@BenWP
>> I don't know what happened to DEESX, either.
My post and phrasing were about CAPE and CAPE only.
As for DSEEX, the M* chart for DSEEX
https://www.morningstar.com/funds/xnas/dseex/chart
shows its growth from end October 2013 to yesterday to be >203%, compared w SP500's 181%. For ytd it's >13% vs <8%.
That's all. Not making any other claims about it. Don't hold it anymore. 5y and 1y show it lags SP500 somewhat.

I-Bonds use 6-mo change in unadjusted CPI for their May 1 & November 1 announcements. That is definitely collapsing on May 1.
TIPS use monthly CPI changes with 2-mo lag. How is that looking now?
I am definitely skipping I-Bonds, but I am still evaluating 5-yr TIPS.

Yogi, can you unpack that for me? Thank you. I own SCHP (TIPS.)

Specifically, if you exclude SCHD's last 25 or so holdings (out of ~100), which contribute a minuscule amount to performance, you do see that the remainder appear to be in SP500 (I'm not 100% positive about this, as I got tired searching within the long columns).
Simple and relatively fast way to do this analysis:
1. Download SCHD into a spreadsheet from the Schwab site; here is the link for the .csv file.
2. Download a current (or at least recent) list of S&P 500 companies. I used Finasko; here's the direct link for an Excel file.
3. Cut and paste the ticker column (roughly 500 rows plus heading) into the SCHD spreadsheet.
4. Use COUNTIF to test whether each SCHD ticker is in the S&P 500 list. The COUNTIF function will return 1 if the SCHD ticker is in the S&P 500 and 0 otherwise. You should adjust the column letters appropriately; the expression I used is:
=COUNTIF($O$2:$O$504, B2)
5. Sum the counts. There are 55 SCHD companies in the S&P 500. The other 48 are not. The first company not in the S&P 500 is #49, First Horizon Corp (FHN).
6. By multiplying the weight of each ticker by its '1' or '0' result, you get a column of weights of just those SCHD companies that are in the S&P 500.
94.06% of SCHD companies (by weight) are in the S&P 500.
Of course the weightings of each company are completely different in SCHD and S&P 500.

@davidrmoran: I don't know what happened to DEESX, either. I see from the charts that it reached its nadir on 3/22/2020, having fallen some 7 percentage points more than FXAIX at that point. It never really caught up and I can't devise a chart that shows it outperforming FXAIX. Maybe at exactly 9.5 years, as you say. I wrongly assumed as a shareholder of DSEEX that the bonds would serve as ballast in a down market; it seems the opposite was true and that the "secret bond sauce" appeared to accelerate the move downward. I was a CAPE fan and said so on MFO. I sold, disillusioned. Fortunately, MOAT has proven itself over the long haul. I've traded it, but have never been out. MOTI and SMOT, which adopt a similar "moat" methodology, have been welcome additions in recent months.

@MikeM, I don't know and can't easily uncover what the heck happened w CAPE as of 4/22, but I am sure someone here knows. DSEEX has still outperformed FXAIX for 9.5y and also ytd :) --- but not, as others would, or will, instantly point out, for various stints in between. (QQQ likewise looks appealing at 10y and ytd, not quite so much in between.)
I wasn't being facetious in rhetorically posing the question of where the breadth sweet spot is. Or can reliably be said to be, if we seek investment goals and guidelines. Some of the above apples-oranges (categories) objections are silly, but someone else also mentioned subsets of sets; and so I began to wonder whether everything in SCHD was in SP500 and everything in SP500 in VONE, and everything in VONE in VT.
For the first it turns out not, but close, so far as I had the energy to parse. Specifically, if you exclude SCHD's last 25 or so holdings (out of ~100), which contribute a minuscule amount to performance, you do see that the remainder appear to be in SP500 (I'm not 100% positive about this, as I got tired searching within the long columns). SCHD applies a seriously delimiting quantified quality criterion. Could there be an SCHD for the VONE universe? (For some periods, of course, that is sort of what VONG and VONV do.)
Unappreciated (why I also mentioned comparative UI) was the 'leveling' effect the SCHD criteria appear to exert. But maybe UI is arguably overvalued as well. Gustibus.

https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/1587982/000139834423000515/fp0081452-1_497.htm
Sunbridge Capital Emerging Markets Fund
Institutional Class (Ticker Symbol: RIMIX)
A series of Investment Managers Series Trust II (the "Trust")
Supplement dated January 10, 2023 to the currently effective
Prospectus, Summary Prospectus and Statement of Additional Information ("SAI").
The Board of Trustees of the Trust has approved a Plan of Liquidation for the Sunbridge Capital Emerging Markets Fund (the "Fund"). The Plan of Liquidation authorizes the termination, liquidation and dissolution of the Fund. In order to perform such liquidation, effective immediately the Fund is closed to all new investment.
The Fund will be liquidated on or about February 10, 2023 (the "Liquidation Date"), and shareholders may redeem their shares until the Liquidation Date. On or promptly after the Liquidation Date, the Fund will make a liquidating distribution to its remaining shareholders equal to each shareholder's proportionate interest in the net assets of the Fund, in complete redemption and cancellation of the Fund's shares held by the shareholder, and the Fund will be dissolved.
In anticipation of the liquidation of the Fund, Sunbridge Capital Partners LLC, the Fund's advisor, may manage the Fund in a manner intended to facilitate its orderly liquidation, such as by raising cash or making investments in other highly liquid assets. As a result, during this time, all or a portion of the Fund may not be invested in a manner consistent with its stated investment strategies, which may prevent the Fund from achieving its investment objective.
Please contact the Fund at 1-877-771-7721 if you have any questions or need assistance.
Please file this Supplement with your records.
******I had the institutional shares which were converted to the investor shares (the new institutional shares) only to have the shares liquidated.
Share conversion filing as of 9/20/22:
https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/1587982/000139834422018768/fp0079714_497k.htm

Thanks for the FinViz VIX chart. But mine from StockCharts looks different. It shows 1/24/22 high of 38.94.
https://stockcharts.com/h-sc/ui?s=$VIX&amp;p=D&amp;yr=1&amp;mn=3&amp;dy=0&amp;id=p89899821759

SP500 daily volatility is +/- 1% (VIX/19). IMO, people have just become comfortable with high VIX. It peaked at 39 in early-2022 but crash-watchers have been looking for VIX of 45. It may not reach that level in this cycle.

That 18.87 reading was as of 1:20 PM today. I’ve no idea what the significance is. But ISTM there’s not much fear in the markets. Should there be?
Edit 2/15 - I updated yesterday’s quote as the VIX fell throughout the day today.

@msf, thanks to your advice. I have gotten into several institutional MFs with a transaction fee while at a lower minimum. Adding more later with Fidelity’s automatic feature for $5 works well. Vanguard brokerage still requires $1M minimum. Still pondering on this fund.

https://corporate.vanguard.com/content/corporatesite/us/en/corp/who-we-are/pressroom/press-release-vanguard-to-streamline-fund-lineup-with-planned-merger-and-liquidation-021423.html
or
https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/313850/000168386323000713/f24245d1.htm
497 1 f24245d1.htm ALTERNATIVE STRATEGY- LIQUIDATION 497
 
 
Vanguard Alternative Strategies Fund
Supplement Dated February 14, 2023, to the Prospectus and Summary Prospectus Dated February 25, 2022
Important Changes to Vanguard Alternative Strategies Fund (the Fund)
 
On February 14, 2023, the board of trustees of the Fund approved a proposal to liquidate and dissolve the Fund on or about April 19, 2023 (the liquidation date). In anticipation of the liquidation and dissolution, the Fund will be closed to new investors on February 14, 2023, and to new investments from existing investors on April 14, 2023.
On the liquidation date, the Fund will redeem all of its outstanding shares at the net asset value of such shares. On the same date, all outstanding shares of the Fund will be canceled, and the Fund will cease operations as a mutual fund.
In order to provide for an orderly liquidation and satisfy redemptions in anticipation of the liquidation, the Fund may deviate from its investment objective and strategies as the liquidation date approaches.
Prior to the liquidation, the Fund may declare and pay its shareholders of record one or more dividends or other distributions of its investment company taxable income and may (but is not expected to) declare and pay shareholders of record one or more distributions of its net realized capital gains.
The liquidation and dissolution are not expected to result in income tax liability for the Fund. The Fund may pay its liquidating distribution in more than one installment. Any liquidation proceeds paid to shareholders should generally be treated as received in exchange for their shares and will therefore generally give rise to a capital gain or loss, depending on their basis in the shares. Shareholders should consult their own tax advisors about any tax liability resulting from the receipt of liquidation proceeds.

https://corporate.vanguard.com/content/corporatesite/us/en/corp/who-we-are/pressroom/press-release-vanguard-to-streamline-fund-lineup-with-planned-merger-and-liquidation-021423.html
or
https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/889519/000168386323000714/f24283d1.htm
497 1 f24283d1.htm VANGUARD MANAGED ALLOCATION FUND MERGER
Vanguard Managed Allocation Fund
Supplement Dated February 14, 2023, to the Prospectus
Reorganization of Vanguard Managed Allocation Fund into Vanguard LifeStrategy® Moderate Growth Fund
The Board of Trustees of Vanguard Valley Forge Funds (the Trust) has approved an agreement and plan of reorganization (the Agreement) whereby Vanguard Managed Allocation Fund, a series of the Trust, would be reorganized with and into Vanguard LifeStrategy Moderate Growth Fund, a series of Vanguard STAR® Funds.
The reorganization will consolidate the assets of the Funds and allow the Managed Allocation Fund shareholders to become shareholders of a significantly larger fund with a similar investment objective and lower expenses. The Board of the Trust along with the Board of Vanguard STAR Funds, after careful consideration, unanimously approved the Agreement, each concluding that the reorganization is in the best interests of their respective Fund and that the interests of the shareholders of each Fund will not be diluted as a result of the reorganization.
The reorganization does not require shareholder approval and is expected to close on or about May 19, 2023. Prior to the closing, shareholders of the Managed Allocation Fund will receive a combined Information Statement/Prospectus, which will describe the reorganization, provide a description of the LifeStrategy Moderate Growth Fund, and include a comparison of the Funds. At the closing, shareholders will receive Investor Shares of the LifeStrategy Moderate Growth Fund in exchange for their Managed Allocation Fund Investor Shares, and after the closing, the Managed Allocation Fund will have no remaining assets and will be dissolved.
The Managed Allocation Fund will restructure its portfolio in anticipation of the reorganization and is expected to deviate from its investment objective and strategies. Since the portfolio transition period may take a significant amount of time, there may be times when the Managed Allocation Fund is holding large amounts of uninvested cash. This may negatively impact the Managed Allocation Fund's performance.
Although we anticipate that the reorganization will qualify as a tax-free reorganization under the Internal Revenue Code of 1986, as amended, the reorganization will have tax consequences for certain shareholders. It is expected that approximately 47% of the Managed Allocation Fund's portfolio assets will be sold in advance of the reorganization in order to align the holdings of the Managed Allocation Fund with the holdings of the LifeStrategy Moderate Growth Fund. It is also expected that the Managed Allocation Fund will experience shareholder redemptions prior to the reorganization. In addition, Vanguard Alternative Strategies Fund, an underlying fund in which the Managed Allocation Fund invests, is scheduled to liquidate on or about April 19, 2023, which will also be treated as a sale of portfolio assets by the Managed Allocation Fund.
When the sale of portfolio assets occurs at a price in excess of the initial purchase price, the transaction results in capital gains. As a result of the expected sales of approximately 47% of the Managed Allocation Fund's assets plus the liquidation of Vanguard Alternative Strategies Fund as well as any additional sales required to satisfy shareholder redemptions, the Managed Allocation Fund is expected to realize capital gains, which must be distributed along with any undistributed net income to the then-current shareholders prior to the consummation of the reorganization. For example, if the Managed Allocation Fund had sold the approximately 47% of its portfolio assets on January 31, 2023, the Managed Allocation Fund would have realized net capital gains of approximately $75 million, representing approximately 6% of the Fund's net assets or approximately $1.00 per share. The actual pre-reorganization capital gain distribution could be lower or higher and, while unlikely, could be substantially higher than such amount. For comparison, the Managed Allocation Fund's capital gains distributions have historically ranged from 0%-6.2% of NAV. The final distribution amount will be dependent on certain factors, including market performance and shareholder redemption activity. Gain distributions will be taxable to shareholders who hold their shares in taxable accounts.
Shareholders should contact their tax advisors concerning the tax consequences of the reorganization and evaluate their individual cost basis and any potential tax liability resulting from investment decisions related to the reorganization, including redeeming their Managed Allocation Fund shares or exchanging them for shares of another fund prior to the consummation of the reorganization.
Closed to New Accounts
Effective immediately, the Managed Allocation Fund is closed to new accounts, and it will stop accepting purchase requests from existing accounts shortly before the reorganization.
© 2023 The Vanguard Group, Inc. All rights reserved.
PS 1498B 022023
Vanguard Marketing Corporation, Distributor....

https://www.invesco.com/us-rest/contentdetail?contentId=067257c5-8d2f-41c8-9293-c5ae4a3faf66&dnsName=us&title=invesco-developing-markets-fund-to-reopen
or
https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/826644/000119312523037648/d458668d497.htm
SUPPLEMENT DATED FEBRUARY 14, 2023 TO THE
CURRENT STATUTORY PROSPECTUS FOR:
Invesco Developing Markets Fund
(the “Fund”)
This supplement amends the Statutory Prospectus of the above referenced Fund and is in addition to any other supplement(s), unless otherwise specified. You should read this supplement in conjunction with the Statutory Prospectus, as supplemented, and retain it for future reference.
Effective as of the open of business on February 28, 2023:
The following sentence is deleted from the front cover: “The Fund has limited public sales of its shares to certain investors.”
Additionally, the information appearing under the heading “Other Information – Limited Fund Offering” is deleted in its entirety.

I-Bonds use 6-mo change in unadjusted CPI for their May 1 & November 1 announcements. That is definitely collapsing on May 1.
TIPS use monthly CPI changes with 2-mo lag. How is that looking now?
I am definitely skipping I-Bonds, but I am still evaluating 5-yr TIPS.

+ @larryB
I can remember not to many years ago, all the comparison and clear winner from that comparison was CAPE over the S&P 500. It was the clear winner - until it wasn't. I'm sure many bought into CAPE high and sold when it faltered. The key is having the conviction to stay with one scheme over another. Value and dividend stocks will have their day, same as growth or tech or using the CAPE methodology. Isn't the S&P500 a collection of all those sub sets?

Global hybrids are difficult to find. Two good ones are SGENX & TIBAX, both no-load/NTF at Fido & Schwab. TIBAX also has an unleveraged CEF cousin TBLD that can be bought anywhere.

The cheaper TIBIX share class can be purchased (with a TF) in a Fidelity IRA with a $2500 min. It can be worth the fee if you're planning to hold the fund for a few years. And via Fidelity's automatic investment system, it should be possible to buy additional shares with just a $5 fee.
Fidelity comparison of TIBIX and TIBAX

Some things can appear so obvious that they become difficult to explain, yet be so unclear to others. I watched an economics teacher struggle to explain something having to do with averages, I forget what. As a 3rd party observer, these different perspectives were visible to me. Perhaps what is happening here is like that and I'm not explaining things well.
I wrote: there's a tendency for people to look at "what have you done for me lately" even when trying not to - sometimes it's baked into the numbers.
Here's a paragraph from CBS News describing how "what have you done for me lately" is baked into M*'s ratings. On the surface, it looks like M* is biasing its ratings toward long term performance, because it weights 10 year performance at 50%, while weighting 5 year performance at 30%, and 3 year performance at just 20%. But something else is going on.

Obviously, the past three years account for 30 percent of the past ten years, which means that they account for 15 percent of the overall rating (30 percent X 50 percent). They account for 18 percent of the five-year rating (60 percent X 30 percent); and 100 percent of the three-year rating. Sum them all up, and we find that the past three years account for 53 percent of a fund's overall long-term rating.

https://www.cbsnews.com/news/whats-right-and-whats-wrong-with-morningstar-fund-ratings/
There's a similar problem in looking at good 1/3/5/10 year figures and concluding that performance is somewhat uniformly good, especially over longer terms. The final year's performance is influencing (I would say skewing) all the numbers. We saw this effect clearly (though with respect to bad, not good, performance) in figures published after March 2020. Suddenly good (and not so good) funds looked terrible, even long term.
Now I'm not expecting another once in a century pandemic anytime soon, nor do I think that nothing has been done to make economies more robust. So I'm inclined to discount (but not ignore) 2020 figures to the extent that they distort averages.

>> what have you done lately
? SCHD longterm performance shows this is, again, a rather misleading way to put it.
>> Had you looked at the same figures at another point in time,
sure, cherrypick away

You pick one trading day out of 2800+ and I'm the one cherry picking?
I looked at the long term (read lifetime) performance of SCHD on every trading day since inception and found that on most of them, its long term performance was superior to that of FXAIX. At least by eyeballing it.
The easiest way to see this is to plot the two over SCHD's lifetime, and note that there are long (multi-year) runs where FXAIX's cumulative performance exceeds that of SCHD:
11/2/13 - 2/5/16 (2¼ years), 7/27/16 - 5/12/21 (4¾ years).
Here's Portfolio Visualizer's graph. You won't get quite the same detail I'm providing (gory details below). The PV graph looks as though FXAIX led the whole way until five months ago. Though that's not far off from what happened.
FXAIX outperformed SCHD for virtually its whole life until five months ago. Are those few recent months supposed to stand in for long term performance?
When you talk about cherry picking, recognize that if one were to pick a date at random, much more likely than not, FXAIX would have outperformed SCHD to that point in time.

>> that we can expect, or at least hope for, another huge year (relatively speaking) for SCHD in the future? One that will make up for its typical slightly underperforming years?
and now you make it sound like SCHD is more this volatile / Heebnerlike instrument.

I'm looking not at SCHD, but the difference in annual returns between the two funds. This has got little to do with volatility of either component, but of volatility of their correlation.
If, for example, you take two share classes of the same, wildly volatile fund, differing only in ERs, then the volatility of the gap in performances will be zero.
The difference in annual returns ranges in magnitude between a half percent (0.52%) and 4½ percent (4.59%) except for 2022, when the difference in performance is more than triple the next largest annual difference. In the "biz" we call that an outlier.
Lewis linked to a couple of pieces that suggest an explanation for this outlier. Assuming you buy the reasoning, the question for you is whether you believe similar conditions (with similar results) will happen again.
11/1/11 - 1/24/12 - SCHD leads
1/25/12 - 5/15/12 - FXAIX leads
5/16/12 - 5/18/12 - SCHD leads (ends on a Friday)
5/21/12 - 5/23/12 - FXAIX leads
5/24/12 - 5/25/12 - SCHD leads (ends on Friday, Mon holiday)
5/29/12 - one day - FXAIX leads
5/30/12 - 6/19/12 - SCHD leads
6/20/12 - one day - FXAIX leads
6/21/12 - 8/16/12 - SCHD leads
8/17/12 - 3/20/13 - FXAIX leads
3/21/13 - 8/13/13 - SCHD leads
8/14/13 - 8/16/13 - FXAIX leads (ends on a Friday)
8/19/13 - one day - SCHD leads
8/20/13 - 9/18/13 - FXAIX leads
9/19/13 - one day - SCHD leads
9/20/13 - 11/5/13 - FXAIX leads
11/6/13 - 11/12/13 - SCHD leads
11/13/13 - one day - FXAIX leads
11/14/13 - one day - SCHD leads
11/15/13 - one day - FXAIX leads (ends on a Friday)
11/18/13 - 11/20/13 - SCHD leads
11/21/13 - 2/5/16 - FXAIX leads (ends on a Friday)
2/8/16 - 2/9/16 - SCHD leads
2/10/16 - one day - FXAIX leads
2/11/16 - one day - SCHD leads
2/12/16 - 6/23/16 - FXAIX leads
6/24/16 - 6/28/16 - SCHD leads
6/29/16 - one day - FXAIX leads
6/30/16 - 7/11/16 - SCHD leads
7/12/16 - one day - FXAIX leads
7/13/16 - 7/15/16 - SCHD leads (ends on a Friday)
7/18/16 - one day - FXAIX leads
7/19/16 - 7/26/16 - SCHD leads
7/27/16 - 5/12/21 - FXAIX leads
5/13/21 - one day - SCHD leads
5/14/21 - 4/25/22 - FXAIX leads
4/26/22 - 4/27/22 - SCHD leads
4/28/22 - 5/4/22 - FXAIX leads
5/5/22 - 7/20/22 - SCHD leads
7/21/22 - one day - FXAIX leads
7/22/22 - tie, Friday
7/25/22 - 7/27/22 - SCHD leads
7/28/22 - 8/18/22 - FXAIX leads
8/19/22 - 8/24/22 - SCHD leads
8/25/22 - one day - FXAIX leads
8/26/22 - 9/8/22 - SCHD leads
9/9/22 - 9/15/22 - FXAIX leads
9/16/22 - present - SCHD leads