For instance if I buy the stock of a company on July11th, will I get the dividend with Ex-Dividend Date Jul 14, 2022.
Thanks, ron

Thank you BaluBalu
Could be long summer, maybe more pains /significant downturns another 15% -25% haircut ahead for 3-6 more months know.
Hope we maybe be little better by late fall /winter 2022 and recovery formation in spring
Buffett- nobody in Wallstreet know!!

The show (7/8) was mostly about private equity investing (first one-third of show). Just one gal being interviewed by moderator. That was followed by 5-10 minutes of Larry Summers, who I don’t think said anything new. The remainder of show was devoted to last week’s market summary plus a look at key upcoming events*. A little disappointed in this one to tell the truth.
*Upcoming events this week include release of some earnings numbers - including some big tech names. There’s been some rumbling in the press that they may disappoint and rattle the markets. Stay tuned.

I can watch the full show as part of my Comcast service. The show airs for my service a few times over the weekend, the last time being 1-2PM PST Sunday. I went to the WSW site last night (by googling) for the first time in response to your post - I did not notice (tired eyes!) the hyperlink (blue font) in your original post.

Treasury Direct (TD) has only a virtual keyboard for password entry and you cannot get rid of it. Unusually, the TD passwords are not case-sensitive (most typically are, while usernames are not). TD is just an older and clunky website.

For years I cursed the virtual keyboard until I discovered that my password manager (1Password) will fill in the password and bypass the keyboard on my desktop Mac.

There are no hard and fast rules for minimum and maximum fund positions.
I agree with much of the info stated in the prior posts.
It's more important to focus on risk and diversification.
An investor can achieve good results owning only a target-date fund or a global allocation fund.
I think minimum fund exposure should be ≥ 5% since smaller positions will not be impactful.
Having too many funds often leads to "diworsification".
An individual investor shouldn't need to hold more than 12 - 15 funds in most circumstances.
Less is often more...

+1
One “hidden danger”, I suspect, of owning only 1 or 2 funds is that it might be easy for some (not particularly well informed) investors to to get into a perpetual habit of selling one or both of those after an extended period of underperformance (umm … maybe after 6-12 months) and moving into “better performing” funds. While that might seem like a good idea at the moment, longer term it’s very detrimental to returns, as all funds will have both hot streaks and cooler ones.
The above problem is not confined to just 1 and 2 fund portfolios. But it’s probably easier to become unnerved / stressed out over a holding when it’s 50% of your assets than when it’s 5-10%..

The rule of thumb of 4-5% per holding is for individual stocks.
Most funds are already diversified but some are not. Unusually, the LC-growth index has become nondiversified (see 1st link below). Also, active funds may be concentrated in some areas/sectors by their managers. Sector funds are obviously concentrated in respective sectors. Fund-of-funds (including target-date funds, robo-advisor funds, 529 funds, etc) are quite diversified. So, considerations for funds are a bit different.
Formal definition of a diversified fund is that 75% of the should have individual holdings within 5% (see 2nd link). This old definition was to prevent funds as being used to cash pools or as controlling entities, but now is also being used for funds that purposely keep over 5% position totals under 25% of the portfolio. Despite such efforts, the number of nondiversified funds is increasing.
https://www.mutualfundobserver.com/discuss/discussion/59731/many-lc-growth-funds-are-nondiversified#latest
https://ybbpersonalfinance.proboards.com/thread/307/diversified-nondiversified-funds

There are no hard and fast rules for minimum and maximum fund positions.
I agree with much of the info stated in the prior posts.
It's more important to focus on risk and diversification.
An investor can achieve good results owning only a target-date fund or a global allocation fund.
I think minimum fund exposure should be ≥ 5% since smaller positions will not be impactful.
Having too many funds often leads to "diworsification".
An individual investor shouldn't need to hold more than 12 - 15 funds in most circumstances.
Less is often more...

Agree with everything @MikeM said. TBLQX? My lord! TRP is digging pretty deep into their symbol bank. :)
If you go with only one fund than benchmarking is more or less irrelevant. But the more you expand / tinker with your holdings, the more important benchmarking is. I care mostly about limiting volatility - but to some extent about total return. A good benchmark helps monitor both. There’s my “official” benchmark (consisting of 3 different funds), but there’s a few “unofficial” ones like VWINX i like to compare to.
One advantage of having more holdings is that it allows making finer portfolio adjustments - if you are so inclined. Last week I added a bit to the badly beaten mining and precious metals sectors. Pretty hard to do that if you’re only in 1 or 2 funds.

Ah, the age-old question @Bobpa. I agree whole-heartily with hank. Portfolio diversification is more important than number of funds, at least, imho. Holding 30, 40 or 50 funds can certainly be a diversified portfolio, but likely any 1 holding at 1, 2 or 3% is going to be meaningless to overall return. Being in 1 target date or retirement fund is likely as good or more diversified as that collection of funds. I happen to have more than 1/2 my money in the Schwab Intelligent Portfolio account (I remember you used to be in it also), and I see that account as nothing different than one of those target funds. So, I guess I have about 60% of my money in that "1 fund" :) .
I'll always suggest that everyone run their portfolio to their risk-comfort level. You can do it with 1 fund, 5 funds or 50 as some here do, but keep an eye on how you are diversified, and by all means make sure you measure against a benchmark. I've mentioned before I use TRP fund TBLQX because it matches fairly close for equity % to where I want to be at 68 yo. Playing with your own portfolio is fun and that is why we come to MFO, but is it fun at the expense of maybe falling 10s of thousands behind a benchmark you can just own otherwise?
If you are still at Schwab, I'm sure you know how easy it is to check your portfolio for diversification. FWIW, PRWCX is 25% of my self-managed portfolio.
As always, good luck.

”I presently have 77% in 5 funds in nearly equal amounts.”

Sounds reasonable. You posted some time back that you had 20% in PRWCX. (LINK). Not a bad choice. By all accounts it’s a great moderate risk fund. I sold it last week. But if I still owed it I’d be adding now with it down roughly 12-15% from recent highs.
No rule of course. When I was 25 I owned one. My workplace Templeton “advisor” had me in just one good global growth fund, Worked fine. (And I could have cared less at that age,) But over the following 50 years both my experience base and also the sheer amount of investment information available have multiplied. I don’t know how many mutual funds existed in 1972, but likely fewer than 10% of today’s choices. Bottom line - I’ve gone from 1 holding to over 20 (funds and stocks) in those 50 years.
One holding would still work. There are some good fund managers who can achieve nice diversification within a single fund. However, I don’t find tracking 20+ holdings that tedious using a good modern day tracker and with so much information now at my fingertips. Being at a NTF brokerage is somewhat of a new experience. If I’m going to “reach” a bit and dabble in some individual equities, far better I think to diversify and spread the risk around. After all, that was the overarching purpose of mutual funds in the early days - to spread market risk across a diversified cross section of stocks.
More directly to your question: While 1 fund could work, 5 might not work if they were the wrong choices or outside your risk parameters. Personal bias - I’d rather see people trying to hone in on the right allocation model for their risk appetite and needs rather than fretting about how many funds to own.

I watch Wall Street Week online.
When I go to the official WSW website, full episodes from 07/01 and 07/08 are missing.
The full episode from 07/01 (but not 07/08) is available on YouTube.
Have there been any recent changes which would affect WSW access?

Thanks, msf. Good info and reassuring. I went to his account and collected documents for the year and 2021 year end. I also got the status for the day before his death, the day of his death and July 5 (the first market day after his death). The IRS link seems to make when the RMD for a 75-year-old man occurs irrelevant. The distribution is required and must use the deceased person's age. So, the amount distributed and taxed doesn't change before, on, or after death. Again, thanks. I guess I do need to relax a bit.

link below is from @JohnN post. 1970s inflation and Feds actions year by year are shown after ~16:35 minute mark - quite interesting.
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=6yzbzJ5ety8&t=149s

Thanks @Observant1. The more recent bear markets from 2000-2002 and 2008 had long recovery periods well beyond 12 months and more. That was including the Fed are cutting the interest rate multiple times. 2020 COVID bear market was an abnormality, and it should not be use as an example of quick recovery.

Hello
Sorry meant most [not 100%] and after modern Era (after ww2)
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=6yzbzJ5ety8&t=149s
(At 2.42)
https://www.mymoneyblog.com/sp-500-bear-bull-market-historical-list.html

My condolences as well. The first thing to do is to take a deep breath and not rush. Especially with Vanguard. For one thing, as others have said, they're just not available now. Another reason is that the instant you notify them of the death, Vanguard locks everything up, as Yogi wrote.
I speak from experience here. When a parent died, the instant I notified Vanguard I no longer had access to account information. That's really a total lockup.
Anticipating this, I downloaded everything I might need. (I had the account password.) That included monthly statements YTD, last year's end of year statement, 2021 tax forms, and a snapshot of current balances as of day of death. In your case, you should also get a record of the RMD schedule. Then notify Vanguard.
If your husband was born in 1950 (72nd birthday this year) then because of death before April 1, 2023 (required beginning date) no RMD is required. This is the only reason to rush to notify Vanguard - it could prevent an unnecessary withdrawal.
(The line Yogi quoted is more a description of how to calculate the RMD amount than a declaration that there are no RMD exceptions. For better clarity, see:
https://www.irs.gov/publications/p590b#en_US_2021_publink100090082 )
Otherwise, an RMD is required for 2022. If it was not made from the IRA prior to death, then it must be made from the beneficiary IRA and that income is supposed to be attributed to the beneficiary. Let Vanguard sort out how it will report the distribution.

@Anna, sorry to hear about your loss.
First, RMDs are also required for the year of the death. So, a scheduled RMD is OK. https://www.irs.gov/retirement-plans/plan-participant-employee/retirement-topics-required-minimum-distributions-rmds#:~:text=For the year of the,identity of the designated beneficiary.
"For the year of the account owner’s death, use the RMD the account owner would have received. For the year following the owner’s death, the RMD will depend on the identity of the designated beneficiary."
Second, there is just NO WAY to contact Vanguard except during weekday hours. I had Vanguard account alert once on late-Friday and my account was locked. I looked for a variety of ways to get hold of Vanguard customer service or its security department but nothing worked. So, I called promptly on Monday 8:01 AM Eastern and got hold of someone at Vanguard. When I complained about not getting through over the weekend, the Rep tried to reassure me that the account was locked for security and there was nothing to worry or be concerned about. I didn't feel reassured but there is really nothing else that can be done at/by Vanguard. Low ERs and poor service are its goals.

This may be helpful as a point of reference.
Ben Carlson recently looked back at every bear market since
WWII and the corresponding peak-to-trough and breakeven periods.
On average, these bear markets lasted 12 months and it took 21 months for investors to breakeven.
Link