This is from someone who as been playing defense for last 15-20 years. Been a while since I visited the site and for good reason.
My answer to the question - Sell deep OTM options. Pay taxes. No one went broke paying taxes. The last 5 months have been the best of my investing life. Based on your risk tolerance level invest in index funds, then take half of your cash and try to earn income on it. Enough defense you will need IMO.
I've been generating $500 consistently with $20000 in my Vanguard account without ANY trouble every month. That's a 2.5% return per month. That's 30% a year. Pay taxes.

Nuts. Lost my (draft) note to VF. (sigh) I'll try again.
Hi!
Mr. O. didn't run POGSX 20 years ago. When he came onboard, he began moderating its aggressiveness and ended up outperforming the S&P 500 pretty substantially. ($10K grew to about $30K with him and $25K with the S&P 500 during his stint at POGSX.) I have no idea of why he left Oak Associates, through that difference of styles might have had some relevance. In any case, it's a LCV with cash for now.
Mr. C. got killed in 2000-02. I think he learned from the experience. The SEC permitted Osterweis to include his private partnership in the fund's prospectus, so there's about a 10 year record with about 200 bps of annual outperformance. It does not appear that the returns reflect excessive risk; standard deviation is a bit high, but all of the other measures of risk and risk-adjusted returns are at or below average.
As always, the goal is not to flog a fund - in either the positive or negative sense - just to be sure we're willing to look at places that we'd normally write off without much examination.
Cheers, David

I'm not real happy about PRBLX holding a 5.9% stake in Amazon.

https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/1020425/000168386320013174/f6885d1.htm
(MSSFX)
497 1 f6885d1.htm FORM 497
LITMAN GREGORY FUNDS TRUST
Supplement dated September 11, 2020
to Prospectus of the
Litman Gregory Funds Trust dated April 29, 2020, as supplemented
This supplement should be read in conjunction with the Prospectus dated April 29, 2020, as supplemented.
For all existing shareholders of the PartnerSelect Smaller Companies Fund (formerly, Litman Gregory Masters Smaller Companies Fund):
The Board of Trustees (the "Board") of the Litman Gregory Funds Trust (the "Trust" or the "Funds") has approved the tax-free reorganization of the PartnerSelect Smaller Companies Fund, a series of the Trust (the "Smaller Companies Fund"), into the PartnerSelect SBH Focused Small Value Fund, a series of the Trust (the "SBH Focused Small Value Fund") (the "Reorganization"). The Reorganization does not require the approval of the shareholders of the Smaller Companies Fund or the SBH Focused Small Value Fund.
The Reorganization was proposed because, among other things, the announced pending retirement of Dick Weiss, portfolio manager of the portion of the Smaller Companies Fund sub-advised by Wells Capital Management, Inc., and the decision by Litman Gregory Fund Advisors LLC (the "Adviser") to not recommend the continuation of the sub-advisory relationship with Wells absent Mr. Weiss as portfolio manager. The Board also considered the overall decline in assets in the Smaller Companies Fund from shareholder redemptions that has resulted in a corresponding increase in the Smaller Companies Fund's expense ratio. The Adviser has advised the Board that it is unlikely that the Smaller Companies Fund will increase in size significantly in the foreseeable future. The SBH Focused Small Value Fund and the Smaller Companies Fund have the same investment objective and similar investment strategies, policies, risks, and restrictions. Furthermore, the investment sub-advisor of the SBH Focused Small Value Fund also currently manages a portion of the Smaller Companies Fund, thus preserving access by shareholders to this manager's portfolio management expertise. The Adviser has committed to limit the expenses of the SBH Focused Small Value Fund at a level below that of the Smaller Companies Fund at least through April 30, 2022. By consolidating the two funds instead of liquidating the Smaller Companies Fund, the Adviser believes that significant realized and unrealized capital losses and capital loss carryforwards may be preserved for the benefit of shareholders while allowing individual shareholders to assess their particular tax situations and act in their own best interest with respect to the realization of capital gains or losses.
To effectuate the Reorganization, the Smaller Companies Fund will transfer all of its assets to the SBH Focused Small Value Fund, and the SBH Focused Small Value Fund will assume all of the liabilities of the Smaller Companies Fund. On the date of the closing of the Reorganization, shareholders of the Smaller Companies Fund will receive Institutional Class shares of the SBH Focused Small Value Fund equal in aggregate net asset value to the value of their shares of the Smaller Companies Fund, in exchange for their shares of the Smaller Companies Fund. The Reorganization is expected to be effective in October 2020.
Effective September 14, 2020, shares of the Smaller Companies Fund will no longer be offered to new shareholders, and shareholders holding Institutional Class shares of any other series of the Trust will not be able to exchange their shares for shares of the Smaller Companies Fund. Shareholders of the Smaller Companies Fund will be allowed to redeem their shares in the Fund until the closing of the Reorganization.
Please keep this Supplement with your Prospectus.

History casts doubts on the reign of the five biggest companies.
Not one of the 31 funds whose oldest share class has a Morningstar Analyst Rating of Gold or Silver had a combined Big Five stake equal to the Russell 1000 Growth Index’s, as of its most recent portfolio.
Three managers stand out for shying away from the Big Five. Akre Focus’ (AKRIX)...PRIMECAP Odyssey Growth’s (POGRX)...Morgan Stanley Institutional Growth (MSEQX)
Those who’d like to reduce their exposure don’t need to turn to value strategies or overseas stocks but can instead consider one of the three large-growth funds above.

https://morningstar.com/articles/1000639/3-top-growth-fund-managers-wary-of-the-big-5

Put on an April 21 20/25 combo spread for LORL. It has SPAC-like qualities and there may be some corporate actions/IPOs that drive the price higher. (This is a speculative trade, btw.)

Stocks fell sharply in volatile trading on Thursday as the rout in tech — the best-performing sector in the market — resumed after a one-day respite. The Dow Jones Industrial Average closed 405.89 points lower, or 1.45%, at 27,534.58. Earlier in the session, the Dow was up more than 200 points. The S&P 500 slid 1.8% to close at 3,339.19. The Nasdaq Composite dropped 2% to 10,919.59 after surging as much as 1.4%. It was the fourth decline in five sessions for the major averages.
Article
I will be very surprised if this elephant can’t be kept aloft until November. I think Congress and the Federal Reserve will be throwing money at it soon. However, I’ve been wrong before. The deadlock in DC may be so severe that it allows this rout to continue. If this slide is allowed to get much worse, likely nothing will be able to halt it. I say that I don’t invest according to my macro read. Generally that’s true. But sometimes my “compass“ gets a bit disturbed by my macro view. Hard to shut everything out. BTW - I like gold at least to November - probably much longer. What do others see in the months ahead for this market?

From what I read, September is the worst month of the year for stocks. Maybe it's just the cycle. Heck, tech stocks were and still are greatly over valued.
I've reduced risk over the past few months and the recent dip doesn't surprise. Gone from 50% equity in may to 40% now. That 10% difference went mainly into my "other " category according to Schwab. This crazy world worries me to much. Maybe, hopefully, after the election we'll start to see some stability.

You may remember Stan Druckenmiller as a frequent guest on the old PBS Nightly Business Report. This is not intended to represent a broad spectrum of opinion. Nor is his view anything new (unless you’ve been asleep in a cave for the past decade or longer). Since Wikipedia is a free encyclopedia, I’m quoting an amount of bio that under normal circumstances might be inappropriate.
“Druckenmiller began his financial career in 1977 as a management trainee at Pittsburgh National Bank. He became head of the bank's equity research group after one year. In 1981, he founded his own firm, Duquesne Capital Management. In 1985, he became a consultant to Dreyfus, splitting his time between Pittsburgh and New York, where he lived two days each week. He moved to Pittsburgh full-time in 1986, when he was named head of the Dreyfus Fund. As part of his agreement with Dreyfus, he also maintained management of Duquesne. In 1988, he was hired by George Soros to replace Victor Niederhoffer at Quantum Fund. He and Soros famously "broke the Bank of England" when they shorted British pound sterling in 1992, reputedly making more than $1 billion in profits, in an event known as Black Wednesday. They calculated that the Bank of England did not have enough foreign currency reserves with which to buy enough sterling to prop up the currency and that raising interest rates would be politically unsustainable. He left Soros in 2000 after taking large losses in technology stocks ...
According to Bloomberg News, on August 18, 2010, Druckenmiller announced the closing of his hedge fund "telling investors he'd been worn down by the stress of trying to maintain one of the best trading records in the industry while managing an 'enormous amount of capital.'" Duquesne Capital Management posts an average annual return of 30 percent without any money-losing year. His funds were down for about 5 percent when he announced his retirement in August. However, they had since erased the losses and closed with a small gain through successful bets that the market would rally in anticipation that the Federal Reserve would announce further "Quantitative Easing" to assist in reducing unemployment and avoid deflation.
According to The Wall Street Journal, on August 18, 2010, Druckenmiller "told clients that he's returning their money and ending his firm's 30-year run, citing the 'high emotional toll' of not performing up to his own expectations." He indicated it was not easy to make big profits while handling very large sums of money.“
Link to Wikipedia Article

Postscript: It’s clear to me that one of my money managers has absolutely no concept of what a bubble is. Dodge and Cox clearly doesn’t like to party. Their flagship domestic stock fund, DODGX, is down nearly 10% YTD. It’s negative over 1-year and has averaged just a sedate 5.2% annualized return over the past 3. “What mania?” they might be asking about now.
:)

I imagine that bubble machine will see use in many business schools across the nation. :)
I’d be curious what folks here been taking lately?

I can buy four ounces of fresh ginseng for 15 bucks at the local Korean grocery. Steam it for three hours. Then dry it in the Arizona heat. Bingo. You've got ren shen.

Don't get to excited , futures down as 9:30 P.M.
Derf

Your comment has me wondering how many people here are trading versus how many are buying some sort of fund for a longer time period

Awe shucks. I don’t see many playing a short game. A lot of us like to watch the action. Many, self included, have a predominately long term allocation we leave alone and also enjoy playing around the edges on occasion with maybe 5 or 10%. Frankly, when invested with fund houses in their products (as I am) there’s some pretty serious constraints on frequent trading - some stricter than others. So any attempt to do some fast in and out trading would hit a dead-end pretty fast.
In an era of practically 0 return on cash, and little more on intermediate investment grade paper, if you can pocket a bit extra now and than making some smart short term bets, I see nothing wrong with it. I mean ... a one-day gain of 3% on a stock, ETF or mutual fund is a whole lot more than what that cash would generate over several years.
I’m sure there are some traders here. Just don’t think it’s a substantial number.

Barcharts website has a screener that shows the top mutual funds for the last five days, as well as other periods of time. A separate search showed that MERFX and HMEAX were both positive for the last 5 days, while BALPX lost -.33% .

Reminds me of Hans & Fritz, pump me up !!! Skit from Sat. Night Live.
Try this with 65 year old , & see what results you get .
Yes I use it, Derf

Thanks, David for point us to this. Here’s Barron’s take : https://www.barrons.com/articles/climate-change-poses-a-major-risk-to-u-s-financial-system-warns-regulator-51599667397
“ The risks from climate change include damage to infrastructure, housing, crops, communities, and livelihoods, as well as to the value of financial assets, according to the report, which argues that systemic shocks related to climate change can undermine the financial health of banks and insurance markets.
It makes 53 recommendations, including that financial supervisors require bank and nonbank financial firms to address climate-related financial risks, that companies make meaningful disclosures about climate risk, and that U.S. and financial regulators provide clarity to confirm the appropriateness of making investment decisions using climate-related factors in retirement plans.”

Glanced at Bloomberg minute ago with volume off. Can’t stand the wall-to-wall ... politics, conspiracy, politics, conspiracy, politics, conspiracy ... crap any longer. Not that I don’t care. I’m voting with my wallet now and will be there at 8 AM election day.
Back to investing, what caused everything to jump around noon? Oil bounced up 4%. Gold +$15. Dow +600 points. Did one of the Fed members mention another transfusion of money printing or maybe buying more sub investment grade paper? Or maybe investing in equities? (I think they will eventually.) Or maybe Nancy and Mitch has lunch together and consumed too much alcohol?
The FVP people at the various fund houses will have a good time today if this rally holds. Asia was down sharply overnight.
Peace.

Strange pick for the writer to call himself Jessie Livermore.

In thinking about the limits of fiscal policy, we should not be lulled into complacency by the U.S. economy's recent lack of inflation. There is a limit, a point at which fiscal expansion would trigger an inflation that would only be controllable through the use of unacceptable interventions. We may not know where that limit is—whether it will come in to play at a Debt-to-GDP ratio of 150%, 200%, 250%, 500%, 1,000%, 2,000%, 100,000%, and so on. But we can be sure that it exists somewhere, right now, as we embark on an effort to explore it.

Gonna need more than a picnic basket on that journey.

Valuation acts in opposition to this process. If investors are sensitive to valuation, rising prices will reduce their desire to allocate to equities. But it's difficult for valuation to gain traction as a consideration in the current environment. The relevant value proposition that investors have to consider is an awkward proposition that pits positive-but-historically-depressed earnings yields in equities against zero yields in everything else. Rising equity valuations cannot easily shift the balance of that proposition for at least two reasons. First, equities can produce attractive returns even when purchased at elevated valuations, provided that they stay at those valuations—and in the current case, they very well might. Second, the alternative proposition—earning a negative real return for an indefinite period of time while others continue to make money--is simply unacceptable to many investors.
We refer to this logic as the logic of TINA—"There is No Alternative." The logic is sound, but it has limitations. Equities aren't going to rise to infinity—an earnings yield of zero--simply because the competition is yielding zero. As equities become more expensive, they become more "needy", more sensitive to declines in buyer enthusiasm. Their neediness and dependence on continued buyer enthusiasm increases their potential for inflicting losses.

I'm not sure this adds up to anything more than buying the dip. But I skipped over the jaw-breakers in the middle of the article.

The numbers for Tuesday, September 8
Dow 27501.42 -2.25%
Dow Transports 11081.05 -1.29%
Dow Utilities 798.61 -0.63%
S&P 500 3331.85 -2.78%
Nasdaq 10847.69 -4.11%
Nasdaq 100 11068.26 -4.77%
Russel 2000 1513.02 -1.45%
VIX Index 31.52 +2.5%
10 Year Gov't Yield 0.69 -4.78%
Spot Gold 1931.77 -0.1%
Spot Silver 26.66 -0.66%
GDX-Gold Miners 40.58 -0.69%
Crude Oil 36.95 -7.09%
Bloomberg is showing gold this evening priced at 1929. Hope that’s not an omen. :)

If you play with this chart:.......FLPSX,IJH,NAESX.....
https://stockcharts.com/freecharts/perf.php?FLPSX,IJH,NAESX
FLPSX performed well PRIOR to 2005 but after that, for the last 15 years, it has been an index hugger.

You may want to correct the embedded link to stockcharts, as I've done above.
That aside, the annual differences in performance between FLPSX and NAESX over the past 10 years, per M* are:
2010: -7.02% (FLPSX underperformed)
2011: 2.75%
2012: 0.45%
2013: -3.30%
2014: 0.29%
2015: 3.22%
2016: -9.39%
2017: 4.57%
2018: -1.32%
2019: -1.55%
2020 YTD: -2.61%
Portfolio Visualizer shows correlation dipping after 2014. Click on the Rolling Correlation tab for the graph showing this divergence.
https://www.portfoliovisualizer.com/asset-correlations?s=y&symbols=FLPSX,NAESX,IJH&startDate=01/01/2005&timePeriod=2&tradingDays=60&months=36
FWIW, M* classified FLPSX as midcap blend 2010-2013, and midcap value 2014 to the present.