Thinking about selling DODIX. They are now averaging BBB. And duration has crept up to five years. According to the last report I read they bought a lot of carbon energy during the down turn.
If I'm going to hold bonds at all I want them to be boring.

Thanks for the excellent article @bee. Like several posters here I also use PRWCX and VWINX as my main balanced funds, and they performed well through March drawdown and bounced back in 6 months.
With respect to VMVFX, this global fund has underwent several sizable changes while trailing its benchmark badly this year. YTD -8.1% versus Vanguard total world index, 4.3%. I too invested in this fund since inception but left two years ago to refocus my oversea exposure elsewhere toward growth oriented funds.
1. the top 10 holding of VMVFX has changed considerably. Now it holds Alibaba (#1) and Taiwan Semiconductor (#3) and they are certainly NOT low volatility stocks.
2. a change of fund manager in 2018 (Antonio Picca)
3. an increased of emerging market exposure to 10.1%
4. Currency hedging hurts its performance as USD has been declining this year.
5. Large % of REITs early in the year does not help as REIT is still not doing well. Recent data indicated that REIT holding has reduced to 4%.
My Vanguard total bond market index fund, institutional share, in a target date fund has done a solid job this year and that is good enough for us.
@Ironranger61, bond funds you picked are quite good. One suggestion I have is Vanguard International Total bond index, Admiral share, VTABX - a conservative bond fund. https://investor.vanguard.com/mutual-funds/profile/portfolio/vtabx

Funny thing, I was pretty good at English grammar while taking tests :-)
After learning Spanish only one year compare to many years in English I wish the most common world language would be Spanish. It's easier to learn, speak and read.
Interesting facts: I immigrated in my mid 30 and worked in IT, most of my co-workers were Asian/Indians. My wife stated that my English got worse over the years ;-)
Another observation: Israel is similar to the US. It has immigrants from around the world. The worse Hebrew speakers after several years are the English ones, especially Americans. The immigrants who speak German, French, Spanish, Russian, and Arabic have better accent, grammar and fluency. What makes English so complicated? Many exceptions, a lot more words with small nuances, the sentence structure is unique, and too many tenses.
Anyway, the bad thing for most investors who look for bonds as ballast for stock is the fact that BND+BIV pay about 2% but most still need it, especially retirees who have enough money and worry about volatility. PTIAX can be a compromise fund with a decent volatility + 4% annual distributions.
For me it's not a big problem since I'm trading bond funds using momentum and looking for good performance. Most of that performance came from MBS/securitized funds such as PIMIX,IOFIX but in the last several years HY Munis (NHMAX,OPTAX,ORNAX,GWMEX) also made me money.

Hank- You've been reading my posts on MFO for many years now, and in all that time, if I'm remembering correctly, only once did someone advise me that I had made a grammatical error.
I really wasn't joking about my virtually complete ignorance of the definition or meaning of all of the grammatical terminology that you are referencing. For example, I could no more define for you what any of the following might mean-
• prepositional phrase
• independent main clause
• subordinate clause
• predicate adjective (apparent)
• pronominal adjective
• singular verb form
• introductory subordinate (adverbial) clause serving as
than I could explain to you the fine points of molecular biology. And even if I were somehow able to acquire that grammatical knowledge, how exactly would I then apply it when I sit down to write something?
When I write something, I just mentally process it as if someone were sitting here talking to me. It either sounds "right" or it doesn't.
So, I would certainly totally flunk any standard test on grammatical usage. But I do believe that, in my life, I've somehow managed to communicate reasonably effectively in spite of that limitation.
OJ

Great comments.
Retirement continues to be good after 15 years. Actively putting attention into maintaining good health makes sense to me as does accepting the aging process as it inevitably occurs. Being close to relatives makes sense in our situation (in some situations it doesn't!). Financially, maintaining a balance between current enjoyment and set asides for the future continues to make sense to me. My simple minded approach for about a decade has been to release income (including some long term gains) from investment accounts to our household account each year. Remaining portfolio balances continue to be set aside for growth, for potential use in extreme emergencies, and for assisting relatives if needed. Any remaining balances will eventually be distributed to heirs and to non-profits.
As my 70th birthday approached last year, I decided to somewhat increase the income being generated by the portfolio for release by beginning to move 25% of the OEF/ETF portfolio balance to a newly created high yield portfolio (an @Junkster thought process led to this decision). That process was recently completed. The new portfolio has been populated with higher yielding stocks (3%+ yields at time of purchase), cefs, bdcs, reits, and commercial mreits. Time will tell if this exercise has been helpful or not!
Income released to the household is used for a variety of general purposes. What remains is mostly used for travel. Unfortunately, an early March return from Hawaii heralded the end to this year's travel. Summer travel plans got cancelled or mothballed. Also, the month in Hawaii scheduled for this coming winter will probably get cancelled soon.
Trips since the pandemic hit have centered around getaways most weeks to our nearby beach cabin (having that has proved to be a real blessing this year). My hope is that a relatively effective vaccine will be fairly widely distributed by next summer. Once that happens, I am hopeful travel risk will be reduced enough that somewhat more normal travel can resume. I am not getting any younger!
After thought: Alway remember life is short! Don't take any day for granted! My wife recently mentioned she could count 19 friends, co-volunteers of hers at the American Legion, and relatives who have passed away during the past year. (We just visited a friend at the coast yesterday who lost his wife to liver cancer during the past month. She was about our age and appeared to be in good health when we last visited them during the winter. The problem was only recently discovered.)

Not sure if the following is referenced behind the WSJ paywall, but several years ago, PIMCO was 'caught' by the SEC doing the same thing with its bond fund ETF::
PIMCO Settles Charges of Misleading Investors About ETF Performance
https://www.sec.gov/news/pressrelease/2016-252.html
Reuters version
https://www.reuters.com/article/us-pimco-sec/pimco-to-pay-20-million-over-misleading-investors-about-etf-performance-idUSKBN13Q5WZ
And Semper Capital was tripped up by the same thing earlier this year.
Barrons:SEC Accuses Mortgage Fund of Overstating Its Returns
https://www.barrons.com/articles/sec-accuses-mortgage-fund-of-overstating-its-returns-51588272533

@caeew388 - OK :)
Quick note to @FD1000 - The error in your thread title is pretty basic - not something most educated readers wouldn’t at least notice.
What I think happened is that you considered “rising rates” to be singular in form. Actually, in conventional use “rising rates” is plural. Therefore, the plural form of the verb (are) is the correct choice. You’re using a contraction here, so the word you need is “aren’t” Sentence reads properly: “Why rising interest rates aren’t that bad for bonds.“
On the other hand, if discussing just one particular interest rate, the singular verb form “is” would be accurate. Example using a singular verb form: “Why the bank’s rising mortgage rate isn’t good for the home-buyer.”
Just trying to help.
On the topic of interest rates:
Certainly folks invested in short duration bonds, money market instruments and the like would welcome rising rates. Banks are one business that are predicted to do better with higher rates because they can lend money at those rates. But longer-dated bonds would not do well - at least not until after the sharply rising rate trend had subsided.
What I’m really wondering is what would happen to the S&P type stocks over a protracted period of rising rates? Has there ever been a period in history during which rates in the U.S. have fallen so far for so long? Longer term rates have fallen from around 20% in the 80s to what? Around 3% now? Regardless of the exact number, that’s been one long steep slide. And it’s persisted for more than 30 years by my count. It’s so unique that there’s not a good deal to go on in trying to assess the impact on many other investments. At some point, if rates rise enough, people may begin to consider bonds a good alternative to equities and begin shifting money away from the stock market.

We love to travel and have done it since the early 80". We did 2 months in the US, then 2 months in the Far East. Immigrated to the US and traveled again to 48 states in the next 15 years several weeks annually.
Since 2007 we traveled to Europe for 3 weeks annually but couldn't do it this year because of COVID-19. So the only thing left is local hiking in GA. We decided a month ago to hike twice a week and treat it like a vacation.
We are using a great site https://www.alltrails.com
Example: we hiked the Raven cliff falls trail (link).

“Then look at Prepositions and particles and my head is spinning“.
Kick in = start
Kick off = start
-
FD, Thanks for responding. What you’ve posted above are actually known as prepositional verbs. (To be perfectly honest, I had to look that one up.) You’ve used the verb form of “kick“ and followed it with a preposition. These tend to be mostly colloquial (casual) expressions, not often found in formal writing.
Prepositions are quite easy to comprehend. Think of one as: a “linking word” having a noun or pronoun as an “object“. Examples: in, on, by. Prepositional phrases add additional meaning to other parts of the sentence. Example: “in this post”: In this example the preposition “in” is followed by its object “post“ and explains where the information was presented. If you think you see a preposition standing alone (having no object) it’s probably serving as an adverb.
Regarding your “COME, HOME, TOMB “, with just 26 letters and only 5 vowels in the language, it’s necessary to assign various pronunciations for the same letter or combination thereof. I agree that that aspect of pronunciation would be most difficult to assimilate. I’d imagine some of the hardest for folks to get their heads around would be combinations of letters which produce sounds (neighbor, phantom). However, this issue should not pose a problem in written discourse as we’re dealing with in your “rising interest rates” post.
I respect those like you who are multi-lingual. I don’t know any other languages, but had a couple years of Latin in HS from a very fine teacher. That experience did more to help me understand and enjoy the English language than anything else. Helping teenagers understand the poetry of Shakespeare (during another life) also contributed to my appreciation for the language. Sorry I wasn’t a bit more polite in my original intrusion into your choice of wording. Didn’t realize than that English was a second language. Just trying to be helpful. As I remarked to @Graust, you do communicate quite well. However, I think those three simple worksheets I linked would be helpful to anyone (even @Old_Joe) who might need a bit of added instruction.
Regards
PS - Regarding “Particles”, I assume you intended “participials”. Let’s save that one for another day! :)

Sorry about my English but please explain how do you pronounce the following 3 words differently.
COME, HOME, TOMB. I see the vowel O in all three but the sound is different. All I know that in Hebrew and Spanish (which I learn briefly) it's very clear how to pronounce words.
The English grammar and tenses(link) are ridiculous. I have been using a language/grammar app for years, but it can't catch all my stupid mistakes :-)
Then look at Prepositions and particles and my head is spinning.
Kick in = start
Kick off = start
Wow, how the above can be equal. How can off = start. My logic says OFF is the opposite of ON which mean no start.
I can also admit that I was never good at languages but English has so many exceptions and illogical rules.

@msf and some others including FD1k have posted solid thoughts about this area, the former in particular giving lists of current CD links and similar
BUT ... if you really have enough for current cashflow (plus some years of equivalent savings, or maybe that is taken into account), then I would do what I am doing, so to speak: wait for future dips and DCA back into all equities.
I intend to do VONE and CAPE 40-40 w some aggressive Akres ETFs, and pray that the overpriced market does not simply keep chugging upward ...
(I ruled out VONG, since as everyone knows the tech big six have carried the day for this year and longer)
If my take is too rich, then DCA into VLAAX, VALIX, JABAX, and/or FPURX.

I wonder why Mondrian (financial parent of Rothko) started a second EM fund when it had been running MPEMX for several years. MPEMX is hardly a great fund, but it still managed to outperform the soon to be liquidated Rothko. Over RKEMX's lifetime (12/18/2018 to present, i.e. 10/15/2020), it returned a cumulative 2% (!), vs MPEMX's cumulative return of 19.46%. That in turn was a tad (2/3%) under the category average.
I never really "got" Rothko. Mondrian is more to my liking. Though in art as in investing, what one prefers can be a matter of personal taste.

Asking this question under two hats, one personal and the other for a non-profit organization. We both have had investments in Certificates of Deposit that have/will mature in the coming months. The question is what do we do with the available cash going forward as the interest returns on the CDs are next to nothing. Fiduciary concerns with the non-profit make investments in equity/bond funds a touchy issue, though on a personal level that is not a particular concern. My wife and I are well into our retirement years with an adequate pension and social security and willing to undertake some risk on future investments, though the current investment climate suggests staying in cash until we see what happens in the next three months or so. Your collective comments and suggestions are most welcome (from a long time reader of the MFO discussions). Thanks.

Great post @Junkster.
Glad I’m not working. It was fun and enlightening most of the time - but a big imposition on time. I terribly miss travel. Always loved flying. I’m thinking I’ll work-out extra hard every day now, generally climbing up and down area sand dunes, until winter gets too harsh so my good health can be extended a few extra years in order to enjoy travel once the world returns to normal.
Travel is tough now with most areas of the nation and world battling Covid. Many attractions, like Broadway, are closed. Love London where I’d planned to be in November. On their very modern “Underground” (subway) the cars are typically jam-packed with travelers. It’s not uncommon to be standing up and shoved against two or more other fellow travelers while riding. Folks accept that as quite normal. But imagine how Covid would spread in such an environment.
Since we’re off the reservation a bit, I’ll connect to investing by saying I’ve a lot of extra $$ on hand. Not just from the loss of major travel. Just not spending as much. I’ll transfer the extra Ks into a (home) “infrastructure” fund - as house will soon need a new roof and other upgrades. While I’d normally have the ‘21 budget needs pulled from investments by this time (sitting in cash), I’m going to let it ride for now. Stay invested long as possible.

Several funds I would hold longer term.
Stocks/allocation:
PRWCX has been my top moderate allocation for years and YTD did well. Great manager with insight.
VWINX/VWIAX-has been my top conservative allocation for years and YTD did well. Great long term team investing in stocks and Corp bonds which is the "secret" of theis fund.
Beyond that simple indexes such as SPY. For more growth simple QQQ
Remember, 40% of the SP500 and 50% of QQQ revenues are from abroad.
Bonds:
BIV a great ballast index and better than BND at about 50% treasuries (better ballast) + 50% investment grade Corp(better for rate rise+higher distributions). BIV has better performance from 3 months to 10 years. BIV er=0.05 is cheap and you can buy it with no commission. BIV is so good you can use it instead of managed core + core plus funds.
PTIAX in the Multi sector category
============
VMVFX used to be pretty good but is doing bad.
PIMIX-used to be an easy choice but lost its mojo in early 2018. There is a new fund JASVX in MBS/securitized. It did well in the crash and YTD. Can't guarantee you anything.
THOPX-I never liked it. Looks Sometimes OK but crashes.
============
Voaltility: I have learned over the years that only several funds can play volatility well longer term but it's difficult to predict and why I'm the one who does it manually.
Momentum: similar to the above, funds can do pretty well for several years and suddenly be behind for years because the environment changed(example: growth vs value). This is why diversification is not a good choice if you can observe this.
Do I really need to hold 10+ funds...3 moderate allocation + 3 conservative allocation + 3 LC stock funds + 3 SC,MC + 3 international?
You can do it all with 5-7 funds.

@LewisBraham
We are discussing beyond the article. The article is talking about long term and mention T/A + other non T/A reasons.
As I said before, you think T/A is dubious and you entitle to this opinion but I have been using it very successfully for about 20 years. It worked great for me for short and long term. T/A is only part of my system and it's how most people who use T/A do it.
So, go ahead and post AGAIN that you think T/A is bogus and I will post after you the above too :-)

@Zolta, IOFIX min is only $100K at Schwab. I'm guessing your investments is at Fidelity. This is one of the reason I transferred most of my money to Schwab. Fidelity also have a million dollar min on Pimco Instit share funds too.
My technique is not recommended to anybody, it takes skills to know when to change. When I started investing this way 20 years ago it was simpler. About twice a year I looked for the best 5 risk/reward funds and kept changing but I used 3 (60%) as core and 2 funds as explore. The funds had to be in the top 30% of performance at all times which made sure I would not hold lagging funds for years.
I never cared about OVER diversification. The funds mangers can do whatever they want I just expect good performance and SD(volatility) which led to good Sharpe+Sortino.

Retirement pleasures put to the side, I would love now to be working, remotely, at any of the editing / writing jobs of my last decades, but would hate to be suddenly downsized and looking; been that and done there, for long anxious years, and now would be ever so much worse.

Below is a chart of the SP500. When do I buy stocks (usually SP500 or QQQ)?
I look for at least 5-8% loss from the last top. Then I need to see:
1) MACD goes from higher negative to positive
2) Uptrend in price for several days
3) If price crossed the SP500 it's better
I buy for 2-5 days to make 2+%.
There are other signs but it's a good start.
You may think it’s bogus but I have been using T/A for years with a very high success rate.
Why the above works? because the more the market goes down, there is a good chance it will come back at least 50-60% of the lose. I'm looking for the first sign of momentum, join it and leave within days.

=========
For bond funds where I make most of my money I look for momentum + SD in the last 1-4 weeks (but also look at long term) + other factors.
Again, I have done very nicely as the numbers showed. The key for me it to make money slowly and lose almost nothing. I follow funds and categories to see where is momentum. What seems a lot of work for most, it's a passion of mine and many times I do nothing for several weeks-months. Of course, T/A is only one aspect of it, a visual of a chart is very helpful because I can see many funds on the same chart. Look at a simple (chart) with 2 funds, can you guess which one is better? IOFIX is better because the uptrend is gradual and goes up while PIMIX chart goes down then up which means IOFIX momentum and volatility is better.

One stock advisor I follow is somewhat maddening in selecting growth companies on the basis of their future prospects (generally tech or health). He has done a great job of picking winners over the years I have subscribed. What irritates me is his commentary each month on “the chart XYZ is tracing out,” as if there were a relationship between what investors are doing and what the economic prospects of the company in question may be. All the charts of the stocks in the newsletter show massive declines last spring due to the COVID crisis, but I don’t learn anything from that information other then to reinforce my opinion that tech stocks are volatile. I can understand Lewis’ comment about using a chart to try to predict for the short term, but other than that, charts are of little use to me. I would like to meet the investor who has enriched him/herself by using a “head and shoulders pattern” chart to determine buy/sell decisions. OTOH, WTF do I know?