Yes, SGGDX was my only equity fund up today +2.28%, YTD +18.11% and 1 YR + 63.60%. Very lucky I finally decided to invest in a Gold fund again after all these years.

I owned MBEAX a few years ago. Hard to recommend when PRWCX JABAX VWELX FBALX RPBAX have all done better. At least it has outperformed OAKBX and FPACX . Would like to see it outperform as a global allocation fund to provide more choice in that category.

All my needs are met by the following
1) usually invested at 99+% mostly bond OEFs. In the last 10 years I was only 4-5 weeks at 99+% cash. Another 6-7 weeks at 30-40% cash.
2) Trading riskier assets several times annually for hours to days and back to bond funds
3) Be flexible at all times. That could be any trade, be in cash, whatever I need to meet my goals.
4) Be in only 2-4 funds because it's easy to follow and trade. All my funds must do well at all times otherwise will be replaced.
5) I compare the above to buy and hold of several portfolios and I come ahead.
6) I never believed in income as my first criteria, I always look for risk/reward which is selecting the best performing funds with the best SD, Max Draw, Sortino, Sharpe, more.
7) I never believed in wide diversification. In the last several years I mainly invest in US LC no SC/international...or..I mainly used HY Munis + MBS bonds and so on.
==================
In the last 3 days, the VIX started to go up from around 31 to 37. If it goes over 40 it's a warning sign. Q2 started with -2.6% loss, we will find out soon if the next leg down started. Some of the good news is behind us. Huge fiscal and monetary support. The coronavirus cases are going down. Earnings are not as bad because the first 2 months of Q1 were normal.
But, Q2 started with 30 million unemployed, a bad economy, and bad earnings. How long can the stock market disregard it?

Take a look at LBNDX. It has worked well for me through the years ... but, it gave up more ground than I thought it should during the recent market swoon.

Another read from Eric Basmajian on Inflation / Deflation Debate:
https://seekingalpha.com/article/4340323-inflation-vs-deflation-tug-of-war

The deflationary thesis holds more weight for three primary reasons.
Weakening rates of population growth and excessive levels of unproductive debt are two long-term structural forces that have been working to undermine the rate of economic growth, widen the output gap, create excess capacity, and exert a general disinflationary force on the economy. Both of these forces will persist.
Recessions exacerbate excess capacity. The current recession is one of the worst economic crises the country has ever faced. The rate of inflation nearly always declines during recessions and typically does not trough for years after the conclusion of the recession and the eventual reduction in excess capacity. A severe recession usually knocks several hundred basis points off the rate of core inflation, placing current measures firmly below the zero bound. The strength of the recovery will determine how persistent the deflation will be.
While the Federal Reserve has engaged in a rapid expansion of its balance sheet and the monetary base, both the money multiplier and the velocity of money will work against the increase in money growth. Velocity tends to decline as debt levels rise. There's no reason to believe the velocity of money will rise significantly. In fact, most evidence points toward a very aggressive collapse in the velocity of money, a force that will continue to negate monetary policy actions as it has for the last several decades.

and,

...various measures of inflation expectations reveal that the bond market is currently expecting deflation for at least the next three years and rates of inflation below 1.5% for more than 10 years.

Difference Between Monetary Base and Money Supply:

Often we conflate Federal Reserve "money printing" with an equal and consistent increase in the money supply. This is not the case.
When the Federal Reserve buys an asset from the private sector, the Federal Reserve increases excess reserves, which represents an increase in the monetary base, not the money supply.
https://static.seekingalpha.com/uploads/2020/4/23/48075864-15876672613202152_origin.png

High Level of Unproductive Debt:

High levels of debt are often misunderstood. Commonly, we hear that debt levels are getting too high and that inflation will ensue. The data actually proves that higher levels of debt, particularly unproductive debt that does not generate an income stream, leads to deflation, not inflation.

Unemployment Factors:

In the prior two recessions, it took 47 months and 75 months, respectively, to regain the number of jobs that were lost. In this recession, the number of job losses will erase upwards of 20 million paychecks based on preliminary data from the report of the initial claims.

On Assets to Hold:

Gold can perform well during periods of inflation or periods of deflation. The direction of real rates tends to be a more critical factor. As such, my analysis suggests a combination of Treasury bonds, gold, and higher than normal levels of cash is the best way to move forward in the current environment.

Hi @bee. Thank you for your question. Have I ever considered using other funds and/or etf's as a benchmark? Yes, but I have not found a conserative asset allocation fund that generates the income stream that my master portfolio kicks off. And, besides being a former corporate credit manager I limit how much I will hold in any one fund. With this I spread it out over a number of positions.
In addition, I use to be more active and engage spiff positions more often as a source of income generation via realized capital gains. Now, I hold a good slug of CTFAX (about a 5% weighting) and I let this fund do this automatically for me. Thus, this has reduced the number of times I have been an active investor with my use of spiffs. I've got a lot of moving parts within my portfolio ... perhaps, to many for some ... but, not to many for me.
Again in review below is how I govern my portfolio as it does everything needed to meet my needs now in retirement. Why change now?
Old_Skeet's All Weather Asset Allocation.
My all weather asset allocation of 20% cash, 40% income and 40% equity affords me everything necessary to meet my needs now being in the distribution phase of investing. The benefit of this asset allocation is that it provides sufficient income, maximizes diversification, minimizes volatility, and provides long-term returns.
The 20% held in cash area provides me ample cash should I need a cash draw over and above what my portfolio generates plus it can provide the capital necessary to fund a special investment position (spiff) should I choose to open one during a stock market pullback. In addition, cash helps stabilize a portfolio during stock market volatility. Example of investments held in this area are cash, money market mutual funds and CD's.
The 40% held in the income area provides me ample income generation to meet my income needs in retirement. It is a well diversified area that incorporates a good number of income generating type funds. Some examples of investments held in this area are AZNAX, JGIAX & PONAX.
The 40% held in the equity area provides me some dividend income along with some growth, that equities generally provide, that offsets the effects of inflation plus, over time. Some examples of investments held in this area are IDIVX, NEWFX & SPECX.
My five largest positions are AMECX, CAIBX, CTFAX, ISFAX & FKINX. Two of these funds I have had positions in since my early teens AMECX & FKINX). I'm now 72+ years in age.
Generally, for my income distributions, I take no more than a sum equal to what one half of my five year average total return has been. In this way principal grows over time.
This works well for me and I have no plans to change the concept. I encourage others to develop something that works well for them and to stick with it even if is a two fund portfolio consisting of a stock index and a bond index fund. If this is what you want then why not use SFAAX? It's yield is too low for me at 1%.

I believe that active managers can bring value to the bond fund arena and I've done well with Pimco Income (PIMIX) as a core bond holding over the years. PIMIX has done poorly recently and index funds, such as Vanguard Total Bond (BND) have done well.
I almost purchased AlphaCentric Bond (IOFIX), but it seemed too good to be true and we all know what happened there. Guggenheim Total Return (GIBIX) has done consistently well, but its manager seems to be a little unconventional with investing ideas. I don't think GIBIX will become the next IOFIX, but I'm wondering how much longer GIBIX can continue to outperform. Performance Trust (PTIAX) also seems like it might be a good choice.
Although I don't like to make sector bets (even in the bond market), I'd like to consider active managers and not just a plain vanilla bond index fund.
Any ideas? Thanks!

Howdy folks,
Help me out. I have never heard anything good about this company - for 50 years. Did I miss something or should they still be avoided like the plague?
thanks,
rono

Roger all points; you just seemed focused on moderate and incremental outperformance and added value, and it is impossible to find any period in which VOOG has not outperformed since its inception. I understand about passivity vs various degrees of process and selection action (which might include the monthly auto-churning of CAPE).
I have been heeding the 'growth has got to end at some point' arg for over 40 years and have 'sacrificed' mucho dollars investing prudently in value funds, all the best ones.
Could hardly care less about pricing and spreads unless egregious.
DSE_X has suffered from the bond discombobulation, yes. I would not advise anyone to bail out of it tho unless they were simply going to shift to CAPE, which gives many investors fits, for extraneous reasons.
If you want to hold the equities and are eyeing VTI, don't forget about considering RSP.

It's so tempting to buy now IOFIX,VCFAX and especially EIXIX which I think is "safer" but I don't dare. These broken MBS might have a problem
[and later ...]
Corp bonds rated invested grade were down 13% from the top. Black swan is unknown ... Pimco top ones PCI, PDI lost 30-40%.

The funds you look at do seem broken. As corporates and MBSs recovered, these funds continued going down. Which is why, as Baseball_Fan wrote, it's important to know what you own, not just what their "stats" are.
Every once in awhile, a picture really is worth a thousand words.

Here's a graph showing YTD curves for MBB (iShares MBS), PTRIX (Pimco MBS fund), VTC (Vanguard Total Corporate ETF), VCFAX, and SEMRX.
All dipped to varying degrees, but the first three recovered and are positive on the year.
VCFAX flattened and is down 13%; SEMRX continued to plunge and is down 22%.
SEMMX is negative over 1, 3, and 5 years. (It has not been around for a decade yet.) Next to that, DODIX looks pretty good. A problem with putting too much faith in volatility figures over a generally quiescent period is that one is blinded to latent risks.
These "black swan" events come almost like clockwork. 2020, 2009, 2000, 1987, 1974. Pandemic risk is unknown? That sounds like a politician.
"Over the past quarter century, warnings have been clear and consistent from both US government leaders, scientists, and global health officials: A pandemic was coming—and whenever it arrived, it would be catastrophic to the global economy."
https://www.wired.com/story/an-oral-history-of-the-pandemic-warnings-trump-ignored/

politician? not really. As retiree that wants to make more without the volatility the numbers show it. If you don't understand how and what you do like most then just invest like most. Buy and Hold stocks and high rated bonds for ballast.
You can see in 20 years black swan happened every 10 years.
My thread was a proof of what I did, see (this)
You can also see (this) and what I did, using trades.
BTW, Today at 10 AM I sold all my stocks(all in QQQ) that I bought earlier in April and posted at M*. I'm not predicting it's the top, I sold sold because I made money the way I do by trading.
But, you are not the first or last that tried to dismiss it :-) and it looks to me that every post I make you think it's your obligation to criticize.

@MikeM, I hold a good slug of it in my taxable account and a little slug in my self directed IRA. There are a couple of reasons that I'm holding off until CTFAX makes it June distribution. One, I feel as though I'd be buying the distribution as it, for the most part, has already been made through its investment activity. Two, I have a CD that matures towards the end of May that I will be using some of the CD money to make this purchase. And, three, I want to keep my cost basis in the fund as low as possible (return on invested capital). Some funds (owned for years) have paid out more than enough to cover my cost of buying them. I'm thinking that the June distribution will be a sizeable one. Possibly, double (or more than) what it normally makes. Skeet

We have read about the V, U, and W shaped recoveries. Now Jerome Powell suggests another possible path moving forward. Names for it like slow-rolling, obstacle course, and washboard come to mind (sisyphus pit is perhaps too extreme). My hunch is that the path that proves to be correct will at least partially dictate the market's path over the next one to two years.

Calling all current economic forecasts “highly uncertain,” Powell mapped out why he believes the economy may go through a series of peaks and troughs for at least a year or more as the world battles to keep the virus under control.
“This is such an extraordinary, extraordinary shock, unlike anything certainly that’s happened in my lifetime ... we’re still putting out the fire, we’re still trying to win, and I think we’ll be at that for a while,” he said.

https://reuters.com/article/us-health-coronavirus-fed-powell-analysi/w-shaped-recovery-may-be-too-optimistic-feds-powell-suggests-idUSKBN22C1MU

I expect that there will be more dividend payers who will do likewise. First cut in 80 years. "RDS.B Royal Dutch Shell Thursday cut its dividend for the first time since 1945, reducing it by 66% to 16 cents a share after first-quarter profit fell by nearly half. The company warned that the pandemic's impact would be more severe in the second quarter." (Emphasis mine)
Shell slashes dividend as earnings sink

https://seekingalpha.com/article/4340466-municipal-bond-perspective-where-go-from
/where do We Go From Here
Given the financial strength of the sector, we believe airports have the requisite resources to weather a decline in air travel over the next several months.
If investment markets do not recover from recent declines before fiscal year-end (mostly June 30), schools will see significant investment losses in fiscal year 2020.
We expect that sales taxes and income taxes will experience immediate shocks as a result of social distancing and demand-side pressures.
As the COVID-19 pandemic evolved during the first quarter, the municipal bond market experienced one of its most volatile periods in years. Here, the Franklin Municipal Bond Department shares how they plan to navigate the market, which they think is likely to show signs of distress and elevated volatility for some time
elieve levels of municipal market volatility are likely to remain elevated over the next few months, and potentially longer. However, our seasoned team of analysts and portfolio managers have experienced difficult market periods in the past, and we are using that collective knowledge to navigate through this panic as well./
many municipals may end up bankrupted by late/summer fall unless market do rebounds and folks are less worried/install more monies into system/buying more. I think we are slowly getting there. The vanguard advisors that we talked to still recommends balance holdings of different products/vehicles and perhaps may lessen risks just in case another crash /W form recovery takes place
we are still holding to our munis and corp porfolios, have not buy nor added recently.
We did have one bond near bankruptcy past few weeks but we are still holding on since it did slightly recovered recently [RIG oil platforms]

It's so tempting to buy now IOFIX,VCFAX and especially EIXIX which I think is "safer" but I don't dare. These broken MBS might have a problem
[and later ...]
Corp bonds rated invested grade were down 13% from the top. Black swan is unknown ... Pimco top ones PCI, PDI lost 30-40%.

The funds you look at do seem broken. As corporates and MBSs recovered, these funds continued going down. Which is why, as Baseball_Fan wrote, it's important to know what you own, not just what their "stats" are.
Every once in awhile, a picture really is worth a thousand words. Here's a graph showing YTD curves for MBB (iShares MBS), PTRIX (Pimco MBS fund), VTC (Vanguard Total Corporate ETF), VCFAX, and SEMRX.
All dipped to varying degrees, but the first three recovered and are positive on the year.
VCFAX flattened and is down 13%; SEMRX continued to plunge and is down 22%.
SEMMX is negative over 1, 3, and 5 years. (It has not been around for a decade yet.) Next to that, DODIX looks pretty good. A problem with putting too much faith in volatility figures over a generally quiescent period is that one is blinded to latent risks.
These "black swan" events come almost like clockwork. 2020, 2009, 2000, 1987, 1974. Pandemic risk is unknown? That sounds like a politician.
"Over the past quarter century, warnings have been clear and consistent from both US government leaders, scientists, and global health officials: A pandemic was coming—and whenever it arrived, it would be catastrophic to the global economy."
https://www.wired.com/story/an-oral-history-of-the-pandemic-warnings-trump-ignored/

I said it. It's pretty easy to conclude based on the numbers and people I know who have had it.
According to the Mass. DPH website: Average age of those hospitalized is 69. Average age of those who have died, 82. To date, the rate of deaths for those 40 years of age and younger is 4 out of 100,000 people. So yes, it affects older people with pre-existing conditions at much greater rate. It's startling, really. Again, this number of saying "young" people, under 60, is ridiculous.
https://mass.gov/doc/covid-19-dashboard-april-29-2020/download

Baseball fan, all the things you said to watch for didn't work. Corp bonds rated invested grade were down 13% from the top. Black swan is unknown and if you invest based on that you will only own treasuries which are fine for some but not all investors.
Charles, the idea of CEFs is good but most were down significantly, even Pimco top ones PCI, PDI lost 30-40%.
I basically sell any bond fund I own that lose 1%.
Lastly, to investors who say lesson learned, I don't. I don't look at the last crash and invest based on it in the next several years. I just wait months until I feel markets come down to take more risk in bonds.

First of all, since when is below the age of 60 considered "young?" People in the their 40s and 50s are not "young." This is a nice way to skew the numbers. I live in Massachusetts and know all about the numbers in the state. Bottom line: It's a scandal for nursing homes and long term care facilities, where 50-60% of all deaths in the state are occurring. Average age of death from the Chinese Flu is 82 years old in Mass. Most people that die are in their 70s and older. Look at the Mass. DPH numbers and get back to me. If you are really "young," you have virtually nothing to worry about, other than getting a cold or flu-like symptoms.

It happened less than a year ago (in dog years).

I bailed on SFGIX a couple of years ago. Foster is candid and seems to know his stuff, but it's been quite a laggard. So...