@catch22 - Why not hold on to your technology marbles and wait for SpaceX to go public?
Perhaps as early as 2024
In keeping with the football motif here, were I inclined to play this one I’d probably employ an ”End-around” (indirect route) and invest instead in mushrooms which should benefit from all the IPO publicity and are far less likely to explode.
Really, the possibilities here are endless …
- Reverse play - Sell the stock short which would pay off big if the first rocket blows up.
- Punt - Hang on to for a few days as IPO attracts buyers and soars in price and than sell all.
- Double reverse - Try driving the price down with a massive short position; than switch directions and buy in “on the cheap” after panicked investors have fled.
- “Hail Mary” - Go for broke. Double-down using leverage.
My own low key ”ground game” has never been interested much in high-tech. I’ve have made more money over the years - potentially anyway. But the big swings in valuation would have led to many sleepless nights. Those kinds of swings can also lead to making dumb decisions like jumping ship at the worst possible moment. However, I did own some PRMTX for a few months in late ‘08 - early ‘09 when valuations were at rock bottom.

YES, indeed. This time is different remains in place since the market melt in 2008. These observations have been expressed over the years here. The market melt of 2008 impacted economic sectors, unlike sectors affected today. But, 2008 brought large policy changes for the functions of monetary policy from central banks. These processes are still being sorted today, as to what, where and when. Other investing sectors changes were already in place, and continue now. We know technology continues to impact and the market place has continued to innovate investment choices via more and more thematic oriented placements.
MOTIF was an early player in this space, where one could build there own thematic investment or invest in other existing themes. From a 2020 notification:

After ten years in the investment space, online brokerage platform Motif will be shutting down operations on May 20. The company notified users via email on April 17 in a message saying, “At this time, we've made the decision to cease operations and transfer your account to Folio Investments.”

Anyhoo. Covid brought forth another new era of investing. Unlike the 2008 melt, when one could still go to a restaurant, vacation or whatever else; Covid removed the social functions, and impacting the economies in a whole new fashion.
Then the rise of the "inequality retail traders" via Robinhood, etc. Some of this birth reportedly had roots in the "Occupy Wall Street" movement years ago.
The writer of the article mentions social media and impacts. I fully agree with this thought. Fortunately for him and our house, too; he/we are able to discover some of what is taking place within the 20-40 y.o. groups relative to social media, and what may be of value as related to investing.
We ask questions of some of the younger ones as to what is going on within social media, who and/or what is "trending". As with anything related to what is investment worthy; we attempt to ask the proper question in hopes of receiving a proper answer/observation.
This area (social media) travels at the "speed of electrons". Robinhood and related have and will continue to impact retail markets; and one can be assured that the big institutional houses have likely established folks from the 20-40 y.o. group to keep them informed. If this is not the case, they are missing the investment boat.
>>>This write is for informational purposes only, as I'm not formally trained in economics or psychology.
Regards,
Catch

........ @Mark
The kicker, literally; "potential to be infused with Cannabis".
Story here.
+ vendors of snacks, which would include Oreo's, Doritos, ice creams and the list goes on and on
Reads like a combo list of related stocks to be put together at the Motif web site.

Reminds me of Motif investing; build your own, eh?
https://www.motifinvesting.com/motifs#catalog=overview

From the article: A low-vol fund gives you more of sleepy Microsoft (MSFT)
>>> Things change, times change, managers change. Microsoft is not currently a sleepy company.
Sample: growth to value and value to growth:
---Durant-Dort Carriage Company was a manufacturer of horse-drawn vehicles in Flint, Michigan. Founded in 1886, in 1900 it was US's largest carriage manufacturer.
This very successful business made the partners rich men and it became the core on which William C Durant and J Dallas Dort began to build General Motors.
Durant sold out of this business in 1914 and it finished carriage manufacture in 1917.
>>>With the assumption of being able to purchase stock in the above, one may suspect those who poo-poo'd the demise of carriages and those who poo-poo'd rise of the motor car. Who and when someone may have bought or sold shares in either organization would have allowed them a more complete understanding of growth becoming value and value becoming growth scenarios, yes?
Below chart is factor investing, too. Large cap value vs large cap growth, from 2 different vendors. Simple etf models, although I don't know about internal holdings changes over the years. In particular, since early 2016 value can not find as many friends.
http://stockcharts.com/freecharts/perf.php?JKE,JKF,IVW,IVE&p=6&O=011000
I will guess that active individual investors are/were 50% inclined to be "factor or smart beta" investors before the terms became fashionable, eh? One makes personal investment choices for whatever reasons. One makes choices based upon many "factors" in their own world of risk and knowledge.
A few possible factors might include:
---age
---financial status, being employed and young with a good wage and prudent personal financial habits; being near retirement or being retired with a comfortable financial position
--- How hungry are you? = I'm young and hungry, I'm almost retired and don't want to lose what I've worked so hard to attain or I'm retired, and don't want to lose what I've attained, but still need to be invested in something reasonable. Among all of this at any age level is the aptitude/attitude involvement which may lead one to a more hands off approach of a plain joe/jane balanced fund style of investment or the Robo advisors.
One sorts and searches for whatever investment style floats their boat of comfort.
Factor or smart-beta investments offer more choices and hopefully not more confusion.
In closing, I'll offer the below partial lyric as the "theme song" for the ever evolving world of etf choices. Build it and they may come, eh?
Kinda like the simple lyric of this Dave Clark Five song (I Like It Like That) from the mid-60's:
Come on (come on let me show you where it's at)
Ah, come on (come on let me show you where it's at)
Whoa!, come on (come on let me show you where it's at)
I said the name of the place is I like it like that
The music is all around us, all we have to do.....is listen.
Take care,
Catch

Here’s how PRPFX invests:
Gold 20%
Silver 5%
Swiss franc assets 10%
Real estate / natural resource stocks 15%
Aggressive growth stocks 15%
Dollar assets 35%*
Total 100%
* Includes U.S. Treasury Bonds
I’ve had a mild (long running) disagreement with @LLJB who believes one should buy the assets, originally promoted by author Harry Brown, directly rather than paying Michael Cuggino a higher fee to do that for you. I agree - except that I’m not aware of a single poster ever who claimed to be doing that. I’m lazy. The thought of having to buy, transport, store and insure physical bullion, buy and sell stock ETFs, play in the international currency arena and do the regular record keeping (including taxes related to international currency trades) is daunting. Saying the fees are high in no way addresses the issue of diversifying across asset classes, which is what the fund’s about.

@hank, thank you for saying "mild" :), especially since I'm not sure we disagree as much as you think and because I far prefer sharing my opinion and letting everyone else decide what's best for them than attacking the choices people make because I think my opinion would somehow suit them better.
Anyway, I wouldn't suggest buying the assets that PRPFX holds in any way. It would be a pain as you highlighted and you'd always be months behind since they only have to be transparent once each quarter. My suggestion would simply be to allocate 25% each to equities (VTI), long-term Treasury Bonds (TLT), gold (I prefer IAU) and cash. Someone could certainly choose different etfs in order to have some foreign and/or emerging markets equities or to have shorter duration bonds if they have opinions about the direction of interest rates but that's a question of personal preference, confidence, goals and willingness to keep records. Speaking of record keeping, I think for years now brokers are required to report the cost basis of your transactions so the only real need to keep records is if you prefer to verify the accuracy of your 1099, which I do. I would rebalance once each year because the mutual fund must rebalance at least that often and your expense ratio using the etfs I mentioned would be 0.11% compared to the current 0.82% for PRPFX.
Just as a what if I also tried to duplicate the PRPFX allocations and back test the performance. I used IAU for gold, SIVR for silver, EWL for the Swiss stock market, IYR and IGE (7.5% each) for real estate and natural resources, RPG for aggressive growth stocks, TLT at 25% for long term treasuries and VTI at 10% for the remainder of dollar assets. The physical silver etf only became available in Aug 2009, I couldn't find anything else older and I didn't want miners, but my attempt returned 9.83% annually with a max drawdown of 8.79% and a worst calendar year of -4.49% while PRPFX returned 5.76% annually with a max drawdown of 12.52% and a worst year of -6.58%. I only rebalanced once per year which I'm sure made some of the difference and my expense ratio was 0.28%, which also helped. My use of IGE for natural resources probably isn't how they do things either, its sort of like buying physical gold vs. the gold miners, but it was simple.
Hindsight is always 20/20 so I'm certainly not trying to suggest my options are somehow better or that they will be better in the future, but if someone's interested in a risk parity approach then I think its worth considering the options. In fact, if someone wanted life made easy, people have created motifs at Motif Investing where you can follow the Permanent Portfolio or Ray Dalio's All Seasons Portfolio as a basket of stocks, something like a mutual fund without all the compliance requirements I guess. I've never used Motif so I can't say anything good or bad about it, just that I'm aware it exists and how it basically works.

Yea, even with my own millennials it's hard to convince them that investing in the tried and true hitters who spray it all over the field year after year is a better bet than the hitter who cranks out a grand slam once every 5-10 years.
However, if they wanted to construct an investing motif of their five to ten best tech stock ideas I wouldn't discourage them.

FYI: Investing isn’t all about the nuances of stocks and bonds and the twists and turns of the market — sometimes, it involves matters of the heart.
Regards,
Ted
http://www.marketwatch.com/story/you-can-invest-based-on-your-religious-environmental-and-even-farm-animal-values-2017-03-08/print
Investment News Article:
http://www.investmentnews.com/article/20170307/FREE/170309943?template=printart
Motif Website:
https://www.motifinvesting.com/products/impact-portfolio

Merriman is soon to release a "motif like" all in one fund to replicate his 13 small slice portfolio which allocates among all sectors stocks and bonds domestic and international. His work is based on DFA research. According to him, this portfolio outperformed S&P500 substantially over the last 45 years.
Vanguard's position (which I respect) on Int'l allocation as follows:
https://www.bogleheads.org/wiki/Vanguard_four_fund_portfolio

Investment portfolio science is always evolving. There is a big push towards the low fee, indexing narrative as it is a huge profit center and the financial industry flocks to where the sales $ exist.
The 21st century has afforded the investor and portfolio researcher alike, the benefit of the use of ETFs that focus on underlying academically based CAPM "factors" and other attributes. Implementing these products within a tactical framework can provide much more flexibility in the goal towards asset accumulation https://docs.google.com/document/d/14OG8dGZolcXg7WGy_vGFN1dTJq1TccfgKwK7x27HAAA/edit?usp=sharing.
The additional innovation of "motif" investing allows users and investors to build managed portfolios that other retail investors can track and invest in; this without the staffing, SEC approval, advertising, legal, etc. involved with the launch of funds and maintenance of running a "brick and mortar" fund enterprise.

Hi @bee,
You noted: " Might the dividend be a distribution in a tax deferred or qualified account which would be a problem where you are younger than 59.5 ?"
Are you asking that if a dividend is taken from the sheltered account (IRA), then it becomes a distribution?
I can't think of a reason for not maintaining the dividend/distribution within the IRA or related sheltered account.
Looking around the MOTIF, I don't find an FAQ or similar about what happens to distributions from one's stocks or etfs held in an account with them.
Lastly, a wonderful summer evening in Michigan. Mid-70's (8:30pm), low humidity and a slight breeze.......and lots of local folks shoot'in them rockets.
Regards,
Catch

Morning coffee, on this July 4th,
A unique investing format exists with MOTIF.
This method of building your own "fund" or using one of the several hundred combinations created by Motif or individuals has been discussed previously here.
I admit that I have been, and am too darn busy to have given time to this "idea"; but I would not hesitate to suggest a full review; for at least a portion, of one's investment portfolio.
The below link is directed towards the "existing portfolios" choices. The "explore" function allows one to set some parameters for searching. Also, just below the word Explore, are the two choices for either Motif or individual built portfolios.
Motif site
At the very least, one is able to look inside of these portfolio mixes to discover what others are investing to attain a particular goal for a given economic circumstance or investing style. Perhaps, this will help with ideas; in particular, for those here who also hold individual stocks as part of the mix.
Lastly, are you or do you know someone using Motif? If so, is there a "satisfied with" report that may be shared here; or perhaps a warning?
Take care,
Catch

Umm ... Mona's correct of course. I've never quite gotten the obsession with James Funds. This is a family run outfit. I doubt they have the deep research staff and capabilities of some of the big players. Dad runs the outfit, along with a couple sons who manage funds if my memory serves me correctly. Dad was an Air Force officer and fighter pilot.
They have some top performers like Golden Rainbow. But, in keeping with the flying motif tonight, they also flew their market neutral fund (JAMNX) into the ground a decade ago. Crashed and burned. Now they've come out with a new version of that prior disaster, a long-short fund (JAZZX). Like its predecessor, it's off to a hot start and money is flowing in. But keep your seat-belt buckled. And with a 2.6% ER, we all know who the real winner is on that one.
Yes, the Balanced fund has done very well. M* likes it. But, you're not buying the performance of the past 10-15 years. You're buying the performance of the NEXT 10-15 years. Big difference. Do as you will. And you will. Were it me, I'd stick with a larger company with a deeper management team, better research capabilities and more competitive fees. There's so many I won't start to name them. Or, as I think Mona and others would suggest, go with an index fund or other offering from low cost leader Vanguard.
Just a thought - The Lipper Scorecard (at Marketwatch) does a great job rating tax efficiency of funds. If you haven't already, try to locate a better alternative using that resource.
Regards

I think Motif is still quite interesting, but the question that came to mind this morning was can I reinvest dividends?
From their website:
"Do you offer dividend reinvestment (DRIP)?
No, not at this time."
So, unfortunately wouldn't work for me.

FYI: This is a three page article, unfortunately the printer-friendly version of SFGate has not worked for some time.
Regards,
Ted
http://www.sfgate.com/business/networth/article/Motif-aims-to-disrupt-discount-brokers-mutual-5587094.php
Previous MFO Discussions Of Motif:
http://www.mutualfundobserver.com/discuss/search?Search=motif

This trend in Motif investing (there is even a startup catering to this fad) is not going to end well for the investors, only for the organizers and the early entrants who manage to get out at the peak of inflows.

I skimmed the prospectus far enough to get to the 5.75% load. Site has nice graphic design motif, not necessarily a good sign. I would expect the big dogs to get the profits from likely IPOs seeking "late stagefunding," whatever that is meant to include. I don't do very well with concepts I think I understand. Since I don't think I really understand this one (I'm pretty clear on 5,75%, tho), believe I'll stay on the porch.

Reply to @WallStreetRanter: Right; thanks, WSR. So apparently you buy whatever whole motif you want, and then tweak it however you want as you go.
Besides the advantage of tax-liability management, seems like you could also bank a lot of savings on trading commissions, versus owning a number of individual stock positions through a more traditional brokerage -- assuming there's a single motif either already offered, or that you can devise, that works for you. I hope I'm interpreting that right, anyway.

I am wondering if you can create a MOTIF of ETFs giving instant diversification corresponding to your risk profile.

Yes thanks for the heads-up - it's interesting to see the different Motifs they put together and you can see which ones have been popular among customers.
For example - the CLOUD COMPUTING motif is rated very high interms of popularity. Top 3 holdings are VMware (22.7%), Citrix (12.5%), Salesforce (11.6%). They also provide a volatility and valuation ranking for each motif. This one is ranked in the middle for volatility with a high valuation.
RECESSION RESISTANT motif - moderate low volatility and valuation. Top 5 holdings: American Eagle Outfitters (6.4%), Flowers Foods (6.0%), Illinois Tool Works (5.8%), Intel (5.3%), Raytheon (5.3%). Other holdings here include Johnson & Johnson, Chevron, Molson Coors, General Dynamics, ADP, etc.
Here's how the Recession Resistant motif is built:
*Research*
- Identified US-listed stocks and ADRs of companies with Debt to Equity ratio less than 50% and Dividends to Cash flow ratio less than 75% for the past 5 years
- Screened for companies with more than $1B market capitalization and positive dividend growth over the past 2 years
- Computed the current dividend yield for each company
- Segmented companies by their primary operating industry
*Weight*
- Ranked the companies in descending order of their dividend yield
- Selected the top 20 ranked companies and equal-weighted them
*Rebalanced Annually*
LOTS OF LIKES motif - Walt Disney (14.1%), Nike (11.2%), Google (10.1%), Starbucks (8.0%), Coca-Cola (7.7%), Microsoft (5.9%), etc. This particular motif was built based on the number of 'likes' on Facebook and is weighted accordingly as well.
There's Cyber Security, Cash Flow Kings and Bailout-free Banks motifs.
SEVEN-DEADLY SINS motif: "Even In A Weak Economy, Bad Habits Remain Strong - Even in tough times, consumers continue to partake in things that may not be considered particularly virtuous. From cigarettes to sex, burgers to Botox®—consumer indulgences require products and services from a wide range of publicly traded companies. Some luxuries see reduced demand during tough times. But smokers could keep smoking, drinkers keep drinking, and the lustful keep…lusting. Bad habits are hard to break. And when times are rough, who wants to even try? Nobody can predict the markets, but consumers are only human. And economic conditions may not be able to defeat their appetites for sinful stuff."
Top 5 here are: Beam Inc (4.4%), Altria (4.4%), Reynolds American (4.3%), Diageo (4.2%), Phillips Morris International (4.1%)...and others that made it on the list include Goldman Sachs (Greed), Wynn Resorts, Las Vegas Sands, etc.
Top holdings in the GARP motif include: Apple, CA, America Movil, SABESP ADS, Credicorp, Aeropostale, Grupo Pao de Acucar ADS, Ambev ADS, etc.
There's also a BRICs BUILDING motif (not very popular) and here's how it's invested:
*Research*
- Identified US-listed securities and ADRs of companies from Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa
- Filtered out companies that derive more than 65% of their total revenue from foreign operations to create the Idea Index
- Segmented companies by country
*Weight*
- Allocated country segments based on each country's share of the total BRICS GDP
- Determined each company’s domestic revenue as a percent of its total revenue
- Applied a pure-play factor to give greater relative weight to companies that derive a higher percentage of their revenue from the BRICS countries
- Weighted each company within a segment based on its market capitalization adjusted for domestic revenue exposure
*Optimize*
Created the motif by running the Idea Index through our optimization engine to get a subset of stocks with the same risk/return characteristics as the Idea Index

Howdy WSR,
Thank you for the note about the "Motifs".
Additional.........for a forward thought as to being able to build one's own "Motif" using etf's. Not available at this time; but the stock only model could be applied to etf's, too.
Regards,
Catch