Use the incessant annual/interim articles to help you identify which PMs/funds are the ones that consistently outperform their benchmarks.

That is the problem in a nutshell, though. There are virtually no funds--perhaps none at all--that consistently outperform their benchmarks, especially in the large-cap U.S. stock space. Even the best funds often have lumpy performance, and many investors, including investors on this board, can't psychologically handle that lumpy performance when the fund is having a bout of significant underperformance. In fact, the lack of consistency is one reason the stats of underperformance versus the S&P 500 long-term are so high. The fund that outperforms the S&P 500 this year will very rarely be the same as the fund that outperforms it in the next. Meanwhile the fee drag of active management is consistent year after year and is utterly predictable. It is the most predictable thing about active management. Over time the outperformance of big up years can't overcome the cumulative effect of that fee drag for almost every large-cap fund. And even when the fund can overcome the fee drag many of its investors don't enjoy it because psychologically they buy and sell the fund at the wrong times, chasing its hot performance and bailing out of it at the bottom.
I would add that the referenced PRWAX has also not consistently beaten its benchmark even in calendar years, let alone rolling ones. Morningstar benchmarks it against a Large Growth index and T. Rowe benchmarks it against the Russell 3000. In both cases, there are lagging years:
https://troweprice.com/financial-intermediary/us/en/investments/mutual-funds/us-products/all-cap-opportunities-fund.html In fact, the fund has lagged its T. Rowe-chosen Russell 3000 benchmark in both 2022 and 2021 as well as 2016 and 2014--lumpy but strong overall performance.
Fun Trivia question: What fund manager holds the record for beating the S&P 500 the most consecutive calendar years in a row? The old-timers here should know. The answer in a way explains why you can't really put much faith in most active managers long-term.
Finally, I would note that the best use of a consistent alpha metric--as opposed to an intermittent alpha one--might be for identifying fraud. There is probably something fishy going on with a fund that beats its benchmark every single year. I bet Madoff had some really high alpha.

I too watched Kristina Hooper on Wall Street Week and not convinced of her argument. FED minutes indicated they are expecting the possibility of recession but that is not their priority as opposed to containing inflation.
Things to watch now is the earnings reporting in order to gauge the economy. Earning expectation has already been lowered from previous quarters. Large banks reported ok but weakness of the financial sector as a whole will be reveal among the regional banks in the following weeks. If the financial sector goes down, things can get ugly.
https://reuters.com/business/finance/bigger-banks-rise-while-regionals-slump-q1-earnings-season-kicks-off-2023-04-14/
Personally, I think we are already in a rolling recession. We will have to see how the earning pressure will unfold.

Received this email this afternoon:
April 13, 2023
Dear Fellow Shareholders,
You recently received a supplement to the prospectus of the Rondure Global Funds dated February 23, 2023, with information about an upcoming shareholder meeting. The purpose of the meeting, as outlined in the supplement, is a shareholder vote about a proposal to reorganize the funds from their existing trust (Financial Investors Trust or FIT) into a new trust in order to move the funds' back-office service provider from SS&C (formerly ALPS) to Ultimus Fund Solutions. The reorganizations are expected to be tax-free for federal income tax purposes. There will be no impact on the ownership of Rondure Global Advisors, or on our team or investment process.
Some of you have been asking about the shareholder meeting date, which was originally set for April 12. Due to unforeseen delays in the filing process, the mailing of meeting materials was postponed. As a result, the shareholder meeting date has been rescheduled to May 31, 2023. You will soon receive a new prospectus supplement announcing the new date.
You or your designee will also be receiving in the coming weeks a proxy statement and other materials with information about the reorganization, including voting instructions.
If you have additional questions after you receive the mailing, please feel free to contact me directly.
Thank you for your help,
Sunshine Stein

@sma3

I tend to think "active management" should also include knowing when the market is too expensive and the potential long term return unattractive and be able to raise cash for a margin of safety.

I tend to agree, but actually very few active managers do that. Career risk from potentially lagging the market by being out of it is a primary reason. A secondary one is that many funds are held by financial advisors who do their own asset allocation for clients, so if they want the client to hold cash, they do it directly. With funds, advisors tend to want managers to be fully invested in their style at all times so as not to throw the client's underlying allocation to stocks, bonds and cash off.

@Sven and @LouisBraham - Thanks for your knowledgeable comments. I agree with you both to the point of saying that absolutist views on financial matters can be counterproductive and destructive of wealth and that they may blind one to potential opportunities. I really shouldn’t have cited what amounted to an “off-the-cuff” remark taken out of context from another forum. In that form it sheds no real light on the subject. My bad.
My intent was to augment @Old_Joe’s stated aversion to bond funds by extending his argument to an extreme absolutist viewpoint and thereby add a touch of good humor to the discussion. Anyone who reads my posts knows that I find a role for bond funds in a diversified portfolio and that I do not conform to or endorse the position a brief snipped pulled out of context elsewhere appears to support.
While we’re on the subject of bond funds: (1) One really shouldn’t throw all bond funds into one hopper and treat them the same. These vary in duration from ultra-short all the way out to long term treasuries. Credit quality and geographic location also vary greatly. (2) I suspect that some who disparage bond funds today are viewing them through a near-term distorted lens. Had you looked at performance charts prior to 2022 the 10-15 year returns would have looked much better.

A couple of clarifications (perhaps):
- The termsheet that Shadow provided says that minimum additional investments are $5K, but doesn't say that these additional investments are required or that they can only be made on a monthly schedule.
- The 3 years before redemptions are allowed start when the initial offering is closed (as opposed to when operations begin). The Form D filing says that the initial offering is expected to remain open for more than a year. So it could be much longer than three years before one could get one's money out.
@sma3 - are you referring to the Tax Reform Act (TRA) of 1986?

ONCE TOUTED AS THE INVESTMENT vehicle of the future, limited partnerships are seldom pitched to investors today. Instead, clients and the CPAs who advise them are looking back at the tax and financial factors that contributed to the downfall of LPs in areas such as oil and gas, real estate and equipment leasing.
...
THE TAX REFORM ACT OF 1986, combined with increased Internal Revenue Service audit scrutiny spelled the beginning of the end for tax-oriented LPs. Extension of the at-risk limitations to real estate tax shelters and the passive loss provisions in the TRA [reducing the ability of individual taxpayers to offset income with losses from tax shelters] gave the IRS the weapons it needed.

Journal of Accountancy, What Happened to Limited Partnerships?
https://www.journalofaccountancy.com/issues/1997/jul/knight.html

I saw that one
FYI for all the opponents of the increased IRS budget, please remember that the chaos the GOP IRS budget cuts have caused has direct and significant negative impacts on average Americans.
My sisters and I are waiting for my deceased mother's refund ( $20,000) from her 2020 and 2021 taxes. She died over two years ago and we were required to file on paper.
I have called the IRS several times and have gotten conflicting advice about what to do. During the last call ( which takes hours) a very competent man confirmed they had the returns but they have to be processed by hand. He cold not tell me how long it would take, but wanted to make sure that this was not causing us significant financial distress.
What if we needed the money? Of course when we get it, it will not be paid with interest.

”Goldman Sachs Group Inc. agreed Monday to pay $15 million to settle regulatory claims that it obscured the cost of derivatives that clients purchased to bet on or against an index of overseas stocks. The Commodity Futures Trading Commission said Monday that Goldman in 2015 and 2016 didn’t tell clients that it priced swaps in a way that put them in a disadvantageous position. The swaps contracts were tied to an index of stocks from Japan, Europe, Hong Kong, Singapore, New Zealand and Australia, the CFTC said. Clients that traded with Goldman on those terms either bought the index at an above-market level or sold at a below-market level, which put them ‘underwater’ at the start of the trade …
“Swaps are financial contracts in which traders agree to exchange payments based on, say, changes in the price of a stock, index or other asset. Buyers can purchase them from a bank such as Goldman, typically paying a fee, expressed as an interest rate, when they enter the trade … Goldman traders set the initial price of the swap using the MSCI Europe Australasia and Far East Index’s value on the same day the parties agreed to the trade, regulators said. Such trades are typically priced on the following day’s value of the index, in order to reduce the risk that banks with more information about the underlying markets could gain an advantage in how the swaps are priced … Goldman benefited when it found a client that would agree to same-day swaps because it could enter into related trades that quickly netted a profit …
“Goldman tended to target the trade at clients who understood less about how the underlying markets of the swaps worked, the regulator said. ‘Communications show that Goldman personnel believed that the less the clients understood about the economics of the same-day swaps, the more profit Goldman could make,’ the settlement order said.”
Excerpted from The Wall Street Journal / April 11, 2023 (Attribution to Reuters ) Byline - Dave Michaels
Here’s a Link - You’ll probably need wsj subscription to access full story
“If you've been playing poker for half an hour and you still don't know who the patsy is, you're the patsy.”
― Warren Buffett

Received this email this morning concerning the GP reorganization:
April 10, 2023
Dear Fellow Shareholders,
You recently received a supplement to the prospectus of the Grandeur Peak Funds dated February 23, 2023, with information about an upcoming shareholder meeting. The purpose of the meeting, as outlined in the supplement, is a shareholder vote about a proposal to reorganize the funds from their existing trust (Financial Investors Trust or FIT) into a new trust in order to move the funds' back-office service provider from SS&C (formerly ALPS) to Ultimus Fund Solutions. The reorganizations are expected to be tax-free for federal income tax purposes. There will be no impact on the ownership of Grandeur Peak Global Advisors, or on our team or investment process.
Some of you have been asking about the shareholder meeting date, which was originally set for April 12. Due to unforeseen delays in the filing process, the mailing of meeting materials was postponed. As a result, the shareholder meeting date has been rescheduled to May 31, 2023.
You will soon receive a new prospectus supplement announcing the new date. You or your designee will also be receiving in the coming weeks a proxy statement and other materials with information about the reorganization, including voting instructions.
If you have additional questions after you receive the mailing, please feel free to contact any member of our client team.
Thank you for your help,
Todd Matheny, CAIA
Head of Client Relations

I thought I would share this hack as I have benefited greatly by doing this. If you are contemplating transferring assets to another brokerage that gives out a bonus for doing so, transfer the lowest amount for that tiers bonus and then transfer the same amount in say 60-90 days and get a 2nd bonus. Not all brokerages allow this but my new one did. Example: If a transfer of 100-250K gets a $300 bonus do a first transfer of 100k and a 2nd transfer of the same when allowed ,for a second bonus instead of transferring the 200k at one time. You will have to do the research to find out which brokerages will allow this. Having a financial advisor at the new brokerage can make this easier also. I will hold back on which one I have done this with so not to have it backfire on me. In the past 120 days I have tripled my bonuses by doing this. Happy Transferring!!

I own ARTKX and like the fund. You might want to look at Causeway International Value, CIVVX. There seems to be similarities between the two funds. Both are managed by a group of good folks. Both are large cap blend. I think CIVVX is more value leaning. Both are Europe centric. Both have concentrated portfolios. Both have a good slug of Financial Services. I like ARTKX more because it has a lower SD. Just a thought. AJ, do you want my ARTKX when I liquidate my position ;-)

Why sure, Mona. But I'm thinking that may be when the mythical hot spot drops below freezing.

I own ARTKX and like the fund. You might want to look at Causeway International Value, CIVVX. There seems to be similarities between the two funds. Both are managed by a group of good folks. Both are large cap blend. I think CIVVX is more value leaning. Both are Europe centric. Both have concentrated portfolios. Both have a good slug of Financial Services. I like ARTKX more because it has a lower SD. Just a thought. AJ, do you want my ARTKX when I liquidate my position ;-)

Excerpted from a CityWire article published on 04/07/2023.
"James Velissaris, the founder, former CIO and lead portfolio manager of Infinity Q Capital Management, was sentenced to 15 years in prison and ordered to pay an unspecified amount of restitution by US District Judge Denise Cote on Friday afternoon in Manhattan."
"Velissaris, 38, of Atlanta, pleaded guilty in November 2022 to one count of securities fraud in a deal with federal prosecutors in the US Attorney’s Office for the Southern District of New York that dropped several other felony charges and required him to forfeit $22m. The charges came about as a result of his role in a $1bn fund overvaluation scheme, with federal officials publicly levying their accusations in early 2022."
Link (paywall)
I'm glad that Mr. Velissaris received a lengthy prison sentence for the serious crimes he committed.
Hopefully, this case will deter others in the financial industry from engaging in fraudulent schemes.

Thanks for commenting @Observant1 - I appreciate links so much more when folks add a personal comment. Generally, the only time I’ll watch a linked video is if the poster has commented on it.
Benz’s “Buckets” conjure up an image of somebody in a Bonanza - like western walking to and from the well. Prefer “allocation model” myself, although the label doesn’t matter much. In both personal and financial affairs I’m usually better off having a disciplined approach. So I’d be lost without my allocation model written down and securely stored among the digital archives. Fortunately (or unfortunately, depending on viewpoint) mine is a whole lot more complex than Benz’s. It’s evolved over nearly 25 years in retirement as my knowledge base has grown, opportunities available have multiplied and age has advanced. I’d hate being still crammed into the same “bucket(s)” today as a quarter-century ago.
Benz is no Einstein, but she appears generally well versed on the fund landscape as one would expect from Morningstar. I think 25-30 years back when I was in the process of ditching the Templeton assigned “advisor” (commanding a 4%+ front load) and developing my own self directed investment approach Benz’s advice would have been both stimulating and helpful. Today, not much. I think she’s appealing mainly to inexperienced investors.
Some pertinent thoughts / observations:
- Benz leads off characterizing bonds as a portfolio-wrecking “torpedo” in 2022. An interesting analogy, though I might have said “weighty anchor”. Equities could have have sunk your investment sloop even faster and driven it deeper than bonds last year, depending, of course, on which ones.
- Benz suggests holding 1-2 years worth of cash reserve to “ride out” rough stretches of the market. Surely this is optimistic. While not one to hold a lot of cash myself, in reading others’ posts over the years it appears that her suggested 1-2 years worth of cash reserve is on the low end. Some well-versed investors here who subscribe to the “rainy day” approach have been known to hold anywhere from 3 to 5 years’ supply of cash to draw on in event of a prolonged bear market - a more realistic time frame. (Either you have religion or you don’t.)
- Just 3 buckets seems rather basic - actually pretty simplistic.
- The contents of Benz’s buckets appear to slosh around a bit. She mentions international funds “might be” an asset to include today. OK. Probably good advice. But a staunch “bucketeer” might well adhere to static allocations, periodically rebalancing. Adding / deleting components would appear tantamount to going off the reservation. She suggests some precious metals (now that they’ve appreciated significantly). Consider that there have been periods as brief as 2 or 3 years over which precious metals funds have fallen 50% or more. How many novice investors (to whom she seems to be appealing) would have the staying power to hold on to to an asset like that near the bottom?
- She’s fond of index funds. If one has a 10-25 year time horizon that’s probably great advice. Over longer periods lower fees should translate into better outcomes. But it’s not that simple. First, today’s investors generally have shorter time horizons / are prone to hold funds for shorter periods than a generation ago. Timing decisions might well impact returns more than fees. Secondly, the advice to invest in indexes ignores the extent to which some of those may have become distorted / overpriced after decades of outperformance. For example, the cap-weighted S&P 500 might not be the best place to invest today. Some knowledgeable investors actually maintain small short positions on it, wagering, in effect, that other market areas will outperform.

Does sentiment have anything to do with the extent to which cable networks like Bloomberg cover the markets? More and more Bloomberg’s evening programing consists of taped interviews or hour-long paid commercials. Sometimes that’s the major portion of what appears after market close up until 1:00 AM when they pick up on Asian markets. (I realize not everyone finds the talking heads all that useful or even worth watching. But ISTM that’s a separate issue.)
Just wondering if the recent diminished coverage is because fewer retail investors tune in anymore since they’re discouraged by recent market losses and are seemingly all herding into 5% money market funds, CDs or short-term T-Bills? It may be that to attract a large audience, prosper and provide 24 hour market coverage there needs to be a bull market going in U.S. equities … Of course, all broadcast news has deteriorated markedly of late (excluding PBS). Remember the “hey-days” of the late 90s when cable financial news soared in popularity along with the stock markets? And Rukeyser? Would anyone even watch him in today’s age?
It seems some came to expect 15-25% market returns every year. It ain’t that way folks. :)

This morning's Wall Street Journal contained two reports- unrelated, but each sharing suggestions of a coming recession.
Following are heavily edited excerpts from those two reports... emphasis in text was added –

Saudi-Led Oil Producers to Lower Output Further
A group of large oil producers led by Saudi Arabia said Sunday they would cut more than a million barrels of output a day starting next month, a surprise move that upset Washington and led to a jump in crude prices amid concerns about the global economy. The output cuts amount to about 3% of the world’s petroleum production taken off the market in seven months.
The production cut will hit an oil market that was widely seen as tightly balanced between supply and demand, meaning it could lead to a longer-term rise in prices. If higher prices last, they could stoke inflation and complicate decisions for central bankers, who are caught between trying to tame rising prices and propping up a teetering banking system.
According to people familiar with the decision, it was negotiated primarily between the Saudis and Russian to get ahead of a global slowdown and raise prices to fund Saudi Arabia’s ambitious domestic projects and replenish Russia’s reserves.
Oil prices had been trending downward since late last year on global recession fears [and] some in OPEC see oil demand taking a hit in a recession. The price moved beyond $85 a barrel after the announcement, before falling slightly.
“Given the preventive nature of OPEC decisions, there is clearly something OPEC knows about demand trends and inventories that we have yet to discover fully in overall supply and demand balances,” said [the] global head of energy strategy at JPMorgan Chase & Co.
An oil analyst at Denmark’s Saxo Bank said the decision to cut production again reflected concerns over the U.S. economy, where interest rates are widely expected to increase.

World Bank Warns of Lost Decade for Global Economy
The World Bank is warning of a “lost decade” ahead for global growth, as the war in Ukraine, the Covid-19 pandemic and high inflation compound existing structural challenges.
The Washington, D.C.-based international lender says that “it will take a herculean collective policy effort to restore growth in the next decade to the average of the previous one.” Three main factors are behind the reversal in economic progress: an aging workforce, weakening investment and slowing productivity.
“Across the world, a structural growth slowdown is under way: At current trends, the global potential growth rate—the maximum rate at which an economy can grow without igniting inflation—is expected to fall to a three-decade low over the remainder of the 2020s,” the World Bank said.
Potential growth was 3.5% in the decade from 2000 to 2010. It dropped to 2.6% a year on average from 2011 to 2021, and will shrink further to 2.2% a year from 2022 to 2030, the bank said. About half of the slowdown is attributable to demographic factors.
Weakness in growth could be even more pronounced if financial crises erupt in major economies and trigger a global recession, the World Bank report cautions.
Earlier this year, the World Bank sharply lowered its short-term growth forecast for the global economy, citing persistently high inflation that has elevated the risk for a worldwide recession. It expects global growth to slow to 1.7% in 2023.
The World Bank identifies a number of challenges conspiring to push down global growth: weak investment, slow productivity growth, restrictive trade measures such as tariffs and the continuing negative effects—such as learning losses from school closures—because of the pandemic.
Some view the World Bank’s projection for a lost decade as too pessimistic. Other organizations, such as the International Monetary Fund and the Peterson Institute for International Economics, a Washington-based think tank, expect global GDP growth to expand a more robust 2.9% in 2023.
Harvard University economist Karen Dynan said that aging populations in nearly every part of the world will be a drag on global growth, but she was more optimistic on raising productivity—output per worker.

Thrivent Partner Small Cap Value Fund, TPSIX merged into Thrivent Small Cap Stock TSCSX in 2015.
Thrivent Partner International Stock Fund AAITX merged into Thrivent Partner Worldwide Allocation TWAAX in 2011, which was renamed Thrivent International Allocation in 2019.
https://fp.thriventfunds.com/resources/fund-changes-and-mergers.html
There is only one Thrivent mutual fund currently submanaged. That is TWAAX, submanaged by Goldman Sachs. All the other submangers (e.g. Turner, TRP, Mercator, Principal, Aberdeen, DuPoint) used by various funds in 2014 have been jettisoned.
https://www.thriventfunds.com/about-us/our-fund-managers.html

Effective April 30, 2019, Thrivent Partner Worldwide Allocation Fund changed its name to Thrivent International Allocation Fund. Principal Global Investors, LLC (“Principal”) and Aberdeen Asset Managers Limited (“Aberdeen”) no longer serve as subadvisers to the Fund. Goldman Sachs Asset Management, L.P. will continue to subadvise the Fund. Thrivent Asset Management, LLC currently manages a portion of the Fund and will also manage the portions previously managed by Principal and Aberdeen.

https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/811869/000119312519126040/d735543d497.htm
Information about Thrivent from its membership application:

Thrivent (“Thrivent Financial for Lutherans”) ... is a membership-owned fraternal organization. ... We welcome Christians* seeking to live out their faith. *For more information on Thrivent's Christian Common Bond, visit thrivent.com/christiancalling

Until recently, Thrivent offered an interval fund with this in mind: Thrivent Church Loan and Income Fund. But it has recently closed that fund and is winding it down.

I actually don't see a government bond portfolio, or for that matter anything in financial life, as something that I should decide today and never change my mind on. In fact, I promise I will change my mind if I have the wisdom to grasp the facts and market consistent risk reward appropriately.
I don't think any writer writes for just the audience. Especially in online forums, where the audience is a total unknown, trying to tailor make articles is difficult and misguided. I much rather do my research, enjoy learning, and share my learning through the writing. Every column I write is a way for me to learn more and for the reader to learn new things potentially.
Specifically to the TIPS, I very much hope that TIPS outperformance in bearish equity tapes will be a reason to rebalance out of bonds and into stocks. We all use bonds for different reasons. Some hold it for rebalancing optionality, some for the interest income, and some for the cash like properties. Everyone needs to figure out their own equation or get a financial advisor who can help.

Mr. Braham:
Thanks for your insightful comments.
You are quite correct that nothing in life is riskless, least of all in investing.
"Riskless" is a financial term of art that can mean several things, most commonly that if these vehicles fail to deliver, which they well might, then you've got far bigger problems than your investment portfolio. In other words, financial economists use the term in the same way that a physicist might use the term "spherical cow." Trust me, the AdvisorPerspectives audience well understands these usages, and I doubt that any of them regard any human operation, investing or otherwise, as "riskless" as defined by the OED or Merriam Webster.
As long as you've got me going: Yes, my backgound is in the sciences, but I view investing as half math and half Shakespeare, and if you only master the former, the latter will surely get you. (See "Long-Term Capital Management.")
I'm also fond of pointing out that if we take the half-millennium survival of the Roman Empire as a starting point, that gives the average person about a one in six (Russian Roulette) chance of falling victim to such an event during their lifetime.
And that's before we consider that several times in the past half century mankind came withing a hair's breadth of nuclear annihilation.
Not to pile on here, but I don't write that much about the sciences, and David might tell you that I have been known to write about history.
So, just to reassure you, I don't view any investment activity, or even tying my own shoelaces, as "riskless" in the literal sense you're using it.
Take care,
William Bernstein

I thought I knew what stable value funds in a 401k were. I used them for years, but what you show looks to me more like an annuity.
Stable value fund is available in my 401(K) plan. It is an insurance product that invest in short term treasurys but has the liquidity like money market fund.
There's a lot of subtlety in attributes of these products that results in a fair amount of confusion. In a broad sense everything people have mentioned here is a stable value fund. In practical terms, the distinctions don't matter much.

stable value funds and their close cousins, guaranteed investment contracts, together accounted for 21.3 percent of the assets in such plans in September [2006]
...
The stable value funds in 401(k) plans are generally a pool of short-term bonds or other debt-market investments protected by an insurance contract known as a wrapper.... The underlying investments are generally corporate bonds, which yield more than government bonds but are also at a greater risk for loss of principal. He said Treasury bonds were a more secure long-term choice than stable value funds, which may be subject “to the law of unintended consequences."
...
Like other stable value funds in 401(k) plans, [the Trust Advisors Stable Value Plus fund] was not a mutual fund but a collective trust.

https://www.nytimes.com/2006/10/08/business/mutfund/08stable.html
"Stable value" can refer to even more varied investment structures. Historically, or "traditionally", these were insurance products - guaranteed insurance contracts like TIAA Traditional issued directly by an insurance company.

TIAA Traditional is a guaranteed insurance contract and not an investment for federal securities law purposes.

https://www.tiaa.org/public/learn/retirement-planning-and-beyond/how-do-traditional-annuities-work
"Stable value" evolved into a much broader range of investment structures. The common thread is the use of insurance to provide investment value stability.

Stable value investment options may be offered by investment managers, trust companies, or insurance companies in various structures, such as separately managed accounts, commingled funds or guaranteed insurance accounts. Sometimes a stable value investment option will be managed by a plan sponsor. While stable value investment options may be managed or structured in a variety of ways, the important similarity is the use of stable value investment contracts, issued by banks, insurance companies, and other financial institutions, which convey to the investment option the ability to carry certain assets at book value.

https://www.stablevalue.org/stable-value/ (Links in original)
For a brief shining(?) moment, stable value funds were offered in retail IRAs. But SEC concerns about pricing led to their demise:

[Stable value as an] investing option has disappeared for individuals [in 2005] because of questions raised by the Securities and Exchange Commission about how to value the funds, although no formal ruling against them has been made.
...
Stable value funds have been available for many years, and remain available today-although on a much more limited basis-in some 401(k) plans and defined benefit pension plans maintained by employers. These investments come under the jurisdiction of the U.S. Department of Labor, which has strict, but somewhat different regulations, from the SEC. The SEC's questions affect investments by individuals in IRAs ...
Scudder launched the first stable value IRA fund in 1997, offering the funds as Scudder Preservation Plus Income and Scudder Preservation Plus. Others were offered by PBGH, Gartmore Morley, Oppenheimer and other mutual fund managers.
But the SEC began raising questions about how to determine the daily valuation of funds with insurance wrappers, which managers had been pricing at book value. The wrapper agreement, which is what made the stable value fund what it was, was also the part that was raising questions at the SEC. The SEC, which initially approved the funds, will not comment on the situation other than to say that there are no stable value funds now registered with the SEC, although there are some nonregistered ones in existence, says John Nester, an SEC spokesman.

https://www.fa-mag.com/news/article-1120.html?issue=56