For many years now we have used Costco's American Family Connect for all three types of coverage, umbrella through some subsidiary. While I often feel I should shop around and compare premiums in detail, I've been very happy with their cost, their service, and their payouts. Even or especially when on "opposite" sides now, as I got hit by a car in January in our no-fault state and so AmFam, which is in Wisconsin, is among the insurers "paying" me and covering the v large medical expenses, approaching $200k. (Medicare rightly attaches some of the payout, being public moneys.)

Another market neutral fund, VMNFX (down -.14% today) has actually outperformed QDSNX by approx. 3% annualized over the past 3 years (15.6% vs. 12.6%) with same SD (7.3). Looks like Vanguard had changed up the Portfolio Mgr around 3 years ago.
Happy with QDSNX, it has performed admirably. One of these funds feels like enough.

@junkster,
Two years ago, I would not have expected floating rate stuff to do well for this long. JBBB and JAAA are green today.

Most of my monies is in CLOs (floating rate) and my complacency there worries me. Even Barron’s is extolling the virtues of CLOs. - never a good sign.
Maybe Powell will ignite another long duration rally tomorrow ala November 1.

CLOs / CDOs / CDS / etc always give me the queasies. The GFC was caused by their systemic risk and not long after the crisis ended, they were back under a different name as I recall. Bottom line, I avoid any investment I can't understand or has too much complexity.

@junkster,
Two years ago, I would not have expected floating rate stuff to do well for this long. JBBB and JAAA are green today.

Most of my monies is in CLOs (floating rate) and my complacency there worries me. Even Barron’s is extolling the virtues of CLOs. - never a good sign.
Maybe Powell will ignite another long duration rally tomorrow ala November 1.

@junkster,
In my universe of watch lists, managed futures ETFs, MMM, SNAP, HC, and utilities are doing alright today. Even nuclear based stuff is seeing big red.
Two years ago, I would not have expected floating rate stuff to do well for this long. JBBB and JAAA are green today.

Just a heads-up … GDX (gold miners index) is down near 4% on the day. Gold is off $50 to just above $2300 after peaking over $2400 2 weeks ago. Is it a good buy? I don’t know. If I had some spare cash lying around, I’d take a small position (but I don’t). Have pretty much side-stepped the metals this year because of the combined volatility + age issues. I do keep 10% of portfolio in PRPFX, and have for about 20 years. It maintains a 30-35% exposure to metals + miners.
FWIW - While most observers think the miners are underpriced relative to the metal, investing in the miners is a lot more risky. For a conservative small play, I’d stick with something tied to the price of the metal itself rather than going out on a limb with the miners. Lots of such funds. I’ve used precious metals (mix) GLTR before. But there are cheaper ones.

In one of my first posts in this thread, I reported approaching my insurance co re increasing deductible by 2,500 to $7,500. The premium would go down by $80 on a $1,800 renewal which was not much of a decrease. The choices I have are stay with current Co. which does not feature among the best companies for customer satisfaction and the alternative I could find (because not too many are writing new policies) is Mercury at $1500 with below average customer satisfaction.
One of my family members has been with the same insurance company for 30 years. When he bought a 4 unit rental 5 years ago, his agent’s quote was materially higher than another agent’s quote for the same insurance company. His original agent could not match the second agent’s quote. So he has all his policies with the same insurance co. but through two different agencies. That is how strange insurance market is.

@Crash, may be it's different now.
When I first tried to trade after-hours years ago, I was directed to call a number. When the Rep started going over the typical risks, I said I was familiar with all that. The Rep insisted that he must still read through it.
May be it's just a click now.

Many many years ago I was a property and casualty insurance agent. In California we were required to notify the carrier of any accident the insured mentioned to us,,, even if their intention not to file a claim. When writing new business we were required to report anything we were aware of that might impact the risk,,, even if the applicant didn’t disclose it on the application. So when applying for a new policy watch what you say to the agent,,,

PIMIX outperformance was largely due to MBS acquistions in the aftermath of the Global Financial Crisis.
Messrs. Ivascyn and Murata backed up the proverbial truck. Kudos to them!
This may have been a once-in-a-generation opportunity.
PIMIX returns have generally been decent the past five calendar years but they pale compared to the past.
The fund's 5 Yr and 10 Yr trailing returns were in the top 1% of the Multisector Bond category as of 10/31/2017.
PIMIX returned 6.87% and 9.33% during these periods which exceeded the BBgBarc US Universal
benchmark's return by 4.38% and 4.85% respectively.

From Bloomy -
"Boeing raised $10 billion from a bond sale on Monday that attracted about $77 billion of orders and allowed the planemaker to ease some of its financial strains by refinancing part of its massive debt load. The outsized demand for the bonds—which Boeing attracted by initially dangling a relatively juicy yield premium to prospective investors—allowed the company to ultimately shrink that premium before it priced."

"The company sold bonds in six portions, with maturities ranging from three to 40 years ... The 40-year portion yields 2.25 percentage points more than Treasuries, said the person familiar with the offering. Initial discussions called for around 2.65 percentage points."
https://finance.yahoo.com/news/boeing-looks-sell-bonds-reporting-125719270.html

I have not done anything 'Morningstar' in many years. Guess what, I found other ways to get what I wanted. I don't miss it in the least. Most of my research and inquires are through Schwab, though I must say their portfolio info is lacking. I moved my HSA to Fidelity a year ago, so I have access to that, but I haven't used it much.

I think it is worth reading the articles @msf posted in this thread.
I would be interested in posters' comments comparing BUFB (and BUFF) and HELO, the laddered buffering ETFs. if you have to choose one, which one would it be to buy on May 1?
https://www.innovatoretfs.com/etf/?ticker=bufb (buffering against first 9% loss)
https://www.innovatoretfs.com/etf/?ticker=buff (buffering against first 15% loss)
https://am.jpmorgan.com/us/en/asset-management/adv/products/jpmorgan-hedged-equity-laddered-overlay-etf-etf-shares-46654q724 (buffering against the losses from 5 to 20%)
BUFB has been around for two years and BUFF has been around since Aug 11, 2020 (a different fund before this date) and neither made any distributions - management fees 0.1% and acquired fund fees 0.79%. If we like the returns and risk, tax efficiency is a welcome bonus here.

Looks like PIMIX has done a little better longer term than the previous post reveals. (+7.68% over 15 years). Let’s remember how dastardly low interest rates were over most of the past decade. That said, for a fund that’s invested about 35% in sub-investment grade paper, I’m not overly impressed either. The .62% fee is a bit high as well.
Take a look at (probably riskier) RPSIX over that same term: 3 yr -1.06%, 5 yr +2.03%, 10 yr +2.62%, 15 yr +4.83% . Interestingly, RPSIX carries an identical .62% fee.
So, with a 10-15% equity component, RPSIX lagged PIMIX over all the terms cited. No horse in the fight. Just adding to what’s already been said.

Let's not kid, or let anyone else, kid us.
If you "held onto" PIMIX for the last 5 years, you got yourself an average annual TR of of 3.07%, and for 10 years, 4.27%.
Again, in an attempt to beat a dead horse, our 5-yr CP CD ladder was paying ~4% during that 5-yr period and is paying over 5% now.
PIMIX sounds like a "free lunch" (sic) at McDonald's or worse to me.

When I was researching insurance many years ago I found that Mercury had some pretty poor reviews. I remember finding at the CA Dept of Insurance official site an extensive ratings/ complaint report on all companies operating in CA at the time, but I can't find a similar link now.
I do remember that some sites like the ones you mention had much conflicting information, and if you read between the lines some of those sites have "associations" of one kind or another with the companies that they are supposedly "evaluating".

Here's what bothers me about this one: we read that the expected life span of this type of aircraft is 30 years. The Delta plane is 34 years old. Is there any kind of regulatory requirement for inspection or special maintenance in a situation like this?? None of the news reports that I've seen have followed up on that question. Why?

Absolutely mesmerizing @Level5. Apple swallows the world toward the middle. Then the information age hype of the 90s becomes the Apple, Microsoft, Alphabet, NVIDA, META with a dab of Amazon thrown in just teasing of today. But the appearance of some big guys getting chopped off at the knees over the years was worth watching the whole thing.

Funds, even "pure" Treasury funds, have some wiggle room to hold some other assets. As noted in the Boglehead thread (see below), WisdomTree doesn't make it easy to find the numbers. But last year, "only" 99.9868% of the income was state tax exempt. I've looked at the referenced spreadsheet and verified this.
One always needs to check the supporting figures that a fund family publishes at tax time. Once upon a time, VUSXX was 100% (exactly) state-tax-exempt. Vanguard changed the way it managed the fund a couple of years ago. With its wiggle room, only about 80% of the income from that fund was state-exempt last year.
Boglehead post:
https://www.bogleheads.org/forum/viewtopic.php?p=7710372&sid=b5b46754ca9e296f26c5f65246618ac5#p7710372
WisdomTree spreadsheet:
https://view.officeapps.live.com/op/view.aspx?src=https://www.wisdomtree.com/investments/-/media/us-media-files/documents/resource-library/fund-reports-schedules/tax-reporting/2023-tax-supplement-report.xlsx&wdOrigin=BROWSELINK

@hank, it's easy to setup, say, a DIY 5-yr Treasury Zeros-ladder. It will have a duration of approximately 2.5 years, comparable to a short-term bond fund.
For Zeros, duration = maturity, so a 30-yr Zero will have huge volatility.