https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2023-10-23/nobody-wants-mutual-funds-now
The page contains five pieces. Though four of them are unrelated to the title of the page. The actual title of the copied piece is: Barbell Strategy
Omitted in the OP transcription are citations (links) to the text quoted within the piece:
Silla Brush and Loukia Gyftopoulou report citation (paywalled):
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2023-10-22/active-vs-passive-investing-money-managers-confront-end-of-bull-market?srnd=premium&sref=1kJVNqnU
WSJ citation (lnot paywalled): https://www.wsj.com/finance/stocks/who-you-calling-dumb-money-everyday-investors-do-just-fine-9dd63892?mod=hp_lead_pos8
That WSJ article addresses @Devo's concern: I think the WSJ article which said retail investors do just fine, and better than professionals, is probably too anecdotal. Nothing about reality and what we hear from individual investors playing zero day options and triple leveraged ETFs ties in with this.

Vanda calculates the average portfolio by analyzing individual investors’ brokerage-account trading activity in U.S.-listed single stocks. The firm’s analysis excludes purchases of exchange-traded funds and mutual funds, along with transactions made through retirement accounts or investment advisers.

The WSJ piece has a graphic comparing individual investors' concentration in the biggest name stocks vs. S&P weights that goes beyond the quoted text's mention of Apple, Tesla, and Nvidia. Also overweighted by individual investors are Amazon, AMD, and Netflix. Underweighted are Microsoft, Alphabet, and Meta (all underweighted by about half).
The WSJ has another graphic comparing individual investors and S&P 500 portfolios by sector. Aside from overweighting technology (as mentioned in the quoted text), consumer discretionary is heavily overweighted, constituting about a quarter of investors' portfolios. Also of note is the substantial underweighting of healthcare (less than 40% of the S&P 500 weight); see MFO thread on healthcare.
Also omitted is footnote 1 (at the end of the 3rd paragraph):

One important element here is that mutual funds were once a way to diversify your stock portfolio in a world where the normal way to buy individual stocks was in round lots of 100 shares. If you had $10,000 to invest, that might get you 100 shares of one or two stocks, whereas a mutual fund could buy dozens of stocks for you and give you fractional ownership of each of them. But now you can trade individual stocks for free and buy fractional shares directly from your broker, so that benefit of mutual funds is much less important.

With 40% of portfolios invested (on average) in three stocks, that's not using cheap trades to diversify. That's doing what small investors have always done - buy a handful of stocks they recognize.
Again from the WSJ piece:

Robinhood users tend to “invest in what they know and use,” according to Stephanie Guild, head of investment strategy at Robinhood and a JPMorgan Chase veteran of about two decades. “That’s really no different than generations before...”

https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/1548609/000089418923007651/baf-497e.htm
________________________________________
BROWN ADVISORY FUNDS
Brown Advisory Equity Income Fund
(the “Fund”)
Institutional Shares (BAFDX)
Investor Shares (BIADX)
Advisor Shares (BADAX)
Supplement dated October 19, 2023
to the Prospectus, the Summary Prospectus and the Statement of Additional Information
dated October 31, 2022
The Board of Trustees (the “Board”) of Brown Advisory Funds (the “Trust”), based upon the recommendation of Brown Advisory LLC (the “Adviser”), the investment adviser to the Fund, has determined to close and liquidate the Fund. The Board concluded that it would be in the best interest of the Fund and its shareholders that the Fund be closed and liquidated as a series of the Trust effective as of the close of business on or about January 15, 2024. Accordingly, the Board approved a Plan of Liquidation and Termination (the “Plan”) that sets forth the manner in which the Fund will be liquidated.
The Board has determined to waive any applicable redemption fees and exchange fees for shares redeemed on or after October 20, 2023.
Effective October 20, 2023, in anticipation of the liquidation, the Fund is no longer accepting purchases into the Fund, except for the reinvestment of dividends and distributions, if any. In addition, the Adviser will begin an orderly transition of the portfolio to cash and cash equivalents and the Fund will no longer be pursuing its stated investment objective. Shareholders of the Fund may redeem their investments as described in the Fund’s Prospectus.
Pursuant to the Plan, if the Fund has not received your redemption request or other instruction prior to January 15, 2024, your shares will be redeemed on January 15, 2024, and you will receive your proceeds from the Fund, subject to any required withholding. These proceeds will generally be subject to federal and possibly state and local income taxes if the redeemed shares are held in a taxable account, and the proceeds exceed your adjusted basis in the shares redeemed.
If you hold your shares in an IRA account, you have 60 days from the date you receive your proceeds to reinvest or “rollover” your proceeds into another IRA and maintain their tax-deferred status. If your IRA account is held directly with the Fund, you must notify the Fund’s transfer agent by telephone at 800-540-6807 (toll free) or 414-203-9064 prior to January 15, 2024, of your intent to rollover your IRA account to avoid withholding deductions from your proceeds. If the Fund does not receive a response prior to January 15, 2024, your investment in the Fund will be liquidated as an age-based distribution with 10% federal withholding on January 15, 2024. Please also note that state withholding may also apply. If the redeemed shares are held in a qualified retirement account such as an IRA, the redemption proceeds may not be subject to current income taxation. You should consult with your tax advisor on the consequences of this redemption to you.
Shareholder inquiries should be directed to the Fund at 800-540-6807 (toll free) or 414-203-9064.
Please retain this supplement for your reference.

I’m not trying to convince anyone to buy CDs and Treasuries, just trying to wrap my head around investing in them. For most of my investing history, cash investments have yielded next to nothing. Treasuries and short term bonds fared little better.
Many financial planners and experts say you can safely withdraw about 4% a year from a portfolio in retirement. I am unlikely to live 20 or more years, based on my family history, although my wife could. So, if I can buy a 20-year Treasury yielding 5.15%, that will pay more than my income needs for longer than my expected life span, what’s not to like? I have no intention in putting all of my portfolio in Treasuries, just a portion that would make up the long portion of a ladder.
I’m trying to decide whether to convert more of my bond funds into Treasuries. My bond funds are currently yielding close to 6% but continue to lose value. I know that at some point they will start increasing in value again, and selling now will lock in my losses, so I don’t plan to totally abandon them. But I no longer view them as low-risk investments to anchor my portfolio. I also plan to continue holding 40-60% of my portfolio in stock funds.
So, if I buy a 20-year Treasury that pays dividends semiannually, is that income compounded, or simply paid out in cash every 6 months? So far, the Treasuries I’ve bought are all zero-coupons that you buy at a discount and mature at full cash value. I haven’t bought any 5-year or longer Treasuries, so I don’t understand if the interest is compounded or simply paid out at regular intervals.

2021-23 will go down the history as the WORST period for bonds. Investors and organizations (M*, etc) that have gone exclusively with bond FUNDs only for all times have done poorly. But those who have also used other fixed-income tools have done better - individual Treasuries, CDs, ladders, stable-value (in retirement plans); m-mkt funds too since mid-2022.
The media is NOW saying that these are the best times to get into bonds. But many investors don't trust that.
Here is a chart showing Treasuries, core, core-plus and multisector bond funds (beneficiaries of HY); default is 1-yr, but can change timeframes to 2, 3 or other years.
https://stockcharts.com/h-perf/ui?s=IEF&compare=BND,FBND,PIMIX&id=p36003419830

I dont remember when PRWCX closed but I could start a new position in ITCSX in an old VOYA retirement account I kept open in 10/2019, so ITCSX was open then.

I opened a small position in my IRA on June 16 of 2014, shortly after the coming closure was announced.

I dont remember when PRWCX closed but I could start a new position in ITCSX in an old VOYA retirement account I kept open in 10/2019, so ITCSX was open then.

VY means that it's offered through a Voya retirement plan. It would open and close in rhythm with the main share class of the fund. Price would not offer access to Voya investors that it denied its own.

Thank you, Lynn, for such a thoughtful, inspiring essay on life and finances in retirement.
https://www.mutualfundobserver.com/2023/10/beyond-the-rainbow-a-map-to-the-good-life-in-retirement/

I wrote to Vanguard for temporary waiver for Admiral min of $50K. I cited bad 3-yr stretch for hybrids & that new money cannot be added to IRAs in retirement (only earnings from work can be contributed).
Vanguard's reply, after several days, was that it is looking into the matter.
If Vanguard's final response is negative, I will just SELL those Admiral hybrids (under $50K) ahead of Investor-conversion deadline and replace them with appropriate combo of TCAF + USFR. In the bigger scheme of things, the ER change doesn't matter. But Vanguard needs to have some pushbacks. After Vanguard forced conversion to brokerage, I am not limited to Vanguard funds.

The Wall Street Journal (10/03/2023) reports:

While the generation born in the 1980s and 1990s has lagged behind prior generations when it comes to homeownership and earnings, new data suggests they are saving more for retirement. By the time older millennials now earning a median salary reach retirement, Vanguard estimates, they will be able to replace almost 60% of their preretirement income with Social Security and savings from sources including their 401(k)s and individual retirement accounts.
Gen Xers and the youngest baby boomers with median earnings are, by contrast, likely to replace about half of their paychecks in retirement. ("Millennials on Better Track for Retirement Than Boomers and Gen X")

The reason they give is at employers now automatically enroll new employees in a 401(k) with a default target-date fund. The plans are often crappy and overpriced, but a mile better than the previous plan: let them figure it out on their own.
Three quick notes:
1. "better" is still not "good" - the same Vanguard study estimates at the median income should target replacing 83% of their pre-retirement income with investments + Social Security.
2. relatively few can anticipate the life path that we or our parents had: home ownership is out of reach in and around the megacities, though remarkably affordable in likely "climate havens" in the Upper Midwest, around the Great Lakes ex-Chicago, and parts of New England, and half of young folks in their 20s are living at home with their parents.

I grew up in a multi-generational home - nine of us, representing three generations, shared the same 900 square foot, 1890s brick house for a long time - so "living with family" isn't something I see as automatically negative.

3. if anyone cared to notice, this might go down in Augustana history as "Snowball's good deed." Ten or 15 years ago I was called upon to help rebuild the college's retirement plan, which had a generous employer contribution (10% of base salary) but almost no employee contributions. We also had over 1200 fund and annuity options. Depending on the department (faculty, facilities, admin, food services ...), participation was in the low teens as a percentage of eligible folks contributing and the average contribution was around 3% a year.
I helped engineer four moves: a far smaller array of fund choices, automatic enrollment in the plan, automatic escalation of the employee's contribution from 6% (year one) to 10% (year five and beyond, unless the opted out) and a shift in the college's contribution from a straight percentage to a 5% guaranteed contribution plus up to 6% more in a matching contribution.
When I last checked, we had something like 94% participation and an average contribution around 9%.
Which no one but you knows.
Cheers!

Yet, it isn't just COIN, HOOD, etc, but companies such as BLK, Fidelity, BEN, etc are betting on the launch of physical/spot-crypto ETFs OR are offering them to their retail and retirement customers.
Several countries have introduced CBDCs. The Fed is still evaluating digital-dollar.
So, there is something there that may not be obvious to all.

Devesh and I, separately, chose to think through the implications of "higher for longer" as a Fed mantra.
Lynn began poking at the new TRP Capital Appreciation ETF and wrote a really nice reflection on Retirement: Year One.
I made some portfolio shifts, which is rare for me. I cut Matthews Asian Growth & Income (MACSX) after a long time. I booked a substantial gain, but mostly in the early years of the holding. What ultimately got me to act was reading the fund's own webpage (their pretty straightforward in reporting performance) and the apparent turmoil / turnover at Matthews. It strikes me as hard to do your job when other people are losing theirs. I added Leuthold Core (LCORX), because I don't have the energy just now to worry about how to reallocate assets when the picture (goodbye, Speaker McCarthy) changes daily. And I had already added RiverPark Strategic Income, which I'd written about this summer in tandem with Osterweis Strategic Income. OSTIX is leading in absolute returns but has more short-term volatility, and I'm just not into that. It's up 5.9% YTD / 5.8% APR over three years.
All of which moves me back closer to my "neutral" position of 50/50 stocks/bonds-cash-alts.

Accounts at financial institutions are considered to be inactive if there has been no activity (aside from automatic divs/interest/CD renewals) for some period of time, often 12 months.
The institution continues to hold your assets, though it may "close" the account, or it may prohibit all transactions (including cashing checks), or it may simply start charging inactivity fees. (Vanguard does not charge inactivity fees.)
There is some confusion about the term "dormancy". Some institutions say that an inactive account is "dormant". That is how Vanguard is using the term according to your post. Others wait until the next phase (below) before calling the account dormant.
A financial institution is required to turn over ("escheat") account assets to your state after some longer period of time. Depending on the state, this is three years or longer. Some institutions say that this is when an account becomes "dormant". Vanguard uses "dormancy" this way in its prospectuses, e.g. for VMFXX:

Dormant Accounts
If your account has no activity in it for a period of time, Vanguard may be
required to transfer [escheat] it to a state under the state’s abandoned property law,
subject to potential federal or state withholding taxes.

https://personal.vanguard.com/pub/Pdf/p030.pdf?2210171184
Until the assets escheat, you can recover inactive account assets by notifying the institution (Vanguard) that you are still alive, still interested in the assets, and go about reactivating the account (or possibly opening a new account).
Note that the rules are more forgiving for retirement accounts. It's a mess that I'm not going to sift through now.
https://news.bloombergtax.com/daily-tax-report/faqs-on-unclaimed-property-aspects-of-retirement-assets
Once burned, twice shy. Wells Fargo did this to me several years ago. Ever since then I've kept a log of the last time I contacted the institution (and what constitutes "contact") or conducted a transaction. When it gets close to a year (even if the institution says it doesn't care about inactivity, just escheatment), I will contact the institution. Or make a $5 deposit, or something.

Stable-Value (SV) Rates, 10/1/23
TIAA Traditional Annuity (Accumulation) Rates
No changes.
Restricted RC 6.75%, RA 6.50%
Flexible RCP 6.00%, SRA 5.75%, Newer IRAs 5.20%
TSP G Fund hasn't updated yet (previous monthly rate was 4.25%).
Options outside of workplace retirement plans include m-mkt funds, bank m-mkt accounts (FDIC insured), T-Bills, short-term brokered CDs.
#401k #403b #StableValue #TIAA #TSP
https://ybbpersonalfinance.proboards.com/post/1197/thread

dtconroe: "Yep, I am also weighing my options of at least devoting part of my portfolio for longer CDs--maybe 2 or 3 year CDs. 2 year CDs have been the longest I have previously invested in, but with 3 year CDs over 5% now, it at least deserves some consideration. With my taxable account, I prefer limiting my CD terms to shorter options of 6 months to a yearfor liquidity purposes, but with my traditional IRA CDs, I am looking closely at longer terms. A 3 year laddering approach looks interesting to me in my IRA account.
For most of my retirement years, I had a target objective of 4 to 6% TR, using low risk bond oefs. It is a little strange to be able to get that so easily with CDs these days."
There is a line of thinking that 10-year treasuries are starting to look good at 4.5%. Unlike CDs they will have a nice CG once 4.5% become history.

Pretty weak article, and poorly written. Hard to figure out what it is saying anyone holds.
Is it counting ETFs as equities? Asked because it separates out investments in mutual funds (17.57% advised, 20.10% DIY).
Cash? 5.70% advised, 15.71% DIY after 2022Q1!. Maybe the DIY'ers had the right idea (whether by luck or not, can't tell from report).
While the article does note that the study is based on Schwab's PCRA brokerage window in employer-sponsored retirement plans (401(k)s, etc.) it does not mention that employees who use brokerage windows tend to be more aggressive investors. Did the study control for that before drawing its general conclusions about all investors?

I came across this link today & post a link, https://finance.yahoo.com/news/schwab-says-double-retirement-savings-171401493.html
Make sure to read the comments as they seem to go against the presented info.

IMO, robo-advisors are nothing more than hyped-up allocation funds that are liked by the younger generation. If one is willing to spend a little time, one can achieve a similar effect with traditional allocation funds (static-allocations; Income, conservative-allocation, moderate-allocation, aggressive-allocation) or TDFs (glide-path allocation). A lot of PR has gone into promoting robo-advisors as something novel when it is just some old wine in new bottles.

No argument here.
The key is the highlighted section. People have to be willing, and interested, in spending a little time. Many are not, though that may seem weird to MFO readers :-).
As to being able to achieve similar effect with TDFs, Vanguard says the same thing. I quoted a portion of Vanguard's disclosure above. Perhaps I should have included more of it, as it echoes what you are saying. In essence, for the extra fee, you get handholding and some advice but otherwise similar investments, especially if one sticks to index funds (a common makeup of TDFs, not just at Vanguard):

Vanguard offers a range of different solutions to help you meet your financial goals, including self- directed brokerage services, single fund investments (such as Vanguard’s Target Retirement Funds), and different investment advisory programs. If you are considering investing through a total market index investment setting, you should understand that each of the Four Totals [Total Stock, Total Bond, Total Int'l Stock, Total Int'l Bond] is a share class of the mutual funds that are used (or are substantially similar to the mutual funds used) in Vanguard’s Target Retirement Funds. In certain circumstances, your recommended standard portfolio will contain identical allocations to the four Total Funds that are available in a Vanguard Target Retirement Fund, which is generally available at a lower cost than the Services.

https://personal.vanguard.com/pdf/vanguard-digital-advice-brochure.pdf
OTOH, if one is willing to spend the time with the advisor, one can wind up with portfolios that are significantly more personalized.

@Sven, age-based funds within 529s operationally work like TDFs for retirement; their glide-paths are to the college age of 18 (vs retirement date of the TDFs). One can mix age-based funds with traditional allocation funds within 529s to achieve a variety of custom glide-paths. But I don't know of a 529 that formally includes a robo-advisor fund within it.
@hank, most performance comparisons of robo-advisors with other funds (TDFs, allocation/hybrid) are for moderate-allocation (around 60-40). There are also variations for MA - MA Aggressive, MA, MA Conservative.
IMO, robo-advisors are nothing more than hyped-up allocation funds that are liked by the younger generation. If one is willing to spend a little time, one can achieve a similar effect with traditional allocation funds (static-allocations; Income, conservative-allocation, moderate-allocation, aggressive-allocation) or TDFs (glide-path allocation). A lot of PR has gone into promoting robo-advisors as something novel when it is just some old wine in new bottles.