I put money into a fund if it has a good risk/reward record over the past 3-4 years and that meets my personal conservative risk criteria. As a retired investor, I certainly don't want to lose a lot of money at this point of my life.
The only thing that matters to me is performance, and how much of a loss I will tolerate during a market downturn. Bottom line, if a fund doesn't work for me anymore, like QDSNX, for example, I sell it and move on.
As I said, I am currently checking out funds that have done well over the past 3-4 years and also during the recent market downturn. "Market Neutral" funds like QQMNX and VMNFX, and conservative balanced funds like Giroux's PRCFX fit this profile.
Good luck.

So it's really an allocation fund that includes commodities exposure, and as a result can display high volatility (SD).
David went back for an explanation on the -5% single day loss on BLNDX from a few years ago, and of course it was related to commodities.
This is not a fund for the squeamish.

BLNDX has a good track record. I might dip my toes in again (I held it several years ago).
BIVIX (a fallen angel) is also recently showing signs of life.

In the June Standpoint commentary for BLNDX, it stated it's biggest winners as:

Biggest Winners
Long U.S. and Japanese equities. Short soybeans, corn, and Japanese yen.

I guess holding Japanese equity will be their biggest loser in the next report. Still, YTD the fund is up 7.6% compared to a couple other notables from another thread, QDSNX at 5.7% and QQMNX at 9.8%. After several years holding BLNDX, I have to admit, QQMNX is a tempting alternative in this alternative field for a less bumpy ride and, so far, excellent returns (+12.1 3Y).

I am now checking out two "Market Neutral" funds, QQMNX and VMNFX, which held up very well and provided some protection during the recent market downturn. New managers have been at the helm of both funds since 2021.

Today, when the US stock market sees the biggest daily loss in nearly two years (S&P = -3%), "Market Neutral" funds QQMNX only lost 0.05% and VMNFX 0.07%.
Both funds also have excellent 3-year total returns (QQMNX = 12.07% and VMNFX = 15.54%), with standard deviations of less than 8.6%, since new management took over.
So far so good.

@MikeW et al
I agree with Junkster, at this time, regarding quality bond funds or etf's; being US Treasury and/or corporate bonds.
There are too many pieces of very dry wood, that are placed too close to a small burning fire. The fire and wood being: Israel and Iran, etc.; the most important U.S. elections of our lifetimes and F-16 fighters started to arrive today in Ukraine; shortly after Ukraine had announced the sinking of a Russian submarine and other important attacks. In addition, is what actions the FED may take in the coming months based on their data views.
We're a Medicare/SS household, and while we enjoy having decent annual returns; we also have capital preservation in mind.
Most of us spend $1,000's each and every year for house and auto insurance, and never file a claim; and the money is gone forever.
We treat our bond fund holdings as 'investment insurance' currently using BAGIX (active managed). We'll not likely outrun inflation and taxes, but maintain the capital.
The AGG bond etf is similar in high quality to BAGIX (ER = .30).
I've watched over the years and charted these two against bond 'index' funds. BAGIX has maintained near 1% annualized above the returns of the other two. AGG and bond index funds run very close paths. I'm not trying to sell, but to offer the view.
Our portfolio is 40/60. The 40 in equity is split between growth and conservative equity (healthcare). The 60 is bond/MMKT. The entire portfolio arrived at a +.33% for last week.
One can always dollar cost average into whatever.
NOTE: We've remained fully U.S. centered with investments since 2008. We have more than enough foreign exposure inside the equities, from their foreign earnings.
Lastly, we don't know what the 'shake out' events will be or from where.
Good evening.

Per A Wealth of Common Sense....with my bold for emphasis:
https://awealthofcommonsense.com/2024/08/this-is-normal-2/
"The S&P 500 has finished the year up double-digits in 56 out of 96 years since 1928 (almost 60% of the time). In 24 of those 56 years with double-digit gains, there was a double-digit loss at some point in the same year. That means nearly 45% of the time when the stock market has been up 10% or more, there has been a correction of 10% or worse on the path to those gains."

@Balu: What are the holdings of your DIY GA fund if you don't mind sharing
I ran a MFO screen with params: Age > 20 years, Sortino > 1.00, Lipper Preservations >= 4, 3Y Roll Avg >= 10 and was surprised to see 47 as the result count.
No Allocation or Alts in the results though

I'm not personally aware of a "true" GA fund with a successful long term(more than 20 years) track record and doubt it is even technically possible.
My personal criteria for GA success is beating a VWELX or Vanguard Balanced with a equal or higher Sortino for rolling 3Y periods over more than 20Y.

I'm not invested in Permanent Portfolio but would you consider that a GA fund?
That's a broad ranging fund, but lacks a GA feature: discretion.

In pursuit of its investment objective, the Portfolio’s strategy is to invest a fixed “Target Percentage” of its net assets in each of the following investment categories: Gold 20%, Silver 5%, Swiss franc assets 10%, Real estate and natural resource stocks 15%, Aggressive growth stocks 15%, Dollar assets 35%

https://www.permanentportfoliofunds.com/pdf/Prospectus.pdf
Conceptually, I like the idea of a fund that can move at will to the "best" market. But then one thinks about it. It's hard enough to adjust a portfolio in the time dimension (when to be in the market, when out). Relatively few managers try even that baby step. Partly due to investors' expectations, partly due to difficulty in executing well.
Adjusting a portfolio within time and space (the types of investment used) seems even harder. (Been watching too much Dr. Who.) The manager has to make accurate macro calls along with correct timing.
[using go-anywhere funds] makes even planning for a target asset allocation problematic
I'm happy giving managers broad discretion (within their areas of expertise) but not unfettered freedom. If my wide ranging managers make decisions that perturb my overall allocations, I defer (within broad limits) to their judgments on where one is best invested. Why should I insist on constraining my portfolio to some static allocation, give or take 5%? Why is that the "right" allocation for me, whatever those percentages are? I just shoot for the side of a barn.
Here's a thread from seven years ago on the same topic. Ted did include PRPFX among funds he considered to be go-anywhere. I especially liked Bitzer's observation that may sum up the whole ball of wax:
My "go anywhere" funds have historically gone to the wrong places.
https://www.mutualfundobserver.com/discuss/discussion/31272/go-anywhere-fund

This is interesting. What are you looking for in a Go Anywhere fund? I'm not invested in Permanent Portfolio but would you consider that a GA fund? How about a GA fund based on Ray Dalio's principles (at least the public ones!)

Thanks everyone for your thoughts and suggestions.
I had been in Oceanstone before it closed and was obviously wildly impressed. Sad ending there.
I can’t access MRFOX via brokerage (don’t want additional ones) so my only way in that one is direct investment. That is where the signature guarantee comment resonated from.
This desire would be a smaller part of the portfolio, not a large one. Those larger positions were made years ago and I’m good there.
I may just create have to create my own “go anywhere” fund myself through ETFs and funds. It maybe easier to run my own “hedge fund” like fund myself. Finding one currently that meets my needs is harder than I thought.
Thanks again.

Investors expect their companies to increase profits every quarter; customers expect them to continually lose money. Neither expectation is realistic.
Zooming out only slightly:

A 2023 pretax underwriting profit of $3.6 billion, reversing a $1.9 billion underwriting loss reported for 2022 at Berkshire’s personal auto insurance operation, GEICO,

https://www.carriermanagement.com/news/2024/02/25/259036.htm
You can find us the figures for 2021 and 2020.
Geico's ability to charge higher premiums even as drivers submitted fewer claims.
Insurers play the long game. If they knew in advance each year how much they would have to pay out, they would set premiums precisely and never have a losing year. But see below (my final few paragraphs quoting NYT).

Like the rest of the auto-insurance industry, Geico was hit by sharply higher claims costs in 2022. It responded by raising premiums, which were up an average of 17% per policy in 2023. That increase, plus sharp cuts in expenses, including for advertising, helped restore profitability in 2023.

https://www.barrons.com/articles/berkshire-hathaway-geico-progressive-stocks-c03bcdf4
make Geico more efficient.
That's one way of putting it. Another would be: make Geico less inefficient. Again from that Barron's article:

The head of Berkshire’s insurance business, Ajit Jain, acknowledged the challenges at the conglomerate’s annual meeting last May [2023], saying “Geico’s technology needs a lot more work than I thought it did.” He noted that Geico had “more than 600 legacy systems that don’t really talk to each other.” Geico, he added, is trying to compress that to no more than 15 or 16 systems.
The underinvestment in technology that led to that tangle looks like an unusual unforced error by Buffett. He didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment. Geico declined to comment.

In the recent 2024 annual meeting (short video clip below), Jain acknowledged that Geico is still playing catchup. Let's hope it continues to improve and that Salim Ramji over at Vanguard can take away some lessons from this. And speaking of Vanguard, Buffett also mentioned Geico's low cost advantage that "masked" Geico's inefficiencies.

As to why the whole industry is raising rates quickly and why there are these wild swings in profits (losses), the NYTimes recently wrote in Why Is Car Insurance So Expensive?:

A key reason car insurance costs are rising so fast right now has to do with how the industry is regulated. ...
If insurers are deemed to profit too heavily, regulators can make them return money to customers. ... At the height of pandemic lockdowns in 2020, when many cars sat idle, insurers returned almost $13 billion to customers through dividends, refund checks and premium reductions for policy renewals ...
When the pandemic shut down most economic activity, it messed up insurers’ ability to use the past to predict the future. ...
[I]n the second half of 2021 ... The prices of cars and parts were jumping and drivers were back on the roads and crashing left and right after a hiatus behind the wheel. "You went from this period of incredible profitability to incredible losses in the blink of an eye," ... “Everyone was together in significantly pushing for rate increases.” ...
[California's insurance] regulator did not start approving insurers’ requests to raise rates until near the end of 2022. The backlog grew so large that the average wait time for approvals was longer — by several months — than the six-month policies that insurers wanted to sell.
[Calif. was slowest but other states also very slow]
In 2021, insurers’ personal auto businesses started recording losses. [2021: $4B, 2022: $33B, 2023: $17B] ... many companies still need to raise prices to make up for those bad years.

Thanks everyone for your thoughts and suggestions.
I had been in Oceanstone before it closed and was obviously wildly impressed. Sad ending there.
I can’t access MRFOX via brokerage (don’t want additional ones) so my only way in that one is direct investment. That is where the signature guarantee comment resonated from.
This desire would be a smaller part of the portfolio, not a large one. Those larger positions were made years ago and I’m good there.
I may just create have to create my own “go anywhere” fund myself through ETFs and funds. It maybe easier to run my own “hedge fund” like fund myself. Finding one currently that meets my needs is harder than I thought.
Thanks again.

Do you guys remember Todd Combs? He is the CEO of Geico. He was originally hired by Buffett in 2010 to manage some of BRK portfolio investments, with the thought that he would take over BRK investments when Buffett retires. It turned out Todd had worked during his younger years at Progressive and some other insurance company as an analyst and had good knowledge of GEICO's line of business. So, Buffett made him CEO of Geico in 2020 to make Geico more efficient. I guess he is doing his job! It is interesting how Buffett seems to have a knack to identify human talent just as he is good at spotting good companies.
It will be interesting to see how Geico investment portfolio has done since Todd took over.

I can’t remember when Buffett wasn’t building cash. This “not finding much to buy” has gone on a long while. Albeit - He has picked up some new additions in recent years. But Hey - with short term credit yielding north of 5% who can blame him? One problem is the company is so large now it takes a sizable acquisition to move the needle much.
Thanks @Old_Joe for the link & excerpt.

There is absolutely no doubt in my mind that the yield from any bond-based MMKT fund will continue to decrease as the Fed lowers interest rates. The only protection against that is a bond/CD ladder stretching out for a reasonable number of years. Right now I'm 60% SUTXX MMKT and 40% interest ladder out to early 2028.
But while that works for us, in our 80s, it definitely may not be optimal for younger investors.

"My wild guess is that there will be a serious correction coming"
Yes, sir- and that's exactly what I'm worried about. Having survived for 85 years I'm a true believer in the old adage "If anything can go wrong it will, and at exactly the worst time and place".
If a serious correction should start in the next 100 days all bets are off on the election.

- Try DRRAX (Rated neutral by Morningstar) 10 YR Return +3.4% Mentioned in Barron’s favorably in 2020 as a “go anywhere” fund. But I am unable to pull up the article.
- Also try QAI (Hedge fund tracker etf) 10 YR Return 1.8% (Not Rated at Morningstar).
Personally I probably wouldn’t buy such a fund. Hedge funds have the advantage of being able to lock-up an investor’s assets for a set number of years. Allows higher level of risk taking. Mutual funds do not have that advantage. Lose 10% in a year and $$ rushes out the door.
- One (approximation) I’ve owned for short periods in the past (without fully comprehending) is the CEF GUG.
I’d term it “Go anywhere with an emphasis on fixed income”. Quite volatile as CEFs tend to be.
- BCAT (CEF) managed by Rick Rieder might fit your bill. I bailed after it jumped 10 or 15% a year or so ago. Heights bother me. Rieder has a lot of discretion in what to buy.
- You might look at GAA. Globally diversified fund of funds. Risk averse high (media) profile manager some would rather avoid. Spreads the risk around. Seems to have a lot of personal discretion which Morningstar loathes. Exposure to gold / EM. But not billed as “go anywhere.” Morningstar Neutral Rating. 5 YR +5.64% (Disclosure: I own this one.)
-

Hey thanks very much for sharing this @Catch22… really appreciate it. I’m starting to look at bonds again for the first time in years. But the moves have been so fast here I’m hesitant to take a position…I’m curious what funds you and others hold.

I have a highly diversified stable of investments/income producing vehicles. More bearish lately and have been taking profits/building cash (and cash like) investments. My question…
I’m looking for a fund that goes anywhere/does anything to produce gains. It has the discretion to do that and does it. A hedge fund like mutual fund. Think Oceanstone or CGM Focus. I’m not concerned about risk just something that I can slowly build a position in, in the next 3-4 years. I was really interested in MRFOX but the hoops I would have to jump through to buy and sell are too much. Signature guarantees to sell a large amount? No thanks.
Any suggestions where I should be looking? Thank you.