@a2z,
Do you set a target allocation (let's say 2% - 5%) to gold and then rebalance to target periodically?
Thanks!

Answers from AI just depend on which websites they choose to scrape. Perhaps their mood has something to do with it. I got different answers than @equalizer did.
I asked Bing for "5 picks for Roth for next 20 years" and got SPTM, VPMCX, JEPI, RQI, and IBIT.
Google Gemini was coy until I asked for "5 fund picks for Roth for next 20 years." It came up with VTI, VXUS, VUG, FSELX, and SCHD.
Gemini won't tell you which web sites it scrapes for its wisdom. But if you ask the AI available at google search, it will. You can find them to the right. It also gave me a slightly different answer: VTI, VXUS, BND, VNQ, and any target date fund at 2045 or 2050.
I basically got the same sort of diversified lineup from Perplexity: FXAIX, VTIAX, VSMAX, VNQ, and VWELX. Perplexity will clearly tell you what it scraped.
But this doesn't get us to the point of the thread. So I asked a new question: "Name five fund options for a roth account if you could only pick one for the next twenty years."
Bing suggested: VWELX, SPTM, JEPI, VPMCX, or RQI. It suggested: "Each of these funds could be your 'forever' pick depending on your risk tolerance and retirement goals. Want help narrowing it down based on your age or investing style?" I think it's not scraping as hard as it could.
Gemini grokked the question a little better than Bing, and came back with: VT, Fidelity Freedom Index Fund 2045 (no ticker), VTI, FZROX, or SCHD.
Google search AI came back with VOO, VTI, VFORX, VBIAX, or VIG.
Perplexity came back with: VTSAX, FXAIX, Vanguard Target Retirement 2065, VT or VIG.
I decided to get pushier. So I asked: "If you could pick only one fund for a roth for the next twenty years what should it be?"
Bing chose VWELX, Gemini chose VT, Google search ducked with "a target-date fund or a low-cost, total-market index fund," and Perplexity came back with VOO or FXAIX before reminding me about the other usual suspects.
These are no where close to what @equalizer was getting; so I asked one more question: "Give me five non-index funds for a roth for the next twenty years."
Bing: VWELX, VPMCX, JEPI, RQI, and SVOL. Gemini: FCNTX, FBGRX, FSELX, TRBCX, and AGTHX. Googel search: FCNTX, PRDGX, VPMCX, JEPI, and AVGV. Perplexity: VWELX, VWINX, JEPI, USMC, and FCNTX.
Well. At least the conventional wisdom is available without spending money for advice or doing your own homework.

Asked Bing AI for top 5 picks
Ticker Fund Name 5 Yr 10 Yr 15 Yr 20 Yr
FCNTX Fidelity Contrafund 14.6% 15.8% 13.2% 9.1%
FBGRX Fidelity Blue Chip Growth Fund 17.8% 18.0% 14.9% 10.7%
PRPFX Permanent Portfolio Fund 4.3% 5.9% 6.6% 5.3%
AGTHX American Funds Growth Fund of America 13.5% 14.7% 11.9% 8.9%
TRBCX T. Rowe Price Blue Chip Growth Fund 18.3% 16.1% 12.3% 10.5%
VFINX Vanguard 500 Index Fund 13.0% 13.7% 10.2% 7.8%

I asked Gemini for 5 picks for Roth for next 20 years and got this
This table shows the average annual return for each fund over various time periods.
| Mutual Fund (Ticker) | 5-Year Return | 10-Year Return | 15-Year Return | 20-Year Return |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Fidelity Contrafund (FCNTX) | 13.1% | 14.5% | 13.8% | 11.9% |
| T. Rowe Price Global Tech (PRGTX) | 15.2% | 17.8% | 16.5% | 14.3% |
| Baron Asset Fund (BARAX) | 11.9% | 13.2% | 12.9% | 11.5% |
| Harding Loevner Intl Equity (HLMNX) | 7.8% | 9.1% | 8.5% | 8.2% |
| T. Rowe Price Health Sci (PRHSX) | 9.5% | 12.4% | 14.1% | 13.6% |

”The commodity space is complex and the asset class can be volatile.”

Everything from coca beans to nat gas. Generally played using derivatives. Tremendous variation among funds.
Flashback - In March 2020, the price of a barrel of oil temporarily fell below zero dollars.
@LewisBraham authored the piece I linked. Thanks for the reminder.
@Observant1 - PIRMX looks like a good moderate approach. I find that with high-volatility funds it’s hard to hang on for long. So better served with a moderate approach from that standpoint.

I'ld skip corn and soybeans for a while.
https://fortune.com/2025/08/30/rural-america-economic-crisis-farmers-agriculture-exports-trump-trade-war-china/

This week’s Barron’s addresses the subject. https://www.barrons.com/articles/commodity-funds-active-management-bd7efdaa?st=r6dN7A&reflink=desktopwebshare_permalink
I do not own a commodities or gold fund. I own a real assets fund with commodity exposure. Some limited commodities exposure thru a couple managed futures funds.
”Does anyone use commodities as a long-term hedge (not short-term tactical trade) against inflation?”
That’s the general idea behind the real assets fund.
”How does this fit into your overall portfolio strategy and allocations?”
The real assets fund is part of a broadly diversified portfolio. About 14.5% of total.
The managed futures funds are part of a basket designed as a “chaos hedge”. Each apx 2% of total.

why not just claim 95% in iau for 2 decades?
no one believes that straight blue line...but at least it was drawn below the S&P500.
kudos if rich enough not to care, but magic timing claims are zero value add.

but i'll only expound on that after they go up.
ok, enough useless fd1k channeling, here is something insightful undisputed by history :
"...financial history is that market pricing almost never takes into account the possibility of huge, disruptive events, even when the strong possibility of such events should be obvious. The usual pattern, instead, is one of market complacency until the last possible moment. That is, markets act as if everything is normal until it’s blindingly obvious that it isn’t.."
p.krugman
and paraphrasing from b.elliot (ex-bridgewater cio) :
it is not uncommon for the market to lag a bad economy for ~9 months after it becomes undeniable, which is on top of the lag from bad decisions that wrecked the economy.
both these put plenty of weight on the investor 'beauty pageant' effect...which is what investors think other investors think despite probabilistic leading quant indicators.

I couldn’t find anything useful in the above comments. I actually have accomplished market timing.
Below is my portfolio performance since retiring in 2018. I’ve kept about 95% in bond funds (not CEFs). My portfolio has consistently outperformed a 50/50 portfolio, a 60/40 allocation like VBIAX, and even a 100% stock mix when diversified with 60/40 SPY/VXUS.
That said, beating stocks isn’t my main goal. My objective is to outperform 50/50 while limiting drawdowns to no more than 3% from any peak. In fact, I’ve never lost more than 1% from any top, while still beating most allocation funds. This was achieved through strong market timing. Just like the song (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7hx4gdlfamo)
BTW, this performance is 99+% of all the money we have. This includes all brokers, banks, credit unions, and cash/mm.
Portfolio performance since 1-1-2018: https://ibb.co/zT6QGzSs

The time from retirement to ss should be the time to convert as much as possible staying in the desired tax bracket IMHO. I took my ss at 63 and it would have been nice not to take it until later because ss income limits your conversions. Looking back I don't regret taking it at 63 because I converted a LOT even taking ss at 63. I converted a lot from 53 (retirement) to 63 (ss) since I had no other income at that time.

Trump v CASA - this is birthright citizenship case. The SC said that while plaintiffs can sue for citizenship, federal courts are not allowed to issue a nationwide injunction to cover all people born in the US. Rather, people born in the US will have to sue individually, or at best as a class, to claim their rights conferred via birthright citizenship. Various class action suits are now proceeding at breakneck speed.
https://www.scotusblog.com/2025/08/the-perils-of-using-class-actions-as-a-replacement-for-universal-injunctions/
By the court's reasoning, if someone sues to block illegal tariffs, then only that plaintiff gets relief. The government can continue to apply illegal tariffs to anyone who didn't sue. Since only a few states sued, only those states get relief from the tariffs.
The lower court, i.e. the CIT, pointed out that this would be unconstitutional because the constitution explicitly prohibits tariffing some states but not others. So it seems that if the tariffs are illegal, then either the court must be allowed to issue a universal (nationwide) injunction covering all states, or the court is prohibited from issuing an injunction to even cover the plaintiff states. And then the plaintiffs, though winning, have no remedy.

firmly establishing the four eBay factors would also be necessary
Agreed. Though the Circuit Court seems to be saying that before considering whether an injunction is appropriate here, we must first ask whether the remedy of an injunction is even available. If not, it is pointless to consider whether this case meets the requirements for that relief.
EBay didn't break new legal ground regarding requirements for injunctive relief. It just ensured that these requirements were applied in patent cases. The SC cited eBay in CASA not because it set new requirements but because it stated those requirements in clear (formulaic), compact form.
The EBay unanimous ruling is so short (just two pages) that it is a quick read.
https://www.oyez.org/cases/2005/05-130 (Summary)
https://supreme.justia.com/cases/federal/us/547/388/#tab-opinion-1962095 (opinion)

To obtain an injunction, plaintiffs must show that they have suffered irreparable harm, that legal remedies such as monetary damages are inadequate, that the balance of hardships favors them, and that the injunction would not disserve the public interest. These principles were reaffirmed by the Supreme Court in eBay Inc. v. MercExchange. Courts also consider equitable factors such as the parties’ good faith or prior conduct when fashioning the remedy.

Emphasis added. https://www.law.cornell.edu/wex/injunction
Every court, virtually every 2L student, knows the "well-established principles" (quoting eBay) of equity. It's inconceivable that the CIT would not have considered the requirements for an injunction. It would be a waste of the CIT's time to go through this again just to then have to say, "never mind", we can't issue the injunction. Hence the main question is whether a universal (nationwide) injunction is available as a remedy.
The CIT did address that question. It said that limiting the scope of the injunction to the plaintiffs (as generally required by CASA) would be unconstitutional.
So I think there's a high probability that the District Court will connect the dots as the Circuit Court is telling it to do and come up with the same conclusion as before.
But this SC is very much result-oriented, the law be damned. In its zeal to expand presidential powers, it could weaken Constitutionally established (though limited) restrictions on Congress' abilities to delegate its powers away and read into IEEPA an implicit delegation of Congress' power to tariff. That is, it could adopt the dissent's view.
Or it might (gasp) say that since a non-universal injunction protecting only the plaintiffs is unconstitutional, no equitable relief is available even for the states suing. Though each plaintiff company such as V.O.S. Selections would still be granted injunctive relief. Then watch for a class action suit representing all importers. As we're seeing with CASA.
The CIT ruling: https://www.cit.uscourts.gov/sites/cit/files/25-66.pdf

Sept. 1st, '25. Is he not dead YET? I'm just asking.

One concern has been what if the Gov provide all this "assistance" to INTC for its chip foundries & then INTC just sells majority stake or all of its foundries.
After all, INTC efforts to become contract manufacturer for others failed miserably. It was actually worse - INTC setup contract manufacturing production, but customers didn't come, so lot of that capex went down the drain.
Previous Administration's approach was to slow the release of promised "grants", demand to see actual customer orders, put restrictions on any foundry sales, etc.
This Administration has a different approach - convert "grants" into equity stakes. But it has released all of the promised money to INTC (to lose or profit) and got 9.99% stake for now.
One overlooked provision of this new deal is that if INTC sells majority stake or all of its chip foundries (where the Gov "assistance" is going), the Gov will get ADDITIONAL 5% stake. So, the Gov may end up with 9.99-14.99% stake in INTC.

if it turns out that the universal (nationwide) injunction is prohibited by CASA then whether the District Court checked all the boxes, and whether it did so in a procedurally correct way are moot questions.

True, but CASA is a very new (interpretation of) law with little precedent to base decisions on and potential implications that appear patently absurd. Please correct me if otherwise, but this would seem to imply that any estimate of whether CASA would allow for a universal tariff injunction in this case would not get better than a 50-50 chance.
On the other hand, the eBay standard looks to be relatively well-established. So, my point was that, since CASA ruling (June 27, 2025) was not in effect when CIT judgement was granted (May 28, 2025), the eBay factors should have been used by CIT as the primary basis for the injunction by "explicitly connecting the dots".
Yet, according to CA,

The CIT did not address the eBay factors in its original opinion.

Taken together with what "CIT explained" in that subsequent order, generously referenced in the CA ruling as

CIT ... articulating its analysis of the eBay factors some days after it issued its original opinion on the merits,

though that discussion looks to have barely touched upon at most 3 of the 4 eBay factors, much less complied with the standard set by CA as:

The four factors a plaintiff must establish to secure a permanent injunction

this appears to suggest that the four factors were not fully addressed by CIT even after the follow up and CA does want these reviewed more explicitly:

remand for the CIT to reevaluate the propriety of granting injunctive relief and the proper scope of such relief, after considering all four eBay factors and the Supreme Court’s holding in CASA.

Yes, CASA might need to be considered "in the first instance", but firmly establishing the four eBay factors would also be necessary for any putative lifting of the abeyance. So, the point at issue remains that if these factors were so fundamentally pertinent to the case and essential for granting the injunctive relief - even before CASA issue had come up - why CIT did not directly validate their satisfaction in its original ruling.
All of this leads to the main question: Would CIT have had trouble justifying the injunction primarily on the basis of eBay factors and, if so, would a new injunction or lifting of abeyance not be forthcoming regardless of any (highly unpredictable) CASA implications?

U.S. government intervention in private business was fairly common in the 19th century.
The reported outcomes for these endeavors (in story below) were not good.
"It would be naive to say that stock investors earned lower returns in the old days solely because Uncle Sam mucked up the markets. It would be just as naive to think that fraud, waste, corruption and conflicts of interest didn’t play any part in reducing returns."
The U.S. did finance several private companies in recent decades (Chrysler, GM, Penn Central, several banks)
on a situational basis in response to perceived emergencies and the very real GFC.
Under the Trump regime, the government will take 15% of AMD's and Nvidia's revenues from AI chip sales to China. The same government has also taken an equity stake in Intel and will invest billions to attain an ~15% equity stake in MP Materials. Donald J. Trump has recently implied "many more cases" may be forthcoming.
“'Why, in 2025,' asks historian Brian Murphy of Rutgers University, 'are we reviving economic practices
that we largely abandoned in the 19th century because they were too corrupt for a 'modern' nation?'”
https://www.msn.com/en-us/money/markets/trump-s-deals-with-companies-aren-t-un-american-that-s-the-problem/ar-AA1Luf8t

PostMeds, dba TruePill Pharmacy, agreed to a settlement of $7.5M for a data breach that "contain[ed] information such as names, medication types, and, for certain patients, demographic information and prescribing physician names."
https://www.hipaajournal.com/postmeds-truepill-sued-over-2-3-million-record-data-breach/
I must have selected a cash payment in lieu of compensation for losses or free credit monitoring. Yesterday I received around $100 as my cut of the settlement. Yea. Sometimes one does get more than a few pennies out of these settlements.
https://truepillsettlement.com/
Still, these days that might barely cover a dinner for two, or perhaps just a lunch.
TruePill is the first of two pharmacies that Mark Cuban CostPlus Drugs contracted with to dispense drugs. It got overwhelmed by the volume and Cost Plus then contracted with a second pharmacy, HealthDyne. It looks like CostPlus recently dropped TruePill (see FAQ who fills my prescription).
I don't know if the massive number of orders was related to the data breach. I do know that CostPlus messed up my records (saying that my prescription could not be found).
CostPlus seems to have worked out most of its kinks since then. I can't say much about its backend pharmacies.

@WABAC, Think we are on the same page on that. Majority of our bonds are on the shorter end. Our small moves to 5-7 years bonds have been gradually as we monitor the inflation data and employment number. Going to long duration is pre-mature at this point.
What has not been talk about in the press is stagflation. Political pressure is mounting for September FOMC meeting.

Some unconventional thoughts on your allocation/drawdown plans, FWIW:
1. If all the money in your (future) RMDs will be taxed at the same rate, and if your RMDs will (along with other income including SS) will be less than your cash flow needs, then there doesn't seem to be much value in managing T-IRA and T-401(k) differently.
Reasoning: if RMDs are more than you need, then it is better to keep them down (and more assets tax-sheltered) by keeping slower growth assets in traditional accounts and faster growth assets in Roths, as you are doing. You don't want to be forced to draw more out of any sheltered account than you need. But this justification vanishes if RMDs are not sufficient for cash flow needs.
By "all RMD money taxed at the same rate" I mean: Suppose that you add up all your other ordinary income (SS, taxable interest, etc.) .and find that you're, say, in the 22% bracket. Then when you add in your RMD, you find that you're still in the same 22% bracket. Not higher. If this is true then it doesn't matter how you split investments between T's and Roths.
Say you've got $100K in your traditional accounts and $78K in your Roths. After tax, they're each worth $78K. Suppose you allocate assets so that your Roth accounts double and your traditional accounts stagnate. Then your Roth will be worth $156K after tax and your traditionals will be worth $78K after tax for a total of $234K after tax.
If you flip the allocations, then the traditional accounts will double to $200K pre-tax, or $156K after tax. The Roth will be sitting at $78K, for a total of $23KK after tax.
The trick is to keep after tax values in mind when allocating investments. Are there any portfolio trackers that can handle this?
2. Since cap gains don't (for the most part) affect what rate your ordinary income is taxed at, you might be better off holding onto your long term positions in taxable accounts (that are pseudo-tax-sheltered by deferring gain recognition) and instead sheltering cash by using it to pay the taxes on Roth conversions.
Suppose you have $22 in cash (taxable) and $100 in a traditional IRA (worth $78 post tax). That's worth a total of $100 after tax. Convert and you've got $100 in a Roth, also worth $100 after tax.
If you convert, then instead of having to pay tax on the cash as it generates income, you've fully sheltered that $22 in the Roth. As for the securities that you could have sold instead of converting, they'll continue to appreciate, tax-deferred, until you recognize the gain.
3. If you're planning on working past RMD age (currently 73), then you can defer RMDs longer in your 401(k) with your current employer. If that's the case, that may militate for keeping higher growth assets in the 401(k). Otherwise, allocation between T-IRA and T-401(k) doesn't seem to matter. Though the choice of investments available to you in your employer plan(s) could tilt the scales one way or the other.
4. Throwing a money wrench into all of this are oddballs like IRMAA and the 3.8% Medicare surtax. And Trump's $6K above-the-line (sort of) extra deduction for seniors in 2025-2028 that is also income-dependent.
In addition, your state may exempt some or all of retirement income from state taxes. Your state may also give other tax breaks that are income dependent (e.g. property tax reductions). And there's no certainty with respect to future tax rates.
I've been doing incremental Roth conversions since 2010 when the income limit on conversions was eliminated. So when I finally get to being subject to RMDs, their size will be closer to what I want to contribute to charities. And by identifying them as QCDs, I won't have to worry much about tax consequences of my RMDs.