This is such a great resource for me during distribution season. What are you guys doing with this data? I use it to create estimates of what my clients will receive in distributions before the end of the year, determine which funds to put off buying, and (some years, not this one) tax loss harvesting out of funds that will pay more in dividends than the capital gains would be.
I assume I'm not the only one who is going to these sites and typing the numbers into excel? Next year.... what do you think about also having a shared google sheet?

Love "experts" predictions, see (link)
Example: In 05/2012 (article)
Question:You have become famous for your cyclically adjusted 10-year price/earnings ratio. What do the latest numbers say about future stock market returns?
Shiller: we found a correlation between that ratio and the next 10 years' return.
If you plug in today's P/E of about 22, it would be predicting something like an annualized 4% return after inflation.
FD: reality, the SP500 made 15+% average anually since that date and much better than countries with lower PE10.
==============
I would love if markets collapse because I would be out. I have been doing it for years and why my biggest loss from any top since 2018 was less than 1%. I made money every week in March of 2020.
How do I know? VIX is one of my indicators, the rest is in a lock box.
The key is to be mostly invested. I'm in the market at 99+%(never cash) at 90+% of the time.

@Simon,
I own a Shelton Capital fund, but have never seen the distribution amounts posted. SBH amounts are still not posted yet. Grandeur Peak, Vanguard, Rondure, Matthews Asia and FMI Funds are several funds that have still not posted yet as of this morning.
I believe this is the link where the information will be posted once it is determined for SBH:
https://sbhfunds.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/07/Distribution-Information-2021_10.pdf

Hi Pudd,
Thanks for stopping by.
Comments and quetions for Old_Skeet should be directed to him on the Big Bang Board. I believe his handle "Old_Skeet" is still in "timeout" on the MFO Board.
Here is what I was able to locate for your questions. This is my thinking not saying that it is correct as applied to VYCAX.
Q: What is float adjusted market cap?
A: "The number of shares used for calculation is the number of shares "floating", rather than outstanding. An index that is weighted in this manner is said to be "float-adjusted" or "float-weighted", in addition to being cap-weighted. For example, the S&P 500 index is both cap-weighted and float-adjusted."
Q: What do options do for the fund?
A: "Options speculation allows a trader to hold a leveraged position in an asset at a lower cost than buying shares of the asset. Investors use options to hedge or reduce the risk exposure of their portfolios. In some cases, the option holder can generate income when they buy call options or become an options writer."
Assumption: Options lower the cost to position and maintain the fund within target ranges as it rebalances positions quarterly. In this rebalance process, most times, the fund generates capital gains (a source of income) which are subject to taxation on the share holder. In addition, the fund pays a dividend.
Best regards,

Can anyone help me with estimated distributions for Shelton Capital and Segall Bryant and Hamill funds? I've tried both websites to no avail.
Thanks in advance.

One can use Portfolio Visualizer (PV) to see how he arrived at the age 70 investment portfolio values. PV shows slightly lower values. That is possibly because when one asks PV for a 6% rate of return, it doesn't use 6%/12 (0.5 basis points) for the monthly return, but 0.487 basis points (compounds to 6% annually). Just a guess.
Here's the PV setup for 6%. Mouse over the graph for the 8 year (age 62-age 70) result.
On the withdrawal side (after age 70), the video makes two simplifying assumptions:

• You will die at age 90. 5% withdrawal x 20 years = 100%. That leaves longevity risk.
• The real rate of return of the portfolio is zero. This addresses @bee's point that the portfolio grows over time. The video's portfolio does grow in nominal returns at precisely the rate of inflation.

bee does a nice job with PV in showing how one might have invested in the past. Kudos for incorporating a couple of bear stock markets in the mix. That said, there are two implicit, and IMHO fairly aggressive, assumptions made:

• The funds selected (or any fund of one's choosing) will continue to outperform the market. I've added a 60/40 S&P 500/bond market mix (rebalanced annually). This didn't survive 15 years. PV link.
• The markets going forward will produce real returns similar to those of the past 20 years. Schwab is projecting average real returns over the next decade of around 4.5% in the stock market and negative bond returns. And that's before considering higher inflation - the projection was from last May, before inflation took off.

Source page: https://www.schwab.com/resource-center/insights/content/why-market-returns-may-be-lower-in-the-future
With respect to sheltering the portfolio from taxes via a Roth IRA: this assumes that the part time worker is not already putting that money into an IRA (and maxing out), else contributing more to an IRA might not be an option. In any case, one could not contribute even half the age 62 benefits to SS. $1400 x 12 mo = $16,800. Including the $1K catch up amount, the max that one can contribute to an IRA is $7K.
Looking at the Roth conversion option: let's assume one is in the 12% tax bracket, no state taxes. If one converted $140K and somehow managed to remain in the 12% bracket, then that would use up the $16.8K in SS, thus effectively adding that amount to the Roth IRA. In reality, that would move one into the 22% or 24% bracket; hardly a good strategy. Not to mention that this would make more of the SS benefits taxable. Further, in order to execute this plan for eight years, one would need to have $1.12M in a traditional IRA available for conversion.
This has a better chance of being feasible if one is in a higher tax bracket (that would reduce the amount of the conversion necessary to incur $16.8K in taxes). However, given the correlation between income and longevity, the higher income person is also more subject to longevity risk and thus would likely benefit more from the lifetime income guaranteed by SS.

Regarding the annuity option: we don't know where the cost figure comes from, or what type of annuity it is. Though I agree with what I think is @JonGaltIII's assumption - life only, no inflation adjustments. One can buy joint and survivor annuities, but they cost more. I don't believe there are any inflation adjusted fixed immediate annuities left on the market, but there should still be some that provide for annual increases of a fixed amount (say, 2%). Of course those also cost more.
If there is the possibility of a surviving spouse, that just makes SS look even better. With SS, if the spouse with the larger benefits dies first, the surviving spouse gets those benefits instead of one's own. Unless one expects both spouses to live past the break even point (~82 give or take), the optimal strategy is often for the lower benefit spouse to take SS early (62) and the higher benefit spouse to defer to age 70.

I have had a small position since 2019. It has done what I expected, ie buffered market declines.
March 2020 Tail was up 27% to SPY drop of 31%. It is down about 15% since I bought it, far less than inverse ETFs like SH which lost over 50%
It also pays about .7 to 1%
the usual advice is to rebalance to maintain the same % in your portfolio. That would work pretty well I think

In the Foreign Large Blend category, I like SCIEX and MIEIX*.
The SCIEX management team also manages 30% of VWILX.
MIEIX has below average costs, low turnover, and usually provides good downside protection.
Mr. Ling started managing MIEIX on 10/01/2009; Mr. Webber began managing SCIEX on 03/01/2010.
Portfolio Visualizer Results from Mar 2010 - Oct 2021
*Morningstar fund category was Foreign Large Growth prior to 2020

I don't care if an active fund tracks an index on the upside, but I do care if it tracks an index on the downside. The SPY lost like 38% in the GFC while PRBLX was down only 22. I'll take positioning & performance like that anyday.

From M* PRILX Fund Analyst Report:
"Downside protection has been a strength for this
fund’s focused, roughly 40-stock portfolio. Since
Ahlsten became a manager on the fund, the strategy
has outperformed the S&P 500 in every market
correction, including the 2007-08 financial crisis, 2018’s
end-of-year pullback, and early 2020’s pandemic-driven
sell-off. One reason for that is that almost all holdings
have narrow or wide Morningstar Economic Moat
Ratings. While the fund typically lags in the ensuing
rallies, the managers have shown skill in picking up
depressed names that have proved beneficial in the
rebound."

There is a lot of fear mongering about the economy and inflation for obvious reasons, but I don't see a lot about the stock market. I think Roth is right to get people to try to conceptualize the risks even if a little ham-handed. Here's Zweig on the subject of optimism:

In February 2020, before the pandemic had fully hit home, these [surveyed Vanguard] investors estimated the odds of such a bear market at an average of only 4%. By April, just after the S&P 500 had fallen by one third, their expectations that the market would plunge again in the coming year nearly doubled to 8%.
Those fears swiftly faded. By last December, investors in the Vanguard survey estimated the probability of another crash in the ensuing 12 months at only 5%. That was slightly lower than their average estimate during the three years before the pandemic.
It’s as if the speed of the recovery had erased the pain of the decline, or made a recurrence seem even more improbable. Just like that, a grizzly bear turned into what feels more like a teddy bear.
That complacency takes a toll—even among Vanguard investors, who tend to be cautious. These people often follow the philosophy of the firm’s late founder, Jack Bogle, who preached patience and repeatedly warned that stocks are risky. If anyone should come through the sharpest market decline in decades unperturbed, it’s the people in this survey—typically about 60 years old, with about $225,000 in Vanguard investments, roughly 70% in stocks.
Yet they didn’t all sit tight. One group in the survey stood out: those who went into early 2020 with the highest expectations for stock returns in the upcoming year. They ended up reducing their exposure to stocks much more sharply during the crash of February and March 2020 than those who had been expecting lower returns.
They also tended to turn around and buy back much of the stock they had just sold—but not until prices had already shot above the March lows.
Investors elsewhere seem to have concluded from the swiftness of the recovery that stocks aren’t risky at all. After last spring’s rebound, Dave Portnoy, a social-media celebrity, declared “Stocks only go up” so often that it began to seem like a magic incantation.
And, for the past year, just about every stock has gone up.
That’s largely because the Federal Reserve has backstopped markets by squashing interest rates toward zero and by buying more than $2.5 trillion in Treasury securities since February 2020, along with other massive interventions. Meanwhile, emergency government programs pumped trillions of dollars of stimulus into the economy.

As for useful actions, I can think of quite a few--save more, spend less being an obvious one. But there are others. Roth's story has a table I can't reproduce here for some reason of which asset classes did well in previous bear markets. It's worth thinking about which might do well in the next one. The I-bond thread already points to an interesting avenue for saving. Options funds if you can find the right one are interesting. Are Treasuries worth it, REITs, high quality value stocks with strong balance sheets? Gold bullion? Cash? Paying down your mortgage or refinancing it? Those are worthwhile discussions to have.

Hey when I look at the trailing p-e of QQQ and it’s over 40 and the trailing p-e of IVV and it’s over 33 when the long-term average for stocks is about 15, it seems surreal to me. And this isn’t off trough earnings either. This is after massive amounts of stimulus when the tech sector, the dominant one in both indexes, did quite well. How much ammo does the Fed have left to prop things up if things go wrong? And if you read Zweig’s article—not a dummy by any means—he would argue that even the 08-09 bear was short by historical standards. I think it’s important to put things in perspective and I liked the fact the article showed how different asset classes performed well in different kinds of bears. That’s very important for investors to understand—what might work depending on the kind of bear we will have. Stocks could fall 50% from here and still not be at historical norms. And it’s an important question whether such a decline lasts a few months or several years. So, I’m not sure why the article is stupid.
From Zweig's piece:

With the exception of a 100-day rebound after an interim drop in early 2009, [the 2020 recovery is] the fastest-ever recovery to a prior peak. The S&P 500 has fallen at least 20%—the conventional definition of a bear market—26 times in the past nine decades, according to Dow Jones Market Data. Recoveries to previous highs have typically taken almost three years, often much longer.

Wanna chase a dividend, eh?
Here's what is in your bowl of REIT chili:
AGNC Investment Corp. (“AGNC”) is an internally-managed mortgage real estate investment trust (“REIT”). We invest predominantly in agency mortgage-backed securities (“agency MBS”) on a leveraged basis, financed primarily through collateralized borrowings structured as repurchase agreements. Our principal investment objective is to provide our stockholders with attractive risk-adjusted returns through a combination of monthly dividends and net asset value accretion. We generate income from the interest earned on our investment assets, net of associated borrowing and hedging costs, and net realized gains and losses on our investments and hedging activities. We utilize an active portfolio management philosophy with the goal of preserving net asset value over a wide range of market scenarios.
YA want some extra hot sauce with that order???

Thanks very much for providing these details @msf. You raise some great questions. I’m going to call up TRP to ask specifically about access to Capital appreciation and New Horizons. It will also be interesting if they provide broader access to all closed funds once TRP spits in two

'The Fund seeks long-term capital appreciation.'
M* is not making up their data feed, I expect. The fund evidently has adjusted its mix. Why not? Unclear about the anxiety part.

Great explanation of Musk sales
https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/authors/ARbTQlRLRjE/matthew-s-levine?cmpid=BBD111121_MONEYSTUFF&utm_medium=email&utm_source=newsletter&utm_term=211111&utm_campaign=moneystuff&sref=OzMbRRMQ
Copied below if interested if you cannot open paywall
Oh Elon
Well here you go sure sure sure:
Tesla Inc. Chief Executive Officer Elon Musk unloaded $5 billion of stock in the electric-car maker, shortly after restoking a social media debate over the tax treatment of billionaires’ shareholdings.
The world’s richest person so far has disposed of more than 4.5 million shares this week, according to regulatory filings. Those were his first sales in more than five years.
Musk, who frequently stokes controversy on Twitter, created a firestorm over the weekend with a survey asking whether he should sell part of his Tesla stake. While he portrayed his proposal as having to do with debate over the ultra-wealthy avoiding taxes, the filings released Wednesday show some of the transactions were pre-arranged in mid-September -- weeks before the poll. He also didn’t mention in the tweets that he has millions of stock options that must be exercised before next August, when they expire.
There are two sets of sales. On Monday, he exercised 2.15 million stock options that were granted in 2012, paying about $13.4 million to acquire 2.15 million shares; then he sold 934,091 of those shares for about $1.1 billion. The Form 4 disclosures for the exercise and sales are here and here. Footnote 1 of each of Musk’s Form 4s says: “The transactions reported on this form 4 were automatically effected pursuant to a Rule 10b5-1 trading plan previously adopted on September 14, 2021 and established by the reporting person for the purpose of an orderly sale of shares related to the exercises of options scheduled to expire in 2022.” Actually it says that in all caps. I like my readers so I rendered it in sentence case for readability, but now I’m going to say it again in all caps, for accuracy but also for emphasis: “THE TRANSACTIONS REPORTED ON THIS FORM 4 WERE AUTOMATICALLY EFFECTED PURSUANT TO A RULE 10B5-1 TRADING PLAN PREVIOUSLY ADOPTED ON SEPTEMBER 14, 2021 AND ESTABLISHED BY THE REPORTING PERSON FOR THE PURPOSE OF AN ORDERLY SALE OF SHARES RELATED TO THE EXERCISES OF OPTIONS SCHEDULED TO EXPIRE IN 2022.”
On Tuesday and Wednesday, he sold a total of about 3.6 million of the 170.5 million shares that he already owned (i.e. not shares subject to options), for proceeds of about $3.9 billion. There are a bunch of Form 4s for these sales (here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here).[1] They do not mention a prearranged 10b5-1 plan; presumably he decided to sell them this week, and then did.
Some background. First, in September, a few weeks after he put this Rule 10b5-1 plan in place, he said publicly at a conference that “a huge block of options will sell in Q4 — because I have to or they’ll expire.”[2] He has 22,862,050 options in the tranche set to expire next August; he exercised 2.15 million of them on Monday, leaving him with about 20.7 million options in that “huge block” that he plans to “sell in Q4.”
Second, this past Saturday, Musk tweeted a poll. “Much is made lately of unrealized gains being a means of tax avoidance,” he wrote, “so I propose selling 10% of my Tesla stock. Do you support this?” In a second tweet, he said “I will abide by the results of this poll, whichever way it goes.” The poll closed on Sunday, with 57.9% of the votes in favor of Musk selling 10% of his stock.
It is not clear what “10% of my Tesla stock” means. At the time of the poll, Musk owned about 170.5 million shares of Tesla stock. But he was also, for legal purposes, the “beneficial owner” of another 73.5 million shares underlying options; Tesla’s filings show him owning 244 million shares. So if Musk were to sell 10% of his stock that would mean selling somewhere between 17 million and 24 million shares, give or take.

It seems to me that when we opened the T-IRA rollover in BRUFX, Morningstar had it included among other 50-70 percent stock funds. That was in April, 2020. It now is labeled in the 70-85% equity group. Yes, Morningstar is often wrong and inaccurate. This is still causing just a bit of anxiety on my part.
Anyone else notice this?

Perhaps April 2020 might have been a more advantageous time? I know I would have bought both these funds back then.

@JD_co & @MikeM
Thanks for the pointers. Will check them out. TAIL gained over 20% in Qtr. 1 2020. (Guess that met the definition of a collapse.). I’ve had it 2-3 weeks and it looked rock steady. But didn’t hold up well today.
Compared to the inverse Dow (DOG), which I played around with, TAIL has been less volatile over the time it’s been in existence. I’d agree with @JD_co that it’s not going to make you money in decent markets. FWIW - Here’s a cut & paste of its strategy:
“The Cambria Tail Risk ETF seeks to mitigate significant downside market risk. The Fund intends to invest in a portfolio of "out of the money" put options purchased on the U.S. stock market. TAIL strategy offers the potential advantage of buying more puts when volatility is low and fewer puts when volatility is high.”
TAIL
Side note: Musk wanted to sell some Tesla. But didn’t want to “spook” the market. So he set up this Twitter gig to make it look as if he were being coerced into selling by his loyal followers. (There are reports his brother sold a big chunk the prior day.). The market didn’t buy it. Now - push hard on the sky-high technology sector and it can set in motion a whole chain of unwanted consequences.

I have been looking into these for my wife's accounts. And Tesla can be an issue depending on the underlying index. Given the recent runup These are fund whose returns aren't so heavily influenced by Tesla.
Descriptions are from etf.com. For various categories of energy I'm looking at:
PBD

passively managed to invest in a wide array of global renewable energy companies, including those involved in conservation, improving energy efficiency and advancing renewable energy. The index may invest in large cap firms and those that derives at least 10% of its market value from clean energy activities, but has bias on pure-play, small- and midcap companies. Importantly, PBD’s portfolio companies are selected based on the index provider’s opinion of their “potential for capital appreciation.” In that sense, PBD is more akin to an actively managed strategy than other funds in the segment. The index is rebalanced and reconstituted quarterly. For diversification, the fund caps its largest holdings at 5% and is required to invest half its assets internationally.

ICLN

ICLN invests in global clean energy companies, which is defined as those involved in the biofuels, ethanol, geothermal, hydroelectric, solar, and wind industries. Aside from holding companies that produce energy through these means, ICLN also includes companies that develop technology and equipment used in the process. Selected by the index committee, the fund is weighted by market-cap and exposure score — subject to several constraints — and reconstituted semi-annually. Prior to April 19, 2021, the index followed a more narrow methodology.

Both are down this year. But that's a feature for me. Ten year returns seem reasonable compared to traditional utilities. There isn't much overlap in their top ten holdings anyway. They weight sectors differently. Neither has much exposure to China. Another feature as far as I am concerned.
Then there is GRID.

GRID is concentrated fund targeting global equities determined to be in the smart grid and electrical energy infrastructure sector as determined by Clean Edge. The fund includes companies that are either Pure Play — more than 50% revenues or Diversified — less than 50% revenues are derived from the smart grid and electrical energy infrastructure sector. The sector may include business in electric grid, electric meters and devices, networks, energy storage and management, and enabling software. GRID also screens for minimum liquidity and market cap. To enhance exposure to the smart grid market, the index provider uses a tiered weighting scheme. Securities are initially market cap weighted. Then a collective weight of 80% for Pure Play and 20% for Diversified are allocated. The Index is reconstituted semi-annually and rebalanced quarter.

GRID is on the MFOpremium Honor Roll. Lipper/Refinitiv lists it as global infrastructure.
I am also looking at three water funds:
CGW

The fund starts with all eligible securities from the S&P Global BMI Index that are classified in either water equipment & materials or water utilities & infrastructure cluster. To identify industry relevance, each company from both clusters will be assigned an exposure score based on its business description and most recent reported revenue. The 25 largest companies with an exposure score of 1 from each cluster will be selected for inclusion. However, if fewer than 25 companies have an exposure score of 1, the fund will select the largest companies with a 0.5 exposure score until the portfolio contains a total of 25 constituents for each cluster. Stocks are weighted by market-cap within each bucket and are constrained, such that securities with an exposure score of 1 are capped at 10% and those with 0.5 exposure score are capped at 5%. Index rebalancing occurs semi-annually.

PIO

The fund's (ironically appropriate) liquidity-weighting scheme produces a concentrated portfolio that only loosely resembles our market-cap-weighted benchmark. PIO is dominated by large- to midcap firms that create products that conserve and purify water for homes, businesses, and industries. Also, only companies participating in the “Green Economy” as determined by SustainableBusiness.com LLC are eligible for inclusion. The index currently limits weighting in both the country and issuer level, to ensure diversification between constituents. Lastly, it is important to note that the fund uses a “full replication” method to track the underlying index. Rebalancing is done quarterly while reconstitution is done annually.

FIW

FIW holds 36 of the largest US-listed water companies, ranked by market cap and weighted equally within five tiers. Companies of any market capitalization that derive revenue from the potable and wastewater industry are selected. In addition, its tiered equal-weighting scheme boosts the weight of small- and micro-cap companies, hence, reducing concentration. FIW changed its name from First Trust ISE Water Index Fund to First Trust Water ETF on December 14, 2016, which had no impact to FIW's investment strategy. The index is rebalanced and reconstituted semi-annually.

Still not too much overlap for me.
I check out holdings and weights using this link to the old M* data:format
http://portfolios.morningstar.com/fund/holdings?t=fsmex&region=usa&culture=en-US
Just replace the FSMEX with the code you want to look up.

Everything that goes up must come down at some point.
Also, keep in mind Tesla rose exponentially prior to its stock split which occurred in August 2020. From an article I read which stated:
When Tesla announced the split to when it actually happened at the end of the month, shares rose 81%. The Board announced the stock split on August 11, 2020.