@Crash Regarding consumption, there is something almost pathological in how our entire economy is dependent on the U.S. consumer consuming more, yet financial experts whose portfolios of company stocks benefit from that consumption are constantly tsking tsking them for consuming too much. It is similary weird and hypocritical to criticize Americans for being obese and eating too much while constantly bombarding them with ads for junk foods and actually subsidizing the corn industry with tax dollar paid farm subsidies--the same corn that makes corn syrup in all of the junk food making Americans obese. Similary, we say Americans are wasteful with plastic harming the environment and they need to recycle while we don't have the recycling facilities to recycle their waste and most of it ends up not being recycled or shipped to China, which doesn't want our waste anymore. Meanwhile, the companies producing the plastic and industries consuming it are largely unregulated and actually the main cause of plastic waste. Everything problematic in the U.S. tends to be put back on the individual as some sort of moral or ethical problem with that individual--that personal responsibility mantra--instead of acknowledging sometimes deeper systemic or structural problems that can only be fixed with regulatory and legal changes. So, with the financial literacy business--and it is a business now--the assumption is if you're poor in the U.S., it has to be your own fault. You're just not saving enough. That's even if your low wages can barely cover your bills or you're just one illness away from being bankrupted by a hospital bill and/or lost employment as a result.
I imagine raising the federal minimum wage and extending Medicare to all citizens regardless of age would do a lot more to solve Americans' net worth problem than financial literacy classes.
Regarding the perception that Americans are just lazy wasteful ignorant people who don't know how to save, one distinction that starkly highlights how that perception is somewhat mythological is the differences in vacation time in the U.S. versus other nations: https://benefitnews.com/news/should-the-u-s-have-the-same-pto-as-the-u-k-and-the-eu

On average, employees in the U.S. take 14 days off per year, while workers in European countries like Spain, France, Germany and even the U.K. take 24 days, according to workforce tech solutions company Skynova. The disparity isn’t a surprise, since the U.S. does not federally mandate paid vacation or holidays, leaving it up to the discretion of employers. The EU, on the other hand, requires at least 20 days of vacation for all employees while the U.K. requires 28 days.

I think Americans are for the most part a hard working people and deserve better treatment from their employers and the government regulating or not regulating currently those employers.

Oh boy, we flew on Southwest 737 last summer. They switched from the long time stable DC-10 to this new plane.

Hi @Sven - The DC-10 is a wide-body type of aircraft, probably closer to the early 747s in size than the 737. It’s very unlikely SW ever used it. Suspect you meant to refer to different generations of the 737, which has grown greatly in size and capabilities over its 50 decades in service.
Some snippets from Wikipedia:
“Since its inception, Southwest Airlines has almost exclusively operated Boeing 737 aircraft (except for a brief period when it leased and flew some Boeing 727-200 aircraft). Southwest is the world's largest operator of the Boeing 737.”
“In November 2020, the FAA formally ended the 737 MAX grounding, and Southwest began the process of returning its 34 737 MAX aircraft to service and retraining all of its pilots. On March 11, 2021, Southwest resumed 737 MAX operation, becoming the fourth US airline to do so.”
“In October 2020, Southwest announced that it was considering the Airbus A220 as an alternative to the MAX 7 to replace its 737-700s, with deliveries from 2025. However, in March 2021 Southwest announced an order for 100 MAX 7 jets with deliveries from 2022 and said that negotiations with Airbus were never initiated.”
-
Historically, the 737 line has been a very reliable aircraft and fit in well with Southwest’s point-to-point short-haul service model, which demanded high frequency takeoffs and landings and fast turn-around times, plus the ability to operate out of smaller airfields with shorter runways. Of course, the lastest 737 version, the MAX has created much havoc for SW.

https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.cnbc.com/amp/2023/04/19/uk-inflation-rate-surprises-again-with-march-figure-holding-above-10percent.html
10%
Wondering if usa cooking the book manipulate data
The Russian really killed EU UK
More hikes coming from UK /Eu central banks

"...I'd venture that most posters on these discussion boards are fairly good savers/budgeters (or at least, were at some point). That's simply not the case for the typical American. In general, we are good at one thing - spending.
On the flip side, some of the supposed Financial Planning experts push the limits of what you really need to retire. Not everybody requires over $2M or $3M in savings to retire comfortably."
*******************
Bingo. 66% --- isn't it--- of the USA economy depends upon CONSUMPTION???
And really, if the proper arrangements are made, no one needs anything near a million dollars. If you work for a nonprofit, you're not going to earn a lotta money. But there are choices to be made and saving and investing to be done, which will stand you in good stead when retirement age comes around.I never owned a home. STILL renting, in retirement. Works for me. Affordable SENIOR housing isn't very costly compared to the standard apartment rents. And I'm not in a senior-living arrangement. There might be a wait. But it's worse, quite a long wait, for under-employed single moms around here. I know one, personally. She applied, and the system simply never came through for her on that score. At least she's been smart enough to put $$$ into her 401k.
Hank mentioned critical thinking skills. There certainly is quite a dearth of that stuff, I note, these days. I talk to ordinary people all around and am shocked. Missing the forest for the trees. Or missing the forest AND the trees. Or not CARING where that forest might be. Or not knowing what a forest IS. OMG. And these people VOTE, I presume.

Oh boy, we flew on Southwest 737 last summer. They switched from the long time stable DC-10 to this new plane.

I owned several Nicholas funds way back, when we lived in Milwaukee. I got a bit concerned when Al brought son into firm and it was obvious he was going to inherit the mantle. He may have been a genius but family is no way to pick best manger going forward.
I did keep my Mutual Shares for years and stayed on even after Price left.
This is one additional problem with active management. The funds that work do well, amass capital gains and there may be a serious tax bill when the manger
1) retires ( Nicholas)
2) decides to spend all his money ( Price)
3) gets fired for doing a great job but not what company wants (Vinik)
4) Serious mid life crisis (Gross)
At least it is entertaining!

SGOL and GLDM have lower ER (0.17 and 0.10) than IAU or GLD
Precious metals ETFs have 28% capital gains tax rate as "Collectible".
If you are interested PHYS is Canadian and qualifies as a PFIC (Passive Foreign Investment Corporation" and capital gains are taxed at usual capital gains rates ( ie 15 to 20%)
https://www.sprott.com/investment-strategies/physical-bullion-trusts/gold-and-silver/tax-information/
However the forms ( 8621) required are complex and not supported by Turbo Tax so you have to file on paper. As I had a small refund coming I am not terribly worried about processing time.
I think I figured it out but it took a while. I have the time as I am retired and like intellectual challenges ( even with the IRS).
You should do your own calculations if the time and extra expense if you pay someone to do your taxes is worth saving 13% on your capital gains. Probably depends on size of your position.
I am thinking if I have a gain by the end of the year the size of my position doesn't make it worthwhile and I will probably sell it.

Top Story
Related - Production problems plague 737/MAX

Is this new to this young generation as this survey suggests? No. I don't believe it is generational at all. As Lewis suggests, it's where you stand on the economic ladder.
And it's not new. A look at the number of todays seniors where social security is their sole income is not much different than this "survey's" critique genX or genZ or any other subset generation they want to pick. It's social status, not generational.

Social Security is the sole source of income for about one in five (20 percent) people aged 65 and older. Certain subgroups are particularly reliant on Social Security. Of those age 65 and older, Social Security is the sole source of income for 40 percent of Hispanics, 33 percent of African Americans, 26 percent of Asian and Pacific Islanders, 18 percent of whites, and 20 percent of unmarried women.

per https://www.nasi.org/learn/social-security/the-role-of-benefits-in-income-and-poverty-2/#:~:text=Social%20Security%20is%20the%20sole,people%20aged%2065%20and%20older.

I know. But it seems irrelevant to say Americans aren't saving enough when so many have nothing left over to save after paying their bills. I often think the constant complaints posed in the media over "financial illiteracy" are really just a coded repeat of the "personal responsibility" mantra, blaming the victims of massive income inequality for their own suffering when that inequality is systemic and, largely, by design, and not primarily due to individual moral or ethical failings. Yes, people should save more and put more in their retirement plans. But there are often really good reasons they can't, and in certain cases lousy reasons. There tends to be a fixation on the lousy reasons.

I think it's a combination of structural inequity AND lack of personal responsibility.
If money's tight, do we really need to go into hock for that summer vacation just because it's summer vacation and everyone is 'supposed' to take a trip? I would argue no; find something local that's more cost effective and go when you're not going to spend the next 10 years paying interest on the credit card debt used to finance the week away.
But at the same time, one can argue that the structure of the capitalist system also runs against people, too. For example, think how many things are now subscription-based versus years ago. Or why is there a 'PBM' dictating what medicine you can get when they're NOT your doctor? Etc, etc.
And don't get me started on the insane nature of our retirement system, account limitations on contributions, etc. I long since quit playing the annual contribute-and-convert-to-Roth game because for only 5-7K/year it wasn't worth it. If you want to create responsible savers, let them save what they want WHEN THEY WANT TO. Had a windfall year and can sock away 50K? Great! Had a bad year and couldn't contribute more than 5K? Okay, that's fine, too. But things like the Roth phase-out and the huge delta between 40X contribution levels and IRA contribution levels remains a sore spot for me. Nobody these days can expect a comfy retirement in 2050+ on tucking away 5-7K a year in an IRA no matter how much it might grow or how lucky the investments are.
And there's the whole single-person-penalty when compared to married couples on taxation and more. Hell, our tax code in general is slanted against most people anyway. Grargh....
Living within your means and staying debt free is what enables true freedom, but that thinking just ain't profitable.
(sorry, I'm on a roll this week - I'm hosting 2 different sessions for our uni's financial literacy week)

Ah, ye olde personal responsibility mythology. Meanwhile: https://statista.com/statistics/261463/ceo-to-worker-compensation-ratio-of-top-firms-in-the-us/
If only America's young stopped eating all that avacado toast and listening to the rock n' roll music, they'd be alright.

Thanks, Mark. For too many years I've pushed many I know to put a 'little' money, at the very least, into available 401k/403b's or a Roth. Don't try to be fancy, but learn along the way. Throw some money at a balanced fund.
The vast majority missed their best investing friend of compounding with time.
Pretty sad all around. I'm writing about boomers who can not 'catch up' to the lost time.
The other generations still have a 'chance'.

Just tossing this Credit Karma survey out there for those interested.
° More than half of Americans don’t know how to calculate their net worth (51%)
° Nearly one-third of Americans have a net worth of $0 or less (31%)
° 30% of Gen Z care more about celebrities’ net worth than their own
Survey

All ratings have been updated on MFO Premium site through March using Lipper's 14 April datadrop. Tools include MultiSearch, Great Owls, Fund Alarm (Three Alarm and Honor Roll), Averages, Dashboard of Profiled Funds, Dashboard of Launch Alerts, Portfolios, Quick Search, Fund Family Scorecard. The site now includes several analytics, including Charts, Compare, Correlation, Rolling Averages, Trend, Ferguson Metrics, Calendar Year and Period Performance.

So we're near the end of two pages of discussion on this topic and not ONE time has the term "alpha" been stated

If I own a volatile fund, I expect it to go down more than the market. But I also look for it to more than make up that underperformance on the upswing.

That's an intuitive description of alpha, at least for funds with beta above one. Though I should have been clearer, by "market" I meant the submarket of the investible universe in which the fund operates, as opposed to the "broad market" or "market as a whole".
While alpha purports to quantify this sense of outperformance, it has a number of flaws, starting with Investopedia's definition. When a fund's performance is regressed against an inappropriate benchmark (such as calculating alpha of a sector fund by comparing it to the "broad market") the result is meaningless (low R²).
In case there's any uncertainty that by "broad market" Investopedia means the investible universe, it removes all doubt when it says that "there is no way to systematically earn returns that exceed the broad market as a whole." That's true only if it is impossible for a fund to fish outside of the "broad market", i.e. if the broad market includes "everything".
Yogi alluded to this problem, noting that with Zacks one often doesn't know what the benchmark is.
Timeframe is another problem with alpha. Lewis implicitly flagged this in pointing out that fund performance is typically inconsistent. While I generally like using standardized time frames, for statistics like alpha and beta complete market cycles would seem to give more meaningful figures.
FWIW, PRWAX beats the S&P for ALL SIX YTD-to-Life interim periods. We are current and LT holders of PRWAX (drumroll) because of its alpha and those results.

Rule 482 [see 17 CFR § 230.482(d)(3)(ii)] and Rule 34b-1 permit the inclusion of performance information in investment company sales material. If performance information is included, Rule 482 requires disclosure of the fund’s maximum sales charges and its average annual total return for the most recent one-, five- and 10-year periods, as of the most recent calendar quarter.

https://www.finra.org/sites/default/files/NoticeDocument/p017302.pdf
Portfolio Visualizer compares All-Cap PRWAX with the total stock market (e.g. VTSMX). PRWAX comes up short in the alpha department in one of those standard time frames (each of which terminates on the quarter ending March 31, 2023), and over its lifetime. Click on the "Metrics" tab for the alpha figures:

1. PV 1 year (April 2022 - March 2023): alpha = -1.87; S&P 500 alpha = +1.00
   
2. PV 5 year (April 2018 - March 2023): alpha = 3.66; s&P 500 alpha = 1.00
   
3. PV 10 year (April 2013 - March 2023): alpha = 3.39; S&P 500 alpha = 0.78
   
4. PV lifetime (Oct 1985 - March 2023): alpha =-0.09; S&P 500 alpha = 0.47

IMHO YTD is meaningless, but for completeness PRWAX underperformed both VTSMX and VFINX YTD (using standardized period, i.e. through March 31st). It also underperformed VFINX YTD through April 17th.

@larryb You are correct. Yet here we are years later: https://morningstar.com/funds/xnas/lmopx/performance
What happened after that streak ended is more important as a lesson I think about active management than the streak itself. Admittedly, LMOPX is a somewhat different fund than the original, but the original suffered too afterwards: https://reuters.com/article/us-legg-mason-miller/legg-masons-bill-miller-leaves-firm-amid-faded-glory-idUSKCN10M1DV Will such a streak happen again? Possibly. It could also end just as badly.

Zacks hasn't been my go-to place for the MPT data (alpha, beta, R), but I will explore it some more. There isn't much on the website on methodology or assumptions used.
I have used M*, PV, Stock Rover (SR) for MPT data.
But the usual cautions apply.
The MPT data are related to the benchmark(s) used and Zacks doesn't clearly identify those.
It is unclear whether Zacks uses monthly (e.g. for M*, PV) or daily (SR) return data - I assume monthly. BTW, the SDs at SR are much higher than those at PV or M* for this reason. The lesson there is never to mix the MPT stats from different sources.
Zacks "Similar Funds" show a handful of funds that I would hardly consider similar for several funds that I tried.
Zacks' categorization of funds is different too - so, it puts PRWCX in the LC-value or among capital-appreciation that typically are all-equity funds; most others put it in the moderate-allocation category. Of course, PRWCX has ranked as Zacks #1 in that group in these tough markets. It is a good fund, but Zacks #1 for it seems flawed.
https://www.zacks.com/

PRPFX prospectus describes risks of holding gold/silver bullion and coins. https://www.permanentportfoliofunds.com/pdf/Prospectus.pdf
"The gold and silver bullion and bullion-type coins held by the Portfolio’s subcustodian on behalf of the Portfolio could be lost, damaged, stolen or destroyed. Access to the Portfolio’s gold and silver holdings could also be restricted by natural events (such as an earthquake) or human actions (such as a terrorist attack). The gold and silver custody operations of the subcustodian are not subject to specific governmental regulatory supervision. The subcustodian’s procedures may not prevent the deposit of gold or silver on behalf of the Portfolio that fails to meet the purity standards agreed to at the time of purchase. The Portfolio does not insure its gold and silver holdings and the responsibility of the Portfolio’s custodian and any subcustodian for loss, damage or destruction of the Portfolio’s gold and silver holdings is very limited under the agreements governing the custody and subcustody arrangements. In addition, if the Portfolio’s gold and silver bullion and bullion-type coins are lost, damaged, stolen or destroyed under circumstances rendering the custodian, any subcustodian or any other third party liable to the Portfolio (or the custodian or any subcustodian), the responsible party may not have the financial resources (including liability insurance coverage) sufficient to satisfy such claim. Consequently, the value of the Portfolio’s shares may be adversely affected by loss, damage or destruction to the bullion and bullion- type coins for which the Portfolio may not be reimbursed. When holding bullion, the Portfolio may encounter higher custody and other costs than those normally associated with ownership of securities. Gains realized upon the sale of bullion or bullion-type coins will not count towards the requirement in the Internal Revenue Code of 1986, as amended (“Code”), that at least 90% of the Portfolio’s gross income in each taxable year be derived from gains on the sale of securities and certain other permitted sources, except to the extent that the Portfolio has invested in bullion as a hedge with respect to investment in the securities of companies engaged in mining gold or silver."

At LewisBraham. His 15 year streak ended in 2006. A remarkable achievement. Think that record will ever be broken? Seems unlikely. Who was Bill Miller?

Topics this Month:
Hitting Your Retirement Savings Goal
5 Things to know about the New RMD Rules & Secure 2.0
20 Years of Target Date Funds
Non Financial Aspects of Retirement
Investor Insight Magazine