For me now I'm 1/3 of my portfolio in cash, money markets or CDs earning anywhere from .5% to 3% (lucky 5 yr cd's bought a few years ago). I'm VERY conservative, but OK with that. I don't look at the cash as an emergency fund, just a guarantee not to get crushed in the next downturn. I cannot time the market.

As the cost of owning ABRTX surfaced in the course of discussion, I’ve linked a good summary of the types of expenses and fees mutual funds charge or pass-on and how they impact your bottom line. LINK
It’s generally recognized that (what I call) “boutique” funds will cost more to own. Specialized approaches like long/short and multi-strategy are more expensive to operate. Some of the added expense comes from having to pay interest on cash used to back short selling - if I understand correctly. However, I haven’t seen any of these funds that could justify an ER much north of 1.5%.
TMSRX is getting 1.29% after waivers. ABRZX (which I also own) gets 1.33%.
If a fund appears to be “compensating” investors for higher fees with an impressive total return, I’d suspect them of taking an inordinate amount of risk to do so - likely more risk than their investors realize.
Not aware of anyone here flogging TMSRX or other of these boutique funds. They have very limited appeal and only to certain types of investors. Generally they’re owned in an attempt to “balance out” or “offset” other riskier investments. Without viewing the portfolio in total, it’s hard to pass judgment on the wisdom of someone else owning such a fund. Additionally, some are using these as substitutes for the bond positions they held in prior years. A better question might be: Will these alternative funds outperform conventional bond funds going forward?

https://www.financial-planning.com/list/bond-funds-with-the-best-15-year-returns
Bond funds with the best 15-year returns
By Andrew Shilling
Managers behind fixed-income funds with the biggest long-term gains nearly double their peers. After a year marked by a global pandemic and near-zero rate environment, their shorter term returns were subsequently even more impressive.
The 20 top-performing bond funds of the past 15 years, with at least $100 million in assets under management, had an average gain of more than 7%, Morningstar Direct data show. Over the past 12 months, the same funds notched an average return of almost 18%.
When considering the bond-market landscape over the shorter timer, it may be hard to fathom the same success in the years to come, says Tom Bradley, managing director and head of capital markets at Miami-based fixed-income software vendor YieldX.
“Last year was an aggressive year for fixed-income performance with global central banks slashing rates as a result of COVID-19, and at the same time re-engaging in secondary market bond purchasing — the perfect combination for high-yield performance,” Bradley says. “Now that markets have plateaued and interest rates globally look grounded (possibly trending higher in the U.S.), fixed income will become a more nuanced sector to invest in as opposed to the ‘rising tide lifts all ships’ mantra of the last few years.”
Compared with broader markets, the iShares Core U.S. Aggregate Bond ETF (AGG), which has a 0.04% net expense ratio, recorded a 15-year gain of just 4.23%, data show. Over the past year, the fund had a gain of 0.32%.
In stocks, the SPDR S&P 500 ETF Trust (SPY) and the SPDR Dow Jones Industrial Average ETF (DIA) have had 15-year returns of 10.20% and 10.28%, respectively. In the past 12 months, SPY and DIA had gains of 50.29% and 45.30%. The funds have net expense ratios of 0.09% and 0.16%.
Morgan Stanley captures surge in retail investing thanks to timely E-Trade purchase
Despite record growth in wealth management, an otherwise rosy earnings report was marred by $911 million loss related to Archegos Capital.

While I like adding diversification, and my own portfolio is closer to Vanguard's target date fund's 30% foreign (per NYTimes article) than to 0%, it's not clear that one benefits substantially from this diversification.
I ran a PorfolioVisualizer comparison of a 47.3/52.7 mix of BNDX and BND (this is the current composition of BNDW - Vanguard Global Bond ETF) with BND, with MWTRX (mentioned in the article) and a baseline of IUSB (US total bond market including a smattering of junk bonds).
The analysis spans just over six years. The blend does a bit better than US IG only - marginally higher returns with marginally lower volatility; correspondingly, somewhat better Sharpe & Sortino ratios. But it is nearly identical to the MetWest core plus fund (down to the same 8% correlation with the US equity market).
The US bond market ETF does a bit better on return with a volatility closer to the blend and core plus funds than the more volatile US IG bond market. Though it correlates a bit more closely (15% coefficient of correlation) with the US equity market. That's still low correlation; some of the other bond funds correlate more closely with the equity market.
The only conclusion I draw from these numbers is that adding something to a US IG portfolio helps. But it isn't clear that foreign bonds help any more or less than a smattering of junk bonds.

One can tell the difference between reports by text writing programs (Mad Libs comes to mind) and living, breathing analysts. The automated reports have a superscript 'Q' appended. See, e.g. GPIOX. Compare that with a real research report, e.g. PRIDX.
The former seem to contain no information that I couldn't get out of a prospectus or M*'s own data tables. The latter I still find useful.
Several years ago (before automating anything) M* reduced the number of funds its analysts covered, and also increased the time between analyst reports on each fund. Having made the decision to reduce coverage, it had to decide which funds would still be covered. M* chose to continue covering the large, popular funds.
If you wish, call it a bias to drive ad sales, i.e. a bias to cover funds that more readers are interested in (as evidenced by dollars invested). As opposed to covering more interesting funds.
M* started its medalist rating system in 2011. Prior to that there had been Analyst Picks and Pans which seemed more reliable, perhaps because (a) the analysts were picking from a larger universe of covered funds and (b) they didn't try to slice and dice into three shiny colors.
IMHO M* was never any good at covering stocks. As far as fund information is concerned, I don't think there are better sources. Much of the fund information one finds on other sites is sourced from M*.

The usual boring statement, KISS for most: know your goals and risk tolerance, select asset allocation accordingly, make minimal changes, stay the course, stay invested.
Emergency fund: after your savings pass a certain amount (for us $50K+) we no longer have cash or emergency for over 2 decades and now in retirement.
Do I really need an emergency fund? not really, first I use credit cards, if I can't, I have several thousands in the bank. Beyond that I can sell my mutual funds and get the money within 2 days. Unless you buy illegal drugs or a ransom why would you have an emergency fund.
CASH: Do you really need cash, even a retiree? IMO, a retiree maybe need 3-6 months at most. Most/all retirees have a cash flow (from SS + distribution + pension + can sell something, what is so difficult to sell 3-4 times per year), in good time they can sell stocks and in bad times they can sell some bonds. Some of these bonds should be a ballast for stocks which means in market meltdown they will go up or have minimal losses.
CASH for trading: I never understood this concept and I'm a trader and not a typical investor. A typical investor have stocks+bonds. If stock go down and you want to buy more stocks, it's pretty east to sell some bonds and buy stocks, so why be in cash making almost nothing.
As a trader in the last 20+ years. When I was younger I just switched from lagging funds to better performing funds. The big change came around 2010 and planning for retirement when I added max loss allowed rule to protect my portfolio. Since then, I'm in the market about 98% and invested at 99+%(never cash). Only at extreme risk I'm out.
So, what % I do have now in cash? The usual, less than 1%, after all, I don't see extreme risk for months.

@little5bee-
Take everything on this MaxFunds site with a large grain of salt. Often they overstate the negative. However, for a worst case scenario , it’s an interesting place to look.
ABRTX Overall MaxFunds Score: 50% - Poor
Forecast: 1%
Best Case: 38%
Worst Case: -75%
Lipper gives ABRTX its highest rating (5) for “capital preservation”. However, that’s a backward looking grade - not a projection. While the chart looks steady, the fund’s been open less than 10 years. Why anyone would pay a 2.25% ER for any fund is beyond me.
I do use some funds that use derivatives heavily to hedge market risk or operate in the futures markets (ie ABRZX). With such funds, the integrity and demonstrated expertise of the manager become paramount. Without knowing much about this one, at a glance I’d agree with @Baseball_Fan that it looks dicey. Suggest you continue to investigate. :)

i own two bond funds OSTRX and WCPNX - im thinking of taking all the money out of OSTRX and adding it to WCPNX - but i wont make my decision til the end of the year. any comments on these funds would be very much appreciated. im not the brightest bulb on the tree when it comes to investing. i have made a lot of mistakes over the years.

PRSNX. Bonds in my portfolio = 51% of total. PRSNX = 21.55% of total portfolio. It is below the zero-line so far in 2021 by just a fraction. RELIABLE. Owned it for several years, now. Other bond funds in portfolio are RPSIX, at 22.46% of total. And PTIAX at 7.25% of total. PRWCX and BRUFX hold bonds, too. I have so far, regretted putting money into those three funds not for a moment.

I’ve long been convinced that there is a link between the end of Madoff’s scheme and the overwhelming popularity of index-fund investing in the aftermath of the financial crisis. It’s not simply that, as the Wall Street Journal theorized, people realized pricey money managers hadn’t seen what was coming. Nor was it merely that the regulators’ cursory investigations into Madoff’s fund left many dubious of all sorts of investments (and the officials tasked with overseeing them). Instead, Madoff demonstrated the lie that almost any savvy individual investor could produce steady gains in a way that nothing else could. By destroying the retirements and dreams of so many, he inadvertently performed a much-needed service.

I'm not so convinced. Outside the realm of the ultra-rich, Madoff was hardly known before the scandal because it was an exclusive hedge fund. Meanwhile, Bogle was already practically a household name by the time of the scandal. I would say the growth of no load funds and fee-only/fee-based financial advisers had more to do with the shift to indexing. Instead of selling high cost active management with a commission or load based fund, advisers were charging a percentage of asset fee, typically 1%. Combine that fee with a high cost active fund charging 1.5% and you've got a 2.5% drag on returns each year. A 0.05% index fund combined with the 1% was far more palatable and produced better results. The whole advice model has shifted dramatically.
Any bull market of course will drive investors to index too, and of course Bogle's own presence, his constant evangelizing and having the numbers to back it up. If there was any fund's fall that might have done more harm to active manager's influence on retail investors it would be Bill Miller's Legg Mason Value when it got completely crushed during the 2008-09 crisis after 15 straight years of beating the market. He was one of the last great heroes of active management in the retail world. Who by contrast in retail-land heard of Madoff before everyone who had heard of him lost their shirts?

Kind of a clickbait headline because you can index pretty much anything nowadays and design the index almost any way you like. The author obviously means market cap weighted indexes, but there's no reason an index needs to be market cap weighted. Also, market cap weighted indexes make the least sense near the peak of a bubble as a handful of frothy stocks dominate it, but that isn't true all of the time or even most of the time. Yes, now is a dangerous time though to buy traditional market cap weighted indexes--not really news or original. People have observed this problem with each bubble going back at least twenty years.

@sma3 As I understand, YES, you can create a list using their Portfolio Manager. I've never bothered with a "transaction portfolio" because it's just too much work for my purposes. But that's how you get the most accurate results, using the thing. Through the years, all I've done is use a fictional entry price of $9.99 or often, the actual ORIGINAL price of shares when I first bought-in, and left it that way. Then I had at least something to compare new numbers to. "Free" users can use X-Ray, but not the pre-loaded and easy "Instant X-Ray" which will populate the computer fields with the funds/stocks you want to see analyzed.
You're right: those written fund analyses read like tripe. They have their measuring sticks and gauges, but it all sounds so facile.

Hi Mac, good to hear from you.
So far, RCTIX has met my expectations with a successful and steady risk adjusted performance, especially in this rather difficult interest rate environment. It has a solid asset management firm behind it with a manager who has run the fund for over 6 years. The ER is also quite reasonable.
I recently sold my shares in JASSX because of a bungled reorganization, at least that was my perception, and added the proceeds to my existing shares in RCTIX. The fund now makes up about 20% of my portfolio. My only other non-muni bond fund in my portfolio is TSIIX.
Good luck,
Fred

That's one of the reasons I fled M* a few years ago. Apart from the horrible interface changes on their site, their data often was inconsistent to flat-out wrong or nonexistent.

M*'s at it again. Instant X-ray and Portfolio Manager are failing to identify the style of many funds. I just tested a few (T. Rowe Price seems to be particularly problematic):
PRWCX - 100% unknown
PRIDX - 100% unknown
FLPSX - 100% unknown
TRSGX - 16.39% LCV, 32.74% LCBlend, 29.97% LCG, and a smattering of others
So it's not just T. Rowe Price funds, and it's not all Price funds. Whatever it is could be an overnight problem. Just don't rely on what M* shows you for your portfolio now.

I hate to say it ... but I think crypto acceptance is accelerating for many reasons. My little experiment is up 25% since my first post here. My regret is that I didn’t take it seriously earlier. I’ve dismissed it for years.
A nice primer for new investors in crypto: https://www.marketwatch.com/video/what-you-need-to-know-before-investing-in-crypto/EB6C438A-53F5-4A2F-8055-58D5644CD587.html

I can't link the article because of a paywall. Sorry. Read this on my brokerage account page.
"WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Market participants this week staked out their positions on how to fix systemic risks in the $4.9 trillion U.S. money market fund industry, in what is shaping up to be the first big fight for U.S. President Joe Biden's financial regulators.
After taxpayers bailed them out for the second time in 12 years during the pandemic-induced turmoil in March 2020, money market funds - a key source of short-term corporate and municipal funding - are facing a regulatory reckoning which could potentially change the industry beyond all recognition."
BY PETE SCHROEDER AND MICHELLE PRICE, REUTERS - 1:23 PM ET 4/13/2021

@Fred TMSRX's have been low, but maximum draw down was only 4.7% during the past three years. One year return is 18% and three year return is 5.4%. Their goal, if I remember correctly, is to make 6% plus the rate of inflation over time.
For me, TMSRX fits in as a low risk fund that will not lose much and will make decent returns. It fits in between bonds and stocks. Below are the funds that I am researching now. During changes in market conditions they do better or worse. I look at mixing and matching to have a consistent performance over time.
CRAAX, TMSRX, FMSDX, CTFAX, ETIMX, GAVIX, MNBAX, RBBAX, VWIAX, VTINX

Thank you for your excellent work! I wonder if there are a handful of truly exceptional funds that are worth spending the commission $ for? We don't know what we don't know....

Here are the funds that I am researching now. They had low draw downs during the past five years and high risk adjusted returns: It is a good starting point.
CLMAX, NTBIX, CRAAX, TMSRX, FMSDX, CTFAX, ETIMX, GAVIX, MNBAX, RBBAX, VWIAX, VTINX

@JonGaltIII
I worry about a 1970's style period of inflation. ...

https://www.whitehouse.gov/briefing-room/blog/2021/04/12/pandemic-prices-assessing-inflation-in-the-months-and-years-ahead/

I found this very interesting and worth sharing.
...
https://theretirementmanifesto.com/your-bucket-strategy-questions-answered/

A good, common sense piece with a bit of substance to it. A few items there worth highlighting:
- Asset allocation. Rather than work with fixed percentages, the allocation is done by time: so many years in cash, so many years in bonds, and the remainder in equities. In his case, he came up with 63% (not 60%) in equities. He's actually got a pretty conservative cash (3 year) / bond (8 year) allocation. The cash/bond allocation lets you invest the remainder (however much that is) in equities without worrying about sequence of return risk, volatility "risk", etc.
- Annuities. He avoids the question of what bucket this income stream (or pensions, or SS) falls into. If one were targeting a particular asset allocation, then this question would matter. But because he's basing cash and bond allocations on how much extra income he needs, this question never arises.
He touches on annuity strategies, which seems beyond the scope of bucket strategies. But since he went there, it's worth reiterating that for many people, using retirement assets to defer SS until age 70 is the optimal strategy.
In a new paper summarized here, 401(k) assets would be used to automatically provide an income stream until age 70. A temporary life annuity can provide the same income stream while enhancing value with mortality credits. (The downside is that if you die before age 70, you don't get the full value of the temporary annuity.)
https://www.kitces.com/blog/understanding-the-role-of-mortality-credits-why-immediate-annuities-beat-bond-ladders-for-retirement-income/
- HSAs. He keeps his in cash, presumably to spend as expenses are incurred. For investing, he recommends bucket 3 (equities). My take is different - I suggest bucket 2.
HSAs are like Roth IRAs - withdrawals are tax-free - so long as one can pair them with past medical expenses. I would put my slower growing Roth-ish assets into HSAs to limit the risk that the HSAs grow too fast. You don't want more money in the HSAs than you can withdraw tax-free (not enough medical expenses). Keep the faster growing assets in the genuine Roth IRAs.