Vanguard Customer Service sucks. Historically. I suffer them because I consider them safe and use their funds for indexing.
Oh and another thing. They sense of "rounding" is illogical regarding how many shares they give you for whatever price even when you are investing nice whole $ amounts e.g. $1000.
You want customer service, my top pick amongst the "big guys" is Fidelity. Schwab comes next (while it hasn't yet translated over to TD Ameritrade).
PS - If you think Vanguard is bad, you haven't experienced E*Trade (now Morgan Stanley) or Merrill Lynch (barf), TIAA-CREF (someone just shoot me)

Here are notes related to my 2019 account transfer to Vanguard.
Changes may have been implemented since then...
Will I pay any fees for my transfer?
Vanguard doesn't charge any transfer fees. However, you'll need to contact your current financial firm to see if it charges transfer fees for closing an account.
If you want to move money from a CD (certificate of deposit) that's held in a bank account and the CD hasn't yet reached its maturity date, check with your firm to see if you'll be charged any withdrawal fees or penalties. Bank CDs will be liquidated at the time of the transfer to a Vanguard account.
Is there any paperwork I need to fill out?
Many large financial firms are enrolled in the Automated Customer Account Transfer Service known as ACAT (or a similar service). The majority of ACAT transfers can be completed entirely online, with assets sent to Vanguard electronically. Some cases, such as partial transfers and changes of ownership (e.g., a joint account to an individual account) may require paperwork. If forms are required, we can prefill some of the information for you.
Some asset transfers require a Medallion signature guarantee from a bank or another financial institution. A bank officer, trust company, or member firm of the U.S. stock exchange can grant this service. (Notary publics can't provide it.) If the firm you're transferring from requires a signature guarantee, check with your bank or a financial institution near you to see if they'll provide this service.
How long will the transfer take?
The fastest transfers take approximately 7 business days. They occur when firms are enrolled in the Automated Customer Account Transfer Service known as ACAT (or a similar service), when assets are moved "in kind" (or "as is"), and when the owner's name is identical on the "to" and "from" accounts. When assets are moved "in kind," it means there's no selling or buying involved, and no gain or loss is recognized as a tax consequence.
A firm that doesn't provide automated transfers may have you fill out paperwork and will send us a check once it receives your documents in good order. This may take 4 to 6 weeks.
Assets held in a money market fund are cashed out before they're moved to the money market settlement fund in your Vanguard account, so they may arrive after your other assets.
Many brokerage CDs (certificates of deposit), limited partnerships, hedge funds, and low-priced securities can't be transferred in kind. If you hold any of these investment in your account, we may contact you to discuss your options.

Full Episode Oct 30, 2021:

My TDA accounts are grandfathered for a commission rate of just $15 to purchase non-NTF mutual funds such as Dodge and Cox or Vanguard. I'm waiting to see if Schwab honors that rate. (I suspect that I would lose that benefit if I transferred my TDA accounts to Schwab before the integration.)

@Mark. Thanks much for the excerpts! And I agree with your explanation.
1st paragraph is accurate in that during normal times an overheated equity market (and economy) are likely to invoke Fed tightening. Eventually (late in the tightening cycle) the market cools off. Than, as the economy cools, the Fed lowers rates in hopes of reigniting growth. That’s a normal cycle. The question remains as to whether the present (as well as the past decade or two) represent “normal”.
2nd paragraph seems an accurate summary of the Fed’s position as they have relayed it through various means (press conferences, meetings’ minutes, statements). No quarrel here. That’s what they’ve said.
Than comes the following inference: “Given this data and the fact that the overall market has shown to perform best when rates are stable, it appears likely that stocks can do considerably well until then." Here, we’re dealing in the realm of probability.
I have no crystal ball. If we’re in normal times, and if the Fed acts going forward in the way it has indicated it will, and if probabilities based on past patterns hold true …. off to the races!

From the article:
"The tables show the stock market as a whole did best when rates were steady, as contrasted with what you might expect, with an average annualized return of 26.73% during four such periods. Surprisingly, it did the worst when rates were falling with an average annualized return of -3.72, and with an average annualized return of 10.89 when rates were rising!"
Equal's - by the time the Fed reacts, raising or lowering, the results have already been generally cooked in.
Implications for Investors
"Right now, even though the Fed is highly likely to quite soon begin phasing out its bond purchases, called quantitative easing, that is not the same as actually raising rates. Since the Fed Chairman has repeatedly stated the Fed is not expected to raise rates until those purchases have ended sometime later next year, we can assume that rates will remain stable until then, as they have been since the last series of cuts ended on March 15, 2020. Given this data and the fact that the overall market has shown to perform best when rates are stable, it appears likely that stocks can do considerably well until then."

According to the Oct 21, 2021 issue of "Investment News," Schwab hopes to move the individual T.D. Ameritrade accounts into Schwab by "the second half of 2023." That's still around two years away!
I had expected it would be faster.

RPHYX of course now closed.
Here's the August 24, 2021 supplement to the fund prospectus:

August 27, 2021 (the "Revised Closing Date") ...
After the Revised Closing Date, the following eligible investors may also open new accounts:
· New shareholders may open Fund accounts and purchase shares directly from the Fund (i.e. not through a financial intermediary).
· Any trustee of RiverPark Funds Trust, or employee of RiverPark Advisors, LLC or Cohanzick Management, LLC, or an investor who is an immediate family member of any of these individuals.

https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/1494928/000139834421016711/fp0068207_497.htm

reserving the right to reject orders exceeding ...
You were given imprecise information. Fidelity, like most fund sponsors, puts in boilerplate allowing them to reject any purchase, including a purchase via an exchange if they feel it would disrupt the fund. But not sell orders. If they did, the funds would no longer be classified as OEFs.

An open-end fund is required by law to redeem its securities on demand

https://www.sec.gov/rules/proposed/2015/33-9922.pdf
Based on the purchase dollar limit you were given for FCNTX, and the limit that I actually hit on a very new and very small Fidelity fund, it looks like Fidelity sets its fund limits at 0.1% of AUM. (M* shows FCNTX as having $139.5B, or roughly 1,000x the purchase limit.)
Regarding redemption in-kind, Fidelity (or any fund company) would distribute securities owned by the fund. Obviously if the fund were to sell some securities just to purchase other ones to hand you, it might as well hand you the cash since that would be no more disruptive.
As it constitutes 10.65% of the fund's portfolio, I'd expect you to get a ton of FB.
According to the latest semiannual statement, Fidelity Contra redeemed 293,065 FCNKX shares in kind, worth $5,071.454. It does happen.

I transferred my Roth IRA from Fidelity to Vanguard in 2019.
The first three comments listed in the link below provide details.
Link

It remains interesting. Turns out the prospectus, like most, has, or is officially reported to have, vague language about reserving the right to reject orders exceeding yada yada ...
without any figure given, said the rep.
He added that the current limit for FCNTX is $138M or something. (Coincidence that you mentioned it.)
This from the 'back desk', he said.
I was attempting 1/276 of that.
Minor irony is that on yet another day of a rising market, if I had put in my FMSDX order for a dollar under the half-mil, it would have gone through fine even as the actual sale amount would turn out to have been nontrivially >$0.5M.
Now, I am willing to believe that if you were an FAIRX or CGMFX (cheapshot examples) shareholder and sold several millions it might well take some time to settle to you.
I love the line about in-kind --- Fido are going to put a ton of VGIT or BSV into your account in lieu of cash ?
The rep did suggest next time (go, bull, next week!) to call them directly or use chat.fidelity.com ....

I have duplicate holdings at a different brokerage and wanted to consolidate them with those at Vanguard. I tried to initiate partial account transfer online at Vanguard. The first thing it asked was the other brokerage account username and password with a note that this information will be used by a third party to initiate the transfer but that Vanguard will not keep that information. I can trust Vanguard but not a third party I never did business with.
Has anybody transferred assets to Vanguard brokerage recently and what was your experience?
P.S.: I tried to reach their onboarding department by phone for the past two days and after an hour plus on the phone I received a voice mail one day and the other day it got disconnected.
I transferred assets from Vanguard to another brokerage a few clicks in a 1 minute. I thought Vanguard might have a similar, simpler process to receive assets.

I don't believe that funds can outright reject redemption orders (though they can postpone orders as was done in Sept 2001 when the markets were shut down). However, funds can place restrictions that might trigger on large orders. It is easy to imagine that such atypical transactions could not be processed online.
From the prospectus of FCNTX:

payment of redemption proceeds may take longer than the time a fund typically expects and may take up to seven days from the date of receipt of the redemption order as permitted by applicable law.
...
a fund reserves the right to pay part or all of your redemption proceeds in readily marketable securities instead of cash (redemption in-kind). Redemption in-kind proceeds will typically be made by delivering the selected securities to the redeeming shareholder within seven days after the receipt of the redemption order in proper form by a fund.

It would be interesting to know what the stumbling block was.

Agree AndyJ...great idea sharing as always!!1 It's just great to get different perspectives and research products you never looked at before.

Some here enjoy Krugman's thoughts, and today he qualifies the above:
It’s been a troubled few months on the economic front. Inflation has soared to a 28-year high. Supermarket shelves are bare, and gas stations closed. Good luck if you’re having problems with your home heating system: Replacing your boiler, which normally takes 48 hours, now takes two or three months. President Biden really is messing up, isn’t he?
Oh, wait. That inflation record was set not in America but in Germany. Stories about food and gasoline shortages are coming from Britain. The boiler replacement crisis seems to be hitting France especially hard.
And one major driver of recent inflation, in America and everywhere else, has been a spike in energy prices — prices that are set in world markets, on which any one country, even the United States, has limited influence. Donald Trump has been claiming that if he were president, gas would be below $2 a gallon. How exactly does he imagine he could achieve that, when oil is traded globally and America accounts for only about a fifth of the world’s oil consumption?
In other words, the problems that have been crimping recovery from the pandemic recession seem, by and large, to be global rather than local. That’s not to say that national policies are playing no role. For example, Britain’s woes are partly the result of a shortage of truck drivers, which in turn has a lot to do with the exodus of foreign workers after Brexit. But the fact that everyone seems to be having similar problems tells us that policy is playing less of a role than many people seem to think. And it does raise the question of what, if anything, the United States should be doing differently.
So why does the whole world seem to be running on empty?
Many observers have been drawing parallels with the stagflation of the 1970s. But so far, at least, what we’re experiencing doesn’t look much like that. Most economies have been growing, not shrinking; unemployment has been falling, not rising. While there have been some supply disruptions — Chinese ports have suffered closures as a result of Covid outbreaks, in March a fire at a Japanese factory that supplies many of the semiconductor chips used in cars around the world hit auto production, and so on — these disruptions aren’t the main story.
Probably the best parallel is not with 1974 or 1979 but with the Korean War, when inflation spiked, hitting almost 10 percent at an annual rate, because supply couldn’t keep up with surging demand.
Is demand really all that high? Real final sales (purchases for consumption or investment) in the United States hit a record high but are roughly back to the prepandemic trend. However, the composition of demand has changed. During the worst of the pandemic, people were unable or unwilling to consume services like restaurant meals, and they compensated by buying more stuff — consumer durables like cars, household appliances and electronics. At their peak, purchases of durable goods were an astonishing 34 percent above prepandemic levels; they’ve come down some but are still very high. Something similar seems to have happened around the world.
Meanwhile, supply has been constrained not just by clogged ports and chip shortages but also by the Great Resignation, the apparent reluctance of many workers to return to their old jobs. Like inflation and shortages of goods, this is an international phenomenon. Reports from Britain, in particular, sound remarkably like those from the United States: Large numbers of workers, especially older workers, appear to have chosen to stay at home and perhaps retire early after having been forced off their jobs by Covid-19.
While the problems may be global, the political fallout is local: Shortages and inflation are clearly hurting Biden’s approval rating. But what could or should U.S. policymakers be doing differently?
As I’ve already suggested, energy prices are largely out of U.S. control.
A few months ago, there were widespread claims that enhanced unemployment benefits were discouraging workers from accepting jobs. Many states rushed to cancel these benefits even before they expired at a national level in early September. But there has been no visible positive effect on labor supply.
Should current shortages inspire caution about Democratic spending plans? No. At this point, the Build Back Better agenda, if it happens at all, will amount to only about 0.6 percent of G.D.P. over the next decade, largely paid for by tax increases. It won’t be a significant inflationary force; if anything, more spending on infrastructure would help alleviate inflationary pressures over time.
Other things might help. I’ve argued in the past that vaccine mandates, by making Americans feel safer about going to work and buying services rather than goods, could play a role in unclogging supply chains.
What’s left? If inflation really starts to look as if it’s getting embedded in the economy, the Federal Reserve should head it off by tightening policy, eventually by raising interest rates. It’s important to realize, however, that raising rates too soon could turn out to be a big mistake, since the Fed won’t have much room to cut rates if demand weakens.
The most important point, however, may be not to overreact to current events. The fact that shortages and inflation are happening around the world is actually an indication that national policies aren’t the main cause of the problems. They are, instead, largely inevitable as economies try to restart after the epic disruptions caused by Covid-19. It will take time to sort things out — more time than most people, myself included, expected. But a frantic attempt to restore the status quo on inflation would do more harm than good.

@Mark: Did you get any important “take-aways” from the most recent newsletter you might distill for us?
I got this far and than they wanted me to setup a free account: “A Steady Fed Suggests Further Gains In The Overall Stock Market”
That’s been the conventional wisdom for a long time now. Money is / has been cheap (since 2008). We could play some games with that widely held belief by plugging in various possible scenarios
1. Rates stay low indefinitely and stocks go up forever.
2. Rates fall even further (below 0) and the Fed begins buying up equities to “protect” investors, 401-Ks and the like. The stock market goes even higher - forever.
3. Inflation soars. Rates stay low. The stock market continues to rise - but your market “winnings” buy substantially less. (This may not persist for long, as debtors would fare better during prolonged high inflation than the wealthier individuals / corporations who lent the money.)
4. Inflation soars. Rates rise steeply. Stocks tumble.

Oakmark
https://oakmark.com/news-insights/2021-fund-capital-gain-distribution-estimates/

No deductions. None. And I assume the tax applies to all income. For all taxpayers including businesses, which is the subject of this thread.
So we eliminate the deduction that mutual funds get for passing through their earnings to investors. Make no mistake, that's a deduction that they get now. See IRC 26 USC § 852, that talks about "the deduction for dividends paid", including "capital gain dividends". Mutual funds will be taxed on their earnings.
And we eliminate the IRA deduction. That's an "above the line" deduction rather than an itemized deduction, but a deduction is a deduction. We want to keep things simple. Obviously HSA, FSA, 401k deductions, and so forth also get tossed.
And income is income, no special cases there either. In the above cited 26 USC § 852 is §852(b)(6). That excludes certain sales of appreciated property from being counted as income. Of course that special treatment has to go in pursuit of simplicity and fairness. That's the exclusion that enables ETFs to spin off capital gains without them being taxed. So now we tax the ETF in-kind transactions like all other income.
Regarding the suggested tax regimen generally, Milton Friedman was more considerate of the poor. In 1962 he proposed what he called a negative income tax. The amount paid on zero income would be negative, and taxes increased (at a flat rate) as one's income increased.
https://www.nytimes.com/2006/11/23/business/23scene.html
https://mitsloan.mit.edu/ideas-made-to-matter/negative-income-tax-explained

15% on all forms for income (wages, cap gains, rents, interest, etc.) with zero deductions. None. Give every person (including corporations) a $25,000 personal exemption. This would mean a family of four wouldn't start paying taxes until they hit $100,000. Very easy - just pay at the window.
rono

Nice. I would add a deduction (childcare credit for working parents) or stay at home credit for parents with kids under 5 years of age. If you choose to stay home, a credit. SS and Medicare deductions worked into that credit to recognize that staying at home raising kids is a job. Stay at home requirement - both the child and the parent participant in Pre-K /Adult Training offered in the same facility.
Corporations and small businesses offer a paid / government supported entry level work program for graduating parents. This offers offers full-time pay of $50K / year.
Which leads me to the question of how do we get a handle the welfare side of government programs? Can this be simplified as well?

Howdy folks,
Right now, the dems are imploding in DC proving the adage, that the democrats are stupid and the republicans are mean. Being a 3rd term elected republican, I take it further to state that most republicans are dirty old white men who are racist sexist religinazi creeps that should even be allowed in public off leash and without a handler.
As for taxes, rono rolls out his solution. 15% on all forms for income (wages, cap gains, rents, interest, etc.) with zero deductions. None. Give every person (including corporations) a $25,000 personal exemption. This would mean a family of four wouldn't start paying taxes until they hit $100,000. Very easy - just pay at the window.
and so it goes,
peace and keep wearing the damn mask,
rono