FYI: The recent fixed-income selloff means large bond funds have posted losses in November. That might surprise investors who have seen healthy gains from bonds for most of the year.
But one popular Pimco fund is bucking the trend, climbing during the turbulence—though its conservative posture has caused it to lag for most of the year.
Regards,
Ted
https://www.barrons.com/articles/bond-funds-yields-treasurys-pimco-junk-duration-51573230142?refsec=bonds
M* Snapshot PONAX:
https://www.morningstar.com/funds/xnas/ponax/quote

FYI: The Securities and Exchange Commission took aim at conflicts of interest in target-date funds on Thursday, calling out a fund structure that holds the majority of 401(k) investors' assets.
The agency's Office of Compliance Inspections and Examinations issued an alert saying some TDFs provided "incomplete and potentially misleading disclosures" around conflicts of interest, such as those that could arise from "the use of affiliated funds and affiliated investment advisers."
Such a fund structure — in which a TDF provider uses its in-house investment funds as the underlying building blocks for its TDFs — is common among the largest target-date providers.
Regards,
Ted
https://www.google.com/search?sxsrf=ACYBGNT-v6cKOKHoLTn7ZjwAH95GvALKFA:1573211271115&source=hp&ei=h0zFXa7GBMG-tQXFiq7wDg&q=SEC+calls+out+conflicts+of+interest+in+TDFs&oq=SEC+calls+out+conflicts+of+interest+in+TDFs&gs_l=psy-ab.3..33i160.3916.3916..5171...0.0..0.93.93.1......0....2j1..gws-wiz.OvdOOdZ7D1Q&ved=0ahUKEwjupeDXvNrlAhVBX60KHUWFC-4Q4dUDCAc&uact=5

@Ted Too bad that in Wyoming they probably want to shoot these instead of watch them. Oh, and too bad all the right-wingers there miss this:

Or this:

U.S. bond prices I follow for reference peaked around Sept. 3. This includes gov't. issues, broad based IG corp. and high yield munis. IOFIX referenced by @Junkster , and a decent HY fund of ARTFX continues an up trend from Sept. 3, but the gains remain less so than from the beginning of the year. A general overview of U.S. bonds from Sept. 3 indicate up and down moves that were of consequence for short periods, but as of Nov. 6 this 2 month period is FLAT for price profits.
I suggest a bottom in pricing that may be held could be the result of international monies wanting to hold bonds, but will continue to stay away from the negative yield world. A 10 yr Treasury may not look like much here at 1.8% yield, but is a decent spread from a negative -.5% in Euroland.
My 2 cents about the current bondland.

@catch22, there has been a huge move in bund rates the past month. The German 30 year has gone from negative to positive. The 10 year at -0.24% should follow. Our 10 year is at 1.96 today. I can get 1.80 from a Fidelity money market fund. I think the current steepening of the yield curve has only just begun. But we shall see. I am no expert. Then again, the last expert I referenced a month or so ago said you better buy up all the bonds you can get, especially the 30 year when it was at 2.01%. Not the best advice so far.

U.S. bond prices I follow for reference peaked around Sept. 3. This includes gov't. issues, broad based IG corp. and high yield munis. IOFIX referenced by @Junkster , and a decent HY fund of ARTFX continues an up trend from Sept. 3, but the gains remain less so than from the beginning of the year. A general overview of U.S. bonds from Sept. 3 indicate up and down moves that were of consequence for short periods, but as of Nov. 6 this 2 month period is FLAT to negative, for price profits.
I suggest a bottom in pricing that may be held could be the result of international monies wanting to hold bonds, but will continue to stay away from the negative yield world. A 10 yr Treasury may not look like much here at 1.8% yield, but is a decent spread from a negative -.5% in Euroland.
My 2 cents about the current bondland.

Not sure bonds (except for maybe high yield) are the place to be. 2020 may be the reverse of 2019 as the 10 year moves to the 2.50 to 3% range. The negative rate scenario may also be a thing of the past in places like Europe next year. End of the day my only holding will be IOFIX but lightening up a bit there too just in case. The fundamentals still look compelling for that niche bond fund but never know when investors will sell en masse anything bond related.

This month Vanguard has 25 funds on our Honor Roll and none on our Three Alarm list, which I find extraordinary.
American Funds has 8 funds on our Three Alarm list and none on our Honor Roll.
You can read more here about the monthly update.

@ET91,
You are correct as listed in the below 5/25/19 filing:
https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/880859/000119312519154380/d723247d485bpos.htm#toc726790_201
..."Limited Fund Offering
The Fund is closed to new investors. Investors should note that the Fund reserves the right to refuse any order that might disrupt the efficient management of the Fund.
Investors who were invested in the Fund on May 24, 2019, may continue to make additional purchases in their accounts.
Any Employer Sponsored Retirement and Benefit Plan or its affiliated plans may continue to make additional purchases of Fund shares and may add new accounts at the plan level that may purchase Fund shares if the Employer Sponsored Retirement and Benefit Plan or its affiliated plan had invested in the Fund as of May 24, 2019. New Employer Sponsored Retirement and Benefit Plans or its affiliated plans authorized prior to May 24, 2019 will have until December 31, 2019 to fund the account. Any brokerage firm wrap program may continue to make additional purchases of Fund shares and may add new accounts at the program level that may purchase Fund shares if the brokerage firm wrap program had invested in the Fund as of May 24, 2019. The Fund may also accept investments by 529 college savings plans managed by the Adviser during this limited offering.
The Fund may resume sale of shares to new investors on a future date if the Adviser determines it is appropriate."

https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/880859/000119312519284727/d820045d497.htm
497 1 d820045d497.htm 497
Statutory Prospectus and Statement of Additional Information Supplement dated November 5, 2019
The purpose of this supplement is to provide you with changes to the current Statutory Prospectuses and Statement of Additional Information for Class A, C, R, Y, R5 and R6 shares of the Fund listed below:
Invesco Oppenheimer International Small-Mid Company Fund
This supplement amends the Statutory Prospectuses and Statement of Additional Information of the above referenced fund (the “Fund”) and is in addition to any other supplement(s). You should read this supplement in conjunction with the Statutory Prospectuses and Statement of Additional Information and retain it for future reference.
The following information replaces the table in its entirety under the heading “Fund Summary - Management of the Fund” in the prospectuses:
“Portfolio Managers Title Length of Service on the Fund
David Nadel Portfolio Manager (lead) 2019
Frank Jennings, PhD Portfolio Manager 2019 (predecessor fund 2018)”
Mr. Jennings will continue to serve as Portfolio Manager to ensure a smooth transition.
The following information replaces in its entirety the information under, and including, the heading “FUND MANAGEMENT – Portfolio Manager” for the Fund in the prospectuses:
“FUND MANAGEMENT – Portfolio Managers
The following individuals are jointly and primarily responsible for the day-to-day management of the Fund’s portfolio:
• David Nadel (lead manager), Portfolio Manager, who has been responsible for the Fund since 2019 and has been associated with Invesco and/or its affiliates since 2019. Prior to joining Invesco, Mr. Nadel was employed by Royce & Associates from 2006 to 2019, where he served as Principal, Director of International Research and Portfolio Manager.
•Frank Jennings, PhD, Portfolio Manager, who has been responsible for the Fund since 2019 and has been associated with Invesco and/or its affiliates since 2019. Mr. Jennings will continue to serve as Portfolio Manager to ensure a smooth transition. Prior to the commencement of the Fund’s operations, Mr. Jennings managed the predecessor fund since 2018 and was associated with OppenheimerFunds, a global asset management firm, since 1995.
More information on the portfolio managers may be found at www.invesco.com/us. The website is not part of this prospectus.
The Fund’s SAI provides additional information about the portfolio managers’ investments in the Fund, a description of the compensation structure and information regarding other accounts managed.”
The Statement of Additional Information is also amended to reflect the portfolio manager changes above.
As of November 5, 2019, Mr. Nadel manages one other vehicle in the Invesco fund complex but does not own shares of the Fund.
O-ISMC-PRO SUP 110519

I remain a Meb fan. He's helped shape the ETF landscape these past 10 years. His seminal paper on trend following, entitled A Quantitative Approach to Tactical Asset Allocation, remains the most downloaded paper on SSRN. His straight-forward books, including The Ivy Portfolio. His podcast, which now exceeds 100 episodes, with some spectacular guests are great. We started following him on MFO with Existential Pleasures of Engineering Beta, when he launched his first Cambria ETFs. He invests in his own strategies. But to one of David's points, the firm now has 11 ETFs and several so far have struggled to beat their category peers, which puts him in some good company. I believe he also considers himself as much a part of the 4th estate as he does a money manager. Maybe that, if there is a conflict there, is part of what David picked-up on in a setting like AAII.

Hi, ff!
Sorry, but I left after about 25 minutes. At that point, the focus of the talk still wasn't clear. I think, based on the teaser, that he was going to endorse investing in the EMs but that hadn't yet been mentioned. My departure was mostly occasioned by matters of style.
The one argument he made appeared to be that asset allocation is irrelevant, only expenses matter. He attempted to substantiate that with a reference to a series of "guru" portfolios that he constructed and modeled over (I believe) a quarter century. Before expenses, differences in returns were negligible (I believe he said 2%) and after imposing a uniform 1.25% expense ratio on the portfolios, the differences collapsed to nothing.
I hedge with "I believe" because this wasn't an argument being carefully laid out, it appeared to be a sort of fly-by of a talk he'd given in Las Vegas. Because I'm not a member of AAII, I don't have the ability to download conference presentations. Sorry.
I found the method suspect (why 1.25% on Buffett's rec to buy the S&P500 index or on the Permanent Portfolio, which charges 0.88?) and the conclusions unpersuasive (since they didn't, for example, take into account risk which influences an investor's willingness to hold on to portfolio). A real-world test of this claim is available by looking at the long-term performance of a family's target date funds, which differ only by asset allocation. In the case, for example, of the Wells Fargo funds, the most long-dated fund has returned 7.5% APR for 25 years and the most short-dated one has return 4.6%. On an initial investment of $10,000, that's the difference between a $30,000 portfolio and a $60,000 portfolio.
The longest-dated fund has also had a 50% max drawdown against 10% for the shortest-dated one.
I have no opinion about the Cambria ETFs themselves, since I haven't had occasion to study them closely though I believe Charles has. In broad terms, there are twelve with a 13th in registration. Eight of the 12 have trailed their Lipper peers on a total return basis since inception, four have led them. Six have trailed by more than a percentage point a year, one has led by more than a percentage point a year. Eight of 11 rated funds have MFO ratings in one of the bottom two tiers, one has a rating in the top tier and one is too new to be rated. Expenses range from 0.34 (GAA) - 1.23% (CCOR).
David

Will touch on 4 podcasts from 7-26-19 to 10-29-19 - Asbury, John Hancock, Jeff Gundlach and Fido.
Asbury (7-26) mid caps in......no large growth is in.....market looks good into the fall. Healthcare equipment is a buy. Healthcare has legs, 10yr could go to 2.50%. Inversion must last 3 months and you have a year before a recession.
Hancock (9-17) ......growth is slowing. Look for Fed cuts. Large and mid caps are in. Only buy quality tech, health, staples----only quality.....no overseas bonds....quality only. 10yr could go to 0.75% in next recession. No banks or small caps. 10yr at 1.80% is a buy.
Gundlach (10-16) ..... negative bonds 97% owned by governments or pension funds. EM down 20% since 2018. No banks; US is expensive. Dollar will weaken growth. US is all about debt. 2020 is not looking good. Will see QE before we have next recession. Time to sell some things.
Fido (10-29) ..... when ECB and US cut rates at same time, 71% chance things rise. 41 global cuts this year. Will take 9 months for it to kick in. Buy financials, industrials....healthcare is a value trap. Buy tech and energy. The Fed will let inflation run hot since we had to wait so long to get some.
God bless
the Pudd

Agree with @MikeM (assuming he means “Better safe than sorry” here).
You don’t know until it’s you out of your life’s work with ongoing expenses and at the mercy of what we collectively term “the markets”. Guess wrong and you might find yourself out looking for a job on your 95th birthday.
I’’m atypical in that I have a DB pension. Wish everybody did. So with that I went 6-7 years into retirement without having to touch the IRA. If you can do that, it’s a great way to build up that nest egg. But 4% yearly? I’ve been able to take a bit more than that over the past 10-12 years and not really “ding” the balance. In fact it’s grown. But I’ve been lucky. Most years I pull 5-7% out. But a couple years, for new car purchases, it’s been a bit higher than 7%.
I doubt the linked OP article even addresses the traditional vs Roth issue. If you’re pulling $$ from a Roth IRA, it’s quite likely that $10 withdrawn from that Roth will buy you as much as $12-$15 pulled from a traditional IRA would (after taxes are accounted for). So, with a Roth, you need to pull out a significantly smaller percentage to maintain the same lifestyle.
The markets are a real wild card. I’d be loath to try and draw too many conclusions from the past 10 or even 20 years. That’s too short of time. History has a much longer memory. Final comment - It seems as if the bond market is hooked on “downers” today while the equity markets are doing steroids. One wonders how long that dichotomy can persist.

@MFO Members : Please !
Regards,
Ted
YTD:
QQQ: 29.70%
SPY: 24.20%
TRBCX: 22.17%
PRHSX: 17.15%
Tamarack Capital Management Hedge Fund: 6.77%

https://www.google.com/amp/s/finance.yahoo.com/amphtml/news/hedge-fund-still-deliver-double-210937573.html
This Hedge Fund Can Still Deliver Double Digit Returns: Here Are Its Top Picks
Sieni Kimalainen
Insider MonkeyOctober 29, 2019, 9:09 PM UTC
Tamarack Capital Management was founded by Justin John Ferayorni, who remained the fund’s Chief Investment Officer and Portfolio Manager. Mr. Ferayorni holds A.B. degree in Chemistry from Princeton University, as well as Chartered Financial Analyst designation. Prior to founding Tamarack Capital Management, he worked as Healthcare Analyst and Portfolio Manager.

FYI: Elizabeth Shaw and Charlie Holloway were digging around in a Scottish cave. They discovered a special map that, they hoped, held the key to the origin of life on Earth. It was one of the earliest scenes in the science fiction thriller, Prometheus. And their discovery was a bit like the 4 percent rule.
OK, I might be stretching things a bit. But who’s to say William Bengen didn’t discover the 4 percent rule in a man-cave of his own? Bengen, a financial planner from MIT, published his discovery in a 1994 publication of the Journal of Financial Planning. He tested several portfolio models back to 1926. His research showed that if retirees had diversified portfolios comprising at least 50 percent in stocks, they could have withdrawn an inflation-adjusted 4 percent per year and not run out of money over a 30-year retirement.
Regards,
Ted
https://assetbuilder.com/knowledge-center/articles/how-retirees-can-withdraw-more-than-4-percent-per-year

FYI: Its beginning to look like .........
Regards,
Ted
https://www.mutualfundobserver.com/issue/november-2019/?utm_source=Mutual+Fund+Observer+List&utm_campaign=fd0763ad5b-MFO_June_2018_COPY_01&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_775f4c1a29-fd0763ad5b-232473797

“Here's a rundown of those who answered "I do not understand it at all" with regard to the following types of bonds: Treasuries, 39%; municipal bonds, 45%; high-yield bonds, 46%; corporate bonds, 51%; structured products, 53%; Treasury Inflation Protected Securities, 63%. Of the 849 respondents who don't own fixed income or don't have any investment portfolio, 44% said they don't buy bonds because they don't understand the different types of securities.”
I’m a bit unsure of just who comprised the sample group. Assuming it was a random cross-section of the adult population, I’m not surprised at the results. First, many can’t afford to pay the rent - let alone invest. But a good many who own solid mutual funds, perhaps on the advice of a friend, advisor or employer, might not understand the intricacies of the bond market. So much depends on your life experience and amount of time you’ve spent reading or talking about a subject.
I suppose I could conduct a survey of some common fishing terms like: “down-rigger”, “high-lining”, “slip-sinker” or “cow-bells” and get a similar low percentage of respondents who knew what they were. But, if you grew up in a Great Lakes costal town and fished a little or knew people who did those are all very common and well understood terms.
From another perspective, I really don’t understand the bond markets. When folks are willing to invest in bonds yielding only 1 or 2 percent - or even in some cases, in bonds that are guaranteed to pay you back less than you invested .... it really does escape my feeble understanding.

Fixed income is still a mystery to many investors
https://www.investmentnews.com/article/20191028/BLOG09/191029935/fixed-income-is-still-a-mystery-to-many-investors
survey shows many Americans admit to having little knowledge about various fixed-income securities and how to invest in them

A lot of optimism in this collection of reports. The tricky question is, is this one of those Christmas rally years? I'm thinking so, but I tend to be wrong 50% of the time, same as a flip of the coin. I may play the game this year.