Thanks for the post. I think there are two related factors in this market - the economy and the FED.
If the econ slows down & the FED does nothing - stocks flat for the year
If the econ slows down & the FED raises rated - stocks take a hit and ultimately down 5-10% for the year.
If the econ some growth & FED raises - stocks up 5-10%

Hi Guys,
The 2015 edition of the Las Vegas MoneyShow ended a few days ago. I attended only some of their many presentations. I wasn’t motivated to mention my planned attendance because in past years, the MFO membership responded with a deep yawn. That’s okay; I learn.
One novel aspect to the 2015 general format was the introduction of a Cannabis section that preceded the conventional MoneyShow agenda. The Cannabis sessions were paid events so I did not attend any of these presentations.
I did not take many notes, but I do have a general takeaway feeling that the professional market wiz-kids expressed relative to the market direction for the remainder of the year. A majority fraction of the experts are guardedly projecting positive returns from a narrowing market.
They observe that the current narrowing market is typically representative of aging Bull market runs. The present Bull market is third longest in history and will become the second longest if it extends into next year. One reason they are sanguine about the market has to do with the Presidential election cycle.
Presidential candidates will paint ultra-rosy pictures for their special programs. Louie Navellier jokingly advised that we should vote for the happiest candidate to best extend the likelihood of positive returns. On the negative signal side, Jim Stack cautioned that only 17% of the forecasters see near-term approaching dark clouds. That’s a contrarians warning sign. As usual, we get to choose our own poison.
For informational purposes, you might be interested in a Bull and Bear market summary paper assembled by Ed Yardeni. Here is a Link to that 10-page summary:
http://www.yardeni.com/pub/sp500corrbear.pdf
I did make a note of one interesting observation made by one of the MoneyShow exhibitors (I didn’t record his name). He noticed that the S&P 500 dividend exceeded the 10-year Treasury bond yield for a brief period in mid-January. Apparently that’s an extremely rare happening. He reported that whenever that did occur, the stock market rewarded investors with high payoffs.
Here is a Link to a January MarketWatch article that examined this occurrence:
http://www.marketwatch.com/story/stock-dividend-yields-are-above-treasury-yields----and-thats-bullish-2015-01-20
If the article has been posted earlier, I apologize. I completely missed it. Sorry Ted.
The three earlier occurrences are really insufficient to make grand statistical inferences, but the next year outsized rewards for these events were eye-popping. More fuel for the fire. Good luck guys integrating these data into your decision making.
Best Regards.

Bwahaha, Dex's belief in the 10-yr T @ 1%, the dweam that will never die. :)

Mmmmmm...forgetting things...Donepezil
Not in Art's league but,
Gundlach says benchmark 10-year Treasury yield could fall to 1 percent
http://www.reuters.com/article/2014/12/10/us-investing-gundlach-interview-idUSKBN0JO05O20141210
http://finance.yahoo.com/echarts?s=^TNX+Interactive#{"range":"2y","showPrePost":false}

OAKIX was still available at Fidelity 5-6 months ago. HAINX, ICEIX are still open, although availability on some platforms is spotty. SGOVX, IVVYX are available on some platforms NTF, but often only via Registered Investment Advisers. QFVIX is another strong contender, although fees are pretty high. We use Ivy as a core international hold for many clients, along with First Eagle for low volatility.

Re foreign equity funds:
http://www.usatoday.com/story/money/2015/01/16/investing-international-funds/21825245/
Both supports (sort of) and modulates what Sven posted. As OAKIX and SGOIX are closed, recommendations are interesting.
Wagg has moved on to other venues.

I wonder if defined maturity bond indexes could be made to work in the mix? Not the HY varieties, but rather the corp bond varieties. They better allow for more discrete control of duration, and have reduced volatility, vis-a-vis conventional bond indexes of comparable maturities. Or would this lead to "being too cute by half," a bunch of extra work and not getting all that much more from it?
http://www.etf.com/sections/etf-issuer-perspective/defined-maturity-indexes-combining-best-attributes-bonds-and-funds?nopaging=1
https://indexes.nasdaqomx.com/Home/BulletShares?source=ETFcombs
I'm thinking here of the BulletShare 0-3yr corp bond index (maybe combined with 0-3 and/or 0-5yr corp Ladder index). Something like that; pick the proportions for each.
update/add-on: conceptually, I would be looking at an allotment to these as a CD-substitute. I haven't checked out their yields; if they suck, then what would be the point? However, if they are equal or better, then advantage to the ETF; and, unlike the CD, you could redeem them whenever, if interest rates rose and you wanted to change course, without penalty (assuming the underlying index hadn't changed too much in value).

FYI: Long-term bond investment had an impressive 2014 to the supremacy of risk-off trade sentiments in the wake of global growth concerns. On the other hand, short-term bonds gave a rather tepid show last year on speculations that the Fed would hike interest rates soon.
Short end of the yield curve rose faster than the long end, and the spread between both yields narrowed to start 2015 as well. Though flattening of the curve is expected to be witnessed once the Fed hikes key rates, volatility is buoyant in the bond market (read: Profit from a Flattening Yield Curve with This ETF).
Regards,
Ted
http://www.zacks.com/stock/news/175990/totl-hits-500-million-in-aum
M* Snapshot TOTL: http://www.morningstar.com/etfs/ARCX/TOTL/quote.html
TOTL Is Unranked In The (GB) ETF Fund Category By U. S. News & World Report::
http://money.usnews.com/funds/etfs/general-bond-funds/spdr-doubleline-total-return-tactical-etf/totl

Reviving an older thread: I uncovered a M* Fund Times May 1, 2015, article on management shakeup at Acorn Funds. Robert Mohn is retiring (unexpectedly) as domestic chief investment officer in 4th quarter 2015, and several experienced analysts left in 2013-2015. M* is putting the Acorn funds under review.
Recent poor performance of ACRNX led to about 40% of assets being withdrawn in 12 months leading up to May 1 article.
Link, must sign in to view:
http://news.morningstar.com/articlenet/article.aspx?id=696099

@JohnC, For cash sleeve here are my thinking:
1. Saving accounts pay little (actually negative after inflation) but they are flexible.
2. Short term investment grade bonds yield 1.5 - 1.6%. VFSUX and VSCSX for example. Minimal duration impact from rising rates.
3. Balanced funds yield > 2.5%. Prefer VWIAX, but higher risk with intermediate term bond exposure (65% in the fund).
@Bee, thanks for sharing your insights.

Bee, I imagine that you would probably have to pay an adviser to have access to the cheapest share class. One way of getting in cheaper would be to buy the short term bond fund (2.5% load), and then transfer your shares over to the fund that you want. Those would still be A shares at Fidelity, but at least the load would be lower.

This fund company seems to take the flavor vanilla and slice it 12 ways to Sunday.
A mere one fund is offered also as:

I compared AMCPX and RAFGX. RAFGX is a R6 shares class has a low minimum (as they all do) and an ER that is half the A share class (AMCPX). AMCPX also comes with a 5% load.
How do investors make a choice between all these flavors?
I'm looking for a brokerage platforms that offer the cheapest share class of American Funds that offers these shares NTF (No Transaction Fee). R6 share (in this case RAFGX) seem to be the cheapest through my brokerage, but I have to cough up the transaction fee.

Actually, the paper seems to say something a bit different.
All else being equal (i.e. same fund family, similar "size, value, and momentum scores"), the researchers found no meaningful difference in pre-tax performance between tax-managed and non-tax-managed funds.

The average before-tax return is very similar for tax-managed funds and non-tax managed funds (0.27% vs. 0.26% per month). ... The average before-tax return is not significantly different between exchange-traded funds and matched open-ended index funds (0.50% vs. 0.51% per month).

Aside from keeping turnover lower (and hence costs lower), other techniques used by tax-managed funds tend to limit what a fund can do and thus potentially impede pre-tax performance. Quoting from the paper's abstract:

Mutual funds can reduce the tax burdens of their shareholders by avoiding securities that are heavily taxed and by avoiding realizing capital gains that trigger higher tax burdens to the funds’ investors. Such tax avoidance strategies constrain the investment opportunities of the mutual funds and might reduce their before-tax performance.

The abstract continues: "Surprisingly, more tax-efficient mutual funds do not underperform other funds before taxes, indicating that the constraints imposed by tax-efficient asset management do not have significant performance consequences." Emphasis added. That is, the conclusion is only that tax-managed funds don't do worse, not that they do better.
What improves pre-tax performance is not tax-efficiency, but keeping trading costs down (a side effect of minimizing trading to keep realized gains down). So look directly for funds with low trading costs
There are lots of papers that discuss trading costs. Brokerage fees can be found in SAIs, and should correlate well with turnover ratios. Market impact is likely affected by how much of a company a fund owns. ISTM that these are the factors that one should be looking at, not tax-efficiency, which is at best a proxy for these costs.

I keep about two years of cash within my portfolio as a safety net plus the portfolio itself kicks off enough income to meet my current annual withdrawal needs. Any cash held above ten percent, for me, would be considered excess and held due market conditions. Therefore, I am presently 10% cash heavy due to market conditions at 20%. And, I could still raise another 15% within the cash area while remaining invested towards the low end of my asset allocation ranges for the income, growth & income, and growth areas by reducing equites from 50% to 40% and other from 10% to 5%. I think most every investor needs to know where they can best raise cash within their portfolio should they need to do so.

Edit: You are lucky to have a pension. Shouldn't you be just fine once you begin taking SS? You may still have a little out of pocket but not much. I assume that will come from your nest egg?

I'm looking at taking SS at 63.5. That would give me 13 years where I don't have to touch my dividends/interest/principal. If I buy a new truck it is 8-9 years. This is another, example of what we both said before - How do people without a pension or a large investment account pay their bills??????????

Dex: Checking/int $753. How do you manage this?
Derf

That's checking balance and interest from STHBX for the remainder of the year.

A while back I bought into a income fund that is multi asset in nature. My thinking on this was a place to park money for the short term before it goes into cash instead. For example, if I keep 12 months cash available, I would have 3-5 years in this fund to temper any hiccups in the markets.
Anyone else use a similar strategy? It could be a form of bucket or sleeve investing of sorts.

Seems like a reasonable approach.
Instead of thinking that there might be market hiccups I try to plan on the hiccups happening during my draw down periods. I try to do this by using back testing (historical data). You can explore mutual fund MaxDD and recovery from Max DD here at MFO thanks to Charles' efforts using this tool here.
A website I visit to back test mutual funds is Portfolio Visualizer. I'm attempting to get a close approximation of future "MaXDD" (Maximum Draw Down) of different mutual funds or etfs (cash can be entered as CASHX). This site lets you enter your mutual funds as individual holdings (100%) or as a combination of fund percentages (which also must add up to 100%). When reviewing the results I pay close attention to this feature (which you have to hover over with your cursor to open...located next to the MaxDD results). It looks like this:

At this website:
https://portfoliovisualizer.com/backtest-portfolio
Max DD is expressed in a percentage and recovery time from MaxDD is expressed in a time frame it took the fund to overcome MaxDD (return to profitability for a buy and hold investor).
On a separate note:
I would argue that cash has a Max DD equal to inflation that can be measure in percentage and time. This might be the most misunderstood MaxDD...the buying power of cash. When you get down to it this is what we all are trying to do preserve or increase... buying power.
My portfolio often feels like a balloon that changes in size, but needs to at least overcome the deflationary pressures of inflationary leaks (the buying power of money).

A while back I bought into a income fund that is multi asset in nature. My thinking on this was a place to park money for the short term before it goes into cash instead. For example, if I keep 12 months cash available, I would have 3-5 years in this fund to temper any hiccups in the markets.
Anyone else use a similar strategy? It could be a form of bucket or sleeve investing of sorts.

FYI: Most of us don't worry about taxes when it comes to mutual funds.
We don't need to because we invest in them through a 401(k), IRA or another account designed to delay taxes until after retirement. More than half of all money invested in mutual funds is in tax-deferred accounts. That makes it easy to ignore whether other shareholders in the same fund are getting a big tax bill just because they're holding it in a taxable account.
Even so, it can pay to consider a mutual fund's tax history, regardless of whether your money is in a taxable or tax-deferred account. That's because funds that keep tax bills down tend to have better returns, even before taxes are taken into account.
Regards,
Ted
http://abcnews.go.com/Business/print?id=31217658

FYI: WHEN Ken Kavula of Genesee, Mich., retired from his job as a high school principal at age 53, he decided to defy conventional wisdom and manage his own financial life — including his retirement accounts and a mix of stocks and bonds he had either accumulated on his own or inherited.
Fifteen years later, Mr. Kavula, now 68, has ridden the huge highs and crushing lows of the markets so well that he has enough to live off, for now, without even tapping some accounts.
Regards,
Ted
http://www.nytimes.com/2015/05/23/your-money/the-risks-and-rewards-of-self-managing-investment-portfolios.html

Dex, STHBX a dog of a dog. In the same short term junk arena it is completely outclassed by ASHDX and OSTIX.

I was going to suggest a combination of OSTIX and WHIYX.
ASHDX has a short history from what I have researched.

Bee, I was in (and out) of WHIYX many times over the years. But it has never been the same since they lost their high profile fund manager. Now I am in and much prefer PHYTX. It has been a nice steady performer year in and year out compared to its peers. RIMOX is an interesting junk/bank loan fund. It has been an outperformer since they shook up their management team by adding several new ones. Everyone pretty much hates junk and have been warning of their high risks. But YTD some are up close to 5%.