One of the posters here considers SS as part or all of their fixed income piece of the pie. That's not a bad idea, especially with bonds as they are at the present. Something to consider.

SS is included in total assets when doing a cash flow retirement plan.

I have been advised to go with 20% equity, 50% bonds, 30% short term. Age are 80+78.
Assets are suitable in retirement to cover all estimated expenses to age 95.

Having chosen to be bonded at the hip to FIDO in my 403b, and facing 0.01% money market returns in the third year of a presidential cycle, with a US stock market that seems fairly to over-valued, and Ukraine, Iran, and China posing concerns, I wondered what others might choose from the following options: FNMIX (are emerging market bonds coming back?) which might offer more return; FFRHX (lower return with some experts claiming these funds aren't as safe as they seem - but FIDO has good bond analysts); FAGIX (high yield, an area which has usually done better than predicted).
These funds have redemption fees of 1% for 60 to 90 days, which shouldn't matter, since funds would only be moved to equities if there were a precipitous decline (and I'd be late to the party anyway). All lost varying amounts in 2008-9, and less in 2011; and I am retiring probably in 3 years, so income would be nice, but I can tolerate some volatility, if I am made whole in 5 to 7 years.
If you feel I have abused the site, keep the castigations brief. I can tolerate more risk than short-term bond funds offer. I'm about 65% in equities across my various retirement accounts, if that colors your answer. My wife and I can probably survive for a year or two on SS income, but she'd be complaining (I actually like beans and rice - with enough spices).

@heezsafe & Other MFO Members:
4/18/14 Copy & Paste: Kirsten Grind WSJ
(Mutual Funds Moonlight As Venture Capitalist)
That mutual fund in your retirement plan may be moonlighting as a venture capitalist.
BlackRock Inc., BLK -0.57% T. Rowe Price Group Inc. TROW +0.36% and Fidelity Investments are among the mutual-fund firms pushing into Silicon Valley at a record pace, snapping up stakes in high-profile startup companies including Airbnb Inc., Dropbox Inc. and Pinterest Inc.
The investments could pay off big if the companies go public or are sold, helping boost fund returns. But, as the recent turmoil in the market for technology stocks and initial public offerings has shown, such deals also carry major risks not typically associated with mutual funds.
"These are unproven companies that could very well fail," says Todd Rosenbluth, director of mutual fund research at S&P Capital IQ. If things go badly for a startup, "there may not be an exit strategy" for the fund fir
Last year, BlackRock, T. Rowe, Fidelity and Janus Capital Group Inc. JNS +1.58% together were involved in 16 private funding deals—up from nine in 2012 and six in 2011, according to CB Insights, a venture-capital tracking firm.
This year, the four firms already have participated in 13 closed deals, putting 2014 on track to be a banner year for participation by mutual funds in startup funding. On Friday, T. Rowe was part of an investor group that finished a deal to pour $450 million into Airbnb, said people familiar with the matter.
Last week, peer-to-peer financing company LendingClub Corp. raised $115 million in equity and debt, the bulk of which came from fund firms including T. Rowe, BlackRock and Wellington Management Co.
Investors put money into venture-capital funds knowing it is a bet that a few untested companies will become big winners, making up for many losers. But mutual funds, the mainstay of the U.S. retirement market with $15 trillion in assets, aren't typically supposed to swing for the fences. Instead, they put most of their money into established companies with the aim of making steady, not spectacular gains.
The risks of putting money into unproven startups were highlighted by the recent slump in technology stocks, which aggravated worries that valuations for pre-IPO companies may be inflated as well.
"We are not at the beginning of the cycle and that's probably the most diplomatic way to put it," says Chris Bartel, senior vice president of global equity research at Fidelity, noting his firm is cautious about investments.
Like other fund executives, he said startup investments represent a small portion of overall assets and that his firm targets companies that are likely to go public or be sold in the near future.
Nothing prevents mutual funds from buying pieces of startups, though the Securities and Exchange Commission limits them to keeping less than 15% of their portfolios in illiquid securities.
Mutual funds have turned to private technology companies as a way to boost investor returns while growth has stalled at larger, more well-known firms, says Mr. Rosenbluth of S&P Capital IQ.
But these deals are more opaque than most fund investments: Fund firms aren't required to immediately disclose such investment decisions to investors, and privately held companies are also more challenging to value, making it more difficult to gauge how a stake is performing.
For startups, fund companies are attractive because they have a longer-term investing horizon than venture capitalists.
Bellevue, Wash.-based startup Apptio has received funding from three mutual-fund companies. T. Rowe was an early investor and Janus participated in the company's recent funding round of $45 million last May, as did Fidelity, according to people familiar with the matter.
Sunny Gupta, co-founder and chief executive of the startup, which helps businesses manage their technology spending, said he was interested in having the fund companies on board in part because he "wanted a different style of investor" that also brought in-depth financial expertise.
Having mutual funds on board also helps on the road to an initial public offering because big-name investors can provide peace of mind to others thinking about taking a stake. With T. Rowe, for example, Mr. Gupta said "there is an incredible amount of brand recognition" on Wall Street.
Similarly, Bill Harris, the chief executive of Personal Capital, a personal-finance and wealth-management website in Redwood City, Calif., said BlackRock's knowledge of the financial world has benefited the startup since the fund company took part in a $25 million funding round last June. Mr. Harris said he hadn't sought out a fund company and that BlackRock had approached him.
The competition among fund companies is driving up valuations of recent deals, said one person with direct knowledge of startups' funding rounds.
The bellwether for the industry is T. Rowe Price, the Baltimore-based fund family that has backed 30 private tech deals since 2009, according to CB Insights.
Henry Ellenbogen, manager of T. Rowe's $16.2 billion New Horizons Fund, put money into Twitter Inc. TWTR +1.33% before it went public, and has since bought shares in other big names including LivingSocial Inc., a daily deals site, and GrubHub Inc., GRUB -4.18% a food-delivery service, according to T. Rowe.
Mr. Ellenbogen's fund returned 49.1% last year, beating its benchmark, the S&P 500, which returned 32.4%, according to fund-research firm Morningstar Inc. He invests only a small percentage of the funds' assets in any one startup and holds about 260 stocks in the fund, realizing that some of the startups might fail, according to a person familiar with his thinking.
BlackRock, never a big player in Silicon Valley in the past, has funded 10 deals in the past two years, including four this year: software company Hortonworks Inc. in March and Dropbox in January. BlackRock doesn't disclose which of its mutual funds have invested, and declined to say how much the firm put into each company. The deals generally "represent a small portion of the total portfolio of a fund, but with the intent of adding incremental returns," a spokesman said.
Fidelity, likewise, has stepped up. The Boston-based fund firm has participated in 14 privately held tech-company rounds of funding since 2010, including six last year and four this year that have closed, including One Kings Lane, a home-décor website.
Another fear among some analysts is that this rush into pre-IPO stocks has echoes of the 1990s dot-com bubble, when many fund managers got badly burned by ill-timed moves into technology shares. Janus and Fidelity had funds that suffered large losses in the dot-com crash.
A spokesman for Janus declined to comment.
Mr. Bartel of Fidelity conceded the firm is seeing valuations that "aren't as compelling," as they used to be but also said it is seeing more pitches than ever.
.

What catch said. Graph it against VNQ or FREAX or even CGMRX and you can see how smoothing it is. One of my large but not large enough retirement holdings.

As discussed previously here, the 'hard close' on GPGOX and GPIOX has two exceptions, as explained in this footnote on the main page for each fund:
"Closed to all investors, except existing investors with an established automatic investment plan and/or an established position in a retirement account."
A couple of the comments on M* specifically refer to retirement accounts - the Fido "no" comment being one of those. I'm curious why some brokerages allow purchases of these funds under circumstances listed as okay by GP, while others don't.

Dex-
Just a note to let you know that I completely agree with your evaluation of the opportunities that our generation enjoyed (I'm 75) vs the terribly diminished prospects ("current reality", as you put it) that today's younger folks face.
Like MJG, we also have dual SS and defined pension benefits, and are able to fund our living expenses from those sources without needing to draw down our savings and investment reserves. It's true that we were always very conservative in our expenses and discretionary spending, with an eye towards retirement, and we did manage our financial affairs wisely as it turns out. But in today's environment even doing all of that stuff won't be all that much help. Some folks tend to look down from their mountaintops and assume that everyone has the same opportunities and plain good luck that they did. It simply ain't so.
Regards-

Hi rjb112,
Wow, you’re a bulldog on fixed income issues and doubts. That’s meant as a compliment, an attaboy.
You pose a delicately balanced retiree scenario. Under the conditions that you postulated, the imaginary retiree is always on the cusp of a cash shortfall since he is tightly coupled to annual market returns.
That retiree has failed to plan well before his retirement years. He should have deployed Monte Carlo simulators to test the sensitivity of his estimated retirement drawdown requirements to market vicissitudes and his portfolio asset allocation design. A parametric Monte Carlo analysis would have identified the relationship between his candidate drawdown schedules and his portfolio survival probabilities. Parametric exploration is always needed because of the uncertain future market performance in all broad investment buckets.
In general, these analyses usually project that a 3% to 4% annual portfolio withdrawal rate will permit that portfolio to survive for 30 plus years with a 95% likelihood of success. A 100% guaranteed survival rate is rare except for an extremely well endowed portfolio or a near-zero drawdown schedule.
Certainly, particularly during the early retirement years, a run of bad luck, of consecutive negative annual performance, can destroy even the most conservative planning. I suppose that’s what you fear. Yes it can happen. Under such a scenario, additional savings must be identified to balance the necessary adjustment to the portfolio’s withdrawal schedule.
Before retiring, I completed these types of Monte Carlo perturbation calculations. It is amazing how flexible route correction rules can improve survival likelihoods in the positive direction. For example, most Monte Carlo simulations assume that withdrawal dollars will be adjusted for inflation. If the marketplace goes south for a year or two, simply not giving yourself that inflation increase will have a profound impact on the portfolio’s survival probabilities. Again this puts pressure on the retiree to tighten his belt. That surely is not pleasant, but it is reality.
This problem with our imaginary retiree has its roots in his pre-retirement working years if he was too risk adverse. If his risk tolerance was very low, he positioned too much of his savings in short-term fixed income products. Historical data suggests that equity real (minus inflation) returns are of order 6.5% with a standard deviation of say 15%. Short-term fixed income real returns are about 0.5% with near-zero variability.
The annual compound return for equities is reduced to 5.3% because of its annual variability; the compound return for the fixed income component remains at 0.5%. Over a 35 year nest-egg accumulation period, the end wealth differential is huge if the saver puts 10% or 20% into fixed income components.
The end wealth multiplier for the 10% fixed income portfolio is 5.19; the multiplier for the 20% fixed income weighting is only 4.42. For this example, the more aggressive portfolio delivers a 17.4% higher retirement starting end wealth.
The takeaway lesson is that during their accumulation phase, folks would benefit by emphasizing equity commitments over fixed income products. Over the long haul, an equity heavy portfolio is less risky than a fixed income portfolio if retirement inflation adjusted end wealth is the goal.
Based on your closing paragraph, I still feel that you are placing far to much emphasis on recovery percentages from a nearby market peak value. The actionable measures are the health of the retiree’s current portfolio, its projected survival time, the estimated future returns, and the necessary drawdown rate to maintain a lifestyle. Where the equity markets peaked is history, and not really meaningful given the current circumstances of the retiree.
For your 2000 meltdown example, the immediate negative market period exceeded one year, but was starting to recover before the downturn reached its second anniversary. If the retiree had properly done his retirement planning, he might well have not accepted an inflation increase for one or maybe two years. Yes, he would have been forced to sell some additional holdings in a down market (he always sells to reach his needed withdrawal rate). He could limit the damage by only selling fixed income units.
I hesitate to invade your personal decision making. That’s your job alone. However, I do hope that my stories do influence some of your thinking on the matter. Except perhaps for a reversion-to-the-mean propensity, ironclad forever rules do not exist in the investment universe. Flexibility in action and flexibility in thinking are mandatory assets for an individual investor.
Only you are responsible for your actions. I trust I contributed to your flexibility in thinking.
Best Wishes.

>> You need to keep buying, rotating, withdrawing, selecting, protecting, etc over the lifetime of investing.
Cman, do you not use funds and fund managers? (honest question, not rhetorical or fightpicking)

I am talking about fund investing. At the zoom level of years not daily or weekly. In the investing horizon of decades, a lot of things change that requires investing decisions even invalidating previous decisions.
Income levels and family sizes change requiring new allocation strategy or risk management, careers change with different constraints on investment choices available, global markets change providing different allocation choices and risk profiles, funds come and go, new fund types emerge, black swan events loom requiring caution and wondering whether it might destroy the retirement.
At any point in time, it may seem like there is a solution now that will be sufficient for the next 30 years and has been the solution for the last 30 in retrospect. But that is usually not the reality one deals with as life happens.
You need situational awareness for all of these decisions. The actual indicators used to get situational awareness depend on the Time zoom level you are using for decisions but exist at all zoom levels and decisions happen at multiple zoom levels.

Hi rjb112,
Thank you for your discerning and kind commentary.
Indeed, the duration and magnitude of both Bull and Bear markets depend upon definitions. The simple plus or minus 20% rule is very common and is the one that I used in my post. In that rule, the 20% is measured from either the high or low water marks immediately before the reversal.
Your astute comments are more market secular cycle in character. They are based on penetrating these previous high or low records. Since the two most recent Bear slides both exceeded -40%, the 20% reversals were only partial by the secular definition, and obviously produced a different duration measurement. Nothing wrong with any of this record keeping as long as we are all familiar with the operative ground-rules.
Cash reserves are costly since they automatically tradeoff investment opportunity for mental comfort. How far we each commit to that tradeoff is a personal balancing matter. Some financial wags are satisfied with a 6 month reserve. I am not so sanguine. That’s why I proposed the one to two year cash reserve. In the end, it’s your decision.
My own decision is that a reserve that covers all potential outliers, that is really deep into protecting against Black Swan events, is far too costly. I’m mentally prepared to accept some low probability cash flow shortfalls so that I can capture more of the higher likelihood investment opportunity paydays. Again the tradeoff is in your camp.
I consider some retirement income as a dead certainty; Social Security and corporate retirement commitments are in that category. Many financial planners recommend assessing these sources as guaranteed fixed income. For many retirees, these constant cash inflows represent a high fraction of the retiree’s daily needs. I suggest that in a market meltdown situation, any income shortfalls might well be accommodated by modest changes in spending habits.
Early in my retirement, I was challenged by this exact scenario. Spending changes are a workable option. Delaying the purchase of an automobile, eating out less frequently, skipping a vacation cruise holiday, and even making the kids initiate a low interest rate college loan do miracles for the financial balance sheet in short order. And they were only temporary anyway.
From my perspective, measuring a market against an earlier peak level is unattractive and inappropriate. It is a false standard for an individual investor because almost nobody entirely entered the marketplace at that precise, unfortunate time. Admittedly, it is a positive signal for a continuing Bull market overall when these high water resistance markers are penetrated. But an individual’s portfolio and his adjustment decisions should not be exclusively tied to historical landmarks.
I’m an enthusiastic and happy Vanguard client. These days, I basically do my banking with them through their short-term corporate bond mutual fund. I do so irregularly and infrequently. I do not sweat small price changes in that fund; it’s noise level stuff at the fraction of a penny level.
And note that “a penny saved will depreciate rapidly”.
Rjb112, you seem to be a highly motivated investor and a financially focused person. That’s goodness unless you allow these positive attributes to squeeze out other important living functions. I guarantee that you will make bad investment decisions. Remember, for every trade there is a successful side, but, also someone was on the wrong side.
I surely have been on that wrong side more than I like to acknowledge. However, I have managed to reduce my error rate over the years. I attribute that reduction to the formulation of my earlier Super Six ( S6), or now Superior Seven (S7), rule discipline.
The original S6 components in general are (1) savings, (2) simplicity, (3) statistics, (4) stability, (5) selectivity, and (6) strategy. Recently I added John Bogle’s stay the course admonishment as the Number (7) “stay” component to form S7.
For example, in the savings component, it took me awhile to recognize that by decreasing my spending only a small percentage, I could double my savings rate. That’s a nice little piece of wisdom.
You are fully aware of my addiction to statistics as a workhorse to guide investment planning and decisions. It is an important element in my list, but I do not permit it to function in isolation to other factors. That admission might shock a few FMOers.
By stability I mean behavioral emotional stability, by selectivity I mean the active and/or passive mutual fund management decision, and by strategy I default to my asset allocation decisions which do morph over time.
I hope you found this reply at least a little informative and useful for your investment purposes.
Best Wishes.

You beat me to it.
http://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/915802/000091580214000011/globalreachfundsoftclose0416.htm
497 1 globalreachfundsoftclose0416.htm FINANCIAL INVESTORS TRUST
Grandeur Peak Global Reach Fund
(the “Fund”)
SUPPLEMENT DATED APRIL 16, 2014 TO THE FUND’S PROSPECTUS DATED MAY 1, 2013, AS SUPPLEMENTED FROM TIME TO TIME
This Supplement updates certain information contained in the Prospectus for the Fund dated May 1, 2013, as supplemented from time to time. You should retain this Supplement and the Prospectus for future reference. Additional copies of the Prospectus may be obtained free of charge by visiting our web site at www.grandeurpeakglobal.com or calling us at 1.855.377.PEAK (7325).
Effective as of the close of business on April 30, 2014, the Fund will close to new investors, except as described below:
·A financial advisor whose clients have established accounts in the Fund as of April 30, 2014 may continue to open new accounts in the Fund for any of its existing or new clients, as long as their clearing platform will allow this exception.
·Existing or new participants in a qualified retirement plan, such as a 401(k) plan, profit sharing plan, 403(b) plan or 457 plan, which has an existing position in the Fund as of April 30, 2014, may continue to open new accounts in the Fund. In addition, if such qualified retirement plans have a related retirement plan formed in the future, this plan may also open new accounts in the Fund, as long as their clearing platform will allow this exception.
This change will affect new investors seeking to purchase shares of the Fund either directly or through third party intermediaries. Existing shareholders of the Fund may continue to purchase additional shares of the Fund.
As described in the Prospectus, the Fund’s investment adviser, Grandeur Peak Global Advisors, LLC, retains the right to make exceptions to any action taken to close the Fund or limit inflows into the Fund.
INVESTORS SHOULD RETAIN THIS SUPPLEMENT FOR FUTURE REFERENCE

Just got the notice from Grandeur Peak. The lead paragraphs read:

We are announcing today that the Grandeur Peak Global Reach Fund (GPROX/GPRIX) will close to new investors on April 30, 2014. The Fund will remain open to existing investors, but will no longer accept new shareholders after April 30th. Retirement plans and financial advisors with existing clients in the Fund will still be able to invest in the Fund for existing as well as new clients as long as their clearing platform will allow this exception.
The Global Reach Fund currently has $101M under management. As you know, we consider capacity at the firm level as well as the Fund level. Across Grandeur Peak we now have over $2.1B under management. We have talked from the founding of the firm about restricting our total assets invested in global small/micro-cap stocks to around $3B. We are soft closing the Global Reach Fund earlier than originally planned to allow continued access for existing shareholders while also preserving capacity for the remaining global small/micro-cap funds we intend to launch over the coming years.

I'd look seriously at the fund. GPROX was intended to be the firm's flagship fund; the broadest portfolio offering exposure to all of their best ideas. All of the others (three currently active, three planned) would be just subsets of the Global Reach strategy. The S&P Index vs Active calculations are painfully consistent: international small cap is the only category were active managers consistently outperform passive. The managers have a great performance record and have already closed three of their four funds to new investors. None of the funds yet has a three-year record, though Mr. Gardiner has about a 30 year record to work from. These are certainly not low-priced funds but investors seem to have been getting ample value for the money they're paying.
Here's our profile from July 2013: Grandeur Peak Global Reach.
For what interest it holds,
David

I bought it ~2.5y ago because I pay very close attention to anything that catches DS's eye, like so many here. In a practice I am increasingly trying to avoid in retirement (and succeeding with since), I bailed out of it after a couple years because it was doing fine but not anything consistently better (reward or risk) than my 2-3-4 big holdings, PRBLX, FLPSX, YAFFX (yes, I know the categories are not the same). I'm trying to reduce and simplify. Subsequent performance has attested to the wisdom of my decision (the dumbest conclusion an investor can draw most of the time), and I did add some moneys into RGHVX since I wanted to continue with the nominal shop.

Hi Guys,
Admittedly, I am an optimistic person. During the latter years of my other life, I was a major organizer and contributor to an endless number of aggressive, challenging engineering work proposals. I believed each would be rewarded the contract; in fact, only a small fraction of our team proposals won the contracts. Even with those disappointing outcomes, I retained my enthusiasm and confidence until retirement.
Over the last week or so, a bunch of MFO regulars have posted worrisome submittals with regard to a potential market meltdown. Presently, I am not in that camp.
I do not worry much over any looming equity Bear market bust. Surely, It might happen. However, I will survive and so will all of you with just some conservative planning, and more importantly, a little cash reserve to cover any plunge and its recovery period. Trying to time the downward thrust is hazardous duty and could deepen the impact of the market cycle’s reversals if not adroitly handled.
As Nobel Laureate economist Gene Fama said: “Your money is like soap. The more you handle it, the less you’ll have”.
As you’re all aware, I love statistics. You’re also familiar with the fact that investment markets are awash with useful and reliable statistics. I certainly deploy this vast statistical database when making my broad market decisions.
These statistics strongly demonstrate the asymmetric upward bias to positive market rewards. The short term statistics are chaotic in character and do resemble a random walk. However, as time expands, so do the odds for positive rewards. Historical data shows that equity market returns are random with roughly a 10% annual upward slope. That’s a confidence builder.
Here are a few of the stats that I find particularly compelling.
On a daily basis, the markets yield positive returns about 53 % of the time. When the time horizon expands to monthly, quarterly, and annual timeframes, the positive outcomes progressively increase to 58%, 63%, and 73%, respectively. Time has a healing influence.
Over 5-year and 10-year rolling periods, the positive outcome odds increase again to the 76% and 88% levels. Wall Street wounds heal more persuasively over longer time horizons.
It is troublesome that so many MFOers have expressed high anxiety over the possibilities of a sharp market downturn. Indeed, it is a certainty that a Bear market will occur. Over the last 8 decades, equity markets have sacrificed 20 % of its value on 4 separate occasions. In the last 113 years, the stock market has suffered Bear reversals 32 times. That record shows a 20 % downward thrust every 3.5 years on average.
Main Street pays the same penalty as Wall Street during these dark episodes since active mutual fund managers have not displayed any talent to really soften the blows.
The good news is that Bear market cycles have a short average duration; their average length is only slightly longer than a single year. The recoveries are rather dramatic with a major portion of that recovery happening near the beginning of the process. Therein is the dilemma for an investor trying to time the reversal. He needs a sharp criteria and speedy reflexes to respond to this rapid turnaround.
The other good news part of the market bull/bear cycle is the duration and magnitude of the bull segment. Its duration is over three times the Bear periodicity, and the magnitude of the gains wipe away the losses during the Bear segment. According to InvesTech’s Jim Stack, over the last century, the average duration of a market recovery is about 3.8 years.
These statistical observations form the basis for my optimism.
Those who flee to cash too early, or reenter too late pay opportunity costs in addition to trading costs. That cost is exacerbated if an investor patiently waits for the confirmatory signal of a Bull market (a 20% gain from the market’s low water marker).
Most folks agree that reversals are impossible to predict. So, why worry that problem? Perhaps we should focus our attention on things we can control. Things like building a cash, or near-cash (short term corporate bonds) reserve of a year or two to outlast any Bear market scenario. Also we could be flexible in our buying habits during stressful periods. A Toyota Camry is not a bad compromise over a Lexus when the road is rough.
Even if an investor fears an impending market meltdown, one viable option that is universally available is to do nothing; stay the course.
I am not quite so brave. If my fears are supported by numerous signal data (like inflation rate changes, super high P/E ratios, low consumer confidence, unhealthy ISM raw order index values), I would be inclined to take some action. However, that action would be both limited and incremental in character.
I believe in the 20/80 rule. In a business, 20% of the workforce does 80% of the productive work. In investing, I tend to keep 80% of my equity holdings as permanent positions. If motivated by Bear horror stories, I might incrementally shift 20% of my equity holdings into less volatile products. The changes would be made incrementally as Bear evidence accumulated and the odds shifted to favor a downward movement.
The overarching purpose of this post is to caution MFOers against acting too precipitously. All investors behaviorally tend to be overconfident and overactive prone.
I certainly welcome your perspectives on this matter. I’m not an expert, and even the experts often fail to identify market tipping points. Jesse Livermore made and lost fortunes several times during his turbulent career. Even the baseball great Babe Ruth once led his league in strikeouts.
Best Regards,

Points taken, and in retirement I am learning not to react as much as before, or at least not in the same way.

Avoiding both, like Comcast and Time Warner? :-)
I think TIAA has a couple of distinctive, if not unique, offerings - TIAA Traditional (annuity) and TIAA Real Estate (direct ownership of properties, not indirect via REITs/REOCs). And CREF Stock is as close to an all-in-one equity fund as any I'm aware of (the other fund I've found with this breadth - value/growth, foreign/domestic is FLPSX, but that's a small cap fund with more of a value bent.)
However, these are only available through retirement plans (typically 403(b)s) and recently through their advisory service.

Agree. Though in retirement I am not disappointed by anything (almost) that is so protective.

FYI:
Regards,
Ted
http://online.wsj.com/news/articles/SB10001424052702304640104579487552023485062#printMode

As a whole, my portfolio dropped only 1%, thank you bonds, utility funds and some consumer staples stocks. However, my retirement accounts dropped by 3%, which is just a bit more than the S + P. Consider that portfolio holds FBTIX and ISTIX, and is all equities, I am not unhappy with it. It was not by my design that all my bonds are in my taxable account, the bonds were inherited and will have first call date June 2016, so no need to change anything right now. Bonds 32% Equities 66% Cash and equivalents 2%

http://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/906352/000093041314001721/c77145_497.htm
497 1 c77145_497.htm
FIRST EAGLE FUNDS
First Eagle Overseas Fund
1345 Avenue of the Americas
New York, New York 10105
(800) 334-2143
SUPPLEMENT DATED APRIL 10, 2014
TO PROSPECTUS DATED MARCH 1, 2014
First Eagle Overseas Fund Closing to New Investors
Effective at the close of business on Friday, May 9, 2014, the First Eagle Overseas Fund (the “Fund”) will be closed to new investors, subject to the following limited exceptions:
• Existing shareholders in the Fund can continue to purchase shares of the Fund. An existing shareholder also may open and fund the following types of new accounts: (a) accounts opened with distributions or roll-overs from individual retirement accounts, 401(k) plans or other employer sponsored retirement plans invested in the Fund; (b) accounts opened in a different share class of the Fund; and (c) accounts opened by way of share transfer from an existing account, provided the new account will be for the benefit of an immediate family member of the beneficial owner of the existing account, or has the same taxpayer identification number or primary mailing address as the existing account or is considered a “charitable foundation” related to the beneficial owner of the existing account for purposes of the Internal Revenue Code.
•Existing shareholders in broker-dealer brokerage and wrap-fee programs can continue to purchase shares and exchange into the Fund. Existing broker-dealer brokerage and wrap-fee programs can add new participants. The Fund will not be available to new broker-dealer wrap-fee platforms.
•The Fund continues to offer its shares through certain retirement plans that were invested in the Fund (at the plan level) prior to the Fund’s close.
•Existing registered investment advisers (RIA) that have an investment allocation to the Fund in a fee-based, wrap or advisory account can continue to add new clients, purchase shares, and exchange into the
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Fund. This exception is also available to accounts opened on certain mutual fund sales platforms designed to facilitate investments on behalf of investment adviser clients. The Fund will not be available to investment advisers, whether investing through a platform or otherwise, that are not already invested in the Fund on behalf of their clients.
• Accounts benefiting employees, officers, directors and trustees of the First Eagle Funds, the investment adviser or the investment adviser’s affiliates and their immediate family members can continue to purchase shares and exchange into the Fund.
• In the discretion of the Distributor, clients of select investment consultants having existing relationships with the Fund or the Fund’s investment adviser will be authorized to purchase shares and exchange into the Fund.
Subject to these exceptions, no new accounts in the Fund will be opened by way of exchange, transfer or purchase, unless the Distributor otherwise determines and documents in limited and exceptional circumstances that the investment would not adversely affect the Adviser’s ability to manage the Fund effectively. Prospective purchasers may be asked to verify that one of these exceptions is available prior to opening a new account in the Fund. The Fund also may decline to open a new account even if the account is otherwise eligible for an exception to the close.
The ability either to permit or decline purchases (or in some cases to limit purchases) in accord with the exceptions set out above relating to accounts held by intermediaries may vary depending upon system capabilities, applicable contractual and legal restrictions and cooperation of those intermediaries.
These terms may be modified in the discretion of the Board of Trustees.
* * * *
The information in this Supplement modifies the First Eagle Funds Prospectus dated March 1, 2014. In particular, and without limitation, the information contained in this Supplement modifies (and if inconsistent, replaces) information contained in the sections of Prospectus entitled “About Your Investment,” “How to Purchase Shares” and “Exchanging Your Shares.”