@Devo : Thanks for your info. Can you tell me what drove the adjusted NAV from $51.22 01/01/2020 to $54.38 at the end of Aug. 2020 as no dividends were paid during this time period.
Thank you, Derf

Two sectors where prices have grown the fastest for many years are two which IMHO should be accessible to all: education and health care.

From an 1887 letter from the Commissioner of the Department of Education, referencing Thomas Jefferson's Notes on Virginia, Query XIV:

Jefferson devised an ingenious plan whereby the boys of best talent, the sons of the people, might be discovered and sent forward, although poor, to preparatory colleges, and finally to the University of Virginia. Such a plan is now in practical operation in the, State of New York, in connection with Cornell University, which accepted the agricultural college land grant upon the condition of free education to talented graduates of local high schools and academies, and also prevails in many other States, where young men receive the benefits of the higher education, without charge for tuition, at the State universities and agricultural land-grant colleges. Natural selection and the survival of the fittest are great needs in American schools, colleges, and universities. Jefferson's ideas, if they should ever be realized throughout the country, will deliver us on the one hand from the over-education of mediocrity, and on the other from the under-education of genius. It is the duty of democracy to evolve from itself the highest talent, not only for government and administration, but for the advancement of science and the arts.

Thomas Jefferson and the University of Virginia (1888)
Jefferson posited that for the benefit of society, education should be available to everyone up to their ability level or further if willing to pay.
In a recently concluded college course in rhetoric, we were split into groups to debate the merits of free tuition (the topic I suggested for debate). There are valid, and many invalid, arguments on both sides. While I was assigned to the anti-free tuition group, personally I side with TJ.

@Crash Dividends not pd for number of months / year.
2018 3 not pd
2019 4 ''
2020 8 ''
2021 3 "
You are correct on amount of dividends also not consistent.

Most indexes peaked in 01/2022 although SP500-value peaked in 04/2022 and it is near its peak. Chart also shows SP500-growth (still down a lot), SP500 (down) and equal-weight SP500 (down only some).
Chart 1-Yr (Live)
Charts 01/2022- , Image https://i.ibb.co/v3tkp6B/Screenshot-2023-01-27-07-56-20.png

About -15.4% off on the S&P 500 from the high of 4796.5 set in January 22.
Possibly what @Junkster referenced … S&P Value Index:
Ticker SVX - “We measure value stocks using three factors: the ratios of book value, earnings, and sales to price. S&P Style Indices divide the complete market capitalization of each parent index into growth and value segments. Constituents are drawn from the S&P 500®.”
Source

It’s been a decent run past month or two. I realize most don’t pay much heed to the DJI. But I’ll note it’s near 34 K - Not too far below where it topped out in early 2022 - around 37 K if I recall. Of course the S&P and NASDAQ still deep in the weeds. Curiously, EM has turned around after getting blown away in 2022. DODEX +10% YTD.
And thanks Yogi for the update.

I saw somewhere where the S@P Value Index is but 3.5% from its all time highs. Haven’t verified though if true. The moves off the October lows in equities and the October/ November lows in bonds have been eye catching and seemingly something much more than a bear market rally. And talk about trend persistency, most bond funds in the Preferred category have been up everyday this month.

+1 Lewis Your second paragraph sums up the situation perfectly. I graduated from a Catholic university in 1983. Tuition, room and meals cost around $7,000 while today's total is around $77,000!

While I have my own issues with student loan forgiveness, I can understand the perspective of Millennials and Gen Zs who think it’s hypocritical that many in the older generation were perfectly fine with two massive government taxpayer funded bailouts of financial markets in 2008-09 and 2020 in which the younger generations have little invested because in part they are laden with student debt. Not to mention the fact that in some cases I imagine they are indebted to the very banks that were bailed out with taxpayer dollars in 2009. That is on top of the bailouts “small businesses” got in 2020, which the government defines as any company with less than 500 employees—many large companies qualified.
And finally, the cost of tuition is astonishing today even at public universities, when the older generations had much more affordable educations. The average cost of attendance for a student living on campus at a public 4-year in-state institution is $25,707 per year or $102,828 over 4 years. Out-of-state students pay $43,421 per year or $173,684 over 4 years. Private, nonprofit university students pay $54,501 per year or $218,004 over 4 years. This in a country where tuition at public universities was once exceedingly low and in certain cases free. It is also true that it is extremely difficult for anyone to have a middle class life today without a college degree when this was not the case in earlier generations. Well-paying Industrial blue collar jobs that don’t require a degree have largely disappeared in 2023. So kids have to go to college and they end up in debt because of it.

It’s been a decent run past month or two. I realize most don’t pay much heed to the DJI. But I’ll note it’s near 34 K - Not too far below where it topped out in early 2022 - around 37 K if I recall. Of course the S&P and NASDAQ still deep in the weeds. Curiously, EM has turned around after getting blown away in 2022. DODEX +10% YTD.
And thanks Yogi for the update.

I received the same email as well.
A couple of oddities about the Vanguard fund:
- Vanguard doesn't show its annual report on the fund page
(You can find it at the SEC here; search for multi-sector)
- On the page linked to by Yogi, the fund is described as " investing in 3 different sector allocations (IG, HY, and EM)"; developed markets aren't mentioned.
-- Contrast this with FADMX. Prospectus says: "four general investment categories: high yield securities, U.S. Government and investment-grade securities, emerging market securities, and foreign developed market securities.".
-- Or PONAX, whose prospectus speaks of investing in debt located "in the United States and non-U.S. countries, including emerging market countries."
FWIW, FADMX's foreign holdings are about 3/4 EM, 1/4 DM, while VMSIX's are split pretty evenly between EM and DM.

VMSIX / VMSAX is a newer low-cost (10/2021- ; ER 0.40%/0.30%) multisector bond fund from VG. It had restricted availability so far and had a bad 2022, like other multisector bond funds. The AUM is $22.5 million only and the data on it are sparse. Now that it will be generally available, its AUM may pick up. It would need a longer record for comparison with FADMX, PONAX / PIMIX, etc.
https://investor.vanguard.com/investor-resources-education/news/introducing-the-vanguard-multisector-income-bond-fund

Since this thread is apparently open for politics here goes.
As distressing as the inflation in the US is, it is far worse in Europe and many other countries. That cannot be blamed on Biden. This is a worldwide phenomena. I tend to believe the one stimulus passed under Biden was too much. Without it, the Democrats could have blamed all the inflation on Trump policies. I guess they thought it was still necessary.
An overlooked feature of the Chips act is the massive investment in Red States and jobs that do not require college.
https://www.wsj.com/articles/bidens-green-subsidies-are-attracting-billions-of-dollars-to-red-states-11674488426
https://www.brookings.edu/research/with-high-tech-manufacturing-plants-promising-good-jobs-in-ohio-workforce-developers-race-to-get-ready/
I have read a lot of the 1619 project and object strongly to it's thesis that the American Revolution was fought to protect slavery. This distortion has been widely criticized by professional historians. The NYT is actively promoting 1619 for high school curricula although none of it's authors are historians, and I object to that as strongly as I object to the continuously right wing WSJ editorials.
On the other hand I can understand some of the criticism in Florida of the Advanced Placement African-American curriculum if, in it's final section, it really does focus on "intersectionalism", black queerness, and demand reparations, without any other perspectives.
I am generally a lifetime Democrat and strongly support helping people get ahead. To me this means safe neighborhoods and workplaces, laws controlling buildings and roads, decent public schools and rewarding someone financially for a job well done with advancement. Leaving all of these to the private sector, without regulation, is a proven disaster
I do agree that the Government should cost as little as possible and there are many things the private sector does better, and there are many things people should pay for themselves, if they alone are to benefit. Building sports stadiums come to mind. I do not think the Government should shower benefits on one group or company exclusively if they are not available to everyone and increase our taxes to pay for it.
Bernie was right to focus on the massive wealth accumulation that investment, side deals and other benefits Federal laws allowed to happen . But his demand that I help pay off all student loans goes to far.
I do think people with adequate resources should pay the full price for their kids education, and these people should not get their student loans forgiven. However, when the government twists the regulations for private for profit "colleges", to allow their owners to get very rich, under a woman whose family, already billionaires, personally benefits from these regulations ( DeVoes), there is a moral duty to deal with the financial disaster that these regulations caused in students lives.

@Crash : I took a peek at Yahoo & 2021 a double payment for Dec. & zip-o for Jan..
Looking further back & you can see what transpired. I wouldn't call it consistent .

Oh. I guess you mean that the AMOUNTS are not consistent?

@Crash : I took a peek at Yahoo & 2021 a double payment for Dec. & zip-o for Jan..
Looking further back & you can see what transpired. I wouldn't call it consistent .

43 weeks of negative Bull Bear spread are record since Survey inception in 1987.

https://marketwatch.com/story/the-economy-and-the-stock-market-tends-to-do-better-under-democrats-11611158787
https://kiplinger.com/investing/602714/best-and-worst-presidents-according-to-the-stock-market
By the way, if he knows it, it must just kill Trump that the annualized return for the stock market was 13.8% under Obama versus Trump's 13.7%.

I would wager a sizable sum that Baseball_Fan has never read the 1619 Project and is merely parroting what he hears from the usual sources. Nor does he know what Marxism is. I suspect any sort of taxation to him for purposes other than the protection of his personal property he views as Marxism. Wanting, say, a public park or public schools makes you a Marxist. Meanwhile, numerous studies have shown the very capitalist stock market has performed better under “tax and spend” Democratic presidents than Republican ones.
Moreover, Biden worked for over 30 years as a senator of Delaware, the nation’s incorporation capital, helping to pass legislation highly favorable to the extremely capitalist credit card and banking industries. But somehow he’s a Marxist too for wanting poor people to eat, our roads and bridges to be repaired and children and the elderly to have healthcare.
Where do people who oppose any sort of taxpayer funded government programs think the money goes other than the private sector in the U.S.? The two work in concert in the U.S.. That is not Marxism by any means. The reason Moderna's stock has done so well is the government spent billions of dollars helping it develop vaccines and then purchased those vaccines from it. That is true for the entire healthcare sector by the way. And yes, as DavidrMoran has pointed out, such government spending stimulates the economy, creating jobs and increasing GDP. It's called the multiplier effect, not Marxism.

Can it really be that you don’t know how any of this stuff works?

Ka-ching!
+1.
****************
...And I can digest snark, up to a point, myself. But the kool-aid brainwashed vitriol just tells me that the source of such a remark has eagerly turned off his brain and turned on the switch which auto-permits trash and lies to fill it. Fixed Noise, much?

Ya too bad that the facts are that under Biden real wages have shrunk every month he has been in office and due to his Covid stimulus give aways...shrunk the working population and created more inflation. Look at your heating bill lately? Look at your grocery bill lately? Cost inputs are still going up thanks in many ways to the incompetent grifter in the White House.
David, you're sounding like that other leftist, quasi-Marxist guy Lewis who somehow can post stuff like how great the 1619 anti american project nonsense is and the board soaks it up. Soon as someone disagrees, all the lefties come out of the woodwork and say keep the focus on investing.
C'mon guys, what's up with all that?
Baseball Fan