Oil popped around 10% today. PRNEX (Nat. Resources / Energy heavy) was up 6%. But you’d still be deep underwater if you’d bought it start of year. Weird - but I read they were giving oil away for nothing only a couple weeks ago. It’s north of $30 now. Suspect that’s what they call a climatic market bottom. Another one that popped today was DODGX - up 5.32%. At first I thought maybe they’d consumed the vaccine, but than I remembered they’ve been overweight energy for the past year. Really - you never can tell. The recent action in oil suggests we should always remain fluid.

Perhaps it's the nature of my individual stock holdings, but they all went up significantly (except for BMY), but the volume was only about 75% of their 3 month average. A lack of conviction?

A read and a listen:
https://seekingalpha.com/article/4342416-what-hell-is-stock-market
https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/reasons-behind-rally-coming-inflation-cullen-roche

Interview with Harvard’s Reinhart and Rogoff.
Some excerpts:

The biggest positive productivity shock we’ve had over the last 40 years has been globalization together with technology. And I think if you take away the globalization, you probably take away some of the technology.
...you probably need a debt moratorium that’s fairly widespread for emerging markets and developing economies. As an analogy, the IMF or Chapter 11 bankruptcy is very good at dealing with a couple of countries or a couple of firms at a time. But just as the hospitals can’t handle all the Covid-19 patients showing up in the same week, neither can our bankruptcy system and neither can the international financial institutions
I indeed hope it is the G-20 and not just the G-19. China needs to be on board with debt relief. That’s a big issue. The largest official creditor by far is China. If China is not fully on board on granting debt relief, then the initiative is going to offer little or no relief. If the savings are just going to be used to repay debts to China, well, that would be a tragedy.
Do you see an inflationary surge at some point?
KR: We don’t know where we will come out. So the probability is, for the foreseeable future, we’ll have deflation. But at the end of this, I think we’re going to have experienced an extremely negative productivity shock with deglobalization. In terms of growth and productivity, they will be lasting negative shocks, and demand may come back. And then you have the many forces that have led to very low inflation maybe going into reverse, either because of deglobalization or because workers will strengthen their rights. The market sees essentially zero chance of ever having inflation again. And I think that’s very wrong.
BM: And what scars are left on economies once the pandemic passes?
CR: Some of the scars are on supply chains. I don’t think we’ll return to their precrisis normal. We’re going to see a lot of risk aversion. We’ll be more inward-looking, self-sufficient in medical supplies, self-sufficient in food.

Harvard’s Reinhart and Rogoff Say This Time Really Is Different:
harvard-s-financial-crisis-experts-this-time-really-is-different

@WABAC. In addition to the 48 periods that MultiSearch provides metrics and ratings across, it now provides return metrics and ratings by calendar year, which I find helpful from a consistency assessment basis, as discussed in Back To Basics.

@WABAC. It may be possible to pretty quickly implement a specific period for metrics only (lots of sites do that Yahoo, M*). The tricky part is the ratings for specific periods. That requires computing metrics for all funds in a desired category, plus accounting for outliers, before assigning ratings. Hopefully, just having more cycle periods will help provide screens across interesting market periods. And maybe instead of vanilla names like Full Cycle 5, we should call them GFC, CV-19, Tech Bubble, Black Monday, etc. Could also define more periods or cycles driven by asset classes other than SP500, like USBond (30 year bull ... and that might not be over!) or gold. Any periods come to mind? In any case, thanks for suggestion ... will noddle more on it.

@WABAC. The closest thing in MultiSearch right now that provides ratings to end dates other that current month are the full, up, and down cycle Display periods. There are 6 such cycles going back to 1960 (though honestly it looks like we called the current one prematurely ... using month ending SP500 levels). When we first did the cycles analysis, it was based on day ending returns. I may end up revising the cycle dates (and numbers) based on the original methodology.
Reference: Ten Market Cycles versus Mediocrity and Frustration, which simplified to 5 cycles, and A Presumptive Bear Ends an 11-Year Bull Run, which introduced the 6th.

I am a terrible stock picker. That's why I let mutual fund managers make those decisions for me. I am a disciplined saver. I put money in the hands of fund managers who have a track record of success and then I watch them very closely as stewards of my savings.
As an investor in their fund, my questioning their decisions is more about me attempting to understand their decision making (and their strategy). This helps me stay the course, especially during the downside of a market cycle.
Index funds have a different criteria for decision making than managed funds. A stock such as GE may seem, to a fund manager like Giroux, a great candidate for inclusion in his fund. The index (and the rules that govern the S&P 500 Index) may decide to exclude it based on it's inclusion / exclusion rules. This lead to two very different outcomes for the fund manager's fund. The managed fund either out performs the Index (if they were right) and under performs the index (if they were wrong).
I stopped trusting Berkowitz's decision making and sold out of FAIRX, but I first thoughtfully tried to question his decision making. I attempt to do this with all the managed funds I own because they all come with fund manager risk.
By the way, Bruce Berkowitz still has a few small pieces of real estate for sale:
/manhattan-townhouse-near-central-park-hits-market-at-23-million

Good morning, have place orders for buys: VDE, VONG, UNH, ITOT, SPY. New monies from 5/15 dividends and got paid last Fri.
Will sell 50% of BRK.B [Stocks perform same as Buffet's recent energy levels - maybe more idle past few years].
We are hopeful for summer recovery since covid-viral mortality/morbidity data has been limited [?bulls market favorable] the past few days [maybe curve flattening indeed is happening]. Maybe we will have slow/moderate economic recovery soon. We will see for sure in few weeks/months.
Bought for FBND, PCI PDI for Mama's retired portfolio.
Regards

It’s likely that the rich don’t even worry about RMDs because their wealth is not tied up in tax-deferred accounts
Well, some of the well to do. Then there are others ...

Romney’s personal financial summary, disclosed last August under federal election rules, shows that his IRA holds his most lucrative investments, which are stakes in partnerships run by Bain Capital. ...
Romney’s IRA produced income of $1.5 million to $8.5 million over 2010 and through August 12, 2011, according to his financial summary.

https://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-campaign-romney-ira/how-did-romneys-ira-grow-so-big-idUSTRE80N04E20120124

@JohnN recently started this thread that seems worth including here:
https://mutualfundobserver.com/discuss/discussion/56127/low-risk-vanguard-retirement-portfolio#latest

https://seekingalpha.com/article/4348188-low-risk-vanguard-retirement-portfolio
Low Risk Vanguard Retirement Portfolio
May 16, 2020 12:35 AM ETVBMFX, VEXPX, VFICX.
Investment portfolios with low volatility, low drawdowns and high returns can be constructed with Vanguard mutual funds.
From January 2003, a dual momentum strategy applied to a five-fund Vanguard portfolio would have produced a safe 5% annual withdrawal rate while achieving a 6.76% annual balance increase.
The strategy described in this article is suitable for conservative investors. It requires quarterly reallocation of funds and is robust with respect to its two parameter selections.

Sorta. Won’t need as much as normally pull out due to not being able to travel anywhere this summer (and who knows for how long?) - plus being gifted a $1200 check from Uncle Donald. Will pull partial RMD however to meet budget needs. And it’s always nice to leave the Roth untouched in any given year. I always move the anticipated budget needs into TRBUX (ultra short) far in advance and leave it under the tax-sheltered umbrella until actually needed. Made deferring some of the anticipated RMD super easy in this case. Good suggestion from @BenWP for those who might need to reclaim their RMD.

“... Let the money grow through the entire year.”

Catch did qualify that comment with “If one doesn't have a need for a RMD for current needs”. Otherwise I’d caution against leaving $$ you expect to need any time soon in the markets. They don’t always “grow”.
A thought: Fortunate are those “average” retirees who can subside beyond age 70.5 without having to tap even a small portion of their tax-sheltered investments. Having substantial non-deferred savings would be one reason not to need to rely on tax-deferred accounts. I searched for the % of Americans in retirement who subside w/o tapping tax-deferred assets, but couldn’t find an answer. Putting aside the substantial number who have no tax-shelter at all, I’d guess the number to be perhaps 10-15% who have one but don’t rely on it to fund living expenses - at least to some degree.

... with PRWCX, based on returns over the past 20 years, starting with a 4% initial withdrawal amount (inflation adjusted), and requiring the worst year to come first, one may have a 98% chance of surviving 30 years.

Superb number-crunching from @msf. Suspect he carries a slide-rule day and night. :)
Can’t help but wonder if it’s similarity possible to calculate the % chance that PRWCX will produce the same (or better) rate of return / drawdown assurance over those next 30 years as for the past 20? That aside, I would never bet against Giroux - though he’s already been at the helm 14 years and will be a bit grey-haired in 30 more.
Fans of PRWCX might be interested to know that even in the current dismal market it’s been consistently besting my stalwart benchmark fund, TRRIX. It is currently off only about 5% YTD compared to TRRIX’s 6% loss. That’s pretty amazing considering that longer term PRWCX is the more aggressive fund and usually outperforms TRRIX by a long shot. I suspect that speaks, in part, to the diminishing value / appeal of fixed-income investments.
My only suggestion would be that in the overall picture I think it more prudent to look at what a more diversified portfolio (focusing more on underlying assets) might generate long term than to focus on one or a handful of funds.

A minor point perhaps, but NYC beaches remain closed - Coney Island, Rockaway Beach, etc. The beach pictures shown are of New Jersey beaches.
Detailed NYC COVID-19 data and graphs:
https://www1.nyc.gov/site/doh/covid/covid-19-data.page
Keep in mind that aside from Rhode Island, NYS does more testing per capita than any other state and more than any other country outside of small countries like the the Falkland Islands and Luxembourg.
https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/country/us/
Even Trump knows that the more testing you do the more cases you "have" (report). It's like comparing Big Apples with Oranges (LA county 20,569 tests/1M pop., roughly half US average.) This is not to suggest that the NYC metropolitan area is not the most significant epicenter; just that one should understand the nature of the data at hand, whether for epidemics or fund metrics.

Here is how Old_Skeet is playing it.
I have two sleeves of equity income funds (one domestic and one global) which make up better than 15% of my portfolio plus what my hybrid funds hold. With this, I'm thinking that I've got, at least, somewhere around 50% in equity income type stocks within equities. As you may recall, I was a buyer of equity income funds during the recent stock market swoon and increased my allocation to them by 5%. In this way, I felt I'd get paid by collecting dividends during the anticipated stock market recovery over the next year, or so. My domestic equity income sleeve has a current yield of 3.72% while the global one has a yield of 2.53%. While this is short of the yield that my fixed income (4.52%) and hybrid income (3.75%) sleeves generate ... the equity income sleeves, I'm thinking, offer better capital appreciation opportunity. In looking back over the past ten year total returns for each sleeve the equity income sleeves had a total return in the 7% to 8% range while the income sleeves had a ten year total return in 5% to 6% range. And, if I had done nothing and kept the 5% in cash ... which I used to buy equity income ... (the best performing money market fund I have) had a ten year total return of 0.67%.
With this, I'm thinking it pays to buy the stock market pullbacks, corrections and the bear markets over just sitting in cash. My analysis and looking back using the above ten year total return performance percentages with a sum of $10,000 invested cash would have generated about $670.00 ... the income sleeves would have generated about $5,500 and equity income sleeves would have generated about $7,500. This does not take into account compounding. For a long term investor, such as myself, buy during a dip, pullback, correction, or bear market when stocks are oversold and you'll do better than the average. Buy above the average when stocks are overbought and your returns will be less than average over an extended period of time.

https://nypost.com/2020/05/16/people-flock-to-nyc-area-bars-beaches-as-quarantine-fatigue-intensifies/
People flock to NYC-area bars, beaches as ‘quarantine fatigue’ intensifies
They’re partying like it’s 2019.
/lockdown-weary New Yorkers ditched the distancing to get social instead this weekend — transforming parts of the Big Apple into a raucous, late-season Mardi Gras./
Folks in NY may have no remote, 2nd wave maybe deadly. We will find out in few weeks if ny curve indeed was flattened

https://www.cnbc.com/2020/05/16/kevin-oleary-talks-stock-market-etfs-as-economic-worries-mount.html
Here’s what’s driving stocks higher despite mounting economic worries: Kevin O’Leary
This is driving stocks higher despite mounting economic worries: Kevin O’Leary
Unprecedented demand for stocks.
That’s one major piece to the puzzle that is the current relationship between the U.S. stock market and the underlying economy, O’Shares ETFs Chairman and “Shark Tank” investor Kevin O’Leary told CNBC’s “ETF Edge” this week.

I sold 50% of brk.b, Warren maybe too old to do things now, may not be as vibrant as he once was, under performed compared to sp500 past few yrs so I pulled the plug. Even he recommended to buy sp500 during last speech
https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.fool.com/amp/investing/2020/05/16/its-1987-again-warren-buffett-berkshire-hathaway.aspx

Turns out he sold a boat load of his Goldman Sachs too, eighty-four percent.
Did Buffet not get the memo that you can't fight the Fed? I read his investment obituary at one of the popular websites this week.
"Rage against the dying of the light"