There are a lot of different situations that are getting mixed together here.
@MikeM raises the question of employer plan rollovers in kind. Often employer plans require you to liquidate your holdings and transfer cash. If they make an exception, it is usually limited to rollovers within the same financial institution, e.g. a TRP-managed 401(k) to a TRP IRA. So rollovers have their own obstacles independent of whether funds are closed or not.
Then there are transfers of shares held directly with a fund company (not the situation here). Long ago, TRP was willing to do an in-kind Roth conversion for me of a closed fund to a new Roth account. More recently, it told me that it would not do an in-kind conversion of a closed fund to a new Roth.
At the same time that TRP was telling me this, Fidelity was telling me sure, they could do the Roth conversion of TRP shares in-kind. I never tested this and have my doubts about whether TRP would allow them to open the new account.
IMHO, the key question is how strict the fund company is with respect to opening new accounts, regardless of where that new account will be opened. The TRP examples above show how this can go either way, and also that a fund company's flexibility can change over time.
Regarding @little5bee's transfer request: Let us know what happens. Filling out a transfer request form is different from actually getting the shares transferred.
I own legacy shares of a fund that over the years transformed into institutional class shares at Legg Mason. It now has a $1M (or higher?) min, not technically closed. Legg Mason has informed me that it will reject any transfer request from another institution (such as Schwab) unless I meet the $1M min in the receiving account. Yeah, sure. I'm hoping that the new fund distributor, Franklin Templeton, will be more flexible.

@catch22 Actually I would challenge the notion. It is not secret I am bond challenged. I've also mentioned 007 doesn't know jack s*** - stirred tastes better than shaken.
When I buy bond funds I HAVE to trust the manager. This the reason I seldom buy bond funds outright. Imagine buying IOFIX "knowing what's under the hood". I'm just glad I didn't buy it.
Back to RPHYX and RSIVX. I expected these to be low risk funds. Now "low risk" is in the eye of the beholder. However when I look at FPNIX, at least I have some confidence. With RPHYX...mea. With RSIVX I'm not happy.
I bought RPHYX and FPNIX risking funds I would otherwise have put in money market.
I bought RSIVX because I thought PTTRX is risky. WTF? Please tell me ONE person who thought PTTRX is a better risk/reward bets in the "sky is falling on bonds" world where every Tom, Dick and Harry is saying buy funds with short durations. They've been wrong on this for at least 10 years.
But tell you what. Let me but PTTRX. It will promptly tank 20%.

@johnN It depends on each persons situation. I am 15 years into retirement. Our investment income currently contributes 25% to 30% to our annual household cash flow. But we can get by comfortably -- with a more modest lifestyle -- if that % drops to zero (the amount available to us this year will go down substantially from 30% if the market does not quickly rebound). My approach is different than would be necessary for a person who would be highly dependent on that income in retirement. Maybe other comments will help in that regard.

What do you do if you are near retirements. We do not know if tomorrow is another large down day. Many predict sp500 can even recede to 1700 levels for another 30s% down. Many near retire hardworking folks may have to break their backs working another 5 years until market recovers.

Good question without an exact answer @Bobpa. What might be good to look for is managers with great track records who had a lot of cash coming into this bear market. AKREX would be my 1st choice to put money back to work. I already own it and it has held up well in a relative sense, so an easy choice for me. There was a lot of discussion on the Yacktman funds a month or 2 ago. YAFFX might be a good consideration. I personally started and have been adding to BRK/B for the reason mentioned above. Berkshire Hathaway has a ton of cash on hand and has been known to put it to work when others are fleeing the market. Many say it has under performed the past few years during the bull, but this could be it's time to shine.
There are probably other good suggestions for great managers with cash on hand.

Howdy folks,
Look around you and see what's working. Don't fall for the head feint to the airlines, hotels, casinos, tourism, Trump Resorts, etc. Sounds like they might get their bailout but they can't get 'demand' from the gov't. Demand for these industries will be depressed for years. Unless you're very, very nimble and are FOD, I'd focus on what will work and have demand going forward.
Video conferencing and anything that replaces F2F with Virtual. Online shopping? Who does it? Who delivers? Schooling? All virtual.
I'm adding to Asia and have been scaling in since just before this broke [yeah, bad timing but I didn't have to wait long to become whole]. For funds, I like the House of Matthews and am riding MPACX, MATFX, MCHFX. Needless to say, I'm all over the pm's with SLV, SILJ, GDXJ, CEF, and some junior miners.
Most of my allocation is overseas at this point - say 85-90%. It's in both bonds and equities, mostly the former.
Good luck,
peace, and flatten the curve,
rono

Experience tell me in order to fully recover the loss that would be time, recovery time that is. During 2008 drawdown, S&P500 index took over 4 years to full recovery the loss from peak to trough. Depending on your asset allocation, it may be shorter (hopefully not longer).
At presence the sell-off is severe, i.e. the rate of decline is even steeper than 2008. There are days when the supposedly opposite asset classes such as bond vs. equity move in the same direction, which indicates panic selling to cash. So jumping to one ship on fire to another is not a viable option to recover the loss.
If you follow Charles Bolin article on MFO, he is near retirement and his portfolio is constructed very conservatively with 20% equity. He should be doing quite well now considering S&P 500 index is down over 30% as of 3/20/2020.

Hi @_Bobpa
I am not investment guru/expert, but I would imagine betting on more aggressive heavily stock driven portfolio [90/10], or Emerging market/oversea products may get you back to previous peak soon if there is indeed recovery. Many predict maybe few years before we see dows at 30000 levels. Others say recessions on horizon and unemployment rate maybe extremely high in near future and severe economiccontractions.
For us late 40 years old, has many years until retirement, our portfolio still comprise 80/20, mostly index products. We are also couch potatoes thus we do hold Tdf 2045 funds in vanguard and schwab. We did not sell, hoping for market to recover soon
Our largest holders currently :
Brk.b
Vanguard primecap core
Vanguard emergent market etf VWO
EEM
Wellington fund vwelx
Vanguard star vgstx
Fbnd
Bnd
Vti
Voo
Been adding vde qqq and vti last week, even going all way downs
Probably will sell good holding bonds [private-corp bbb ] soon, would need cash to pay uncle Sam 2019 tax next few weeks.
Regards

That is exactly the problem. They use estimates until there are buys or in this case sales that establish a real price. So when the estimates are obviously higher or much higher than the prices they see quoted the last thing a manger wants to do is sell and set a price, but when a wave of redemptions come in they have no choice, the sell the prices drop more redemptions etc etc.
Over the last few years there are fewer and fewer market makers making the markets a lot less liquid. The few that are left probably have no incentive to offer realistic prices but instead low ball them. They also probably know when a huge fund company has to sell at any price

@BenWP- don't beat up on yourself too much- lot's of us have been there too over the years. Win some, lose some...

For what it is worth I think the issue with IOFIX is they were forced to sell thinly traded bonds at any price to meet redemptions after they exhausted their line of credit ( I seem to remember $200 million??)
Since these bonds probably sell "by appointment" and I think by phone anybody they called knew they were in trouble and offered low ball prices seeing if they would bite. They had not choice
Once they sold at those low ball levels, there is a price and more of the portfolio gets "marked to market" and the NAV is automatically that much lower, even if the bonds in the fund are really worth much more.
With corporate bonds that mature, like in ZEOIX, the mangers will tell you just to hang on and bonds that mature will mature at par in a few months or so, raising the NAV by that much. I don't know the duration of IOFIX, but if the mortgages mature in 10 to 15 years it will be a long time before they hit "par". Many homeowners may also have enough equity to refinance but that would be a redemption at par and would just reduce the interest payment. but "raise" the NAV.

"The Federal Reserve is providing the fuel for this morning's reversal, announcing that it will purchase Treasuries and mortgage-backed securities "in amounts needed," along with plans to buy corporate bonds and municipal securities and a lending program to support small-and-medium sized businesses'

>>> Many of these pieces of support is what has been in place in Europe from the ECB.......the "whatever it takes", especially from several years ago; with backstopping corporate bonds, etc.
And the beat goes on.......................

Few years back I recall someone bringing a bill to congress which would make it illegal for members of Congress to trade on insider information. The bill was soundly defeated.

STOCK (Stop Trading on Congressional Knowledge) became law in 2012. It was subsequently modified to make enforcement more difficult, but as of now it is still illegal for members of Congress to trade on insider information.
https://www.npr.org/sections/itsallpolitics/2013/04/16/177496734/how-congress-quietly-overhauled-its-insider-trading-law

I'm old enough to remember when NYC didn't pay the coupons on its bonds. (Of course, all the bond houses were sending out messages that NYC had to pay the bond holders before it paid the cops, fire fighters and garbage collectors. That may have been true legally, but it wasn't true either politically or practically.) This all happened in 1975.
For all you young'uns, what happened was that there was a moratorium on NYC payments, the coupon rate was reduced & it was eventually paid off. If history is your hobby, you can read about it at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_New_York_City_(1946%E2%80%931977)#Fiscal_crisis The hero who arranged all this was Felix Royatan.
So, bottom line, yes things can go wrong with munis.
And we should expect states, etc. to have reduced income from taxes as the virus decreases economic activity.
Finally, if you want to know how vulnerable your bond fund is to changes in interest rates, look for its DURATION. The duration is the average maturity of all the payments a bond will make (including its coupon payments). It's a bit less than the average maturity of the fund or bond. The magic about duration is that a change of X% in interest rates results in a change of (duration) times (X%) in the principal value of the bond - and in the opposite direction. So if interest rates rise by 0.5% and the fund has a duration of 5 years, then the principal value goes down by(5)(.5%) = 2.5%
That change is independent of credit risk - if the issuer of the bond becomes less credit worthy, then there will be a change caused by that too.

Charles,
I don't watch charts daily where I make my decisions. I do see prices daily because every night around 6:30-7 PM I see my total portfolio updates (Both Fidelity and Schwab allow you to aggregate all funds/accounts from several brokers.
Once a week write down my favorite funds for several categories which is around 30 funds. The rest of the time, I'm just watching and since investing is my passion for decades I read, watch, listen daily.
I may hold funds for weeks and months and sometimes years. Since 2000 I have my system of best risk/reward funds. It goes like this, identity best rusk/reward funds, select the top 3-5 funds and keep switching within this list. It's more complicated than that but that's the basics.
Example: I held PIMIX from 2010 to 2018, it did so well I couldn't find anything better.
Then, I retired and have enough, so now I mainly investing in bond funds and several times annually trade stock/ETF/CEF/whatever when I see a great trade.
Example: PCI is one of the best CEFs (managed by the PIMIX team and where Ivascyn has most of his money). I don't like CEFs volatility which can be much higher. Last Wed I traded it for around 30 minutes and made 5%, see (link) and the last post
When markets are unreasonable with a screaming value I may buy for short term to make a quick trade.
When I see that bonds+stocks don't make sense + very high VIX + panic I sell everything.
My main 4 goals are:
1) We need to make just 4.5% annually to cover LT costs+inflation for our portfolio to last for 4-5 decades.
2) I still want to make at least 6% annually with the lowest Standard Deviation (under 3) and without ever losing 3% from any last top and be positive annually. I no longer care to maximize performance but to keep our standard of living
3) Use mainly bonds OEFs with the flexibility to trade more often by using momentum and trends
4) May use sometimes faster trades of other funds(stocks,CEFs, gold and more).

Hi @Derf

@FD1000 said,"As usual, I follow my chart/trends and they come directly from the price which is the end result of the opinions of all traders. "
Something like the Junkster would have said ! Follow the price !

This method "price"; is a fully viable process. This does not preclude one's paying attention to what may or may not be pushing a price up or down; and of course, one's risk assessment.
A simple example from my simple mind. One is thinking of buying a particular vehicle that they have had their eye on......but, to be smart; buy a two year old model and avoid most of the first 2 years depreciation. Then one discovers the secondary/used pricing is even lower than anticipated and what would be normal. What happened? In searching the net you discover that, in spite of large new sales volumes, owners over the two year period have become dissatisfied with the product. So, Mr. Market price; sets the price.
Part of my method to discover pricing. But, I agree with FD1000; and his long time process, which is technical; but helps answer the question of why investment "x" is price performing in a particular fashion. @rono and others here also pay attention to Mr. Market pricing.
c'est tout
Take care,
Catch

It seems to me that with respect to "when to start buying" equities/equity funds the decision should mainly be based on two factors:
• How close are you to retirement?
• Do you believe that the equity markets will eventually recover and continue to operate as they have historically?
If you have five to ten years left to accumulate before retirement, and you believe that the markets will, in time, recover, then what's the problem with buying right now? There's a "1/3 off sale" going on even as we sit here.
If you're a little early, the market will decline even more before stabilizing and beginning another upward cycle. If you prefer to buy a little now, and maybe a bit more each week for a while, you will either get even better prices or maybe pay just a bit more, depending on what the markets do. Nobody knows exactly when we will hit bottom, but we're certainly in a good buying area right now.
Please note that I'm restricting my perspective to the equity market. What the bond market will do is being manipulated by so many outside actors that it's impossible to know what's going to happen. I'll leave the bond commentary to my friend Catch22.

A few countries and companies have successfully issued "century bonds" with 100 year maturities, so sure, this could work. Even Petrobras did a few years back. It's all part of that bond game where a whole lot of investors don't plan to hold most of their bonds to maturity anyway, so it's about hedging, and bets on the curve, or all these other things I don't pretend to understand.

Dear Old_Joe, we are not born investors, my profession is very far from it, but life offers us many opportunities to make silly mistakes. That is why I am following you for many years any trying to learn from you and many others.
MikeW, I fully agree that the financial support may give huge unexpected boost to the market. I am still 60% invested, I do not want to be too smart about things that I do not understand well enough. My main concern is that if the outbreak is not mitigated soon, the emotional response will be very strong, and the standard tools like looking at the 200 day moving average may not help us to understand what is going on. Probably we will know part of the answer soon.

@rforno- oh, yes! bought some 14% tax-free out of Salt Lake City for some power generating plants. Figured that if anyone could get through that period it might be the Mormons. They did, and the income was spectacular.
It was only many years later that I found out that those power plants were the massive coal-fired polluters at Four Corners.
Crap!