IOFIX was near the bottom of the barrel in a robust Bondland until the past month where it has suddenly surged ahead. . Except for the new offering EIXIX which @The Shadow mentioned here, IOFIX leads all the others this year in the non agency rmbs arena. I still think IOFIX is an excellent and well managed fund. My problem with IOFIX was its one day decline late last year of 1.29%. Regardless, junk corporates from day one this year have been and remain the place to be in Bondville with gains in the 7% to 8% and more range. Even the normally staid (compared to its peers) Vanguard junk fund VWEHX is having a bang up year over 8% YTD. Four times out of the past five negative years in junk they came back the following year with double digit returns. So let’s hope this will be 5 out of 6 as last year was negative.

Lipper categories:
SMD - Short Municipal Debt Funds - Funds invest in municipal debt issues with dollar-weighted average maturities of less than three years.
SIM - Short-Intmdt Municipal Debt Funds - Funds invest in municipal debt issues with dollar-weighted average maturities of one to five years.
ISHAX has an average effective weighted maturity of 9.37 years. (Effective maturity is generally shorter than stated maturity because it incorporates the likelihood of being called.) That makes it clearly not short term by Lipper definitions. Likewise, M* shows the fund as intermediate term.

Hi @hank
Yes, for the most part; I was being a smart arse. I grow tired of the site(s) pronouncements that arrive here. Too many posts have no input from the poster as to why such a site link may be of some consequence. Tis fairly simple to have at least a single sentence personal thought about the topic.
There are, without a doubt; valid investment thoughts here and there in the internet world that can arrive at MFO.
Being curious as to investment announcements, I poked through charts; using the tickers indicated and found nothing valid as to why one would want to invest in this area, based on this recent post shown next in bold. Apparently nothing more than a writing assignment. Had I posted the linked story, it would have been relative to the fact that I didn't see any confirmation that the investment areas had a positive return for an investor, versus other simple equity investment areas.
You Can Play the Flurry of M&A With Merger Arbitrage Fund
I received an email last year from a lady I've know for 40 years about a YouTube video she had seen about investing "now" in gold and silver, as the world was going to hell in a hand basket some day or another. I watched the short video and researched the author. My reply email was a background of the person trying the sell. She'd been involved in the precious metals market in a variety of positions for more than 20 years. Pure marketing to have an income.
Overall, with all of my warts and short comings as a person; I/we understand what we don't understand relative to investments and have a decent amount of critical thinking skills. IMHO these are very important to investing in particular, let alone everything else in life. So, yes; I tire of many of the pointless posts here. I do my best to post/respond to something I feel may be of consequence and valid for some here. Obviously, my viewpoint is only mine; and the value of a given link remains in the eye of the poster and the reader.
K. Too much ramble from me and my chores are now behind schedule to stay ahead of the rain.
Take care,
Catch

Nicely articulated by @LewisBraham. Thank you. (I too can do without Suzie O.) :)
Re “aged scotch” ... Just for accuracy: All scotch is aged (minimum of 3 years in oak casks - by law). That’s the only kind there is.
Here’s the exact language from the Scotch Whisky Regulations 2009 (SWR) : “ (Must be) wholly matured in an excise warehouse in Scotland in oak casks of a capacity not exceeding 700 litres (185 US gal; 154 imp gal) for at least three years”
Source - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scotch_whisky

Munis are issued with long maturities, so < 5 is generally considered short duration in the asset class. Lower credit (but nowhere near the risk of similarly rated corporates, as munis are) with some rate sensitivity isn't a bad setup for an unofficial barbell approach.
P.S. Matt, I use NVHAX quite a bit. I don't invest in IG munis much at all these days; absent leverage, their yields have been pretty paltry for years.
I do use muni CEFs (Pimco, Invesco, and Nuveen have some pretty decent ones), but not when they're at high valuations like they are now. Pimco's are generally at high premia now, and they just announced some distribution cuts early this week. I'll own a muni CEF or two when the next selloff comes along. You might look into that route, but it does take some time to get your personal investment schtick down with CEFs.
Good luck -- AJ

I find the generational and classist finger wagging from rich old folks like Orman obnoxious and absurd in the extreme. There are always these articles complaining about young people "wasting their money" on lattes and avocado toast. Why aren't there articles about the older generation wasting its money on aged scotch, gun collections, cigars and foreign-made mid-life crisis convertibles? Lattes at least help make you work harder and be more productive so you can have more money to invest. I don't think the younger generation is any more wasteful than its elders. In fact, there's evidence that they are actually smarter about money with regard to home buying and lower cost investment choices. This whole debate about people not saving enough is really a smokescreen masking the fact that inflation-adjusted wages have not gone up with profits in the last thirty years, and one party wants to gut Social Security.

@mcmarasco:
For me, ISHAX might be a named as a short duration high yield muni fund; but, from my perspective, it is anything but a short duration fund as it carries an average duration of 4.64 years with an average effective maturity being listed, by M*, at 9.37 years. To me, this is not a short duration high yield muni fund. I'm thinking short duration would be within a 1 to 3 year range with an average effective maturity likewise falling within that range as well.

@Derf: I try not to post over something that has already been put up. But, at times, it happens.
Perhaps, the class needed another lecture on the subject and there just might be some that simply missed its first posting as I did. Often times, a professor will offer the same lecture more than once. And, besides @hank, @Old_Joe and @MikeM had a great discussion and exchange going between themselves on this very subject; but, under another thread topic.
For me, what is important about this study, with me being in retirement, is that it reflects that a 50/50 portfolio can substain a 4% withdrawal rate and grow principal over time as the 50/50 portfolio averaged an 8.5% return over time. I'm thinking, the 4% withdrawal rate would have to be computed on the portfolio's average value. This is why I set my own withdrawal rate to generally not exceed a sum of what one-half of my five year average return has been. I found in doing this about twenty years ago when I governed my parents portfolio's provided them ample income plus grew their principal. Now, I have adopted this very same distribution withdrawal method.
Sorry @Ted. My bad. I simply missed it's first posting.
Skeet

@David_Snowball enjoyed your analysis of BAFWX. Thank you. In the article you mention that:
" With an 18.0% lifetime APR, BAFWX is an MFO Great Owl in the multicap growth category. That means it has consistently received a return rank of 5 (Best) for all periods three years and longer. It joins only nine other GO funds in that category. Investors have not sacrificed returns or experienced a tradeoff from using ESG characteristics in the portfolio."
Could you please provide a list of the other 9 GO funds with a return rank of 5 for all periods? thank you

Lou Rukeyser was a mentor to many of our cohort. To this day I can visualize Frank Cappiello mournfully shaking his head at the perceived foolishness of some element of "Wall Street", and predicting some imminent disaster or other. I was also fond of Julius Westheimer and poor Marty Zweig, who over many years took an unmerciful pounding because the predictions of his technical "elves" sometimes fell a little short of reality. A good crew, for sure.

“Investors Shouldn't Watch Business TV”.
Alright. Than who should watch ?
I’ll say, coming from a very large family where money & money management were pretty much alien concepts (except Fridays when we ate very well), just about everything I learned about the subject of finance came from Rukeyser’s old show on Friday nights - which spanned 25 years. Has shaped my attitudes towards investing for decades.
You could do a lot worse than to invite the likes of John Templeton, Peter Lynch or Henry Kaufman into your living room on Friday nights. Yes - I was a college grad. But being a liberal arts major, left school knowing much more about Robert Frost than about money.

@MJG- You've just touched on a subject that has been a bugbear of mine for many years: the inability of some persons to simply say "I don't know". For whatever reason there seems to be a whole lot of people who would rather waste everyone's time with some long-winded "answer" to a question that turns out to be nothing more than guesswork or a compendium of misinformation.
In my former occupation I frequently needed to obtain specialized information from others, and vice versa. When I was asked a question, unless I was absolutely certain of the answer I would give my best guess or estimate, along with a comment to the effect that "I'll give that an (insert percentage here) chance of being correct. If I had no idea, I would simply say so.
Occasionally someone would apologize to me for not knowing an answer- my reply was simply "there's not a darned thing to apologize for... I don't know the answer either or I wouldn't be asking the question".

Thanks both for the input. Having deliberated this a while, I want to concede that my analysis is quite distorted in that it may suggest only taking from investments near market peaks. Of course that’s not realistic. So, proponents of the bucket approach need to plan ahead as to when something would “trigger” withdrawals from said bucket - as well as to when they would begin “refilling” it.
What I’d fear most with this approach would be that when my bucket had dropped below the “25% remaining” level (maybe 4 years after I began withdrawing from it), I’d panic and sell some securities at very depressed levels to add to that bucket (similar to noticing your gas tank is below quarter-full and not knowing how far away the next gas station is).
Those with good memories will remember that by the end of ‘08 almost everyone was expecting things to get even worse. Of course, 2 months later the recovery began.
@MikeM - Yes, you make good sense. By pulling from your cash bucket (as you explain it) you are in effect increasing your allocation to equities & other risk assets. Generally, that’s a smart thing to do in a falling market (but psychologically difficult).
@OldJoe - Yep. I sleep well too. Always something in the basket that increases in worth - even on the worst days - (but sometimes only the cash portion) :)

@MikeM- Your way of looking at the situation is very similar to mine. But I have to concede that @hank has a couple of good points too. We've been told that we could have done much better over the years had we not been so conservative. Probably true, but on the other hand, we never lost much sleep, even during major downturns.

Food for thought - I’ve never subscribed to this popular notion of maintaining a separate “bucket” of cash to “tide you over” during temporary declines. My approach has been to create a (1) reasonably stable portfolio with growth potential and to (2) take small enough distributions so as not to deplete significantly the overall portfolio. Yes - you lose some ground by taking distributions from the investment pot during bear markets. But you’re farther ahead during up markets by having 100% invested (includes allocations to cash / bonds). Decision making related to how much cash to hold and trying to time when to dip into that bucket are substantially reduced. Albeit - you may also lose ground during bull markets as well because you’re not as aggressively invested as you might be (having a sizable bucket of cash in reserve). Since Ms Dizubinski and a number of smarter people here than me favor this bucket approach, I’ll defer to their judgement. No intent to give investment advice. Not an expert (Only “C“ s in math).
Proponents of the approach Dizubinski advocates often point to the duration (in month’s) of a bear market. However, a more accurate way to examine this is to look at the number of months from market peak to full recovery. Since the bull market always begins at the bottom of a bear market, the climb back up to the earlier high can be long. I suppose the proponents of the cash bucket approach intend to rely on the bucket during the full recovery period?

Just estimating here -
- Looks like it took about 10 years for the S&P to fully recover from its high reached in 1906 (Dividends / compounding aren’t included* / A world war transpired).
- About 25 years elapsed before full recovery from the 1929 S&P peak (A world war intervened).
- After the 1968 peak, nearly 20 years elapsed before all the S&P losses were recovered.
- The S&P partially recovered from the 2000 sell-off (in 7 years) by around 2007. Than the “big fall” we’re most familiar with occurred.
- From that interim high in 2007, the market recovered in just 5 years. To some extent, that rapid recovery may have taught us the wrong lesson.
- Full S&P recovery, however, from its 2000 high took something in the vacinity of 15 years.
Admittedly, the above analysis is at least partially flawed: *(1) It doesn’t account for compounded dividends paid investors along the way, (2) It assumes (suggests) that investors dipped into their cash bucket immediately after a significant decline from “peak” occurred and relied on it until full market recovery, (3) It fails to acknowledge most investors are diversified into domestic equities, international holdings and debt instruments in addition to the S&P. To this last point ... If you own an actively managed fund of just about any sort you’re automatically exposed to some fixed income (typically cash) held by the manager for liquidity purposes.
Here’s the source of the chart and some accompanying analysis:
https://www.advisorperspectives.com/dshort/updates/2019/04/01/a-perspective-on-secular-bull-and-bear-markets

It used to be printed, then about 5 years ago they announced that it no longer would be, but that it could be accessed online (until now).

1-2y true cash may be a little scant, though I just commenced moves to result in 5y cash or bonds and that seems excessive, some days

@davidrmoran, I've gone back and forth with myself what that 'number of years' cash bucket should be also. I was initially pretty conservative with a plan to hold 4 years living expenses in cash. I've reduced that # in my plans. The object for me is make sure I don't have to sell equity funds in a bear market. I think from what I've read the typical bear lasts about 14 months. Average recovery about 5 months. So given that, a 2-3 year bucket should be more than efficient.
The other part of that safety bucket I'd like to incorporate is that all dividends earned in my portfolio would continuously go into that safety-cash bucket. That would safely stretch out that 2-3 years need for replenishment even longer.
Good luck with your planning.

Hi @Old_Joe
This is Morningstar's convertibles funds list.
Numerous duplicates among fund families due to the "R" type for dedicated retirement accounts and some institutional that may not be available to us regular folks.
You can sort the return list with a click upon the "year".
Course, I don't know what you may have access to via Schwab. I've not used their web site for a long time; but wondering what they show for a search list or investment style list.
Being a Fidelity acct. I chose their similar fund to chart against The Franklin fund, which appears to have the edge over other similar funds for the past several years......
Chart here
If you find something available at Schwab, use this active chart and add a comma and the ticker and click GO. The time frame should remain the same if the new add has long enough time frame.

My cash area consist of two sleeves. A demand cash sleeve where I hold enough cash to meet my income distributions needs plus some for new investment purposes. Generally, this sleeve holds a sum equal to about one years worth of portfolio income generation. In my investment cash sleeve are found mine and my wife's bank savings accouts, our brokerage held money market mutual funds and a one to three year cd ladder. At one time, I considered holding the 1 to 3 year US Treasury etf SHY; but due to its current yield of 1.87% I scuttled this thought since my CD ladder is paying out north of 2.5% and my current money market funds are paying out north of 2.25%. We hold a sum equal to about three years worth of cash draw needs in the investment cash sleeve. Probally more than we should; but, there again, should we get into a protracted market decline I don't want to have to sell investments in other portfolio areas should the need arise to raise some cash especially in a down market.

@MikeM:
For a good number of years I have referenced Mr. Rowland's Leadership Strategy to see what he is favoring and also to see what might be out of favor within the strategy thus making it a good contrarian play.
Currently, money market has moved upward over the past few weeks while scv and micro caps are at the bottom rungs of the strategy. I've been thinking of buying a little in my small mid cap sleeve as a contrarian position since they are the out of favor styles in the strategy. An example of this follows. A samll cap fund (MMEAX) that I watch that also holds a good reprenentation of micro caps was up last week by +3.67%. For those that might be interested I have linked its Morningstar fund report below.
https://www.morningstar.com/funds/XNAS/MMEAX/quote.html
I have found that if I wait for a style to green light then a good bit of the gain has already been achieved. This might be why the strategy has not outperformed for the 2008-2017 period as much as it did in the first period of your study since computerized trading has now become more common place with big money. I'm thinking that big money might be out playing the strategy and the gains that use to be made with the strategy are simply thinner today. I'm also thinking that the high frquency crowd has made stock market gains thinner for the retail investor as these guys skim off some of the trading profits that would have otherwise been left.
I feel it would be of good interest to learn Mr. Rowland's thoughts; and, I have made contact with his office requesting one.
Old_Skeet