All well and good:
- IF you knew then what you know now
- IF one is fully committed to buying and holding no matter what the market does
- IF you can refrain from spicing up your retirement stew from time to time with select outperformers as conditions warrant/dictate.
In the end probably not a bad course of action for most investors.

I had been looking at this ESG fund, for last two years. (this will be less than 5% of my retirement portfolio). PGRNX has 37% renewable energy, 40% water, 11% waste management.
http://paxworld.com/system/storage/19/d7/e/1748/fact_sheet_globalenvironmentalmarketsfund.pdf
This is tracked as a world stock. Expenses are a bit high, But I have more than 15 years for my retirement and was thinking to add one of ESG funds. I used to believe this was a hype but I do believe in climate change and have experienced personally scarce water issues in other parts of the world.
Thoughts? Opinions?
Thanks
Mulder

Howdy folks,
Mark is spot on. Goes back to Peter Lynch - play what you know. Everybody has some area of knowledge superior to most and if played . . . I've collected coins for some 60 years so I should know pm's. I've watched Mark play MLPs for years and tried, but I have NEVER been able to figure them out. Indeed, over the years, most of my investment losses have been from playing somewhere I had no business being.
That said, when you play within your circle of competence, as Mark put it, you are able to bear greater risks with a larger percentage of your portfolio.
As for investing differently because I have a pension is really beside the point of financing a retirement.
I've always thought of retirement as a footstool with one or more legs. Social security is a leg, as is a DB pension, and a 401(k), an IRA, savings, home equity, rental income, other streams of income, a child who is a physician with a granny flat, etc. Each of these represents a leg under your stool. The game is to get as many legs and make each of them as strong as you can.
and so it goes,
peace,
rono

@davfor, that is an interesting and useful observation. It is necessary to understand where something like this may fit in for fund evaluation.
At a very high level, those ratios answer questions like "Is this fund going to go up and down a lot for what I can get from it that may be a problem". RARE analysis answers questions like "If I buy this fund over an index fund (or another similar fund) at any time, am I (as opposed to the fund) likely to do better than the latter".
Regarding the ratios you mentioned, a quantitative study of correlation at this point wouldn't make sense because the sample space is so small and the selected funds are already skewed towards funds that are rated high over several metrics.
But qualitatively, they do measure very different things. Those ratios along with Sharpe ratio are volatility measures that may affect your ability to achieve a certain return or the deviations they make in reaching that return that may give you ulcers. So, they are affected by market volatility. A sector index fund that faithfully follows a highly volatile sector would fare poorly in those measures.
RARE grades on the other hand measure the ability of an investor to realize an alpha or excess return over the market using a particular fund even if you are losing money because markets are headed down. It normalizes with respect to market volatility.
So, it is more related to alpha measures for a fund. It differs from alpha measures in that it is also a measure of the volatility of the alpha generation as a rolling metric. Just as volatility of price in a fund affects the probability of returns you get based on when you bought that fund (near a peak or a trough), volatility of alpha determines the probability that any individual investor will realize the alpha that is measured for the fund in discrete steps.
If the underlying market is very steady and the fund is very volatile with respect to it, it may be correlated with volatility measures. But if the fund is also steady, then it isn't correlated. A fund that generates alpha uniformly will have good RARE grades and a fund that is equally steady but loses with respect to the index say with high ER, will have poor RARE grade while the volatility measures might be the same for both.
The reason this distinction to alpha measure is important is because of timing and the incentive fund managers have to manage returns for a calendar year. If the alpha performance of a fund is streaky or lumpy as may happen with a focused fund, then the alpha you would see will be very dependent on when you bought into that fund and may be much less or negative compared to the alpha reported for that fund in some fixed time period.
Fund managers are in the asset gathering business not fund returns business, so the latter is only important as to help in that asset gathering. Because of the year to year metrics used which determine how a fund fares in rankings and comparisons, it sets up an incentive for a manager to manage the returns for a calendar year rather than manage the returns for the investors coming in and out.
The activity of fund managers trying to juice up returns towards the end of the year by increasing risk or beta exposure especially if they are trailing the index is much talked about. If you sold the fund before they did this (or have been selling regularly in retirement), you may not get anywhere close to the returns for the fund for the year.
What is not talked about much is the opposite, when fund managers get a windfall earlier in the year. Depending on that gain, it may be safer for the managers to reduce risk for rest of year and coast than risk losing that earlier gain. So if you are doing monthly buys or buy later in the year, you may not see anywhere close to the gains for the fund for the year.
RARE grades try to separate funds that have streaky or lumpy gains in narrow periods from those that steadily (not calendar year consistent as some metrics try to do) beat the market over longer periods. While it may protect you from poor timing of when you got into the fund, it also has the benefit of potentially avoiding funds that look good on paper but that may be from one or two lucky streaks and unlikely to be repeated. Funds with steady gains over longer periods may indicate better management and/or strategy.
Should complement other fund evaluation criterion.

Great work Andy and what a nice fund! Wish it didn't have that pesky short term redemption fee. As I mentioned to someone here, that would be something I would love to own if I could ever get into a retirement mode. I should be out hiking today and everyday for that matter. But have to stay put and decide whether I need to lighten up on the junk corporates. At least the junk munis continue to just roll along with PYMDX the leader of the pack.

@lljb, you are right. My first reading of those slides was wrong. He was badmouthing the critics not Bill Miller by quoting the badmouthing of Bill Miller by the critics. So, I take that part back and apologies to Mr. Smead for that mischaracterization.
The critics weren't doing anything other than echoing the sentiments of the passive indexing over active indexing crowd that saw the fall of Bill Miller as validation of their long-held views. I don't see this is necessarily foolish because there are good reasons for criticizing the performance of active managers as a whole.
Ironically, his argument against the criticism relies on the same calendar year metric that I show above can hide the performance real investors may see in the funds relative to the index.
Just to note, I am not doing an indexing vs active argument here. My point is that bad metrics make it difficult to select good active funds that may exist from bad/lucky ones.
Here is an idea for the site owners since they seem to have the data and the computing capability.
What if you computed a metric that calculated the 1yr, 3yr, 5yr returns as an average and variance to the index over multiple runs of the fund each with a single purchase at the beginning of each month since inception and held for that period of time? Right now, the metrics say what happens if investors purchase only at the beginning of the year which is very artificial and subject to gaming by fund managers.
Wouldn't this be a more valid indicator of what an investor coming across a fund and purchasing without paying attention to the calendar can expect from the fund? This would make explicit any destructive effect of the fund's volatility if they tend to be volatile and can burn investors. Would the great owls be still be great owls using this metric? If a fund had a long and distributed poor performance periods with some lucky short spikes then this would expose the destructive power of such underperformance even if the fund managed a tiny gain in enough years from such spikes to look great in current metrics.
The second metric would be adding a fixed investment every month for each run above as might happen in a retirement fund or a disciplined investing plan. This is for investors in the accumulation phase. The complement would be withdrawing a fixed amount each month during that run.
Isn't it worth doing this experiment if the current metrics have the potential of misleading investors setting false expectations of what a fund is likely to do even when future performance mimics past performance? Is it feasible or such metrics already available?

Mark,
Could not agree more and have posted so. "... common argument [for raising the retirement age] amounts, in effect, to the notion that we can’t let janitors retire because lawyers are living longer" [Krugman and others].
Press was talking about the Federal Reserve. Not the debt fearmongerers who advocate bad changes to SS.

Hi expatsp:
I manage, or mismanage, retirement accounts for 2 kids and their spouses. Bought FAIRX maybe 10 years ago, sold maybe 5 years ago. Why? The 'star' manager phenom. Some of those 'kids' are more attuned than others, but none of them have the level of cynicism I do. I like the team managed stuff, thinking that there might be some continuity over the coming years. I use two you mentioned: Primecap and Dodge & Cox. Tweedy Browne Global has been in their ports for years as well, although I think their ER stinks: they don't trade an awful lot and won't buy anywhere they can't drink the water - so whats the deal with 1.40 ER?
Am taking antacids over Sequoia: thought I had a good one there. We'll see if they can right the ship.
Matthews MACSX requires monitoring now - I have been neglectful of their management changes. Artisan ARTGX can stay for a while and we'll see. Bridgeway B
ridgeway is another concern of

I learned very early on in my teaching career there was a big difference between a 40b(b) (IRA deferred annuity with loads, riders and fees) and a 403b(7) (IRA mutual fund account at low cost places like vanguard).

I think you mean 403b(1), not 40b(b).
In any case, it seems you're confusing implementation with requirement. That is, each vehicle allows for a variety of different plans, good and bad. 403(b)(7) plans allow for load funds (not necessarily load-waived). And 403(b)(1) plans allow for very cheap, noload, straightforward annuities.
One really can't talk about 403(b)(1) plans without looking at the elephant in the room, TIAA-CREF. You're not going to get a stable value option paying 4% in any 403(b)(7). You're probably not going to have a loan option with a 403(b)(7), at least according to this description of 403(b) plans provided by New York State United Teachers (NYSUT).
A CREF VA is pretty much plain vanilla, no loads, and inexpensive (including the annuity fee) totaling less than 40 basis points for actively managed funds in some plans. Here's their prospectus (expenses are on p.8, pdf p. 11):
http://www.tiaa-cref.org/public/prospectuses/cref_prospectus.pdf
That's not to say that all the wannabe annuity plans don't charge an arm and a leg, or that 403(b)(7) plans are typically high priced. Just that it's more the provider than the type of plan that matters. Even a Fidelity 403(b)(7) will likely cost more than a TIAA-CREF 403(b)(1).

One thing to keep in mind: the many kinds of deferred annuities "guaranteeing" 5, 6, 7% are not "bought" by consumers. Consumers are SOLD these things.

I learned very early on in my teaching career there was a big difference between a 40b(b) (IRA deferred annuity with loads, riders and fees) and a 403b(7) (IRA mutual fund account at low cost places like vanguard).
Vanguard never brought me lunch in the teacher's lunch room, but they continue to help fund my post-retirement parties.

Either I'm reading the DOL proposal wrong or the news article is an insurance industry PR piece.
If you want a "short" summary, here's the DOL fact sheet:
http://www.dol.gov/ebsa/newsroom/fsconflictsofinterest.html
My two line summary: Fiduciary responsibility will now generally apply to advice on IRAs (so if brokers intend to avoid that responsibility, they'll have to stop selling IRAs altogether, which won't happen), and virtually nothing gets special treatment or singled out. If annuities lose market share, it's because they are often not the best investments (especially inside of IRAs), not because they're being picked on.
I'm still wading through the proposal - which is long and takes several readings to appreciate. With that qualification (i.e. I may not know what I'm talking about), here are some responses to the article:
- "annuity retirement accounts [would be added] to the list of investments for which brokers [have to act as fiduciaries]"
Sure, and so would mutual funds, and anything else in an IRA. What's being changed is that if you get individualized advice on an IRA (or 401(k)), the adviser would now be considered a fiduciary, regardless of the investment. The proposal says:

Today, ... many ...advisers have no obligation to adhere to [fiduciary standards], despite the critical role they play in guiding ... IRA investments. Under [the Internal Revenue] Code, if these advisers are not fiduciaries, they may operate with conflicts of interest that they need not disclose and have limited liability under federal pension law for any harms resulting from the advice they provide. Non-fiduciaries may give imprudent and disloyal advice ...
With this regulatory action, the Department proposes ... a definition of fiduciary investment advice that better ... protects plans, participants, beneficiaries, and IRA owners from conflicts of interest, imprudence, and disloyalty.

The proposal goes on and on about how high cost funds are costing IRA investors a percent or more a year. I don't see any similar criticism of retirement annuities.

The underperformance associated with conflicts of interest--in the mutual funds segment alone--could cost IRA investors more than $210 billion over the next 10 years and nearly $500 billion over the next 20 years. Some studies suggest that the underperformance of broker-sold mutual funds may be even higher than 100 basis points, possibly due to loads that are taken off the top and/or poor timing of broker sold investments

- "The extra work required by the new rules ... would likely push brokers away from selling annuities and toward mutual funds and other fee-based investments"
The extra work imposed by the new regulations would apply to all IRA investments, so annuities wouldn't be disadvantaged. As a result of industry comments, DOL streamlined the regulations to reduce the overhead. DOL acknowledges compliance costs:

The Department nonetheless believes that these gains alone would far exceed the proposal's compliance cost.... For example, if only 75 percent of the potential gains were realized in the subset of the market that was analyzed (the front-load mutual fund segment of the IRA market), the gains would amount to between $30 billion and $33 billion over 10 years.

- "They feel the government is favoring mutual fund companies like Vanguard over insurers"
The proposed regs allow advisers to keep their front end loads, their wrap fees, etc. so long as they are reasonable under the circumstances.

Investment advice fiduciaries to IRAs could still receive commissions for transactions involving non-securities insurance and annuity contracts, but they would be required to comply with all the protective conditions [that apply to mutual funds]

For the full set of DOL docs, see: http://www.dol.gov/ebsa/regs/conflictsofinterest.html

FYI: Lincoln National Corp., the Radnor-based life insurer and retirement investments company, is among a group of American insurers facing a steep drop in annuities sales to retirement investors and their IRA accounts, if a year-old Obama adminstration consumer-protection proposal gets enacted this winter, as industry observers expect
Regards,
Ted
http://www.philly.com/philly/blogs/inq-phillydeals/Is-US-favoring-mutual-funds-vs-insurers-annuities.html

http://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/1567138/000116204416001395/gator497201601.htm
497 1 gator497201601.htm
January 20, 2016
GATOR OPPORTUNITIES FUND
Supplement to the Prospectus dated July 29, 2015, as supplemented December 21, 2015
On December 21, 2015, the Gator Opportunities Fund (the “Fund”), a series of the Gator Series Trust (the “Trust”), notified shareholders that, pursuant to various considerations and approvals by the Trust’s Board of Trustees (the “Board”), the Trust expected that, subject to approval by the shareholders of the Fund, the Fund would be entering into a transaction with BPV Family of Funds (the “BPV Trust”) for the purpose of reorganizing the Fund into BPV Small Cap Fund (the “Transaction”). The Fund had prepared, with the assistance of the BPV Trust, a draft proxy statement regarding the Transaction, which was filed on Form N-14 with the Securities and Exchange Commission on December 14, 2015, in anticipation of finalizing the same for a shareholder meeting. However, the Trust was informed on January 15, 2016, that BPV Capital Management, LLC (“BPV”), the investment adviser to the BPV Trust, had determined not to go forward with the Transaction.
In light of the foregoing, effective immediately, the Trust has terminated the public offering of the Fund’s shares and will discontinue the Fund’s operations and liquidate no later than March 21, 2016 (the “Closing Date”). Shares of the Fund are no longer available for purchase.
The Board, in consultation with the Fund’s investment adviser, Gator Capital Management, LLC (the “Adviser”), determined by written consent dated January 20, 2016 (the “Written Consent”) to discontinue the Fund’s operations based on, among other factors, the Adviser’s belief that it would be in the best interests of the Fund and its shareholders to discontinue the Fund’s operations. Through the date of the Fund’s liquidation, currently scheduled to take place on the Closing Date, the Adviser will continue to waive fees and reimburse expenses of the Fund, as necessary, in order to maintain the Fund’s fees and expenses at their current level, as specified in the Prospectus.
In the Written Consent, the Board of Trustees directed that: (i) all of the Fund’s portfolio securities be liquidated to cash in an orderly manner on or before the Closing Date; and (ii) all outstanding shareholder accounts on the Closing Date be closed and the proceeds of each account be sent to the shareholder’s address of record or to such other address as directed by the shareholder including special instructions that may be needed for Individual Retirement Accounts (“IRAs”) and qualified pension and profit sharing fund accounts. As a result of the liquidation of the Fund’s portfolio securities described above, the Fund’s normal exposure to investments will be reduced and eventually eliminated. Accordingly, shareholders should not expect the Fund to achieve its stated investment objective.
Shareholders may continue to freely redeem their shares on each business day during the Fund’s liquidation process. The distribution of proceeds from the closing of shareholder accounts remaining on the Closing Date will be considered for tax purposes a sale of Fund shares by shareholders, and shareholders should consult with their own tax advisors to ensure its proper treatment on their income tax returns. In addition, shareholders invested through an IRA or other tax-deferred account should consult the rules regarding the reinvestment of these assets. In order to avoid a potential tax issue, shareholders may choose to authorize a direct transfer of their retirement account assets to another tax-deferred retirement account before the Fund liquidates. Typically, shareholders have 60 days from the date of the liquidation to invest the proceeds in another IRA or qualified retirement account; otherwise the liquidation proceeds may be required to be included in the shareholder’s taxable income for the current tax year.
If you have any questions regarding this Supplement, please call (813)-282-7870.
Investors Should Retain this Supplement for Future Reference

@heezsafe, thanks for the link. It made interesting reading. Biotechs have been flat from that point not counting today's bounce.
It is like when you read a news report that seems credible and plausible. If you were a participant in the news or had inside information, the reports you read are almost always full of inaccuracies.
Same thing with investing. We make investment decisions within the narrow scope of what we know or can imagine but the reality is most often very different. Lot of times, it does not matter because you place a bet, the stock goes up for other reasons or as is more often the case, because a lot of people place the same semi-ignorant bets, and we think we have it figured out. When it does not, we blame the "other" investors, manipulators, etc or move our targets to a longer term. This is fine as a game app you play on a smartphone but trusting the entire retirement plan to it? Just nuts.
But that is the only game we have if you haven't earned enough via wages to make retirement without playing this game. What is insidious is that a whole industry is vested in doing exactly that convincing everyone else to play the game. That includes every broker and fund manager.
I really have to wonder why people buy individual stock because of the games being played within the companies to make their shares attractive to the "greater fool" markets we have. If you had visibility into any of the inner deliberations, you would never buy any company's share based on public disclosure unless you had that kind of visibility in which case you might be flirting close to insider trading territory.
Most of the wealth in the Bay Area comes from exploiting that market system of greater fools, not from playing it as another fool. Biotechs and Unicorns are currently doing so. Same is true of NY area I would think.

Think of it this way: You've worked your entire life at a job or a career if you hopped around. Then you're expected to trust your retirement--your golden years--to the stock market--something the best experts on the subject admit is a random walk. If you're lucky you do well as the market is rising when you retire. If you're unlucky and retire during a terrible crash, you're broke or at least struggling. Either way, the situation is largely out of your control. Meanwhile money managers collect their tolls on your assets regardless whether the market rises or falls. It's a heads I win tails you lose scenario.
There is something grotesquely unfair about that for someone who has worked their entire life and just wants now to rest and enjoy their remaining few years. This is why when I hear politicians saying Social Security should be invested in the stock market, I laugh. People are right to distrust Wall Street.
Yet I recognize Sauter has a point in the country we live in. That country is one where there isn't a strong social safety net and interest rates are near 0%. So the stock market is the only game in town. And for most people who don't have the time or ability to find good money managers, index funds are often the best way to go. They are the only way to prevent Wall Street from extracting its pound of flesh from their retirement funds.

Hi Everyone,
I use Powerfunds Portfolios to guide my investing -- Aggressive Portfolio for IRAs (we're about 15 years from retirement) and Conservative Portfolio for college funds (needed in the next 1 to 6 years). I have found them to be quite prescient about what categories will do well going forward, though sometimes a bit early in switching. Last year, the Aggressive Portfolio had a gain of 3%. (Sadly for me, I didn't do as well, with -1.7%. The recommended double oil short DTO was too volatile for me and I passed on it, but it is up 100% over the last year). In 2008, the Aggressive Portfolio was down about -16%, not too bad. The portfolios change every 12 to 18 months.
New recommendations for the portfolios came out yesterday -- check them out at the link above. Basically, in the Aggressive Portfolio, they are recommending ~ 40% in long term bonds, a switch from growth to value, new investments in utilities and Italy, and some shorts in case of a total market meltdown.
lrwilliams

Hi DavidV,
Given your 3 to 5 year time constraint, congratulations on designing a portfolio of all 60/40 Balanced mutual funds/ETFs. I assume you populated your portfolio with low cost funds to maximize keeping market rewards for yourself during your anticipated market participation period.
Historically, an assortment of Balanced funds have generated returns that hover around 10% with a substantial reduction in portfolio volatility (like a standard deviation of perhaps 12%). I recommend you check your portfolio against historical performance using a Portfolio Visualizer tool. Here is the Link to that useful website:
https://www.portfoliovisualizer.com/
Use the Backtest Portfolio option to access the historical performance of your baseline asset allocation.
You asked about portfolio optimization. The Portfolio Visualizer toolkit includes an Efficient Frontier Optimize Portfolio option. You might want to give it a test ride. I have never used that option. The Efficient Frontier is a transitory, elusive target; if it does really exist, it changes rapidly. However, it might offer you some comfort if you explore several portfolio what-if constructions.
You seem to have considerable fear over a market meltdown. Certainly that happens, but it might not happen as frequently as you suspect. Here is a Link to a nice summary article that reviews and categorizes various negative market return levels:
http://thereformedbroker.com/2013/08/20/a-field-guide-to-stock-market-corrections/
You must know the odds when participating in the marketplace. A correction of 10% is defined as nerve-wracking, but it doesn’t occur all that frequently. Check the article for the numbers. Also, historically, average recovery time from a 10% downturn is NOT that long (about one-half year).
I made a few calculations. Assuming a Gaussian returns distribution with expected average return and standard deviation for a representative portfolio constructed of all 60/40 Balanced funds, the projected rate for a 10% decline is roughly 6%. That’s not too unsettling. These data and brief analyses should relieve your discomfort level somewhat.
Since your time horizon is so short you might elect to deploy the generic strategy recommended for those approaching retirement. As the date approaches, you might consider converting a portion of your 60/40 mixed Balanced funds into 30/70 Balanced funds. This strategy compromises expected returns a little, but it simultaneously reduces portfolio volatility. The Vanguard Wellesley Income Fund (VWINX) is an attractive candidate for this tactic from my perspective.
You have made some solid investment decisions, and by so doing have mostly resolved your own issues. I also believe that other MFO posters have properly addressed other mental aspects of your concerns. Have courage and stay the course.
Best Wishes.

Hi Alex,
Based on your advanced age, you impose a high target returns requirement, a high hurdle that gets higher each year as your RMD increases annually, on your portfolio.
I completely agree with MFOer msf with regard to scoping the problem by consulting the government RMD tables which are tied to life expectancy.
Numerous academic and industry retirement studies have concluded that a withdrawal rate of about one-half your RMD goal is a doable target that results in high portfolio survival odds over extended timeframes. The usual outcome from Monte Carlo simulations is that a 4% drawdown over a 30 year retirement period generates portfolio survival odds that are in the 95% and higher range.
Given your age, the anticipated portfolio survival timeframe is more like 15 years. This shortened period changes the calculus considerably. Some additional calculations are needed.
Nowadays, these calculations are easily and rapidly done with some simplifications that should not significantly impact any conclusions from the analyses. Since learning to fish is more useful than being gifted a fish, I suggest you do the analyses yourself.
One tool to do a respectable Monte Carlo analysis can be found on the MoneyChimp website. Here is a direct Link to the Monte Carlo calculator on the helpful site:
http://www.moneychimp.com/articles/volatility/montecarlo.htm
Please exercise it to get an informed feeling for the likelihood of a successful accomplishment of your goals.
For a representative portfolio with an 8.5% annual average return and a standard deviation of 12%, a survival likelihood of 98% is anticipated for a 15 year period. If that period is extended to 20 years, the portfolio survival likelihood decreases to 86%. If the portfolio volatility is increased from 12% to 15% annually, the portfolio survival probability is deceased from 98% to 93% for the 15 year timeframe.
Parametric analyses like these help an investor to get a feel for the soundness of his plan. These general cases seem like attractive potential outcomes from a portfolio survival perspective. However, note that MoneyChimp does not provide the end value of the portfolio. If a single dollar remains in the portfolio after the designated period, MoneyChimp scores that as a portfolio survival instance.
If you want more detail, please give the Portfolio Visualizer version of Monte Carlo a test run. Here is a Link to that site:
https://www.portfoliovisualizer.com/
This excellent website will allow you to back-test generic and specific portfolio asset allocations, and also to do a Monte Carlo simulation that outputs portfolio survival odds and average portfolio end wealth values.
For one test run, Portfolio Visualizer yields a 96% survival likelihood for the 15 year period with a 50% US Stocks, 25% Large Cap Value, and 25% International Stock portfolio allocation. A 37,000 dollar average annual drawdown rate was assumed.
The median portfolio end balance was 1.1 million dollars, and both the 25 percentile and 75 percentile end values were provided. Since these are Monte Carlo simulations, results will change a little with each running of the code.
These estimates were done using historical base rate returns. Given the current investment environment, you might want to do the simulations using slightly more muted market return projections. You can input your own predictions and do some sensitivity scenarios.
If you don’t like the specific outcomes, these Monte Carlo tools allow you to play endless what-if options to explore allocations that might improve the projected results. The work is easy and even fun. Enjoy.
I edited to convert my original post from MRD to RMD. Sorry for the nomenclature error.
Best Wishes.

@Alex
I would consider a portfolio consisting of: VMNVX (50%), GLIFX (20%), and QMNIX (30%). As a whole, this portfolio would provide relatively low volatility and reasonable returns. Other funds that I would consider would be VMNFX and QLEIX. The institutional AQR funds are available at Scottrade for $100 minimum in both taxable and retirement accounts.
Kevin

Converting Permanent Portfolio to Roth for 2016. Should go through today.
Other than feeling good having 70% of all my retirement money under the Roth umbrella after this, I can't think of any good reasons. Not expecting to get rich quick. Obviously like fund over very long term. Amount? Just under 10% of total.
(Edit: Went through as planned. No glitches. My estimated % was high. Actually, IRA is now about 61% in Roths and 39% Traditional. Feels good :) )