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

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.