One way to address bear market risk is to first study the history of bear markets:
Here's a graphic:

source Image:
History of U.S. Bear & Bull Markets
Here's the narrative:
historic-bear-markets/
There are two term known as "Max Draw Down" and "Recovery Time" which loosely means the number of months it takes to complete the bear cycle from the start of the bear (when the bear arrives in camp) and until he leaves. For example, if you owned VWINX over the last 33 years (1985-2018) , this fund experienced a Max Draw Down of (-18.82%) starting in Nov of 2007. This fund bottomed in March 2009 and the began its recovery which continued until September 2009. Therefore, its "Recovery Time" took a little less than 2 years (November 2007- September 2009). This information is readily available on Portfolio Visualizer's website. Here's a snapshot of the chart with the Max Draw Down and Recovery Time highlighted.

For a long term investors these draw-downs are opportunities to buy less expensive shares. For retirees who are in the withdrawal phase these draw-downs create "sequence of return" risk especially if a retiree is locking in these losses with withdrawals (selling low).
There are many ways to deal with sequence of return risk. I do not think owning a bear market fund is one of them.
What might be?
1. Withdrawing from a "cash like" funding source - In the scenario above one would need two years of income (2 years of withdrawals) since VWINX needed almost 2 years to recover. A retiree would instead withdraw from the cash-like source until VWINX recovered. Today these cash like accounts can earn almost 2% which helps offset inflation.
2. Use your home's equity - either in the form of a HELOC or a Reverse Mortgage- as a temporary funding source for income. Both would need to be set up in advance. Remember HELOCs were being called in by banks during the very time that VWINX was floundering. A Reverse Mortgage has set up expenses associated with it, but it can not be called in by the bank. The younger you set it up (age 62) the longer the "equity value" grows independent of the "market value".

FYI: The great share-class migration that has been building this year is starting to unfold, representing a significant pay cut for advisers relying on beefy 12b-1 fees for predictable income streams.
Over the next few months, several fund companies plan to start converting C-class share mutual funds that have been held between seven and 10 years into A-class shares that pay advisers smaller 12b-1 fees.
Regards,
Ted
https://www.google.com/search?source=hp&ei=lwSAW5fLFYjYsQW0s4vIBg&q=Fund+industry+limits+C-share+investing,+cutting+12b-1+fee+income+for+advisers&btnK=Google+Search&oq=Fund+industry+limits+C-share+investing,+cutting+12b-1+fee+income+for+advisers&gs_l=psy-ab.3...3034.3034..4543...0.0..0.63.125.2......0....1j2..gws-wiz.....0.F6FvIhg6u5A

See earlier post about liquidation:
https://www.mutualfundobserver.com/discuss/discussion/41551/loomis-sayles-value-fund-to-liquidate
Also from Loomis Sayles website:
https://www.loomissayles.com/website/mutual-funds/Value-Fund
7/25/18 In accordance with the provisions of the Plan of Liquidation approved by the Board of Trustees, the Fund paid pre-liquidation capital gain and ordinary income distributions on July 25, 2018. For more information, please refer to the “Daily NAVs/Distributions” section of the website. The remainder of Fund assets will be liquidated on August 30, 2018, as scheduled.
6/8/2018 Effective June 8, 2018, the Fund will no longer accept investments from new investors. Effective August 15, 2018, the Fund will no longer accept investments from current shareholders. Effective August 30, 2018, the Fund will be liquidated.

@dryflower: I'll give you plain vanilla without sprinkles, just buy 6,161 foreign stocks contained in VGTSX and be done with it. All for an ER. of .17%
Regards,
Ted

As @Bed would say, "this isn't foreign, it has 0.95% US Stock!"
Bahahahahaha.

PRWCX Covered call strategy:

PRWCX has employed a covered call overwriting strategy consistently since 2008. This involves buying an equity security and writing a call option that becomes exercisable at a higher price in return for an upfront premium. In the first half of 2018, our covered call program generated 133% of the market’s return while taking on only 55% of the market’s risk. While the underlying derivatives detracted from performance in the last six months, the underlying equities were material positive contributors to performance and the combined portfolio of equities and the calls written against them produced good absolute and risk-adjusted returns.

Semi-annual Report for PRWCX:
https://prospectus-express.broadridge.com/summary.asp?doctype=semi&clientid=trowepll&fundid=77954M105

I haven't (yet) tried Chase, though I have tried the other three majors, and have been rather underwhelmed. I've used them primarily to meet mins for other services (e.g. getting bonus cash back on BofA credit cards with my Merrill Edge account), so my demands on them are minimal, and yet they still manage to disappoint.
Better luck with Chase. Try them out before moving much of anything there. At least that way if/when you don't like them you'll be able to liquidate and not incur an ACAT (transfer) fee. (FWIW Schwab charges $25 for a partial transfer; the $50 is only for a full transfer.)
Chase already sells all the funds it offers without a transaction fee. While that does include Vanguard (Investor shares only) and Fidelity, for the most part it's a limited offering. Just 30 families, and no institutional shares - just retail NL shares or load-waved A shares. A link to the list of funds and families is below, as is a copy of the families they sell.
I think that consolidating institutions is more important in making it easier for your wife than finding a place she can walk into. It's really not hard doing must stuff over the phone. Though you do get to the point where a death certificate needs to be mailed in.
It'ss not a big deal to send the paperwork via certified mail. Even if beneficiaries walk in with the paperwork, they won't get the money immediately.
Gary Pilgrim and Harold Baxter were both crooks. (Remember Christine?)
https://www.sec.gov/news/press/2004-157.htm
As was William J . Nasgovitz
https://www.twincities.com/2008/01/29/heartland-advisors-agrees-to-3-5-million-settlement-of-sec-suit/
Alliance Bernstein
Allianz
American Century
American Funds (Capital Group)
BlackRock
Delaware
Dreyfus
Eaton Vance
Federated
Fidelity
First Eagle
Franklin Templeton
Hartford
Invesco
Ivy
John Hancock
J.P. Morgan
Legg Mason
Lord Abbett
MFS
Natixis
Nuveen
Oppenheimer
Pacific Life
PIMCO
Principal
Putnam
T.Rowe Price
Transamerica
Vanguard
https://www.chase.com/content/dam/chase-ux/documents/personal/investments/jpm-mutual-fund-list-for-sdi.pdf

FYI: U.S. ETF and mutual fund investors favored bonds over stocks and domestic over international while continuing a long-term trend towards passive management in July.
According to Chicago-based Morningstar, $32.1 billion flowed into U.S. open-ended, long-only funds in July, compared to $22.1 billion in outflows during June.
Regards,
Ted
https://www.fa-mag.com/news/investors-favored-passive--defensive-funds-as-they-returned-to-the-markets-in-july-40458.html?print

Does anyone have experience with JPMorgan Chase? I see they charge $75 if you want to move out an asset. (Schwab wants $60 each to move an IRA, by the way.)
I had a nice wrap account with Wells Fargo with 100 free trades. I still have the 100 free trades, but there is little other reason to stay with them.
I started "collecting" mutual funds back when you pretty much bought them direct from the fund itself. Funds have come and gone (remember PBHG Growth? Heartland Value?), but I now have accounts at WF, Fido, TDA, Schwab, Fidelity, Vanguard, plus those pesky individual fund companies. Which is fine. For the time being. But eventually, it won't be fine. Particularly if I got hit by a bus tomorrow.
I have been aggregating at Vanguard, but they are not really the place for stock trading, and they are not local. (But Vanguard waives my Transaction Fees on mutual funds ...)
So the advantage I could see with JPM Chase is that lacking me, my wife could consolidate there and expect to walk to the Chase branch and receive money. Period.

Hi @Ted
50% of our equity holdings remains tech. and healthcare.

R & D spending is generally considered a positive sign for a company's future growth. The list may help provide more insight into where you choose to place your investment monies going forward, if you're not already in place.
15 U.S. companies largest R & D spending

Missed in all the brickbats here is that PRWCX is a top-notch fund from a top-notch fund family. I’ve owned it nearly since inception. @Crash has owned it for close to a decade. Many others in the discussion either own it or wish they did.
A penny’s variation in a fund’s NAV on a single day is short-term focus for sure. I don’t know why @Crash singled the fund out for attention on Tuesday. But, considering the number of threads here that often have little / nothing to do with mutual funds, his sin appears slight.
Some of us just enjoy discussing the workings of funds - particularly the ones we own. To me, saying something like “the fund has outperformed every year for 15 years” adds little to an understanding of the fund or of investing. Anyone can go to M*, Lipper, or another data base, list funds by category, and quickly learn how various funds in different categories have performed. And I suspect that’s about all some think there is to investing ... buy those funds that have done better than their peers over time. If that’s all you as an investor want / need, it’s fine with me. But to some of us the game is infinitely more interesting if we dissect the fund - looking for the reasons the fund has worked so well (or, sometimes, why it hasn’t).
No one needed to read this thread. There’s plenty of other options to persue here. Ted, alone, generously initiates more threads most every day than @Crash and many others do over the course of a year. (And I’m sure he doesn’t mean to dismiss this single thread as totally irrelevant as compared to all those he posts.)

Right, the lay terms get squishy (rightly or wrongly) in the real world of mfunds, that's all.
As for merit, I tend to align with this analysis myself:
https://www.usatoday.com/story/money/2015/01/16/investing-international-funds/21825245/
SP500 is plenty of foreign exposure, he says (using the word international :) )

As for names, sort of
VWIGX is also ~11% USA.
DODFX just under 8%, while per M* its benchmark, FLB, is around 1%. So strict.
FSIVX is 0% USA (Fido) or 1.5% (M*).
So sweating the small stuff is, well, just sweating.

I understand a new TRP Capital Appreciation Income fund being discussed. Income (from higher allocation of bond and other instruments) is the primary focus similar to that of Vanguard's Wellesleye Income fund, VWIAX.

TCAPX. Still pending. STILL!!!
https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/1689311/000168931117000021/canpta-may35.htm

>> Do you have account with Merrill Lynch? You HAVE to call.
?? one can do a lot of stuff online, including all trading
did I miss a particular transaction or operation?

Apparently you did miss the memo:

Merrill Lynch said it will stop automatically sweeping customers’ uninvested cash into money market funds starting in September and instead move it into lower-yielding deposits at affiliated banks. Brokers will still be able to manually move the funds into money market accounts.”

https://www.americanbanker.com/morning-scan/jpm-breaks-free-merrill-to-sweep-uninvested-funds-away-from-mmfs
That's part of a summary of Jason Zweig's Aug 21 WSJ article, Merrill Lynch Joins Brigade Downplaying Money-Market Mutual Funds:

Merrill’s brokers will still be able to place their customers’ cash in higher-yielding money-market funds, but only by purchasing them manually.

https://www.wsj.com/articles/merrill-lynch-joins-brigade-downplaying-money-market-mutual-funds-1534880179 (google search or subscription required)
Vanguard is currently paying 1.9% (7 day yield) on VMFXX, which is the settlement account for VBS accounts. So unlike most brokerages, there isn't the need to move money to a higher yielding MMF. Though VMMXX is yielding about 1/4% more.
https://investor.vanguard.com/mutual-funds/list?filterAllAssetClasses=false&filterMoneyMarket=true&filterFiftyThousandAndUp=true&filterLowCostInvestor=true#/mutual-funds/asset-class/month-end-returns
At Fidelity, the default core account is SPAXX, currently yielding 1.53%. You can boost that by about 1/3% by moving the money into SPRXX/FZDXX. While you have to explicitly move the money into the higher yielding fund, Fidelity will automatically pull from that fund to cover purchases/withdrawals if there isn't enough in your core account.
https://www.fidelity.com/fund-screener/evaluator.shtml#!&ft=MM_all&mgdBy=F&ntf=Y&expand=$FundType&tab=ic
Chuck doesn't give you the option of a MMF for your settlement account:

Schwab no longer allows new enrollments into sweep money market funds (MMFs), with the exception of international accounts, Schwab Managed Accounts, Schwab Charitable accounts, and certain existing ERISA plans. Existing accounts with sweep MMFs will be migrated to the Bank Sweep feature over a period of years

So you have to move the money yourself into one of its "purchased" MMFs to get a decent yield:
https://www.schwab.com/public/schwab/investing/accounts_products/investment/money_markets_funds/purchased_money_funds
Getting back to Merrill Lynch. Here's their list of bank deposit accounts and MMFs available as "Cash management solutions". (When I download it, it gives me a date of 8/21/18).
https://olui2.fs.ml.com/Publish/Content/application/pdf/GWMOL/ICCRateSheet.pdf
As it notes, not all funds are available for all Merrill investors. Some of the "tickers" don't end in XX, and the Merrill Edge quote box doesn't recognize them. While the trade form does recognize standard symbols like GOFXX, when I enter one of them I get the message: "The symbol you entered is invalid. Please try again."
It looks like the only funds on Merrill's list that would be available to someone not investing through a managed account (that might be able to get an institutional share class) are the Blackrock Money Funds (BBIF). Tier 1 is paying 0.53%. Still I can't see how to buy that without calling a broker. Are there any MMFs you can buy online at Merrill Lynch or Merrill Edge?
https://www.blackrock.com/cash/en-us/products/282859/bbif-money-fund-1-usd
This exercise is confirming my expectations: Vanguard lowest cost/highest yield, Fidelity good yield, a bit easier to use, Schwab sticking you with low paying bank sweeps but offering options; Merrill Lynch sticking you with low paying sweeps and hiding alternatives if they even exist.

VOO is better yet, and yes, it was the four months preceding Aug 15 that initially gave XRLV the nontrivial leg up.
Same with the last month.
So you get performance very close to VOO (or IVV) with possible added value of outperformance under rising rates. Win-win. All I was saying. No kidding anyone.
Hard to beat VOO. If there were significant downsides to QUAL, XRLV, and CAPE (none shown thus far), they would not be of interest. Yet they seem close to equal to VOO and, often enough, better than. That's why my discussion title was what it was.
But you do you, and stay argumentative.

Fidelity even offers some of these funds with lower mins in taxable accounts, like EVBIX. Though in general, as you wrote, Fidelity offers the lower minimums only in retirement accounts.
Fidelity EVBIX page:
https://fundresearch.fidelity.com/mutual-funds/fees-and-prices/277905220?type=o-NavBar

"I am told by my ML handholder that etn status is not the reason, but its use of derivatives. Or something like that. "
There's that bogeyman, "derivatives". There are many people, myself included, who would say that ETNs are themselves intrinsically derivatives. Their values are derived from something else and there's nothing requiring an issuer to hold that "something else". See, e.g. this old (2010) page:
https://www.invest-faq.com/articles/deriv-exch-trade-note.html
Though others like the SEC don't consider ETNs automatically to be derivatives:
"Funds that are constrained by the limits of the proposed rule may also respond to incentives to gain market exposure with exchange-traded notes (ETNs) instead of derivatives."
https://www.sec.gov/comments/s7-24-15/s72415-85.pdf
Let's test ME's explanation. Here's a list purporting to include all ETNs. Most ETNs are either leveraged, or inverse, or based on commodities or futures, which would be derivatives under any definition (they don't hold actual wheat, for example).
https://www.firstbridgedata.com/page/list-of-etns-exchangetraded
We can look at ETNs that track the Alerian MLP index. Excluding leveraged ones, there's AMJ and AMU (also AMUB, which is just a second series of AMU). On the ETF side, there's AMLP, which does actually hold the component securities.
http://etfdb.com/etfdb-category/mlps/
Merrill Edge won't trade any of the ETNs, but is happy to sell you AMLP. It doesn't appear to be concerned about the index being tracked, only that the securities are ETNs rather than ETFs.
See if you can provide a counter example - ask Merrill Edge to name a single ETN that they'll sell you. If the handholder will only tell you yes or no for ETNs you explicitly name, walk through the whole list (above) of ETNs. I don't expect a single "yes".

from the article:

Some brokers place your cash into money market funds, often their proprietary, in-house funds. This allows the broker to earn fees from your idle cash. Some brokers “sweep” your cash from the brokerage into a bank, typically a bank they also own (an “affiliated” bank).

This is exactly what Schwab does with their Intelligent Portfolio's (robos). It is how they get away with not charging any "fee" for their robo-portfolio series. I haven't thought much about this up until now. I have been fine with it as MM and CD interest was very low, but as rates go up... I have to give that some thought. My robo has 10% in Schwab-cash contributing little to nothing for the portfolio.
I do purchase CD's and MM 'funds' from Schwab with my self managed cash. I believe the MM rate is about 1.89% and I just bought a 1 year CD (Morgan Stanley is the holder) paying 2.35% .