The FT article (OP) is dated August 25. Here’s what it states:
“But Giroux has cut the fund’s equity exposure down from about 70 per cent at the market low of 2020 to the mid-50s per cent level now …”
Lipper, which is usually pretty accurate, still has it at 70%.

Here's a thought...you might want to access the TRP site (What? There is one? Who knew?) to get the latest published stock allocations as of 07/31/21 which was (if my addition is correct) 70.4%.
https://www.troweprice.com/personal-investing/tools/fund-research/PRWCX?src=USIFundRedirect&adobe_mc_sdid=SDID=7593B66782D33635-0C1AF59A7D98C5A2|MCORGID=D15D15F354F647770A4C98A4@AdobeOrg|TS=1630353056&adobe_mc_ref=https://www.google.com/#content-portfolio
And if you are a poster/investor questioning Giroux's allocation decisions, you might want to go play a round of golf and think that through a bit.

Yes @msf, I wasn't suggesting anything nefarious or against regulations. I just think that certain fund managers might get a 5-10 minute chat or a meet up that lesser known or renowned fund managers might not AND as you noted "where the way the response is phrased conveys information that goes beyond the disclosure itself" can speak volumes. Good point and thank you.

Today the Fed (and other central banks across the globe) is part of the market.

This is a conclusion I adopted in February 2019 ( Powell Put ). It became clear to me at that point the Fed had given up on reviving traditional interest rates. The Fed and the stock market are for now co-dependent and planning to live in a somewhat lower interest rate world. The pandemic and the Fed's more inclusive employment mandate have further solidified this change. My portfolio allocation to bonds was 37% on 1/4/19. It is 25% today. That 12% difference has been allocated to higher yield stocks (3%+ YOC). (Time will report to me on the ongoing benefit of that change.)

You're welcome to attempt to calculate your own version of what the four factors contributed, over that same time period. What you will find is -
1) Once you have determined each of the four factors, and you attempt to multiply them, they will not equal the S&P 500's total return. Inconsistencies among your data sources do not permit such accuracy.
2) Thus, if you wish to complete the effort, you will be forced to make alter your results into order to make the numbers fit. These assumptions will introduce variances that will likely be as large as the difference betweent the multiplicative and additive approaches.
3) Shifting the time period that is studied by a year or two will have the same effect of changing the underlying factor results.
None of these items obscure the general pattern. Tinker with them all, and inflation still comes out as the largest factor, followed by profits, then dividends, then multiple expansion. But depending upon your choices, the individual numbers will vary.
It's an exercise with a margin of error, but that margin is not larger than the differences among the findings, assuming that the time period studied doesn't greatly change. (Except perhaps the role of profits vs. dividends.)

Does anyone suppose that manager longevity not only relates to their performance success but also to their access to businesses and company managers they've built up over the years? I tend to think that the likes of Danoff, Tillinghast, Miller, etc., etc. might have quicker or easier access to their time and insight.
I forgot to add that I had owned Fidelitys Contrafund FCNTX since roughly 1982. I was generally always pleased with its performance and saw little reason to change until it became quite massive in AUM and returns seemed to track that of the S&P500 +/- a percent or two here and there. Two years ago I sold a good chunk and invested the proceeds into BIAWX. Since then BIAWX has returned 83.82% to 47.61% for FCNTX. It has been a reasonable exchange so far.

Today the Fed (and other central banks across the globe) is part of the market. To support the stock market, quantitive easing, QE was introduced back in 2008. During the COVID-19 pandemic and the country is being locked down. The broader market fell over 30% within 2 weeks. As part of the rescue plan, the Fed cut the interest rate to near zero. In addition, they bought $80B treasury and $40B mortgage backed bonds on a monthly basis. The market responded quickly and marching upward toward recovery. By fall 2020, the recession is over.
Below is a short piece from Brookings Institute on tapering of Fed's bond buying.
https://brookings.edu/blog/up-front/2021/07/15/what-does-the-federal-reserve-mean-when-it-talks-about-tapering/

I don't know how one chooses.
Isn't that really the point? That one doesn't know, except in hindsight, whether one's manager will be there tomorrow, whether a fund's method is "solid" or will change, or even if it doesn't change whether it will continue to be successful over time or in the next bear market or whatever.
Sticking with an investment should involve continual evaluation. Is this a fund I would buy today? If not, then why am I holding it?
Out of curiosity, I ran a screen for funds that currently have a manager who has been there for at least two decades. Aside from five oddball funds without star ratings, the remaining 144 distinct funds break down as:
5 star: 10 funds, 7%
4 star: 30 funds, 21%
3 star: 50 funds, 35%
2 star: 34 funds, 24%
1 star: 20 funds, 14%
The M* "neutral" distribution is 10%/22.5%/35%/22.5%/10%. This is about as close to that as one would expect to get when pulling 144 funds out of a hat. Longevity would appear to count for nothing. Perhaps even less than nothing, given survival bias (funds that stay around for decades tend to be better performing ones, so these should have skewed toward more stars).
There are several funds in the list that I recognize. A couple are:
LLPFX, "One of the best mutual funds in history" - Jaffe, 2/6/2000. This fund, along with its sibling LLSCX have had the same managers for over three decades. Both are currently rated 1 star.
TEFQX (Firsthand e-Commerce Fund until May 2010): "[M*'s] top rated 5 star funds were all technology and telecom funds that met investors fancy 2 1/2 years ago [mid 1997]. This led to their subscribers pouring money into the Janus and Firsthand Funds". TEFQX not only survived, but is currently rated 4*.
However, Kevin Landis' Firsthand funds generally imploded. His flagship Technology Value Fund (TVFQX) was converted into a business development company, technically not even a registered investment company. That happened not as a result of the dot com bust, but as a result of the GFC years later.
This is all a long winded way of saying that I agree, one can't know how to choose. As a corollary, one can't know whether to stay the course.
Regarding Fidelity's management turnover (i.e. expectation that a new fund manager would still at the fund a few years later), late 80s/early 90s:

This is typical: A look through Fidelity's long list of equity funds finds only about six managers who have been managing the same fund for five years or more. A tenure of one to three years for one fund is much more common, though most managers have been with Fidelity longer than that, graduating from one fund to another.

June 15, 1992
https://www.sun-sentinel.com/news/fl-xpm-1992-06-15-9202140732-story.html

Just noting this (although it doesn't feel normal to me):

Return to Normal???

My initial sentiment was only about sticking with solid method over time.
Your initial post showed how wonderful FLPSX was compared with other funds you considered as alternative investments at the time of a market peak (give or take). The fund navigated that one bear market (2000-2002) exceedingly well, even gaining in value. In all other bear markets during the fund's lifetime, it roughly paced the market:
July 16, 1990 - Oct 16, 1990: -17.46% vs. -19.9% for S&P 500
March 24, 2000 - Oct 9, 2002: +18.05% vs. -49.1%
Oct 9, 2007 - March 9, 2009: -53.64% vs. -56.8%
Feb 19, 2020 - March 23, 2020: -36.85% vs -35%
https://www.cnbc.com/2020/03/14/a-look-at-bear-and-bull-markets-through-history.html
https://markets.businessinsider.com/news/stocks/stock-market-sp500-hits-record-high-intraday-bear-market-recovery-2020-8
That one fluke does suggest that "Perhaps it is all luck" after all. Its "solid method" of investing didn't help it reproduce that success in other bear markets. Take away that one fluke and I think you'll find FLPSX 's performance is right in line with that of some good funds and below that of some others.
If the intent of the initial post was to show that funds with "solid methods" perform well, what was the purpose of including FAIRX? It hardly seems like a fund with a "solid method" of investing, at least not in recent years.
Rather than illustrate your thesis, FAIRX seems to act as a counterexample - that funds with lousy methods of investing can do as well as funds with solid methods.
Has he not largely adhered to the fund name?
FLPSX was a small cap fund for about half its lifetime. It managed to remain focused on small caps through the early 2000s even as AUM exploded. It used the tactic of buying more and more different small caps to spread out the money. This tactic ran out of steam when it hit 1,000 different companies.
As I recall, Fidelity explained that the fund was investing in a significant number of mid and large cap companies not because it had grown too large, but because it was remaining true to its "solid method". It claimed that its investing discipline naturally led to invest in larger cap stocks due to market conditions at the time. Ultimately Fidelity had to drop this charade and acknowledge that the fund had morphed into a mid cap fund.
With respect to adhering to its name, "Tillinghast concedes that Low-Priced, which purchases only stocks that sell for $35 a share or less, is 'a bit of a gimmick.'"
https://www.kiplinger.com/article/investing/t041-c000-s002-small-and-mid-cap-funds.html

The real numbers always fascinate me and are often hard to find: https://wsj.com/articles/small-cap-stocks-may-be-pricier-than-they-appear-11629640805

For the Russell 2000 benchmark, leaving out the unprofitable companies means setting aside what for the past year has amounted to more than one third of the market value of the small-cap index, according to an analysis from Jefferies looking at earnings over the previous 12 months....
....Yet, other analysts say it’s misleading to present a valuation metric that omits such a substantial share of the Russell 2000. Investors who own the stocks in the index aren’t weeding out the hefty portion without earnings.
“You’re taking out like six, seven hundred companies from your calculation,” Steven DeSanctis, small- and midcap strategist at Jefferies. “If you took out all the Cs and Ds that I got in high school, I was a solid B-plus student.”
Metrics that include negative earnings show the Russell 2000 went from trading at 27 times its past 12 months of earnings at the end of March 2020 to trading at 238 times earnings one year later, according to data from index provider FTSE Russell. That multiple fell by nearly half over the following month, and as of July was down to about 70.
With loss-making companies removed, the Russell 2000’s price-to-earnings multiple was both lower and less volatile: about 14 in March 2020, up to nearly 25 in March 2021 and then down to 19 at the end of July.

Sounds about right @Sven. According to Investopedia they have up to 60 days after a quarter’s end to file their holdings with the SEC. If this is tantamount to a “public release”, than the near 2-month delay in D&C providing the semi-annual report to investors makes sense.
The current Barron’s contains an article “A fresh Batch of Active ETFs“ written by some guy named Lewis Braham. In it he mentions the issue of front-running when fund holdings are revealed too early. Different companies and managers have differing views. But TRP was singled out in particular as one house that likes to withhold such information as long as legally possible. I’d be willing to bet D&C is another.
Link to Barron’s Article (subscription required): https://www.barrons.com/articles/capital-groups-american-funds-is-finally-getting-into-etfs-51630089111
Note: The online article carries a different title from the print version which I read. Same content.

I like short term investment grade bonds, short term TIPs and GNMA as cash substitutes, although not perfect. My allocation is modest with 55% equity and tilting toward international. Trimmed back a bit on EM exposure. Last week Powell’s carefully crafted statement indicated tapering is coming.

Let us propose that in the late 1980s or early 1990s we were persuaded, from press or elsewhere, that this guy Tillinghast was worth giving some money too.
Using performance since inception, an objective time frame, is a definite improvement over using a subjectively chosen date in the middle of 2000.
In a similar vein, my "horse changing" date was also objective. When a fund is reclassified, especially if due to increased girth, it's a time for owners to examine what they own. Tillinghast had increased the fund's holdings to over 1,000 securities; he had exhausted this tactic.
Ah, there is a same-house fund that has matched or beaten Tillinghast: FCNTX.
If we're playing this what if, hypothetical game, what would have persuaded you to invest in FLPSX at inception, in a fund and in a manager with no track record? We can hypothesize anything, but it would help if it were believable. Likewise, what would have persuaded you to have invested in FCNTX?
At least that fund had a track record, albeit with three managers over its five year life span (as of 1989). That included its then current manager who had just taken over at the beginning of 1989, and who, like Tillinghast had no prior fund management experience.
To add insult to injury, both those funds sported a 3% load at the time.
https://www.thestreet.com/personal-finance/fidelity-removes-loads-from-five-funds-10095722
In Dec 1989 (when FLPSX started), if one were perusing the press, one could not have helped but be impressed by Lynch's fund. Alas, FMAGX was closed. But there was another LCG fund aggressively implemented lookin' good.
FDGRX had a manager with ten years experience, the last two managing this fund. And from its inception in Jan 1983 through Dec 1989, it was blowing away FCNTX, 219% to 157% cumulative returns.
None of this is to say that these are not all fine funds. But in the late 80s/early 90s, Fidelity was rotating managers like crazy. There was no expectation that any manager would be around for a long time. Just look at FCNTX, with its three managers in five years before it settled on Danoff. Magellan was the exception.

OEF reports are, annoyingly, usually at least 2 months old by the time they come out.

Right. Seems to me D&C emailed me the link to the semi-annual within the past few days. But I could be wrong. Agree that the June 30 date on the D&C report is pretty old. Looks like the FT article is recent, bearing an August 25 date. Yet, when I look at the CNBC clip @Sven posted, it’s dated April 23. So, apparently, Giroux was already scaling back on equities and publicly stating that as far back as April.
Here’s Sven’s link again. https://www.cnbc.com/video/2021/04/23/t-rowe-prices-david-giroux-we-are-underweight-equities.html

Good stuff. Hard to believe Giroux has been running the fund for near 15 years. I have a modest weighting in PRWCX along with about the same amount in DODBX.
Read D&C’s semi-annual last evening. They have the fund invested 66% in equities. Their stocks overall have a much lower average PE than the S&P. In fact, they hold a 4% short position on the S&P which they see as overvalued. They like financials (which do well when interest rates are rising) but have sold some off recently. Also overweight energy.
Here’s a brief (possibly “suspect”) quotation: “The equity portfolio’s composition is very different from the overall market, and trades at a meaningful discount to both the broad-based market and value universe: 13.9 times forward earnings compared to 22.3 times for the S&P 500 and 17.9 times for the R1000V. Stocks that benefit from rising interest rates are currently trading at particularly low relative valuations, and represent an area of emphasis for the portfolio.”
LINK to June 30, 2021 Report /// DODBX
Apologies for any thread drift. Hard for me to view one fund without comparing it to the other, as both are integral to my approach.

@msf, in showing how wrong additive decomposition of factors is, are you also making a point about this conclusion?

A couple, at least.
That his relying on people's intuition that the factor weightings should sum to 100% is wrong. So his factor weighting column must be wrong. And thus the way he calculated it must be wrong.
That the assertion that this resulted in being off by merely a few basis points is sleight of hand. The misdirection comes about in switching from the time frame used in most of the column, 45 years, 3 months (542/12 years), to a single year toward the end. Calling that single year "annualized" enhanced the illusion, as it makes it seem that the factor weighting (percentages) are the same over time.
That's not true. Over time, the discrepancies compound just like the returns. What may be a rounding of a few basis points over one year becomes a large deviation over decades.
Here's a simple example to illustrate. Take two factors, one that adds 2% to the return per year and one that adds 3%. Call them inflation and earnings if it helps make things more concrete.
Over one year (i.e. annualized), the increase in value is:
(1+ 2%) x (1 + 3%) - 1 = 5.06% ≈ (2% + 3%) = 5% (give or take 6 basis points)
Using addition rather than multiplication isn't significant at first. But over 45 years, 3 months we get, first using the correct (multiplicative) annual return of 5.06% and then the rounded (additive) return of 5%:
(1 + 5.06%) ^ (542/12) - 1 = 8.2951 = 829.51% increase in nominal value
(1 + 5%) ^ (542/12) = 8.0584 = 805.84% increase in value
That's a difference of 2,367 basis points. Not just "a few basis points". Swept under the rug by redirecting attention from a decades long time span to a time span of a single year.

Lots of talk, a grand total of one stock as the "one investment," and never a word about mutual funds that own "quality."

That's interesting. The show took me to funds that have a large position in BRK.A or BRK.B. For example FCNTX owns both share classes.
Berkshire holds a slew individually publicly traded stock (ie KO, MMM) that they hold "forever in the Berkshire Ecosystem". For example, Berkshire owns 9.28% of KO stock which makes up 7.8% of Berkshire's Stock.
I don't think of Berkshire purely as a stock. Maybe more like a conglomerate stock...a companies that owns many companies. Berkshire is diversified across sectors (consumer, RE, Finance, etc). BRK.A or BRK.B seems much like a mutual fund.
If you own BRK.X stock it comes with a management team that eat their own cooking and charges an ER of Zero. Reminds me of maybe even a Hedge Fund since it owns entire companies that are not traded publicly (GEICO, See Candy).
Berkshire is a conglomerate stock. What assets does it hold? Lots.
List_of_assets_owned_by_Berkshire_Hathaway
berkshire-hathaway-portfolio
top-5-shareholders-berkshire-hathaway-brka-brkb
Lastly,
Buffett Shaped Berkshire As An All-Weather Conglomerate

tnx, OJ, that was my point, sort of. Have winner faith, hang in.
Obvious, if not to some.
Let us propose that in the late 1980s or early 1990s we were persuaded, from press or elsewhere, that this guy Tillinghast was worth giving some money too.
30 years later --- which is not all that long for those of us older investors --- guess how his work compares w other wise touts of that time: DODGX, VFIAX, PENNX (old sc), DFCIX (old mc) ?
Oops --- his returns are more than 40% higher than the best of them. Whoa. Well over double SP500, no less.
One manager, one method, one fund. Snowball's insight is true!
Ah, there is a same-house fund that has matched or beaten Tillinghast: FCNTX. With several managers. So you could even argue, sometimes and with hindsight, for having constant faith in a house and its LCG sector aggressively implemented.
(If we had stuck with those two, instead of fretting and tracking and reading and trading, well, we could be giving a lot more to charity and kids these days!)

As of 6/30/21, PRWCX holds high % in utility (11%) and cash (10%). Still he managed to gain 13% YTD and leads the balanced fund category. The fund is well in position when the market corrects when the Fed starts to taper later this year.
https://fundresearch.fidelity.com/mutual-funds/composition/77954M105?type=o-NavBar