The April 2020 quarterly newsletter describes the SVARX active management approach over the preceding two years. The chart provides a good visual description. Scroll down to the Active Management section of the newsletter. (Reviewing the 12/31/19 and and 3/31/20 portfolio composition in the table above that section is also instructive.)
THE FULL SPECTRUM - April 2020

Thanks for the info. The chart in the link above is worth watching and see how SVARX compared to PIMIX and other bond funds

But since 2020 SVARX made so much more than these funds, see 1 year (chart) and how PIMIX lost more than 12% while SVARX lost less than 2%
Reminder: there is no guarantee that risk/reward will continue. I'm not going to buy it because I have been doing my own trading and portfolio protection.

Just wondering if there’s an option to upload documents to TRP’S website so you don’t have to rely on the mail being sorted? I’ve used this option at Schwab in the past and am in the process of doing the same to transfer a 401k out of the nightmare called Empower Retirement so as to eliminate one weak link in the chain.

I did find out an interesting tid-bit though, not all closed funds are really closed funds. He told me that if the amount is large enough for moving 401k funds in, that they could be deposited into currently closed funds. I've been looking at PRWCX Capital Appreciation and was told I could open an account and actually deposit funds into it if it's the right amount. Does this sound right?

Yes, this is a open secret that occasionally comes up here. I used this loophole by transferring part of a small 401k to TRP and opening a Rollover IRA in PRWCX a couple of years ago.
Then I transferred one share of PRWCX from this new IRA to an existing IRA at Fido. This let me buy additional shares of PRWCX in my Fido IRA.

BT2020: What FD is missing here is the leverage is HIGHER now then earlier in the year.
With HIGHER leverage and the corresponding INCREASE in treasury rates, interest costs and the associated risk for the leverage has increased then earlier in the year.

Maybe you are the one who missed my main 2 points. Please reread it.
It means you can't predict where the leverage will be next week or in 4 weeks. Leverage was used years ago. Example: the 10 year treasury is around 1.1%, in 2018 it was over 3% and in 2019 over 2%...mmm...are we anything close to that?
In fact, in 2017-2019 the 10 year was higher than 2%.

I like Firstrade for the access it provides to some institutional/advisor class shares, especially without charging a transaction fee. I used it for this purpose several years ago; I'll wager I'm the only one here to have walked into its office, both before and after it moved.
But it is a barebones operation. Ultimately I found that even as a buy-and-hold investor the access to a small incremental number of funds unavailable elsewhere wasn't worth the hassle of having one more account to deal with.
Firstrade labels only some of its funds NTF. I'm guessing that means that like other brokerages (e.g. Schwab) it receives fees from these funds for servicing accounts. You'll find links to its separate lists of Load Funds, No Load Funds, and NTF funds next to the fund search box near the top of this page.
True, it currently charges no commission (transaction fee) for any of them. But I can't find a statement that it waives loads on any fund in its load list. Take PIMCO for example.
All the PIMCO A shares such as PIMAX are on the load fund list (Type = LOAD). It at least appears that one would pay a load for these shares, just as one would at Fidelity. Unfortunately, Firstrade does not sell PIMCO Institutional class shares such as PIMIX.
Speaking of WellsTrade, it looks like PIMIX is available there with no transaction fee and no minimum. I walked away from WT years ago for a variety of reasons and have never looked back. So this is not a recommendation to consider them.

Over the years I have had wonderful investment ideas thrown my way on this site which, I very infrequently post to. I thought I would share my experience with everyone who might be interested, as it is saving me loads of cash. And no I have no affiliation with this company.
6 months ago Wellstrade (Wells Fargo) sent me a letter telling me that my free 100 per year transaction fee fund purchases/sales would no longer apply. This, after I opened the account 10 years prior because of this promised feature. Let us not even discuss the nefarious other stuff going on with this company. So after due diligence I moved most of my fund portfolio to Firstrade. I left a few NTF funds and ETF's which are fee free for trading in the account.
Since September I have found the company has over 12,000 funds all ntf. I really could not find any fund I was interested in, not available. Even better many of the institutional type funds are available with $500 minimum investments. So with no transaction fees and institutional expense ratios less than the investor funds, I am saving quite a bit of buckeroonees. ACH transfers are available immediately for trading. No 2-3 day waits any longer. The online site is very easy to use.
And now the bad. If you need customer service by phone expect a long, long wait, usually 20-90 minutes. That is not a typo. Having a huge load of cash invested ,does not give you preferential treatment unless you trade frequently and that does not include funds. Only one bank account for etf transfers can be linked to your account. Transfers and other business takes a little longer than at the major brokerages. Fund prices are updated around 6-7 am the day after the transactions or market price changes.
All in all for, for saving gobs of money especially if you have a large fund portfolio, will be a godsend,as long as you can tolerate the above quirks ,which I have found to be quite tolerable. My other big box brokerages have better service but of course the cost is higher . Hopefully this information is useful to some. I just love this site and wanted to provide a great money saving idea for those interested. Have a great day Fundly

Absolutely do your own diligence. First, we don't know how long or how high the leverage has been. Second, the 10 year was much higher years ago and the fund did OK too. Third, the manager has been using short positions too. Per M* fund holdings I can see 2 positions at -10.03% and -9.89

What FD is missing here is the leverage is HIGHER now then earlier in the year.
With HIGHER leverage and the corresponding INCREASE in treasury rates, interest costs and the associated risk for the leverage has increased then earlier in the year.

The input thus far is very much appreciated. Additional thoughts are welcomed. FTEC is an excellent choice, too; as we also invest in this etf. @Old_Joe , yes; Ted would state that QQQ is the one. @davidrmoran , yes, perhaps Ted would also suggest these. If there were a larger dollar amount available, I would also be tempted to suggest some of the money be split into FSMEX or IHI (an eft twin) for direct exposure to medical tech.
SPY and most related indexes that track the SP-500 are a blended U.S. equity position. I do not consider this a poor choice for many portfolios; but consider an investment in QQQ or similar to be a better fit for a young investor. SPY type funds do represent a much larger sample of U.S. equity; but one also finds sectors of this area that can be a drag on performance, too. Over the past several years, financials and energy have been brakes on performance. But, the recent inclusion of TESLA and other ongoing changes will continue to affect this mix.
SPY

Sectors	Fund %	Cat %
Basic Materials	2.42	2.61
Consumer Cyclical	12.66	11.17
Financial Services	13.90	13.42
Real Estate	2.29	2.47
Communication Services	10.26	10.21
Energy	2.60	1.90
Industrials	8.83	10.11
Technology	23.82	22.81
Consumer Defensive	6.78	7.99
Healthcare	13.77	14.76
Utilities	2.67	2.54

QQQ
With this is a much smaller sampling of U.S. equity (100 companies), but oriented to growth; but using market capitalization size to establish the holdings and percent. The prospectus indicates that the holdings percentage may be and are adjusted throughout any given time period.

Information Technology	47.90%
Consumer Discretionary	19.29%
Communication Services	18.22%
Health Care	6.39%
Consumer Staples	5.15%
Industrials	1.88%
Utilities	0.96%

Industry exposure:

Software	15.27%
Semiconductors & Semiconductor Equipment	13.96%
Technology Hardware, Storage & Peripherals	12.37%
Internet & Direct Marketing Retail	11.95%
Interactive Media & Services	10.35%
IT Services	4.59%
Automobiles	4.43%
Biotechnology	3.98%
Media	3.39%
Entertainment	3.11%

Thank you @Observant1 Every little bit of knowledge helps someone.
This connects to my QQQ post about the continuous attempts to awaken brains about investing, both young and old. I established and encouraged investment learning in 1985 when an investment club was put in place among 14 co-workers. After 5 years and too little interest or participation, the club was dissolved. But, years later I still had comments related to could've, would've and should've given more attention. Even with the brief market melt in 1987, the club had a very nice profit period. Some did benefit a bit when a 401k was introduced within the company. A few small victories here and there.
I'll add again, that we've presented the following book as an additional wedding or birthday gift.
The Millionaire Next Door, written in 1996. The math values provided in the book are from this time frame, but the "heart" of the book is about one's treatment of hard earned money.....how not to piss it away. Which leaves money for investing. A personal finance book in the best form, that also applies to current investors.

The April 2020 quarterly newsletter describes the SVARX active management approach over the preceding two years. The chart provides a good visual description. Scroll down to the Active Management section of the newsletter. (Reviewing the 12/31/19 and and 3/31/20 portfolio composition in the table above that section is also instructive.)
THE FULL SPECTRUM - April 2020

Don’t forget the most important part of the fund.
The 49% leverage and the huge position in swaps.
With the recent spike in the 10 year and if the rise in interest rates continues, the higher borrowing costs will be detrimental to this funds huge position in leverage.
Do your own due diligence on this fund.

Absolutely do your own diligence. First, we don't know how long or how high the leverage has been. Second, the 10 year was much higher years ago and the fund did OK too. Third, the manager has been using short positions too. Per M* fund holdings I can see 2 positions at -10.03% and -9.89
I found the semi-annual report from 3/31/2020 (link)and more than 50% is in treasury bills, mutual funds about 30%, MM at 13.8%(maybe used for leverage).
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JD_co: that's correct, Ralph Doudera, also runs HFSAX/SFHYX which also has a good risk/reward, but the min is 1 million for HFSAX at Schwab and the other is only for institutional customers. I can still buy SVARX at $5000 min + $49.95 fee, but I can't buy the Ins SVASX, Schwab doesn't recognize it.
3 years performance/SD...HFSAX 14.5/7.6...SPY 14.1/18.7

The portfolio manager for SVARX, Ralph Doudera, also handles HFSAX. Mr. Doudera has a Masters degree in Biblical studies and also a Masters in Mgmt/Finance.
His funds have performed extremely well with limited volatility. SVARX has 3 and 5 year returns just over 10%, and its worst ever Quarter in 7 years was a -2.06% loss. Nice track record.

I only started following this fund in the last several months.
SVARX is a fund of other fixed income funds. The ER=2.95 is very high, but the results are very good. Several of these funds have ER of 1.5% already. BTW, in 03/2020 the fund lost less than 2% peak to trough. The risk-adjusted performance easily beat VBINX+VWIAX
As of 1/15/2020: (One year SD is from PortVis)
SVARX performance/SD...............1 year=23.4%/6.4.......3 year=10.4% annually/5.4.....5 year=11.4% annually/4.9.
VBINX (60/40) performance/SD.....1 year=23.4%/16.8.....3 year=11.2% annually/11.9...5 year=11.15 annually/9.7.
VWIAX (40/60) performance/SD.....1 year=23.4%/11.55...3 year=7.2% annually/7.7......5 year=8.0% annually/6.3.
When you look at their (site) they do a good job not to mention the fact they invest in other fixed income funds.
Their top funds from M* as of 9/30/2020 are and by now it's probably different :)
IOFIX=special securitized
NHYIX=HY
Recv Nuveen Prf Secs Inc
Pimco Govt Mm Instl
BDKNX=special securitized
Eaton Vance Floating=bank loans
Ishares Tr Pfd Inc S (-10%)
CMOYX=CLMAX=special securitized
The yield is low under 1% for 2020 and about 3-3.5% for 2019 and about 2.5% in 2018.
So, if you are looking for a good risk/reward fund, maybe that's the one. See one year (chart) and change to 3-5.
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I'm not sure what the managers of SVARX are doing, but I managed my own portfolio with the following goals: making more than 6% annually, never losing more than 3% from any last top, SD under 3. In the last 3 years, since retirement in 2018, I have used mainly bond funds with several very short term (hours-days) of stocks/ETF/CEFs, usually very concentrated in 2-3 bond OEFs, using momentum and switching between best performing funds but also selling to cash when risk is very high as I did in Q4/2018 and Q1/2020. My portfolio risk-adjusted performance below as of 12/31/2020 are actually even better. Directly from Schwab, you can see below that SD=2.3 for both one and three years. The portfolio never lost more than 1% from any last top during 2018-2020.

I have invested in ARTRX for several years - a very consistent fund with a reasonable drawdown in 2020. The manager has been running the func since inception - quite remarkable. Covers all developed global markets without emerging market exposure. I use separate funds dedicated to emerging market. The same management team also have a newer global fund that has some EM but this fund adds another 0.30% to the expense ratio.

somewhat OT, and you have get past the wack lede, but an interesting thing to know maybe for investing outside the US
https://humbledollar.com/2021/01/lost-abroad/

Methinks he doth protest too much. Foreign tax credits can be carried back one year and forward ten years, so he may not have lost his tax credit as much as he would like you to believe he did. I've carried forward and later used foreign tax credits.
Basically, you can't take a credit now for foreign taxes paid at a higher rate than your current overall (not marginal) US rate. For example, suppose you owe $10K in taxes on $100K of taxable income (10%). If $20K of that income was foreign, and you paid $3000 in foreign taxes (15%), you could take a credit now for $2000 (10%) and carry over the remaining $1000 to use in future years.
The way the IRS describes it is different but amounts to the same thing:

Your foreign tax credit cannot be more than your total U.S. tax liability ... multiplied by a fraction. The numerator of the fraction is your taxable income from sources outside the United States. The denominator is your total taxable income from U.S. and foreign sources.

More important than his self pity ("It all seemed very personal") is whether your mutual fund passes through foreign taxes to you. The way funds generally work is that they pay for expenses (management fees and yes, taxes) out of earnings and pay you the net earnings as divs. The income you see on your 1040 is the usually the net income.
But sometimes, even though you're only getting net divs, the funds pretend that you got extra income and it was you, not the fund, that paid those foreign taxes with that extra income. So you might have $500 in "real" dividends, but on your 1099 you see $550 in divs and $50 in foreign taxes paid.
The question is: which funds pass through foreign taxes to you? A fund must make an election to pass through the taxes. They can't do so unless "more than 50 percent of the value ... of [the fund's] assets at the close of the taxable year consists of stock or securities in foreign corporations." 26 U.S. Code § 853(a)(1)
Generally, global funds don't make this election because they either typically have less than 50% invested abroad or because their portfolio could be near 50% and they want to be clear to investors. (Currently, M* shows 46/246 large cap world stock funds with over 50% non-US stocks.)
Somewhat surprisingly (to me) a number of international funds also decide not to pass through foreign taxes.

Zweig cautions that these funds are as risky as story stocks and cites research that showed that thematic funds underperformed conventional funds over time by about 0.5% per month.

As may be, but you have to admit that it'll take a good long time for the ARK funds to devolve to meet that 'standard'; unless there is a HUGE swoon for pretty much everything over a couple of years. Not discounting what you're saying, but they DO have a substantial lead at this point...

Yes, the fund dropped 60%, and yes it held mortgage bond insurance companies other than MBI. Yes, it was painful. But it wasn't that much worse than the typical LCV fund. Here's a chart for peak to trough of the fund 10/11/07 to 3/9/09.
It lost 61.34%. A LCV index fund (VVIAX) lost 58.97%. TAVFX did worse, sure. A lot worse? No. If you want to use the word "implode", it's the value side of the market that imploded. "Value trap" implies active stock selection, but passive management did just about as poorly. Whitman made some mistakes but he must have made a number of good calls as well to have come out average.
Meanwhile, TAVFX's cumulative 10-year returns are less than one-fifth the broad market's.
That's the post-Whitman era, which was my original point. He resigned as CIO over a decade ago, and as manager of TAVFX nine years ago. Without Whitman the fund has indeed turned in an absolutely abysmal performance - bottom 3% (though not quite as small as 1/5, closer to 1/3 as much total gain as that of the entire equity market). A whole lot worse on a relative basis than Whitman did before, during, and after the housing crisis.
Regarding the particular mortgage bond insurers it held between Oct 2007 and March 2009, does it really matter? In Oct 2007 MBI constituted 64% of these holdings. FWIW, Radian (which M* says was primarily in other businesses) constituted 27%. The rest was noise.
I recall that Whitman was involved in public disputes with another investor who was shorting that industry
From the NYTimes (repeating a link from above):

“MBIA is being victimized by an apparently well organized bear raid headed by William Ackman of Pershing Square Capital Management,” Mr. Whitman wrote.

Interesting read... Last post was 2016 but guess which suggestion looks terrific after 4 years? PRBLX and DSENX Nicely done @davidrmoran @benwp

There's no question that he was way wrong about mortgage insurance companies. However, despite this moderate sized bet, the fund performed respectably before and during the housing crisis.
Let's put some dates and numbers to paper. MBI would seem to be a good proxy for his investments in the mortgage insurance business (what in the annual statements is counted in "Financial Insurance/Credit Enhancement").
Oct 31, 2008: 3.57% of portfolio in financial ins., all MBI.
Oct 31,2007: 3.95% in financial ins., 64% of that in MBI.
Oct 31, 2006: 3.55% in financial ins., 65% of that in MBI.
I'm not going back further. MBI's stock price peaked just before the end of 2006 (Dec 28 close of 73.31 per Yahoo). "In 2007, home prices started to tumble." NPR.
From Dec 28, 2006 to March 5, 2008 (the low point for MBI), TAVFX outperformed the average large cap value fund by over 2% (not annualized) while underperforming VEIRX by about 1%.
M* chart.
In January 2008 the fund owned about 10% of MBI. That mistake by Whitman of doubling down brought its percentage of the fund's portfolio to around 5% (end of January N-Q). With the stock declining from his purchase price of $12.15 to a low of $2.29 on March 5, 2008 the position contributed around -4% to the fund's performance. Since then, MBI has gently risen in price.
Though his bets on mortgage insurers had a measurable impact on fund performance, bringing down a once superior fund to an average performing one, they did not seem to be the cause of the subsequent "implosion". That came later.
The fund started to underperform in the 2nd half of 2008, well after MBI had stabilized. Even at that, it had its moments and performed in line with large cap value funds until just a few months before Whitman resigned as manager, March 3, 2012.
M* chart 2008-March 3, 2012.

What would be the purpose ultimately? You would bail or add depending on something you saw? Really?
And you probably would do that anyway depending on performance over timespan (which for many investors has gotten shorter and shorter over the years).
I do agree that it is helpful to know what you got into, but you should have done that anyway, beforehand.
So what @Crash said. I want the chef to buy the ingredients and do the cooking and mixing or assembling. I eat the result. I am paying for the selection skills and judgment, and in the case of investment, tactics and decisions in response to circumstance.

Morningstar Portfolio Manager might be a good resource. It's a premium product, but some brokerage houses (such as T Rowe Price) offer it as a free benefit.
https://morningstar.com/help-center/user-guide/portfolio-manager
Also, determining how correlated your funds are to one another and the different sectors of the market is a worthwhile exploration. Morningstar again offers this tool in portfolio manager, but it can be found for free here (for stocks, ETFs, and indexes).
https://unicornbay.com/tools/asset-correlations
Here's an Asset Correlation Map (last 10 years):
https://guggenheiminvestments.com/mutual-funds/resources/interactive-tools/asset-class-correlation-map