this time I thought/assumed that, originally, it was set up this way so as to avoid taxing state governments. 76 and not to old to learn. ;)

Still a youngster - we can collect SS until 150 years old, like those collecting now. ;)

I suspect all of us on the board, followers of David and MFO, me since 2011 and before that with Fund Alarm, look to build our own FOFs.
David publishes his periodically.
In recent years, the proliferation of model portfolios, do essentially provide FOFs.
Ditto most FAs or RIAs, either those they download from their platforms, likely sponsored, or those they create on their own ... the more independent and thoughtful ones, perhaps.
Target Retirement Funds are essentially FOFs too.
At quick search on MFOP shows there are presently 1719 FOFs offered in the US: 1276 are Mixed-Asset, nearly all "actively managed," including 386 Insurance Funds.
Focusing just on actively managed OEFs and ETFs, Federated Hermes Global Allocation (FSTBX) is the oldest at 65 years. And, not surprisingly, Vanguard Target Retirement funds are the largest, followed by American Funds Target Date Retirement funds.

SSA WEP & GPO related extra payments have started for simple cases that can be handled with automation. Complicated cases will be addressed later. SSA says to wait until April to inquire about the status.
https://www.yahoo.com/news/social-security-begins-paying-retroactive-225352352.html?guccounter=1

The Week in Charts (02/25/25)
The most important charts and themes in markets and investing, including:
00:00 Intro
00:20 Free Wealth Path Analysis
00:51 Topics
01:36 The Cruelest Tax
04:45 Rising Credit Card Delinquencies
07:43 Buffett Raising More Cash
10:52 Delaying the American Dream
13:46 The Other Side of Mania
18:22 Show Us the Receipts
22:27 The New King of Retail
24:44 Record 401(k) Participation
Video
Blog

What's the difference between constructing your own "Fund of Funds" and being told by some MFOers that having too many funds is inefficient, wasteful, and self-defeating, as we've all heard here so many times over the years?

d - My response has always been: Give me 10 funds as good as PRWCX. The combined return should be the same.
I consolidated down from 15-20 funds to just 6 (+ cash) over the past couple of years. FD was one of the posters that I listened to. I found that with fewer funds you tend to concentrate more on the quality of each fund (management / goals / methodology, holdings, etc.). There’s a lot more money riding on each selection so you are pushed to do more due diligence. All good.
It does create a bit of a headache should you decide to exit a fund in favor of another, as you are moving a much larger sum of $$. I actually had trouble selling all my shares of a Cambrea etf the other day because it is so thinly traded. Took several sell orders over about 10-15 minutes to fully exit.
I explained earlier my thinking in creating a fund-of-funds with the proceeds from one of those 6 major positions. I want to learn whether I can take advantage of the volatility of CEFs by actively trading them - mostly within the group of 7. Don’t know. Seems like a reasonable exercise for someone who follows markets closely. I can report back in a year whether the experiment was successful.
Re “Funds of Funds” & fees. Most do not add an additional layer of fees, but some do. TRRIX from T. Rowe is an example of a fund-of-funds. With an equity target of 40% the fund (Silver at M*) has returned better than 6% annually since inception (2002). The 0.49% ER reflects the aggregate of fees from the underlying funds.