Thank you. One has to wonder why Vanguard would venture down the internal fund path while the survival rate is truly terrible. One of the graph indicates 90% of alternatives survive 1-3 years.
Yet many university endowments have sizable allocation to alternative funds and private equity including the former David Swanson’s Yale University.

I use SNAXX in my IRA account. When the market tanked a few years ago, I sold all my bond oefs in my IRA, and invested over $1mil in SNAXX. A few months later, I started withdrawing funds from SNAXX and invested in CDs. I now have far less in SNAXX than $1mil, but I can still maintain SNAXX as long as I don't liquidate it. I also use SWVXX in a taxable account and in my wife's IRA, which never had enough money to qualify for SNAXX. I live in Texas so state taxes are not an issue for me.

I'm using M*'s chart page (a tab found on any fund/ETF page) such as:
https://www.morningstar.com/etfs/arcx/fltr/chart
Set the Frequency to Daily and the Data Type to "Growth w/Dividend". That gives you total return and scales each fund charted comparably (total returns relative to $10K start).
If you set a date range of not more than 20 years or so, you can see where the peaks and valleys are. (You won't see much of anything if you look at the lifetime of VWELX, as that spans 86 years.) Mouse over spots to get approximate gains (losses). Or spend a couple of minutes zooming in on the exact start point you want. Then M* will calculate the exact gain on each subsequent date.
Over VRIG's lifetime (starting 9/20/16) FLTR has outperformed, though barely: 34.17% vs. 33.82% cumulative.
Zooming in to 2/1/20 through 4/1/20, one sees that they both peaked on 2/19/20. Setting that as the start point, one sees VRIG hit bottom on 3/26, losing 13.0437%, and FLTR hit its bottom on 3/18/20, losing 17.8062%. Other dips are similar though much smaller and not worth worrying about.
VRIG lost 1.3786% from 11/14/18 to 12/21/18; FLTR lost 1.8535 from 11/13/18 to 12/21/18.
VRIG lost 2.2798% from 1/21/22 to 6/16/22; FLTR lost 3.0049% from 2/7/22 to 6/16/22.
VRIG lost 0.7763% from 4/2/25 to 4/7/25; FLTR lost 1.9253% from 4/2/25 to 4/4/25.
YTD, FLTR has outperformed 3.11% vs 3.03%.
Overall, neither FLTR's small outperformance nor its slightly deeper short term losses seem consequential. This slight difference is mirrored in FLTR's slightly higher standard deviation. FWIW, M* gives FLTR a risk score of 3 (out of 100), and VRIG a 2. All of this is just splitting hairs.
I don't recognize what's in the CLO ETFs either. Another potential risk there.
Finally, I'll add that I keep looking at CBLDX. My concern here is that unlike Sherman's RPHIX, it doesn't mitigate risk by buying "money good" debt. Still, the numbers (stability of returns) impress for somewhat longer term cash.

A very thorough comprehensive discussion of some cash-like alternatives by @msf …And thanks!
I had thought JAAA was “good enough” for my less stringent needs and held a lot going into the late March / early April market drop. But when the initial “mini-crash” occurred (the first of several bad days) and I sold a large portion of JAAA to reinvest the money in rapidly falling equities, guess what? JAAA was down more than 0.50% (intra-day) at the time. So the equities I ran to weren’t as “cheap” for me as they would have been with a more stable cash substitute. JAAA did recover in following days. The question remains: “Where were you when I needed you?”
I didn’t own or track NEAR at the time, but my observations have been it holds up much better during those brief times when equities (and a lot of other stuff) are rapidly selling off. That’s the reason I no longer own JAAA - but may someday find a spot for it or PAAA which @msf has pointed out seems a bit more stable. Some may also wish to look at VNLA. I owned some then, and it held up better during the selloff than did JAAA.
Note: The “gamble” one takes with NEAR (ISTM) is the small sensitivity to rates. Over longer periods that shouldn’t be a problem, but near term (1-3 years) it will outperform or lag cash based on how rates in the 1-3 year part of the curve are moving. As far as quality goes, it doesn’t get much better.

One has to be comfortable with a large amount of hi-yield fare in RPHIX. I ended up with CBUDX instead. Information on the composition of the funds is near the bottom of the links. Two funds near their range of M* standard deviation would be JPST and FLOT.
This is what makes AAA CLOs so interesting. We've seen that no matter how an investment is structured (AAAs being first in line from a whole pool of debt) nothing will protect you if the whole house of cards comes tumbling down. That's what happened with CDOs in 2008.

What’s especially notable is that slight differences between CLOs and CDOs have given CLOs more resistance to economic downturns. In fact, a [White & Case] report notes that CLOs were minimally affected by the same troubles as CDOs during the Great Recession. A shift toward CLOs and away from CDOs could benefit traders, investors and lenders without forming a bubble that would inevitably burst.

https://www.businessnewsdaily.com/10353-cdo-financial-derivatives-economic-crisis.html
I'm not ready to pull the trigger on AAA CLOs just yet. Let's see what happens over the next few months. Even then, I'd look at just the best of the best - the most "pure" AAA CLO fund. That seems to be PAAA. Though JAAA serves as a good reference for how AAA CLOs have behaved over a few years. And JBBB serves as a good comparison for seeing how the quality of the tranche (AAA vs BBB) matters.
An ETF I haven't seen mentioned that's somewhat in FLOT's space is VRIG. FLOT and FLRN hold about 2/3 of their assets in corporate bonds (the rest in gov bonds) and track each other closely. VRIG takes a different path, splitting its non-gov bonds evenly between corporate and securitized. This seems to result in slightly more risk but with commensurate rewards.
VRIG has a longer (but still miniscule) effective duration (0.23 years vs. 0.01 years); lower credit quality (A+ vs. AA-), worse 3 year std dev (0.99 vs 0.57) resulting in a lower Sharpe ratio (1.34 vs 1.81). On the plus side, VRIG comes with better long term performance.
It also seems to do better with short term jolts:
Feb-March 2020: both dropped around 13% (daily data);
March 2023: both dropped around 1½% through March 13 but FLOT continued dropping another ¾% over the next few days;
April 2025: VRIG dropped ¾% while FLOT dropped twice that.
Some have used the word "gamble". I'm still looking for how best to spread my bets.

I remember that Gabelli Funds were fined because they just posted some reports online and skipped mailing.
This dumbing down of prospectuses began many years ago when some info was moved to SAIs. Now, we have Summary Prospectuses (dumbest), Prospectuses (not yet dumb) and SAIs (with some useful info well hidden in routine boilerplate disclosers).

PVMCX still has pretty good but too short reports. The manger has a more or less monthly blog where he opines about investing, but for the last few years it is "everything is too expensive
Unfortunately since everyone else is getting away with it, even previous loquacious mangers must figure "why bother"?
Buffet and a few others of his ilk, mainly private investment mangers, still publish yearly letters, which are very interesting, but they usually do not discuss all of the firm's holdings.
Bloomstran at Semper Augustus publishes a free annual report that is masterful, but only discusses a couple of his holdings
https://www.semperaugustus.com/clientletter
Vitaly Katsentelesen runs a similar "value oriented " investment firm and has a good newsletter
https://imausa.com/about-us-personal-investment-management/
It is interesting but I wish he would talk more about his stock ideas and less about life lessons etc.

”I miss the shareholder letters from the portfolio managers …”
So how did the SEC manage to remove those - or some of them anyway?
After buying OAKBX couple months ago (which had been a stalwart of mine under Studzinski), I tried to pull up the letters to shareholders with the annual / semi-annual reports. In the old days they were pure gold. Now a joke. Wow. I sold the fund when my 60-day holding period was up, partially for that reason, but also because unlike the OAKBX of older years which used AAA credits as an equity hedge, the newer version has loaded up on lower quality bonds. What a change.

A few observations about this FoF, and replicating it on your own:
Unlike Vanguard that uses expensive share classes of underlying funds, AQR uses its cheapest (R-6) share class for acquired funds. In replicating this FoF, one would only have access to N class shares - adding 0.35% to the cost. That's still less than the 0.44% that QDSNX charges, but it is close.
Shorting is not cheap. One can see this in the underlying fund QMNRX. Its offical ER is 4.55%. When M* backs out the cost of shorting, it comes up with an "adjusted" ER of 1.23%.
M* says that the managers add value by tactically varying the weights of the underlying funds. I'm not so sure.
I took what appears to be the nominal weights by rounding the current weights. Over the past five years (nearly the whole lifetime of the fund), from end of July 2020 to end of July 2025 (60 months), M* says QDSNX returned 11.76% annualized. Portfolio Visualizer concurs exactly. But the DIY portfolio (annual rebalancing) returned 11.95%.
Portfolio Visualizer five year comparison
Unfortunately, after subtracting 0.35%/year to use the more costly retail shares, one falls a little short of the QDSNX return.
To address @hank's concern about this fund being too new, you can take the PV model, and set it for max timeframe (PV is limited to ten years). The static mix I used to approximate QDSNX did not distinguish itself over the ten year span. Perhaps the actual QDSNX would have done better with its managers resetting weights than with this static mix.
I also added a second portfolio, a blend of Wellington and cash, that gave similar performance over the past decade.
Portfolio Visualizer ten year performance

Fred said ”However, my bottom line is a fund's risk/reward profile, not its fees”
I think there.’s a good case to be made for that line of thinking. More true I think in “frothy” markets like today or for someone in their “golden years”, more concerned about “not losing a lot” rather than with “making a lot”.
I’ve looked at QDSNX before and decided it’s not for me. Too short a track record for my comfort level. But the numbers are amazing since the fund opened in 2020.

Hank,
Miss the Contrarian Chronicles from 20 years back on MSN Money.
“It became a must-read for investors burned by the dot-com bubble and wary of Wall Street's pervasive optimism. The column stood as a stark, often witty, counterpoint to the prevailing market narratives of its time”.
Need the Chronicles today!

I started reading Fleck’s commentaries online in the mid 90’s. They were free then - I believe on a site hosted by Jim Cramer - but might be wrong. They saved me some money as they led me to lighten up before the .com crash. This informational link appears quite dated. I missed Bill’s spirited market take for many years, but dug a little deeper and pulled up his $100+ yearly site 7-8 years ago.
Not sure how well being a contrarian works in today’s heady markets. Bill was correct on gold 5-10 years ago when few saw the worth. But his persistent bearishness on the broader equity market hasn’t worked over the same period. You’d have made a lot of money on gold but forfeited a lot of the gain in equities had you followed him over the past decade.
The problem being contrarian is expressed pretty well in the old cliche: “Markets can remain irrational longer than you can remain solvent.”

I do not own VTAPX but have considered it as well as several other inflation-protected funds. I have also looked at NEAR before but did not invest. Being pretty risk-tolerant, I was just curious about the logic of picking one over the other, so thanks to everyone for the discussion.
My personal expectations are based on the assumption that Powell & Co will bend sooner rather than later. We will then get a rate cut this fall and, perhaps, another one early next year with Christmas season being weaker than expected if tariffs stay in place. In this case, I would expect MM yields to fall and inflation to drift up.
So, I have been trying to come up with a good place place to shift some of my MM holdings in such a scenario. Any thoughts would be much appreciated.
P.S. RPHIX looks like an excellent option (alas, misunderstood by M* just like PVCMX I am so fond of). Too bad I did not come across it a couple of years ago, I would have put some money into it instead of USFR.

Generally speaking, how does a fund like RPHIX compare to a moneymarket fund like SUTXX?

I spend (waste) the next couple of paragraphs below going through this year's returns because RPHIX has been a bit of a disappointment in 2025.
YTD (in just over 3/5 of the year) RPHIX has returned 2.80%. That extrapolates to about 4.7% for 2025, or about 4¼% after taking out, say 10%, for Calif. taxes. That's still subject to Fed taxes.
Through July 31, SUTXX has returned 2.42%. Its current yield is 4.12%. Converting that to a daily yield and compounding that daily yield over the remaining 5 months (153 days) gives an additional return of 1.75%. Combining 2.42% and 1.75% (i.e. taking 1.0242 x 1.0175 - 1), the expected return for the year is 4.2%. So for 2025, the two funds should, after taxes, return about the same amount.
Over most stretches of time, RPHIX has fared better, even after taking out state taxes. Here's a link to a Fidelity page (no login required) that compares RPHIX to FSIXX (Fidelity's equivalent fund to SUTXX).
But you are adding volatility with RPHIX, along with bookkeeping nonsense. Since the share price of RPHIX fluctuates, each buy or sale generates a cap gain (or loss). In addition, if you're reinvesting divs, then you're subject to wash sales. For this reason I recommend not reinvesting divs, or if you do, suspending reinvestment a month or two before you expect to make a withdrawal. This is a concern with any bond fund, not just with RPHIX.
I think the two funds (RPHIX and SUTXX) can be used well in tandem. SUTXX to hold at least a few months worth or even a couple of years worth of cash, and RPHIX for longer term cash.
RPHIX also carries a transaction fee, though Schwab has introduced an Automatic Investment Program (like Fidelity's) that lets you buy additional shares of some TF funds for $10/purchase. Look for AIP on Schwab's pricing page.
https://www.schwab.com/legal/schwab-pricing-guide-for-individual-investors

Also: we don't have the luxury anymore of endless time to outrun total catastrophe, like we would have had 30-40 years ago when we knew what was happening, so any obstacle is a problem.
Plus, there are major actors for whom the price differential doesn't matter, e.g., supposedly regulated utilities that operate on essentially cost-plus contracts with their customers. The incentive is to build expensively so a given allowed profit margin brings in more dollars, for the benefit mainly of execs and shareholders. It makes new rate hikes a regular feature of ratepayers' lives. The only way for customers to get around additional hikes is to put in home solar, but knocking out the credits makes that a bridge too far for many folks.
My state's main utility is doing exactly what you'd think they'd do, extending the life of one of the dirtiest coal-fired plants in the nation and building a massive new, super-costly and polluting methane-burning plant instead of diversifying into renewables and storage. The regulatory body is utterly captured, to the max since the R legislature super-gerrymandered the commissioners' electoral districts, session before last.

Hank,
Miss the Contrarian Chronicles from 20 years back on MSN Money.
“It became a must-read for investors burned by the dot-com bubble and wary of Wall Street's pervasive optimism. The column stood as a stark, often witty, counterpoint to the prevailing market narratives of its time”.
Need the Chronicles today!

Morningstar has RPHIX at 2 stars ! Yes I know it's not in the right category. Thought it was a 1 for how many years?

In 2022 VTAPX lost nearly 3% while NEAR gained a little. To me the latter is a better cash substitute. Cash should not experience down years.
Calendar years are easy to get statistics on. But I think the sentiment here is that cash should not be down more than 12 consecutive months, regardless of whether those months exactly align with calendar years.
From its low on 10/6/21, NEAR did not recover (including divs) until 12/16/22. That's more than 14 months underwater. It took eight months for it to hit its nadir, down 1.32%, on 6/14/22.
NEAR is a good fund, it outperforms cash over periods of multiple years, and this short term bond fund should do better then ultrashort funds when/if the yield curve steepens. So if you're betting on a rate reduction (i.e. the Fed being more concerned with avoiding a recession than with rising inflation), or if you simply want to hedge your bets, it can meet those needs.
A couple of somewhat similar funds to NEAR are the ultrashort funds PYLMX and BBBIX. The former modestly underperforms NEAR but tracks it closely with under half the volatility and 1/3 the max drawdown. The latter is just slightly more volatile, has a max drawdown that's two thirds of NEAR's, and has outperformed over the past 1,3,5,10, and lifetime of NEAR.
Though for a cash substitute, it's hard to beat RPHIX. Never a down year (twelve consecutive months, whenever), infrequent miscues, and over the lifetime of NEAR much better stats including risk metrics and performance.
Testfolio comparison of the four funds

Bill Fleckenstein is a virtual encyclopedia on the precious metals and miners. I’d be much wealthier had I followed 100% of his advice going back about 5 years. From yesterday’s ”Daily Rap” (8/09/2025):
”… these tariffs won't impact demand or the spot gold price much. However, they do cause a problem for folks who arbitrage between London Gold and Comex Gold, because Comex Gold requires 100-ounce bars for settlement, which is what comes out of Switzerland and has now been sanctioned to the tune of 39%. Meanwhile, London gold has 400-ounce bars … what this has done is thrown a monkey wrench into the plumbing of gold … ”
Excerpt from: Daily Rap (Fleckenstein Capital LLC). This is a subscription based service. Link takes you to the site one year ago. You’d need to “pay-up” to read current commentaries.

@rforno said,

That's precisely why I am NOT in my state pension plan! My entire 403b is in a vanilla quality equity-only American Fund.

If you are a public school teacher I believe you are contributing to your state pension through monthly (payroll deductions) that are mandatory contributions to help fund the state pension fund. Your state also is required to contribute and often state's choose not to fully fund. Big problem when they don't.
Your 403(b) is an additional retirement option that you elect to contribute to individually. It is not mandatory.
In addition to 403(b) options you may also have 457 and 401(a) options.
At retirement, all teachers, who qualify (by age, years of service, etc.), will receive a pension (the State of CT in my case) based on a specific set of criteria and formula.
Your 403(b) is totally separate from your state/municipal pension. I too contributed to my 403(b).
When you separate service you can roll over your 403(b). Another option is to annuitize your 403(b). I did both.

Nope. As a university professor I had the option of selecting either the state pension or self-directed 403(b) - known as the Optional Retirement Plan - when hired. In my case the 403(b) contributions are pre-tax and 'above' my salary ... nothing I do or have touches the state pension system and I don't contribute to it myself. (Though pension and ORP folks alike can open up various pre- or post-tax 403b or 457b accounts as supplimental retirement accounts to save extra if we want.)
What you say is true for many K-12 teachers/staff in my state, but even then I believe they're also given the choice of either a traditional pension or ORP. But of course that varies by state and/or district.

@rforno said,

That's precisely why I am NOT in my state pension plan! My entire 403b is in a vanilla quality equity-only American Fund.

If you are a public school teacher I believe you are contributing to your state pension through monthly (payroll deductions) that are mandatory contributions to help fund the state pension fund. Your state also is required to contribute and often state's choose not to fully fund. Big problem when they don't.
Your 403(b) is an additional retirement option that you elect to contribute to individually. It is not mandatory.
In addition to 403(b) options you may also have 457 and 401(a) options.
At retirement, all teachers, who qualify (by age, years of service, etc.), will receive a pension (the State of CT in my case) based on a specific set of criteria and formula.
Your 403(b) is totally separate from your state/municipal pension. I too contributed to my 403(b).
When you separate service you can roll over your 403(b). Another option is to annuitize your 403(b). I did both.