@dtconroe
Regarding Tax Cost Ratio (TCR), I don't recall what tax rate / bracket M* uses to calculate the value. The definition M* provides is silent on the topic. For munis, with a TCR of 0% the issue is moot. Perhaps I don't understand TCR fully, but for taxable bond funds, the tax impact is tied to one's specific tax situation / tax rate and whether they are close to a breakpoint in tax brackets. The tax impact of interest / dividends for someone in the 15% tax bracket is different than for someone in the 22% bracket or higher. State and local taxes also need to be considered to get a full picture. Seems like TCR is more a relative vs. absolute measure and one needs to do further due diligence to get the full picture for their particular situation.

This M* widget at the dinky linky seems to be designed for comparing individual bonds, but I don't see why it wouldn't work for funds. It allows you to enter your Federal and State tax rates. I used the latest

SEC yields for the funds I was comparing when I looked into adding a taxable bond fund to my taxed account.
dinky linky.

Sec yield is not an accurate number.
Example: PIMIX sec yield for a couple of years is under 3.5% and PIMIX continues to pay about 5.5% annually.

@dtconroe
Regarding Tax Cost Ratio (TCR), I don't recall what tax rate / bracket M* uses to calculate the value. The definition M* provides is silent on the topic. For munis, with a TCR of 0% the issue is moot. Perhaps I don't understand TCR fully, but for taxable bond funds, the tax impact is tied to one's specific tax situation / tax rate and whether they are close to a breakpoint in tax brackets. The tax impact of interest / dividends for someone in the 15% tax bracket is different than for someone in the 22% bracket or higher. State and local taxes also need to be considered to get a full picture. Seems like TCR is more a relative vs. absolute measure and one needs to do further due diligence to get the full picture for their particular situation.

This M* widget at the dinky linky seems to be designed for comparing individual bonds, but I don't see why it wouldn't work for funds. It allows you to enter your Federal and State tax rates. I used the latest SEC yields for the funds I was comparing when I looked into adding a taxable bond fund to my taxed account.

dinky linky.

@WABAC: Yes, that calculator works for many situations. It does not account for Qualified Dividends which are taxed at a lower rate than ordinary dividends (0% for lower tax brackets). Some taxable bond funds hold assets which qualify for Qualified Dividend tax treatment but that info is not readily available nor factored into most calculators. While I have used the M* calculator or similar ones, for my situation, I have often found the best assessment is found by doing what if scenarios in tax software, like TurboTax, or one of the many tax estimators available online because there can be many moving parts and interactions in the tax calculations that the simple calculator does not address. At least that has been the case for my situation. As always, your mileage may vary.
Also, using SEC yield vs distribution yield in the calculator will provide quite different results because they are calculated differently. This investopedia article discuss the differences between the two ways of calculating yield.
https://www.investopedia.com/terms/d/distribution-yield.asp

@dtconroe
Regarding Tax Cost Ratio (TCR), I don't recall what tax rate / bracket M* uses to calculate the value. The definition M* provides is silent on the topic. For munis, with a TCR of 0% the issue is moot. Perhaps I don't understand TCR fully, but for taxable bond funds, the tax impact is tied to one's specific tax situation / tax rate and whether they are close to a breakpoint in tax brackets. The tax impact of interest / dividends for someone in the 15% tax bracket is different than for someone in the 22% bracket or higher. State and local taxes also need to be considered to get a full picture. Seems like TCR is more a relative vs. absolute measure and one needs to do further due diligence to get the full picture for their particular situation.

This M* widget at the dinky linky seems to be designed for comparing individual bonds, but I don't see why it wouldn't work for funds. It allows you to enter your Federal and State tax rates. I used the latest SEC yields for the funds I was comparing when I looked into adding a taxable bond fund to my taxed account.
dinky linky.

"perrywinkle">@dtconroe
Regarding Tax Cost Ratio (TCR), I don't recall what tax rate / bracket M* uses to calculate the value. The definition M* provides is silent on the topic. For munis, with a TCR of 0% the issue is moot. Perhaps I don't understand TCR fully, but for taxable bond funds, the tax impact is tied to one's specific tax situation / tax rate and whether they are close to a breakpoint in tax brackets. The tax impact of interest / dividends for someone in the 15% tax bracket is different than for someone in the 22% bracket or higher. State and local taxes also need to be considered to get a full picture. Seems like TCR is more a relative vs. absolute measure and one needs to do further due diligence to get the full picture for their particular situation.
perrywinkle, I really don't have anymore information about M* calculations than what is posted above in the M* definition. I assume the TCR varies in importance, depending on your own personal tax situation, which is hard to generalize about.

from @JohnN link...

The 25 Best Low-Fee Mutual Funds to Buy in 2020
25-best-low-fee-mutual-funds-to-buy-2020
Fidelity International Growth = FIGFX
Oakmark International = OAKIX
Baron Emerging Markets = BEXFX
AMG TimesSquare International Small Cap Fund = TCMPX

Google.com/finance although you may need gmail acct
I do research on my funds etf as and stocks using schwab research [we have brokerages acct w Schwab] although I as very biased toward and usually buy indexes
Lots funds mentioned here are very good that are recommended by mfo readers, but sometimes fees are too high (more than 1%annual) or they have preload 5s% (or after loads) and don't do well 10 yrs compared simple indexings

@dtconroe
Regarding Tax Cost Ratio (TCR), I don't recall what tax rate / bracket M* uses to calculate the value. The definition M* provides is silent on the topic. For munis, with a TCR of 0% the issue is moot. Perhaps I don't understand TCR fully, but for taxable bond funds, the tax impact is tied to one's specific tax situation / tax rate and whether they are close to a breakpoint in tax brackets. The tax impact of interest / dividends for someone in the 15% tax bracket is different than for someone in the 22% bracket or higher. State and local taxes also need to be considered to get a full picture. Seems like TCR is more a relative vs. absolute measure and one needs to do further due diligence to get the full picture for their particular situation.

Bingo. There is no more 15%. It goes 10,12,22,24,32,35,37.
Most USA households will be at 22% and under because MARRIED FILING JOINTLY is up to $186.4K and especially retirees with lower income at retirement compared to when they used to work.
Let's see how it works in reality. If we compare MWCRX to VCFAX for 3 years. Looking at M* tax tab (link)
Performance pre-tax MWCRX 3.5% VCFAX 5.7%
Performance after-tax MWCRX 2.3% VCFAX 3%. The after tax numbers are way off for tax bracket 10,12,22 and even 24 which goes to $321.45K for Fed income
The above means that the difference between MWCRX to VCFAX is not only 0.7% but much higher.

@dtconroe
Regarding Tax Cost Ratio (TCR), I don't recall what tax rate / bracket M* uses to calculate the value. The definition M* provides is silent on the topic. For munis, with a TCR of 0% the issue is moot. Perhaps I don't understand TCR fully, but for taxable bond funds, the tax impact is tied to one's specific tax situation / tax rate and whether they are close to a breakpoint in tax brackets. The tax impact of interest / dividends for someone in the 15% tax bracket is different than for someone in the 22% bracket or higher. State and local taxes also need to be considered to get a full picture. Seems like TCR is more a relative vs. absolute measure and one needs to do further due diligence to get the full picture for their particular situation.

Some of the information is provided on their new pages, some isn't, but can still be found on their legacy pages.
For example, if you click on the price "tab" on a new page, at the lower right you'll find the three year tax cost ratio for a fund. But I don't believe that you can find the 1, 5, 10, or 15 year tax cost ratio as you would on a legacy page, e.g.
http://performance.morningstar.com/fund/tax-analysis.action?t=VFINX&region=usa&culture=en-US
OTOH, the legacy page doesn't give the category three year tax category tax cost ratio that's provided on the new page.

Thanks for the tips. I still have portfolios over there, especially for shopping.
Is there an easy way to reliably get to the legacy pages?

Yep, Tax Cost Information is a bit inconsistent between various sites. At M*, on their front page, I just type in the fund symbol in their search and quote box, get the Fund specific information to come up, click on the Price icon under the specific fund, and get the Tax Cost Ratio information for the last 3 year period. At Schwab, I pull up the Fund Symbol in their Research category, and when the fund comes up, I go to the Risk and Tax Analysis section where I can get Tax Cost Ratios for both the 1 year and 3 year periods. I suspect it is available at other sites, but I tend to depend on M* and my brokerage for fund information.

I recommend the risk screens here. I am a recent transplant from M*, though I was never very active on their boards until they destroyed the value of premium membership. I quickly realized that resistance was futile.
I first tried the quick search option on the premium site to evaluate funds for my wife's rollover IRA. It's free. And you can compare up to five tickers at once. I have subsequently purchased access to the whole shebang.
I sought to keep her selection of bond funds simple to understand, high quality, and on the lower end of the duration scale. The first goal being to preserve principal, with some modest hope of compounding over the six years before we have to take RMD's. The second goal was to create a template if something unforeseen happens to me.
From the selection of funds available at Wells Fargo I selected:
Vanguard Inflation Protected Admiral VAIPX. A pure TIP's fund that's AAA rated at 7.38 years duration. Because you never know.
Vanguard GNMA Admiral VFIJX. An intermediate government fun that AAA rated at 2.68 years duration.
Fidelity Intermediate FTHRX. A boring intermediate that's A rated at 3.99 years duration.
Vanguard Short Federal Admiral VSGDX. AA rated, 2.35 years duration.
Payden Low Duration PYSBX. AA rated, 1.9 years duration.
I have the short-term funds because I intend to have her fully invested between now and the end of the year. So there will need to be some guarantee of something there to sell when it comes time for RMD's.
My own IRA collection is more diverse (Christine Benz might call it a sprawling mess) due to my interests, and what is available at Vanguard. But this post is already getting long-winded.
I have been participating in online communities since the days of Compuserve. Just a few thoughts . . .
Paragraphs help readability. White space helps readability.
There will always be more viewers than posters. But jargon can turn people off. After the first page of this thread I just glazed over all the fund symbols listed. Maybe I missed some good ones. So I decided to add enough of the name for viewers to catch the fund family, and the drift of the strategy.
If I'm going to type at all, I find it just as easy to type "open end fund" as I do to type "hey pal, use google." Your mileage may vary.

Some of the information is provided on their new pages, some isn't, but can still be found on their legacy pages.
For example, if you click on the price "tab" on a new page, at the lower right you'll find the three year tax cost ratio for a fund. But I don't believe that you can find the 1, 5, 10, or 15 year tax cost ratio as you would on a legacy page, e.g.
http://performance.morningstar.com/fund/tax-analysis.action?t=VFINX&region=usa&culture=en-US
OTOH, the legacy page doesn't give the category three year tax category tax cost ratio that's provided on the new page.

https://etfdb.com/news/2020/01/15/effective-way-to-tap-evolving-muni-bond-market/
An Effective Way to Tap Evolving Muni Bond Market
The municipal bond market is evolving and some index funds and ETFs have kept pace with that evolution. One that really has is the VanEck Vectors Municipal Allocation ETF (MAAX).

(Sorry I can’t access Lewis’ article at this time.)
DODLX lost 6.21% In 2015 according to Yahoo Finance. That must be the year I bought in, as I remember taking a substantial “drubbing” on my initial investment. https://finance.yahoo.com/quote/DODLX/performance/
My own quick perspective - For many years now DODLX has elected to maintain heavy exposure to North American issuers - especially the U.S. That NA exposure is typically north of 50%. I like this fund as companion to RPSIX in my “Diversified Income” sleeve. The differences are substantial however (and DODLX is arguably less risky).
Never mentioned on the board, but of great value to me, is that D&C writes very comprehensive narratives as part of their annual and semi-annual fund reports. These provide thoughtful insights into how the fund is positioned, the process of investing as a study, and their current macro-thinking.

It seems that there has been a lot of interest Muni bond options for taxable accounts recently. It is hard to generalize about whether it is best to purchase a Muni bond fund, or if a taxable bond fund might be a better, or at least an acceptable choice. For some years, I have used Tax Cost Ratios of each fund to help decide if I want to seriously consider it. In case you are not familiar with Tax Cost Ratios, here is its definition from the M* Glossary.
"Tax Cost Ratio
The Morningstar Tax Cost Ratio measures how much a fund's annualized return is reduced by the taxes investors pay on distributions. Mutual funds regularly distribute stock dividends, bond dividends and capital gains to their shareholders. Investors then must pay taxes on those distributions during the year they were received.
Like an expense ratio, the tax cost ratio is a measure of how one factor can negatively impact performance. Also like an expense ratio, it is usually concentrated in the range of 0-5%. 0% indicates that the fund had no taxable distributions and 5% indicates that the fund was less tax efficient.
For example, if a fund had a 2% tax cost ratio for the three-year time period, it means that on average each year, investors in that fund lost 2% of their assets to taxes. If the fund had a three-year annualized pre-tax return of 10%, an investor in the fund took home about 8% on an after-tax basis. (Because the returns are compounded, the after-tax return is actually 7.8%.)"
You can find what the average Tax Cost Ratio is by category, with Munis being 0, short term bonds being .88 Nontraditional bond oef being 1.38, HY bond oefs being 2.06 etc. but you have to go to each fund to find out the Tax Cost Ratio specifics for it. Here are a few examples of TCR for some funds in various categories:
HY Munis: NVHAX and SDHAX (0)
NonTraditional Bond OEFs: MWCRX (1.36), SEMPX (2.13)
Short Term Bond OEFs: DHEAX (1.38), DBLSX (1.13)
HY Bond oefs: ZEOIX (1.20), RPHYX (1.01)
The above TCRs are for 3 years, but at Schwab you can also get them for the last year.

Discusses DODLX - actively manged vs. lower yielding BNDX; offered by low cost, team managed D&C; flexible but with some guardrails; how it uses that flexibility.
I'm able to read w/o tricks or subscription, but Barron's is generally paywalled, so YMMV.
https://www.barrons.com/articles/global-bond-fund-yield-in-a-low-rate-world-51578968494

Hi @FD1000,
Thanks for posting this fine peace for reading. For me, it was a very interesting read.
Skeet

This post also mentioned LDVIX:
https://www.mutualfundobserver.com/discuss/discussion/39017/mutual-funds-weekly-roundup-february-22/p1

A great article (link). Below are several quotes from this link.
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What do you expect to be the key driver of stock market performance over the course of 2020?
Markets climbed a wall of worry in 2019 and nearly all risk assets did very well - essentially the opposite of 2018. We believe we have entered the fear of the fear of missing out. One thing we are watching closely are equity fund flows that were down last year. It's very rare for fund flows in stocks to be negative when the market is up so strongly. But recent data suggests that may be turning. It would be a bearish signal for us to see a large amount of new money flow into equities.
According to Goldman Sachs, two thirds of the market move since 2009 has been earnings growth. However, in 2019, just 8% of the S&P 500 move is explained by earnings growth.
We tend to be bullish when others are bearish and tend to get bearish when others are bullish. Last year, investors were maybe not bearish but definitely cautious given the trade worries and other geopolitical issues. However, today we seem to be moving toward a more euphoric phase which does have us concerned.
What do you expect out of the yield curve in 2020 and what impacts will that have on the bond market and the economy in general?
On the long-end of the curve, we think rates could inch higher but shouldn't jump significantly like we saw in 2017. If I had to make a bet where the 10-year yield will be at year end, I would say around 2.15%.

What are some portfolio tilts and sub-sectors you think investors should focus on this year?
We believe this year could look a lot like 2017 with some minor changes. First and foremost, we think the dollar rolls over and starts to decline. Dollar strength was largely due to the Federal Reserve raising rates for the last few years through 2018. With the Fed lowering rates three times last year (-75 bps) that should start reverberating throughout the markets this year, especially the dollar.
If the dollar does start to decline, we think international equities could finally shine. They have drastically underperformed US equities in the last 10 years. However, they should rebound. Europe and Japan have experienced much slower growth than the US during the recovery and continue to have worse demographics.
In fact, from a valuation standpoint, US stocks have never been more overvalued relative to the rest of the world. This is eventually likely to mean revert and we think a lot of it is due to the negative sentiment regarding the euro and Brexit.
Value stocks may finally do better than growth stocks thanks to the steeper yield curve. The thesis of owning growth stocks during a flattening yield curve and value stocks during steepening could prove true here. We also like small caps more so than large caps (and especially mid caps) given the 20-year low relative valuations. Emerging markets look particularly interesting.
I would still stay away from energy which looks like is going through a secular shift away from fossil fuels.
In fixed income, where are you allocating capital for 2020?
1) Municipals: We've been pushing munis for most of the last year as rates appeared poised to drop. Even today, we think rates pushing 2.00% are not a bad place to put capital. And when you factor in the tax equivalent yields of munis (especially muni CEFs), and consider the risk of these securities which is extremely low, it's hard to beat this sector.
(2) High Yield / Floating Rate: . At these levels, we would say investors in high yield are coupon clippers, meaning that you are likely to receive the yield only with little to no capital gains. The risk is to the downside.

Our favorite area of the market remains mortgages (for the third year in a row). We place them into the high yield/ floating rate sector simply because of our focus on non-agency MBS, which tend to be unrated or lumped into non-investment grade/high yield. Many of these mortgages also are floating rate. Our thesis remains that the investors tend to fight the last battle, which with the Financial Crisis centered on the mortgage market.
(3) Real Assets / REITs: The sector was an under performer in 2019 and we think could be one of the best performers in 2020 as rates stabilize. The fourth quarter of 2019 was the driver of that underperformance as investors moved back to a risk-on environment and away from the "bond proxies."
Total cash returns could be as good as 9% in 2020 with approximately half coming from the yield and 4% to 6% earnings growth. If we see rates meander lower, we think there will be renewed interest in the sector which could help push up prices further. Fundamentals in the sector are strong with property values continuing to move higher.
(4) Preferreds:The asset class is small and has low liquidity which tends to exacerbate the moves lower. It's when these liquidity-induced selloffs occur that you should be buying shares of high quality names. While most talking heads poo-poo preferreds when rates are rising due to their perpetual maturities, this can be an advantage for retail investors. When rates fall, the issuer can call the shares at their discretion and replace them with a lower yielding issue. Today, we are seeing "refinancings" occur even if they can save just 50 bps of interest expense. If rates rise, while the "perpetual value" of your shares may go down, it does lock in your income stream for longer.
=====================
FD: and this is why most of my money is in HY Munis + Multisector specializing in MBS/Securitized

https://www.fa-mag.com/news/avoiding-the-perils-of-behavioral-investing-mistakes-53613.html
Avoiding The Perils Of Behavioral Investing Mistakes
JANUARY 15, 2020 • MATTHEW WILSON
There’s no shortage of research showing how investors are often their own worst enemies, sabotaging themselves by making emotional decisions or resorting to market timing and performance chasing (Source: 2018 Dalbar Quantitative Analysis of Investor Behavior).