I went and graphed Oct-Dec $10k change for CAPE, DSEEX, SP500, low-vol LC ETFs, plus DOD, MMTM, QUAL, SCHD, VIG.... And yeah, everyone has already beat me to the point: DSEEX and CAPE did not do any better, to the contrary, did somewhat worse.
(I too have wanted to use CAPE for Merrill no-cost trading but cannot.)
I was v impressed to see how comparatively well TWEIX, YACKX, and PRBLX did during that significant slump. Yay for active management sometimes.

@Sven, DSENX is not a balanced fund (as thoroughly discussed in past discussions here. msf I believe had some good info on that point) so that comparison you gave ends up being apples to oranges. I suppose it could be called a "hybrid" type fund for whatever that means. For me it's just a large cap fund that has a really good return record and does better than the index, whether that's the LC Value or S&P 500 index. And what is meant by your comment that the 2018 drawdown is sizeable? In 2018 per M* the fund lost -4.3% while the LC value index lost -8.5% (S&P500 was -4.4%). It is a little more volatile if you are basing that on the STD, but does that matter if your holding the fund long term and not trying to get in and out to time the market? Higher STD is a bad thing if you don't hold on to your funds. In any case, there is nothing to say this fund is significantly more risky than your typical large cap fund. Take a look at the upside/downside capture ratio. Again DSENX has more upside than the S&P500 index and less downside. It blows the LCV index out of the water by that measure.
@MikeW, didn't really pay much attention before, but per M*, DSENX lost -15.6% and in comparison the S&P500 lost -13.5% in the 4th qtr. The CAPE ETF also lost about the same as DSENX so apparently it relates to the S&P500 low valuation sectors the CAPE formula was invested in at the time. It is not a low-volatility fund if that's what you are looking for.

Old Skeet provided a good analysis. I too hold DSENX for awhile. The 2018 drawdown is sizable as indicated by Derf. The fund 2018's total return was -4.0% while the 60/40 balanced index lost -2.9%. The international version, DSEUX, performed even worse and yielded -12.9% in 2018. The only saving grace of these tow CAPE-oriented funds is their large bond positions that provide the monthly dividend.
Interesting products from Gundlach but the risk is significant. Perhaps TRP Capital Appreciation would be a better vehicle with respect to both risk and reward.

I hold both CAPE and DSENX, using the former for trading when the price is right. Up until the market drop late last year, performance of the two vehicles was similar; however DSENX dropped much more than CAPE during he turmoil. I used M*'s chart function to compare performance, so maybe I missed something important.

David, why would you need a CAPE stand in?
You turned me on to DSENX years ago and it remains one of my top holdings. FDSAX seems a poor substitute for DOD and it hasn't even kept up with the S&P500 let alone DSENX. Some times more is less. Maybe not even sometimes.

CAPE, again, has outperformed DOD the last 6/5/4/3/1y periods. (Slightly.) I shoulda considered it when looking for a CAPE standin, instead of QUAL and MMTM and a few others. DOD sure has a higher UI, though, and by some degree.

I haven't looked recently at the holdings data for TWEIX and FLPSX, and doubtless the study considered such; but I do wonder if CAPE at least fits relative, perhaps not 'true', value criteria. It's supposed to, I believe.

all noted, tnx
The thing is, this was not ever supposed to be a 'brokerage attached to a bank', but the bfd result of a long-established independent brokerage marrying a big ol' bank, with all the joy-joy of each and both...
I forgot about CAPE not paying dividends (etn meaning debt instruments) --- so all the DSE_X divs come from the bond sauce. Huh.
Yeah, the end-month fractional sweep thing is also nuts.
BoA credit cards don't need ME/ML brokerage, I think, though you probably get extra-nice treatment or something if you have a lot of bucks at the brokerage.

Yup, they are oddly unsophisticated, and in important ways, I think.
If ML were not hardwired w/ BoA (where we have checking / savings / mortgage / heloc / 3% credit card sort of), and above all did not have free trading, and did not pay so much for accounts transferred into them (I guess the same as other places, turns out), I would move everything back to Fido.
Also, fwiw, ML's accounts aggregator, My Financial Picture, is invariably accurate, while Fido's has been sketchy for about a decade, even as they changed from yodlee to other data feeds, and earnestly promise improvement every other month. I have a dozen emails about FullView and My Portfolio update problems. Still laggard and/or wrong, almost every night.
There is worse, too, in just trying to ascertain whether you can buy a given fund --- it shows availability right up to the moment you make the actual purchase attempt. And the capper for me is their restriction list, already covered in this forum, notably for me CAPE unavailability.

While 40% might be a tad high, I agree more with @msf here. Bogle is generally a lot of “bluster.” I doubt even he agrees 100% with everything he says. (But I’ll acknowledge his contributions to mutual funds / investors).
The biggest reason I can think of to diversify equity holdings more outside the U.S. is the long term damage being done to our competitive position and democratic institutions by the current occupant of the WH. Unfortunately, to a degree he’s a symptom of deeper problems in the country that aren’t going to disappear overnight. I’ve tried to increase international exposure by bolstering my % in RPGAX. And it hasn’t escaped my attention that domestically oriented DODBX has a significant amount of foreign exposure (somewhere near 20%). Recently increased my stake in that one.
I’ve always clung to a healthy dose of foreign currencies / bonds for a somewhat different reason, If some nasty inflation (actually Dollar deflation) were to emerge down the road, the dollar would weaken against foreign currencies and foreign currencies would increase in relative value. I can’t predict that will happen. But I like having the insurance of some foreign currency exposure anyway.
Back to equities - About the time equities in one region or another begin looking bleak is, IMHO, a good time to begin averaging in. Europe appears “on the ropes” now due to BREXIT & related issues. And China just had an awful year. Good places for long term investors to look for possible value. EM as a group? If younger, I’d make a spec play on the beaten up EM sector. But over the very long term most of my international exposure would be with the less risky / volatile developed markets.

A report of "Harold Evensky’s final presentation on investing."
https://www.advisorperspectives.com/articles/2018/09/26/the-investment-world-according-to-harold-evensky
Very straightforward, nothing earth shattering, though several points I've seen elsewhere are included here:
"Evensky cited the Shiller CAPE ratio, which is 31.1 versus its historical average of 16.2. 'It’s a very expensive market,' he said."
Maybe not as expensive as three months ago when this presentation was made, but still far from cheap.
"If a manager cuts turnover from 100% to 50%, the marginal reduction in taxes is negligible, Evensky said. Managers need to be closer to 10% turnover to be thought of as tax-efficient."
Which is why I may fret about Dick Strong-type churning, but don't obsess over "moderate" turnover. Though turning over an entire portfolio within a year still isn't "moderate" from other perspectives.
“'Our clients don’t need cash flow,' Evensky said. 'They need real income.' The problem with dividends is that they are not consistent; interest is also volatile, as bonds are subject to interest rate movements. 'Our clients need reasonably consistent income,' he said".
Hence a focus on total return.
“'we tend, particularly in planning, to focus on the probability but ignore the consequences. That can be really dangerous in planning.' If you know the probably of success is 95%, the consequences of failure still matter, he said. We need to plan, for example, for additional longevity of our clients."
Which is why I continue to be concerned about simulations showing 95% success that don't also tell me how bad the results are in those other 5% (miss by just a little, or spend golden years of poverty?)
Evensky has changed his outlook about annuities, which he once derided as an inappropriate vehicle for his clients. Single-premium immediate annuities (SPIAs) and deferred-income annuities (DIAs) will be the single most important tool in the coming decade, he said, mostly because their fees have come down

@Derf
don't see any comment from her except quoting him, and I sure love his 'lathered in derp' locution
yes, almost everything looks oversold, and if I had any cash I would be buying bigtime, not only CAPE and ARKK but PCI and now PDI

FYI: You might expect a 70-year-old mutual fund with $74 billion in assets to be set in its ways.
But the Franklin Income Fund’s holdings have gone through big changes in recent years. Ed Perks, the fund’s lead manager, described those shifts as well as the uncertain investing landscape of 2018 and what he sees ahead.
The Franklin Income Fund FKINX, -0.93% FRIAX, -0.94% was launched in August 1948. The fund’s objective is to maximize income while also seeking opportunities for capital growth, with a diversified, actively managed portfolio of stocks, bonds and convertible securities.
In an interview on Dec. 18, Perks said the fund was about evenly allocated between fixed-income and equity investments. At the beginning of 2018 the allocation was about 40% fixed income and 60% equities. Perks said that this year the fund’s management team has “softened its overall investment posture,” in order to “reduce total expected portfolio risk going forward.”
Regards,
Ted
https://www.marketwatch.com/story/there-will-be-plenty-of-opportunity-for-investors-in-2019-says-manager-of-74-billion-franklin-income-fund-2018-12-21/print
M* Snapshot FKINX:
http://performance.morningstar.com/fund/performance-return.action?t=FKINX&region=usa&culture=en_US
Lipper Snapshot FKINX:
https://www.marketwatch.com/investing/fund/fkinx
FKINX Is Rank #21 In The (30%-50%-E) Fund Category By U.S. News & World Report:
https://money.usnews.com/funds/mutual-funds/allocation-30-to-50-equity/franklin-income-fund/fkinx

@Crash
Same question. Why would one want or need CM as part of a portfolio?
Sidenote: Canada, for the most part did not escape the turmoil of pricing declines during the market melt. CM, from a high price in May, 2008 through its low price in March, 2009 found a -62% change.

M* has screwed up the categorizations of DSE_X, from the getgo, I think.
It algorithmically churns SP500, as CAPE-plus vehicle, so never ever SC. LCV is always reasonable, since valuation drives the algorithm.

When in doubt go to the funds website:
https://doublelinefunds.com/shiller-enhanced-cape/

After several years of almost no year-end distributions, this year the tax man cometh. NAV is around $15.50 and the total distribution is estimated at about $1.65. Ouch. Still, it's hard to complain about the performance. The ETN, CAPE, does not make big distributions.
For a really tax-efficient, winning equity fund, check out AKREX.

You can always roll your own, 50-50 or 25-75 or whatever w/ PONAX and DSENX (or SCHD or CAPE or whatever) and call it a day; still a distant horizon at 50y.

Blows my mind too. Sometimes, however, I come close to understanding Einstein’s view of gravity (somehow tied-in to the the theory of relativity) - but than it escapes me. As I understand his view of gravity, everything is traveling in a straight line (including orbiting planets). But because space itself is warped by the mass of large objects, objects like planets only appear to be moving in circular orbits.
From a practical standpoint, would an equity position opened on Earth by an “Earthling” from his near-the-speed-of-light spacecraft appreciate in Earth years? If so, the traveler would be unimaginably wealthy once he eventually returned to earth - and still young enough to enjoy his new found wealth to the fullest. :)

Yeah; I was (am always) looking for alternatives to CAPE, which outdoes them all but is unavailable at one of my brokerages. All similar more or less but real (non-huge) differences in performance.