For those unfamiliar with FundAlarm and for folks looking for a nostalgic rush, here's a snapshot of the FA discussion board from January 2011 and April 2005.
Roy Weitz launched FundAlarm 18 years ago as an antidote to the mindless hype that fund companies were getting away with. He combined a tart monthly commentary with a list of funds to avoid, then added a discussion board. About six years ago he felt himself running out of steam and asked if I'd write a new feature on small and new funds; after a year, Roy granted himself a sabbatical and I took up the monthly commentary. About four years ago he admitted that he'd written himself out; he felt he was stretching for content and made my role permanent.
About three and a half years ago, Roy's parents encountered simultaneous health crises and he let the community know that he was retiring FundAlarm to care for family. At Roy's prodding a number of folks encouraged me to launch "a site in the tradition of FundAlarm." Lacking any technical skills, I paid Brad Isbell, an IT colleague at Augustana, to design the site and prevailed upon my friend Cheryl Welsch (a/k/a Chip) to maintain it. We did a "soft launch" on April 1 2011 and had a sort of grand opening on May 1 2011. Our early look was ... uhhh, rudimentary. Anna Zolotusky, web designer whose mom was (is?) a fan, volunteered to bring us into the 21st century (and did).
We run two major software packages side-by-side: WordPress underlies the entire site and Vanilla underlies the discussion board. Chip frets rather more about WordPress, Accipiter - who taught himself programming for the purpose - frets rather more about Vanilla. Accipiter also wrote the Navigator program, which allows you to find a wealth of targeted information about any fund. As our discussion board software grew in complexity (Accipiter has written a bunch of custom programs for it), OJ generously wrote a really first-rate users guide.
Charles, like me, started as a member of the discussion community with a special knack. I'm not sure what my knack was. Charles's is making data sing. After reading one particularly fine post, I asked Charles if we might include it in the monthly commentary and had the pleasure, thereafter, to have him contribute pieces with a sophisticated statistical bent on a regular basis. As he thought about what the site needed, he also designed both our fund screener and the metrics behind it which led to the Great Owl designation.
Ed Studzinski, whose career included stints in the Navy JAG office and banking as well as co-managing OAKBX, had been sharing behind the scenes commentary on the industry and its players by phone. Eventually I persuaded him to address a larger audience about the dynamics of the industry and the way they affect our fates.
All on less than $700 a month.
Hope that helps,
David

What are the numbers below?
Are they since inception of MFO?

I will tell you why average investor has lagged. It is because average investor does not invest lumpsum and hold on for dear life for 20 years. This is what happens to average investor.
Average investor is told to DCA. So he starts DCAing at Y-20. He had $100,000 but he does not invest $100,000 at Y-20. He invests $5K, then another $5K at Y-19. Market is going up. He DCA'ing is effing him up. At Y-15 he realizes is $25 investment is only worth $40K. Everyone is celebrating 5-year returns. M* is rolling out red carpet for fund companies.
Average Jo now takes remaining $75K and invests it Y-15. Y-14 his $115K investment is now worth $120K. He is still up, and he is complacent because so is everyone else. Market starts tanking. Y - 12 his investment is worth $120K. 5 Years numbers are still positive from funds. He thinks, oh yeah market will come back. Y - 11 He is at $55K. 5 year numbers suck!. Things are not okay any more. He sells.
$100K is now worth $55K. Y - 10. Market returned 50% in the past 2 years. Time to get back in again. Rinse. Repeat.
Moral Of the Story: Stop watching CNBC, Stop reading M*. Come to MFO. Learn.

Thanks @mrdarcey!! I didn't think of trying 65 periods of no payment but now that you mention it, it makes complete sense.

Meh. So many funds aren't strategic in the slightest. They're just fully long 24/7/365 and if it's a bad year, it's not their fault.

For Excel -- PV(rate = .02 , #periods = 65, Payment =0, FV = 4200000)

Hawk: This is presumably for a 403b? I figured, but you didn't say so--- though you mention "matching" funds up to 9%. ....Has TIAA CREF improved its game? There have been issues in the not-too-distant-past. I think performance was an issue. The funds just did not do a good job of investing. Were there legal matters, besides?
From the days of the depths of the Financial Crisis, for which no one has yet gone to jail:
http://chronicle.com/article/Is-TIAA-CREF-Safe-/44807
...But Oregon is using TIAA-CREF for its 529 Plan.
http://www.savingforcollege.com/529_news/?page=plan_news&plan_news_id=1004
This might only be marginally helpful, but take a look. :)

TIAA-CREF.
A quick screening produced these choices...notice that TIAA-CREF has multiple offerig of the same investment (lots of duplication). Good Luck and con"grad"ulations!

Also, aren't there student loan forgiveness programs out there for those that choose education as a profession?

Keep in mind, that's real-return, so they are assuming something like 2.5% inflation. Which means something around -1.5 to -2% a year going forward.

Still need substantially sized cajones to make the call ANY mainstream asset class is going to on average yield negative returns for 7 years. I don't think even Hussman is saying that, and he is already in the dog house for the rest of this century!
My point, we need to applaud the true visionaries and/or need to verify if Grantham is also a BS artist. 7 years. I hope to be alive. I hope to remember to check.

As I write, the S&P 500 futures are tilting upward this morning ...
(In addition, check the news tab within this link.))
http://finviz.com/futures.ashx
The foreign markets are somewhat mixed with Europe up and Asia mixed.
http://markets.wsj.com/usoverview
(This site updates data during market hours about once every minute).
Of interest are yesterday's best and worst performing mutual fund categories which appear in the middle of the above link.
In addition, The Mutual Fund Closing Quotes ...
http://online.wsj.com/mdc/public/page/2_3048-usmfunds_A-usmfunds.html?mod=wsj_mdc_additional_mutualfund
I wish all ... "Good Investing."

@rjb112
Hmmm, I sort of assume one of Excel's built in formulas will work but when I looked quickly at a couple it seemed to me they were built to discount a series of payments to the present. Since its such an easy formula I just did it manually in Excel as =4200000/(1.02^65) and then I did it in reverse, starting with the answer and multiplying by 1.02 sixty five times to make sure I ended up with $4.2 million. Clearly the calculator you used is doing the same thing and with less work for you.

Well Accipiter, we need to sensitize you to be more diverse in your thinking. Have you heard of Speciesism?
"The term is mostly used by animal rights advocates, who argue that speciesism is a prejudice similar to racism or se_ism, in that the treatment of individuals is predicated on group membership and morally irrelevant physical differences."
Speciesism revealed
All species have the right to vote, own property, not be the food of any other species, have copyright protection, the right to consent to marriage (both intra and inter-species) and take advantage legal tax loopholes. Remember they are never our pets or owned by us. It's right there in the 14th amendment. Join our movement Accipiter.
peta.org/
I'm going to go eat a vegan burger.

Not completely without reasoning: Animal Liberation by Peter Singer, perhaps the world's best known living philosopher, and a leading voice of the ethical school of Consequentialism. Aside from being a proponent of massive wealth redistribution of the sort that probably would make some heads here explode, the bastard almost single-handedly made me give up my graduate work in ethics.
I ate some burgers of the non-vegan sort instead.

thanks mrdarcey. I'll have to take a look at those. I believe there have been some articles this year, possibly one by Larry Swedroe, saying that dividends were getting quite popular and therefore expensive.....so that the P/E ratios on some of the dividend exchange traded funds was too high. Swedroe in particular was advising total return investing and not dividend investing for that as well as other reasons. I'd have to look for those articles.

I've seen Swedroe make the point that it shouldn't matter towards cap gains if you take dividends out or not and sort of poo poo DRIPing. Basically telling investors to create their own dividends by selling a %age of gains. But the thought is supposed to be that dividends and low payout ratios (and to some extent buybacks) impose some restraint on corporate misbehavior, and that only high quality firms can afford to continually restrain themselves by returning profits. You've probably seen the same things I have there. Some valuations seem stretched, but these are maybe companies people are willing to pay up a little for.
Forgot to add M*'s wide-moat index, MOAT.

Negative 4.4 returns for small caps for 7 years in a row. Takes some cajones to make that call. Setting a reminder for 2021.

Keep in mind, that's real-return, so they are assuming something like 2.5% inflation. Which means something around -1.5 to -2% a year going forward.

@rjb112
PV*(1+r)^n=FV, so I used .02 for r, 65 for n and I rounded the future value from the article to $4.2 million. When I solved for the present value it came out to $1.159 million which I rounded to $1.2 million just to be generous.

@LLJB, looks good.
Did you just plug that Present Value, Future Value formula into Microsoft Excel?
I just plugged this into a purchasing value calculator working backwards, and confirmed your result.

Negative 4.4 returns for small caps for 7 years in a row. Takes some cajones to make that call. Setting a reminder for 2021.

Yeah, that's quite a forecast. It would be much easier to gloss over that forecast if it was made by Harry Dent, Dr. Doom (Marc Faber) or Peter Schiff.
But Jeremy Grantham and GMO should not be glossed over so easily.
I can only imagine a portfolio constructed on the basis of that forecast.
Let's see now.......how should that portfolio be constructed? Let's keep it very simple.
35% Emerging market stocks
30% US High quality stocks
15% Emerging market bonds
10% Developed small international stocks
10% Developed large international stocks
In you're in that portfolio, better hope the US dollar does not strengthen!

@bee, what's a few more days?

@rjb112
PV*(1+r)^n=FV, so I used .02 for r, 65 for n and I rounded the future value from the article to $4.2 million. When I solved for the present value it came out to $1.159 million which I rounded to $1.2 million just to be generous.

ICMAX versus IWM from Oct. 2005 Right click on the 200 day slider and then select "ALL".
Includes all distributions

"No wonder I'm going bald."
John!! Say it ain't so!!