"I'll note that I alone warranted a 375-word rebuke recently."
Show-off!

I'll note that I alone warranted a 375-word rebuke recently. The 3 of you combined can muster only 197 words? Pretty pathetic showing men. :)
Thanks to @msf for the analysis. Hope the personality aspects here don't obscure your contribution.

No, Education IRA, those with $2k max limit. Fortunately, I started the accounts for both kids around 2009 (the lowest point of market) and contributed for 3 years, and that 6 thousand has become approximately $12k in both accounts.
Contribution to them is after-tax money, so as you mentioned, they are somewhat like Roth IRAs.

Hi @mrc70
You noted: " my daughter's Education IRA"
Do you mean a 529 "education" account or does your daughter have a Roth IRA that will be used for education?
Thank you.
Catch

"My goal was not to tout Mr. Bengen, but much more importantly, to encourage you Guys to try a powerful Monte Carlo simulation for planning purposes."
To that end, you cited one of the most well known papers on retirement planning as evidence of how well Monte Carlo works, even though it didn't use Monte Carlo. I pointed out that Bengen found zero real world return patterns where a 4% drawdown would fail (over 30 years); your response was to disparage the original work you cited approvingly.
It's enough to make one wonder whether you read the paper.
Instead of comparing and contrasting methodologies, you continue to effuse about Monte Carlo. Bergen took a different approach using using actual returns, that virtually everyone here can understand and use to draw their own conclusions.
In contrast, Monte Carlo spews out magic numbers (not unlike M* star ratings) that leave one to one's own devices to interpret. As guidance you proffer that you consider a 5% risk acceptable, but you didn't give any reasoning, rendering this fact useless. (I wonder why you used these 30 year projections at all; as I recall you've indicated an age which suggests that a 30 year horizon is, shall we say, rather optimistic.)
Even the probabilities posted are meaningless because unlike Bengen, you didn't state the assumptions you used, such as the input values for mean and standard deviations of stocks, bonds, and inflation. Nor did you even apply the same asset allocation that Bengen used.
Did you consider skew and kurtosis (the S&P 500 exhibits both)? Do you think that most people using these "push a button" tools even understand that question? (No disrespect of MFO readers is intended; many have stated that statistics is not their forte.)
The fact that a program can do thousands of computations in seconds is not so much a demonstration of the usefulness of a program as much as it is a testament to the operation of GIGO. A scalpel is a great tool in the right hands; in other hands it can be destructive.
When all one has is a hammer, everything looks like a nail.

Hi @mrc70
You noted: " my daughter's Education IRA"
Do you mean a 529 "education" account or does your daughter have a Roth IRA that will be used for education?
Thank you.
Catch

JULY 6
Still wondering where the big money moves with many sectors getting the whack.
chg | %
ITOT -0.94%
FREL -1.82%
HEDJ -1.11%
FHLC -1.57%
LQD -0.26%
IEF -0.19%
EDV -1.30%
HYG -0.25%
Thinking about how many "part 1, 2, 3, 4's, etc." will I put up with before I "depart" our own investment parts.
Take care,
Catch

FYI: The chart below shows several issues investors struggle with all the time. It’s difficult to pick the best performing investment year after year, yet for many investors, it’s an annual event. They look for an encore, picking the best asset class last year with the hope of a repeat performance. Yet, betting on last year’s winner rarely works out.
Assets at the top of the chart one year could be at the bottom the next, and vice versa. Much of this is due to reversion to the mean. But over the long-term, those big swings even out. The chart shows annual returns for eight asset classes against a diversified portfolio. Diversification works to smooth out those big swings in the short-term. While you’ll never get the biggest gains of any year, you avoid the huge losses.
The table below ranks the best to worst investment returns by asset class over the past 15 years. Hover over the table to highlight the asset class returns.
Regards,
Ted
https://novelinvestor.com/asset-class-returns/

FYI: I recently argued that today’s stock market is not at all like the 1997-2001 dot-com bubble and that, in fact, the simple benchmark developed by John Burr Williams, the original value investor, indicates that investors can anticipate a long-term return on the S&P 500 that will be well above the return on Treasury bonds. Today, I look at another investment benchmark that suggests that stocks are not at all bubbly.
Regards,
Ted
http://www.realclearmarkets.com/articles/2017/07/06/stocks_still_dont_look_very_expensive__102761.html

CNRYX is available at FIDO w/TF $49.95; $2,500 min. initial investment.

Yes I have been reading up on this fund over the past couple of weeks too and am intrigued by it. I have followed Jain over the past couple of years. I'm curious what % of your equity portfolios does EM currently represent. I'm around 5 %

I'm 10% foreign. And SFGIX is my only dedicated EM equity fund. It's 3% of total portfolio. I've not been adding much at all. Mostly just watching, lately. Rich valuations. I'm re-investing all pay-outs.

Yes I have been reading up on this fund over the past couple of weeks too and am intrigued by it. I have followed Jain over the past couple of years. I'm curious what % of your equity portfolios does EM currently represent. I'm around 5 %

@AMatMFO See Mark's June 5 post.

As for the last month, if we assume the same sectors continued from May into June, Technology was hit pretty hard (-5+%) and Consumer Discretionary was down roughly the same as Healthcare was up. Industrials were up a little but not much. I looked at the SPDR Select efts and admittedly I just looked at the 1 month performance from right now, so it's not completely precise, but that's at least some of the cause. In the last month VOO was down half a percent or so. That doesn't totally justify 2% underperformance, more like 1% or so, which means either the imperfections in my estimate are the rest or the bonds had a tough month too, or both.
I think anytime you follow a system that mechanically rotates, regardless of whether it's among sectors, or in the market and out based on moving averages, or whatever, you're going to have periods where you're on the wrong side of things and you're hope is that you'll end up on the right side of things enough to do well. There's no question the fund has done well since its inception, but in some cases systems are designed to reduce volatility rather than specifically increase the return. In the case of this fund it seems the goal is increasing the return more than reducing volatility although at times I think it's been less volatile too.

I sold HIEMX a few months back which he ran from 2006-2016 which had superior results during his tenure. I had a wait and see attitude after he left, and decided to opt for SFGIX about 6 months ago. His new fund is not currently offered at Fido, but time will tell. I would be happy to invest with him again when offered, Im still slightly underweight in intl despite my adding in second quarter to all my intl funds. I recently brought SFGIX up to 25K so I can convert to inst. shares which is in process.

This is a little off-topic of emulation, but if anyone would comment I would appreciate your thoughts and views.
I am a fairly recent (2017) investor in DSEEX so I have not reaped the previous years benefits. I have no intention to liquidate or reduce my percentage invested but I am curious if anyone has thoughts on the recent meaningful "under-performance" of this fund to its benchmark, the S&P 500?
The sectors it is/was invested in (according to its website) have done relatively well, excluding tech recently! So why the recent 2+ % under-performance?
I am just trying to get a better understanding of DSEEX and what to expect under various scenarios, if that's possible!
Thx,
Matt

FYI: When Rajiv Jain left Vontobel Asset Management in May 2016 to set up his own shop, it’s a good bet his former employer wasn’t very happy. A 22-year veteran of the Switzerland-based firm, who started as an analyst and left as its chief investment officer, Jain was a marquee name with a loyal following and nearly $50 billion in international and emerging market assets under his supervision. When he left, Vontobel’s stock dropped and billions of dollars in assets under management left the firm.
Regards,
Ted
http://www.fa-mag.com/news/emerging-markets-star-sets-up-shop-33417.html?print
M* Snapshot GQGIX:
http://www.morningstar.com/funds/XNAS/GQGIX/quote.html
Lipper Snapshot GQGIX:
http://www.marketwatch.com/investing/fund/gqgix

Hi msf, Hi Guys,
Thank you all for reading my comments on Mr. Bengen and Monte Carlo retirement tools. My goal was not to tout Mr. Bengen, but much more importantly, to encourage you Guys to try a powerful Monte Carlo simulation for planning purposes.
If Bengen "concluded that a 4% drawdown rate resulted in certain survival", he was wrong. In just a few minutes I did simulations on a code, that I often recommend (Portfolio Visualizer), to estimate portfolio survival odds for drawdowns being discussed. These codes do thousands of what-if cases and almost never find a 100% survival likelihood except for uninteresting extreme cases given typical uncertainties in market annual outcomes.
I did two sets of calculations: one maximized risk by assuming a 100% US equity portfolio, and a second set that was more balanced by assuming a 50/10/40 portfolio of US equity, International equity, and US bond asset allocations. I used historical market returns in my calculations.
For drawdowns of 4.0%, 4.5%, and 5.0%, the all equity portfolio failed 14%, 18%, and 26% of the time for a 30 year test period. For the same drawdowns, the more balanced portfolio only failed to survive 3%, 6%, and 12% of the time, respectively. Diversification works as a form of portfolio survival protection. These calculations only took several minutes to complete. They demonstrate the power and usefulness of Monte Carlo simulations. Please take advantage of this resource for your own retirement planning purposes.
When doing thousands of simulations with some statistical distribution of outcomes, some failures are often projected. An investor must decide what portfolio failure rate is acceptable. In my case, my target was to reduce failure rates to under 5%. Given the uncertainties of the marketplace some risk always exists. The goal is to construct a portfolio that projects a rare failure probability given the target drawdown schedule.
Even with careful planning, crap happens. If the market rewards turn sour, the drawdown schedule should be a candidate for adjustment. Flexibility improves survival odds.
Given the Monte Carlo tools that can be easily accessed, you guys can do a better job than Mr. Bengen in terms of projecting future probable outcomes. Good luck. Take time to explore this tool and you will reduce your need for luck.
Best Wishes

" A fellow named Bill Bengen initially used that [Monte Carlo] calculation discipline when he concluded that a 4% annual drawdown rate resulted in high portfolio survival odds for an extended retirement period."
Not exactly. He concluded that a 4% drawdown rate resulted in certain survival, not merely a high probability of survival: "no client enjoys less than about 35 years before his retirement money is used up." Survival is typically taken in financial publications to mean lasting 30 years.
More importantly, for the most part he used actual not statistical data. He looked at rolling 50 year periods, starting with 1926 (i.e. 1926-1976) and ending with the 50 year period 1976-2016. Monte Carlo had nothing to do with this.
You may well ask: what "actual" data did he use for years that were in his future (his paper was published in 1994)? Well here he did use statistical data. But of the simplest kind, again no Monte Carlo simulation. He merely "extrapolated the missing years at the average return rates of 10.3 percent for stocks, 5.2 percent for bonds, and 3.0 percent for inflation - a concession to the 'averaging' approach, but one that was unavoidable."
Bengen used actual returns over multiyear spans (i.e. he did not assume that year-to-year returns were random and independent). He filled in missing data by using constant annual returns (i.e. no variation of returns). Everything Monte Carlo is not.
Quotes are from Bengen's original paper, cited in the NYTimes article linked to by MJG. See Figure 1(b) in that paper for how many years a 4% drawdown rate would last if started in any year from 1926 to 1976.

Any opinions on this fund? Steady annual returns, but a bit choppy at times (for example, lost almost -6% in the month of Jan-2016)
Annual Returns History:
GTSOX
7.58 % 2011
9.51 2012
12.94 2013
5.38 2014
6.98 2015
5.87 2016
3.46 2017 YTD

Hi @willmatt72,
I don't think you are to late to the global infrastructure party ... but, just my thinking. Anyway, my fund (PGUAX) is not the lead fund within the sector but it is performing to standard. I'm going to continue to ride this train along with my other two themes in my specialty sleeve ... emerging markets (NEWFX) and business development (LPEFX). Combined, these three funds make the sleeve the best performer in the growth area with a year-to-date retrun of 16.6%, followed by the global growth sleeve with a return of 15.6%, the large/mid-cap sleeve with a return of 14.2% and the small/mid-cap sleeve with a return of 4.2%. The year-to-date total return for the growth area computes to about 12.7%. Now, if small/mid-caps have a good second half as I think they might then good things could be happening across the board in the growth area. Anyway, I am not complaining and I am truly happy with what is happening within the growth area of my portfolio which currently consist of twelve funds (three funds in each sleeve). The spiff sleeve is currently void holdings.
Wishing all ... "Good Investing."