@Baseball-Fan, First year of pandemic was under Trump and the second year was under Biden. What was the federal budget deficit in the first year and second year. You can pick the deficit by calendar month to come up with the calendar year deficit. Let us talk facts and keep political commentary and hyperbole out. Hyperbole is needed only if trying to market something people do not need.
I did not receive any of the stimulus checks and was happy to see BBB not pass in the form it was being pushed. Unemployed since Feb 2020 and did not receive unemployment checks or any form of assistance either.

@msf yes you raise some excellent points. I went through that same analysis that you describe above and evaluated both funds 2 years ago. Long term they both have similar track records. But MFAPX gets there with much less volatility. MIOPX actually held up quite well in the March 2020 selloff -- only dropping about 15% in comparison to 19% for its category. But things really turned south for MIOPX and other funds with large emerging markets exposure when China cracked down on its technology industry last year. I think you can trace its underperformance starting then. I might return to MFAPX at some point but am looking for more of a large cap blend. I find selecting an international fund to be quite difficult because they have underperformed the U.S. for so long. This year to date foreign value is doing quite well with funds like Dodge and Cox International up over 6% YTD but I wonder if this is a short term thing. Their long term track record is pretty poor. Again international is real conundrum.
@carew388 It's funny you mention MSFBX because that one has come up on my screens too. I really like that funds defensive posture with about 30% in consumer staples. Unfortunately it also has a 20% allocation to tech so if tech continues to get hit as I believe will happen -- you won't be safe in the fund. YAFFX is intriguing with a great long term track record -- also more of a global fund. It is one fund I'm looking at also. I think this is going to be a difficult year to make money though.

This will be a bit painful to do but I will be selling most of my position in MIOPX. I really like the manager -- Kristian Heugh. But there is too much downside risk in his portfolio.

If you like the manager and want to dial down the risk a bit, you could consider MFAPX. The difference between the MS summaries is that MIOPX includes emerging companies, while MFAPX is primarily focused on established companies.
Morgan Stanley MIOPX page
Morgan Stanley MFAPX page
Obviously they have a lot of overlap, but their figures are significantly different.
Portfolio Visualizer comparison
Close performance over 3, 5, 10 years (through year end 2021). A notable distinction is that from 2Q2020 on, MIOPX rose and fell faster. For example, YTD (2022), MIOPX dropped 9.23% and MFAPX dropped 2.83%. PV shows other significant differences (better figures are MAFPX):
std dev: 16.58% vs. 12.99%
max drawdown: 26.18% vs. 17.26%
Sharpe ratio: 0.77 vs. 1.00
Sortino ratio: 1.27 vs 1.71
As one might expect with its higher volatility MIOPX had a much better best year (55.06% vs. 44.18%) and a much worse worst year (down 12.36% vs down 5.48%).
According to M*, the best fit index for MIOPX is US Convertible Bonds!
http://performance.morningstar.com/fund/ratings-risk.action?t=MIOPX
From inception through 2016 MIOPX tracked FISCX pretty closely. (MIOPX even returned less over this period). Then it became more volatile and returned more. But it wasn't until 2020 that it took off like a rocket. And then fell like a stone. In that same period, MFAPX also rose with MIOPX, but not as quickly and with much gentler spikes.

This will be a bit painful to do but I will be selling most of my position in MIOPX. I really like the manager -- Kristian Heugh. But there is too much downside risk in his portfolio. One fund that I have added is CDC which Lynn Bolin has written about here. It is a low volatility defensive fund with heavy weightings in financials, consumer staples, and utilities. Held up very well in March 2020 and has a very nice long term record.

@JohnGaltIII I bought WAMCX back in May of 2020 and it has been an excellent fund for me. Unfortunately as you've seen with interest rates rising funds like this with high PE multiples are susceptible to a great deal of risk. The fund was down 8-9% for the year earlier this week. I feel that in the current environment this fund and others in the small cap growth space will perform poorly. I have gone ahead and taken profits and plan to allocate to more defensive positions.

@msf said, “ I tend not to deal much with financial institutions in their role as fund shops. To the extent that I do, my interactions are typically limited to accessing reports/prospectuses, perhaps a little info about the holdings/management, and important to me, capital gains and dividend estimates. Also muni income breakdown by state.”
Rather than starting a new thread - a related personal question, if I may. I have just one fund outside my IRAs, PRIHX. Having transferred that from TRP to Fido last year “in kind”, I’m curious which will provide tax information? Will a statement come from TRP? Fido? Or both? Thanks.
To the broader issue here, I’m of the opinion that the deterioration of service at businesses and institutions is commonplace - driven by cost constraints and profit motives. As consumers we want the lowest prices. As shareholders we want the greatest profitability. Those sometimes clash or lead to ruin of service we once found reliable. I sometimes find my self shouting angrily at Walgreen’s “robo assistant” when calling in or checking on prescriptions. But it’s a lot easier to move your prescriptions elsewhere than to transfer all your retirement money.

I'll say it again: I find Vanguard to be the most ridiculously difficult firm to deal with of all fund shops my wife and I use.

I tend not to deal much with financial institutions in their role as fund shops. To the extent that I do, my interactions are typically limited to accessing reports/prospectuses, perhaps a little info about the holdings/management, and important to me, capital gains and dividend estimates. Also muni income breakdown by state.
Cap gains/div estimates: IMHO Vanguard has been superb here. It provided an initial set of estimates along with a release date for an update. Its final estimates included estimates for divs.
Contrast that with many other fund shops, e.g. Morgan Stanley, which at best provided a single estimate in October (based on Sept 30th figures) and no estimate of divs.
https://www.morganstanley.com/im/publication/forms/tax/2021-estimated-year-end-distributions.pdf
Finding reports/prospectuses/fund info on Vanguard's site is not as streamlined as it could be (there doesn't seem to be a page aggregating all funds). Still, from the personal investor home page one can enter the name or ticker of a fund to go directly to the fund page. That page has a link to prospectuses and reports, and pretty clear information one can tab through for full holdings, management, etc.
Contrast that with Schwab. When I type Schwab 1000 into the search box on its home page it brings me to 3,338 search results. Maybe there's a fund page in there somewhere, but I can't tell.
Instead, one can use the accounts & products drop down (-> investment products-> mutual funds) to get to a generic MF page. The drop down on that page, "Find Mutual Funds" has an "Investor Information" selection. That gets one to a page listing Schwab funds, with links to the fund pages and additional links to their reports, holdings, etc.
"https://www.schwab.com/mutual-funds/find-mutual-funds/investor-information
As a brokerage, Vanguard has recently made it harder to find third party funds. I haven't found any direct way to get to the 3rd party fund page since the website revamp. One can enter another company's fund name or ticker into the home page search box to go to that particular fund. From there one finds a link to "Other companies' funds & ETFs".
That brings you to the old 3rd party page: https://investor.vanguard.com/other-funds/
Still, that's better than brokerages like Merrill or T. Rowe Price, where there doesn't seem to be any way to find out from them what third party funds they offer without opening a brokerage account.
What I've found to be the worst part of dealing with Vanguard is its phone service. Routinely 40 minutes on hold. But no worse than T. Rowe Price in that regard. (I was recently on the phone continually with both in trying to get a simple IRA transfer between the two straightend up.)
Vanguard is not the easiest fund shop to work with. But IMHO it's also far from the worst. (I think TIAA is in a league of its own, but that's a whole 'nuther story.)

I hold a constant above-average weighting in small caps in my Roth as SOP. My rationale is that in that account I have more time to ride out any volatility than in my 401k. T
In my 401k I an also overwight smid's since there is also scuttlebut in respectable corners that large caps are over-valued and that there is less risk currently in smaller and mid-sized companies. Oakmark, Tweedy, D&C and other value-conscious shops seem to have moved more into smids during 2020 and early 2021 (but have rotated out since). I counter the smid overweight by holding a bit more cash, such that the simple weighted expected return is above that of holding larger caps.
FWIW.

MGGPX: reduced
BGAFX: reduced
ARTYX: sold
The first two funds had massive inflows in 2020 during run-ups; the opposite is true for 2021 when outflows are seen. The charts are ugly. ISTM that the managers will have a hard time reversing recent misfortunes because outflows are likely to continue.

“We expect equity investors to perform well relative to bond investors over the next decade. We also believe that our portfolios are more attractively priced than the S&P 500.”
Hard to disagree as worded. “our portfolios” doesn’t mean the same as what you, I, or somebody else may own. And they seem to disavow the S&P. Unfortunately, we’ll have to wait 10 years to see if the manager’s perceptions re his portfolio are accurate.
Note that the blurb does not differentiate among bonds, lumping all into one hopper. Well, now, there are short, intermediate and long term bonds. Corporate and sovereign. Investment grade and poorer quality. U.S. domiciled and those from other nations. And, there’s EM as well.
I think for many of us the past week is a great opportunity to compare how different asset class we held faired compared to one another. It hasn’t been too often that so many different assets suffered together (Maybe Qtr 1, 2020?).
When all is said and done, I’m glad I had exposure to bonds last week. RPGAX (30% bonds) fell 1.48% as compared to PRWCX which lost over 2.0%%. My worst performing bond fund, DODIX, fell 1.07%. In contrast, my worst performing equity holding, WPM, fell over 10%. Equity funds themselves were all over the place of course. Those heavy into banks saw gains. Similar variance existed among various alts, long shorts, etc. PRPFX surprised, losing just 1% for the week, despite exposure to gold, bonds and growth stocks.
So, if you have a 10 year or longer time horizon and can live with higher volatility, send your $$ to the folks at Oakmark. BTW - I read a lot of Dodge & Cox’s commentary. They might well have written the same blurb.

What happened was that investors sold retail fund holdings and purchased institutional fund holdings. Such a move would have been a taxable event had it been done in taxable accounts, but employer plans (e.g. 401(k)s, 403(b)s) are tax sheltered.
If someone had between $5M and $100M in a taxable retail TDF, it is unlikely that one would have sold shares (recognizing personal cap gains earlier in 2021, before distributions). The cost of the taxes on the realized gain would likely have outweighed the benefit of switching to a lower ER fund.
(I personally faced a similar decision years ago. I owned service class shares of a fund. The A shares, with a slightly lower ER, were subsequently offered load-waived. The fund declined to do a tax-free exchange for me. So I continued to hold the higher cost service class shares.)
Investors weren't selling off shares because they wanted out. They were just moving to a lower ER replacement fund. So whether retail or institutional series had higher unrealized gains seems somewhat moot. That said, I agree that the younger institutional series was likely to have had lower unrealized gains.
Since Vanguard decided to merge the series entirely, there wouldn't seem to be much point in merging the employer plan investors and then months later merging the rest of the investors. Had Vanguard given this enough thought to realize that the first change (lowering the institutional min) would trigger the mass migration, it could have skipped that step completely and merged everyone at once.

I have had sig Commodities esp energy since last year's oil crash. A lot of the ETFs are too heavy in Oil to be a diversifier, so I added DBA for agriculture and GMET for "green metals" REMX for "strategic metals"
For broad based funds, I still think SPACX is a decent fund, although it paid a huge income distribution this year, presumably due to profits on futures. It is less volatile than those mentioned above with lower draw downs in 2020 ( 28 % vs over 50%)
There are lots of alternatives but look carefully at how the mange risk

MyMoneyBlog, citing Bogleheads, has a good explanation of what happened.
https://www.mymoneyblog.com/vanguard-target-retirement-funds-nav-drop-cap-gains-distribution.html
In brief, in early 2021 Vanguard enabled lots of employer plans move money from the retail TDFs to the institutional TDF, by lowering the mins from $100M to $5M. Companies responded. There was a mass movement of dollars out of the retail TDFs, creating large cap gains for those remaining.
As pointed out in the blog, had Vanguard merged the funds first, then none of these plans would have moved money around and there would have been no large gains distributed.
So the gains were not because of the merger, but in spite of the merger.

Howdy folks,
I'm probably the oldest 'gold bug' around but no longer give it the same inflationary hedge status today as I have in the past. Bitcoin hasn't dethroned it but has reduced demand sufficiently on the margin to influence my decisions. Don't get me wrong, I'm playing the junior silver miners as I type.
Recall the Elder Baron Rothschild's advice that to protect your wealth, you wanted 1/3 in securities, 1/3 in real estate and 1/3 in rare art. It's this last category that can be tricky. It includes gold and bitcoin, and many other assets. It doesn't include cabbage patch kids, nor Beanie babies.
Good luck and wear the damn mask
Rono

Throw in sports cards to the "rare art" mix Rono. Since 2020, the hobby has gone through the roof. There's youtube videos of people charting card sales and gains like stock charts.

This is trial post here.
Pg L4: COVER STORY, “The Commodities Boom/Why It’s Time to Invest in COMMODITIES, and How to Do It”. Factors driving commodities include inflation, China and energy transitions. Bloomberg commodity index rose +27% in 2021 and more gains are ahead, especially for oil and ag-commodities. INFLATION is driven by pent-up demand and constrained supplies due to supply-chain disruptions. Greenflation is also contributing as the ESG movement has costs. CHINA is a huge consumer of commodities, and it is slowing. Its property sector is in trouble. Yet, commodities need China. ENERGY TRANSITIONS and ESG are driving the demand for several commodities. Rising energy and other prices feed into higher AG-COMMODITY prices. Plant substitutes for meats are boosting demand for several ag-commodities. WEATHER has been difficult in many areas. Most commodities are in BACKWARDATION (i.e., the prices of near-futures are higher than those for far-futures); futures-based commodity funds benefit from backwardation during their periodic future rolls. It is hard to find active commodity funds but an article in FundQ mentions 3.
Pg L7: COMMODITY indexes vary widely. The S&P GSCI commodity index has 60% in energy; the Bloomberg commodity index has 33% in energy, 33% in metals. Yet neither has lithium, copper, tin, metals essential for electrification. So, use active commodity funds such as PCRAX, CCSAX, BCSAX; indexed/passive funds are more common. Beware that commodity funds are volatile.
Pg L8: Be aware of several changes coming for 401k: More ESG options including the default options; guaranteed-income option (immediate or deferred/QLAC) at retirement included within the target-date funds (TDFs); pooled employer plan (PEP) 401k for small businesses. On the other hand, the Backdoor Roth IRA loophole will be closed. (This long piece is by @LewisBraham)
Pg L10: Amy DOMINI of Domini Impact Investments (AUM $3 billion in 5 funds) was an early ESG pioneer (Domini 400 Social Index/MSCI KLD 400 Social Index, KLD Research & Analytics that was bought by MSCI, books, etc). PERFORMANCE of ESG funds doesn’t lag general funds; in fact, they have better risk-adjusted performance. There is now appreciation that ESG is everybody’s business. There is work still to be done on ESG STANDARDIZATION and Europe is ahead on this. The SEC needs to get into this; the DOL is cleaning up the mess that it has created. Her funds use a combination of exclusions and inclusions based on ESG criteria (featured fund is DSEPX). They also use industry specific ESG standards. She notes that although Larry FINK of BlackRock/BLK makes lots of noises on ESG, BLK has a record of mostly voting with managements (Larry Fink/BLK declined comment). Her recent book, People, Planet, & Profit, November 2021.
Pg L36: In 2021/Q4 (SP500 +10.90%): Among general equity funds, the best was LC-core +9.80% and the worst was SC-growth +1.84%; NO category beat SP500. Among other equity funds, the best was real estate +14.42% and the worst was Japan -4.25%. Among fixed-income funds, LT -0.01%, world income -1.19% (not very refined in Lipper mutual fund categories listed in Barron’s).
LINK

I'm a Cathie Wood fan. You need out of the box conviction if you really want to outperform. I remember watching her on CNBC a few years ago where she explained her TESLA thesis while many others were talking about eventual liquidation or acquisition. No investment style can work all the time, because if it did it would be duplicated or arbitraged and end up not working at all. If you want a 100% plus up year you need to accept 30% down some time. I am slowly picking up shares in ARKK and ARKG.

Just curious, when did you start buying ARKK and ARKG? Is it for a trade or a long term portfolio holding?
I did buy a little bit of ARKK yesterday. I am not putting any money into ARKK that I can not afford to lose. This is not Cathy's first rodeo but I do not see any trophies from past rodeos.

Long term, first buys June 2020. Even in ARKK. Down 8% in ARKG. buying only the big dips. I think this will work out over time, or at least do better than the broad market.

I don't normally view Yahoo, but stumbled across a linked message today.
Will be interesting to discover the magic of this management, eh???
ARTICLE

I just added CDC as a low volatility more defensive fund option. Lynn Bolin had a really nice writeup on the fund a few months back. Steady eddy fund that held up quite well in March 2020. max DD of 15%. Nice dividend too. I am also going to sell my technology fund BGSAX and trim back on holdings in MIOPX. Both have high PE multiples and Aren't well positioned for a rising rate environment. Evaluating a few other funds for purchase.

Jerome Dodson was the PARWX manager from inception (04/29/2005) until he retired on 12/31/2020.
Billy Hwan became a comanager on 05/01/2018 and the sole manager at the start of 2021.
Mr. Dodson took a contrarian approach which resulted in an elevated risk profile.
Mr. Hwan takes a relative value approach and wants to bring the fund's beta (vs. S&P 500) down.
Taking this into consideration, past PARWX performance may not be very indicative of future performance.