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

I can tell you have a “PHD” @BenWP :)
(PHD = “pile it higher and deeper”)
Kidding aside - It’s a fascinating fund. I’ve held it from the start. But I still haven’t figured out how the 5 different managers keep from shooting one another. TRP tried a 2-manager approach with PRWCX 10-15 years back and it didn’t last long.

I can't understand why SWAN has a low ranking. It has to offer amongst the best risk-reward over it's short life, CAGR 15.9 Sharp 1.59 Max DD 5.06.

@waxman, Thanks for reading and commenting. Here is an explanation that I just posted on Seeking Alpha:
The Ranking system is good but not perfect. This article exploited some of areas, such as my lowest ranked funds, where an investor may follow shorter term trends instead of the ranking system. The benefit is that the spreadsheet does millions of calculations and provides good insights that would be impossible to keep straight without it.
One thing that hurts SWAN is its Lipper Category, "Large Cap Core", because I use the average bear market performance of the Lipper Category for the past three bear markets. It would be better classified as an "Alternative" in my opinion. Low yield also hurts. Momentum has been low during the past three months. Finally, Consistency is the percent of times the fund performed average or better during its life up to 13 years. It did great in 2020, but not 2020 for the Large-Cap Core Category.

I bought DIVO during the COVID pullback in March. Several years ago, I had spoken with the subadvisor, Capital Wealth Planning in Naples, FL about a separately managed account based on this strategy. Why bother when you can buy DIVO?

I agree, @little5bee on DIVO. I don't own it, but I like Amplify. The fund has been around since 2017 and has $140M in assets. I do prefer ETFs over CEFs, and the yield is competitive.
Thanks for reading.

I bought DIVO during the COVID pullback in March. Several years ago, I had spoken with the subadvisor, Capital Wealth Planning in Naples, FL about a separately managed account based on this strategy. Why bother when you can buy DIVO?

DIVO trades just like CII with a little less volatility, nice if you prefer an ETF over a CEF. Solid pick.

I bought DIVO during the COVID pullback in March. Several years ago, I had spoken with the subadvisor, Capital Wealth Planning in Naples, FL about a separately managed account based on this strategy. Why bother when you can buy DIVO?

@msf - You are absolutely correct re duration. I had no idea D&C was running that short a duration on DODLX. (I’ll have to read those fund reports even more closely.) FWIW - Yahoo puts the category average at 7.4 years - more than double what DODLX is at. I can’t explain it. Judging by DODLX’s recent performance & behavior I’d have guessed a longer duration than 3.4 years.
This won’t convince me that DODLX is less risky than PRIHX. I read a lot into a fund’s daily behavior and the latter certainly looks less dicey. (I’ve even begun stashing some excess budgetary cash in it - though I don’t recommend that to anyone else.)
FWIW - David Geroux might just agree with me re PRIHX’s relative attractiveness, writing in the earlier referenced fund report: “We find the rest of the fixed income market, outside of short-duration high yield bonds, to be extremely unattractive and in fact the most unattractive it has been in my whole career.”

- I’ve been slowly reducing exposure to this one for the last 9-10 months because it’s had a very good run in recent years and may be nearing some sort of retrenchment. The “slack” (so to speak) has been taken up by PBDIX and PRIHX, both of which I consider less risky - the former because of its higher credit quality (and lower ER) and the latter because of its shorter duration.

There are reasons to prefer muni bonds to taxable bonds (e.g. IRMAA in retirement, net investment income tax, etc.), but all else being equal, I'm missing some of the appeal of PRIHX.
As of Sept 30th, the effective duration of PRIHX was 4.34 years vs. 3.40 for DODLX (both per M*).
The SEC yields are 2.07% for PRIHX (as of Nov 30th), and 2.69% for DODLX (as of Sept. 30th). The latter translates to 2.04% after federal taxes of 24%, a virtual wash (albeit with a different reference date).
Where PRIHX looks better as a "regular" bond fund is in its much lower volatility (4.81 vs. 7.42 standard deviations) and much lower correlation with the equity market (0.21 coeff of correlation vs. 0.71 for DODLX), per Portfolio Visualizer.
As you wrote elsewhere, DODLX shifted 20% of its portfolio (into corporate bonds) in the first half of the year. It's a fund that (tries to) go where the market is moving, so I'm not particularly concerned about retrenchment. Though I do appreciate the desire to take some money off the table from the winners.

It's unclear what risk is to be mitigated. LLJB speaks of " put[ting] your kids in equities ... and very likely have dug them[] a deep hole after 7 years."
LLJB then goes on to put this in the context of sequence of return risk: "because they got unlucky with sequence of return risk." By definition, sequence of return risk assumes that you do not have insight into the sequence of returns.
Are we talking about sequence of return risk, where one does not know or have reliable guidance into the order of returns and where one may be lucky or unlucky, or are we talking about working with reliable guidance?
Given that this thread is about sequence of return risk, that this risk was specifically mentioned by LLJB, and that the article LLJB cited explicitly described accumulation phase sequence of return risk, I took "risk" to mean sequence of return risk. In that context, the unlucky sequence of returns that GMO predicted is merely one of many possible outcomes. One that will be realized "If they're right ...", but one with no greater likelihood than any other sequence of returns.
As I wrote before, if we're talking about a lump sum investment, there is no sequence of return risk. But there is in the accumulation phase if money is being added periodically. Here's a piece by Kitces on sequence of return risk in the accumulation phase.
https://www.kitces.com/blog/retirement-date-risk-how-sequence-of-returns-risk-impacts-a-pre-retirement-accumulator/
He writes:

the fundamental point is simply this: for investors that have no cash flows coming out or going in to a portfolio [lump sum investment], it’s feasible to just wait for long-term returns to manifest. However, for retirees taking distributions, or accumulators making contributions, the cash flows moving in/out of the portfolio introduce a sequence of return risk

Emphasis in original.
I also implied that accumulation phase glide paths are designed to mitigate the impact of poor returns when your portfolio is larger, i.e. to mitigate sequence of return risks. Kitces concurs:

the reality is that target date funds (or lifecycle funds), which typically take equity exposure off the table in the years leading up to retirement, arguably really do have it right when it comes to asset allocation for accumulators. Reducing equity exposure in the final years – as the portfolio gets largest and most sensitive to return volatility – is an excellent means to narrow down retirement date risk.

OTOH, should one assume "that GMO predictions are truly useful" then we're out of the realm of sequence of return risk and into market timing. Perhaps slow motion timing (seven years), but timing nevertheless.

"My take is So what? 40y??"
It sounds like you are thinking about a single 40 year investment. Of course if we invest money in something with an average return of X% over 40 years, it doesn't matter what the sequence of returns is. We wind up with (1 + X%) ^ 40 times the original investment regardless of how the annual returns are sequenced.
In the real world, workers invest money periodically over their careers. Sequence of return matters.
One way of thinking of the accumulation phase is as a decumulation phase in reverse. Run time backwards from point of retirement to point of hire. Instead of adding money periodically, as time goes backward you're withdrawing money periodically. (I have this mental image of someone walking backward out of a brokerage with a check in hand.)
If you have good years shortly before retirement (or shortly "after" retirement as time rolls backward), you do better. What "better" means here is that your pot at the point of retirement is larger. If you have bad years near retirement, you do worse.
This makes sense because the closer you are to retirement, the larger the portfolio and the more a bad year will hurt. This is the idea in using glide paths prior to retirement.

@racqueteer - you said "They also have a lifetime of 25-30 years, apparently; so that's a LOT of replacing which would be ongoing."
By the same token furnaces, pumps, drilling/excavating machinery, etc., etc., etc. break down and need to be replaced. Maybe the costs are a tossup and maybe they aren't I don't know. However one option leaves us with possibly a cleaner planet to live on while we figure it out or discover something better. I say we at least start to move the other way even if 15 years is not doable. It's a goal much like putting a man on the moon. Whatever we're doing now isn't going to cut it and there is no planet B.

VWINX is my "go-to" fund to benchmark this category. That's not to say there aren't comparable funds. But because it is such a solid long term performer, for me to prefer another fund to this one I would want to see something about the other fund that was significantly better.
BAMPX also looks like a solid fund. Slightly weaker than VWINX over ten years, a dead heat over five, better over the past three years, and much better over the past year. Its better numbers are due primarily to its current (2020) year's performance. For periods ending in 2019, the long term figures still look great, but not superior:
1 year (2019): 16.68% (BAMPX) vs. 16.87% (VWINX)
3 years (2017-2019): 24.04% vs. 24.96%
5 years (2015-2019): 28.97% vs. 36.41%
10 years (2010-2019): 104.79% vs. 111.41%
While I don't disregard this year's performance, I do ask whether the gap between these funds was a one off or something repeatable. In addition, you might want to discard all BAMPX history before 2016, because its current lead manager Michael Gates took over in mid 2015 and the fund shifted from being a moderate allocation fund to being a conservative allocation fund. That's a serious point to consider.
VWINX is what I might call an old school conservative allocation fund - large cap value, bond allocation hugging 60% (57% - 61% over the past five years). BAMPX is more "modern", with a growth leaning blend portfolio and a lower bond allocation, around 50% (39% to 56% over the past five years). This has resulted in performance that has been slightly more volatile. Standard deviation comparisons over the past 3/5/10 years are:
8.52 (BAMPX) vs. 7.72 (VWINX) / 6.96 vs 6.35 / 7.44 vs. 5.51
As noted above, perhaps we should disregard the 10 year figure. The volatility of BAMPX over the 3 and 5 year periods are below category average, so this comparison is not to suggest that it is an excessively volatile fund.
On the plus side, the fund is pretty small at $½B. I happen to like the fact that it invests some equity overseas (currently about ¼ of its equity); others may consider this a negative. Its cost, 0.68% ER (0.73% without waivers) is reasonable, though obviously much higher than that of VWINX.
Where it looks a bit odd is in its portfolio. This is a fund of funds, so one would expect it to have a modest turnover, tweaking allocations. But its turnover rate of 98% is somewhat high even for funds that invest directly in individual securities. According to its latest (Sept. 30th) annual report, it holds 11 equity funds, 3 fixed income funds, and 2 MMFs.
Blackrock equity funds: EM class K (5% of portfolio), Technology Opportunities class K, Master Advantage Large Cap Core Portfolio (5%)
iShares equity ETFs: Core MSCI EAFE (4%), Core S&P Small Cap (4%), Core S&P Total US Stock Market (15%), ESG Aware MSCI USA (11%), MSCI EAFE Growth (7%), MSCI Min Vol USA, MSCI USA Value Factor, US Medical Devices
Blackrock fixed income funds: Strategic Income Opportunities Portfolio class K (8%), Master Total Return Portfolio (22%)
iShares fixed income ETF: iBoxx $ Investment Grade Corporate Bond (6%)
(The Master funds are "master" funds in master/feeder configurations. MDLRX is a retail fund feeding into Master Advantage Large Cap Core, MAHQX is a retail fund feeding into Master Total Return.)
Overall, BAMPX looks like a solid fund from an excellent fund family. While its portfolio seems slightly aggressive (both in terms of a higher equity allocation and its dabbling in sectors), it manages to keep volatility in check. Based on its turnover rate and plethora of underlying funds, I couldn't guess at its strategy (spaghetti against a wall?), but it seems to work. It looks like a worthwhile fund; for me I don't see a compelling reason to prefer it to VWINX.

Found this, which seems to do a good job of summarizing the arguments for solar; both pro and con.
I appear to have been incorrect about the landmass required for solar panel replacement of fossil fuels, though problems related to transmission persist. They also have a lifetime of 25-30 years, apparently; so that's a LOT of replacing which would be ongoing. I apologize for my previous misstatement. No excuse; simply a case of something I KNOW which doesn't happen to be true.
BTW, I'm not known here, but those who DO know me, know that I'm pretty much apolitical. Either what someone says makes logical sense or it doesn't; their politics are irrelevant to me. I also don't make a habit of expressing my own political beliefs, as they don't fall into some neat box. BOTH major parties are problematic for me, as BOTH have to be seen as placating their extreme wings (my opinion), and I don't agree with extremist positions. My intent is not politically motivated; if you take offense with logical arguments I present, that is YOUR political predisposition talking, not mine.

>> Solar has the same issue; there simply isn't the landmass to hold enough panels to replace fuel burning.
Huh? Where did you get that?
I read this (from Off the Grid) years ago and knew about it prior, when I put solar on my roof.
2.8 acres per 1GWh. Solar would have to produce about 4 million GWh of electricity annually to provide enough energy to power the entire USA. At 2.8 acres per GWh, then about 11,200,000 acres of land would give us what we need to produce the 4,000,000GWh of solar power. There’s 1.8 billion acres of land in the USA, so about 0.6% of our land is all it would take. Wait, “all it would take”? 11.2 million acres is a huge amount of land, right? Yes and no. Now I probably would not want to build an 11.2 million acre solar farm, but spread out across the whole country that’s very reasonable. If every single family home roof top in America were covered in solar panels for example that would give us about half of the energy.
Drive around and look at commercial buildings and see how much rooftop acreage currently has solar. It is dumbfounding how much flat roof faces the sky with nothing on it but hvac equipment.

DODFX is foreign LARGE value. It scores in the 39th percentile in its category, just now. But that's not saying much. PRIDX is Foreign smid-growth, but they're not taking anyone new, these days. Most of my 9% in foreign stocks is in there. Years ago, I owned the Third Avenue International Value Fund. Forgot the ticker. Are they still around? Your post just makes me wonder how they're doing. They did great, until they didn't. Things in general there just seemed to fall off a cliff. Marty Whitman retired...
https://money.usnews.com/funds/mutual-funds/rankings/foreign-large-value

@davidrmoran, there's certainly no shorter-term need, I'm thinking in terms of 40 years and most likely more. My thought, though, was that some things can be out of favor for more than a decade. Based on valuations today, GMO predicts negative real returns, and not small ones, for US equities for the next 7 years. They also predict very high returns for Emerging Markets value.
If they're right and you just put your kids in equities, passively, even in a Total World fund, they will very likely have dug themselves a deep hole after 7 years simply because they got unlucky with sequence of return risk. It's like the case in Bee's article that shows the difference in eventual returns depending on whether the big negative is at the beginning, middle or end of the time period.
If there are ways to mitigate that risk and increase the likelihood of a better outcome then it'd be interesting to think about the options.