A recent (June 2022) , long-format discussion with Stan Druckenmiller.

Some key takeaways: (paraphrasing)
-Historically, he (Stan) made more money in bear markets, not bull markets -- because he could load up on 'safe' bonds and let the Central bank lower rates.
-Historically when interest rates, oil, and the DXY (USD) are all up, company earnings -- and stock prices head down. Stan asks: Does this sound like today?
-He has less high conviction bets than he normally does. His current bets elicit humility on his part.
-If a strong equity rally (15% or so) were to follow, he would be inclined to short it at that point.
-Still likes energy fundamentals (supply/demand). But concerned the trade is crowded
-No historic analog for our current (macro-) circumstances (esp. as regards Central banks) but, the possibility of the 1930's comes close).

Howard Marks specializes in distressed debt ala junk bonds, bank loans, etc. Over the past several months I have continually read about how junk bonds offer value from various pundits. All the while it is one new low after another for junk bonds. So much so that the first half decline of 14% was the worst first half decline ever for the junk bond market.
What is particularly ominous is how detached junk bonds have been from equities and Treasuries. Meaning while equities had a vicious bounce a few weeks ago, junk and bank loans just kept making new lows. While Treasuries are having a nice recovery presently still new lows in the risk on credits aka junk and and bank loans. Below is a link to Morgan Stanley’s outlook for junk. Sounds much more objective and reasoned than much of what I have read recently
https://www.zerohedge.com/markets/morgan-stanley-recession-arrives-will-we-see-surge-corporate-defaults
Edit: Obviously as with Treasuries recently, these markets can turn on a dime. And junk bonds are notorious for strong recoveries after bear declines. Coming off the 2008 bear market in
2009 junk had the greatest credit rally of all time rising over 50%.
Edit: Today’s action in junk bonds so far at least so far not as negative as it may appear. Although down, the junk ETFs are still trading well above Friday’s NAV meaning the open end may be up today.

@sven, just call TIAA. It has 2 business sides, retirement plans with restrictions (for colleges/universities & nonprofits) and general accounts (for everybody) for mutual funds, brokerage (via Pershing), 529s, taxable annuities, banking, and used to be life insurance but it stopped those. As my involvement with TIAA is through retirement plan (403b), I don't have first hand info on the latter aspects. Remember though that access to TIAA Traditional (SV-like) and TIAA Real Estate Account VA (your indicated interest) is only for special IRAs that also meet TIAA Eligibility requirements (link below that was also posted earlier) - some direct or indirect/family connection with TIAA.
TIAA Eligibility https://www.tiaa.org/public/pdf/eligibility_flyer_external.pdf
TIAA Products https://www.tiaa.org/public/invest/financial-products

WSJ chart via Twitter, https://twitter.com/GunjanJS/status/1544097319301308416

@yogibb, thanks for the info. My previous experience with Pershing/T. Rowe Price required patience. Is TIAA available for anyone or limited to teachers ? I had TIAA-CREF serving as the administrator for Oregon 529 plan.
@msf, really appreciate for sharing your experience. What I am interested is TIAA Real Estate VA. I have to read more since the withdrawal process for RMD appeared to be not so straight forward. Also what is your experience of rolling over $ from another brokerage like Fidelity to TIAA?

From Fidelity: " government money market funds: Transact at $1.00 and are not subject to SEC liquidity 'gates and fees'".
https://institutional.fidelity.com/app/item/RD_13569_45072/government-money-market-funds.html
Same difference. All prime funds are subject to liquidity gates. At their discretion, government MMFs may impose liquidity gates. AFAIK, none has.
Aside from Fidelity, most brokerages charge for outgoing wires.
https://topratedfirms.com/brokers/fees/brokerage-wiretransferfees.aspx
all wires are subject to a wire fees
Some brokerages may waive the fee if your account is large enough. Schwab waives its fee for the first three wires per quarter if you have $100K with them.
https://www.schwab.com/legal/schwab-pricing-guide-for-individual-investors

I don't base my investing on outlooks or prediction, it's based on big picture + several indicators (link). Both signaled high risk months ago and why I'm in MM since then with only short term trades if the charts support it. It's not the first time. I sold before 03/2020(this post is from 2/29/2020(link) and Q4/2018 and bought back much lower after risk was lower.

I don't base my investing decisions on actions taken by momentum traders.
Regardless of how astute they claim to be.
Which brings to mind, why do certain investors feel obliged to frequently post
select trades on various anonymous investing forums?

Anyone can open a conventional taxable brokerage account at TIAA.
https://shared.tiaa.org/private/mytcbrokerageaccountopening/aobrokerageapp/secure/required
It gives you access to what you'd find at most brokerages - stocks, ETFs, mutual funds. Like those other brokerages, it does not give you access to mutual funds sold through annuities.
Most brokerages offer retail IRA accounts that, aside from being wrapped up in an IRA, are virtually identical to their retail taxable accounts. TIAA does not. It used to but stopped offering such an IRA account a few years ago.
What TIAA does do is sell retirement annuities. To colleges, that's a 403(b) annuity. Like most variable annuities, TIAA's have a limited set of funds that are sold only through annuities. Notably the CREF funds, like CREF stock. And like some variable annuities, the TIAA annuities offer a fixed annuity option. Here, that's TIAA Traditional Annuity.
For individual investors, TIAA offers two variable annuities. One is your typical VA, called TIAA Intelligent Variable Annuity. It offers "funds" (typically VA clones) shown here. The other VA is effectively the equivalent of the 403(b) annuity (plus brokerage window). It's that one that gives you get access to TIAA Traditional, CREF, and TIAA Real Estate.
That annuity is only offered to "eligible" investors, and only as an Individual Retirement Annuity. Unlike typical VAs, you can't buy it for a taxable account.
https://www.tiaa.org/public/retire/financial-products/annuities/annuity-ira-benefits
As Yogi mentioned, the TIAA Traditional Annuity (fixed annuity investment option) that you can get though this limited access IRA annuity comes with a lower rate than paid to 403(b) participants. It is paying 2.50%, and has a guaranteed floor of 1.0%. I believe the IRA annuity contract restricts Traditional withdrawals to one per quarter.
An IRA investor is at the bottom of the totem pole when it comes to the CREF funds. Several years ago, TIAA split these into three share classes, with large institutions getting cheaper shares and small institutions getting the most expensive shares. As an IRA investor, you're thrown in with the small institutions. It could be worse; TIAA could have created a fourth share class for IRA investors.
IMHO the only significant benefit to this IRA annuity is access to TIAA Real Estate Account (TREA).
You can find the VA options (including those for this IRA annuity) here. The IRA doesn't give you access to the non-TIAA VA subaccounts listed (except for Nuveen, which is owned by TIAA).
https://www.tiaa.org/public/investment-performance
Since it is structured as an annuity, this IRA can be difficult to deal with. You can't do transfers in kind (e.g. for RMDs, or IRA-to-IRA). When transferring money out of this annuity, you have to initiate the transfer from the TIAA side; typically one initiates transfers from the receiving side. These are attributes normally associated with employer-sponsored plans (401(k)s, 403(b)s), not with IRAs.
The website is atrocious. I'm won't go into details. Suffice to say that people who complain about Vanguard's website likely haven't yet had the "pleasure" of dealing with TIAA's. And you won't know what funds you can buy through the IRA brokerage window until you actually open an account.

In addition to what I had written in my previous post, on my way to the airport, I called Schwab to wire the money to Fidelity, to which Schwab said they are happy to send the money immediately but all wires are subject to a wire fees. I did not want to pay a wire fees and so ended up writing a check to Fidelity. (I do not pay any wire transfer fees at other brokerages.) I expect members to call Schwab -1-800-435-4000 or make a test transaction before relying on my experience.
"FZDXX is subject to liquidity gates."
I think you meant redemption gates, as specified in the current SEC regulations. Not relevant for me but SWVXX is also subject to redemption gates.

I don't base my investing on outlooks or prediction, it's based on big picture + several indicators (link). Both signaled high risk months ago and why I'm in MM since then with only short term trades if the charts support it. It's not the first time. I sold before 03/2020(this post is from 2/29/2020(link) and Q4/2018 and bought back much lower after risk was lower.

@hank, I would not bail on PRWCX since it is closed to new investors. Link above explains the consequences of stocks and treasury being down at the same time. Just about all allocation funds are down this year. There are a number stock funds and ETFs are doing better than that of S&P500 this year. I would focus on the defensive funds until we get through the rate hikes.
BTW, there are few bright sectors (energy and commodities) this year and now they are declining a bit. Several alternatives that @lynnbolin suggested last month are doing well.
You mentioned that you have D&C balanced fund. Think it is leading the allocation funds so far this year.

I put in an order to sell entire SWVXX at Schwab yesterday [Wed June 29]. I had to wake up today at 6 AM PST to pick a family member at the airport. So, I checked my Schwab account pre-market and the SWVXX sale cash was already in the account.
Cash actually in the account? Or is Schwab just making it look that way without being very precise?
Financial institutions have a propensity to offer ersatz services - carefully hiding details letting customers' imaginations fill in the gaps. NOW accounts are a good example. Savings banks offered these accounts that looked like checking accounts, felt like checking accounts, but were not the same as demand deposit accounts.
https://www.creditkarma.com/money/i/what-are-now-accounts
Schwab may have posted a pending credit prior to market open, making it look and feel like a cash deposit, knowing that any withdrawal would not be reconciled until end of day, i.e. T+1.
I transferred money from one Fidelity account to another this weekend. The money shows as available for withdrawal in the target account. But my MMF position in the "from" account is unchanged. And the number of shares in the target core MMF hasn't increased. The cash has not moved. Yet.
On the "Positions" page, Fidelity says that what's in the target account is a "Cash Credit from Unsettled Activity."
FZDXX at Fidelity, unlike SWVXX at Schwab, is counted towards my cash buying power, and Fidelity will automatically liquidate FZDXX as necessary to satisfy any buy trade.
True, and a nice feature, though it isn't a sweep account and Fidelity hasn't quite figured out all the mechanics. I know because I asked a fairly long time ago.
FZDXX is subject to liquidity gates (at least until the regs are changed; see SEC proposal thread here). There is at least a theoretical possibility that Fidelity would impose a hold on FZDXX redemptions if the fund came under stress. What would happen with cash withdrawals made "immediately" on the assumption that cash could get pulled out of FZDXX? The honest answer I got from Fidelity was that they didn't know.
(FWIW, it does not seem that Fidelity MMF needed bailouts in 2008; Chuck's did.)

What I tried to do was look for a similar historical period and see how different stock allocations would perform under those conditions. The cash buffer was a conceptual attempt to mitigate most, but not all impact of market swoons.
In essence, I started with a traditional 60/40 portfolio and swapped some or all of the bonds for more equity and cash, figuring (hoping?) that the cash would add stability allowing for a higher equity allocation.
Intuition says that if one has too many market corrections/bear markets in a span of a few years, preserving one would be better off with cash. I tend to agree with this intuition. However, it turns out that this risk sometimes vanishes if there is a full recovery between the periods of market decline.
Looking at the 1968-1980 period (assuming withdrawals and reallocations are done on calendar year boundaries), at the end of 1972 (right before the 1973-74 bear market) the allocation methods (including withdrawals) all are in the black. The portfolio values (nominal dollars) range from $101,402 (all stock) to $102,728 (90/10 with a cash buffer). A 28% cash buffer (7 years @4%/year) ended in the middle of the pack with $101,964.
Since all methods ended 1972 above their high water marks, they would rebalance to their "normal" allocations. It would be as if 1969-1972 hadn't happened, except that some portfolios would have a few hundred dollars more or less than others.
The reason why starting with 1969 instead of 1973 seems to make a difference is that this moves the ten year mark. If one ends after 1978, one ends just before the market has a big run up: 18.52%, 31,74%, -4.70%, and 20.42% from 1979 through 1982. It's the arbitrariness of the time periods and not the method that's the problem here.
Finally, a mea culpa. In looking more closely at the two sets of results, I realized that I erred in building the results for 40/60 in 1973-1982. That method (stocks/bonds, annual rebalancing) came out pretty well. The 30% bond return in 1982 (vs. 20% for stocks) and 8% return in 1981 (vs. -5% for stocks) surely helped.

  Year	December 31 Balance							
100% stock	90/10		90/10		75/9/16		75/9/16		60/40		55%-40%		40/60
single asset	annual rebal	cash buffer	annual rebal	cash buffer	annual rebal	glide path	annual rebal
1972	$96,000.00 	$96,000.00 	$96,000.00 	$96,000.00 	$96,000.00 	$96,000.00 	$96,000.00 	$96,000.00 
1973	$77,916.04 	$79,964.65 	$79,964.65 	$82,774.63 	$82,774.63 	$84,941.86 	$85,820.08 	$88,454.77 
1974	$52,849.69 	$57,065.02 	$56,366.89 	$62,757.74 	$62,779.42 	$66,449.90 	$68,565.60 	$73,770.73 
1975	$67,177.97 	$71,171.20 	$71,526.14 	$75,940.95 	$75,586.94 	$77,923.98 	$78,943.98 	$82,707.22 
1976	$77,709.51 	$81,312.30 	$83,093.89 	$85,862.08 	$86,793.31 	$89,157.97 	$89,949.56 	$93,980.77 
1977	$66,440.91 	$70,788.22 	$71,449.48 	$76,681.03 	$76,733.21 	$81,584.58 	$83,607.73 	$88,682.57 
1978	$64,393.97 	$69,072.33 	$69,728.56 	$75,016.17 	$74,903.38 	$78,784.24 	$80,338.99 	$85,247.72 
1979	$69,100.59 	$74,061.67 	$75,423.11 	$79,380.19 	$80,871.40 	$80,108.79 	$79,673.90 	$84,001.59 
1980	$82,907.47 	$87,939.43 	$91,236.47 	$91,378.46 	$95,352.49 	$86,229.83 	$81,409.15 	$84,953.48 
1981	$70,161.78 	$76,604.00 	$79,004.86 	$82,044.34 	$85,902.92 	$77,823.31 	$74,781.73 	$78,754.87 
1982	$75,302.27 	$82,308.84 	$85,951.03 	$89,100.42 	$94,318.06 	$87,801.30 	$85,465.37 	$90,618.38 

Appreciate the post ... Where to Invest Now? That is the question. If you're not in retirement and you have some cash on the sidelines, where do you invest? You definitely want to avoid any companies that are not generating profits. It's impossible to call a bottom. Yes. Ok, so will the recession (we are in one) last 18-24 months? If so, should you wait for another 12 months before deploying cash? DCA into index funds? Which ones? S&P 500 or Small Cap or both?
Kiplinger article "The good news is that stocks tend to do well in the first year of Fed rate hikes. Looking back some 65 years, Deutsche Bank found that 12 months following the first hike, the stock market was up 91% of the time, by an average of 7%." <-- that's some positive data.
I'm keeping an eye on the labor market. It's a strong point at the moment but we're seeing a lot of hiring freezes and offer letters being rescinded. It appears the Tech companies are gearing up for a slowdown. Interesting times.

Good data!
Even though the model 60-40 (60% SP500, 40% 5-yr Treasuries) isn't typical, it gives the general idea that multi-asset funds have been BAD this year.

The author analyzed all rolling six month returns for the S&P 500
and 5 Yr. Treasuries for the period ending June 30, 2022.
Link
S&P 500: worst 3% of all 6 month returns since 1926.
5 Yr. Treasuries: second-worst 6 month returns ever ¹.
60/40: worst 2% of all 6 month returns since 1926.
¹ period ending 05/31/2022

M* had more details citing MarketWatch (owned by News Corp/NWS, parent of Barron's, WSJ, DJ & Co, etc), https://www.morningstar.com/news/marketwatch/20220628116/oaktrees-howard-marks-is-finding-bargains-i-am-starting-to-behave-aggressively-he-says
Original/MarketWatch https://www.marketwatch.com/story/oaktrees-howard-marks-is-finding-bargains-i-am-starting-to-behave-aggressively-he-says-11656414153
"That brings us to our call of the day from a well known voice on Wall Street, Oaktree Capital's founder Howard Marks, who says now's the time for "bargain" hunting follow the market's selloff.
Marks is best known for his lengthy investment letters, and warnings. In early May he cautioned over bull-market excess, which seems as prescient as his similar year-earlier warning.
"Today I am starting to behave aggressively," he told the Financial Times in an interview. "Everything we deal in is significantly cheaper than it was six or 12 months ago."
The manager said now seems like a "reasonable time to start buying," noting lower prices for such assets as high-yield bonds, mortgage-backed securities and leveraged loans. Oaktree specializes in alternative investment strategies.
"Things may well go lower. In that case, I hope we'll have the will to buy more. It makes no sense to say: "I'm not going to buy until we reach bottom." We never know when we're at the bottom, and certainly I'm not saying we are today," Marks said."

https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.kiplinger.com/investing/stocks/stocks-to-buy/602844/midyear-investing-outlook-where-to-invest-now?amp
See recent ecently year-end target for the S&P 500 from 5200 to 4900, though he remains bullish. “Calibrating an exact return is less important than framing the question: Is now a good time to be in the stock market? The answer is ‘yes.’ Returns are going to be robust over the next 12 months even in light of risks.”
Do incognito search article title
Midyear Investing Outlook: Where to Invest Now
Could be soft landings vs mild recessions w Feds Ukraine economic questions/
Lots opportunities there
Sp500 may finish upper 4000s range end 2022

Mark Freeland wrote a very good analysis of the returns of different asset allocations during the inflationary 1970s He estimates the expected results of withdrawals from various allocations of equities 100% equities to 40%/60%.
The best results were a 79/9/16% ( latter is cash) which allows withdrawals for four years without selling equities at the bottom, or when they are below their high
This "cash stash" keeps you from the largest draw on performance, selling into a declining market at the low. This approach is similar to James Cloonan at American Association of Individual Investors, who proposed five years expenses in cash and withdrawing from equites only when the SP500 was within 5% of it's high.
I looked carefully to see it four or five years is enough and I am not sure it it, because the market took 3.2 years to recover from 11/68 high but then less than a year later, ( 1/11/73) it peaked again and took 7 years to recover (7/16/80). The 68 peak to the 80 recovery was over 11 years.
Similarly from a high in 3/2000, the recovery took 7.1 years but less than 5 months later crashed again and didn't recover until 3/2013, a combined total of 13 years.
Consequently, I believe that the customary 4 or 5 years is not enough to cover these prolonged declines. Seven years of expenses in cash or short term bonds seems to be the minimum.
Maybe the withdrawals would have been during those short period of market highs, and the withdrawals if below the peak would have been at least pretty close to it. You also have to withdraw enough to replenish your "cash stash".

SC piece is by @LewisBraham
https://www.barrons.com/articles/small-cap-funds-beat-blue-chips-51656530650?mod=past_editions
Part 2 Link
FUNDS. SMALL-CAPs (SCs) have sold off sharply (-31.9% from 11/8/21 high to 6/16/22 trough) and may be resilient in recession this time and may rebound better than blue chips in recovery. The SCs have EV/EBITDA discounts of 22% (20-year low) vs large-caps (LCs) while they typically trade at premium. Almost 44% of R2000 had losses for Q1. Although R2000 is a widely used SC index, the S&P SC600 is a better SC index (foreign investors don’t care for this distinction and tend to go for R2000). ACTIVE SC managers may outperform SC index during the rebound. The SCs are domestically oriented and benefit from deglobalization. Mentioned are OEFs AVALX, DSCPX, SSLCX, RYPRX, RYSEX, AASMX; ETFs IJR/S&P SC600, IWM/R2000, SLYV/S&P SC600-V.