Over the last several years that strategy has worked very well for me. I built my own ETF using selections from NOBL and VIG. Lately I have been taking a very hard look at USMV which has outperformed both of those although on the surface it's not the same strategy at all. They're the same only different.

https://etfdb.com/core-equity-channel/dividend-growth-strategy-building-resilient-portfolios/
Dividend Growth: A Strategy for Building Resilient Portfolios
Companies that consistently grow their dividends, year after year, have become especially popular with investors in recent years. Generally, these high-quality companies have displayed durable business models, stable earnings, solid fundamentals, and strong histories of profit and growth. As a result, strategies featuring companies with consistent dividend growth have exhibited strong performance characteristics under a wide range of market conditions.
We have added vanguard div etf recently...will see how it goes

A lot of it depends on your time horizon. My wife and I will remain fully invested in US growth funds and don't anticipate making any changes due to COVID-19. We don't have any emerging market or overseas funds because the US is the premier global economy and we expect it to remain so for years to come.
However, if the virus starts to seriously disrupt the global supply chain then some of our tech and large-cap funds could definitely be impacted in the short term. But over a 15-20 year time frame I'm not concerned.
Another factor to consider is that the Chinese communist state has almost certainly deliberately misrepresented the number of infections and deaths. The real number may be 10, 100, or even 1000 times higher than they claim. China's chronic dishonesty may well prove to be the real virus.
Still, I would strongly advise against making any knee-jerk changes to a portfolio which, like us, you might have taken years to craft.

First post. Hello all. I think this disease will effect mkts a lot. I have most everything at TRowe inc. my Roth and 403b. Have been in PRHSX and PRGTX along with PRNEX when prices drop for energy or the fund fall into the low 30s at least. Few weeks ago I move most everything to PREMX and PRULX just keeping some shares of the others to keep them open. I got bit a few times when funds closed....
I have been stalking you all here for a few weeks and know many of you just sit tight and rebalance but I do feel that moving things to bond funds like I have when I have made good gains and the market seems to be about to burst works for me. Of course if GTX drops down to the $14-$15 range I will shift again perhaps. I know I have missed some gains the last 10 years but am still above 8% and some years more still. I am in my mid 40s and need to build not just maintain. Wife's things are with Janus because it sounds like her mom's name (you should see her pick the final 4 LOL) Thanks for adding me, I have been looking for a place like this. Split my board time here and on WUS.

I "love" GMO forecasts. In 12/31/2010 GMO 7 years forecast (link)
was that US LC would make 0.4% + 2.5% inflation = 2.9% and US SC would make -1.9%+2.5%=+0.6%. GMO was way off, for 7 years SPY made 13.65% annually return while IWM made “only” 11.65%

recycling again :-)
2016 article https://www.aarp.org/money/investing/info-2016/junk-bonds-to-avoid.html In 4 years since 2016 JNK made over 40%.
2018 article https://seekingalpha.com/article/4190783-is-4-trillion-risk-in-bond-funds 2019 was one of the best years.

Just as a quick update:
we had a very long talk that covered a lot of ground.
The shortest version of his investment strategy is to buy and hold "global champions," which he defines as companies whose pricing power is supported by a network effect. A simple example would be MSCI. The more that investors get used to seeing MSCI benchmarks for their investment products, the more valuable the MSCI brand becomes. That means that more firms will have an incentive to use MSCI and MSCI will have the ability to raise fees as above-market rates.
"Global champions" are good compounders, because they tend to be high quality businesses committed to sustaining long-term relationships with clients (which is what accounts for the consistent and consistently rising income flow).
Options are a small but valuable part of the portfolio. The casino mentality that we see in the equity market also rules the options market; lots of people are trying to use options to create leveraged bets in the hopes of getting rich quick. As a result, options sell as a premium. He reports that the long-term return of equity options is about 200 bps above the long-term return of equities. He might buy an option on a stock they were already thinking of buying or sell one on a stock they were already thinking of selling. The net effect is cheap upside in the one case and cheap downside protection in the other.
The apparent over-exposure to the financial sector is sort of illusory. A bunch of "finance-lite" companies, such as MSCI, FTSE, insurance brokerages, payment processors, operate as virtual global duopolies with low capital costs, a network effect that serves as a barrier to entry and consistently growing income. They don't have a lot of interest rate / credit risk exposure but do get classified as "financials."
Finally, his strategy is to remain fully invested because he's not good at timing the market and doesn't believe anyone else is, either. He holds a lot of cash occasionally, but only when the returns on cash exceed the projected returns on stocks. (He cited 2007 as an example.) The mantra is "if you're looking to buy great companies with good long-term prospects, the best time to invest was ten years ago, the second-best time is now."
Thanks, too, to Dennis Baran for ferreting some of this stuff out in advance of the interview!
For what interest that holds,
David

The premium M* only goes out 5 years in the comparison so it misses the 2008 bear market. So better to go to Yahoo for APR!

Why IOFIX?
I wasn't comfortable investing in this fund but after several years of solid performance, I like it.
The managers also provided excellent presentations, see the last (one).
Another good article written by Charles Boccadoro can be found at MFO (link)

Dear dtconroe, I do hope that you will reconsider your decision to go. In fact I would like to ask you a question which is very important for me personally. On January 9 you said: "For me, I would not touch IOFIX with a 10 foot pole, but there are many others who believe this is the next great multisector bond oef."
Can you tell us more exactly why you would not touch IOFIX with a 10 foot pole? The fund behaves amazingly well, but maybe you see something that is hidden from many of us? I invest in it for several years already, and I could not identify immediate signs to worry. Do you have some reason to believe e.g. that its stability is not the result of the special kind of investments they make but a result of Ponzi scheme? You said: "I have chosen to only use VCFAX and PIMIX". But I was under impression that PIMIX was doing well in the beginning because of investing in mortgage-backed securities, just like IOFIX, and now PIMIX cannot do it as well as they once did because of the enormous size of the fund, while its more nimble brothers at PIMCO like PDI or PCI continue to invest predominantly in mortgage-backed securities? I am asking your opinion not to debate, but to learn from you, because I am a novice in bond investments, so it is a very practical issue for me.

Just looked at that thing, @Catch22. No surprises. We are quite lucky re: housing. We're paying two-thirds of what by rights ought to be expected for rent (3BR) here. But also: 3:30 p.m. on Feb. 21 and weather is 76 degrees with "a few clouds," according to the NWS. Jimmy Buffett sang: "I wish I were somewhere other than here." Not me. And the little guy is just 3 years old. Last night, he heard me listening to the Allman Bros. "Jessica." He walked into my room and danced and danced with me, until the song was over. And that's a long song! So yes, it's fun here. And when he gets to screaming and crying, his mother and dad can deal with THAT. ;)

@Crash
I know this has been discussed several times over the years here. This link has several view points for data.
Always buy at least one lotto ticket a week, when living in Hawaii.

Cost of Living index, U.S. states

@Tarwheel, you are correct, M* puts PTTFX in the Intermediate Core-Plus category but I would call it MS(Multi Sector) light.
The best risk/reward category over the last several years is securitized.
M* says that PTTFX has over 50% in it and it's the biggest category.
VCFAX has about 90% in securitized...JMUTX 49%...PUCZX 32%...IOFIX 90+%.
Portfolio Vis (link) shows that VCFAX,JMUTX,PUCZX have better performance, SD, Sharpe, Sortino.

Crash - Since you seem to be interested in TR Price bond funds, you might want to check out PTTFX, TRP Total Bond. It’s been around about three years and has done very well. It’s what I would call a high quality multisector bond fund. Unlike RPSIX, it holds no stocks, and it has fewer foreign bonds than PRSNX. I have split the bond allocation in my Roth IRA between RPSIX and PTTFX because I wanted a “purer” bond fund that wouldn’t drop when stocks had a bad spell (unlike RPSIX).

“I can make 20-30+%“
Funny thing about quoting percentages is that seem higher than they appear to be.
Say if a bond fund returns 3%, a 30% increase amounts to less than 1% increase in return.
Is the effort worth it for a tiny 1% increase in return?
Are other assets classes (stocks) or asset allocations (stock to bond ratios) better to target?

@BigTom
Nope, it's not only 1% increase it's much more than that.
Several examples:
1) PIMIX vs BND (link)=in the last 10 years PIMIX made 5% more annually with higher SD(but still low) and much better Sharpe+Sortino
2) IOFIX vs BND (link)=IOFIX made almost 8% more annually with similar SD and much better Sharpe+Sortino.
3) A relative used to invest in MM, I told him to use SEMPX instead after I explained it to him. In 5 years SEMPX made 4.4 while VG VMMXX made 1.2%, this is more than 3% annually.
4) I told another relative to use HY Munis instead of some of his MM/CD and he made over 7% in the last 3 years instead of 1.5-2%.
This tread intention is to discuss only open-ended bond funds.
Not stocks vs Bonds
Not CEFs vs bonds
Not asset allocation
Not how anybody invests currently and in the past.
Not about retirement or accumulation phase.
If you like to discuss the above non-related topics please start a new thread.
It's a pretty simple concept, you post a bond fund and we discuss it generally and compare it to other funds.
So, do you have a bond fund in mind you like to discuss?

Warren has made some bad stock purchases over the recent years (think IBM, WFC & TEVA). He should concentrate on lending his huge cash pile to leveraged companies at high interest rates. He’s been very successful at doing that!

Ignore gold shills.
Rebalancing is not too hard. Don't be afraid of capital gains taxes, they are at historic lows if you have little or no earned income.
I am wary of bond funds. As I shave off my stock index fund gains little by little, I've actually been buying individual bonds of 1 to 2 year duration until recently. The offerings really dried up in January, though, and even money markets are paying more than 1-2 year near-junk-grade stuff. Once rates hit zero (and I think they will) what will happen to valuations? I dunno.
My calculations say I can live for a few years off my for-now 3% bond ladder yield so I am buying my time. 15% cash as well, shooting for higher.
Don't forget that I-series savings bonds pay over 2% if you are willing to hold them a long time.

I am curious why you are wary on bond OEFs? There are 2 excellent posters here that do a lot of research on them. From those 2 I have learned a lot about bond funds. I do not follow anyone blindly but still do my own due diligence.

“ Their system starts by identifying companies with the characteristics that exemplify long-term outperformance. Then they fish in this pond, since these businesses are likely to continue doing well. ”
“secrets” include:
Buy cheap stocks, look global, hold long term, concentrated bets, strong balance sheets, get a degree in physics
Two-part rationale for avoiding high dividend yield: they can’t raise it much in the future, and they’re probably masking weakness.
Proof of their secret formula: beat the index for three years

https://www.marketwatch.com/story/9-secrets-of-dividend-investing-from-a-couple-of-stock-pros-who-beat-the-market-2020-02-19
Opinion: 9 secrets of dividend investing, from a couple of stock pros who beat the market
Many income-focused investors dwell on dividend yield and buy largely on that basis. More income is better, right?
Not so, say the two dividend-minded mutual-fund managers who run the outperforming Guinness Atkinson Dividend Builder Fund GAINX, +0.47% . Matthew Page and Ian Mortimer use a much more nuanced approach to get high-achieving results. Over the past three years, they have beaten both their Morningstar World Large-Stock category and the MSCI ACWI Index by 1.9 and 1.4 percentage points, respectively, on an annualized basis.

Cutting MPW (REIT) loose after a while to lock in approx 6 years' worth of dividends via cap gains. Will buy it back on any major weakness, though.
Also dropping JBGS (REIT) for a 20% gain as a 2-year trade on Amazon coming to my block.