I think we can all agree that the last 10 years have been abnormal... GFC, elongated recovery boosted by QE. I have no crystal ball to tell you when things will turn, but I do believe they will and we will all be on this forum posting about our low (maybe negative) absolute returns.

@Ted I agree recent performance has been lackluster, but this is precisely the kind of problem value investors face in a strong bull market, especially value managers like Einhorn who can go both long and short or bet against stocks. It is also remarkably similar to what happened in the go-go 1990s to many value investors who started to lag the S&P 500. Also, eerily similar is talk of a "new paradigm" and that value investing seems not to work on disruptive tech companies. A number of value managers were fired in the 1990s, only to be redeemed in the subsequent crash.

@Lewis: No question Greenlight Capital has an outstanding record with an annualized return of 16.1% since it's inception in 1996. However, its a question of what have you done for me over the last ten years, not much !
Regards,
Ted Greenlight Capital S&P 500
3-Year Cumulative -7 (-2.4%/year) 29 (8.9%/year)
5 Year Cumulative 19.1 (3.6%/year) 98.2 (14.7%/year)
10-Year Cumulative 55.6 (4.5%/year) 95.7 (6.9%/year)

https://www.gurufocus.com/profile/David+Einhorn
Einhorn’s Greenlight Capital was funded in 1996 and through August 2006 had stellar 29% annualized returns. Since then not so stellar ending 2016 which shows a NEGATIVE 2.4% annualized for three years, +3.6% annualized for five and +4.5% for ten.

Many of us fail to take a long-term perspective and view things over a full market cycle. I'm a firm believer that things will inevitably turn and a lot (not all) of these hedge funds that investors have rapidly fled from will prove they are actually effective investments. This will ultimately lead to investors piling in again, chasing returns and in 10-15 years we will go through the process again. "It's like a circle."
https://youtube.com/watch?v=qmzxR0zfIN0

AQR Funds https://funds.aqr.com/news/aqr-funds-distribution-estimates-2017
Artisan Partners https://www.artisanpartners.com/individual-investors/resources/tax-center/distributions.html
BMO Funds https://www.bmo.com/gam/pdf/BMO_Funds_Capital_Gains_2017.pdf
Conestoga Small Cap http://www.conestogacapital.com/conestoga-small-cap-fund/
Lyrical Value Fund https://lyricalvaluefunds.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/10/2017_Distribution_Estimate-1.pdf
Manning- Napier Rainier (new) https://www.manning-napier.com/Portals/0/FundsDocs/distributions/summaries/distributions-4Q17.pdf
Marsico Funds https://www.marsicofunds.com/funds/content/distributions.fs
Morgan Stanley
https://www.morganstanley.com/im/publication/forms/tax/2017-estimated-yearend-distributions.pdf?1509384603818
Motley Fool Funds https://foolfunds-prod.s3.amazonaws.com/media/funds/2017_Capital_Gains.pdf
Oak Associates http://www.oakfunds.com/downloads/CapitalGainsEstimates.2017.pdf
RiverNorth Funds https://www.rivernorth.com/mutual-funds/rncix-rncox
Tributary Funds https://www.tributaryfunds.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/11/TRB-Funds-Capital-Gain-Estimates_2017.pdf
Wells Fargo
https://www.wellsfargofunds.com/assets/edocs/communications/20171103-productalert.pdf

@Ted How old are you and do you forget how value managers who were subsequently proven right like Yacktman, Eveillard, Grantham, and Sanborn performed in 1999? Look at Einhorn's long term record and you'll see he's no dummy.

This sounds familiar:
https://finance.yahoo.com/news/einhorn-wonder-market-adopted-alternative-paradigm-163704878.html

Hedge fund billionaire David Einhorn is struggling to make sense of the stock market. In his latest investor letter, the founder of Greenlight Capital raised an interesting question about valuation.
“Given the performance of certain stocks, we wonder if the market has adopted an alternative paradigm for calculating equity value,” Einhorn wrote in a letter to investors dated October 24. “What if equity value has nothing to do with current or future profits and instead is derived from a company’s ability to be disruptive, to provide social change, or to advance new beneficial technologies, even when doing so results in current and future economic loss?”

Thanks for the sharing, very helpful.
Old_Skeet: Is ANCFX closed? M* indicates open, but Scottrade and TD Ameritrade indicates closed.
Patrick1: Have you looked at the portfolio construction difference between QDEF and QDF? From a performance point of view seems comparable to SCHD.

@Sven ---
>> I have invested with DESUX [[assume you mean DSEUX]] several months ago and it has hold its own comparing the DSEEX. At Fidelity, the institutional shares required $5K minimum.

With a $50 fee, no? I also show $100k min for Fido - ?.
I did buy some DLEUX, ntf.

I pass, even with the institutional share with ER 1.35% and a minimum of $250K.

ER's being relatively meaningless if one trades frequently is one of those pieces of "common wisdom" that never seemed quite right to me.
Sure, if you trade monthly and one of those funds (that you own for a month) has a high ER, it won't make much of a difference. But if you're flitting from one high cost fund to another, it's no different from owning one high cost fund for the whole year.
Paying 1/12 x 2% for a month, twelve times a year, is the same as owning one 2% fund for the entire year.
I can understand the idea of moving from sector to sector, or region to region, at a frenetic pace. But just as the ER of a single short term holding won't make much difference, ISTM that whoever is managing that single holding also won't make much difference over a very short term.
The other factors that hank mentioned, market trends and asset class valuations strike me as dominant. You can get focused exposure to these factors with low cost ETFs. No need to resort to high priced funds. (Yes, even I will say that ETFs have a role to play. They replace what Fidelity Select Portfolios used to do, back when they traded hourly.)

Hi slick!
I have also signed up for equity perspectives on 11-2 with Josh Berger of Wellington Management.....and Municipal Bonds on 11-1. I don't know if you saw them. Thought they might be interesting. If I do catch them, I will start the November thread on them.
God bless
the Pudd
p.s. Sven and Jlev: I also follow Dash.....just the weekend post, though.

The only item I'd disagree with is the speed of moving money between investments.
If the market goes up more than it goes down, it is preferable on average not to be out of the market longer than necessary. So faster movement is a desirable feature whether you trade several times a month, or a few times a decade.
Having the funds inside a brokerage keeps your time out of the market to a minimum. Otherwise, one can mitigate the problem with funds if one has a cash allocation. If one has, say $10K in cash, and is moving a $5K investment from security A to fund B, one can simultaneously sell A and buy $5K of B out of cash. Later replenish the $5K with the proceeds from the sale when it settles.

Ted - thank you. Also see discussion here regarding expense ratios and SWR's:
Pfau & Dokken: Why 4% Could Fail - Rethinking Retirement
https://mutualfundobserver.com/discuss/discussion/23490
Wade Pfau’s new book: How Much Can I Spend in Retirement? (@ Bogleheads.org)
https://www.bogleheads.org/forum/viewtopic.php?t=229814

https://www.thestreet.com/story/1305526/1/make-a-bundle-on-the-sps-rejects.html

The S&P 500 is often mischaracterized as a passively managed index of large stocks, but in 2000, its managers became seriously aggressive -- adding (and subtracting) four new stocks each month, on average. In the process, the index was systematically stripped of small and mid-sized value stocks from Jan. 28 to Dec. 11 in favor of large-cap growth stocks -- largely from the technology sector, and at exactly the wrong moment.
You didn't know that stocks are sometimes removed from the index for subjective reasons, just as they are at any ol' mutual fund?"

2000 was merely the culmination of five years of irrational exuberance on the part of the S&P committee: "Starting in 1995, it has evicted old stocks from the S&P 500 and stuffed in new ones at an unprecedented pace"
http://money.cnn.com/2001/06/13/zweig_on_funds/zweig_on_funds/a.htm (Jason Zweig)
----
"Good luck on picking a recent winning fund and having that fund repeat its superior performance."
Do I detect a bit of bias? Many of us look at length of management (irrelevant to recent performance), MPT statistics (generally not even available for recent periods under three years), etc.
M* analysts, for whatever else you may think about them, often award gold and silver metals to funds with abhorrent recent performance. YACKX (gold, 87th percentile YTD), BERIX (silver, 91st percentile YTD), DODBX (gold, 77th percentile YTD), FMIJX (gold, 97th percentile YTD), MAPOX (silver, 77th percentile YTD), OAKLX (gold, 89th percentile YTD).
Recent winning performance is not a necessary condition for selecting funds going forward, and I doubt many people here constrain their selections so narrowly.

msf - thank you for listing of benefits.
So - if I could summarize (at the risk of putting words in your mouth...) it seems as if the benefits of a brokerage (as opposed to a non-brokerage) account, largely benefit traders, as opposed to investors (i.e., "buy and holders").
Note: While there is some "reduced tax preparation paperwork" benefit for brokerage accounts, that evaporates when the accounts - either brokerage or non-brokerage - are held in tax deferred retirement accounts.
Paradoxically then, for Vanguard to promote brokerage, no? I assume that this must come down to costs - since what doesn't at Vanguard? Brokerage must be cheaper for Vanguard and the funds it administers (and which own Vanguard).
So what I think we have is that Vanguard is promoting a platform for which the apparent initial benefits would seem to benefit traders, rather than investors (an unusual stance for them) except that in the longer run, the impact of lower (assumed) costs in brokerage flow through to the funds in lower expense ratios - benefiting (eventually) both traders and investors.
However, as an individual - who rarely trades - it would seem that the optimal position would be to maintain non-brokerage accounts to benefit from the flexibility of directed dividends and automatic investment, while at the same time benefiting from the lower expense ratios as everyone else is herded into brokerage.
... Having said that (and 'figured' it out) I should say no more on the topic.
PS: Thank you Anna for this link:
https://www.thetaxadviser.com/content/dam/tta/issues/2014/jan/stateirachart.pdf

Again to clarify - I meant that you (or anyone using Vanguard funds as opposed to its brokerage) could use automatic exchanges in lieu of directed dividends.
Advantages of VBS over individual funds are limited, but they do exist:
- For Vanguard funds with both investor class and ETF class shares, the latter cost less; of course you'd need a brokerage account to hold the ETFs.
An alternative is to buy enough to reach Admiral class, assuming you have enough money and assuming Admiral shares exist for the fund; for example VSS has only VFSVX Investor shares, not Admiral shares.
- You can move money from outside investments to Vanguard funds without being out of the market for days.
In a brokerage, you have access to the pending settlement proceeds immediately. But if you want to buy Vanguard funds outside of the brokerage (say, you sold BRK.B in a Vanguard brokerage), you'd have to wait days - for the trade to settle and then to place the order to buy the Vanguard fund. Vanguard says this will take at least four days. I suspect that's old info, given the change from T+3 to T+2.
- Reduced paperwork.
A single 5498 instead of one per fund (for IRAs), a single 1099DIV rather than one per fund. Personally, I think this is little more than a technicality - handling a few extra papers isn't a big deal, especially if you download the tax statements directly into tax prep programs.
---
Curiously, VBS doesn't offer one advantage that I was expecting - the ability to write smaller checks. Checkwriting features of mutual funds usually require some minimum amount for the checks. In Vanguard's case, that's $250. In contrast, brokerages usually have no minimum requirement - you can write checks for a penny if you want. But VBS still has the $250 min.

About 15% of my self managed portfolio has been in DSENX. I decided to start moving some of that money to the International (Europe) fund, DLEUX. I started the process last week.
DSENX has made me a believer in the Shiller CAPE method. I've done well with the domestic fund. Though I told myself I would give the newer fund some time to prove itself, I decided to jump in sooner than later. The CAPE value method seems to work, at least when we are in a value market. My thought here is there is more value right now in Europe than the U.S. I plan to keep moving from domestic CAPE to the European model until the 2 are closer to 50:50.
FWIW, from their website, the 4 sectors DLEUX is invested in as of the end of the 3rd Q.
Consumer Discretionary
Consumer Staples
Health Care
Utilities

Hi guys!
Skeeter: Good post, again. Love to read them.
Ted: I thought you just bought a world or international fund a few weeks ago....am I wrong on that? Also, this fund is fairly new. What gives, big guy? If I remember, you always said you wanted a fund with a track record. We're not chasing here, are we? Not looking for a fight.....just saying. Also, FIDO had a webinar this week about the 4th quarter......unimpressed. Duke took some notes again, so here goes. Their four (4) picks: Industrials, Health, Tech and Finance. They are strong and will stay so you have time to get in. Stay away from Telecom, Energy, Staples. The best areas to be in with rising 10-year bonds: Tech, Finance, Disc. Industrial. Eddie Yoon was talking healthcare is like a coiled spring ready to launch......his opinion is very bullish. He says it's cheap-----20% of GDP. And we're the innovators to the world buy now it has about a year's lag time. Also, Energy P.M....also talked U.S. growing production---60 thousand barrels per month. He is bullish on MLP's. On tax reform, cycles best area, along with small and mid caps. For 2018, tech outlook is still a buy on its margins and profits. Materials also a buy as world economies heat up. Market at fair value. They call it a buy. It's about earnings and they're good. Also, Thursday, I added to FSPHX. If it goes down more, will add again.
God bless
the Pudd