Bee, THOPX is ~ 90% investment grade (mostly BBB) and OSTIX is more than 90% non-investment grade; I don't think you can call those similar holdings. Making a choice between them involves a portfolio allocation decision.

Your correct with respect to credit risk. I guess my point has to do with overall risk/reward. I'm impressed with both funds overall performance. These are managed bond funds so I am sure both fund's bond holdings have changed over these 11 years.
Finding bond fund managers who can navigate both credit risk and interest rate risk along with market risks will serve an investor well. OSTIX gets my nod for managing both risk and reward along with its impressive performance in 2008-2009 (market risk).

Hi JohnChisum,
Thanks for making a comment.
I agree, no doubt some folks get turned off by a sales load. But, once paid they are usually free to move around within that family of funds to other funds, through nav exchanges, without paying another sales load.
One of the best ways I have found to manage the sales load, for a small retail investor, is to buy a fund family’s bond fund which usually has a smaller sales load than their equity funds and then do a nav exchange later into the equity position. You might check on this in more detail if you are interested as usually there are certain required holding periods and a limit as to how often you can do nav exchanges among funds.
I like holding all of my investments with one broker and in this way come tax time I get one consolidated 1099 statement for all my investment positions within my taxable account. If I held them split among a few fund houses or split among a couple of brokers then my accountant would have to generate a consolidated 1099 spread sheet as a part to filing my tax return. I figure, what I pay in mutual fund sales commissions that get spread over many years is a savings over having to pay my accountant annually to compile a consolidated 1099 spread sheet plus there are other things to consider.
Old_Skeet
Additional comment. I have owned both NARAX and PGUAX, each from time-to-time. I currently own PGUAX and if I chose I could move to NARAX commission free through the nav exchange program and then once parked in NARAX, I believe for 90 days, I could move back to PGUAX. The nav exchange program is one way I have found to move from fixed income to equity to play seasonal strategies without paying a sales load. And, the bookeeping is maintained by the broker's back office through sending out the account's 1099 Form which details all the account's transactions, etc. The one 1099 Form has certaintly reduced the hassels I generally have to deal with come tax time vs. many.
For those interested I have linked the M* report for PGUAX below. Notice its nice dividend of better than 4.25%.
http://quotes.morningstar.com/fund/pguax/f?t=PGUAX
Something to perhaps think on.

Hmmm...we would need to know the portfolio of GDX and GDXJ over the years. If you look at TGLDX portfolio 70% is International, but mostly developed markets. I do recall international exposure used to be 85%. If all of the 15% difference was EM, that could explain it.

Bill Bernstein M* interview talks breifly about adding precious metals equities to your help lower overall portfolio volatility and help long term returns. Most PM equity funds are now offering a free gift of Band aids and iodine with each set of falling knives that you purchase.
From their M* interview:
"Benz: On the flip side or in a similar vein, one deeply unloved asset class right now is precious metals, which was very much in vogue a few years ago. You think it's also a pretty interesting time to be looking at that asset class, too.
Bernstein: I do. It's a market that I've always been interested in. I've been following precious-metals equities for the past 25 or 30 years, and it's important to understand how this asset class behaves in the long term. It has very low long-term returns. If you look at Ken French's series, which goes back more than a half century, the return if you count the most recent declines probably comes out to be less than 5% per year nominal, which is 1% more than inflation over that period, which was 4%. So, it has gotten very low returns. It has bone-crushing volatility. Now, three times in the past 50 years, it's fallen in price by approximately 70%.
"Benz: So, why do we even want to own this asset class?
Bernstein:Well, it occasionally zigs. When the overall market sags, it does particularly well. When there is high inflation--and one of the reasons why it has done so poorly recently is that inflation hasn't turned up--it turns out that even with its high volatility and its crummy returns, adding several percent of it to your portfolio does improve its behavior. It improves its return and it improves its volatility as well; it lowers its volatility."
I must admit from a price stand point, these funds are grabbing my attention.
morningstar.com/cover/videocenter.aspx?id=670230

@John Chisum: What a difference 72 years makes !
Regards,
Ted
1942:

2014:

Once again thank you David, Charles, and everyone who works hard every month to bring us an informative commentary.
This month's writeup included SJPNX, The Japan Fund which has had different homes in the past and now will be merged into MJFOX. Many years ago I bought shares in the Japan Fund. It was either independent or was associated with Scudder. All I can remember was that the mailings came out of New York City. I benefited greatly from the dead cat bounces of the Japan market at that time. (Early 90's).
A good read as always.

"Hard to find a manager that good, and consistent." I feel fortunate. I've been invested since the 90's and the day he left FBR, I sold and I followed. I've learned from listening to him over the years the role psychology plays in investing. If you read his shareholder letters, it seems so simple. And yet, if it was so simple everyone would be doing it. Mr Akre has a way of making it all seem so simple and yet he's still relatively unknown. His fund along with YAFFX, ARTKX, FPACX and FMI funds are my don't leave home without them investments. Timeless in nature and easy to hold on to, even when times are bad.

Marty Whitman was managing well into his 80's. With this in mind, I could have yet another decade to enjoy Mr Akre's expertise. I hope his new charges are learning well, but just like his old trio, the students are seldom as good as the teacher.

I hope to join you in continuing to enjoy Mr Akre's expertise for the next 10 years. I don't know anything about "his old trio", how have they done?
Hopefully he teaches his "new charges" well and we can just stay in AKREX very long term.....

Mikey:Did you get that from "Wikipedia" or what is your source? Yes I make up my own definition of "retirement" and yours is quite different from my "stop working years", I guarantee you, and that is a "fact"

I've slowly come to the conclusion that Ted and a few others are right. These funds add nothing to a diversified portfolio. They in general, do not out-perform a decent balanced fund. If you have to be right twice, in an up market and in a down market, your odds are very slim the manager can pull it off. If you look, most of these funds are only decent in one market or the another. I was sold on RGHVX when it looked great over the last couple years. But it had no protection in a down market based on the latest slow down.
A bond substitute? Pick a conservative balanced fund with 15-30% stocks. A little spice to a portfolio? Say you put 10% into one of these funds for spice or protection. In a down-turn they may save you a 10% drop over equities. So your portfolio is down 1% less. Big deal. You will get that back when the market moves up again.
Nope, I'm convinced now these "interesting and intriguing" funds were a marketing ploy feeding off investors fears of the last great recession.

Healthcare has been "surging" for years, but I'm also in on two of others so that's good.

True. But, most HY, active managed funds remain flat/neutral at this time for pricing.
If the pricing remains the same going forward for a sustained period, an investor may still find a yield range of 5-6%. The capital appreciation may not be in place as during the past several years.
Today (with the crazy upward moves in global equity markets) may provide some more clues for the HY sector. Although one should consider that if the flows to equities remains strong, some of these monies may not travel the HY road right now.
Take care,
Catch

Holding VGHCX, VPMAX & FBIOX, I have to agree with Jerry. Health care funds will be important for the 30 years that it takes the boomers to move from retirement to interment (I think that's an original phrase), but I don't know which companies to pick. Admittedly, I think medical biotech offers the best upside for the foreseeable future, but a less constricted health fund may do better later.
General stock funds gravitate to their areas of expertise, and they may not have a good health sector analyst, although they should. Consequently, they will invest in areas that they understand.

Good points bee, fundalarm, scott.
I just posted this in another thread. Wonder if anyone has a comment:
How is anyone going to be a successful investor in gold?
Gold peaked at $875/ounce in January 1980. So there was a major run up till that point and people did extremely well.
Then it went down in value for 21 years, losing somewhere around 65% on a nominal basis, and probably lost around 90% if you take inflation into account.
Then it had a major run up from about 2001 thru 2012, peaking around $1900. Now it's back to $1200.
MFOers, How is anyone supposed to invest in this asset class successfully?
By the way, Alan Greenspan is now saying that it would be good to own gold now!

How is anyone going to be a successful investor in gold?
Gold peaked at $875/ounce in January 1980. So there was a major run up till that point and people did extremely well.
Then it went down in value for 21 years, losing somewhere around 65% on a nominal basis, and probably lost around 90% if you take inflation into account.
Then it had a major run up from about 2001 thru 2012, peaking around $1900. Now it's back to $1200.
MFOers, How is anyone supposed to invest in this asset class successfully?
By the way, Alan Greenspan is now saying that it would be good to own gold now!

BTW, I invested in both AKRE and GPGOX funds not to fulfill some portfolio allocaiton needs, but for the concept that I believe in. In my opinion, proven manger with a new fund is a very good combo to succeeed, so I invested in them as soon as they came out. I missed a similar ones, though contemplated, for example MAPIX. Its performance in the first few years was very good, and it cooled now.

VGPMX testing its 2008 low at today's close.
Article presents a half truth with this quote:
"The mining stocks benefit from leverage to the metal. As a result, a 2% allocation to precious-metals equities equates to a roughly 5% allocation to bullion"
Doesn't leverage also work in the opposing direction?
My quote would read something like:
"The mining stocks are equally harmed as benefited from leverage to the metal. A PM equity investor has had to endure roughly 2.5 times the volatility compared to bullion"
A $10K investment in VGPMX in 2004 would have grown to $36K by 2008, a 260% gain. Over that same four year period GLD rose to $21.7K or roughly 117%. (The authors claim) of PM equities exhibited beneficial leverage over this timeframe is true, but by 2009 VGPMX valuation fell from its $36k high to a low of $9K, a drop of about 75%. During that same time period GLD's valuation went from $21.7K to $15.8K, a drop of about 25%.
This same dynamic has repeated itself over the last 3.5 years where GLD dropped roughly 33% from its high in April of 2011 while VGPMX dropped close to 66%.
Leverage happens in both directions and often cuts fast and hard on the downside.

Fundalarm,
Responding to all of you separately so that I won't end up with a big message.
I sold out all my bond funds a while ago and in cash now. Sorry, I did not provide that info, and I should have done that.
Burnt my fingers in 2000-02 downturn by investing in stocks, and converted to funds completely from 2005-06 (transition period). I am regular at M* forums since 2005 and at fundalarm/MFO from 2006. What I am saying is I am not a novice investor to follow the crowd. I invested in CGMFX as a speculative play, after its putrified performance, and after all the performance chasers left. Since that fund like feast or famine, I stayed in it for 3 years before I quite no loss or no gain.
I am of same age as you.
Have not checked portfolio in X-ray in the recent past but I do that on frequient basis, being a regular visitor of M*. I play around with their tool once in a while. This portfolio is purely a retirement one. Too many funds because these are across 4 accounts of ours. I have thought about consolidating them into two but V'rd does not offer all the funds that I want, which are avaiable in TDA. For example, Artisan funds.
Finally, close to 75% of the funds are in solid core funds (VDIGX, FPACX, VHGEX, ARTKX, ARTGX, etc.). Obviously Grandeur peak and other EM fund are not part of that core.

Taking a cursory glance at this fund's basic profile numbers on the M* quote page, I see several things:
(1) once again, M* has placed FAINX in the wrong category, an exercise that should be so straightforward in this case that it would be considered a simpler work problem on a Cave Man IQ test;

Call me Cro-Magnon, but I don't see the obvious misclassification as a Moderate Allocation fund. It seems neither does Lipper, who calls it a "Mixed-Asset Target Alloc Moderate Fund". (Lipper generally rates it higher than M* - 4's, except for tax efficiency (5) and cost (1, obviously).
This may help, it's Lipper's discussion of its categories, as well as how they align with M*'s:
http://www.lipperweb.com/docs/Research/Fiduciary/2009_02_Fund Classification Roadmap.pdf
(for completeness, here's M*'s descriptions of its categories: http://www.morningstar.com/InvGlossary/morningstar_category.aspx)
p. 13 describes Lipper's Mixed Asset target allocation funds. Table 2 shows how its mixed asset target allocation moderate funds line up with M*'s moderate allocation:

Asset Class	Lipper	M*	FAINX
Equity		40-60%	50-70%	71%
Fixed Inc/Cash	40-60%	30-50%	28%

M* doesn't look at instantaneous snapshots of a fund (because there can be transient fluctuations), rather a fund's portfolio over the past few reports (not sure how far the lookback period goes). For the fund's first three years, M* classified the fund as conservative allocation. I'm inferring from the fact that the very initial classification (before a portfolio was published) was moderate allocation, M* looked at the actual portfolio and said that it was more conservative than the prospectus suggested.
Over time, that has shifted. It might be trending toward aggressive allocation, but doesn't seem to have gotten there yet.
Maybe I need to check with a Neanderthal - though that could turn out to be a dead end.

My PRHSX more than doubled over the last couple of years. Unfortunately, a very small percentage of the overall portfolio to make any significant difference (:-