Don't have time to read the underlying paper now, but a few thoughts come to mind regarding his first point. Namely that funds are reportedly outperforming "less often" before fees.
He uses "less often" to mean smaller percentage. We don't know if the fund universe has grown with lots of lousy funds that decrease the percentage of successes or that there are actually fewer funds outperforming.
More important is Sharpe's simple argument that before fees, the average dollar invested in the market must match market performance. If fewer funds are outperforming, that strengthens the possibility (above) that there are just more lousy (small) funds. The data doesn't show that actively managed dollars (pre-expense) are doing worse now. They can't be, per Sharpe.
One needs to be precise here. Actively managed dollars invested in the market must on average match market performance. If the cash drag on funds has increased (percentage of fund assets on the sidelines in cash) has increased, then of course the average fund performance will have decreased. But the average performance of the fraction of fund dollars actually invested will not have. They may just be getting held back more forcefully by larger cash drags.
The average actively managed cost figures quoted are for actively managed dollars (i.e. dollar-weighted average of funds), and not the simple average expense ratio of actively managed funds as stated in the piece. See, e.g. here. This is important because while the dollar weighted average of ERs is dropping, that doesn't say anything about the simple average of ERs. It can easily be the case that the simple average isn't dropping at all; merely that people are moving their dollars to cheaper funds. This seems to put his conclusion about fund expenses being unrelated to performance in doubt - because he's looking at performance fund-by-fund, not weighted by dollars.
Ptak at M* knows what he's writing about and what gaps exist in his (and others') work. I'd start with his paper to understand what's really going on.

https://www.gurufocus.com/news/808561/fund-performance-before-and-after-fees-does-it-matter
Funds are increasingly underperforming both before fees are included as well as not included in their return calculation

HY in muni-land isn't as risky as comparably rated HY corps.

That’s my impression as well - but little experience with munis. Had some non-sheltered $$ to tuck away for about a year a while back and used Price’s PRFHX. If memory serves, I cut it 50/50 between that fund and their investment grade intermediate muni just to be safe. Worked reasonably well at the time. However, the fund isn’t rated very high by M* and the others. Knowing how risk averse T Rowe tends to be that doesn’t surprise me.

FYI: In one respect, Scott Moore probably never belonged at American Century funds. “I grew up in a small town called Carterville, Illinois, with a population of about 3,000,” says the 54-year-old entrepreneur and manager of Nuance Mid Cap Value. Though American Century is hardly a Wall Street behemoth, for Moore, working at the Kansas City, Mo.-based firm with $100 billion in assets and 1,300 employees still required some cultural adjustments.
Moore now runs his boutique, three-fund shop— Nuance Mid Cap Value (ticker: NMAVX), Nuance Concentrated Value (ticker: NCAVX), and Nuance Concentrated Value Long-Short (NCLIX)—that is more like Carterville than Kansas City. The firm has 16 employees and defined capacity constraints for each fund. Mid Cap Value is the largest at $935 million. Combined with privately managed accounts run in an identical style, the strategy has $1.3 billion, and Moore sees its total capacity at $2 billion and $3.5 billion for his entire firm.
Regards,
Ted
https://www.barrons.com/articles/big-returns-at-fund-with-small-town-values-51548943200?mod=hp_DAY_9
Nuance Funds Website:
http://www.nuanceinvestments.com/funds

FYI: Every few years, Steve Romick pens a long letter to clients about looming risks for the stock market. His timing is usually too early—credit-default swaps in 2002, subprime mortgages in 2005, excess leverage in banks and investment banks in 2006—but eventually the dangers came to pass. Recently, Romick wrote his latest jeremiad, this time about the risks lurking in sovereign and corporate bonds.
Regards,
Ted
https://www.barrons.com/articles/a-winning-mutual-fund-prepares-for-the-next-storm-51549044547?mod=hp_DAY_10

FYI: The term aristocrat is usually associated with snobbery and status.
In the context of dividends, it’s a lot more down to earth and benevolent. The S&P 500 Dividend Aristocrats have boosted their payouts for at least 25 straight years—a bar that usually reflects solid, durable underlying profit growth for a company. (For more on this group, see “These 5 Stocks Are In Line to Be the Next ‘Dividend Aristocrats.’”)
For retail investors, buying all 53 of the S&P 500 Dividend Aristocrats can be cumbersome and expensive. But there are exchange-traded funds that can help investors that have this income bent. The accompanying table includes three such funds.
Regards,
Ted
https://www.barrons.com/articles/3-etfs-with-reliable-dividends-51548936003?mod=hp_DAY_7

FYI: In February 2018, Vanguard launched a suite of promising, actively managed factor exchange-traded funds. These factor ETFs are not active in the traditional sense. They are systematic, rules-based strategies, so there are no qualitative judgments about the investment merit of each stock. But the managers have discretion to rebalance the portfolios (or not) when they see fit, which should help reduce implementation costs.
The Vanguard Quantitative Equity Group, which oversees the new funds, has managed similar factor ETFs listed in Europe since December 2015.
Regards,
Ted

Started at E.F. Hutton then went to Edward D. Jones, Pioneer Funds in here some place then A.G Edwards Dain Rauscher, City Group, Solomon Investment finally ended up at Fido for IRA's and Morgan Stanley for stocks and bonds. This has been over 56 years. I'm still here but a lot of my investment companies didn't make it.

For institutional class funds, Fidelity. Access can be easier than at other brokerages. Often Fidelity sells institutional shares with low mins in IRAs (not displayed on the website's fund pages); and transaction fees are low, at $5 for incremental investments and $0 for sales. I also use Fidelity for retail funds where terms are not worse than at other brokerages/fund families. The ability to input the cost of lots and to select lots to sell, even for noncovered shares, is invaluable.
For Vanguard funds, Vanguard. Now that they've removed transaction fees on all ETFs they sell, I might consider using them for ETFs. They also offer PIMCO institutional share classes (e.g. PIMIX) at a low min ($25K), should I choose to go in that direction.
I've got other funds spread out at other institutions, generally for one-off reasons. For example, I've funds at Merrill Edge (not Merrill Lynch) for the sole purpose of boosting my credit card cash back. They're funds I never trade.

@thundley459 and @slick,
thanks for sharing your thoughts on GQGPX and also PRIJX. Morningstar doesn't cover either. Can I ask what draws you to PRIJX? I see that its a top performer over the last 3 years. For GQGPX, I'm assuming Rajiv Jain's track record is the driver. thanks so much.
@AndyJ and @davfor.. thanks for providing your funds too.

Vanguard. JP Morgan for a rollover IRA. American Funds for 529 direct.

Recently started positions in both iras for GQGPX, run by manager Rajiv Jain who left Virtus to start his own boutique firm in 2016. Owned his Virtus fund for 5 years prior to his leaving and it had an excellent record there. David highlighted his fund recently. I also own GSIHX which he subadvises, that one has a small portion in emerging markets, mainly foreign large growth.
I initially bought GQGPX at td Ameritrade last year until it was available Fidelity late 2018. Am adding to it each month.

Might I ask. - What is the “series”? They already have FSKAX. - https://fundresearch.fidelity.com/mutual-funds/summary/315911693

@MikeW: I sold SIVLX in December to take a tax loss and immediately replaced it with PZVEX. Its a low turnover holding as was SIVLX.
Here is a link to the latest Fact Sheet for PZVEX:
https://snl.com/Cache/1001247182.PDF?O=PDF&T=&Y=&D=&FID=1001247182&iid=4162576

@MikeW: As you requested here are my thoughts along with a barometer report. As of market close today Old_Skeet's market barometer which follows the S&P 500 Index indicates that the Index ... based upon its metrics ... is in the overvalued range on the barometer's scale with a reading of 140. With this, Old_Skeet would not be a buyer of the Index at this time. Coming off the December lows the Index has gained more than half of what it lost from its recent high. I'm thinking the next half will take a good bit longer to regain what was lost.
The time to have been a buyer of the Index based upon the metrics of the barometer was during the last week of December and first week of January. Back then the barometer had reading of 182 and 183 respectively indicating that the Index was extremely oversold and due for a rebound (or throw back rally).
Remember, a higher barometer reading indicates there is more investment value in the Index over a lower reading. In addition, there has been a recent increase in short interest for SPY over the past week or so. So, as the Index has recovered and risen in its valuation some investors are now increasing their short positions in the Index over the past couple of weeks. Short interest as measured in the number of days to cover has risen from 1.1 days to cover to 1.8 days.
I'm thinking ... and, this is just a scientific wild ass guess (SWAG) ... we will see the markets pullback some once we get through 4Q2018 earnings and revenue reporting. After all, forward earnings growth projections for the Index have, of late, been on the decline. Also, remember there is a lot of "hot" money that frequently gets reposition in the markets form time-to-time through computerized trading systems. Since stocks have recently had some good upward momentum during January here comes (or came) the fast money. And, how long will it be before the FOMC again begins to bump interest rates? They are still low by historical standards and I'm thinking although they say they are on hold for now their actions might be quite different in a few months, or so. Perhaps, they have raised to far and to quickly and this is the true reason for their pause.
For me, I'm watching the yield on the US10Yr Treasury as a clue of what might be ready to happen with stocks. Today, it closed with a yield of 2.64% which is way down from its October high yield of around 3.23%. Seems, the US10yr is still in good demand. Since, bond values and their yield generally move in opposite direction of one another ... Well ... I'm thinking ... the time to again become a buyer of stocks will be when investors begin to flee bonds and their yield begins to rise. Right now cover seems to still be sought by some investors with their demand for bonds.
So, emerging markets just might be the near term ticket since both domestic stocks and bonds seem to be overbought, from my perspective, and explains why they are catching investor interest. After all, both of my emerging market funds are up nicely thus far this year and their P/E Ratios are quite low compaired to other choices. Plus, they are both off their 52 week highs by better than 10%. Remember, though, the hot money crowd also chases after opportunity.
I hope my thoughts @MikeW have been helpful.
Old_Skeet

Hi @MikeW: I have two emerging market funds with the American Funds Group. One is their New World Fund (NEWFX) which I have owned for better than ten years. The other fund of theirs that I own is their Developing World Growth & Income Fund (DWGAX). I recently purchased my first buy step (of four) in this fund and I plan to continue to add to it through a postion cost average approach until I have the position fully built.
I have other funds that I own that have some exposure to emerging markets; but, these are the two funds that I own that are considered to be emerging market specific.
Also, I found an interesting article written about emerging market funds that might be of some interest. It is linked below for easy reference..
https://www.morningstar.com/articles/740785/5-top-emergingmarkets-funds-that-look-beyond-emerg.html

Thanks very much for sharing your holdings Skeet. New World fund is one I'm evaluating now also. Can I ask how you plan the timing of your buy steps into your funds? Is this something that you plan to do once on the same day each month until you get thru the 4th buy step? Or do you plan based on your market barometer and when its giving you a undervalued rating?
thanks for sharing the article too.

Hi @MikeW: I have two emerging market funds with the American Funds Group. One is their New World Fund (NEWFX) which I have owned for better than ten years. The other fund of theirs that I own is their Developing World Growth & Income Fund (DWGAX). I recently purchased my first buy step (of four) in this fund and I plan to continue to add to it through a postion cost average approach until I have the position fully built.
I have other funds that I own that have some exposure to emerging markets; but, these are the two funds that I own that are considered to be emerging market specific.
Also, I found an interesting article written about emerging market funds that might be of some interest. It is linked below for easy reference..
https://www.morningstar.com/articles/740785/5-top-emergingmarkets-funds-that-look-beyond-emerg.html

Here's the full paper: https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=3075023
My take from the ETFStream summary is that, to answer @hank 's question, volatility is reduced by rebalancing. This comes from the statement that the Sharpe ratios for rebalanced portfolios was superior (i.e. smaller denominators [standard deviations], assuming the returns were similar).
The paper (again, inferring from the summary) is that this applied only to a portfolio with no flows in or out (or at least no flows out). I'm curious about the impact of rebalancing on one's spend down phase. To put it another way, does rebalancing increase or mitigate sequence of return risk?

“While the buy-and-hold strategy has a greater standard deviation of ending wealth than the rebalancing strategy, ... “
I’d suggest “end wealth” would be clearer in above statement. :)
Anyone catch whether the rebalancing strategy provides a more stable (less volatile) ride? That’s been the assumption I’ve operated under in the “post-50” years. But it may well be a faulty assumption.
Total return has always been secondary to me compared to the “sleep well” component which in turn promotes a “stay-invested” attitude, compared with a more volatile ride from which many decide to jump at the worst possible times.

FYI: The ETF industry is defined by only two consensuses. One: to index is better. Two: to rebalance is better.
And to that end, portfolio rebalancing is recommended by virtually every ETF provider, advisor and planner. According to Vanguard, rebalancing can provide 35 basis points of alpha a year. BlackRock rebalances its model portfolios every quarter. While most planners and advisors actively militate for rebalancing.
But does rebalancing add value for investors? Perhaps not, an important new research paper has found.
Regards,
Ted
http://www.etfstream.com/news/6074_new-research-casts-doubt-on-benefits-of-rebalancing