@Observant1: I’m finding it’s not just the volatility of small caps, especially SCV. Good past performers BRSVX and RWJ have struggled this year, while a couple of newcomers (which I own) are doing fine. Most of you probably don’t buy new funds, even from established managers, but I have been pleased with SMOT and DSMC. The moat discipline works for domestic stocks (i.e., MOAT) and now SMOT, while the global MOTG and international MOTI don’t impress. From Distillate Capital comes DSTL with a distinguished record; DSMC is the new SMID version of that LCV fund. Their overseas version, DSTX, does OK, but trails old favorite international value FMIJX. I don’t know why value metrics that work for domestic stock managers appear not to function as well when applied to international portfolios. Probably opacity, accounting standards, less actionable information, and a reduced commitment to enhancing shareholder value make security analysis more of a challenge for international PMs. I believe the challenges are even greater when selecting small-cap international stocks.

Keeping up with DepositAccount.com for going rates and timetables for CDs. Trying to keep parent's cds to 1 year to 2 year timetables with rates between 4%-5% at our credit unions. Will evaluate the CD market as the CDs' approach maturity.

Received an email from GP with an explanation.
update:
July 3, 2023
Dear Fellow Investors,
After a decade of diligent service at Grandeur Peak, Stuart Rigby has decided to leave the firm to pursue a new path in his career and launch a global technology hedge fund. Stuart has been a valuable contributor to our investment process over the years and a great colleague. We wish him the best of luck as he embarks on his new endeavor and look forward to continuing our friendship and sharing investment ideas with him for years to come.
Effective July 1st, Stuart will no longer co-manage the Grandeur Peak Emerging Markets Opportunities Fund. Blake Walker, Grandeur Peak's CEO, who has been a portfolio manager for the Fund since its inception in 2013, will continue to serve in that capacity. Tyler Glauser will also continue as lead analyst.
In addition, Stuart will no longer serve as one of the nine listed portfolio managers for the Grandeur Peak Global Reach Fund, focusing on the technology sector. Phil Naylor, who has been a Grandeur Peak technology analyst since 2014 and has been co-managing the technology portfolio in Global Reach with Stuart since 2021, will continue in that role. Phil will also replace Stuart as guardian portfolio manager on the Grandeur Peak US Stalwarts Fund.
Please be assured that while we will miss working with Stuart and miss his contributions, the prudence employed in running our investment process will not be compromised as a result of his departure. One of Grandeur Peak's most distinguishing features and strengths is that our team structure enables us to utilize our entire research team to manage each of our portfolios. This allows us to fully leverage our "multiple minds" investment philosophy and mitigate key person risk.
If you have any questions related to this news, please reach out to me or a member of our Client Relations team.
Best Regards,
Eric
President

Yeah, small-cap funds tend to be more volatile.
VTMSX is my only dedicated small-cap fund.
I ran Portfolio X-Ray for the period ending June 30 earlier today.
VTMSX constitutes 7.7% of my portfolio.

Old Ted mentioned that he'd not worry about the performance of a holding that constituted less than 5% of his stuff. I'd not give a small-cap fund any more than such minimal room along with my other stuff.
But I wish you well with it. I hope you don't need Vanguard's customer "service."

BTW, applying a similar roll yield calculation for Treasuries doesn't yield a clear cut answer.
As of 6/30/23 EOD:
1-yr 5.40%
2-yr 4.87%
3-yr 4.49%
Breakeven yield 4.035%
So, if 2-yr 1 yr from now will be > 4.035% (it is 4.87% now), then buy 1-yr now and roll into 2-yr on maturity (likely). Else, buy 3-yr now (less likely). Or, it could be just a toss-up.
The picture may become more clear as the Fed raises rate twice (?).

@TheShadow knows everything about fund changes! The old Hambrecht and Quist (until 1999), and then the Tekla is Capital Management healthcare CEFs have been acquired by a bigger closed-end operation, the former Aberdeen, now known as the vowel-less mouthful, abdrn. (Is this name progress?) I was a fan of HQL, until ETFs made it much easier to do sector investing. HQL and HQH, like many beleaguered CEFs, had to adopt a generous distribution policy to offset the persistent discounts. As a result, these sector funds became something much more akin to equity-income funds. Volatility remained a problem, however.
I'm curious to know if the lynchpin of TCM, Daniel Olmstead, who started his career at Merck while doing his PhD, is motoring on into retirement or if a more unpleasant departure is in store. OTOH, maybe the buyout has terms favorable to current management. This post is pure wonk, if anyone has read this far…

From somebody who follows CD rates very closely and has a sizeable CD ladder:
Correction to what you stated in the OP:
2- and 3-yr CD rates have recently been inching UP, NOT DOWN.
I've replied to you a few times over the years about this topic and once in the past few months. You don't seem to appreciate my input on this topic, but I'll try it one more time, especially for those who might.
It's all pretty simple if you paint by numbers, so to speak. Translation, create a very basic EXCEL spreadsheet and drop in the variable numbers.
Here are the BEST current CD rates for Fido, non-callable CDs.
1-yr: 5.25%
2-yr: 4.95%
3-yr: 4.80%
Example:
You want to invest in non-callable, interest bearing instruments for 3 years.
You BUY a $10,000, 1-yr, non-callable CD at 5.25%
At maturity in ONE year in July 2024, you earned $525.
You could have instead BOUGHT a 3-yr, non-callable CD at 4.80%
At maturity in THREE years in July 2026, you would have earned ($480 x 3 or) $1,440.
In order to break even with the currently available 3-yr CD rate, at maturity of the 1-yr CD in July 2024, you will need to BUY a 2-yr CD paying 4.58%.
($525+$458+$458 = $1,441)
(NOTE: You could also BUY a 1-yr in July 2024, and another 1-yr in July 2025, but I'll leave that scenario and math up to you.)
So, in this example,
(1) If you THINK a 2-yr, non-callable 4.58% or greater CD will be available in July 2024, BUY the 1-yr now.
(2) If you DON'T THINK a 2-yr, non-callable 4.58% or greater CD will be available in July 2024, BUY the 3-yr now.
For my money, the decision is easy. BUY the 3-yr NOW as IMO it is unlikely a 2-yr, 4.58% non-callable CD will be available in July 2024. And even if it is, IMO it won't be sufficiently greater than 4.58% to cause me to let the current 3-yr rate of 4.80% get away from me.
Disclaimer: This ain't idle chat. It's what I'm actually doing, and have been doing, for the past six months.

July 1 pisode

Grantham discusses his views on climate change, bursting market bubbles, and artificial intelligence. He believes that climate change is the most important issue facing the world today and that artificial intelligence could have a major impact on the future of the economy.

Risk Profile:
https://morningstar.com/funds/xnas/fpacx/risk

I stumbled across an informative article today discussing Markowitz's contributions to investment theory.
"Markowitz agreed with Williams’s approach to valuing individual investments. It was far better than the old prudent man approach. But Markowitz still saw it as incomplete. The shortcoming: While it’s important to evaluate individual investments, it’s equally important—if not more so—to consider how a collection of investments will work together in a portfolio. Markowitz was the first, in other words, to show investors how to effectively diversify a portfolio."
"In his 1959 book, Portfolio Selection, adapted from his thesis, Markowitz provided this example: 'A portfolio with sixty different railway securities, for example, would not be as well diversified as the same size portfolio with some railroad, some public utility, mining, various sorts of manufacturing, etc. The reason is that it is generally more likely for firms within the same industry to do poorly at the same time than for firms in dissimilar industries.'”

"As noted above, today this might seem obvious. But before Markowitz, it had never occurred to anyone. And it wasn’t just a casual observation. Portfolio Selection runs more than 300 pages and is dense with formulas. In it, Markowitz provided a framework for building optimal portfolios—those that offered either the maximum possible return for a given level of risk, or the least possible risk for a given level of return. Markowitz called these portfolios 'efficient,' and presented them visually in a diagram he called the efficient frontier."
Link

I have invested heavily in CDs since March of 2022. Many of those CDs are now maturing, and I have decisions to make about investing in new CDs. Rates seem to be flattening recently, and rates for CDs longer than 2 years seem to be dropping. The best rates are shorter term, 3 months to 1 year, paying a little over 5%. CDs from 18 months to 2 year are around 5%, and anything longer is less than 5%. When I look at the future, there does not seem to be a strong appetite for any major rate increases, with most projections thinking we may get 2 more .25% rate increases in the second half of 2023. I am now thinking about going out to about 18 months to 2 years for a CD paying 5% or more, but continuing to renew CDs for 6 months to a year, when they are at 5.25% or more. I currently am hesitant to invest in longer term CDs that are paying below 5%.
For those continuing to have a desire to invest in CDs, I would be curious as to what you consider as attractive rates to maintain your investing interest.

See this thread nearby on Twitter becoming "closed"/member-only. https://www.mutualfundobserver.com/discuss/discussion/61266/twitter-is-now-also-closed#latest

30 June, 2023.

And mortgage paper. "A screaming buy." ----TCW.

+1

The minimum to open FZDXX in an IRA is $10K, otherwise it is $100K. See summary prospectus (this info isn't on the fund's web page).
The minimum amount Fidelity expects you to keep in FZDXX is $10K, even for a taxable account. I've been told that Fidelity is lenient in enforcing this policy. They give you 30 days notice in any case. From the statutory prospectus:

If your fund balance falls below $10,000 worth of shares for any reason and you do not increase your balance, Fidelity may sell all of your shares and send the proceeds to you after providing you with at least 30 days' notice to reestablish the minimum balance.

If you have multiple MMFs in a Fidelity account, it isn't clear which fund Fidelity will tap next once your core fund is depleted.

It has been mentioned by others. BUT I have verified it in my Fido a/c.
I have a margin a/c at Fido. But Fido is very aggressive in sending margin notices even when those aren't really required. For example, if I sell $x in mutual fund/OEF (T+1) and right away buy about $x in ETF (T+2), OR if I put in a T-Bill auction order for Monday that will settle on Thursday with a maturing T-Bill, Fido will send margin alerts anyway. But everything will even out on the settle date. So, I just ignore Fido margin alerts in such cases - NOT a good idea generally.

podcast...also stated 90%+ of those under 45 years old who have a 401k account, auto invest into index funds... can that be true?? If so, that could drive markets higher,
@Baseball_Fan -
d
That sounds a lot like a theory I’ve heard on other forum(s) to explain why equities have risen this year. Can’t blame folks who missed the 6+ month rally to try and rationalize how they got left behind. And the theory (that passive inflows are driving the market) might in the end prove correct. Darned if I know. But let’s look at that statement you cite ….
Re: ”90%+ of those under 45 years old who have a 401k account, auto invest into index funds…”
That could well be true if it means a portion of their automatic investment goes into index funds. That relates to target date funds being the default option where they work plus the fact that nearly all target date funds do invest a portion of their assets in the S&P. It does not mean that 90%+ of those under 45 invest exclusively in the S&P. I and a number of others have cited figures as to the % those target date funds allocate to large cap U.S. stocks. Nowhere near 90%.
There’s another flaw in the quote you cite. Even were it accurate (as you interpret it), it still would not mean that 90% of all 401K contributions go into index funds. That would depend on who that 90% were and how much they were able to contribute.
-
PS: Not my role to assess market valuations or recommend what people should own. I will submit however, that if a bubble existed the S&P, NASDAQ, or other major major U.S. index, opportunities could still exist in smaller or mid cap equities as well in some foreign markets. And, an index is not a market. It merely seeks to replicate one.

Total AUM for ETFs from 2016 to 2021 tripled from 3.4 to 10 Trillion, likely even more bigly now...that is how I am interpreting the comments made by Green on the podcast I listened to. Someone is investing a tons of money into these index ETFs..the biggest SPY, then Vanguard then I shares blackrock etc etc....how can that NOT be a driver of markets?

I recently opened a new Fidelity account (have existing Fidelity accounts).
The default settlement fund for this account is SPAXX.
I researched Fidelity money market fund options but didn't realize so many funds were available!
Their money market funds include:
Eleven Government and U.S. Treasury Money Market funds
No minimum investment: SPAXX, FDRXX, FZFXX, FDLXX
Other fund minimums: $100,000, $1,000,000, $10,000,000
Four Prime Money Market funds
No minimum investment: SPRXX
Other fund minimums: $100,000, $1,000,000, $10,000,000
Four National Municipal Money Market funds
Twelve State Municipal Money Market funds
Link

podcast...also stated 90%+ of those under 45 years old who have a 401k account, auto invest into index funds... can that be true?? If so, that could drive markets higher, no?
As a side note, I thought this was relevant in today's world, Mr Green was asked about Gold, the value of it, his answer Gold = 1/n where n is the confidence in central banks globally...and the topper...."I want something that I can throw at the Zombies when they come after me..."

+1.

I've become accustomed to their use of the "weighted harmonic" beast. Surely, they are not the only ones doing it.
FWIW, a SeekingAlpha piece asserts:

Most institutions like Morningstar calculate a fund's P/E by taking the harmonic average of the underlying equities and filtering out those with negative earnings.

https://seekingalpha.com/article/4074061-your-mutual-funds-p-e-is-likely-wrong
(free subscription required)