I had rather large positions in ARBIX and MERFX. I never lost much money but never made much either. Over last 15 years MERFX has paid out about 10% in income and the share price is up 25% Over a fifteen year period that's not much
There is no magic cure in this low interest rate environment. With a duration of 8 years, VWINX may really hit the wall if rates go up. If there is a substantial equity pull back, you could lose 10 to 15% in a week or so.
I think at these valuations you are better off DCA into a target position over months if not a couple of years, unless you understand options well enough to buy puts ( which reportedly are very cheap now)

If you're interested in multisector bond funds, you may want to consider RCTIX.
Fact Sheet

It is confusing and very messy when dealing with portfolios of all different maturities, coupons and ratings (different yield curves). That's why it's easier thinking about these questions with a single bond or a homogeneous portfolio of bonds all the same.
If you own a bond and sell it before maturity, even assuming that rates remain the same, you'll get a bit more than YTM. This is because longer term bonds pay higher rates. Since SEC yield reflects YTM, I don't believe this return is reflected in that yield.
Think of a two year bond paying interest annually. Let's say that market rate for a two year bond is 2% and market rate on a one year bond is 1%. (This time I'll ignore pennies for simplicity). If the two year bond pays 2% each year, it will cost you $100 (par).
A year after buying, you get a 2% interest payment. You're now holding a 1 year bond with a 2% coupon (that's above the 1% market rate for a one year bond). So you're able to sell that bond for $101 (1% premium). Your net return: 2% market rate interest plus 1% in capital gain.
[A buyer of your bond, if holding to maturity would net 1% on that bond (2% coupon less 1% loss in value). There's your 4% total return over two years.]
There's no difference between you doing this with your own bonds and a fund manager doing this with the fund's portfolio. You get more total return by turning over bonds because you're taking on more risk.
When holding a two year bond to maturity the average maturity over that time is one year. If instead you sell a two year bond after a year (and replace it with another two year bond), your average maturity over time is 1.5 years. You're always holding a bond that matures between one and two years from now.
We didn't assume rates were changing here - just that we didn't have an inverted yield curve where shorter bonds pay higher yields than longer bonds.
Rates changing complicates this. If you swap one bond for another of the same maturity, nothing's going to change. It's as if you sold your bond and then simply repurchased it. Your sale price and your purchase price will be equally affected by the rate change.
But if you're selling shorter maturity bonds and replacing them with longer maturity ones, then a change in the yield curve is going to affect how much you get for extending that average maturity. In ways I honestly don't want to work through right now :-)

@Observant1
Nice article by Ben Carlson, as usual. Thanks for sharing.
I'd add Bruce Berkowitz and the Fairholme Fund FAIRX to that list.
And Bill Miller of Legg Mason Opportunity Fund LMOPX.
There is also a fund company in SF that publishes the NoLoad FundX Newsletter, which is good. And they employ a hot fund chasing strategy in FUNDX. But it too has had years of over-performance followed by years of under-performance.
c

It might help to get back to basics and look at individual bonds.
Simplest case: a one year bond sold at par (face value), maturing in a year, and paying a 1% coupon at maturity. So you can buy the bond for $100, and at the end of a year it returns your $100 principal and pays you $1 in interest. I think we can agree that the annualized yield on the bond is 1%.
Now take a one year zero coupon bond. You purchase it for $99.01 and at the end of a year it pays you its face value of $100. You get 1% more than you paid for the bond. What's its yield? Its yield to maturity (YTM) is 1%. That's what in a mutual fund would be called SEC yield. What's its distribution yield? 0% since it is not making any coupon (interest) payments.
Next, consider a one year bond, maturing in a year and paying 2% of face value at maturity. If the current market rate is 1%, then you'll have to pay $100.99 to buy it. At the end of the year, you'll receive $100 from the face value and $2 in interest. From your perspective you'll get back $1.01 more than you paid, i.e. you'll have gotten the 1% market rate on a one year bond. Your YTM (SEC yield) will still be 1%. Your distribution yield will have been 2%, even as you were losing 1% in principal.
So what does yield mean to you? All three bonds give you the same return of 1%. You can get a higher distribution yield but you'll have to pay up for it and you won't wind up with more in the end. That's what you're seeing in NTFIX.
You're paying an average of $116.46 (per M*) for every $100 worth of bonds in NTFIX. Even as it makes above market rate interest payments, those bonds are losing value as they get closer and closer to maturity. Your net annual return (assuming market rates don't change) will be around 0.59%.

Just to be clear, the ARKW return I quoted above is a annualized (conceptual) number, but here are the actual calendar year returns:
 YTD - 136.0% (thru Nov)
2019 - 35.8%
2018 - 16.8%
2017 - 90.4%
2016 - 8.7%
2015 - 15.3%
That is one impressive run! Bet it scores well with Ferguson Metrics.

Is there any way to get a better determination of future bond fund yields and what would end up in your pocket, besides the 30 day SEC yield which is the recommended method to compare fund yields. I find that many funds have a "Distribution Yield" which is far greater than the SEC yield. Not all funds publish their distribution yields but this can be easily determined . Also some funds distribute dividends quarterly which would cause differences as SEC yield is based only on the last 30 days and the fund may not have distributed dividends in the past 30 days.Also yields can deviate sometimes quite a bit month to month. Example. NTFIX has an SEC yield of 0.59% but a 30 day distribution yield of 2.05%. Google NTFIX and click on the Dupree funds page to get this information. If they are so different why is the 30 day SEC yield supposedly the recommended yield to compare to other fund yields when they are so drastically different compared to distribution yields? TTM yields are of course useless if yields have not been stable in the past 12 months. If anyone knows of any other better way to better predict your future bond fund yield please share. Comments?

PTIAX has 3.81% yield. YTD is +5.59 and last 10 years: +5.99, maybe call it 6% (?) The monthly dividends are always bigger than the 3 cents plus a fraction I typically get from my others: RPSIX and PRSNX.
RPSIX +5.6% YTD and PRSNX +8.00% YTD.
YIELD: RPSIX 2.98% and PRSNX 3.2%.

ARK Innovation ETF is discussed in the following blog post.
Other "hot" funds from the past are also mentioned.
A Short History of Chasing The Best Performing Funds

At this time, I just don't see any good reason to hold most highly recommended and highly rated intermediate core/core plus bond funds with their low SEC dividend yield, now usually in the 1 - 2% range. An exception are multisector bond funds like PIMIX and TSIIX, for example, that may eke out total returns greater than their SEC yield.
As a retired and somewhat conservative investor, I have been looking for other low volatility options that may offer more competitive total returns in the current low interest rate environment. I have come across a promising alternative fund like ARBIX (SD = 2.94%), and also two allocation funds along the lines of the former BERIX fund, i.e., before it changed ownership, that usually had a small equity exposure of around 20%. The two funds are FIKFX (SD = 4.13%) and VASIX (SD= 4.72%).
I would appreciate any comments or suggestions for any additional fund options along these lines.
Thank you,
Fred

My point with those funds (which do make an interesting list) is that value simply hasn't performed as well as blend, let alone growth. Lewis made this point as well in asking whether you were disappointed with the fund or with value in general.
KGIRX was not a fund I was familiar with. Something to note about it is that unlike most of the other better performing foreign LCV funds is that it has a large measure of EM. Really large. 43%.
I ran a few searches, and the closer one hews to low risk, foreign LCV, the more similar the performance becomes. For example, one screen was:
Category = foreign large value or foreign large blend
Large Cap Value >= 25%
Large Cap Growth < 10%
Bear market percentile < 50%
YTD return > 0
For me rapid spikes down or up don't matter. Unless one is planning on selling within a small window of time, ISTM that recovery time is more important than how deep a plunge is. Since the 2020 spike (decline) was between January 17 (when the market hadn't risen much YTD) to March 23, it seemed reasonable to look for funds to "break even" over the current year, hence YTD return > 0. (Between 1/17 and 3/23, many funds seemed to have drawdowns of 34% - 35%.)
Not too many funds pass this screen. (Variants include increasing the percentages of both LCG and LCV while keeping a significant difference between the two.) One of the few that did was PRCNX, which led me to believe you were looking for very similar funds.
Another fund that came out of that initial screen (LCV >= 25, LCG < 10) was GSAKX. This sits on the border of value and blend. It wanders along the dividing line; M* called it value in 2019-2020, but blend in the prior three years. It's highly concentrated (34 stocks), and very Eurocentric @ 79% including UK. Its 1/17-3/23 drawdown was 34.5%, just slightly less than VEA's 35.1%.
Changing the screen slightly (LCV >= 35, LCG < 25) gives a few different funds. One is LZIOX. This is a more wide ranging fund from what is generally a value shop. It's generally been blend, though it had a year as a LCG fund and is now LCV. It has a more conventional 70 equities. It has performed respectably, though it too fell 34.6% between 1/17 and 3/23. Over the past three years it has done significantly better than TBGVX.
BRXAX is another fund from this screen. It's been LCV for the past four years, but this year its portfolio is blend and M* has placed in in the blend category. 149 stocks, including a bit more than 20% EM. Likewise, it fell 34.5% between 1/17 and 3/23.
None of these funds is going to set the world on fire. They're lower risk, reasonably performing, relative value funds. In contrast, TBGVX is a "deep-ish value" fund.

Yep, I get that. But, we have to give them a nod for what they've done so far. They sure got it right ... six years worth.
Four MFO Great Owls (all those older than 3 years). Four on MFO Honor Roll (all older than five years).
They are top quintile in both absolute and risk adjusted return; in fact, three rank #1 in absolute return and one ranks #2 in their respective categories.
Waxed peers by double digits ... per year!
ARKW has delivered 43.1% annualized for the past 6.2 years ... with only 18% drawdown. That level of compounded return is an incredible number!
Here's table of four oldest funds since launch through November.

Yes, it's all sunshine, sea shells and balloons...until it all comes crashing down as reality sets in..
Absolutely frightening as to how it all mirrors almost exactly all the BS that was going around in the late 90's...new paradigm, you don't understand, new guru's, TAM, total addressable market size, 20 year olds driving Porsche 911's, excuse me now Tesla's, smoking cigars riding around in Limo's, excuse me, Uber Black, blah blah blah.
What do I know though...I spend a lot of time in Silicon Valley back in the mid to late 90;'s...went out to dinner after making sales calls all day to biotech and semi companies...drove around and saw companies with overflowing parking lots...if you called on Applied Materials you had to park 3 blocks down the street to find parking, some engineers had their desks in old closets as that is the only place they had room...all kind of jobs, folks making things, designing things....now?
Oh, what's that, the fund is down 83% in 5 months, you don't say? Get your popcorn ready, the show is going to be epic!
Merry Christmas, Good health and Good luck to all,
Baseball_Fan

Eye-watering!
It has five funds returning more than 100% from April thru November … six, if you count the one it sub-advises ... see here.
Five of its funds have returned more than 80% YTD!

Problem Solving Portfolios:

“Disruptive innovation is often not priced correctly by traditional investment strategies because people may not understand how big the ultimate opportunities are going to be. They aren’t sizing the opportunity and they aren’t analyzing the disruption.”

https://bloomberg.com/news/articles/2020-12-18/cathie-wood-sees-control-fight-ending-lifting-cloud-over-ark?source=content_type%3Areact%7Cfirst_level_url%3Anews%7Csection%3Amain_content%7Cbutton%3Abody_link&sref=DWzi38c2

Waiting to "buy the dips" (the strategy to wait for a 10% peak-to-trough loss before buying, then holding for at least 12 months or until the drawdown threshold is exceeded before returning to cash) doesn't work verses Just "Buy and Hold":

Linked Article:
reasons-why-you-shouldnt-wait-for-the-stock-market-to-crash

I was wondering if the below info is correct as per the writer , especially the $3K to offset other ordinary income ? I was thinking write off $2k & carry forward the remainder $4K
Another thing you should know is that you don't need to use up your entire capital loss for the tax year in which you take it. Say you take a $6,000 loss this year, but you only have $2,000 in capital gains to negate. From there, you're left with $4,000, of which $3,000 can be used to offset ordinary income. But you don't lose the remaining $1,000 tax benefit. Instead, you can carry it with you into 2021 and use it then.
Merry Christmas to All, Derf

@msf. agreed- Several great ideas ! ( thanks ) and I think it has gotten a bit confusing because....
1. I asked to consider a "global blend manager" in the hopes that might put the decision making between Value & growth in the hands of the manager. Perhaps that is not the smartest way to gain the exposure that I think I need. As I stated in the opening post - it has been a long wait for the value proposition to kick in. I welcome your comments on the issue of Value vs. Growth at this time
Here are my priorities
2. I am willing to give up on the upside for protection on the downside - so I have been looking at the Sharpe and Martin Ratio, and Max DD in the MFO screener. Is there better process for evaluating the risk ?
3. EM was only referred to because I stated that I was moving on to researching small/mid and EM next/separately - I am not screening it as an alt to TBGVX.
TBGVX is 68% Western Europe 13% U.S (that slug of US probably helped the performance vs. a strict Foreign only fund - ARTKX has outperformed in 1/3/5 years, but as you point out has had steeper MAXDD in 2011 and 2018.
I am already holding MINIX, TBGVX (in a 401k that I did not sell), DFALX that I can't sell due to cap gains in it.
does that add clarity ? Your advice is welcome.

https://institutional.fidelity.com/app/proxy/content?literatureURL=/9898959.PDF
Using the above link, on pages 17 and 18 Fidelity explains the investment process and the portfolio construction parameters of their Disruptive Funds.
...
It also states that FGDFX has "equal weight exposure to the five five Disruptive Funds

Nice find!

People are offering many good fund names. Though they are all over the map, e.g. global, growth (notably Morgan Stanley), EM. High risk, low risk. More clarity on what you're interested in would help.
For example, you are sick of waiting on value, but you're not sure if you want to bail on it totally. You put your five star fund(!) up against an index fund in a different category (foreign large cap blend).
There are only five foreign LCV retail funds that have posted better performance than VEA over the past 1, 3, or 5 years: FIINX, EPDPX, EPIVX, KGIRX, VTRIX. Something has to give: commitment to value or a sense of what constitutes "decent" returns.
Or perhaps it's the demand for low risk that needs to be relaxed. When a fund earns five stars, it's because of risk adjusted performance. That can be achieved either through earning outstanding returns, offering a lot of protection, or a balance of the two. TBGVX's returns have been "only" above average and average, respectively, over the past three and five years. But it still earned 5 stars over three years and 4 stars over five because its risk as calculated by M* was low.
VTRIX is one of the half dozen high performing FLV funds listed above. However, to achieve that it took on more risk - "average" per M*. You can see how the risk played out. Each year in the past decade when it lost money (2011, 2014, 2015, 2018) TBGVX out performed it by 5%-10%.
Note that M* risk is very different from max drawdown. If low drawdown is your sine qua non of risk management, then throw the star ratings out the window, because it barely registers in the calculation.
FWIW, between 10/31/2007 and 3/9/2009, TBGVX lost "only" 50.5%, compared to VTRIX's loss of 59.3%, and VTMGX's loss of 60.6%. (The VEA share class doesn't go back that far.)