@davor, I have averaged in as well. I brought my equity allocation up to 43%/44% range and it is currently at 48% through growth from the recent stock market rebound. When it hits 49% I'll trim back to 47% by eliminating an equity position from my equity income sleeve most likely LCEAX. Currently, I'm positioning money on the income side of my portfolio. Perhaps, by the end of this quarter I plan to bubble at 10% cash, 45% income and 45% equity and ride from there into the 4th quarter. Once, I reach the 10/45/45 target asset allocation all income that the portfolio generates will go into the cash area of the portfolio. Currently, all income goes towards building the income area. In time, I plan to move back to my 20/40/40 allocation, in steps of course. But, right now, for me, Surf is Up so ride the wave that the FOMC & Treasury are currently making. But, don't throw caution to the wind either. What i'm doing is throttling my asset allocation to take advantage of current market conditions. I'm thinking most of the leverage money is now gone (or greatly reduced). I've been watching the money flow on SPY and it continues to be in an up trend. On March 6th my money feed in the barometer read 23. Today it reads 75. Can it cut the other way ... Absolutely.

@Old_Skeet OK. I understand. My personal uncertainty relates to the near term path the stock market will take before it resumes a long term upward trend (and from how low a point the rebuilding process will commence). The balance point in my portfolio is 55% stocks. As of today, I am at 54% due to some investing in stocks done on the initial trip down. As the uncertainty regarding the pandemic's duration has become clearer, my personal uncertainty about the stock market's near term path has increased. So, currently I am only investing 2% of my March cash reserve balance each week into stocks, bonds, or hybrids. Next week, that 2% will go into bond funds.

Here are a few recent episodes:
March 27th:

April 3rd:

April 10th:

A depressing as heck article. A few questions I have though are: The author discusses the real and expected unemployment numbers and compares them to the Great Depression, but he doesn’t ask about the duration of that unemployment or expected duration. There’s a huge difference between a 25% unemployment rate for three months and three years for instance and the impact that will have. How long will this scenario last is a vital question? Also, he doesn’t examine the nature of employment itself and how that’s changed since the Great Depression. Back then people had trades and jobs when they were working often for life, often in the same locale. Today we have a gig economy where Americans are used to switching jobs and relocating for work. How will that factor into the equation? Then there’s technology itself and how that’s changed our consumption patterns. Will Americans stop clicking Buy when it’s so easy even if the economy worsens? Also, regarding fiscal spending versus previous eras, I wonder how they would look if you inflation adjusted past spending, debt and GDP numbers?
@Charles

I had a neighbor once tell me that stocks had to go up because everybody's retirement depends on it.

The only thing is a significant percentage of Americans have little to no savings so this really isn’t true.

@FD1000

The price is always right

I don't think the price was always right when the market bid up Pets.com, Adelphia Communications, Enron, Worldcom, Washington Mutual, Lehman Brothers, tulip bulbs, etc. throughout history in past manias. But there are those who believe what you are saying. They're called efficient market theorists and would recommend only buying a total market index fund. I don't really understand, though, if you believe that, why you're posting on this board, which is devoted primarily to actively managed funds with managers who don't believe the price is always right. Those two philosophies--the price is always right or the price is often wrong and there are ways to get an edge on the market through active management--are incompatible. So if you don't mind my asking, why are you here?

The price over time is right as reflected in the SP500.
Sure, there is a way for managed funds but over LT the SP500 performance is better than most managed funds.
BTW, I have posted for years now that QQQ has been a better performer because the big high tech companies are winning so big.
The SP500 is also a global index and gets about 40% of its revenues from abroad. QQQ is even more global with about 50% of its revenue from abroad.

FXAIX didn't perform better because it didn't have a lower ER all these years. The main difference between me and others is that I supply numbers and not just narrative;-)

It would be very time consuming to find ER for previous years but from memory, Fidelity lowered ER for their index funds years ago to compete with VG.
From M*, for 5 years average annual as of (04/08/2020) [...]
It's a surprise that VOO with lower ER had lower performance than VFIAX

VOO is a bit of a distraction, because it introduces an additional layer of differentiation (ETF share class vs. OEF share class) and because its ER was lower by just 1 basis point for one year. Amortized over five years that amounts to nothing more than a rounding error. Still, it's good to see an acknowledgement that an S&P 500 index fund with a lower stated ER can have lower returns.
That's important because it puts lie to the statement that "FXAIX didn't perform better because it didn't have a lower ER". Certainly ERs affect relative returns, but they're not dispositive, especially when the magnitude of a difference between funds is small.
"It would be very time consuming to find ER for previous years." So sometimes you don't "supply numbers". That's okay. But you presented a numeric claim, viz. that FXAIX had a higher ER all these years, without checking the numbers. That calls into question numbers posted without citations and links.
VFINX ER from current prospectus and from 1998 prospectus
2019: 0.14%
2018: 0.14%
2017: 0.14%
2016: 0.14%
2015: 0.16%
2014: 0.17%
1999-2013: between 0.17% and 0.19% (interpolation)
1998: 0.19%
1997: 0.19%
1996: 0.20%
1995: 0.20%
1994: 0.19%
1993: 0.19%
1992: 0.19%
1991: 0.20%
1990: 0.22%
1989: 0.21%
1998: 0.22%
FXAIX (and predecessor fund) ERs from:
current prospectus [On July 1, 2016, FMR reduced the management fee ... from 0.025% to 0.015%],
2011 prospectus [On February 1, 2011, FMR reduced the management fee ... from 0.07% to 0.025% ],
2005 prospectus [Fund shares purchased prior to October 1, 2005 and not subsequently converted to Fidelity Advantage Class are deemed Investor Class shares]
2004 prospectus [Effective April 18, 1997, FMR has voluntarily agreed to reimburse the fund to the extent that total operating expenses ... exceed 0.19%.]
1997 prospectus (showing actual expenses for 1988-1996)
2019:       0.015%
2018:       0.015% (per 2019 note)
2017:       0.015% (per 2019 note)
2016:       0.020% (per 2019 note and averaging over half year)
2015:       0.025% (per 2011 note)
2014:       0.025% (per 2011 note)
2013:       0.025% (per 2011 note)
2012:       0.025% (per 2011 note)
2011:       0.025%
2006-2010: 0.070% (per 2011 note and 2005 prospectus showing YE 0.07% ER)
2005:       0.090% (per 2005 note, weighted avg of share class ERs)
1998-2004: 0.190% (per 2004 note)
1997:       0.190%
1996:       0.280%
1995:       0.280%
1994:       0.280%
1993:       0.280%
1992:       0.280%
1991:       0.280%
1990:       0.280%
1989:       0.280%
1988:       0.280%

As of market close April 9th, according to the metrics of Old_Skeet's stock market barometer, the S&P 500 Index is now at fair value with a reading of 153. This is in the midpoint range of the barometer's scale. This past week, the short volume average increased, a good bit, from 55% to 68% of the total volume for SPY. It seems, the shorts are betting against this rally. The VIX (which is a measure of volatility) fell and went from a reading of 45 to 41. This is good. During the shortened week the stock Index's valuation gained ground moving from a reading of 2489 to 2790 for a gain of 12.1%; but has a decline of 17.6% off it's 52 week high. However, it up 21% off its 52 week closing low of 2305. I'm thinking that we have seen most of the nearterm gains stocks have to offer and we move mostly sideways (with some upside) but within a trading range form here through summer. Let's hope these gains stick and the shorts get squeezed. The three best performing sectors this week were real estate, materials, and, financials.
From a yield perspective, I'm finding that the US10YrT is now listed at 0.73% while at the beginning of the year it was listed at 1.92%. With the recent stock market swoon the S&P 500 Index is currently listed with a dividend yield of 2.14% while at the beginning of the year it was listed at 1.82%. As you can see there is a yield advantage for the stock Index over the US Ten Year Treasury. With this yield advantage, for stocks, during the month of March I favored my domestic equity income funds over my fixed income funds for new money; and, I expaned this sleeve from four to six funds. My domestic equity income sleeve gained +8.7% for the week while my global equity income sleeve gained 7.4%.
Since, I now have more than a full allocation to equities, at 48%, I've now started to buy on the income side of my portfolio. Since, cash will likely pay very little, in the form of yield, I have changed my asset allocation. My new asset allocation is 10% cash, 45% income and 45% equity. This is to take advange of the nearterm rebound that bonds are expected to receive now that the Fed's have begun to buy bonds and just within the past few days they started to purchase in the high yield sector. My fixed income sleeve gained +2.8% for the week while my hybrid income sleeve gained +6.3%. Plus, bonds will pay more in the form of yield over my money market funds which gained +0.01% for the week. This equates to about a one half of one percent yield which is hardley enough to cover purchase loss due to inflation.
My three best performing funds for the week were PMDAX +14.9% ... FRINX +12.8% ... and, LPEFX +11.7%.
Thanks for stopping by and reading.
Take care ... be safe ... and, I wish all ... "Good Investing."
Old_Skeet
Please note: The next barometer report will be made at the end of the month unless there is a barometer reading change from fair value.

Why tech will continue to lead for decades to come. I worked in IT over 35 years in different sectors from retail, to banking, finance, mutual funds to healthcare. There is no way to stop this trend and it's getting faster. How long it took Walmart to be dominated? compare it to Amazon. BTW, Amazon is a tech company and I can argue that WM is one of the best retail companies because of its great IT for many years.
Value investing was easier years ago when a good manager can find undervalued companies under the radar but in a digital, global, free data world it's a lot harder. High tech squeezes every corner in every business. To acquire the next customer for high tech companies is very cheap, sometimes pennies because the infrastructure exists already and digital is very cheap compared to actual stores and humans.
Some sectors are harder to break such as banking and finance but even they have been going down by joining the big tech. How long can you deceive clients by promising them better performance when a computer is cheaper and better. You can transfer now money to any person in seconds for free, just several years ago you had to pay a commission and took several days.
There are always new upcoming tech companies and when they do something well they explode very quickly because 1-5% lower price for the same (sometimes better) service means a lot. You can see it on Amazon if one company offers the same product for $1 cheaper and if the service is good it will take a huge % of the market. A reasonable customer will always pay less.
Real estate is another slow sector that will be more computerized.
The only sector that holds steady is healthcare, it gets more expensive with no end in sight IMO. There is no way to solve the HC issue in the USA. We can start a new thread on this.

Interestingly, the SPDR Tech ETF, XLK, leaves out Amazon because I imagine Standard & Poor's categorizes it, foolishly in my view, as a retail or consumer stock, yet the SPDR tech sector ETF still crushes the S&P 500 without it. One can imagine how much more the tech ETF would've crushed the S&P 500 if Amazon was also included. VOOG does have a big chunk of Amazon with a 5.8% weighting. My thoughts on Amazon as a $1 trillion company is, A, how much bigger can it get, i.e., when does the law of large numbers kick in, and, B, what happens to its supply chains due to covid as well as the trade war and C, is there some young upstart company that could threaten its business in some way? Retail probably not, but cloud computing--that seems a more competitive space. Finally, is it possible regulators may eventually attack it for the monopoly it really is? It is a $1 trillion company with a trailing p-e ratio of 89 and a forward one of 69 when the long-term avaerage p-e for stocks is about 15. The response of analysts who've all become converts to the stock is that it will "grow into" that p-e ratio. Will it?

Here is a little more detail on the types of high yield bonds and about other financial products the Fed will now be buying:

In a move that surprised some investors, the central bank will also expand its bond-buying program to include debt that was investment-grade rated as of March 22 but was later downgraded to no lower than BB-, or three levels into high yield. It’ll also buy exchange-traded funds, the preponderance of which will track investment-grade debt along with some that track speculative-grade debt. Together, the programs will support as much as $850 billion in credit.
.....as well as fund the purchases of some types of......collateralized loan obligations and commercial mortgage-backed securities.

https://washingtonpost.com/business/on-small-business/fed-to-buy-junk-bonds-and-lend-to-states-in-fresh-virus-support/2020/04/09/1baf9420-7a60-11ea-a311-adb1344719a9_story.html

@davidrmoran Not only what VOOG excludes but includes. Without doing too deep a dive, VOOG has a 32% weighting in tech stocks. VOO has a 21% weighting. Although I don't think VOOG breaks out sectors like the S&P 500, the tech sector isolated by itself from the S&P 500 has dramatically outperformed it since 2009: https://morningstar.com/etfs/arcx/xlk/performance
I would imagine this tech effect would be even greater in VOOG because it probably only owns the growthiest tech names, not the loser ones like Hewlett Packard all those years, the one tech company value managers found attractive. VOOG, for instance, has almost double the weighting of Amazon of VOO. RPV's tech weighting is a mere 2.3% and its financials is 34%. As I said above, the real story here isn't really just a growth versus value one. It's a tech sector versus financial sector one. To the extent that tech stocks are overvalued as some like Netflix I would argue are, the value managers will win. To the extent the financial services sector gets disintermediated by the tech sector--talk for instance of Amazon managing money soon or other tech companies doing banking--than the growth sector will win. The past ten years have been about Amazon, Google, Microsoft, Facebook and Netflix ostensibly taking over the world. If you believe that trend continues, you go growth. If you don't, you go value or cash.

I still say: they should have instituted a 4 or 5-month rental / mortgage holiday.

@davidrmoran: if you are lazy, then I must surely be irredemiable. In any event, I do not have the time to pull those numbers either.
However, when I was younger and had more time (but less money to invest) I did a set of analyses comparing historical cumulative returns for domestic and global value and 60/40 balanced funds on successive rolling intervals, and found that a small (but reasonably-sized number, hidden in plain sight) set of actively-managed, value-tilting funds beat the market.
My familial background also instilled in me the practical wisdom of buying a dollar for $0.75. My academic and professional backgrounds have made me students of transience and hype, and thus suspect of markets and tautological arguments about rationality and invisible hands. I recall a classic series of articles appearing in the Administrative Science Quarterly ages ago which evaluated whether "the market" necessarily allowed the "best" ideas to survive (you can guess the conclusion, since I'm noting them here). LewisBraham's examples of the short and long term impact of extraordinary popular delusions are well known, and certainly strike a cord with me: I fear the madness of crowds. Even Adam Smith had his doubts! Certainly, if we wanted to get into politics we could question the notion as to whether "the market" or "voting machines" have produced the "best" political leadership for our country by any reasonable standard.
In any event, to each his or her own: that's what makes a market. You may end up benefitting from my ignorance in the immediate, near, and / or long run. In which case, you will be having a drink on me. In the interim, I have adopted a system for investing that is in accord with my values and experience. If it keeps me in the market, I surely benefit. And, ultimately, I'm always updating my prior.

Well, HYD up 5+% so far today.

The rates that you see on Muni MM (3-4%) are just the results of the last several days/weeks. You will not get anything close to it and they will revert back to 1-1.5% and lower than prime MM. If Muni MM could give you even 2-2.5% performance all the cash would be invested in them.
In fact, Muni MM and prime MM can have the following: "The fund may impose a fee upon sale of your shares or may temporarily suspend your ability to sell shares if the fund's liquidity falls below required minimums because of market conditions or other factors."
In this market, I stay away from the above MM and invest in Fed or treasury MM where I will able to sell at any time and buy something if I need to. It is not worth the additional small performance.

Not long time ago, I have seen several posts on different site about Muni MM and how great it is because it had 7 day SEC yield over 3%. You can see my response above.
So how much more did you really get for VMSXX(muni mm) vs VMMXX(prime)? You got about 0.1% more in one month, see (chart)
VMSXX 7 day SEC yield = 1.35% now and VMMXX = 0.94 but again, soon enough VMMXX will be the better performer.
BTW, I don't use prime or Muni MM but Fed MM. I already stated my reasons.

Riffing on @LewisBraham responding to @FD1000: 2001 dot-com specialness -- a lot of "top" companies got to the top and....
In the short run, the market is a voting machine; in the long run it is a weighing machine. Belief in that principle (as well as the logic of buying a quarter for a dime) is what is makes value investing logic appealing to many investors.

Statements like this are really meaningless. 15 years is pretty long and over long term it's being proven that a very cheap, "stupid" but a smart idea like the SP500 will beat most managed funds
What is VALUE? value means different things to different investors. Is Buffett value equal D&C value.? Is T a better value than AAPL?
The best voting machine is the market thru the price. It doesn't matter what anybody thinks, the price reflects the end results of all decisions. The price is always right and the price will affect the SP500.

From what little I can find, it seems that FXAIX overall had the lower ER all these years. I look forward to seeing the ER numbers for "all these years".

It would be very time consuming to find ER for previous years but from memory, Fidelity lowered ER for their index funds years ago to compete with VG.
From M*, for 5 years average annual as of (04/08/2020)...FXAIX=7.9%...VFIAX=7.88...VOO=7.86
It's a surprise that VOO with lower ER had lower performance than VFIAX

Another maybe bullish sign... This article from the NYT says it's institutional investors (aka smart money) driving this one while Mom and Pop investors (like me) wait it out.

I have also read that some of the buying has been driven by funds with a mandate to own the constituents of various indexes.
OTOH. From your link:

Cole Smead, a portfolio manager at the Smead Value Fund, has been snapping up bargains in beaten-up parts of the market, like oil and energy producers, homebuilders and shopping-mall companies, that are closely tied to short-term swings in the economy.

I won't be adding Smead Value to my shopping list. I regularly drive by one of the largest ghost town malls in the country.

Goldman Sachs economists, for example, expect the gross domestic product to contract at an astounding 34 percent annual rate in the second quarter, with unemployment reaching roughly 15 percent.

I look at numbers like that on top of the burden of corporate leverage, and I wonder what could happen if their debt is down graded.

And don’t underestimate the fear of missing out. As shares rise, professional money managers feel pressure to buy stocks to protect their reputations.
“If you wait until the coast is clear, you will have missed a huge part of the gains,” said Matt Maley, chief market strategist at Miller Tabak, a trading and asset management firm. “And professional investors can’t afford to do that.”

That doesn't sound like the sort of discipline Old_Skeet describes as his process.
Thanks for the link.

Howdy folks,
The chances of this happening are pretty low. Is it possible? Sure. Right now, gold is at all time highs as expressed in every other currency in the world. This means that in dollar terms, gold is cheap. Indeed, the simple fact is that most every government in the world is printing money 24/7/365. Hell, the most secure job in the planet is a printing press operator at the mint. This should result in gold continuing to hit new highs.
And so it goes
Peace and Flatten the Curve
Rono

Hi guys. I have the S&P 500 Index current up off its 52 week closing low of 2237 (March 23rd) by +22.9% (513 points). According to Mr. Paulsen's thesis I wonder how much near term upside is left?
I'm thinking from here we drift sideways and become range bound for a while. Should Q1 earnings surprise then perhaps we go higher ... Perhaps, not. For the near term, I feel most of the upside has already been made.
For me, since I was an active buyer of equities during the downdraft it is now clip coupons and collect dividends, that my portfolio generates, while I await this out.