May I join this commiseration? Maurice, long gone MFO poster, was also a Third Ave and Acorn (Ralph Wagner) suffering soul. I owned Fairholme from its very early days in NJ, along with Third Ave when Marty was running it. Great returns for both, reports made for good reading, portfolio themes and holdings made perfect sense.
Then Berkowitz became seduced and infatuated with the abyss - Sears - along with his relative Charlie Fernandez (another story for those two characters) and his modern art collection. Bruce went native in Miami, rather he went gaga, man o man!
I kept swearing I would dump Fairholme after visiting Sears morgues - oops, meant stores. Several years ago I bailed but still follow his anemic portfolio and skimpy reports and shrinkage of AUM. Third Ave was a mess once Marty retired, including the debacle at TA Credit and contentious President who left it deep in the dirt and illiquid. Revolving door of TAVFX managers were inversely related to the worsening results and holdings that were the total opposite of what Whitman taught, preached and built the Fund to achieve. Last in the clown car for me was Chip Rowley, with no discernible record, who's purchases were dumped by the Fund after he left. Waiter, check please.
I also dumped Acorn at the same time as TAVFX but that track record was better though bloated and mediocre.
My philosophy has been to invest with an honest, competent and insightful manager. But that has gone into the crypt. Better to invest in a team who have a strong record and can counter the impulses and obsessions of a single manager. Once the barrel goes over the cliff, we shareholders suffer. The creaming of management fees off the top remains.

"DODFX is a mediocre FLV stock fund that has only kept pace with IC+ bond fund DODIX for the past ten years.
ISTM that you're rolling up multiple factors into a single number. Over the past ten years, DODFX has turned in four star performance. It is rated three stars for risk adjusted performance.
While it's more than fair to consider risk since that's @hank's main concern here, it's not quite fair to mix raw performance and risk adjusted performance in the same sentence: "mediocre" (risk-adjusted) and "kept pace" (raw performance).
We can take a closer look at those ten year performances. DODFX has outperformed its category by an average of 1.03% over the past decade (through Sept. 18, per M*). DODIX has outperformed its category by 0.40% over the past decade. Based on these figures, which is the mediocre fund?
Sure, DODIX has kept pace with DODFX. But that's because a mediocre core plus fund has outpaced a mediocre FLV fund over a decade, 4.26% to 3.95%.
"What about BND vs RBIN??"
Okay, what about it? Seriously.
Is it your thesis that a portfolio consisting of these two funds and others shouldn't be periodically rebalanced? Because current rebalancing would effectively take some money from BND and add it to RBIN. Of course that would be within the larger scope of an entire portfolio.
There are certainly many people who think rebalancing is overrated. I had asked the same question: "should [we] take money out of cash and bet it on foreign large cap value funds [that have lost value]?"
To put it another way: should rebalancing be a one-way street? Should we move money out of (long term) riskier categories into (long term) less risky categories when the former have done well, but we shouldn't rebalance the other way? That would mean we don't move money from bonds to stocks even though core plus bond have had a better ten year run (even the mediocre ones) than foreign large value funds.

I doubt anyone owns this fund or cares. I stuck with Mr. Berkowitz and have been suffering for a while. He owned Sears of course and rode it to ~0. Not sure if he also owned other stinkers. He no longer gives interviews and his reports are very brief. The past two years he has been on fire still lagging overall (i am pretty sure S&P not sure about value index). He stuck to his guns and lowered fees recently. In 2019 fund was up 32.06% and this year so far 50%. St. joe is killing it this year along with imperial metals (tiny position). He still owns Fannie preferred and i guess his last hope is Supreme Court. I briefly owned CGM focus. I also owned third avenue value and that ride was miserable; i finally sold a long while ago. I never owned Bill Miller funds. I also owned and finally sold Royce small cap value. George whitney was killing it a long while ago but then performance turned south and he either left Royce or was let go. Jay Kaplan took over and the ride has been miserable. Morningstar turned sour on Berkowitz a long while ago and gave FAIRX a negative rating. Now they are dropping coverage on the fund. TIMES HAVE CHANGED.

Wow! Lots to unpack there...I'll just address a couple points.
DODFX appears to be team managed with 5 of the 8 managers being there since 2001-2007. It's been a mediocre, M* 3-star fund in all report periods, 3 years, 5 years and 10 years.
What makes you think that somehow that same mgmt team that has only produced 3-star ratings for their entire tenure are all of a sudden gonna turn this fund into something they've been unable to do during their entire 10-20 year tenures?
DODFX has had negative returns in 4 of the past 10 years, with double-digit losses in 3 of them, 2011, 2015 and 2018, ranging between -11% to -18%. It's actually in the RED in 2020, in a year when worthy FLV funds like CIVVX are UP 5%.
You've already posted that DODIX has virtually matched DODFX's 10-yr performance with DODIX only having ONE small loss in ONE year. (Actually, it lost -0.59% in 2015 and -0.31% in 2018.)
All that said, DODFX and DODIX are an apples and oranges comparison, or more accurately, 90/10 Foreign/US stocks vs 90/10 US/Foreign bonds.
DODFX's SD is 5x-6x that of DODIX and that's not going to change much at all, overnight, or over a 3-10 year period.
I kindly suggest that you spend a little time examining exactly what these funds respectively own, and what SD and other risk measurements mean (see Investopedia link), and how those two items make this decision pretty easy.
https://www.investopedia.com/investing/measure-mutual-fund-risk/
The conclusions that should be drawn are:
DODFX is a mediocre FLV stock fund that has only kept pace with IC+ bond fund DODIX for the past ten years.
DODFX is inherently a much higher risk fund than DODIX and the chance of it not meeting investors return expectations is significantly higher.

Correction: The “SD” went over my head. Not something I read or think about. 90% of my holdings don’t change except for rebalancing. I’m simply trying to calculate all the various risk components that factor into decision making where short term discretionary moves may apply. Others are welcome to use SD or any other component. Some of the factors I look at involve: central banks and interest rate trends, relative strengths of competing economies across the globe, govt. fiscal policies, currencies, investor sentiment and money flows. But the thing that prompted this question is the sharp divergence over recent years in the performance of the two funds in question - with the more conservative offering way out in front.
I’m also biased towards D&C, having been with them some 20 years, which also affects my outlook somewhat. I know that international markets have wave-like patterns, with different global economies rising and falling, not always in sync. So, I tend to view an international fund that has lagged peers for a number of years as having greater potential than those that have ridden the crest of the wave. Another consideration is the potential for large gain that should be part of the risk equation ISTM. By that measure it’s clear international stocks have much greater potential for gain today than short or moderate term credit instruments do.

Still it is interesting that DODIX is not positioned for rising rates while DODFX appears to be. Different teams but same family.

Yes - I’m surprised to see DODIX out 4.8 years on duration. In terms of volatility, it feels a lot shorter. It’s as if the two D&C teams aren’t communicating. But it also helps explain DODIX’s outperformance this year. Thanks to @MrRuffles for picking up on that (rare) slip. I’d probably have missed it myself.
Bottom line: DODIX and many others playing that space (intermediate duration / mid and lower investment grade bonds) have had an outsized year that’s not likely to repeat. That’s largely due to the Fed’s efforts on interest rates and in providing at least tacit backing for BBB corporates (generally considered borderline investment grade). I’m assuming that you can only pull the same rabbit out of the same hat once. So for 2020, the bond cart was up-ended.

"Clearly DODFX is positioned for a rising rate environment."
I'm not so sure about that. Over the past few years, it had been positioned as a short term fund (see M* historical style boxes here), but in 2020 it extended its duration into intermediate term territory.

There’s a little confusion here. @hank is talking about DODFX wrt rising rates (as in rising rates lead to more profits for financials, hence its overweight in financials), not DODIX, which your discussion of M* style boxes links to.

"Clearly DODFX is positioned for a rising rate environment."
I'm not so sure about that. Over the past few years, it had been positioned as a short term fund (see M* historical style boxes here), but in 2020 it extended its duration into intermediate term territory.
Also, as I suggested above, rising interest rates could be a result of an improving economy. In that case, one would expect the spread between junk and IG to decline, making junk more attractive. In addition, junk bonds are less sensitive to interest rate changes, tending to a fair degree to track equities. See, e.g. this Balance piece.
Yet as you noted, DODIX is not taking advantage of its ability to hold lower grade bonds. It is one of the few core plus funds with a M* average credit rating of A. (Just 17 hold A rated portfolios vs. 25 with BB portfolios; over half the core plus funds have portfolios rated BBB.)
ISTM the fund is positioned for a slow slog; low and steady rates, where it is betting on rates not going up (and prices dropping), while not willing to bet on avoiding short term problems in the economy (where junk bond prices would fall).
In the equity market, rising interest rates are good for the financial sector, because people expect higher rates to lead to higher spreads and greater profits. I don't know how that connects with financial sector bond prices though. I really have no idea unless one expects lower profits to substantially increase the risk of financial institutions being unable to service their IG debt.

DODFX currently holds 27% in financials. That’s very high. In fact it’s significantly higher than the 19% financial stake reported by T.Rowe’s Equity Income Fund (PFRDX). Clearly DODFX is positioned for a rising rate environment. Helps explain its underperformance in recent years as well as its more recent turn-around. One’s opinion on the question, I submit, needs to take into account their presumptions regarding the future of interest rates - as well as inflation and currency valuations.
Yes, per @msf, DODIX may by prospectus invest large amounts in non investment grade paper. But it hasn’t done so, currently holding just slightly above 10% in junk bonds - nearly all of it in the highest rated tier (BB).
- “Using the theory that one should take money from winners and place it on losers, we should take money out of cash and bet it on foreign large cap value funds?”
It’s an intriguing conjecture. But, No, I wouldn’t recommend that. On the other hand, if one is using “play money” (defined as 1-5% of a larger well diversified portfolio) I think it might be a good idea to do just that.

@stillers +1 (though I might recalculate the three year std dev after adjusting for the March 2020 outlier)
"I agree with stillers that beyond the 3-year threashhold DODFX has outperformed DODIX. Yet, according to Lipper, at the 10-year point their annualized returns are nearly identical: DODIX: +4.67% / DODFX: +4.85%"
However, since the timeframe you are interested in is 3 years, we can compare performance data over the past three years. M* reports that the foreign large cap value category lost an annualized average of 0.70%, through Nov 30th. See its trailing total returns here (click on Monthly tab). DODFX did bit better, losing just 0.10% annually. Fidelity reports that the average prime MMF made 1.31% annually through Nov 30th (see its graph here).
Using the theory that one should take money from winners and place it on losers, we should take money out of cash and bet it on foreign large cap value funds? Surely that doesn't sound right; MMFs are safer investments, even now, than DODFX. One can stretch rules of thumb too far, especially over short time frames.
I do agree with Giroux that IG bonds do not look attractive. However, if one accepts the Fed statement that it will keep short term rates near zero for the next three years, then one might eek out a bit better return with IG bonds than with a "high" yield savings account. That's at least until the economy heats up, which could push longer term rates higher. IMHO this small potential improvement in return isn't worth the risk but it's a thought.
But DODIX isn't a vanilla IG bond fund. It can invest a significant amount in junk - it is a "core plus" fund. While IG bonds and the stock market have essentially no correlation (BND and VTSMX have a correlation coefficient of -0.04), DODIX and VTSMX have a correlation coefficient of 0.58 over the past three years.
Edit: Over the past decade, DODFX has outperformed its category by just north of 1% annually. Not great, but enough for M* to characterize its 10 year performance as "above average" (vs. its 3 year "average" performance). It earns a lower star rating than its performance suggests because its risk is rated "high" over all time frames, and star ratings are risk adjusted.

hank: I agree with @stillers that beyond the 3-year threshold DODFX has outperformed DODIX.

Hank, FWIW, I did NOT say that. I only presented SD data for the 3-yr period, not performance data.
On cash substitutes, good that you can take the volatility of DODIX as a cash sub. That said, there is a wasteland of 2020 M* forums participants who previously thought that several multi-sector bond funds with high concentrations of securitized holdings were good cash subs. They learned some very hard lessons in Feb-Mar this year.
It doesn't surprise me that DODFX and DODIX had similar TRs over 10 years. No offense, but DODFX is not a very good FLV fund, while DODIX is a worthy domestic IC+ bond fund.
Bottom Line: Don't overthink this. You're asking if a mediocre international stock fund is riskier than a domestic IC+ fund. Risk, in its simplest form, is uncertainty concerning loss. SD, while not exactly a measure of that, is a still a worthy measure of it and DODFX's SD is about 5x-6x greater than DODIX's for all prior time frames.
Granted, the macro outlook sure is pointing to outperformance of international stocks in the coming year(s). Now if I only had a nickel for the multiple times that's been the macro thinking over my 40 years of investing, I'd, well, probably have enough money for something.

In its 30+ year history, dating back to 1989, I can find only 5 years when DODIX failed to generate a positive return. In only 1 of those years did its loss exceed 1% (it lost 2.9% in 1994). As a substitute for a money market fund (vs a clone or replica) I can under most circumstances accept that amount of volatility. Others may make their own decisions. Yahoo Performance data: DODIX
I agree with @stillers that beyond the 3-year threshold DODFX has outperformed DODIX. Yet, according to Lipper, at the 10-year point their annualized returns are nearly identical: DODIX: +4.67% / DODFX: +4.85%
And I agree that an international stock fund is inherently riskier than a predominately investment grade domestic bond fund. That’s a mathematically provable thesis as well as conventional wisdom. But an individual investor might view risk differently, asking “Which of these choices is more likely to generate gain and less likely to produce a loss over a relatively short near-term period (1-3 years) based on the macro outlook?” I’m suggesting that on the second note the “playing field” is much less uneven now than it has conventionally been. Others are concerned about fixed income as well. David Giroux in his last semi annual report called the investment grade bond market “extremely unattractive and in fact the most unattractive it has been in my whole career.” Capital Appreciation Semi-Annual Report 2020
Not seeking to answer my own question, but rather to explain why I felt it deserved to be asked. If the question didn’t have at least two sides to it, it wouldn’t be worth asking. And thanks @sillers for your input.

@wxman123 - thanks for your thoughts. I’ve been invested in PIMIX for the past 3-years during it’s asset bloated period and investment faux pas (see Argentina). Analysis and opinions from online folks has challenged me to reconsider this position on multiple occasions, even while it manages to surge during the 4th quarter each year. Still, I’ve scaled it back by 50% of my original investment.
I’ve appreciated DIAL’s rule-based investment theme of maintaining positions in 6 categories:
- HY Corporates = 30%
- Emerging Market debt = 20%
- US MBS = 15%
- US IG Corporates = 15%
- US Treas = 10%
- Global Treas = 10%
Best to all!
Brian aka Level5

OH! Now I get it. Thank you.

@Ben,
Many years ago, on the antecedent FundAlarm site, someone (?Rono) proposed that folks who set their hair on fire about a sudden dip in mutual fund NAV during distribution season without first checking whether a distribution had been made, then brought anxious questions to the board ("What happened yesterday that my fund took a deep dive when all indexes were up?"), should repent this mortal sin by bringing donuts for everyone. A mendicant posture also seemed appropriate.

DODIX - Up 9% YTD / 9.3% one year / 6+% annually over the past three years
DODFX - Up 1.74% YTD / 2.37% one year / 1.68% annnually the past three years
The question isn’t purely academic. I opened a small spec position in DODFX about two and a half months ago. Just a little play money - pennies. The fund has caught fire of late. Normally, I’d now shift the spec money from DODFX back into DODIX, locking in a 20-30% gain. DODIX is, after all, clearly the more “conservative” fund. It serves as a cash substitute for investors at Dodge Cox which doesn’t have a money market fund.
However, at this juncture everything looks “upside-down”. It’s the “safe” conservative fund that’s been screaming hot for several years while the “riskier” international fund has hardly moved. Regression to the mean - maybe?

DIAL looks to me as a pretty good option:
1) ER=0.28% is cheap for Multi sector bond. PIMIX ER=1.09%(I know, it includes borrowings and repurchase agreements but still it's expenses)
2) Risk/reward looks good. I used MFO data for 3 years, Multi sector funds + MFO rating of 4-5 and DIAL showed up while PIMIX didn't.
3) Distribution are at the lower range under 3%.
See MFO Table (link).

@Ben,
Many years ago, on the antecedent FundAlarm site, someone (?Rono) proposed that folks who set their hair on fire about a sudden dip in mutual fund NAV during distribution season without first checking whether a distribution had been made, then brought anxious questions to the board ("What happened yesterday that my fund took a deep dive when all indexes were up?"), should repent this mortal sin by bringing donuts for everyone. A mendicant posture also seemed appropriate.

@MikeW: I was going to try to learn something about this Causeway fund but M* is thwarting my efforts to look at the fund holdings. This value firm has been a M* darling for a long time, although it’s hard to understand what the (fatal?) attraction might be. The firm has been hemorrhaging assets over the past five years resulting in the « flagship » fund holding only $50M. Causeway has not had any better luck in EM value, either. You are certainly right to note that this year has been fabulous. M* will still adore value, however.
Ok, now I see the holdings. M* reports that Global Value has been selling large percentages of its top 20 holdings. Surely, this is not a sign of conviction. Maybe you have some play money you were going to give to your family? Why not make a donation to a struggling MF?

I’m just as poor as you, @Derf. But a friend of mine made so much in Bitcoin in the last couple of years that he was able to buy his daughter a house. I’m not tempted.

I have been watching Columbia Diversified Fixed Inc Allc ETF (DIAL) for the past 2-years. As a multi-sector fixed income ETF:
https://www.columbiathreadneedleus.com/investment-products/exchange-traded-funds/Columbia-Diversified-Fixed-Income-Allocation-ETF/DIAL/details/?cusip=19761L508&_n=1&cid=2020CTI_Google_CTIDIALETF&gclid=EAIaIQobChMI3Lzo3-rS7QIV1_bICh1TnQZcEAAYAyAAEgKmrPD_BwE&gclsrc=aw.ds
This fund seeks investment results that, before fees and expenses, closely correspond to the performance of the Beta Advantage® Multi-Sector Bond Index.
The Beta Advantage® Multi-Sector Bond Index is a rules-based multi-sector strategic beta approach to measuring the performance of the debt market through representation of six sectors, each focused on yield, quality and liquidity of the particular eligible universe. The index will have exposure to the following six sectors of the debt market: U.S. Treasury securities; global ex-U.S. treasury securities; U.S. agency mortgage-backed securities; U.S. corporate investment-grade bonds; U.S. corporate high-yield bonds; and emerging markets sovereign debt.
It’s 3-year history shows:
YTD = 8.26 / 3-year CAGR = 6.64 / StDev = 5.51 / sharpe = .93 / sortino = 1.22
I am interested in this ETF as a substitute for PIMIX and would appreciate your thoughts / opinions...
Brian aka level5