@FD1000. Big agreement with you here. The entire portfolio is THE THING. I call it paying attention to a “single metric “. I record the portfolio balance on 12/31/. Everything else is noise. I admit I listen to the noise at too high a volume and too often. But I try to pay attention to my single metric. And I use a benchmark that corresponds with my general asset allocation.

I do that, too: record my year-end total, so I can watch and compare the next year's growth (or not, if I've been stoopid.) KISS it. I'm down to 9 positions, and in terms of size, 1 of them is like an afterthought. That 9 positions includes Cash. 5 funds and 3 single stocks.
Don't wanna end up like Moonlight Graham, who got called up to The Show, but never got to bat. I'd rather make my own mistakes, particularly since I know some stuff by now, unlike when I first began investing. Like Annie Savoy told Crash Davis: "young men are uncomplicated." That's the way I like the portfolio. Uncomplicated.
P.S. I just discovered that a couple of the prospects I'd been watching (ADRs) are traded OTC and would come with a commission, if I bought. I'm not buying.

I like to use StockRover. They're calling it a HOLD, currently. Their call is for 8.65% upside to target share price. (1 year.) P/E is 24.2 and that's already too rich for my blood. A solid company that's been around forever, you're right. I like the beta, at just 0.47. Maybe wait for the expected fall in the Market generally? The EPS Predictability and Cash Flow Predictability numbers are stellar. Over the past 5 years, the company's own P/E is at a rather reduced point, though 24.2 is still higher than I'd be willing to pay. The dividend yield is 1.8% and so it's just too little for me to go for. But if dividends are not a priority for you, that just won't matter; it will feel like a bonus when it comes. Payout ratio is 41.7, so that's sustainable. ...You can always dollar-cost-average your way in, in small steps, on a regular basis. Break a leg!

I don't believe in portfolio sleeves or core bond funds at all. I am oversimplifying it but I think in terms of high volatility and low volatility.
Loosely, below is how I screen and pick
- Funds with volatility below 5% and returns above 10%. If I don't get matches, I loosen the selection criteria.
- Review the investment strategy, track record, managers, current macro, projected macro, etc.. and pick or discard.
- Same as above for high vol where vol is below 20% and returns a few points higher than a selected benchmark (the benchmark will vary, examples include SPY, VT, etc..). The main idea is that an active fund should be worth picking over a passive fund
- I generally stay away from sector, buffered, single intl country, crypto, EM debt.
- Overall my goal is to have a balanced mix of high octane funds (AVALX for example) and hedges (QDSIX, QMNIX, QLEIX, EGRIX for example)
- MFOP hands down is the best screener out there (and I have used a few dozen) but intra month I rely on barchart.com (limited screening functionality but performance is updated daily)
- At this moment my favored hedge is EGRIX and I am looking at scaling into AVALX, AVDV, FPADX, QNZIX.

For decades now, I don't look at one sleeve of my portfolio but the whole portfolio.
This allows me to use all categories.
I came to the conclusion to only hold leading categories/funds and look for the portfolio's total risk-adjusted performance and limited number of funds.
In retirement it's a lot more important for me to have much lower volatility. I pay less attention to performance because I have enough.
Simple example:
Instead of holding stocks + bond fund I may use QLEIX instead in the last 5 years.
Suppose I want just 30% in stocks. Instead of 30/70 VOO/BND, I select VOO/RCTIX. See 10 years (https://testfol.io/?s=18uGeuEjL0F)

@hank : Just a guess, thinking for long term holders?
P.S. I didn't read the article.

Not sure reading the article would help much with my question. I’m interested in what happens to these types of stocks if the markets enter a steep downturn? Barron’s does not address that.. There was a thread here about TROW (with a caption like ”Buy TROW instead of its funds?”) 5-6 years ago. How’d that go?
@Derf raises an interesting secondary question. When you buy a stock, how long do you intend to hold it? Buffett might say forever. Doubt many of us have that degree of patience. I only buy individual stocks when the price is already depressed. But if it turns south early on I’m likely to sell. That would have been the right thing to do with TROW 5 years ago.
(TROW stock price: - 27.4% over 5 years)
PS - Here’s an interesting discussion I ran across today.

This week’s Barron’s has an interesting article recommending an investment in asset managers. Three mentioned favorably: T. Rowe Price, Blackrock, Invesco, each for different reasons. With Invesco they like that about half of its offerings now are popular ETFs. For Blackrock it’s the continuing growth of AUM and high quality of management.
What they say about T Rowe Price: T. Rowe may be the deepest value and riskiest bet. At just 11 times forward earnings, it’s one of the cheapest fund managers on the market. It’s cheap for a reason: Assets keep draining away. The company reported $24 billion in net outflows in the first half of 2025 after seeing $43 billion depart in 2024.
My question: While all of the above may be true, wouldn’t the stocks of these three firms (and asset managers in general) fall sharply if the equity markets entered a prolongued (year+ long) downturn owing to the market generated loss of AUM? And, in such a scenario wouldn’t those firms (like the 3 mentioned) heavily invested in retail fund flows suffer the most? I recall trying to play Invesco during the ‘22 downturn and it didn’t go well. Your thoughts?
(Article caption: “The fund industry faces big hurdles, but these three asset managers have been unjustly dismissed.)”

I think of an AI like Perplexity as a better search engine without so many ads--yet. All it does is scrape the internet.
Ten years ago few would have thought of searching google for the best mutual fund to buy right now, or, what is the cure for cluster headaches?
If I ask Perplexity a question like: What is the success rate of low cost mutual funds? Or, are there any new developments in cluster headache research? I get interesting summaries and good links to follow up.
So I asked Perplexity for good mutual funds to buy during a government shutdown. Am I interested in Perplexitie's answer? Neigh, I click on the sources tab to see which sites it relied on for its answer. This link should take you there.
BTW, I am not really interested in buying a fund for the shutdown; I am curious what other people are saying.

@Observant -- tks for pointing out a key diff between PV and PB regards max dd.
Adding BND to your analysis results in following stats for the same dates
CAGR: -0.37%
DD: 18.58%
So at least for this 5 year stretch, QDSIX would have been a fantastic proxy for BND.

I very much appreciate low volatility and limited potential for drawdowns. So with 5% to 7% per annum being my target, I've been setting up the following bond alt sleeve:
IRA:
PAPIX - Option trading
ARBIX/ARBOX - Hedged Equity
HMEZX - Merger Arb
BUYW - Option income
Taxable acct:
BALT - Wealth Defender - Defined outcome ETF (capped)
ALLW - SPDR Bridgewater All-Weather ETF (Ray Dalio)
PSFF - Buffered FOF
PRPFX
It will be interesting to see if it gets me there. Expecting a market test at some point to see how it floats.

From David, ”And the level of stock ownership is now at a record high; almost 45% of Americans’ net wealth rests in their stock portfolios (Federal Reserve data, 9/28/2025). So the American consumer is propping up the stock market, and the stock market is propping up the economy, and now consumer confidence is cratering.”
Randall Forsyth makes a similar case in this week’s Barron’s . In effect, Forsyth says it’s the stock market keeping the economy afloat. He sees the impetus continuing for some time even if the markets falter because of the enormous gains the wealthiest have already reaped. And Schwab has a new TV spot in which a couple riding in the back of a limo talking about stocks is interrupted by the limo driver - who turns out also to be an avid trader. :)

Monthly data is utilized for Portfolio Visualizer analyses
while daily data is incorporated in Portfolio Backtester analyses.
Consequently, results will vary.
Portfolio Visualizer generated the following results for QDSIX, QLEIX, and QMNIX respectively¹.
CAGR: 12.59%, 24.84%, 18.14%
Max. Drawdown: -4.45%, -15.98%, -10.52%
Sharpe: 1.42, 1.68, 1.28
Sortino: 2.85, 3.63, 2.66
https://www.portfoliovisualizer.com/backtest-portfolio?s=y&sl=4yoNaAO46AdhkOrEsxJKG2
Portfolio Backtester generated the following results for QDSIX, QLEIX, and QMNIX during the same period.
CAGR: 11.97%, 25.11%, 18.37%
Max. Drawdown: -7.06%, -17.07%, -14.05%
Sharpe: 1.16, 1.91, 1.51
Sortino: 1.57, 2.79, 2.20
https://testfol.io/?s=4JX16KUrEm3
¹ Jul. 2020 - Sep. 2025 (constrained by available data for QDSIX).

Here are my observations
- The SD metric incorporates daily price movements. No need to manually pore over individual price charts imo
- Selective cherry picking of dates for unclear reasons. I.e. A 3 year chart of QDSIX is being looked at alongside YTD charts for SPY (no idea why SPY even entered the picture in a discussion for bond funds but anyway..)
- My suggestion of QDSIX as a candidate for replacing a standard bond fund (such as BND) was initially explained as per below

To me the label of Bond fund is less relevant than whether it has served the function of a bond fund. I.e. Decent return and low max dd. With that frame, here are some funds that have returned 7% or higher during the last 5Y with a drawdown of 3% or lower.
CEDIX, 15.6, 2.4
VFLEX 10, 2.1
LCTIX 7.4, 2.5
as compared to
CBLDX 6.1, 1.4
PFIIX 4.5, 7.3
PAIIX 2.6, 8.9
The last two would be no-go's for me with those performance and max dd numbers.

Subsequently I proposed QDSIX too (in response to a question asked by a forum member) with justification as per below

Here is the direct QDSIX to BND compare
https://www.portfoliovisualizer.com/fund-performance?s=y&sl=3hYp9dTgZx25fW564h0zrq
Key take-aways
CAGR of 12.59% vs. -0.43%
MaxDD 4.45% vs. 17.54%
Sortino 2.85 vs. -0.64
Short story is that QDSIX has blown the lights out of BND across various time periods since inception in 2020 at significantly lower volatility.

And finally, in response to the selective cherry picking of dates by @FD1000 (Note: I never proposed QLEIX to be a substitute for a bond fund, I have no idea just like SPY why QLEIX entered the picture in a bond fund thread but anyway..).
3Y (10/1/22 to 09/30/25) Return & Risk Stats of QLEIX, QDSIX
CAGR: 13.41, 32.55
SD: 6.62, 8.39
Is QLEIX CAGR a lot better than QDSIX for above time period for comparable risk? Sure, I think that is a reasonable argument to make
But zoom out to the inception to date performance of QDSIX (July 2020 to Sep 2025) as compared to QLEIX and the numbers are
CAGR: 12.59, 24.84
SD: 6.5, 12.05
MaxDD: 4.45, 15.98
In short, I don't see QLEIX is a replacement for QDSIX but YMMV. I certainly see QDSIX as a strong replacement for BND but I ack the comments from others that QDSIX is a young fund that has not been battle tested.

In the above referenced thread, @FD1000 kindly educated me as per below.

Where is the actual data that supports your contention that QDSIX has dropped 7% in 2024/25?

See the chart (

https://schrts.co/pWNKwfaP)
I looked at a 3-year chart so it looked like 7%. It's actually closer to 6% but still more than your DD=4.8
If you use PV for YTD (https://www.portfoliovisualizer.com/backtest-portfolio?s=y&sl=10eBW4hM7DguW80JelVpf8)
MAX draw = -1.37.
For SP500 max draw = -7.58. In reality SPY lost about 19% from peak to trough.
See (https://schrts.co/WPhBIdSe)
I hope you learn something new. :-)

Just posted all ratings to MFO Premium site, using Refinitiv data drop through Friday, 3 October 2025. Monthly flow tools updated through September and the daily FLOW tool updated through Friday.

Hello MFO team:
Love your publication. Am I to understand that your site will no longer publish or entertain a discussion about MF Capital Gain estimates as in yrs past? You're now steering your subscribers over to CapGainsValet?
Thank you
Felipe Garcia

Where is the actual data that supports your contention that QDSIX has dropped 7% in 2024/25?

See the chart (https://schrts.co/pWNKwfaP)
I looked at a 3-year chart so it looked like 7%. It's actually closer to 6% but still more than your DD=4.8
If you use PV for YTD (https://www.portfoliovisualizer.com/backtest-portfolio?s=y&sl=10eBW4hM7DguW80JelVpf8)
MAX draw = -1.37.
For SP500 max draw = -7.58. In reality SPY lost about 19% from peak to trough.
See (https://schrts.co/WPhBIdSe)

Where is the actual data that supports your contention that QDSIX has dropped 7% in 2024/25?

Max DD for QDSIX since inception is 4.45% as per PV unless @FD1000 you have info to the contrary.

Reread my post.
DD is a monthly number.
If on April 1st a fund NAV is at 10, then 9 on April 20, and back to 10 on April 30th.
DD=zero and tells you nothing about fact that it was down 10% from peak to trough.

@Derf, Google AI says that HFT trades are almost 50% of US trading.
HFT trading is algo-trading with hundreds of simultaneous trades and with trade intervals measured in milliseconds. If you can do that on your PC, then you are in the club, but are likely not (-:).

so so confused
QDSNX:
Asset Class% Net Short Long
U.S. Equity 8.23 127.53 135.76
Non-US Equity 6.68 89.05 95.73
Fixed Income 12.79 278.80 291.59
Other 37.97 4.41 42.39
Cash 29.33 174.56 203.89
Not Classified 4.98 0.44 5.42