I'm a VWILX ¹ investor and the fund has performed poorly over the past year and YTD.

Same here, but I exchanged most of VWILX to the more value-oriented VGWEX for reducing risk. Growth is out of favor now after it out-performed value for many years. Anderson is retiring this year. Perhaps the Schroeder team will now lead VWILX.

Interest on bonds is conceptually straightfoward, though not simple. Even though the detailed calculations can be a bit of a nightmare.
When one buys a bond from an issuer, one is buying a fixed rate of interest for the life of the bond (until maturity or call). That interest may be paid periodically or when the bond is redeemed (bought at one price and redeemed at a higher price at maturity, like a CD) or a combination of both. Regardless of the form the income takes, it is all interest and for munis, generally all tax-free.
Consider a "vanilla" muni issued with a coupon paying market rate, so the bond is priced at par. If market rates go up, the price of the bond will drop. It drops so that the net return, coupon plus "appreciation" to maturity yields the market rate of interest.
Now, instead of that discount coming from the issuer, it's coming from the market. The buyer is still buying a bond with a fixed rate of interest (combination of coupon and "appreciation"), so all the income is treated as interest, not gain. But since that extra interest comes from the secondary market seller, not from the original municipality issuer, that extra interest is taxable.
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A few numbers may help here. For clarity, I'll work with simple interest and ignore the effects of compounding. Say the market rate on 5 year munis is 4%. A muni might be issued with a 2% coupon and a price of $90.
(2% coupon + 2% price increase/year = 4% yield, give or take.)
After a year, the price has gone up to $92 and the buyer has received 2% in coupon payments. A total of 4%. The adjusted basis of the bond is $92, accounting for the accretion at 2%/year. And the buyer declares 4% in tax-free interest. This goes on for another four years until maturity. The adjusted cost basis is then $100, there is no gain upon redemption, and the buyer has declared 4% tax-free interest each year.
Suppose after a year the rate on the bond increases to 5%. That could be because market rates generally have increased, or because the particular bond had a credit event such as a technical default. It doesn't matter.
The bond is now priced at $88, so that in the four remaining years it pays
($100 - $88) + 4 x 2% coupon = $12 + $8 = $20, or 5%/year.
If the owner sells now, there will be capital loss of $4: $88 sale price - $92 adjusted basis.
The buyer of that bond is getting a bond with $8 remaining OID (adjusted basis is $92) and $4 of market discount. The seller, not the municipality, is paying that extra $4 of income. So, to maturity $8 of accretion is tax-free, $4 is taxable.
Most of these effects are the same whether held by an individual or by a mutual fund, which simply passes through the taxes. (Though as noted before, it can't pass through a capital loss, though it can carry it forward.)
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Take the same example, except instead of the bond yield rising to 5% it falls to 3%. As before, this could be the result of general market rate declines or because the bond issuer is recovering from a credit event. It doesn't matter.
The bond is now priced at $96, so that in the remaining four years it pays
($100 - $96) + 4 x 2% coupon = $4 + $8 = $12, or 3%/year.
The adjusted cost basis after a year is still $92, but the buyer is paying $96. That $4 is called acquisition premium. The buyer is still paying below par; nevertheless, there's a market premium, not a market discount. This is why I was interested in seeing a specific CUSIP. One isn't necessarily buying at a market discount simply because a bond is priced below par.
In summary:

• Market discount, which is relative to the adjusted cost basis, is treated as taxable interest, generally upon sale. (Owner has option to declare annually.)
  
• OID discount is treated as tax-free interest, declared annually, and used to increase adjust cost basis (much as reinvested divs change the cost basis of your mutual fund).
  
• Market premium (price in excess of adjusted cost basis) for munis must be amortized; it reduces the annual amount of tax free interest declared and also reduces the adjusted cost basis.
  
• Sale of a bond may be above or below the adjusted cost basis, resulting in a capital gain or loss.

All the examples above use simple interest. The actual calculations are significantly more complex. I've also disregarded de minimis treatment of market discount.

Good Morning Class,
Any thoughts re SAMT, ETF, Strategas Macro Thematic ETF?
Over the years I've always paid close attn whenever Jason De Sena Trennert is being interviewed for his thoughts re economy, the casino, I mean stock market etc...unlike many other prognosticators, tea leave readers, con men/women, his insights do seem to be spot on when you look back at them several months later.
Per the fact sheet thematic major themes of the ETF right now
Inflation for longer
Economic Re-opening
Cyclical Defensives
Quantitative Tightening
Cash
Seems dialed in to me, no?
I'll be plunking down a sizeable starter investment come Monday morning.
Not a recomendation, keep in mind, full transparency, I do not know anything about anything. Do you own due diligence etc
Best,
Baseball Fan

In Taxable accounts you might look at individual munis bonds too.
High Quality Massachusetts ( GO and Harvard) 1 year bonds pay 1.7% tax free. Two years 2.2%
There are a lot of OID bonds selling for below par, but I have to look at tax consequences a little more.

@BaluBalu, clearly, it is important when the money is taken from the account for Treasury Auctions, whether on the Auction Day or the Settlement Day. We know that for Treasury trades in the secondary market, money will be taken out on trade-settle day (as for most brokerage trades).
Schwab took the money out on the Auction day for online Treasury/TIPS order.
Somebody may know it already for Fido online Treasury Auction orders. You Fido Rep said that for Treasury FRNs that don't allow online orders at Fido for Auctions, you can provide money until the Settlement Day. Confirm this if you do go through with your FRN Auction order. Also, whether there was any broker-assisted-trade fee.
Treasury Direct (TD) says that the money will be taken out by the Settlement Day, but what is the actual experience? I know that for I-Bonds, TD was very aggressive and took the money out on the morning of the next business day (it didn't wait until the end-of-the-day or the next day as I had expected).
I am aware of inflation-"expectations". Individual TIPS held to maturity do capture CPI-U month-to-month changes and those are going gangbusters now. Changes don't have to be high, but just positive AND persistent (for long enough). If there was a shorter-term for TIPS at Auctions, I would go for that, but 5-yr TIPS are the shortest maturities available. TIPS in the secondary market would introduce other market factors. I will know in 5 years how my 5-yr TIPS experiment went - either good or dead money. BTW, next 5-yr TIPS Auction is on June 23, 2022 (I wouldn't mess with 10-yr TIPS, but their Auction is on May 19, 2022).
FRED Inflation-"Expectations" https://fred.stlouisfed.org/graph/?g=OsmV
FRED CPI-U (Unadjusted) https://fred.stlouisfed.org/graph/?g=O9Mg
FRED CPI-U (Unadjusted), Month-to-Month changes https://fred.stlouisfed.org/graph/?g=Osv7

I had an order at Schwab for 5-yr TIPS auction that was today. As I remembered from my prior experience a couple of years ago for buying T-Bills at Schwab, money was taken out from my account TODAY about 1/2 hour past Noon. So, Schwab didn't wait for the Settle day 4/29/22 tomorrow.
If I had some Treasuries maturing this week, I think Schwab would have waited to settle everything tomorrow. All Treasuries maturing or auctioned this week will Settle on Friday.
I bought I-Bond in January in Trust a/c. I could open another individual Treasury Direct a/c, but I decided to use the 2nd best 5-yr TIPS route & also test things out. My TIPS purchase was far far far... smaller than $5 million (-:).

The WaPo is interesting, in that it maintains it's historic "left-leaning" reporting and editorial perspective despite being owned by Jeff Bezos, who is not exactly known for his pro-union left-leaning propensities.

15-20 years ago we achieved the than “miraculous” ability to receive daily copies of WP electronically. Had to leave a cellular enabled device connected to a telephone landline overnight and every morning there was the WP. It was a much better and more objective paper back in those days.
I won’t credit Bezos with the decline, since newspapers generally have succumbed to cost pressures (reducing hard content) and, to an extent, the polarization of society where a publication’s perceived “slant” may attract or discourage readers. I can only say the WP ain’t what it once was. Neither is the WSJ - but it does a better job separating the opinion out into a separate section. It has enough subscribers paying an inflated price that it can still afford good research staffs and journalists.

Templeton Global Bond (TPINX) was one of the premier funds in the World Bond category years ago.
TPINX was different from most World Bond funds due to substantial emerging markets exposure and widespread currency bets. The fund generated top 1% / top 2% category returns for the respective 10 Yr and 15 Yr trailing periods as of 01-31-16. Michael Hasenstab (M* 2010 Fixed-Income Manager of the Year) started co-managing TPINX on 12/31/2001.
Templeton Global Income (GIM) was the CEF version of TPINX.
I purchased GIM in late 2013.
GIM was trading at an attractive discount and it had a lower expense ratio than TPINX.
Unfortunately, the discount widened and Mr. Hasenstab lost his mojo.
I sold the CEF approximately five years later booking a tiny profit.

As JonGaltIII observed, "Content is king".
Many years ago, when Netflix had the option of subscribing via DVDs, we were subscribers because of the huge variety and depth of content, much of which was not "mainstream". When Netflix went streaming-only, we dropped the subscription because we didn't do streaming at that time.
Last year we again subscribed to Netflix, hoping to resume viewing content which interests us. We cancelled after one month: nothing that Netflix now offers is of the slightest interest to us as viewers.
I completely understand that our viewing interests are hardly universal, and that Netflix is going for the mass audience. Nonetheless, I would think that the costs of content delivered via streaming would be significantly less than via mailed DVDs. The fact that content that we would happily pay for is no longer available suggests that Netflix management simply made a decision to ignore a certain segment of the potential market.
After cancellation they bombarded us with repeated offers for renewal. However, at no time did they bother to inquire as to why we had cancelled. Literally, they don't have a clue.

According to the proxy filing: "In contrast, the nominees nominated by Saba have limited (if any) experience with closed-end funds or global bond strategies." While it may be true regarding global bond strategies, Saba has invested in and been an activist in closed-end funds for many years. The idea that it doesn't have experience dealing with closed-end funds is misleading.

Like YBB I also held GIM and TGBAX off/on for years during Hassenstab's 'golden time.' In addition to the Ukranian bonds that IIRC blew up in his face a few years ago (at the time he had a reputation for diving into risky areas and winning) I lost interest in the fund due to performance and b/c Hassenstab was entering 'rock-star' status in the media, which to me is an instant turnoff when it comes to investing.
On a side note, that Franklin statement you posted is shrill, whiny, fear-mongering, and imo inappropriately worded ... it's the kind of statement I'd expect to hear from an Elon Musk, frankly.

Now I have a non-linkable "proof" based on checking numbers on our OWN tax returns and what was mentioned in our SSA "DETERMINATION letters" (received typically in November/December) that it is like the 1st FORMULA. So, the SSA takes the AGI from the 1040 of 1-2 years ago (that includes only the TAXABLE Social Security payments) and adds TAX-EXEMPT interest to get MAGI for IRMAA. The Determination letter mentioned those 2 numbers separately and the total and said that the IRS provided them to the SSA. Specifically, the untaxed portion of the Social Security payment was NOT added to MAGI for IRMAA.
The 2nd formula can also be found quickly on web search but it is used for other things, NOT Medicare IRMAA. But misleading statements can be found on the web.

@chinfist, it is a free article from the WSJ so anyone should be able to read it. Anyway the article does elaborate more.
"Several million workers who dropped out of the U.S. workforce during the Covid-19 pandemic plan to stay out indefinitely because of persistent illness fears or physical impairments, potentially exacerbating the labor shortage for years, new research shows.
About three million workforce dropouts say they don’t plan to return to pre-Covid activities—whether that includes going to work, shopping in person or dining out—even after the pandemic ends, according to a monthly survey conducted over the past year by a team of researchers. The workforce dropouts tend to be women, lack a college degree and have worked in low-paying fields."

That is the only part of the article that can be read unless one subscribes. I read that part. My questions pertained to if they are not working, where are they getting money in order to pay the rent/mortgage, food, etc. Does the article address this?
Edit: it looks like you can read it if you register, without having to subscribe.

Noted, but...
Not sure what you think are disclaimers in my posts, but as they say, it is what it is. No need to point them out.
It's my style, borne out of 30+ years of writing/reviewing audit reports for the feds and senior management. FWIW, we bean counters tend to cover our arses when possible, and when appropriate, my favorite, being "sufficiently vague." The latter of which is a true art form in the bizness, routinely employed by several of my staffers, and something I always aspired to be never quite achieved.

@BenWP- Thanks for your comments. We have subscribed to the print edition of the WSJ for many years because of their reporting- most certainly not because of their editorial garbage. Additionally, we subscribe to the print editions of The Economist and The Atlantic, as well as the internet versions of the NY Times, The Washington Post and The Guardian, so we have a pretty good view on tendencies towards reporting bias.
As a prime example of reporting bias, I would note that we also have subscribed to the San Francisco Chronicle for over fifty years. At one time it was actually a decent newspaper. In the past few years it's reporting has deteriorated to little more than a totally predictable "progressive" distortion of reality. The main reason that we maintain the subscription is to read the comics section.
I come from a strong Union family, and in fact was myself a Union steward for a number of years, so my natural bias is obviously towards “left-leaning” perspectives, and I don't regard either of the terms "left-leaning" or "right-leaning" as pejorative. There most definitely is a "left-wing" and a "right-wing", and to pretend otherwise is to be blind to reality.
Nonetheless, I do not want or appreciate significant bias in my news reports. The reason that we subscribe to this spread of news resources is to allow comparison of reported information.
I must respectfully disagree with your opinion of the WSJ. By and large we have found their reporting to be factual, reasonably neutral, and generally in accordance with other decent sources. As you note, any news operation has to choose what events to cover, and with respect to the WSJ it's hard to know if editorial bias influences that. It is true that the WSJ does not always choose the same event overage as The Washington Post, but it's also very true that WaPo is hardly without a "left-leaning" bias of it's own.
One tries to distill something close to the truth by obtaining input from a variety of sources. No one of them is perfect, by any means.

@stillers, If I understood your post correctly, I think you are not suggesting investors to now get into FFGCX. I think your only suggestion is to get into "ST CD/TNotes ladder (6 mos - 2-yrs, the latter being the sweet spot)." Is that correct?

Here's what I previously posted.
Sadly, an investor takes on much greater risk now with the equity plays noted in this post. But on dedicated bond funds vs a ST CD/TNote ladder, which investor would you rather be, one faithfully holding onto dedicated bond funds for the next couple of months/years, or an investor with a ST CD/TNotes ladder paying an FDIC'd/Full Faith'd 2% average APY?
So, no, I'm NOT suggesting investors NOT get into FFGCX at this point. I'm just suggesting that IMO (BTW, that and ten bucks gets you a Starbucks) an investor is taking on greater risk at this stage, implying that a LOT of the easy money has already been made.
That said, I happen to have (after a few changes to the deck chairs) marked the April 6 close as a date that I am tracking TRs of my funds for an interim look at current performance.
Coming into today, since April 6, FFGCX is UP 5.6% and FCPVX (another holding) is UP fractionally. NO OTHER MFs I own are UP during that (pretty rough) interim period.
If you want to have a current holding in your portfolio that you are reasonably sure will be UP virtually every day/week for the near-to-intermediate term, FFGCX (and the like) is a STRONG candidate, but understand (that I THINK at least) those gravy train tracks are getting closer and closer to the end of the line with each passing day.
In the meantime, it's been, and currently still is, one helluva ride.
Aside: On the other part of my excerpted post about dedicated bond funds vs a ST CD/TNote ladder, note that the sweet spot is NOT getting any sweeter in the past coupla days, so perhaps there is a shift in the markets happening/about to happen. We've deployed almost ALL of our SELL proceeds already, so not an issue for us. BUT, anyone wanting to go this route, oughta be looking into this strategy, like NOW!

@Old_Joe: I believe what you have written about the separation between news and opinion at the WSJ did in fact exist. I was a long-time reader until about two years ago. I had no quarrel with the investigative reporting (on Elizabeth Holmes and on avaiation, for example), but the formerly objective news coverage came to be slanted once 2016 came to pass. What I noticed in particular was the use of terms such as “left-leaning” to describe any politician not Republican as well how stories about DT’s rallies clearly expressed a favorable opinion of how the rabble was behaving on that particular day. Any news operation has to choose what events to cover; what I was doing was reading the NYTimes alongside the Journal. The Gray Lady had the facts, the WSJ presented poorly-disguised opinion pieces.

@chinfist, it is a free article from the WSJ so anyone should be able to read it. Anyway the article does elaborate more.
"Several million workers who dropped out of the U.S. workforce during the Covid-19 pandemic plan to stay out indefinitely because of persistent illness fears or physical impairments, potentially exacerbating the labor shortage for years, new research shows.
About three million workforce dropouts say they don’t plan to return to pre-Covid activities—whether that includes going to work, shopping in person or dining out—even after the pandemic ends, according to a monthly survey conducted over the past year by a team of researchers. The workforce dropouts tend to be women, lack a college degree and have worked in low-paying fields."

We also don't know how extensive Long Covid will turn out to be. CDC tracking isn't providing much help there. But it's possible it could be a significant labor force and overall economic drag ... of course not to mention a whole lot of people suffering the effects.

@yogibearbull,
I was looking at 5-Yr TIPS from the perspective of the breakeven inflation rate.
Except for the past few weeks, it appears this rate is the highest it's ever been (earliest data - 01/02/2003).
Per your comments, recent monthly CPI-U changes have been very high.
Holding 5-Yr TIPS for several months in this environment seems like a sensible strategy.
BTW, I've accumulated a good-sized position in I-Bonds over the years.
Thanks for your detailed response!