If you want only funds that never lost money then performance could lag badly. PFNIX 10 years average annually is only 2% and that's a dismal bond performance.
I'd suggest you might have a typo, but you've assured us that whatever was posted, you meant what you said and you said what you meant, your numbers are true, 100 percent.
Still, given that PFNIX has only been around since 4/28/18, producing a 10 year average for that share class is a neat trick.
If one were to extrapolate PFNIX returns based on the performance of other share classes, one might arrive at a 10 year average return of 3.57% as of June 30th. That's far better that your 2%. However the shares, had they existed, would have lost money in 2011, 2014, and 2015.
Nor could it be that you conflated Pimco Low Duration Income Fund with Pimco Low Duration Fund, e.g. PTLDX. Because while the latter fund did average a bit over 2%/year over the past ten years, it too lost money. The annual performance graph below is from its prospectus.

If the game is simply to compare performance of funds that have never had a losing year.... AKRIX. I win! The metric in the quoted sentence was 10 year average annually. That would be 18.3%.
Silly cherry picking game.

Why is it that every spoken political ad I have seen and heard for the last 30 years whose content I more or less agree with is spoken in a smarmy repulsive voice? This one is the latest. Talk about self-defeating shooting oneself in the foot! Why would anyone believe anything spoken in such a self-satisfied tone? I hear no alarm, no urgency in the voice of this speaker. I hear self-righteousness.

One reason maybe that AVEFX ''flies under the radar'' is it is not available at Fidelity or Schwab no load/NTF.

In 2020 peak to trough AVEFX lost about 10% while FPINX lost only about 2%.
AVEFX has 20% in stocks FPINX < 1%
Vanguard VASIX is a better choice than AVEFX. See (

chart). VASIX ER=0.11%. It has better performance and SD(volatility) is close.

There may well be better choices for this TYPE of fund, but the criteria I was focusing on was never a down year. VASIX has had two, including down 10.53% in 2008. Not so pretty. AVEFX has an unbroken streak during its existence dating back to 2004.

If you want only funds that never lost money then performance could lag badly. PFNIX 10 years average annually is only 2% and that's a dismal bond performance.
AVEFX has a much better performance but 3.8-3.9% average annual return for 5-10 years are not good enough for me. At least VASIX performance annually is at 5.2-5.3% and Vanguard uses just indexes.
My goals at retirement are 6+% average annually with SD < 3 + positive annually + never lose more than 3% from any last top.

After working at Kodak for 40 years, in great times and bad, I still bleed yellow. Hope this works out for them.

Would oil be a drag on a commodity fund?

Oil has been a tremendous boost for funds that invest in oil futures since the price went negative April 20. Over the past 3 months oil’s soared to over $40. I don’t even know how to compute such a phenomenal rate of return from -$30 to +$40. (maybe “a gazillion percent”?). The supposition behind @little5bee ‘s question must be that oil has entered bubble territory. :)
All the “cards“ seem stacked against oil from a casual viewer’s vantage point. Fracking, electric cars, shared vehicles, wind and solar, global warming / ecological related restrictions. What’s interesting is that with air travel off 50-75% during the pandemic and carriers mothballing aircraft, the price of oil has hung in there. So you have the eventual resumption of air travel to look forward to. Also, not all oil derived products are burned as fuel. Asphalt used for paving is one example. Lord knows we have plenty of roads in need of rebuilding.
There aren’t a lot of pure commodities funds. The ones that do exist play the futures markets thru derivatives. That’s expensive and risky. But who wants to take delivery or crude oil or lean hogs? I put a little in Invesco’s BRCAX shortly after oil fell below 0. This one’s the real McCoy as far as commodities funds go. The fund has done well since than. PRENX does not call itself a commodities fund. It invests in nat. resources, concentrated in refiners. Even its manager has suggested for at least 3 years now (in annual reports) that this fund is not currently a good investment, as he foresees a long bear market in the nat. resources area. I’m eager to read his next fund report to see if his thinking has changed any. PRAFX is as close as Price comes to having a commodities fund. It is less exposed to oil and appears to have a bit more in gold judging from its behavior.
Disclosure: I own all 3 of the above mentioned funds.

They've had data problems on and off again for the past several years. Is one of the reasons I stopped my longtime premium subscription.
Earlier this year I paid for SA Premium, whose data, analytics, and website are far more reliable and readable and useful than the current interation of M*.

I'm liking this fund. VWIGX has had nice YTD performance and a great track record...International Large Cap seems to be unloved compared to US Large Growth. It has a low ER (.43)...ranks in the top 5% of the category for trailing returns (for every time frame from 1 month through 15 years).
Not mentioned much here at MFO...I wrote this back in 2016...might be worth a review:
https://mutualfundobserver.com/discuss/discussion/54980/favorite-over-seas-funds/p1

The dollar’s tanking after decades of strength. Some of that relates to the Fed’s recent printing spree and some to our dismal failure dealing with Covid. Reminds me of the scattered bits I can recall from the late 60s and early 70s - several years before inflation really took off. Dollar down. Gold up. Repeat. Repeat. Nixon imposed wage and price controls in ‘70 or ‘71, although inflation wasn’t bad at that point compared to what it would be a few years later.
It’s not rocket science. We normally work for, trade in and buy things with dollars. When the value of the dollar falls, the price of what we buy goes up. However, the linkage isn’t real direct. Takes time for supply chains and consumer expectations to catch up. So don’t expect things to cost more tomorrow than today. In addition, the monkey wrench that is Covid has the economic picture so distorted now that it’s hard to get a good fix on relative valuations.
As for gold, I’ve seen it rise - and I’ve seen it fall - many times over my 70+ years. Pretty stuff too. It runs more on emotion than on fundamentals - although the fundamentals are currently in its favor. Some will get rich this time around. And some will get greedy and loose a fortune when the tide turns.
From Disney’s Beauty and the Beast: “A tale as old as time ...”
Just an added thought here - Conventional wisdom often links gold’s price increase with the current inflation rate. That’s a long stretch and normally not the case. Gold tends to move in sharp rapid movements like we’re witnessing. So at any given time, it’s racing ahead of or trailing inflation. Just a rough guess - but gold bullion looks to be up 20-25% over the past year. Miners are more volatile with many mining funds up 40% or more in the past year. Bad as inflation has been, it’s not running at 40% annually. However, over very long time frames it’s likely gold’s as good an indicator of the long-term inflation rate as would be real estate, lumber, tomatoes or coffee. Personally, I’ve some limited gold exposure, but I feel safer playing around the edges. Many real asset / commodity funds provide limited exposure to gold as does PRPFX. Some of the EM funds are nice indirect plays on the metals as well.

A bit about my grandson, and myself. I'm familiar with investing; I've always done the investing for my husband's 401k, now an IRA since he's retired. My father died about 6 years ago, a multimillionaire (none of us knew!). My and my sister's inheritance is managed/invested by a reputable wealth management firm. My grandchildren will inherit from me, but my grandson wants to start investing on his own, and good for him I tell him. He will graduate this year as a biomedical engineer. He's very smart, and will be quick to learn about investing. I will match his $1000 investment; he has more money than that, but that's what he wants to start with. I imagine he'll open an account with Fidelity or T Rowe Price, one single fund, for now. I know I could've just called the firm that manages my money for suggestions, but I wanted to hear from experienced investors here, and once again I thank you all so much for taking the time to respond.

That reminds me of the idea behind the now-defunct Stein Roe Young Investors Fund. The fund held a bunch of companies that kids in the 80s were into -- from clothing to toys to fast food. But these days a decent tech/growth fund would probably suffice and cover the same general things -- as I suggested earlier, PRBLX or TRBCX are solid choices.

That’s a great idea, @Mark. A buy-and-hold fund that could keep up with innovation and buy the companies profiting from same would be a jewel to give a kid. I fully expect that in 20 or so years the portfolio of such a fund might not resemble today’s « tech » fund.

That’s a great idea, @Mark. A buy-and-hold fund that could keep up with innovation and buy the companies profiting from same would be a jewel to give a kid. I fully expect that in 20 or so years the portfolio of such a fund might not resemble today’s « tech » fund.

Jeff's weekly column is always a good use of 15 minutes of my time. Hopefully you will find some value in this weeks writeup.
"I have written about economic indicators for more than fifteen years in WTWA and studied them before that. Usually there is some value in each. Not now. Very few are helpful in identifying the economic turn and prospects.
Indicator Analysis
I will summarize the indicator, how it is interpreted, the current implication, and my own comment."
Weighing The Week Ahead: Time To Look Under The Hood

Hi @BenWP,
I more or less have to use SMCWX if I want to do a nav transfer from one American Fund to another as SMCWX is their only small/mid cap offering which I hold in my global growth sleeve with two other American Funds ANWPX & NEWFX. With this, I hold some other small/mid cap funds in my small/mid cap sleeve which is also found in the growth area of my portfolio. The funds currently held in this sleeve are AOFAX, FKASX & PMDAX and I hold another (multi cap fund) KAUAX in my large/mid cap sleeve.
Both FKASX and KAUAX were offered by the Kaufmann Funds Group which are now owned by Federated Investors. I first became aware of the Kaufmann funds from Mutual Fund Magazine which was a print magazine (years back) that is no longer in publication. I have owned both these two Kaufmann funds off and on through the years and currently hold positions in both of them by doing nav transfers between them and another Federated fund which I own (SVAAX) for its equity income gereration.
Another small mid cap fund that I find interestering (and also own) is LPEFX. It has a global perspective and holds a good percentage in public listed and traded companies that have placements in companies that (for the most part) are not listed or traded on the exchanges. Very simlar to a busineess development type company of which it owns some of these as well.
It is interesting that SMCWX has had the performance that it has had based upon it's size. I generally look for a small cap fund that is small in size as it can be more nimble than it's larger counterparts.
Just goes to show ... There is more than one trail to the top of the mountain. For me, that is what makes investing so great as there is more than one way to find succeess (and failure) in investing.
By the way, SMCWX is a core holding for me.
Old_Skeet

Using rounded figures for back of the envelope calculations:
EDV:
2013 Price loss: 1 - 89.62/116 ~= 22¾% (Yahoo figures for 12/31/2012 and 12/30/2013)
2013 Yield: -18.86% - (22¾%) ~= 4%
Say that PSLDX had bonds of similar maturity, so it should have made 4% on the yield also.
It should have lost about 13½/25 as much on bond prices (shorter duration), or about 12¼%
It should have gained about 32¼% on the equity side.
(Per mid 2013 prospectus, the target duration for PSLDX was 13½ years ±2 years)
Thus it should have made: 32¼% + 4% - 12¼% ~= 24;%
It not only got crushed by its long bond holdings, but underperformed as well.
You are comparing a zero coupon bond fund with a coupon bond fund. That may be okay with a short term bond (or bond fund), but falls apart as maturities get longer. As Fidelity says:

Generally, bonds with long maturities and low coupons have the longest durations. These bonds are more sensitive to a change in market interest rates and thus are more volatile in a changing rate environment. Conversely, bonds with shorter maturity dates or higher coupons will have shorter durations

There are most definitely derivatives in play with PSLDX,
AFAIK, nearly all the "play" is simply to gain leverage. There's a whole lot of investment engineering one can do with derivatives, as PIMCO typically does with its funds. In contrast, here derivatives are used primarily to get market exposure without putting up much cash: "It does this by purchasing low-cost S&P 500 derivatives exposure." These derivative mimic the S&P. It can then use the cash that it would have invested in the equity market to invest in bonds. There's your 2x leverage. Nothing funky.
The marcom verbiage you're paraphrasing (with no quotes, no cites) says simply that when one mixes stocks and bonds, sometimes the bonds help, sometimes they hurt. I've posted on this too many times already to say much more than that. Other than to observe that one thing it omitted is that because this fund is leveraged roughly 2&frac14 x (100% stock exposure, 125% bond exposure) it could fall 2&frac14 times as fast as "the market" if both stocks and bonds fall. Which more than explains why :
it lost a ton of value in a few sessions, not explained by the market
From March 15 through March 23, PSLDX lost 21%, the S&P 500 lost 17%, and VWESX (an IG grade fund with a similar 14 year duration and similar 21-22 year maturity) lost 8%. Just adding the equity and bond losses together (forgetting about the extra 25% bond side leverage), one gets a loss of 25%. Impressive performance, actually.
Here's a chart showing these funds, plus PSTKX over this short period.
Equity, long bonds, leverage. Not much else going on here, no magic.

So many great suggestions. My thoughts, overall, are that the hands-on experience grandson will enjoy with his initial nest-egg will motivate him to engage in financial conversation and study on his own. Books? I get lots from folks around the holidays. Seldom do I ever read any of them, as I’d rather “set my own (reading) table“ so to speak. Plus, many loving relatives (nieces, nephews, etc.) don’t realize that 90% of my reading today is on tablet devices and most of the rest thru audiobooks. Because of my ancient and grizzled appearance, younger people who don’t know me very well must assume I still read paper books. Excuse the digression. But, often telling someone they should read a particular book (or do anything else) achieves the opposite effect..
@MikenM (and perhaps others) referenced technology as an inviting investment. Not a bad thought. However, tech is very diverse area. Some “hot” areas from the not too distant past like hand-held calculators, VHS players, Commodore computers and “cordless“ (land-line) phones are nearly extinct. My guess is in 30 years, when grandson turns 50, the really hot areas will be lunar and interplanetary mining (and related services), infrastructure for underwater habitat, and solar powered autos & trucks. So don’t get too wedded to any single technology. Truth be told - it’s hard to remember when “technology” in some form wasn’t in vogue. Likely, the horse-drawn plough underwent many “technological improvements” during its time. And, as broken arms and fingers testified, the advent of battery powered self-starting farm tractors and autos was a huge technological leap.

I respectfully disagree with some attributes ascribed above to PSLDX, while acknowledging that it has significantly outperformed funds that could nominally be called its peers.
While PIMCO dates its StocksPLUS strategy to 1986, this strategy is "used across [its] “PLUS” portfolios". The first PIMCO fund to use this strategy was PSTKX in 1993; PSLDX dates back only to 2007. MWATX, previously mentioned, started in 1998.
https://www.pimco.com/en-us/investments/mutual-funds/stocksplus-fund/inst
https://www.pimco.com/en-us/investments/mutual-funds/stocksplus-long-duration-fund/inst
The bond holdings in PSLDX strike me as less opaque than those of most PIMCO funds. It's in the name: long duration. No secret sauce. This fund, by mandate doesn't significantly alter its bond bets. Rather, this fund will soar (at least its bond portion will) as interest rates decline, and will crash as rates rise.
[Effective duration is calculated by starting with modified duration (a well-defined, mechanical calculation based on coupons and maturities). One or more models are then used to estimate the duration effects of all the oddities of the bonds.]
For this fund, effective duration = modified duration = 14.57 years (per M*). So there's very little going on outside of (long) vanilla bonds. Looking at the holdings, PIMCO appears to be tweaking around the edges with derivatives to adjust the bond portfolio attributes slightly.
The 2x strategy (or StocksPlus strategy) gets 100% exposure to stocks at minimal cost by buying swaps on the target stock index. It then uses the remaining cash (almost 100%) to invest in bonds. DSENX is 100.69% long in stocks, 91.32% long in bonds, and short in cash by a similar amount. That's the way it's supposed to work.
PSLDX goes further and adds even more leverage. You've still got the 100% stock exposure through swaps (M* says 102.31%). But the bond portfolio is leveraged: 127.69% per M*. So not only is this fund heavily exposed to interest rate risk (with its long bonds), but it is doubling down with leverage. Okay, it's just 1¼ x down; same idea.
Because the fund must hold long bonds, there's no secret sauce here, or none worth mentioning. Just very long bonds combined with extra leverage on the bond side.
FWIW M* classifies this fund as a hybrid (85%+ equity), while PSTKX, DSENX, and MWATX are classified as large cap blend funds. I suspect that's because the leverage on the bond side increases the bond exposure to the point that M* won't consider it a stock fund with just a bond kicker.
If one is confident that rates won't rise at all for some time and that the yield curve (whatever little curvature there is) won't begin to curve a little more, then going long makes sense. Otherwise, those scenarios will crush this fund, at least relative to the others or to a vanilla stock fund.
NTSX differs in several ways. Instead of 2x, it is 1.5x. Instead of 50/50 stock/bond exposure, it's 60/40. It does not have flexibility in allocating bond sectors; its only exposure is to Treasuries (via futures). Its target duration is 3-8 years, typically less than half of PSLDX, though I suspect more than that of the other funds. But it does actively manage duration.
Its blurb touts the ability of the 1.5x strategy (90/60) "to enhance returns" by investing the the extra 50% (1/3 of the portfolio) in "noncore assets such as long/short equities, risk parity, CTAs, or true alternatives." However, upon reading further, one finds that the fund itself "invests 90% of its net assets in the 500 largest U.S. stocks by market capitalization" and "60% notional exposure to U.S. Treasury futures (2-, 5-, 10-, 30-year ladder)."
That's not the same as the S&P 500 (which is not a compilation of the 500 largest US companies); nor does the prospectus even mention 500 companies. Rather "The Fund invests in a representative basket of U.S. equity securities of large-capitalization companies generally weighted by market capitalization." (Prospectus.) It invests directly in stocks rather than using swaps. That enables it to actively manage its equity side - another point of differentiation from the OEFs mentioned.
Over its short life it has done nicely. Much (not all) of its performance seems to be due to leveraging. If one takes VBIAX's annulized performance over the past 21 months (the lifetime of NSTX), calculates its monthly performance from that, leverages 50%, and compounds that, one gets an annualized performance of 10.45%, still measurably below NSTX's 11.23%.

Hi @wxman123
I can't dismiss the outstanding performance of VWELX and agree with you.
As this fund is closed for the most part to many; my question is whether an individual Vanguard account holder may place new money into this fund or only add if one already has a position in the fund? The other constraint for Donna's grandson is that it appears the minimum investment still is $3,000. If so, his $1,000 start money wouldn't allow for this fund purchase.
Those with knowledge of Vanguard's operation may be able to clarify.
I had a Vanguard account for many years, but only for the purpose of a 401k. That money was rolled to an IRA at Fidelity many years ago.
Regards,
Catch

The granddaddy of them all in this space is PSLDX. IMHO among the greatest mutual funds of all time. You can get it for $25K at vanguard, but it's no free lunch. After holding for a few years with enormous gains there was a point in the past few months where virtually all of those gains were wiped out (brought tears to my eyes). Whatever derivatives were in the secret sauce were crushed to oblivion. But it came back hard and now up 17% YTD. This is a great strategy but would never put more than I could afford to lose in any opaque derivative-driven fund. For an ETF along the same lines but not as extreme check out NTSX. I'm long this as well as Dseex (a fine long term hold for sure).

I just looked. Gosh, DSENX is only off 3.5% YTD. Not bad at all. And it’s made good $$ for holders over the years. It’s hard (possibly counterproductive) to try to figure out why some funds excel and some lag over relatively brief periods. Many had their lights knocked out during the early March thru early April period. Like a dazed boxer, some are still struggling to their feet.
I don’t follow HY much. But seems to me it had a rough stretch. To the extent Gundlach is invested in some non-investment grade paper, that might have pulled his fund down relative to similar funds.

I took some heat back in March 2017 for referencing DSENX as “a bit of a black box.” It wasn’t meant to be derogatory. Heck, I’ve said the same thing about TMSRX which I own. But this old thread might shine light on some of the reservations expressed by me and others back when Gundlach had one of the hottest hands in town. A lot of my funds didn’t hold up well, either (DODBX for example) so I shouldn’t gloat about whatever fate may have befallen DSENX.
I wrote: “If you create a 100% exposure to some type of equity index(s) through use of derivatives, while at the same time investing a significant portion in fixed income, than of course you're leveraging-out the equity exposure. Price swings on the equity side should be exaggerated compared to actual equity values. The managers, as you suggest, probably count on their fixed income holdings to moderate or offset the inherent equity volatility. Lipper's breakdown of holdings:
Bonds: 42%
Equity: 33%
Other: 18%
Where I'd take a second look ... is at the types of bond holdings allowed. It appears from the prospectus that fixed income (average maturity out to a maximum of 8 years) may include CMOs, high yield, floating rate, and just about anything else the manager wants to buy - including the kitchen sink. A lot of funds will try to hedge equity fluctuation with high quality bonds. This latitude in the fixed income end is a bit concerning to me. But I'm not Jeff Gundlach. :) “
LINK - DSENX thread March, 2017 / You’ll need to hit the back arrow as this begins on the second page of a rather lengthy discussion.