So far, the traditional, vanilla bond funds (MWTRX, VCORX) have mostly held up a hell of a lot better than the "nontraditional" ones that were supposed to do fancy stuff to keep investors safe.

Of course, it did at a time of a major meltdown when simple bonds have higher liquidity.
But, it depends on your style and needs, do you want to own only simple indexes/funds or you think there is any value in flexible managed funds. There is a place for both. I prefer managed funds since 2000 because I was able to lower my portfolio volatility and reach my goals. What simple bond fund had the risk/reward of PIMIX 2010-2018?
Soon will be the time that managed funds may shine again

I don't like to trade but in a volatile market like this one I've found myself doing just that. What I bought 4 days ago is now down 10% or more. The stimulus will be of enormous help but only a vaccine will permanently turn around the markets and economy. So I'm selling into strength.

Hmmmm ... top 10% of its peer group for the trailing 1 week, 1 month, 3 month and YTD periods.
If you check the factsheet, you'll notice that two of the top ten issuers are cruise companies (Royal Caribbean, Silverseas) and at least one is energy (Pacific G&E). Other than that, lots of software and internet.

This is looking to be one of those monster up days, maybe up 10% by close, of which we've had a few. And a few days later, we've always been lower than when we started. I'm guessing this will happen again. I think we're still in the early innings here, even if Congress pushes through a stimulus package today.
So I'm tempted to try to do some day trading: sell a fund at COB today, hopefully buy something similar back in a few days at a lower price.
Just don't know if I have the guts. I chickened out the last few times this happened over the past month and just sat tight.

Hi @VintageFreak
A quick look at the portfolio of the fund ( RSIVX ) you mentioned indicate why the recent price drops.
First, a quick look at S&P's bond rating guide:
"AAA" and "AA" (high credit quality) and "A" and "BBB" (medium credit quality) are considered investment grade. Credit ratings for bonds below these designations ("BB," "B," "CCC," etc.) are considered low credit quality, and are commonly referred to as "junk bonds".
RSIVX , per M* has an overall rating of "B" rating. Also, as a compare; an excellent high yield/junk bond fund ARTFX has a SEC yield of 6.25%, while RSIVX has a SEC yield of 5.53%. For me, this also indicates that RSIVX is closer to "junk" status for its holdings.
Corporate bonds in particular, have not fared well during this melt period.
There remains a lot of stress going forward in the ability of companies to be able to service their debt properly.
RSIVX bond grade holdings:
Grade / Fund %
AAA/ 0.00
AA/ 0.00
A/ 0.64%
BBB/ 23.72%
BB/ 30.51%
B/ 38.18%
Below B/ 6.95%
Not Rated/ 0.00
Lastly, regardless of the "name type" (strategic, total, etc.) of a fund, one needs to know what is under the hood, yes?
My 2 cents worth.
Take care,
Catch

Yep.
https://twitter.com/EricBalchunas/status/1242426219569852418?s=20

Defer for sure; but I was thinking expunge as a way of injecting $ into the system. And, it's not like the banks don't owe the American taxpayer for 2008.
Whether or not people use the saved $ wisely is another matter, but we'd have the same issue with sending out $1000 checks.

That's a big 10-4.

You can't take a big hit when you are at 99.5+% in a money market :-)

so you keep reminding us; bully for you

ANGLX joined the party of "LOW SD SECURITIZED" category when it lost -3.6% today.   From the high(or pretty close to it) on March 4th, SEMMX lost 16+%...ANGLX 14+%...VCFAX close to 14%....IOFIX over 42%...DPFNX 19%...DHEAX 8.5...PMZIX 17%...BDKAX over 60%

The SAGA of securitized isn't over yet

Crazy that IOFIX still has a double digit 1 year return.
Could this possibly be a way to play normalizing bond markets....whenever that actually occurs? Will it’s portfolio dramatically “reprice” and “gain” NAV rapidly? Just asking hypothetically (I completely lucked out and sold from all accounts I have/help with at the beginning of March (when it was only losing a percent or two, every day, not 10-20%)).

Given recent questions about money market funds, it seemed worthwhile to post a few links with comments.
Basic background on types of MMFs (from Vanguard):
Money market reform: What you need to know (2014)
https://personal.vanguard.com/pdf/VGMMR.pdf
Aside from institutional MMFs, there are government MMFs, prime MMFs, and muni MMFs. Government MMFs keep 99.5% of assets in federal government securities, cash, and repurchase agreements backed by federal securities. They are considered the safest (but see below), and are not required to impose redemption restrictions in times of stress. Prime MMFs are taxable MMFs that don't meet the 99.5% requirement (e.g. holding corporate paper). Muni MMFs hold (mostly) state, municipal, and territorial (e.g. Virgin Islands) paper.
Splitting hairs on government MMFs, the safest are pure Treasury funds. While the funds themselves are not guaranteed by the Treasury, the underlying securities are. Other government funds may hold agency securities that are not backed by the full faith and credit of the government. See, e.g. Northern Trust US Government MMF NOGXX.
Non-Treasury funds may also hold repurchase agreements. These not only introduce another (small) level of risk (see this Schwab paper) but are also not state tax-exempt. A few states (Calif., NY, Conn.) tax 100% of a MMF's income if too much of it comes from state-taxable paper like repurchase agreements.
Retail prime and muni MMFs must impose gates and/or redemption fees in times of stress. That's said to happen if a fund's percentage of "highly liquid" assets fall below certain thresholds. Except for muni MM funds, at least 10% of assets must be in cash, Treasuries, or securities that mature within one day. There's also a weekly threshold of 30% which applies to muni funds as well as to prime funds.
https://www.sec.gov/news/press/2010/2010-14.htm
Because of the possible restrictions on redemptions, I would keep some cash in a bank or government MMF. At least enough for a couple of weeks, which is about as long as redemptions can be held up (10 business days).
Aside from liquidity, there's the risk of breaking a buck. "[G]overnment and retail money market funds are allowed to try to keep their NAV at a stable $1.00 per share. These funds do this by using special pricing and valuation conventions when valuing the fund assets. ... If one of these money market fund’s NAV deviates by more than half a cent from $1.00, the fund would have to re-price its shares to something other than $1.00, which is known as “breaking the buck.” Therefore, if it deviates by more than half a cent below $1.00 (as one money market fund did in 2008 due to losses in the underlying investments), investors in the fund will likely lose money."
https://www.sec.gov/oiea/investor-alerts-bulletins/investor-alerts-mmf-investoralerthtm.html
Funds are now required to post their liquidity figures and their NAVs (out to four places) daily. So you can see how close they are coming to imposing redemption gates or breaking a buck. OJ asked about SWKXX. This is a good case study, and I suspect typical of muni MMFs these days. Its NAV has dropped in the past week from $1.0002 to $0.9987. While still comfortably about 99½¢, the speed of the drop invites close monitoring. On the other hand, its weekly liquidity has been quite stable.
One keeps hearing that "we're in uncharted territory." That's often an exaggeration, but in this case I believe apt. These are new disclosure and enforcement regulations. Combined with the precipitous drop in security prices, we are at a place we have not seen before.

Another 14% down today, which is slightly better than I feared.
@Old_Joe. I agree with you that the topic of liquidity has been written about in our commentary (by Ed) and on the board by many, but I've never seen a fixed-income fund fall so much so fast. So, this seems unprecedented to me.
I remember LTCM collapse. Lived through 2001 collapse. 2008 collapse. Severe drops in FAAFX. LLSCX. DODGX. All took my breath away.
I know of Black Monday 22 Oct 1987.
Seen big drops in JNK and even TLT.
I saw VIX collapse in a day, but that was a pure trading vehicle.
I've seen individuals stock drop 30% in a day and more. AIG, BAC, GE collapses.
I've seen levered-products blow-up.
But this?
Not in my experience.
Even fixed income ETFs, as flawed as they may be, seem to have better pricing than this situation. In fact, it may be that an open ended structure helps create the stampede for the door on these types of products, since you don't have insight into the selling pressure and therefore fear the worst.
Until last week, I'd never experienced anything this sudden and catastrophic in a fixed income product ... but I have now. And it's made me much more wary of the fixed income world.

Well, I've got my fingers crossed, but a big chunk of our cash is sitting in SWKXX, a Schwab CA Muni MMKT fund, @ $1.00/share price. So far, so good, and with the Fed now spreading it's wings over that type of fund I'm hopeful that it will stay good. Any thoughts on that?

Hey, I'm taking the same hit on DSENX. Only had a couple of k there, so no big deal, but still down 1/3.
As I've mentioned elsewhere, about a year ago I went to roughly 95% cash, because I figured that at 80 it was time to quit playing. But I kept a vestigial amount, roughly 2k, in most of the accounts. So I can see the total carnage- almost everything is down by 1/3. I'm no genius either.

I sold my remaining shares of IOFAX today. It was very helpful to listen to everyone's comments, so thanks from me to you.
My rational was, 1 of 3 things could happen going forward:
1- the Treasury announcing it would step in and buy some of these assets might keep the fund afloat.
2- the fund has more sellers than it can return money too, like me, and continues it's bolder slide down hill, to what, zero? .
3- I could sell, lick my wounds and put that money to work into something else, something more reliable over time (though reliable may be a relative term now).
I chose #3.
I do remember Junkster getting out of this fund before he left us. I believe it was because these securities were so thinly traded. I certainly didn't comprehend what he was saying or the risk involved at the time. I figured at worst the fund would drift down, but not fall off a cliff. Financial lesson # 1028 - learned :)

New filing for IOFIX concerning liquidity risk:
https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/1355064/000158064220001282/alphacentric497s.htm

I posted the below last week, but it was likely not viewed by most. Now that we have arrived at QEE (Quantitative Easing Extreme) .....thank you for your indulgence.
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
I posted this back in 2011; or there about. I need some comic relief again, don't know about you.
Are we all going to receive another quantitative easing? I don't know. What's left to do?
Sadly, Mr. Clarke (without eye glasses) passed in 2017. These two put so many financial events in a comic light, based in truth.
NOTE: you may need to click the play arrow two times

RiverPark just posted David's update, which should download if you click on it, and we had a few minutes to chat at the end of his lunch hour.

1. The fund is performing well. It's down 2.1% YTD. That compares to MINT at -4, Zeo at -10 and ultrashort bonds as a group at -3.8%.
   
2. By its nature, Short Term High Yield is generating investable income for him every day. The "ultra short" part means that he doesn't have to sell portfolio holdings so much as letting them mature and be redeemed, which happens regularly. About 40% of the portfolio, $270 million, will rollover into cash in the next 30 days.
   
3. He's buying. The nature of panics is that they favor folks with dry powder and a willingness to buy. He's picking up things that, under the right circumstances, are offering annualized returns of 7-50%.
   
4. He's willing to talk with you. Both he and Morty Schaja have offered to join us on a conference call if that's something that might be useful and generate enough interest among board members / readers to justify the effort.

Let me know what you think. In particular, let me know what topics you'd want to hear about if a call occurs. As a caveat, there are likely to be some topics where David & Co. would be unable to comment for legal reasons.
By way of disclosure: I own shares of RPHYX and last week bought additional shares - as I did with most of my holdings - but we have no other financial ties with Cohanzick or RiverPark.
For what that's worth,
David