The obvious problem being that there are funds that sit on 30% equity historically. Basic only allows a hard filter for either 30-50 or 15-30 screens. An investor searching for 15-30% equity may find a suitable fund sitting on the lowest edge of 30-50% category that gets screened out in basic. AOK is an example. In the last 5 years they dipped as low as 27% equity but classified today as 30-50% by M*. I have reclassified on my watch list as 15-30%. AOK is a good fund IMO. Seems to me this would affect the funds performance reputation as M* is quoted often. There is no perfect world, just worth noting. I am sure also applies to 50-70%. I will pay more attention going forward.

There's hysteresis built into the classification system. That is, if a fund has been holding 25% equity and moves to 35% equity, M* does not immediately change its category. It waits (three years or more) to see how permanent and how significant the change is.
https://www.morningstar.com/articles/306244/why-is-my-funds-style-box-different-from-its-categ
(This talks about style drift but it could just as easily been talking about a fund changing stock/bond allocations as changing large cap/small cap allocations.)
The point here is that one can't look at an average over time and determine how the fund is classified. The classification is "path dependent" - it depends on how it got there. A fund that hit 30% from 25% and stuck there would likely remain in its 15% to 30% category, while a fund that hit 30% from 35% and stuck there would likely remain in its 30% to 50% category.
If the fund is bouncing back and forth between a tad under and a tad over 30%, there would be no reason to change its category. Even if those oscillations miraculously averaged exactly 30% equity.

They introduced new Balanced Fund categories a few years ago. You can find the above under
Allocation Funds - 15 to 30% Equity
Allocation Funds - 30% to 50% Equity

What category is assigned to a balanced fund that holds 30% equity historically? 15-30% or 30-50%?

Mutual Fund Ranked by Market Cap
DFA Emerging Markets Small Cap / 954
Morgan Stanley Inst EMkts Sm C / 1,021
Ashmore Emerging Markets Sm Cp / 1,294
Victory Sophus Emerging Market / 1,376
RBC Emerging Markets Small Cap / 1,385
Silk Invest New Horizons Front / 1,527
AMG TimesSquare Emerging Mkts / 1,586
Virtus KAR Emerging Markets Sm / 1,738
Victory Trivalent Emerging Mkt / 1,774
Templeton Emerging Markets Sma / 1,827
ETFs such as EWX in this case may be better for pure emerging market small exposure, although I think purity is overrated.

No where to run to, nowhere to hide, eh?
Risk.....
One could write a small book about the state of investments today. Money market funds are backwards/dead monies, except for short term parking, pending other choices. Too many equity sectors are hot and interest rates/yields have trended up in recent months.
We don't re-balance our portfolio based upon end of year or other time frames. The markets help establish any changes.
We're at 45% equity and 55% bonds at this time. Yes, we could have found investment glory changing some investments at the being of April, 2020. But, we stayed firm throughout the year. Everyone has there own assessment of risk. There are 1,000's of combo portfolios among those at this forum. I won't agree with some of the choices, as well as many would not agree with our choices. Tis the nature of the investment beast.
Cheap money and those investing on margin..... I don't have any data about how much hot money is in the market place; using margin or otherwise. Reportedly, there are about 13 million Robinhood accounts in the U.S. I don't know how much money these accounts are managing. More to this point is that I will presume much of this money is narrowly targeted to narrow sectors or stocks within those sectors. Twitter feeds have likely pushed a lot of this money in the past year. I don't imagine many of these folks are reading the WSJ or similar publications.
Lastly, is that we generally have little concern for investing choices based upon elections or politicians. The machinations of Congress and the government in general move along with their compromises and decisions. Many of these actions have slow moving parts that may cause some changes in a longer term investing environments.
However, some of our investment considerations going forward as of January 4 find a new set of circumstances that are beyond the normal, at this time; and just when we thought that Covid was the primary game changer. The Georgia Senate election and what FORM of government will find it's place in the next two weeks weighs upon investments changes at this time.
Wishing all of you well; for a variety of reasons.
Catch

@msf : Did you read all 5,593 pages ? !!
Stay Safe, Derf

everything costco is excellent, almost; wish I had put a hundred thou into the stock long ago, $10k to $5M since 1982, criminy, and yes there are better, but still

According to the statute (see p. 1966 out of 5593!), this 2021 "stimulus" check is an advance of a tax credit on your 2020 return - same as the last check.
You can't file your 2020 tax return before January 27th, which is why I think the IRS is saying that it will get all payments sent by mid January. Your tax software will have to be updated because it doesn't currently include code or worksheets to handle the second payment.

While not small cap, I encourage you to take a look at FSEAX which is exclusively focused on Asia and has top 10% returns for the past 1, 3, 5, and 10 year time frames for both Asia Ex-Japan and also emerging markets overall. It is the most consistent fund with strong returns that I have found in EM over the long term. Also held up well in the March downturn. Available at Schwab

Dole, Mixed Tropical Fruit Syrp Passn Fr, 15.25 Oz - slightly different name, same size, same ingredients, same nutritional content, same product of Thailand. (Label says "in light syrup and passion fruit juice".)
Amazon Pantry: $1.21 per can, unit 1 (= $14.52/dozen).
This product comes with various different labels with slightly different names. Just look at the first two images shown for for the same Amazon 12 pack to see two different examples. Possibly anything advertised with your label of choice commands a premium now. Or maybe they're just messing with your head.

Agreed VAESX and WAEMX have high ER's. VAESX at 1.85 and WAEMX art 1.95 but their performance has been good. I prefer VAESX of the 2, M*5 vs M*4 for WAEMX.

March 18, 2020:
DOLE Mixed Tropical Fruit in Light Syrup and Passion Fruit Juice, 15.25 Ounce Can (Pack of 12)
Sold by: Amazon.com Services LLC
$16.56
June 24, 2020:
DOLE Mixed Tropical Fruit in Light Syrup and Passion Fruit Juice, 15.25 Ounce Can (Pack of 12)
Sold by: Amazon.com Services LLC
$16.56
Was thinking about reordering...
Jan 3, 2021:
DOLE Mixed Tropical Fruit in Light Syrup and Passion Fruit Juice, 15.25 Ounce Can (Pack of 12)
Ships from and sold by Amazon.com.
$30.99​
Obviously Amazon has jacked up their price outrageously, yes?
Well, maybe not-
Jan 3, 2021:
DOLE Mixed Tropical Fruit in Light Syrup and Passion Fruit Juice, 15.25 Ounce Can (Pack of 12)
Walmart
$47.87

I noticed MEASX several years ago.
The fund performed exceedingly well within its category the first three full calendar years.
12-31-2016
3 Yr return: 10.9% (top 2% of category);
standard deviation of 8.91%
MEASX seems to be in a slump since 2017.
05-31-2020
3 Yr return: -13.8% (bottom percentile); 5 Yr return: -4.0% (bottom percentile);
standard deviation of 21.40%
Note: Morningstar moved MEASX from the 'Pacific/Asia ex-Japan Stock' category
to the 'Miscellaneous Region' category sometime after May 31, 2020.

Fidelity shows VAESX as ntf with $2500 minimum.

The (only) land border affected is Ireland/Northern Ireland, and an exception was made to make sure things flow freely there--- after all the deliberations and efforts at cooperation between Stormont and Dublin, ever since the Good Friday Accords in the 1990s... Otherwise, I think there's a sigh of relief, because there was NOT a no-deal Brexit, after all. The British fisherman got screwed. And the "deal" that was agreed to contained precious little about how the financial sector will work things out. Direct, simple access to the EU's banks and such is no more. A unified Europe is a step further away, now. The Brits never did adopt the euro. There are one or two others who "joined" without adopting the euro, too. Anyhow, it's hard for me to imagine Europe at war with itself, AGAIN. When I was back visiting Ireland in 2009, the euro was killing me at $1.51. But look at it, now, eh? There will be no more tension in the air about the prospect of a no-deal exit. That, at least is something. A near-term consideration.

FYI - https://decisionmoose.com/home-page is open for free viewing until January 6th. I see that his formula has made 20% this year, primarily IMO due to switching to cash in February and back out in May (didn’t nail the March 23 low).
Current Call

date signal type at until at change
-- 20-Nov-20 Hold Equal Weight (RSP) $120,931
10 12-Nov-20 Switch to Equal Weight (RSP) CI 117.46 31-Dec 127.54 8.58% $111,374
9 6-Nov-20 Switch to Growth (IUSG) BS 84.30 11/12/20 83.67 -0.75% $112,212
8 28-Oct-20 Switch to Cash (SHY) SL 86.42 11/6/20 86.38 -0.05% $112,264
7 7-Oct-20 Switch to Momentum (MTUM) BS 149.25 10/28/20 145.8 -2.31% $114,921
6 18-Sep-20 Switch to (SHY) SL 86.49 10/7/20 86.42 -0.08% $115,014
5 22-May-20 Switch to Growth (IUSG) BS 67.90 9/18/20 77.93 14.77% $100,211
4 24-Feb-20 Switch to Cash (SHY) SL 85.03 5/22/20 86.64 1.89% $98,349
3 7-Feb-20 Switch to Growth (IUSG) CI 71.41 2/24/20 69.29 -2.97% $101,358
2 31-Jan-20 Switch to Momentum (MTUM) CI 130.26 2/7/20 133.20 2.26% $99,121
1 3-Jan-20 Switch to Fundamental (QUAL) CI 101.22 1/31/20 100.33 -0.88% $100,000

" ... (DODFX), which currently has around 6% of its assets in emerging markets." Link
DODFX has always kept a healthy slug of money in EM. As of Sept. 30th, M* reports that of the fund's 98.71% in equities, 16.09% are in emerging markets. That works out to 15.88% of its assets in EM.
http://portfolios.morningstar.com/fund/summary?t=DODFX&region=usa&culture=en-US
D&C itself reports as of Sept. 30th that the fund holds 19.8% in EM, counting holdings in Brazil, China, Mexico, Peru, Russia, South Africa, South Korea and Thailand.
https://dodgeandcox.com/ISF_character.asp
These two figures can be reconciled simply by deciding whether S. Korea is counted as an EM country (D&C figure) or as a developed market country (M*). The fund's largest holding, at around 4%, is Samsung.
Where the 6% came from is anybody's guess. (Actually, my guess is that the writer added up the Latin American and African equities, forgetting about Asia and a smidgen in emerging Europe. But that's pure speculation, based on nothing but these numbers adding up to 6%.)

High expense ratios pose a sizable hurdle to overcome in the fund's performance. Also VAESX carries a 5% front load. The institutional share is no-load but it requires $100k at Fidelity.
May want to consider international small cap funds which often have 10-20% EM small exposure. Matthews Asia Small Companies come to mind. Grandeur Peaks and Wasatch are good companies to research, but pay attention to the ERs.

Mike, I like MFO's Portfolio Tool for the metrics. I use Fidelity's because it it quick and combines funds held elsewhere. Morningstar's has some neat features, but I haven't used it in a while. The December data is available on MFO. I uploaded them into my Ranking System. Here are some of the defensive funds that I own or have written about recently. Over the past few months I sold or reduced holdings in SWAN, DRSK, IAU, and TAIL. I will cover the December Rankings in the Webinar.
Name, Symbol, Lynn's Rank, MaxDD, APR, Rtn 3 mon, Trend, Flow, Yield, SMA10
Aptus Defined Risk, (DRSK), 89.2, -3.1, 13.4, 0.2, 0.6, 4.5, 1.18, 5.3
KL Allocation Inst, (GAVIX), 82, -2, 17.2, 4.9, 3, -0.1, 2.16, 11.3
BlackRock iShares Gold, (IAU), 78.2, -10.3, 21.2, 0.2, 2.4, -0.5, 0, 12.6
T Rowe Price Multi-Strtgy Tot Rtrn, (TMSRX), 77.1, -4.7, 10.3, 4.6, 2, 9.5, 0.83, 4.5
Amplify BlackSwan Growth & Treas Core, (SWAN), 62.4, -5, 19.4, 5.1, 3, 0.4, 0.35, 7.8
Invesco S&P 500 Downside Hdgd, (PHDG), 56.4, -6.2, 13.4, 0.3, 1.5, -0.1, 0.64, 14.6
Hussman Strategic Total Return, (HSTRX), 45.3, -2, 11.4, 0.4, 0.5, -1.7, 0.52, 8.7
ATAC Rotation Inv, (ATACX), 20.5, -8.1, 36.3, 16, 9.4, -4.4, 0.06, 29.1
Cambria Tail Risk ETF, (TAIL), 19, -14, -4.1, -5.1, -1.7, -7.1, 0.36, 3.3