A young investor should be at 70/30, maybe even 80/20. I started investing in my late 30" and was at %100 stocks. After about 5 years I changed to about 85-90% stocks and only about 8 years prior to retirement I changed gradually but rapidly to more bonds when I was sure to hit my retirement date.

Not fantasyland huh? Consider these points:
1. 76 percent of Americans are living paycheck to paycheck
2. 62 percent of Americans have less than 1,000 dollars in their savings account
3. 65 percent of those 65 and older have less than $25,000 in retirement
4. 21 percent of all Americans have no savings account at all
5. 43 percent of American households spend more money than they make each month
6. Middle-class Americans today make up a minority of the population. In 1971, 61 percent of all Americans lived in middle-class households
7. In the last 14 years, median income of middle-class households declined by 4 percent
8. Median wealth for middle class households dropped by an astounding 28 percent between 2001 and 2013
9. Middle class take-home pay before expenses has plummeted to just 43 percent of gross pay, compared to 1970 when the middle class took home approximately 62 percent of all income
10. There are still 900,000 fewer middle-class jobs in America than there were when the last recession began
11. According to the Social Security Administration, 51 percent of all American workers make less than $30,000 a year
So yeah, I think saving $750/mo is out of reach for a large percentage of the US population.
More Here

The above report is from 2015. What happened to Median household income in the United States from 1990 to 2019? It went up very nicely from 2015 to 2019 under you know what president (link)
(link)

Let's say you have a $100,000 portfolio. On a given trading day, the numbers show an increase in value of $500. Within that portfolio is a small position in a stock that blew up and shows a 20% ($1,000) decline for the day.
Are you generally satisfied because you had an increase of 0.5% for the day? Or are you despondent over the stock that blew up? I fall in to the latter category, but it seems illogical. Can you relate? And is there a way to make myself be more rational?

Loss aversion and overrating (overvaluation) of loss, resulting in serious, meaning behavior-altering, flinching are long-studied in investing and elsewhere, so I dunno.
There are not many ways to make ourselves anything one way or the other, ways that work and stick, although painful aversion and strong-pleasure reward do sometimes, as we all know. (Dog training, etc.)
A drink might help, sure, or meditation, or insight-oriented psychotherapy, say, as with everything else in life. Education ('rational') helps with some, being eye-opening and all that, but usually by the time we're using words like despondent, it takes a combination of experiences. And even then.

Tomorrow (September 30) Price’s 40/60 conservative balanced fund TRRIX celebrates its 18th birthday. Since inception, Lipper shows the fund averaging 6.25% - not too far from the 7% figure being batted around here. That was than this is now? Think again. Over the past 5 years the return is even better - averaging 6.47%. Lipper
My own take (based on recollections) is that 7% was pretty easily attainable for a conservative investor in the 70s thru the 90s and up until roughly 5-10 years ago when bond yields began to scrape bottom - where they remain today.
It’s hard finding anything good on the subject. Google it and you’re apt to get a bunch of investment advertisements promising to bring you remarkable returns. Sure! I’m linking an article from The Motley Fool I think does a decent job on the 7% subject. Fool

Mrs. Ruffles has a fairly small (<$7.5k) inherited IRA at Fido from which she has to take an even smaller RMD (at least in the years when they’re required). Except for the RMDs, it hasn’t been touched since she inherited it and is all in FMAGX (probably originally from the Peter Lynch era). I’d like to move it into one fund that won’t have such massive potential drawdowns. With this size, I don’t think it’s worth working with too many moving parts though I’ve put three years of RMD money into a cash equivalent.
I’ve been considering JABAX, BALFX, VLAAX which are all NTF at Fido. Any comments or other suggestions?

Not fantasyland huh? Consider these points:
1. 76 percent of Americans are living paycheck to paycheck
2. 62 percent of Americans have less than 1,000 dollars in their savings account
3. 65 percent of those 65 and older have less than $25,000 in retirement
4. 21 percent of all Americans have no savings account at all
5. 43 percent of American households spend more money than they make each month
6. Middle-class Americans today make up a minority of the population. In 1971, 61 percent of all Americans lived in middle-class households
7. In the last 14 years, median income of middle-class households declined by 4 percent
8. Median wealth for middle class households dropped by an astounding 28 percent between 2001 and 2013
9. Middle class take-home pay before expenses has plummeted to just 43 percent of gross pay, compared to 1970 when the middle class took home approximately 62 percent of all income
10. There are still 900,000 fewer middle-class jobs in America than there were when the last recession began
11. According to the Social Security Administration, 51 percent of all American workers make less than $30,000 a year
So yeah, I think saving $750/mo is out of reach for a large percentage of the US population.
More Here

All of the quick departures are alarming. I'm babysitting some money for someone else, and part of it --- 10% of their total--- is in MAPIX. So far, its fund managers remain at the helm. I've re-read the M* analysis of the fund, dated in August. They love it. Best thing since sliced bread! Should we remain, or clear out? I'm pretty impressed by the numbers, too...

I'm not super impressed with Morningstar assessments. For example, analysts or co pms can leave funds and they somehow always seem to think that since the head/lead pm is still there, everything is fine. Quite often, its the underlings that do much of the grunt and analytics. And they never seem to hit on the qualitative stuff (why people left). But I digress.
I looked at MAPIX earlier this year. Performance had struggled a bit over the last 12 months. IIRC, the 3-year return number was below the benchmark, which shocked me. It's since recovered some, but compared to other active funds in that category, Columbia Pacific Asia (USPAX) and Fidelity Pacific Basin (FPBFX) have superior return numbers for 1, 3 and 5 year trailing. I went with FPBFX as the return numbers were better and the expense ratio was 97 bps vs MAPIX 102 bps.

I don't think it's really fantasyland. It just gives you an overall feel for the numbers.
But yes, $750 a month is a lot. And 20 years is a long time. And 7% is a good return. That's a lot of consistency and discipline. And a lot of work, if the invested money was earned from a job or business.
I guess $390K is better to have than not to have, but I would have hoped to see a larger sum. Gives you some idea how much money we are talking about when we talk about millions. By my nature I'm an investor and a slow builder, but maybe we're chumps.

Let's say you have a $100,000 portfolio. On a given trading day, the numbers show an increase in value of $500. Within that portfolio is a small position in a stock that blew up and shows a 20% ($1,000) decline for the day.
Are you generally satisfied because you had an increase of 0.5% for the day? Or are you despondent over the stock that blew up? I fall in to the latter category, but it seems illogical. Can you relate? And is there a way to make myself be more rational?

Good morning @hank : "One thing I like at Max Funds is the maximum 1-year loss they envision. Worst case scenario for sure. Where it’s helpful to me is in looking for / comparing relatively ”safe” funds to meet a certain portfolio need. "
Is there facts as to how close they come to ringing that bell, so to speak ? Is there a look back section ?
Stay Safe, Derf

Hi Derf - They claim some kind of “proprietary” system I think. (Doesn’t everyone? :)) My understanding is it’s run by Max Ferris who has appeared often on Fox as a financial / investment commentator. I don’t know if he still does. Never cared for Fox’s financial programming - but recall him being one of the better ones among the bunch.
I just ran a few lower risk funds through MaxFunds and - yikes - they really derate them (is that a word?). RPSIX comes in with a WCS (worst case scenario) of -40%. A favorite of mine, TRRIX weighs in at -45%. And Price’s venerable (and conservative) PRFDX scores a wopping -70% WCS.
Maybe ol’ Max knows something about the coming cliff? Or maybe he needs to change his whisky brand. I really don’t know.
To answer your question, @Derf - There’s no “look back section.” I can, however, appreciate and agree with their relative risk assessment of the 3 funds just cited, having owned all of them at one time or another. But the depth to which each might fall seems to me a bit exaggerated.
Regards

The difference arises from the payment at the beginning or the end of the month. I changed the HP-12C to "beg" and I received $392.974.05 The calculator was set to "end", my total is $390,695 (rounded).

I love these fantasyland hypothetical scenarios that presume that A. most Americans have $750 extra a month to stash in the stock market and B. that the stock market's past returns will be the same in the future. Depending on which study you believe, on the low end, 40% of Americans have less than $1,000 in liquid assets to invest: https://bankrate.com/banking/savings/financial-security-january-2020/
But more importantly, who can say with any honesty what the next 20 years of stock performance will bring? No one.

This calculator says $392,974.05
https://www.buyupside.com/calculators/recurringinvestmentcalculatordec07.htm
Don't know where the difference comes in.

@FD1000; I'm guessing you bought in around 3/25/20 ?
Derf

Nope, I sold over 90% at the end of 02/2020 and the rest days later.
Made several good trades with QQQ+PCI in 03/2020.
Start investing back in bond funds to over 99+% in 04/2020.
I had a huge % in GWMEX for several months. I owned IOFIX only in the last several weeks.
I wish I was brave enough to buy IOFIX on 3/25/2020. It made over 50% since then.

Increasing access to high-quality education.
Sure, I want even more:
I think that all employees should get better benefits + treatment. CEOs should make much less.
If we're already going there, health care and high education should be cheaper. Please find me these great cheap doctors and universities.
It's funny, the more we try to improve the above the worse it gets under both Dems and GOP.
1) Our school level got worse in the last 20 years.
2) CEOs are making 250-300 times their average employees while they used to make about 30 times in the 80"
3) Healthcare got a lot more expensive since Obama care.
4) The gap got bigger too. Many STEM jobs increase pay more than inflation but lower paying jobs did not + many don't get benefits.

@FD1000; I'm guessing you bought in around 3/25/20 ?
Derf

MaxFunds is too generic instead of looking at risk/reward as the best measure of funds. MFO is a fantastic source too.
Easy example: VWENX(98 by MF) vs PRWCX(83 by MF) in the last 10 years (link)
VWENX has a bit lower SD but PRWCX is beter for the following: performance was at 2+% annually, Worse+Best year, Sharpe+Sortino.
===============
What are my 5 or 6 largest holdings?
As a trader I use only 2-3 funds and now I have a big % in IOFIX and smaller % in JASVX+NHMAX. I could change it any week or stay with it for weeks.

@Gary1952: I’ve ferreted out for you the essential points in the Mester quotation. Here’s what she said:
Mester’s Overarching Thesis: “Opportunity and inclusion are important for achieving a strong economy”
How Mester thinks the “policymakers” can assist in meeting the need implicit in her thesis:
1. Increasing access to high-quality education.
2. Helping all households gain access to high speed internet.
3. Eliminating systemic inequities in access to credit and financial services.
Do you disagree with Mester’s thesis or with one of her three recommendations? I’m confused. I did not take her suggestion for “increasing access to high quality education“ as an indictment of our secondary schools. I thought she was referring to some kind of post-secondary assistance (subsidies, grants, scholarships, direct aid to universities, etc.) so kids from less well-off familires could enjoy the same high quality post-secondary education that kids from wealthier families do. Her second recommendation (access to high speed internet), however, is intrinsically linked to quality of education across all levels - including K-12.
In today’s modern economy, without some form of post-secondary education kids are at a severe disadvantage (and Mester sees this impacting American competitiveness globally). Post-secondary education need not be college, but study after study has confirmed that lifetime earnings correspond closely with years of college completed. And college is expensive. “... the average cost of college for the 2017–2018 school year was $20,770 for public schools (in-state) and $46,950 for nonprofit private schools, only including tuition, fees, and room and board.” Source
So, to your point, I saw nothing in Mester’s speech about “bad teachers” or mandatory school attendance laws not being enforced. Seems to me you tossed out some dubious red herrings to distract attention away from what she really said.

@Gary1952
My home town, the history that places your question into the real world.
https://hechingerreport.org/anonymous-town-model-desegregation-civil-rights-era/

While I'm a fan of using standardized periods (e.g. calendar years) for comparing funds because it prevents cherry picking, when it comes to looking at one fund's performance cherry picking may be what one wants. For example, one disregards year (and often month) boundaries when looking at max drawdowns.
With that in mind, AKREX lost 9½% in the year spanning Feb 11, 2015 to Feb 11, 2016 roughly matching the S&P 500. FWIW, CPOAX lost 16¾% over the same 365 days.
M* chart.
Also, as I've said before, an unusually hot (or cold) few months for a fund can make not only its past year performance look great (or lousy), but can also skew 3, 5, and sometimes even 10 year figures.
For example, if we back up just six months, and look at the ten year period between March 19, 2010 and March 18, 2020, we see that AKREX outperformed CPOAX. Similar result if we stick to calendar years (2010-2019). The 10 year comparison is skewed by a few months of hot performance by CPOAX.
M* 10 year chart (ending March 18, 2020; cherry picked to filter out impact of latest hot streak)
M* 10 year chart (2010-2019)

I like MaxFunds, and it's one of my go to resources. The problem here is that AKREX is being compared to funds that are riding 80% plus gains ytd on the backs of shopify, zoom and the like. That usually ends very badly. I'll take my "average" of plus 17%/year over the last decade with no down years and an SD under 12 for AKREX as compared to say CPOAX -- yes it has a 10 year average of 22.8, but with an SD 0f 19.51, including two down years. It does wonders when a fund is up 85% ytd!