Smidcap stocks are on fire. The Russell 2000 RUT, +0.55% is up over 19% this month compared to 10% for the S&P 500 index SPX, +0.24%.
Will it continue? This group has been beaten and battered for so long that many people simply doubt the move. But this is a big mistake. I don’t know about the next few days ahead, but smidcaps will continue to do well over the next year for the following five reasons.

Small and midcap stocks will keep rocketing higher for 5 big reasons

"PCI(CEF): 8.5%. YTD still at -10.1%"
To be fair, though, this is, I think, just price. It additionally picked up probably 8.5-9% in dividends.

Observations for one month as of 11/27/2020:
November was a great month for stocks and bond and interest rates were up. There were so many good performance monthly funds it was difficult to select just several.
Multi: Several did 2-3%.

Uncontrain/Nontrad: Several did over 2% for the month.
HY Munis: Several did over 2% for the month.
High Rated Bonds: Rates were up but several funds made over 1.5% for the month.
Bank loans: EIFAX +2.4%.
HY+EM: Both (FNMIX,HYG) over 3.5%.
Corp: PIGIX 1.9%.
SP500(SPY): 7.5%. VXUS(international): 11.6 is doing better than SPY for 1-3 months.
PCI(CEF): 8.5%. YTD still at -10.1%

My own portfolio
I started the month with IOFIX+JASVX (both securitized). In the middle of the month sold JASVX and bought NHMAX. The performance was so good in November that securitized fund performance lagged the best. It was another good month for me, I made about 2% and it was one of the strongest month.

@davidmoran, My understanding is a 401K has many attributes that a rollover IRA does not have. That said, a 401K that resides with an old employer can be transferred to a new employer's 401K plan. This may be advantageous if the new employer's plan has great investment choices (tax deductible at any income, employer match, higher contribution amounts, low fees, high rated investment choices, loan provisions). Also, if she were to separate service from the new employer (401K employer) anytime after 55 she could withdraw from her 401K plan penalty free (normally a -10% penalty). 401K plans may have important protections as well (from lawsuits, debtors, etc.)
A 401K can always be rollover over into rollover IRA, but it might worth boning up on the differences before she does.
401(k) vs. IRA: Reading the Difference
difference-between-401k-ira
rollovers-of-retirement-plan-and-ira-distributions
ira-vs-401k/
12-reasons-not-to-roll-your-401k-into-an-ira
legal-protection-401k-vs-ira

Very good interview! Thanks for posting! Another topic I need to dig into.
How does one invest in the 5 factors?
https://www.ishares.com/us/strategies/smart-beta-investing
What are the 5 factors?….
“Foundations of Factor Investing(https://www.investopedia.com/terms/f/factor-investing.asp)
Value
Value aims to capture excess returns from stocks that have low prices relative to their fundamental value. This is commonly tracked by price to book, price to earnings, dividends, and free cash flow.
Size
Historically, portfolios consisting of small-cap stocks exhibit greater returns than portfolios with just large-cap stocks. Investors can capture size by looking at the market capitalization of a stock.
Momentum
Stocks that have outperformed in the past tend to exhibit strong returns going forward. A momentum strategy is grounded in relative returns from three months to a one-year time frame.
Quality
Quality is defined by low debt, stable earnings, consistent asset growth, and strong corporate governance. Investors can identify quality stocks by using common financial metrics like a return to equity, debt to equity and earnings variability.
Volatility
Empirical research suggests that stocks with low volatility earn greater risk-adjusted returns than highly volatile assets. Measuring standard deviation from a one- to three-year time frame is a common method of capturing beta.
Certainly, there isn’t one ETF that would do all this. I assume you would need a number of funds and be prepared to rebalance & never lose faith (!).
Bee! You could look at commodity funds, such as PCRIX, however, as WABAC says - don’t bother. And that’s what Swedroe said.

@little5bee : All REITS or do you have a favorite ? A lot of people working from home now. I believe most will continue if given the chance,
Have a good weekend, Derf

The S&P 500 has generated excellent returns over the trailing 10 years.
However, its performance the preceding 10 years (11-27-2000 to 11-26-2010) was subpar.
Small Caps (IWM), REITs (VGSIX), International (VGTSX), Emerging Markets (VEIEX), and Investment-Grade Bonds (VBMFX) vastly outperformed the S&P 500 during this period. Link
The $1M question: How will these asset classes perform in the future?

@FD1000, go back a decade and notice what a difference that decade (2000-2010) made for the S&P 500 where it lost 20% of its total value (inflation adjusted). Then there were the nineties (1990-2000) were the S&P 500 grew 340% (inflation adjusted).
When you get on this roller coaster is as important as how long you ride it.

Unfortunately long term performance was off since 2010. The SP500 did better than the rest (SC=IWM, GLD, international=FSPSX, EM=EEM and REIT=VNQ) + had lower volatility and why I don't pay attention to historical returns and I'm never over diversified.
See 10 year (chart) of the above.

Christine Benz from Morningstar has also examined asset class correlations.
I believe this is her latest article on the subject.
The PDFs linked below depict historical asset class correlations over various time periods.
1 Yr
3 Yr
5 Yr
10 Yr
15 Yr

Maybe the following 1 and 3 years performance charts of SPY,AAPL,QQQ,BRK/A,JPM will convince you that Apple IS NOT another "blend—a blue chip stock ". If they don't I give up.

Strange but true. Figures (as I noted a few posts ago) are from Fidelity's "Key Statistics" page for the respective companies. The number represents "EPS Growth (Last 5 Years)".
AAPL is no slouch, but everything is relative. Quite a period indeed.
AAPL: 7.31%
PG: 10.14%
JPM: 15.17%
UNH: 20.25%
VZ: 13.95%
DIS: 8.04%
PFE: 15.27%
CMCSA: 12.08%
and the subject of this thread, BRK.A tops this collection at 32.74%.
(I post this as much to check my previous post as to make the figures concrete. It's always possible I could have made a mistake.)

>> ... based on 5-year EPS growth rates, it is growing more slowly than ... Procter & Gamble (PG), JPMorgan Chase (JPM), UnitedHealth (UNH), Verizon (VZ), Disney (DIS), Pfizer (PFE), and Comcast (CMCSA).
Hmm, a remarkable fact given my more recent analyses: '... compare Apple w/ say SP500, or w/ IVW, or indeed w/ QQQ, whether from two summers ago, from spring '17, from fall '16, from last Thanksgiving, or ytd, ... It still looks like all rock 'n' roll all the time.'
What a period this is, huh.

I wouldn't compare BRK.A to anything else.

I don't see any reason to own BRK.A
SPY beat it easily for 1-3-5-10 years and with lower voltility.

Okay.
Apple P/E = 35.6 (link)
You must have a reason in mind, some point you're trying to make, by presenting this figure in isolation. Whatever it is, the point isn't clear.
If it is to show that AAPL's P/E on Nov 25 is higher than the 33.19 P/E it had on Oct 30th, well, sure. It goes without saying that over a short period when the earnings denominator (a quarterly datum) doesn't change, P/E will move in proportion to price movements. And this month, most stock prices have been going up, so most P/E's have been going up. Nothing special here.
If the point is to hint that AAPL's P/E is high, whatever "high" means, context matters. Certainly 35+ is high relative to historical stock market averages. But relative to the current (Nov. 25) TTM S&P 500 P/E of 41.34, it is low. Not bargain basement low, but notably lower than the typical large cap stock.
https://www.wsj.com/market-data/stocks/peyields
https://www.wsj.com/market-data/quotes/AAPL
Apple earning are so huge and why it has so much cash and it's harder to show growth but it still shows it
Certainly Apple's earnings are growing year by year. Though based on 5 year EPS growth rates, it is growing more slowly than not only the other top 10 stocks in VUG (your choice of growth index), but more slowly than eight of the top 10 stocks in VTV, including BRK.A (okay, you don't like that one), Procter & Gamble (PG), JPMorgan Chase (JPM), UnitedHealth (UNH), Verizon (VZ), Disney (DIS), Pfizer (PFE), and Comcast (CMCSA).
Moderate, steady growth. Some people call that a blue chip. You choose to call it growth. Whatever.

I just checked Vanguard Tax-Managed Small Cap Fund (VTMSX).
Returns for the past month and three months are 14.35% and 17.57% respectively.
VTMSX was clobbered earlier this year (-32.24%, Q1 2020) but is now up 6.07% YTD.

Food for thought:

The Russell 2000 Index of small cap stocks is currently on pace for its best month ever. As of Tuesday afternoon, it’s now up more than 20% for the month of November. I looked at every double-digit return month for the Russell 2000 going back to 1979 and then calculated the total returns for the ensuing 1, 3 and 5 year periods to see how they performed after those wonderful months:

what-happens-to-small-caps-after-a-huge-monthly-gain/

full sabotage, much reduced funding availability
https://finance.yahoo.com/news/mnuchin-put-455-billion-funds-195143177.html
at whose behest? gosh, who could it be?

I wouldn't compare BRK.A to anything else. Nothing typical about it.
Apple P/E = 35.6 (link)
Apple earning are so huge and why it has so much cash and it's harder to show growth but it still shows it and why it's amazing.
I don't think that apple is just another blue chip.
BTW, personally, Apple is the only company I ever banned. I never bought any of their products and would never do it in the future based on Steve Jobs behavior toward his employees, friends and family and its ridiculous product prices but Apple is a fabulous company :-)

"And one could argue the planet’s environment itself though without human agency is a stakeholder. "
One has ...
Stone, Christopher D., Should Trees Have Standing - Towards Legal Rights for Natural Objects, Southern California Law Review 45 (1972): 450-501.
https://iseethics.files.wordpress.com/2013/02/stone-christopher-d-should-trees-have-standing.pdf
4 page book review (Fla. St. Law Review article):
https://ir.law.fsu.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1753&context=lr

All true, but I think it misses at least two points:

Yet in recent decades, Boeing — like so many American corporations — began shoveling money to investors and executives, while shortchanging its employees and cutting costs.

Schools teach, or at least they used to, that there are three sets of stakeholders in a company. The two mentioned here - the owners and the employees - and a third, the customers. Boeing shortchanged its customers by compromising safety, by hiding information, by marketing the MAX as something it was not.
The other missing point is that what Boeing and nearly all other companies have been doing is not maximizing shareholder value, but maximizing short term profits and share price at the expense of long term growth. The piece talks of being profit obsessed, but doesn't delve into how focusing on stock price often leads to lower profits in the long term.

Almost 80 percent of chief financial officers at 400 of America’s largest public companies say they would sacrifice a firm’s economic value to meet the quarter’s earnings expectations. ... (This dynamic backfired at Wells Fargo, where employees pressured to meet quarterly targets opened accounts without customers’ permission.)

https://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2016/12/short-term-thinking/511874/
https://hbr.org/2015/10/yes-short-termism-really-is-a-problem