According to Instant Xray, about 8% of my equity allocation is invested in emerging markets with both my emerging market funds (DWGAX & NEWFX) being up better than +20% each over the past rolling 90 days. In addition, I have a good number of equity funds that are bettering the +20% mark as well. So, it is not just emerging markets that are (or have been) on the upward move as there are some others as well.
My three best 90 day leaders are AOFAX +25.43 ... SMCWX +24.43 ... and, FISCX +24.37.

I would do as I did with my two youngest kids. Set up a brokerage account, making it a Uniform Gift to Minors if the child is under 21. Try to explain that you are putting in some dough and that additional deposits should represent 50% of the child’s earnings, even if minimal. An adult child should be shown how to pay him/herself first. Invest the parent or grandparent contribution in a good growth fund (AKREX) and a dividend growth ETF (VIG). If only $1K is available, use ETFs for both positions, using QQQ (or similar) for the growth portion. Try to get the kid to see how the account works and how money can grow if it’s added systematically. At 21, the kid’s in charge and you hope you’ve been a good teacher. Offer advice when it’s sought.

Leuthold makes the case for looking at a tactical allocation to EM.

We’ve never shared the secular enthusiasm for EM equities professed by many of our peers, but we try not to let our bias blind us to tactical opportunities. Emerging Markets trade at a little more than half of the S&P 500’s normalized P/E (14.2x versus 27.0x), despite matching the mighty NASDAQ 100 over the last three months. We can’t think of any other major pocket of value with that type of momentum.

Over the past 3 months, Vanguard EM and the NASDAQ composite have both risen 21%.
Just food for thought.
David

It was yielding over 20%. Of course it’s going to go down. Even if it went down by half it would yielding about 10%. As AUM increases, yield will fall. This is happening as expected. It’s also actively managed by Tad Rivelle. They may be trimming their risk. Cash looks to be building.

In the last 4 days it looked like the following
As of Date Ticker Dividend Rate
7/23/2020 MWFSX 0.001582083
7/22/2020 MWFSX 0.001426187
7/21/2020 MWFSX 0.001684689
7/20/2020 MWFSX 0.001714354
If we use 0.0015 daily we get about 4.5% annually.
It is one of the worse performer for one month and 3 months in my list
Ticker..1 Mo...3 Months
MIAYX 3.03 9.85
AIHAX 2.62 2.95
JIPAX 2.6 7.57
ADVNX 2.56 4.91
BMSAX 2.43 8.44
JSTIX 2.41 6.35
PDIIX 2.32 7.89
PLSFX 2.28 9.09
FCDDX 2.25 8.12
STISX 2.23 8.2
JMUTX 2.22 9.38
ASIGX 2.17 6.79
PUCZX 2.1 8.67
FADMX 1.97 7.98
MXIIX 1.73 5.63
JMSIX 1.66 9.01
HSNYX 1.64 10.57
PTIAX 1.61 4.95
IOFIX 1.54 16.42
SEMMX 1.34 10.66
PIMIX 1.3 6.31
TSIIX 1.27 7.29
EIXIX 1.09 8.01
DHEAX 1.08 8.04
VCFAX 0.88 7.78
MWFSX 0.84 4.06
RCTIX 0.43 4.45

Yes, they opened back in early April. David wrote about it in his monthly commentary.
https://www.mutualfundobserver.com/2020/4/
International Stalwarts is closed to third party financial intermediaries effective June 10.
https://www.mutualfundobserver.com/discuss/discussion/56200/grandeur-peak-international-stalwarts-fund-to-close-to-new-investors-via-financial-intermediaries
I picked up GPMCX for a non-taxable account.

I respectfully disagree with some attributes ascribed above to PSLDX, while acknowledging that it has significantly outperformed funds that could nominally be called its peers.
While PIMCO dates its StocksPLUS strategy to 1986, this strategy is "used across [its] “PLUS” portfolios". The first PIMCO fund to use this strategy was PSTKX in 1993; PSLDX dates back only to 2007. MWATX, previously mentioned, started in 1998.
https://www.pimco.com/en-us/investments/mutual-funds/stocksplus-fund/inst
https://www.pimco.com/en-us/investments/mutual-funds/stocksplus-long-duration-fund/inst
The bond holdings in PSLDX strike me as less opaque than those of most PIMCO funds. It's in the name: long duration. No secret sauce. This fund, by mandate doesn't significantly alter its bond bets. Rather, this fund will soar (at least its bond portion will) as interest rates decline, and will crash as rates rise.
[Effective duration is calculated by starting with modified duration (a well-defined, mechanical calculation based on coupons and maturities). One or more models are then used to estimate the duration effects of all the oddities of the bonds.]
For this fund, effective duration = modified duration = 14.57 years (per M*). So there's very little going on outside of (long) vanilla bonds. Looking at the holdings, PIMCO appears to be tweaking around the edges with derivatives to adjust the bond portfolio attributes slightly.
The 2x strategy (or StocksPlus strategy) gets 100% exposure to stocks at minimal cost by buying swaps on the target stock index. It then uses the remaining cash (almost 100%) to invest in bonds. DSENX is 100.69% long in stocks, 91.32% long in bonds, and short in cash by a similar amount. That's the way it's supposed to work.
PSLDX goes further and adds even more leverage. You've still got the 100% stock exposure through swaps (M* says 102.31%). But the bond portfolio is leveraged: 127.69% per M*. So not only is this fund heavily exposed to interest rate risk (with its long bonds), but it is doubling down with leverage. Okay, it's just 1¼ x down; same idea.
Because the fund must hold long bonds, there's no secret sauce here, or none worth mentioning. Just very long bonds combined with extra leverage on the bond side.
FWIW M* classifies this fund as a hybrid (85%+ equity), while PSTKX, DSENX, and MWATX are classified as large cap blend funds. I suspect that's because the leverage on the bond side increases the bond exposure to the point that M* won't consider it a stock fund with just a bond kicker.
If one is confident that rates won't rise at all for some time and that the yield curve (whatever little curvature there is) won't begin to curve a little more, then going long makes sense. Otherwise, those scenarios will crush this fund, at least relative to the others or to a vanilla stock fund.
NTSX differs in several ways. Instead of 2x, it is 1.5x. Instead of 50/50 stock/bond exposure, it's 60/40. It does not have flexibility in allocating bond sectors; its only exposure is to Treasuries (via futures). Its target duration is 3-8 years, typically less than half of PSLDX, though I suspect more than that of the other funds. But it does actively manage duration.
Its blurb touts the ability of the 1.5x strategy (90/60) "to enhance returns" by investing the the extra 50% (1/3 of the portfolio) in "noncore assets such as long/short equities, risk parity, CTAs, or true alternatives." However, upon reading further, one finds that the fund itself "invests 90% of its net assets in the 500 largest U.S. stocks by market capitalization" and "60% notional exposure to U.S. Treasury futures (2-, 5-, 10-, 30-year ladder)."
That's not the same as the S&P 500 (which is not a compilation of the 500 largest US companies); nor does the prospectus even mention 500 companies. Rather "The Fund invests in a representative basket of U.S. equity securities of large-capitalization companies generally weighted by market capitalization." (Prospectus.) It invests directly in stocks rather than using swaps. That enables it to actively manage its equity side - another point of differentiation from the OEFs mentioned.
Over its short life it has done nicely. Much (not all) of its performance seems to be due to leveraging. If one takes VBIAX's annulized performance over the past 21 months (the lifetime of NSTX), calculates its monthly performance from that, leverages 50%, and compounds that, one gets an annualized performance of 10.45%, still measurably below NSTX's 11.23%.

The granddaddy of them all in this space is PSLDX. IMHO among the greatest mutual funds of all time. You can get it for $25K at vanguard, but it's no free lunch. After holding for a few years with enormous gains there was a point in the past few months where virtually all of those gains were wiped out (brought tears to my eyes). Whatever derivatives were in the secret sauce were crushed to oblivion. But it came back hard and now up 17% YTD. This is a great strategy but would never put more than I could afford to lose in any opaque derivative-driven fund. For an ETF along the same lines but not as extreme check out NTSX. I'm long this as well as Dseex (a fine long term hold for sure).

I just looked. Gosh, DSENX is only off 3.5% YTD. Not bad at all. And it’s made good $$ for holders over the years. It’s hard (possibly counterproductive) to try to figure out why some funds excel and some lag over relatively brief periods. Many had their lights knocked out during the early March thru early April period. Like a dazed boxer, some are still struggling to their feet.
I don’t follow HY much. But seems to me it had a rough stretch. To the extent Gundlach is invested in some non-investment grade paper, that might have pulled his fund down relative to similar funds.

fwiw, for the last 4m and shorter, as with the last 4y+ and longer, DSEEX has outperformed FXAIX nontrivially.
So it arguably remains a good option for buy-hold. It has been doing its 'black box bond' thing for coming up on 7y.
I would not recommend, to a holder, bailing out, nor switching to it from FXAIX either, necessarily. It is v hard to sustain an edge, as we all know.
Yes, if you look at M* risk measures for 5y, you see its SD, return, and bear ranks are all higher than FXAIX and its Sharpe and Sortino both slightly lower.
The bond sauce is spicy. Just compare DSEEX w/ CAPE for 3m vs ytd.
https://quotes.morningstar.com/chart/fund/chart.action?t=dseex

@hank - linking tip. The time (or date) stamp under your name at the top of your posts is actually a link directly to your comment.
Here's the LINK to your March 2017 comment.

Pended is a great CU. Anybody can join and they do it fairly. We refinanced several times over the years and found each time hundreds of dollars "mistakes" that had to be fixed because I was going to walk away hours before closing.
Penfed didn't have these mistakes.
Penfed was our last home debtor. In 2012, they offer a 5 years loan at 1.99% with zero fees. We use it to pay the previous mortgage + our kids tuition and how we finished paying our debt years earlier.

“Generally, Fidelity funds have a $0 min.”
@msf - Does that mean that if I send $10.00 (ten-dollars) to Fidelity I can open 10 accounts in the amount of $1 each in 10 different funds? If so, I’m just crazy enough to do it!

Yup. I just entered an order for $1 of FLPSX, and the system took it. I immediately cancelled the order. Have fun!
P.S. The better paying (if you can call it that) MMFs have higher mins.

Yes “better paying” is perfect. :)
How does one pay the $10 house fee? Most casinos accept credit cards. Would Fidelity take a $10 debit from one of my bank cards? Playing a gold fund (or 2 or 3 at a time) would be a lot of fun. Where else can you pocket a 15-20% gain in a few days? And, if in a Roth the winnings would be a tax-free.
Hate to be so inquisitive. But I’ve never invested outside my direct accounts at a few old-fashioned houses. To my knowledge, no one has ever characterized T. Rowe or D&C as “fun” or “exciting.”

FYI
FZROX Life +6.00% vs its proprietary index +5.96%

Not sure where you get your fake numbers @msf

See this
http://quotes.morningstar.com/chart/fund/chart.action?t=fzrox
click Maximum
Fido index is included, then add FSKAX

FYI
FZROX Life +6.00% vs its proprietary index +5.96%

Not sure where you get your fake numbers @msf

FYI
FZROX Life +6.00% vs its proprietary index +5.96%

FSKAX has outperformed FZROX over the latter's lifetime, YTD, and over the latter's lifetime excluding YTD (just in case one figured that this year skewed the lifetime numbers).
The two funds follow different indexes: FZROX follows a Fidelity proprietary index; FSKAX follows a DJ index. The main difference though seems to be that FZROX has more difficulty tracking its benchmark.
Over its lifetime (since 8/2/18), it has returned almost 70 basis points less, cumulatively, than its benchmark. Give or take, that's about a 35 basis point tracking error per year. Over the same period of time, FSKAX beat its respective benchmark by a basis point.
There's the marketing hype of 100% lower expenses (0% vs 1.5 basis points). Then there's the reality of money in one's pocket.
Done.

FWIW, and this is not advice, I'd consider it a hold or slight sell.
As I asked in a recent thread on PIMIX, have your reasons for holding it changed? It's a 2x fund, 100% stock exposure + 100% bond exposure. That's always been true, it hasn't changed. If that was an appealing concept, it should still be. That fact that the some risks recently manifested shouldn't change one's perceptions - the idea of risk is that sometimes bad things actually do happen.
If one bought it because one thought that an index-ish fund, a "smart beta" could beat market returns, then one should examine why one believes (or believed) that. Is this time really different, or is the market simply going through a different phase?
Note that I'm not the one calling the CAPE index smart beta - Doubleline is. Doubleline acknowledges that pre-2012 performance of the index is just backtesting; and that Barclays is motivated to use to that present the index in the best possible light:

Shiller Barclays CAPE® U.S. Sector Total Return Index..., a non-market cap-weighted, rules-based (aka “smart beta”) index.
...
Pre-inception index performance refers to the period prior to the index inception date (defined as the period from the “Index Base Date” (September 3, 2002) to the “Index Live Date” September 3, 2012)). This performance is hypothetical and back-tested using criteria applied retroactively. It benefits from hindsight and knowledge of factors that may have favorably affected the performance and cannot account for all financial risk that may affect the actual performance of the index. It is in Barclays’ interest to demonstrate favorable pre-inception index performance. The actual performance of the index may vary significantly from the pre-inception index performance.

From the same 2019 page as cited previously.
The reason I might consider selling the fund if I owned it is because something has fundamentally changed - interest rates. Even with the use of swaps, the leverage to get 100% bond exposure is not free. That presents a hurdle, small in a normal interest rate environment, but significant in a near ZIRP world.
Compare and contrast three large cap oriented 2x (equity + bond) funds: PXTIX, DSENX, and MWATX.
Historically, PXTIX has performed as promised, beating its benchmark, the Russell 1000 Value, by half a percent for the past five years (in a low interest environment), 2% over ten years, 3% over 15. But falling about 1% short YTD.
DSENX, excluding this year, beat CAPE by 2% in a couple of years, roughly matched CAPE in a couple, and then a -1% year followed by a +1% year. That's around a half percent a year, until this year, when it looks like it made a bad bond call. (To see the blow by blow comparisons, use this page, and then add CAPE as a fund to compare with.)
It's fair to compare CAPE with the S&P 500, since that's the universe from which it is choosing sectors. M* shows that CAPE and DSENX over their lifetimes, more or less (10/31/13 to present) to have done better than the S&P 500. Both have cumulative returns around 130% vs. 110% for the S&P 500. More recently (3 years or less), they've underperformed. Whether this is just a market phase and that their outperformance will resume is fodder for a broader discussion about smart beta.
MWATX is instructive because it doesn't use smart beta, just a 2x strategy. It significantly underperformed the S&P 500 in 2008, not catching up to the S&P 500 until the end of 2016. It took a much lighter hit this year, and is now within 1% of the index on performance since Feb 20. IMHO this shows that the leveraging works, but there's real risk and one needs to be patient. Also, it's an extremely tax-inefficient strategy.

"The deficit is growing at a rate "well in excess of the growth rate of the economy," he added. "To me, that means more of our nation's income will have to be devoted to debt service, which will retard economic growth in the long term."
The above has been true 5-10-15 years ago too as the deficit was growing under both parties and...here we are.
If you believe in that let us know when are you selling everything ;-)
As usual, I disregard all articles and forecasts and concentrate on what markets are doing now.

I would open an account at Fidelity and invest in the SP500 using FXAIX. Expense Ratio=0.015%

The DoubleLine Shiller Enhanced CAPE®, [is] an investment strategy pairing Shiller Barclays CAPE® with an active fixed income strategy (DoubleLine Short-Intermediate Duration Fixed Income, or SHINT. ...

Introducing DoubleLine Short-Intermediate Fixed Income Strategy (“SHINT”)
To construct portfolios across multiple sectors of the fixed income universe, including SHINT portfolios, DoubleLine applies a macroeconomic framework, led by portfolio managers and analysts who look across the spectrum of different asset classes. ...
SHINT is a diversified fixed income strategy that, at present [April 2019], targets duration of one to three years while pursuing a yield of 3% to 4%. That yield target appears feasible in the current market environment, allowing the investment team to take a measured approach to both interest rate and credit risks. Freedom to allocate across multiple sectors of the fixed income universe also allows the team to construct a diversified fixed income portfolio with what DoubleLine believes to be the most attractive investments on a reward-to-risk basis. The two-pronged approach of coupling top-down macroeconomic views with bottom-up security selection provides potential benefits from both risk management as well as return-seeking opportunities.
Actively managing the credit risk [non-AGG bond sectors] and interest-rate risk [IG bonds] of the portfolio is a key element to the asset allocation process. DoubleLine tilts the portfolio in the direction of one risk versus another based on the investment team’s macroeconomic forecasts and views on return and risk prospects within the sectors. ...
Sector rotation of SHINT portfolios has tended to be gradual, due to the gradual shifts in the macroeconomic landscape.

https://doubleline.com/dl/wp-content/uploads/DoubleLine-CAPEinRisingRateEnvironments-March2019.pdf
That contains a lot more, including a graph of the bond sector allocations over time.
DSENX tracked CAPE until March, when it underperformed by about 6%. The gap has held steady since then. This suggests that the bond component was fairly flat (neither helping nor hurting) through February, and also after March. But that it dipped 6% in March.
We've seen funds that have not recovered well, notably junk securitized debt. But those also fell much harder than 6%. So without peeking, I'd guess that DoubleLine had a mix of low grade securitized bonds and enough higher grade bonds to temper the dip. Taking more credit risk would also be consistent with trying to maintain that 3%+ yield while keeping a short duration.. Strangely enough, the bond fund I find with the closest match for that 2020 performance is TPINX. The portfolio is consistent with my guess: BBB credit rating, 2 year duration.
Looking at the linked doc on the Enhanced CAPE strategy, it seems that DoubleLine missed a macro call in 2019. The doc is entitled: A Potential Solution for Investors in Rising-Rate Environments.

Given indications that yields on the 10- and 30-year Treasuries put in a durable bottom in 2016, ending of the 35-year bull market in government bonds, investors have good reason to think about how to position portfolios for the next regime in fixed income. The investment team at DoubleLine is not calling for the advent of a secular bear market in fixed income. ... However, DoubleLine sees numerous fundamental factors presaging a rise in interest rates over the long run. Investors should study strategies that may not need the tailwind of declining rates to provide positive returns and perhaps have the potential to outperform in the face of rising rates.

Finally (and why I was curious about this fund), M* started classifying it as a blend fund in 2019. Not all that surprising, since CAPE rotates among sectors that are most undervalued relative to their own prior valuations, not relative to the market. So it can easily rotate into more "growthy" sectors.