@Maurice

They both live in glass houses.

False equivalency. Read the U.S. News & World Report story. And I'm sorry if you're going to assume that anything published in U.S. News is false and part of the liberal media conspiracy, there really is no point in talking. It's respectably existed since 1933.
From the story:

Compare and contrast all of this with the much-maligned Clinton Foundation. Let's be clear: Whatever you think of the Clintons, their foundation has been a force for good. The signature example: Nearly 12 million people around the world have more affordable access to AIDS/HIV medication at least in part because of the organization. (See Colby political scientist Laura Seay's tweet-storm on the topic for a ground-level view of the foundation's work.) And it does a lot more – Inside Philanthropy's David Callahan has a good explainer here cataloging the foundations causes. (And contra right-wing talking points, 89 percent of its expenditures go to charity.)

By contrast, Trump's foundation gave less than $10,000 to the Police Athletic League, bought a giant picture of himself and gave $25,000 to Attorney General Pam Bondi to curry favor with her.

So, ya'll (MFO'ers) hadn't provided any linkage...................other than the connector in the original post.
Don't know about the original copy/paste article; but how much of the money for such areas of the senior world come from "Medicaid" payments or similar. If this gets the big whack in funding; what becomes of the revenue stream to senior housing???
https://www.google.com/search?q=SeniorLivingFund&oq=SeniorLivingFund&aqs=chrome..69i57j0l5.2630j0j8&sourceid=chrome&ie=UTF-8

@ Senior Living Fund: I just asked that you ad be flaged. However, if you want to contribute $5,000 to MFO, a non-profit website, the powers to be might reconsider
Regards,
Ted :(

A demographic of baby boomers has allowed seniors housing to become a winning investment—both in commercial real estate (CRE) overall and healthcare realty specifically. And there are plenty of reasons. Research shows that 100,000 units must be built each year through 2040 to meet anticipated demand. When you consider seniors housing is also recession-resistant, many would call this investment a basic “no-brainer.”
Over the past decade, seniors housing has outperformed every other asset classes of CRE. But recently, some investors have expressed concern over rising interest rates and potential overbuilding. In 2016, the occupancy rates declined 0.5+% (to 89.3%), leading some to wonder if oversupply could potentially impact returns in the long term. In fact, some sub-sections of the seniors housing market have already been impacted, specifically skilled nursing.
Which begs the question: is seniors housing still a wise investment? Research indicates “yes.” A survey from CBRE showed nearly 60 percent of U.S. investors actually plan to increase their seniors housing portfolios this year. And that’s an increase from less than 50 percent last year. Many seem confident a wide range of opportunity still lies in the seniors housing sector—if investors can keep the following factors top of mind.
Consider Secondary Markets: It may be true that some primary markets face a potential oversupply, but many secondary and even tertiary markets hold lots of potential for both renovation and new construction. Indeed, a significant portion of supply across all markets is outdated, leaving room for much-needed enhancements, such as making spaces more comfortable and sociable for seniors.
Do the Research: There is no substitute for doing your own due diligence. Whether you’re looking to invest in private equity or a REIT, make sure your chosen fund manager is knowledgeable, experienced, and aware of current market conditions. Request a portfolio showing past investments and new deals, as well as historical returns. Lastly, ensure that the fund manager takes time to consider each individual investment, analyzing existing demographics and competitors before committing to any specific project.
Be Informed: Keep an eye on current issues to make sure the fund or REIT you select is on trend. Skilled nursing declined this last year, and memory care has likewise seen impact in some areas from overbuilding. Meanwhile, independent living is now a favorite, which is off-trend from previous years. In fact, independent living reached a seven-year high in occupancy rates closing 2016—so high that it was actually highest absorption rate in a single quarter since NIC started collecting data back in 2006. The best fund managers will be aware of these trends.
Ask Lots of Tough Questions: A strong fund manager will likely tell you that project operators play a large role in ensuring the success of a given investment—sometimes even the most significant. Dan Brewer, the Chief Fund Manager at SeniorLivingFund.com, says, “The operator is hands-down the most important player in our investment decisions. They can make or break any opportunity, regardless of market or demand.” In other words, don’t shy away from asking who your fund manager may be working with, how long they’ve worked with one another, and to what outcome.
Keep It Real: As with all investment opportunities, market conditions like interest rates or political issues, can impact returns. Although seniors housing has seen unparalleled growth in the past 10 years, it’s reasonable to think the industry will keep growing—if only at a slower rate.
The great news about seniors housing: the opportunities are just beginning. The current wave of seniors now seeking care is the first of many to come. Research shows our 75+ population will likely grow at rates above current inventory growth rates (3.1 percent) until 2021. Indeed, for the 75-79 age group, growth could be as high as 5.7 percent. That leaves lots of room to grow the sector—and lots of room for solid returns for smart investors.

OK, then. I DID in fact look only as far as the top 5 holdings in the RPGAX portfolio at Morningstar--- under the assumption that a fund's top holdings gave an indication of the meat and intent of how the fund will be comprised and managed. So, I stand corrected. :) ...Silly me, using immediately identifiable indicators, and thinking that such things would correspond to reality....

Isn't it all just a vehicle for financing black market crime?
sciencemag.org/news/2016/03/why-criminals-cant-hide-behind-bitcoin
https://theguardian.com/technology/2017/may/15/digital-gold-why-hackers-love-bitcoin-ransomware
fortune.com/2017/03/19/irs-bitcoin-lawsuit/

FYI: T. Rowe Price is expanding its institutional NTF distribution through a key platform.
T. Rowe Price's Investor Class mutual funds are now available on Fidelity Investments' FundsNetwork (retail) from June 26
and Institutional FundsNetwork with no transaction fee from
July 5
Regards,
Ted
http://www.mfwire.com/common/artprint2007.asp?storyID=56685&wireid=2

@Crash @Ted
RPGAX a fund of funds???
24% of holdings are other TRPrice funds, yes. But, the fund has 1,361 holdings indicated.
Hardly a fund of funds, IMO.
This is a young fund, but the 3 year return is at 5.2%, versus a category average of 2.3%.
The fund is #13 on a long list of "world allocation" funds.
Don't own the fund, will not likely ever own the fund; but to claim the fund to be a "fund of funds" indicates light research.
Dig a little deeper, eh?; lest one gets caught with their pants down.
Regards,
Catch

I'm sure there are those who do trade on his (and others) recommendations, not understanding many things about the markets or those who pontificate about them on TV. But hey, it's not my money that's being invested in such cases!! :)
Years ago CNBC had a new program about options trading. Their first-ever guest suggested selling puts on Google when it was around 500/share. I was screaming at the TV for the asinine idea, targetted at retail investors who likely didn't have 500 x 100 = $50,000 cash lying around for when (or if) the stock was put to them and they had to buy.....b/c in a 3-minute piece, you can't also teach folks the intracasies of options-101. The clown simply picked the stock, said it was a good buy, and here's how to profit from it. Thankfully he was never to my knowledge invited back on the program. But I wonder how many people tried to do the trade, or got burned if it went against them, b/c they didn't know the risks of the trade, just got caught up in the possible rewards of it should it work out as intended.

The part that always bothered me is he'll go on CNBC or do an interview with Barron's and he'll say stuff that's totally true at the moment he says it. Unfortunately he might change his mind overnight and not only doesn't anyone know that but there's not much effort made by these media organizations to be transparent about it other than the standard legal blah-blah disclosures that not many pay any attention to. I guess most people wouldn't trade based on anything he says but I "pity da fool" who does.

FYI: If there’s an economic indicator that gets released these days, taking the under usually ends up being the prudent bet. Today’s release of homebuilder sentiment for the month of July from the NAHB on Tuesday was the latest example. While economists were expecting the headline reading to come in at a level of 67, the actual reading was 64- the weakest reading since November. After a four-month surge post-election, the last four months have seen homebuilder sentiment decline in three of the last four months. Making matters worse, Tuesday’s reading was the weakest relative to expectations since May 2015.
Regards,
Ted
https://www.bespokepremium.com/think-big-blog/homebuilder-optimism-up-in-smoke/

"If you look at the fund's trailing SD, you will see it at 18.11 over 10 years, then it drops drastically to 11.41 at 5 years. You think something changed in their investment strategy during that time?"
Not based on that data alone. Since std dev is a second moment, outliers such as 2008 have a disproportionately large impact on the figures.
The S&P 500 std deviation also dropped by around 3/8, from 15.21 to 9.56. Do you think something changed in Standard and Poors' Index Committee's selection strategy during that time? (The S&P indexes, unlike those from other companies, are selected by individuals rather than by mechanical algorithms.)

I'll preface this by saying that I am not an LPL advisor directly; however, my firm uses LPL as our platform for clients.
For the $25,000+ account, the fee is actually set by the advisor. The range I see among colleagues is between 1-1.5%. As for the services a client receives, that is going to vary greatly from advisor to advisor based on what kind of practice they are running. But couldn't that be said of nearly any firm! (Our team focuses on asset allocation, risk management and comprehensive planning--we aren't stock/fund pickers really. We mostly use low cost indexed investment options) The platform itself is open-architecture; equity/ETF trades are a few bucks, many mutual funds are NTF (wish they all were), etc.
I'm right there with you, Bob, that LPL's new mutual fund only platform is bizarre and a step in the wrong direction for smaller clients who often don't have very good options. I sure hope that changes. But I did want to make it clear that LPL also works well for fee-based advisors who run their practices as fiduciaries to their clients. Hope that helps!

Interesting, and thank you for the information. What do they charge on a $25,000 account, and what services does an account owner get?

The account minimum at LPL for the fee-based account I mentioned is $25,000, and I am constantly lobbying for it to be lowered or eliminated entirely!

Oh yeah, not a good call on my part 5y ago, it turned out. Ain't hindsight wonderful?
It did not occur to me likely that the Jameses in Ohio and McGregor at Oakmark would quite flatten, if not slump, as they did. I guess I would stand by my "automatically prefer" locution, though.
As for the AO_ approach, it also did not occur to me likely that diversification would fail to pay off as it did.
2013 is what did it for the D&C groupthink work, that and whatever the heck they bought / held last Nov 3. So good on them.
Still, as noted above, the 10y performance, if one is a believer in that period as some sort of standard, is problematic given their method constancy. As is that odd Aug 15 - Aug 16 slump.

Again, about keeping DODGX and M* accountable for a clear standard.
The webpage of D&C states (as of June 30), 10 year returns 5.89% - compared with S&P 7.18%. Let's please not search for excuses for underperformance. Without discussing the yearly tax cost of 0.98%.
In relation to the fund performance during the past 5-years, more volatile funds that missed in the downside in 2007-2008, typically have better returns in the more recent period. For this reason I tend not to rely on 5-year returns.
What is different about DODGX (in relation to other outstanding funds!) is that its returns, after the 07-08 underperformance, were not adequate for the fund to catch up with the S&P.

+1
In order to get a full reading of this fund's performance, you have to look back 10 years, not 3 or 5. It's clear to see that they dropped the ball big time and never recovered to keep pace with the S&P 500 over the past 10 years. I held the fund during the disastrous 2007-2009 and dumped it upon a partial recovery. When I bought the fund, it was my understanding that they would hold up better on the downside; they did not. Quite the contrary. *M can talk about its "deep investment team" and "decisive value approach" all it wants. Currently, *M shows the fund's risk as very high. I guarantee it was showing as lower on *M when the credit crisis hit. Clearly, *M misread the fund as well. If you look at the fund's trailing SD, you will see it at 18.11 over 10 years, then it drops drastically to 11.41 at 5 years. You think something changed in their investment strategy during that time? Lessons learned.

"Huh? Gosh, the three ]LCV funds] I moved to long ago from DODGX (before placing everything LCV in DSEEX): PRBLX. YACKX, and TWEIX."
What is long ago? DODGX was in the top quintile for 2009 and top fiftieth (second percentile) in 2011 and 2012. D&C funds often go through multi year funks and multi year spurts. 2008 is an important benchmark, as is 2015 for value funds. (By that latter metric, DSEEX looks good, at least so far.)
If one wants a smooth ride, shorter term, D&C funds are not the way to go. M* seemed to agree, saying that DODGX had enviable long term results. But (assuming that the long term market trend is upward) there is a problem with long term investors placing too much emphasis on the down years.
For example, one investor here five years ago almost to the day (Aug 2012) wrote about another D&C fund (DODBX):
"it certainly seems to have improved, but (recent, tempting) past performance does not etc. I cannot imagine why anyone would automatically prefer it now over Oakbx, Glrbx, and even AOR / AOM, my two 'new' favorite ETFs. "
Here's the five year chart comparing these five funds.
(Data per M* as of 7/17/17) Growth of $10K:
DODBX: $18,358.73
OAKBX: $15,848.45
AOR: $14,959.24
AOM: $13,422.89
GLRBX: $13,366.85
Now I'm not suggesting that one compare any of these funds with the S&P 500 (or S&P 1500); they're a different type of fund and the comparison wouldn't be meaningful. Likewise, I wouldn't go comparing value funds with blend (e.g. SPY) or growth funds, especially over the past decade when growth had a decided advantage. Heck, if I were to do that I'd just dump everything into a growth fund - even the average (median) LCG fund (NMFAX) returned 7.48% over the past decade, beating the S&P 500.
D&C, like many peers (and also unlike many other peers) completely blew 2008, getting caught in a value trap - continuing to hold on the way down. The questions are: how likely is another 2008, has D&C modified its investment process since then, is short term (e.g. 2015) or even prolonged underperformance acceptable in exchange for longer term gains? Different people have different answers.

RPGAX ;has performed well and Fidelity now has it available NTF. However the ER is very high @1.15. When I look at RPBAX which carries an of ER .64, I think I would do better by adding a little more international stock and foreign bond to it. But don't know what I might add to take place of the Blackstone Hedge fund Solutions
I am seeking opinions on best way to mimic RPGAX at a lower cost.

I own QRSVX, FOSCX, and MSCFX in this space. Queens Road is a value fund, while the other two ride the line between growth and blend.
5 year annual returns of: 11.11%, 14.2%, 15.5%
QRSVX is pretty conservative if that is what you are looking for, but it still has an ulcer index of 10 and had a max draw down of 42% in 2009. It is in risk group 4. So, yeah, maybe protection is the wrong word, but the conservative positioning of the fund results in holding some cash (currently around 16%), and avoiding overpaying for stocks. It has had the same manager since 2002! FWIW

Down Market Performance Bar Chart on the QRSVX website

Again, about keeping DODGX and M* accountable for a clear standard.
The webpage of D&C states (as of June 30), 10 year returns 5.89% - compared with S&P 7.18%. Let's please not search for excuses for underperformance. Without discussing the yearly tax cost of 0.98%.
In relation to the fund performance during the past 5-years, more volatile funds that missed in the downside in 2007-2008, typically have better returns in the more recent period. For this reason I tend not to rely on 5-year returns.
What is different about DODGX (in relation to other outstanding funds!) is that its returns, after the 07-08 underperformance, were not adequate for the fund to catch up with the S&P.