I have written on TIPS earlier for MFO in the Feb issue. Here is the link:
https://www.mutualfundobserver.com/2022/02/thoughts-on-inflation-protection/
The 1st tool for inflation protection and the easiest one is Series I bonds. Each American tax payer can buy it for 10K online and 5k in paper through Tax refunds. That is the easy part because you can never lose mark to market money in that product. One doesn't even have deflation risk (I know, an odd think to think about right now) in Series I bonds. You are always protected at a zero inflation floor and get paid more than that if CPI is higher.
But what should we do AFTER I bonds, if anything.
One can always leave money in cash. Cash is always going to protect the notional value, provided, the 8-9% inflation we have witnessed in the last 12 months does not bother the person.
It's understandable if people look for protection against inflation. When you've satiated your I bond capacity and don't want to leave in cash, what are the other tools available.
1. TIPS
2. Commodities?
3. Real Estate?
4. Thoughtfully managed short-end taxable mutual funds?
There are no guaranteed answers but TIPS have a 100% correlation to CPI-U. Do remember that the calculation of CPI in the TIPS accruals is lagged by 3 months.
Complete details on how TIPS work can be seen in this video I produced a few years back:

A great website on TIPS is maintained by David Enna: tipswatch.com
I can tell you why I continue to hold short-dated TIPS.
YTD, the VTIP (Vanguard Short-Term Infl-Prot Secs ETF) is down 1.53% year to date. How should I process that information given the high CPI we have witnessed thus far.
YTD, the price return of VTIP has been -3.8% and the total return has been -1.5%.
This means, TIP owners have been paid 2.5% in "interest" from CPI. But because of lagged use of CPI and not enough time gone by, this 2.5% is less than 6-7-8-or-9% that might be accrued due to CPI increases when the year is done. Not all of the interest will accrue right away but it will all make its way through the TIPS eventually.
Another question to ask is: what would I have held instead that is Bond like?
1. TIP (7.5 year duration) -8.9% ytd
2. LTPZ (20year duration) - 26% ytd
3. Short Term Treasuries -3.5% ytd
4. Intermediate Term Treasuries -7.7% ytd
5. Long Term Treasuries - 22% ytd
What would have been US Government paper and "safer"? Maybe 3 month T-bills would have been fine. And that's the same as cash.
Once an investor goes outside of the TIPS universe for inflation protection, one opens up a can of unknowns.
Equity REITS -20%,
Commodities and Commodity stocks did great for a while and recently had a 30-50% correction based on what one owned.
Volatility matters for meeting goals. VTIP was the cleanest among the dirty shirts.
If absolute returns is your goal, and it's a good one, in the Fixed Income Taxable bond universe, RiverPark Short Term High Yield Institutional, RPHIX, is UP on the year. David Sherman's been phenomenal in keeping the fund above the surface in 2022.
FPA New Income, apparently Open, but I cant buy it because it shows up Closed due to Schwab not having updated their database, is also long a lot of Floating rate bonds that will help the fund in the future.
I continue to be long VTIP because I believe that even if Fed raising rates further has an impact on Duration and Real Yields, and it hurts VTIP, eventually you get paid through CPI as long as inflation remains sticky. And if inflation comes down, the portfolio would benefit from OTHER assets. *unless we are in stagflation, in which case, God help*
Hope this was helpful.

Thanks for starting this thread. I DO own PRWCX. I had been following traditional advice about a 60/40 portfolio in retirement, reducing equities, and growing my bonds. Then came the party after fed stimulus, when covid struck. Then came the war in Ukraine. Then came supply chain issues. A can of hash here costs $5.00, last time I looked. Then came souped-up inflation and Central Banks raising rates. And the market downturn.
Because I am me, I responded to it all late and inadequately--- as ever.
I bought some funds just as they were turning DOWN, earlier in the year. I'm down to 20% bonds, and my one bond fund is a TRP HY animal, now. TUHYX. I'm up to 73% stocks. PRWCX = 36.73% of total today.. (Hank says he's be adding to it now, in these current circumstances. I just did add a couple of thousand dollars to it, about a month ago. I would not dare to do that with any other fund or stock, letting it get SO big.)
Same goes for my still rather small stake in single stocks. I just started to grow THAT garden as the Market turned south. But as I have been able, I've been adding, given depressed equity prices these days. I keep my eye on a watchlist. But my retirement IRA and my brokerage account are like swimming pools with a very tall wall between them. If I take too much from the former in order to give to the latter, I'll owe taxes I don't want to pay. i live in the ZERO bracket these days. Still have a couple of years before RMDs begin.
The common wisdom is to put a limit of 20% on any single holding. That's what I'd heard. I blew THAT one out of the water. After PRWCX, my other stuff, in order of size is:
PRISX. 14.9% of total.
PRNEX. 11.45%
TUHYX. 10.7%
TRAMX. 7.4%
PRFDX. 5.53%
BRUFX. 5.36%
BHB. 3.54%
ET. 2.94%
RGR. 1.45%
I'm down significantly YTD, but I'm in good company. I don't do shorts, don't invest in inverse, 3X upside-down bear funds. I'm waiting this out. When a recession shows itself, The Fed will cry "uncle," I bet. With 34% of my total in financials around the world, I'll be happier than a pig in shit when rates come down.
That was more than @Bobpa and everyone else needed to know. Sorry. Great question, though.

Treasury Direct (TD) has only a virtual keyboard for password entry and you cannot get rid of it. Unusually, the TD passwords are not case-sensitive (most typically are, while usernames are not). TD is just an older and clunky website.

For years I cursed the virtual keyboard until I discovered that my password manager (1Password) will fill in the password and bypass the keyboard on my desktop Mac.

”I presently have 77% in 5 funds in nearly equal amounts.”

Sounds reasonable. You posted some time back that you had 20% in PRWCX. (LINK). Not a bad choice. By all accounts it’s a great moderate risk fund. I sold it last week. But if I still owed it I’d be adding now with it down roughly 12-15% from recent highs.
No rule of course. When I was 25 I owned one. My workplace Templeton “advisor” had me in just one good global growth fund, Worked fine. (And I could have cared less at that age,) But over the following 50 years both my experience base and also the sheer amount of investment information available have multiplied. I don’t know how many mutual funds existed in 1972, but likely fewer than 10% of today’s choices. Bottom line - I’ve gone from 1 holding to over 20 (funds and stocks) in those 50 years.
One holding would still work. There are some good fund managers who can achieve nice diversification within a single fund. However, I don’t find tracking 20+ holdings that tedious using a good modern day tracker and with so much information now at my fingertips. Being at a NTF brokerage is somewhat of a new experience. If I’m going to “reach” a bit and dabble in some individual equities, far better I think to diversify and spread the risk around. After all, that was the overarching purpose of mutual funds in the early days - to spread market risk across a diversified cross section of stocks.
More directly to your question: While 1 fund could work, 5 might not work if they were the wrong choices or outside your risk parameters. Personal bias - I’d rather see people trying to hone in on the right allocation model for their risk appetite and needs rather than fretting about how many funds to own.

An update on the user interface aspect would be very helpful to investors. This is typically government sites that were build many years ago and with minor and I frequent updates.

The savings bond calculator will display the value of a savings bond as of any given month. To find the net amount of interest credited to the savings bond between two given months ask for the values on those two months and take the difference.
Note: this shows net interest credited. One doesn't get credit for the last three months of interest until the savings bond has been owned for five years.
For example, if you input your month of purchase, 03/2022, and an amount of $1,000 (since $10K paper bonds are no longer issued), you'll see $6.00 of interest both total and YTD (useful if you're electing to pay taxes yearly). Multiply by 10 to show the interest on a savings bond worth ten times as much (i.e. $10,000).
Unlike TIPS, with savings bonds there is no adjustment to principal. The entire increase in value is due to interest.

Right about Montpelier; the state capital with the fewest number of inhabitants, a sweet town. That splurge was many years ago, when I had a metabolism like a volcano.

Several prominent fund managers and the CIO exited Matthews Asia since 2020.
Bill Hackett, the CEO for 13 years, retired on June 30, 2022.
From the July M* FundInvestor newsletter:
"Cooper Abbott joined Matthews International Capital
Management as CEO on June 13, 2022, succeeding
Bill Hackett, who had served as CEO for 13 years and
is retiring on June 30. This development is unsur-
prising, because Matthews announced in December
2021 that Hackett was planning on retiring in
mid-2022 and that a search was underway for
his replacement."
"Abbott has more than 20 years of senior investment
management experience. He previously served
as president and chairman at Carillon Tower Advisors
(where he led that firm’s acquisitions of several
asset managers during his tenure) and as executive
vice president of investments and co-chief operating
officer at Eagle Asset Management (which is an affil-
iate of Carillon Tower Advisors)."

Ah, B&J. I remember going nuts years ago at their 'seconds' store in Montpelier, in their pre-Unilever days.

As I said before, I read many articles that claimed you can't do it. I have been using my system over 20 years. Well, if you don't care, you don't. Over the years, I have learned a few techniques on several boards + my own interpretation.
As I said before, in order to swim, you got to be in the water. My system is explained (here) + actual results that were copied directly from my brokerage.
BTW, my portfolio (think 10/90) as of 7/5/2020, beat VWENX(about 64% stocks) for 1-3-5 years with SD for 1-3-5 year at 1.96-2.57-2.31.

I think we do need to revisit the very term "liberal". Its use in the political arena a few hundred years ago was those persons who wished to "liberate" individuals from government overreach (i.e. "tyranny").
That of course is exactly the opposite of the inclination of self-proclaimed liberals in the West today. What we call "liberal" are those who wish to remove freedom from people by enacting ever more regulations/laws which restrict individual action. -- I cannot recall President Biden using the word "freedom" in public statements when he is discussing domestic political goals...
What liberals are, really are "statists" -- favoring the centralization of power around the chosen few who run the govt. -- They no longer are our servants, but our masters.
The above is in no way partisan. I would classify Bush 43 as a statist too. -- delivering new govt largesse (Medicare Part D) with no funding attached to it. And enacting the "Patriot Act" legislation which codified much of the surveillance state we now have.

Crash :
The Fed's money printing has been the biggest contributor to IN-equality during the past 20 years or so. --- As they have blown asset bubbles, everywhere. Who owns most of the stocks and bonds which have had asset bubbles? -- The wealthy.
Its not the same as "printing counterfeit money". -- No one believes bitcoin is the USD. People want OUT of the USD. So your counterfeiting argument is easily discarded. Is gold "counterfeit money"? Of course not.
Crypto the "invention of the criminally-minded". You sound like an expert. --So you must be aware that most financial institutions (banks, etc) are working feverishly to incorporate the underlying blockchain technology which is the basis for crypto, to service their existing businesses. --- So will you ban them from using blockchain technology? If not, then there goes your whole IN-equality argument: you want the wealthy to benefit from blockchain, but not the little guy.
As for liberals spending for more libraries etc, fine, let them propose/pass tax increases, rather then debase the currency. --- Its the debasement of the currency which is the raison d'etre for crypto.
Do you have an alternative to prevent sovereign currency debasement? Or is that crickets I hear?

Rant, rant, rant. Liberals are not the enemy; they just want to see us collectively aim higher than the status quo. Better libraries, education system, equitable economy, HEALTHCARE. Their big problem is that they can't get out of their own way, and some of them just plain advocate for some trivial and silly shit.
Conservatives? Too many of them simply need brain transplants, and maybe then they'd be able to look beyond the Fox "News" propaganda bullshit. In my golden years, I am becoming more conservative, but I don't drink the Fox Kool-Aid. Perfect equality will never happen. Yet a more equitable society would be a vastly better arrangement than what we live with currently.
Crypto? A tool to avoid debasement of legal tender currency sponsored by governments? It's the same as printing counterfeit money. ...What this all comes down to is the very purpose and function of government: to serve the people. If government(s) are doing a stinky job of it, that does not obviate the need for (good or better) government, to maintain order, provide for roads, schools, hospitals, transportation, military and all the rest of it.
My wife comes from a shit-hole country where the whole economy seems sometimes to be "underground," to avoid taxes. At the airport, they won't let you on the plane before you pay the airport tax. Every individual. Why? Because gov't there cannot trust the airline to collect the fee and then hand it over to the Treasury. I know about deep distrust of government. I have seen the way that ostensibly legitimate businesses, including airlines, operate as if taxes are for everyone ELSE to pay.
Crypto is the invention of the criminally-minded. Yes, I say that, even knowing that some countries are actually establishing crypto-currency for themselves. The Marshall Islands and a few others... It's simply unethical. The perfect example of the distinction between what's legal, and what's ethical.

Marks is sharp. -- I agree that "nibbling" is in order. But not going in "whole hog".
Find it curious that in a businessinsider article date June7, he declares "we (Oaktree) are not market timers...(because).. we never sell to prepare for a market decline."
Well, OK, but if you happen to have material amounts of investable cash lying around before the market sells-off, and then you "buy low" (as he now recommends) that kind of makes one a "market timer". I just think Howard should not try to rhetorically run away from who he is -- from whom most well known investors are. Even Buffett has maintained unusually large amounts of cash underployed for years. He could have just deployed a lot of into collateral-backed S&P futures. Why didn't he? He was timing the market -- in his case by maintaining a mountain of dry powder for a crash he could reasonably predict would happen at some point.
That's not a criticism of the Sage, simply an observation that the captains of finance engage in the "market timing" which they suggest we little folks should not..
One more thing re Marks, for those who may be interested. His Oaktree does have a readily available public vehicle, ticker OCSL. It trades every day the stock market is open and pays a fat distribution:
https://www.oaktreespecialtylending.com/about/investment-strategy

A bit too late to the game and priced too high. Their China ETF will be 20 bps higher than CNYA and underperforms it by a wide margin in 1, 3, 5 year trailing periods.
Numbers aside, the more alarming issue at Matthews is the exodus of portfolio manager talent that has occured over the past 2-3 years. For a small team, they've lost 10+ really important portfolio managers to competitors in a very short amount of time, including Tiffany Hsiao, Juanyuan Ji and Beini Zhao (all left for Artisan). This has been discussed ad nauseam in other threads. Never seen anything like it in all my years.
Sometimes the real story is not in the performance numbers!

Some poster on YT did a more detailed summary than did I:
2:11 In my career I've said many things that didn't turn out
4:00 The last 10 or 11 years we've had $30 trillion in QE
4:35 This business is about guessing
5:11 We've only pulled off 2 or 3 soft landings in history. The one I remember was 1994/1995
5:20 We've never had a soft landing after inflation has gotten above 4.5%
5:56 Anything is possible. I've been wrong plenty of times in my career
6:25 Once inflation has gotten above 5%, it's never come down unless Fed Funds has gone above CPI
(but this time that will probably be broken, because Fed Funds would have to go above 8% this time)
7:24 Once inflation has gotten above 5%, it's never been tamed without a recession
8:23 We have $1 trillion to $1.5 trillion in excess savings (who? households or the Government?)
9:53 I was a dropout of a Ph.D program at the University of Michigan
9:57 I don't use what traditional economists use to predict the economy -- things like employment
10:17 The inside of the stock market has a prescient message regarding future economic activity
10:27 Stocks lead fundamentals by 6 to 12 months
11:00 We listen to companies and do a bottom-up analysis
11:14 If leading industries are turning up or down, that's a signal
11:27 The bond market used to be a prescient signaler,
but the last 10 or 11 years it hasn't signaled because the Central Banks have manipulated bond prices
12:04 Last summer when the 10-year yield dropped from 1.70 to 1.15, I didn't anticipate that
12:15 Central banks were buying trillions of dollars and manipulating price of bonds
13:15 Home builders with good fundamentals have declined 50% from their highs (might actually be around 36% drop)
13:28 Trucking is down 40% from their highs (might actually be around 30%)
13:49 Retail numbers are tainted. Can't just accept them blindly
14:48 A lot of these signals have long lead times, 6 months to a year (meaning, recession might not happen until 6 months to a year)
16:10 When I first got into the business,
if a company reported bad earnings but still closed the day positive, that stock was going to be up 6 months from then (and vice versa)
16:28 If the economy looked great and bonds were rallying, that meant the economy was not going to be great
16:55 Price versus news is weakened these days compared to 20 years ago
17:21 I started in this business in the mid 1970s
17:27 Traditionally, I learned that during bear markets I had to morph into bonds, commodities, foreign currencies
17:45 Maybe this says something about my dysfunctional personality but I've always made more money during bear markets
17:55 the way I did it was by ignoring equities and taking them off the table, and buying bonds
18:00 But I've never seen a situation like this where inflation is over 8% and yields 3%
18:21 Referring to golf, I feel like I'm about to play without a driver or wedge, because bonds which have been my go-to may not work this time
18:50 Investing is an art form and you have to innovate from cycle to cycle
20:29 I've lived through enough bear markets to know that if you get aggressive shorting, you can get your head ripped off with rallies
21:03 Side-stepping a decline is not the worst thing in the world (that is, getting out rather than risking losing or gaining)
21:31 I'll be surprised if sometime in the next 6 months the dollar DOESN'T weaken
23:09 There's a strong correlation between crypto and NASDAQ
24:00 My 69th birthday is in a few weeks
24:32 I feel like my predictive power is better but I'm not making as much money because I'm not as aggressive (with investing)
26:34 If we're gonna have a bull market, I want Bitcoin. If we're gonna have a bear market, Gold
27:35 You gotta know your own biases
28:10 I was lazy in college, but I'm passionate about investing.
I'm intellectually stimulated imagining the world and prices 12 to 18 months from now
31:15 Business school says that if you're highly diversified, you have less risk. I don't believe that at all
31:26 People get in the most trouble when they have stale longs or shorts
31:42 You have to have ruthless discipline and be paranoid
32:09 What I learned from George Soros is that it's not about whether you're right or wrong,
it's about how much you make when you're right and how much you lose when you're wrong
32:25 I believe in streaks. One of my number 1 jobs is to know when I'm hot or cold
35:41 When you hear a good idea, within 2 or 3 weeks it may be too late

Anyone can open a conventional taxable brokerage account at TIAA.
https://shared.tiaa.org/private/mytcbrokerageaccountopening/aobrokerageapp/secure/required
It gives you access to what you'd find at most brokerages - stocks, ETFs, mutual funds. Like those other brokerages, it does not give you access to mutual funds sold through annuities.
Most brokerages offer retail IRA accounts that, aside from being wrapped up in an IRA, are virtually identical to their retail taxable accounts. TIAA does not. It used to but stopped offering such an IRA account a few years ago.
What TIAA does do is sell retirement annuities. To colleges, that's a 403(b) annuity. Like most variable annuities, TIAA's have a limited set of funds that are sold only through annuities. Notably the CREF funds, like CREF stock. And like some variable annuities, the TIAA annuities offer a fixed annuity option. Here, that's TIAA Traditional Annuity.
For individual investors, TIAA offers two variable annuities. One is your typical VA, called TIAA Intelligent Variable Annuity. It offers "funds" (typically VA clones) shown here. The other VA is effectively the equivalent of the 403(b) annuity (plus brokerage window). It's that one that gives you get access to TIAA Traditional, CREF, and TIAA Real Estate.
That annuity is only offered to "eligible" investors, and only as an Individual Retirement Annuity. Unlike typical VAs, you can't buy it for a taxable account.
https://www.tiaa.org/public/retire/financial-products/annuities/annuity-ira-benefits
As Yogi mentioned, the TIAA Traditional Annuity (fixed annuity investment option) that you can get though this limited access IRA annuity comes with a lower rate than paid to 403(b) participants. It is paying 2.50%, and has a guaranteed floor of 1.0%. I believe the IRA annuity contract restricts Traditional withdrawals to one per quarter.
An IRA investor is at the bottom of the totem pole when it comes to the CREF funds. Several years ago, TIAA split these into three share classes, with large institutions getting cheaper shares and small institutions getting the most expensive shares. As an IRA investor, you're thrown in with the small institutions. It could be worse; TIAA could have created a fourth share class for IRA investors.
IMHO the only significant benefit to this IRA annuity is access to TIAA Real Estate Account (TREA).
You can find the VA options (including those for this IRA annuity) here. The IRA doesn't give you access to the non-TIAA VA subaccounts listed (except for Nuveen, which is owned by TIAA).
https://www.tiaa.org/public/investment-performance
Since it is structured as an annuity, this IRA can be difficult to deal with. You can't do transfers in kind (e.g. for RMDs, or IRA-to-IRA). When transferring money out of this annuity, you have to initiate the transfer from the TIAA side; typically one initiates transfers from the receiving side. These are attributes normally associated with employer-sponsored plans (401(k)s, 403(b)s), not with IRAs.
The website is atrocious. I'm won't go into details. Suffice to say that people who complain about Vanguard's website likely haven't yet had the "pleasure" of dealing with TIAA's. And you won't know what funds you can buy through the IRA brokerage window until you actually open an account.

@MikeM - It’s not a “negative call” on the fund. Aware of its stellar record. But I do have quite a bit in DODBX (similar risk / reward level). That’s directly with D&C. We’ll see how things pan out. I did regret leaving PRHYX many years ago believing they would reopen it some day.
Thanks for chiming in.
@Sven - Thank you also for your comment.

I always find @LewisBraham’s articles excellent. Several of his have been very helpful to me over the years. This week’s “9 Funds That Could Beat the Market” is no exception.
My sweeping remark was a reaction to the cover story only. IMHO they tried to cover too much. Glad @Yogibearbull and others found it useful. As Yogi intones, the appeal is likely stronger for those with a special interest in this type of investment. I look forward to Barron’s every week, and sometimes it’s hard not to not weigh in on articles mentioned on the board. Hope many others share their reactions to this and other intriguing articles.
Remark not directed at any particular individual. Ben’s assessment is what prompted me to weigh in - sparked my interest so to speak. But I’d been thinking about what I said for some time.

With M* Portfolio (free/Basic and Premium) going away soon (2022), and its replacement M* Investor having very poor portfolio analytics, I have collected several TIPs based on my use of FREE Portfolio Visualizer (PV) over the years. It may serve as a primer for new PV users and refresher for experienced users.
https://ybbpersonalfinance.proboards.com/thread/311/portfolio-visualizer-pv