somewhat OT, and you have get past the wack lede, but an interesting thing to know maybe for investing outside the US
https://humbledollar.com/2021/01/lost-abroad/

Methinks he doth protest too much. Foreign tax credits can be carried back one year and forward ten years, so he may not have lost his tax credit as much as he would like you to believe he did. I've carried forward and later used foreign tax credits.
Basically, you can't take a credit now for foreign taxes paid at a higher rate than your current overall (not marginal) US rate. For example, suppose you owe $10K in taxes on $100K of taxable income (10%). If $20K of that income was foreign, and you paid $3000 in foreign taxes (15%), you could take a credit now for $2000 (10%) and carry over the remaining $1000 to use in future years.
The way the IRS describes it is different but amounts to the same thing:

Your foreign tax credit cannot be more than your total U.S. tax liability ... multiplied by a fraction. The numerator of the fraction is your taxable income from sources outside the United States. The denominator is your total taxable income from U.S. and foreign sources.

More important than his self pity ("It all seemed very personal") is whether your mutual fund passes through foreign taxes to you. The way funds generally work is that they pay for expenses (management fees and yes, taxes) out of earnings and pay you the net earnings as divs. The income you see on your 1040 is the usually the net income.
But sometimes, even though you're only getting net divs, the funds pretend that you got extra income and it was you, not the fund, that paid those foreign taxes with that extra income. So you might have $500 in "real" dividends, but on your 1099 you see $550 in divs and $50 in foreign taxes paid.
The question is: which funds pass through foreign taxes to you? A fund must make an election to pass through the taxes. They can't do so unless "more than 50 percent of the value ... of [the fund's] assets at the close of the taxable year consists of stock or securities in foreign corporations." 26 U.S. Code § 853(a)(1)
Generally, global funds don't make this election because they either typically have less than 50% invested abroad or because their portfolio could be near 50% and they want to be clear to investors. (Currently, M* shows 46/246 large cap world stock funds with over 50% non-US stocks.)
Somewhat surprisingly (to me) a number of international funds also decide not to pass through foreign taxes.

Global stock funds can be a viable alternative to a combination of discrete domestic and foreign stock funds.
An investor will need to determine if the foreign asset allocation (often approx. 50%) is appropriate for their particular situation.
I recently considered investing in a global equity fund (looked at ARTRX, RPGEX, others) to reduce the number of funds in my portfolio. I decided to retain discrete domestic and foreign equity funds since this will allow greater control of the asset allocation. Also, periodic rebalancing between domestic and foreign equity funds may provide additional returns.

Jan 15th Episode:

Jan 8th Episode:

@Mark,
After selecting "Analyze Portfolios" scroll to the top of the PV page. At the top of PV page is a hyperlink called "link". If you select that hyperlink and then PV creates a unique URL that you can copy and paste. It is a bit long so editing it here in MFO is recommended.
Unedited Link:
https://portfoliovisualizer.com/backtest-portfolio?s=y&timePeriod=4&startYear=1985&firstMonth=1&endYear=2021&lastMonth=12&calendarAligned=true&includeYTD=false&initialAmount=10000&annualOperation=0&annualAdjustment=0&inflationAdjusted=true&annualPercentage=0.0&frequency=4&rebalanceType=1&absoluteDeviation=5.0&relativeDeviation=25.0&showYield=false&reinvestDividends=true&portfolioNames=false&portfolioName1=Portfolio+1&portfolioName2=Portfolio+2&portfolioName3=Portfolio+3&symbol1=VFINX&allocation1_1=100&symbol2=PRWCX&allocation2_2=100&symbol3=PRBLX&allocation3_3=100
Edited Version:
PV Link Here

Zweig cautions that these funds are as risky as story stocks and cites research that showed that thematic funds underperformed conventional funds over time by about 0.5% per month.

As may be, but you have to admit that it'll take a good long time for the ARK funds to devolve to meet that 'standard'; unless there is a HUGE swoon for pretty much everything over a couple of years. Not discounting what you're saying, but they DO have a substantial lead at this point...

Well shoot, the attempted link does not show the input values. Try this after you open the link.
1. Walk through the first 10 lines making your choices.
2. In the Portfolio Assets section enter PRWCX as your first ticker. Tab over and enter 100 in the first Portfolio column.
3. Enter VFINX as your second ticker. Tab over to the second Portfolio column and enter 100.
4. Finally enter PRBLX as your third ticker. Tab over to the third Portfolio column and enter 100.
5. Select Analyze Portfolios.

I assume that you are talking about this page: Backtest Portfolio Asset Allocation It's a way to back test the performance results of a real or hypothetical portfolio. At it's simplist it works as follows.
1) The first 10 lines are hopefully self-explanatory. Just make your selections. As noted above, if you choose to display income it will insert a new line for you to select whether you wish the dividends reinvested or not.
2. Portfolio Assets
A. Enter the ticker symbols of ETF's or Mutual funds of interest. For example you could compare a 10-year investment in PRWCX vs. VFINX vs. any other large cap blend fund ( I chose PRBLX).
B. I chose 3 separate portfolios each containing only a single fund (i.e. 100% of the assets). However you could put one-third in each or have a portfolio with a 50-50 split, however you want to split it up. The Portfolio value total must add up to 100%
3. Select Analyze Portfolios.
4. Here is a link to this example. If it works you can scroll around to see where the entry's were made and even substitute the funds and percentages. Give it a go.

The article highlights the thematic ETFs that ran the table last year, including those from the Ark shop. Zweig cautions that these funds are as risky as story stocks and cites research that showed that thematic funds underperformed conventional funds over time by about 0.5% per month.

HGGIX. Looking again, I see that it is very concentrated, with just 37 stock holdings. It is global, not foreign-only. But it is Large Growth. 36% is in the top 10 holdings. It's 54/44 in US/foreign. I'm putting money into it soon. One reason I like it is because the usual Amazon and Facebook and Apple do not prominently appear.

"The Story Behind the Market’s Hottest Funds"
By Jason Zweig
Jan. 15, 2021 10:00 am ET

This is a 5 year old thread, but still a timely topic. I'm in PRBLX (now PRILX) and have been very happy w/its stability, performance, and composition. They were one of the few funds to come out rather well during '08, all things considered.

@JonGaltIII. Agree. And that was the year (& 2015) when most funds struggled and a few were underwater.

@Jim0445 .... which fund are you referring to?

Exactly. https://www.marketwatch.com/story/feds-powell-downplays-risk-of-persistently-higher-inflation-11610649051?mod=home-page

Yeah, I know. Been kicking myself for taking a quick 5K profit and running. That's why I never post financial advice here. Anyone following my advice would likely come looking to kill me.

Anyone see the tonight's closing price of ASML?
Tonight's (1/14/21) closing price: $544.65

Yes, the fund dropped 60%, and yes it held mortgage bond insurance companies other than MBI. Yes, it was painful. But it wasn't that much worse than the typical LCV fund. Here's a chart for peak to trough of the fund 10/11/07 to 3/9/09.
It lost 61.34%. A LCV index fund (VVIAX) lost 58.97%. TAVFX did worse, sure. A lot worse? No. If you want to use the word "implode", it's the value side of the market that imploded. "Value trap" implies active stock selection, but passive management did just about as poorly. Whitman made some mistakes but he must have made a number of good calls as well to have come out average.
Meanwhile, TAVFX's cumulative 10-year returns are less than one-fifth the broad market's.
That's the post-Whitman era, which was my original point. He resigned as CIO over a decade ago, and as manager of TAVFX nine years ago. Without Whitman the fund has indeed turned in an absolutely abysmal performance - bottom 3% (though not quite as small as 1/5, closer to 1/3 as much total gain as that of the entire equity market). A whole lot worse on a relative basis than Whitman did before, during, and after the housing crisis.
Regarding the particular mortgage bond insurers it held between Oct 2007 and March 2009, does it really matter? In Oct 2007 MBI constituted 64% of these holdings. FWIW, Radian (which M* says was primarily in other businesses) constituted 27%. The rest was noise.
I recall that Whitman was involved in public disputes with another investor who was shorting that industry
From the NYTimes (repeating a link from above):

“MBIA is being victimized by an apparently well organized bear raid headed by William Ackman of Pershing Square Capital Management,” Mr. Whitman wrote.

Never underestimate the fund industry's ability to capitalize on any situation. From the prospectus:
The Index Provider then matches each company’s country of risk against that country’s “Democracy Score” assigned by The Economist Intelligence Unit Ltd.’s Democracy Index. A country’s Democracy Score can range from 0-10 and is a composite of sixty indicators, which are grouped into the following five categories:
1. Electoral process and pluralism
2. Civil liberties
3. The functioning of government
4. Political participation
5. Political culture

I thought bitcoin was all grown up as an investment and had cleaned up its act:
https://news.yahoo.com/exclusive-large-bitcoin-payments-to-rightwing-activists-a-month-before-capitol-riot-linked-to-foreign-account-181954668.html