PIMIX still has the highest Sharpe ratio, lowest drawdown and no down years
The following performance graph is from PIMIX's 2009 statutory prospectus. You can take it on faith that this is for the institutional class shares for calendar year 2008 or you can find it yourself on p. 58 of the 21MB prospectus.

It's interesting but not news. People have known for decades now how difficult it is for active funds to beat the benchmark with any consistency--and the consistency part is perhaps not dicussed enough. My problem is with the basic assumption, i.e., forecast, that stocks themselves will always be a good investment and this assumption is implicit in the decision to index the benchmark, and in investing in many active funds that rigidly adhere to a particular stock-driven investment style. The indexing decision assumes that the benchmark itself isn't really dynamic, that the S&P 500 today or better yet the Russell 3000 is really the same as it was yesterday, last year, ten or fifty years ago and plunking one's money into it at any point in time in the future will always be a good choice. What we know is historically it has been a good choice in the past most of the time. But there are a periods of time--periods of extreme over- and under-valuation--where it's been a terrible or terrific choice. One could argue that now is one of those times. Moreover, no one knows what the future will bring and the data-set for stocks overall is extremely limited versus human history, and a grain of sand in biological, or worse, geologic history. There is nothing particularly scientific in other words in assuming that in the long run stocks go up. All we know is in the past stocks have gone up.

@observant1 thanks for sharing the spiva pdf. Page 4 is interesting - the table shows that over a 15 year period, 92.35% of all Large Cap Growth equity funds failed to beat their benchmarks. I guess that is what you and others are trying to say. I understand that data and agree it’s not easy and there’s a strong compelling case to just index.
If you choose some active LC growth funds and set and forget them for 15 years, 92.35% of the time you will be disappointed as they won’t beat their benchmarks. Since you and I own active funds, aren’t we saying that by using our tools, we think that we can maneuver in and out of these funds before we are disappointed and thereby beat the benchmarks? Not often - just when performance “consistently” underperforms.
I don’t mean to be simplistic, it’s just that I was an index only investor for a number of years and I’m constantly second guessing myself since owning active-despite positive results. This discussion and the feedback is helpful to me.

PIMIX had a sizable drawdown in 2020, -11.3% and finally recovered for the year. So the risk aspect is higher than expected. Performance-wise the fund is way way too big and trailed other bond funds for last several years.
PRSNX had a smaller drawdown and recovered quicker. 2020 was a unusual year where the boring total bond index fund performed quite well. Will see how bonds will do this year with higher inflation, but Fed will keep rate flat for another year.

Pretty much disagree with your take on PIMIX (though I know most share it). The bond market is enormous. While funds having billions in assets can't take advantage of niche opportunities like a very small fund can, most of the funds discussed here are in that same boat. That's OK if what you're looking for in bonds is mostly stability with some decent distributions. Go ahead and compare PIMIX to many of the funds mentioned here back to January 2016. PIMIX still has the highest Sharpe ratio, lowest drawdown and no down years. The same holds mostly true back to 2009 (except PIMIX was down a modest 5.47% in 2008). Hartford strategic may look great now but it suffered a hair-raising 21% drawdown and was also down 17% in 2008. There are no free lunches here. If you want to take on more risk it's simple, a no-brainer really, DHHIX.

M* currently places FSMAX in the Mid Blend category but in the Mid Growth style box.
Category placements are based on three years of style box data.
This article discusses recent fund style box moves at M*. Link
It appears that Fidelity, Lipper, and M* all use different criteria for determining fund categories.
Sometimes certain funds won't fit neatly within the available categories.
For example, M* classifies NWFFX as a Diversified Emerging Markets fund but developed markets comprised 48.7% of its assets as of September 2020.
These type of anomolies can make fund category comparisons challenging.

This is a good discussion. If we ignore bonds for the moment. Buffett and the Index proponents say don’t try and beat the market. Just own the market. Most say an S&P 500 or Total Market Index.
Ok, so if we ignore bonds (for diversification or income etc) and we just consider equity funds.
Is it not possible to find equity funds that consistently best the S&P 500 or TSMI on a long term basis? Not sometimes but consistently? Over 10-20 year periods. Maybe they miss 1 or 2 years but over the life... they beat the S&P. The BFGFX did for 14 years. I don’t own this fund.
That’s my goal. Identify and invest in mutual funds that outperform the S&P 500. Yes I look at APR vs peers BUT... if the smartest investors in the world like Buffet and Bogle... advise to just index... that’s my real benchmark. So, even though some funds may handily outperform their peers, if they don’t consistently beat the S&P and I’m not using it for diversification purposes (like a bond fund or allocation), then I look elsewhere. Thoughts on this strategy for equity funds?

PRBLX's poor years against its large-blend benchmark were 2017 especially, but also 2015 and 2016. Yet another strong fund overall.

What I'm saying is the funds that routinely beat their bogeys and/or the S&P are relatively easy to find because they pretty much do it ALL THE TIME.

No, they aren't easy to find and no they don't do it all the time.
https://spglobal.com/spdji/en/spiva/article/us-persistence-scorecard
In fact, if you include 2008 into any stock benchmark comparison and go until 2021, you probably won't find a single large-cap blend fund that beat the S&P 500 every calendar year. Even the best managers have fallow periods and performance tends to be lumpy. I doubt you've looked at the truly long-term history of most funds and I doubt you've made apples-to-apples comparisons for funds investing in similar style/size stocks to the benchmark. FLPSX is an exceptional fund, but it is not a fund to compare to the S&P 500, but to a mid-cap value benchmark currently and shifting benchmarks throughout its history, but almost never large-blend like the S&P 500 I bet. And it too has had lagging years versus its Morningstar benchmark, 2016 notably. In fact, if you look at the three-year period of January 1, 2014 through December 31, 2016 of FLPSX versus the IWS mid value index ETF, you would've seen IWS produce a 32% return versus FLPSX's 17%--a significant underperformance during a three-year period. And yet FLPSX remains a great fund.

It's really not that hard to beat the market. Simply BUY the funds in the smaller percentile that ALWAYS do.

OK, that's funny, like saying It's easy to get a 100 on a test. Just don't get anything wrong.

Hmmm...it's not intended to be funny, rather instructional.
What I'm saying is the funds that routinely beat their bogeys and/or the S&P are relatively easy to find because they pretty much do it ALL THE TIME.
FIND them. BUY them. Repeat.
HINT: Perform screens to identify the funds that are 5* funds for 3, 5 and 10 years, appear at/near the top of the screens in ALL of those columns and the 1-yr, YTD and Life of Fund columns. Dig a little deeper with your DD, especially regarding the PM(s), and select the very best.
Fido even assists investors by identifying "Fund Picks from Fidelity." You can probably even routinely beat their bogeys and/or the S&P if you just bought those.
But no, I'm not inclined to spoon feed them here. Several though are littered throughout my posts. If you swing and miss on one, not to worry as you likely blew away their bogeys and the S&P with the others.
Just don't EVER think you can pick THE ONE fund that's the best. Select 2-3 in each cat and if you did it properly, you very likely scored BIG on at least one or two of them. How many mistakes you think you could have made and STILL outperformed bogeys/S&P if you would have JUST bought and held FLPSX (see my prior post) from its inception?
Many investors have been coded to think that this is either impossible or will take too much of their time. And that's unfortunate.

M* portfolio lists PTIAX maturities with 30% over 20 years and 20% between 15 and 20 so likely duration is high

@JonGaltIII
Great post.
It's a tired old debate that at best provides confirmation bias to those who want to believe it or just don't want to try to beat the market.
To wit: I own 11 dedicated, actively managed stock funds. All 11 easily beat-to-blow away their bogeys. 10 of 11 do the same vs the S&P, the only one being a SCV fund that I bought last year. This scenario has been the case with my port for about 40 years now.
When I say blow away, I mean blow away....
I don't own it any more, but take a look at FLPSX, which I bought near its inception and owned (as my only fund for about five years circa early 90's and) all the way up to the last couple of years.
Value of $10K, 12/27/89 to Current:
VFINX: $208,480
S&P 500 TR: $215,986
FLPSX: $495,523
Note: There are no typos there and your eyes are NOT deceiving you.
True, LOTS of funds fail to beat their bogeys and many come nowhere close to matching the S&P. That's why statistically writers can truthfully pump out hair-on-fire (Thanks, Dick!) articles like these.
It's really not that hard to beat the market. Simply BUY the funds in the smaller percentile that ALWAYS do, or at least ALWAYS do over time.
Also, use of the word "NEVER" is usually not a good idea in these contexts. LOTS of PMs and analysts last year predicted Small Caps, Value, Foreign and EMs were places to be this year. So far, they weren't right, they were very right.

Thanks for sharing. If I understand the premise of the article - it's really about Index Funds vs. Active Management. It makes a compelling case for just investing in the S&P 500 Index and not trying to find the "hot hand" or chase a portfolio manager because they can't consistently beat the Index 95-97% of the time. It's what Warren Buffett is doing with his money when he passes away.
I understand the Index vs. Active discussion and I own some index funds. I agree that it's very difficult to have a portfolio that consistently beats the S&P over the long term.
Using MFO Premium ... let's take BFGFX as an example. The fund has been around for 14 years. It's +4.8 to the S&P over the life of the fund. It's APR has never trailed the S&P in it's history and last year it beat the S&P by 96.7 and +31.7 the year before.
Would it be safe to assume that this fund is part of the 3-5% that found a way to beat the S&P 500 Index (at least over the last 14 years)? What am I missing? Or is that the point? We won't be successful at trying to beat it over the long term. Genuine ?

Look closely at interest rate risk, usually measured by duration. Be wary of anything over 5 years avg duration. It is the reason I left a couple possible bond OEFs off my list.
Note that PTIAX does not publish its duration. Spoke to them years ago and was told the reason is basically to protect us average investors from ourselves. Interest rate risk is not completely/accurately measured by avg duration and the firm does not want its avg duration to be incorrectly interpreted as a measure of PTIAX's interest rate risk.
Disclaimer: LT owner of PTIAX and comfortable with whatever avg duration it has, albeit largely unknown.

PIMIX had a sizable drawdown in 2020, -11.3% and finally recovered for the year. So the risk aspect is higher than expected. Performance-wise the fund is way way too big and trailed other bond funds for last several years.
PRSNX had a smaller drawdown and recovered quicker. 2020 was a unusual year where the boring total bond index fund performed quite well. Will see how bonds will do this year with higher inflation, but Fed will keep rate flat for another year.

My update - PTIAX and RCTIX is not available in TRP Brokerage. I am deciding between PIMIX, HSNIX and TRP's own PRSNX...I've owned PONAX in another account and they have receovered well from March 2020 volatility. Next, from what I can see the PRSNX seems to protect better on the downside and it's USD Hedge adds a unique wrinkle. The top performer in the past 3 & 5 years, HSNIX, seems to take the most risk and potentially protect less. Although it came roaring back...

Although, I no longer post on the MFO board I still visit and read it. The last time hank visited was December of 2020. His extended absence gives me pause. With this, I'll be keeping him in my thoughts and prayers. Hopefully, he will be back soon. Skeet
Here is a link to the last post made by hank. https://mutualfundobserver.com/discuss/discussion/57465/which-of-these-2-funds-is-riskier-safer-over-the-next-1-3-years-dodfx-vs-dodix

Thank you for posting. Have not follow Royce funds since they were sold to Legg Mason. I hope the rotation will hold in the coming years.

Well I watched WAITING FOR SUPERMAN, so I guess I'm now allowed to state opinions again. It throws a ton of different issues into the air, so commenting intelligently on them would take as long as the documentary. While some may choose to disagree, I saw a lot of things which agreed with what I was saying: Kids who are willing to work hard have involved parents, and who operate under reasonable levels of discipline; self-applied or otherwise, are likely to be successful. Others will tend not be. Pretty much what I said going in.
Yes, there are systemic problems. Yes, not all teachers are 'good', work hard, etc; just like any other field. The film strongly implied that unions were a major problem. Is it worth my time to point out that many of the very worst state educational systems (per the documentary) do not have unions while some of the best do? Is it worth noting to anyone that my home district, and the one in which I taught for twenty years, was 50% minority, provided free lunch to a huge percentage of its population, and was famously the inspiration for the NY Magazine article "Welcome to Newburgh, Murder Capital of NY".
https://tcf.org/content/commentary/welcome-to-newburgh-murder-capital-of-new-york/?session=1
Yet despite all of this, Newburgh integrated its schools by being one of the first NY districts to institute 'magnet schools'. While there were initially parochial schools; in time, ALL kids attended the public schools in Newburgh. People didn't flee because discipline was enforced and the educational program was superior to anything around. It was not uncommon for the very best students to graduate with a year of college credit. In my senior year, out of a class of approximately 1000, we ended up graduating 850; not the 300 and something suggested by the SUPERMAN documentary. Many of those who did not graduate chose to drop out as soon as possible and go to work. This was especially a problem with the latino population.
Tenure is proclaimed to be a problem, and it can be in some cases...but...one has to ask why, after three years of observing, a district gets itself saddled with a poor teacher? Can part of the problem be poor administrator oversight? Or maybe good candidates don't grow on trees and districts have to take what they can get? Why would that be? As for getting rid of tenured teachers, the hitch seems to be that you have to document the problem, and that seems to be difficult for administrators to do (which comes back to that oversight issue).
And if kids are being "passed along" and the school "failing" as a result, it's not the teachers doing it. In these cases, they are instructed to pass the kid along. Why would unions have any effect on THAT? If you abdicate your responsibility, have no standards, refuse to accept failure or impose consequences, how could you possibly expect a favorable outcome? We absolutely need to fix the system and get good people in there, but there is no simple and painless fix.

I dont know if you can access this page from Bloomberg without a subscription but it addresses the equity duration issue less comprehensively in the context of bond duration as well
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2021-02-06/danger-lurks-in-global-markets-transfixed-by-rising-bond-yields?sref=OzMbRRMQ
"Equity duration is a bit trickier to grasp. Some use dividend yields to calculate how many years it will take to get one’s capital back without any dividend growth, with more time equating to higher duration -- broadly speaking, a lower dividend rate means a higher duration."

Crash asserted nonsense and I called him on it with substantiation. Then he started handwaving about a just society but calling for more flunking of kids.
Whatever.
Racqueteer, this may not be the best month to trot out the tired bootstraps argument yet again. It does remain perennially popular among some of us nonminority types, and even among some minorities too. Why can't everyone be like the Jews and the Asians and others similarly situated? What racism? What structural inequality?
As for my career, I have been a teen worker, HS teacher, university TA, and most recently sometime HS coach and sub. Also parent and grandparent. Also married to an elem-schoolteacher for a decade. I do know the gut feeling of being in a difficult classroom. It all can be very discouraging, not to say difficult to have insights about.
But I know that this is pernicious crap at the talk-radio level: 'You can't solve real, significant problems --- not at the root --- by throwing money at those problems.'

The problem, to me, with BOTH sides is the unwillingness to bend from some absolutist stance. To my way of thinking, everyone is entitled to a fair chance. That may entail more help to some individuals than others. Ultimately, however, good intentions aside, I can't MAKE someone do what is necessary to be successful. And, like the reality or not, the society in which one lives has a huge impact on the outcome. Money is almost certainly an issue, but attitude on ALL sides is as well. "Throwing money" at a problem isn't the same thing as properly funding productive strategies. If we as a society were actually serious about the issue, we'd have better pay in hard to staff districts than in affluent ones. We have just the opposite. Further, it would be more 'help' to struggling students to have classrooms which are orderly (disciplined) than not.
Having spent almost 30 years teaching mostly chemistry and physics in a heavily minority district, I know that I was drawing my classes from about half the population. Even THAT population was underperforming its potential; a situation which became WORSE over my career, Discipline issues became a greater and greater issue as time went by; since the schools didn't want to have 'bad statistics'. This despite the fact that, in a class of 1,000 students, there were probably only a dozen kids accounting for 75% of the serious instances. Instead of controlling THOSE kids, 'we' lightened up on enforcement and the problem spread.
I don't want ANY kids to fail, but the reality is that, if you set standards, SOME will not meet them. The 'solution' isn't to lower the standards so that EVERYONE 'succeeds'. If you don't end up actually KNOWING anything, how is that 'succeeding'? Anyway, by all means, make it possible TO succeed, but don't expect that you can make everyone DO it.