Also, the examples provided didn't go back prior to 1986. (I find the reasoning for this--that some fixed income categories didn't exist prior to 1986--a bit dubious, but nevertheless.) I believe most of the rate increases after that period were gradual and modest ones allowing fixed income to catch up with its yield payments to compensate for losses. The real test would be a period of rapid rate and inflation increases like in the 1970s--what is known as a "rate shock." I doubt Wellesley income or many funds to be honest would hold up too well in such a period. Also, because rates are so low now, as has already been pointed out, a small increase actually can be more significant. Going say from a 0.25% rate to 0.50% is actually a doubling of rates. That is more uncharted territory. Also, income-oriented stocks that Wellesley owns might do particularly poorly in a rate shock environment because unlike bonds they essentially have an infinite duration as they never mature. Then again, they could do better if they have a growth component to compensate for rising rates. It's hard to predict how it would do. Yet here is some useful information: https://sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/105544/0000893220-95-000089.txt
If you go to page 6, you can see how Wellesley performed in the 1970s. Other than 1973 and 1974, it held up pretty well. So there's that. I wonder how it would do in a rate shock today when we're starting from such low rates.

Try this link instead:
https://www.icmarc.org/x3333.html?RFID=W1582&usg=AOvVaw2I9Vd-WRuW_zIiwp1pxMzJ
A solid piece, pretty much textbook (longer duration = greater loss with rising rates, junk = less sensitive to rates).
A few curiosities:

• It is interesting to note that contrary to conventional wisdom, all fixed income sectors experienced positive returns during the four rate hikes.
  I thought conventional wisdom said that historically NAV losses were more than compensated for by high coupons. Vanguard certainly makes this point in writing that buying bond funds in rising rate environments can still be profitable. (Not checking for citation now.)
  The problem is that with interest rates at historical lows, the coupons will likely not fully mitigate capital losses. The Vantage Point article alludes to this as well: "it is possible that the next upturn in rates would not result in positive returns for fixed income sectors due to unique factors, which may not have been present in the last four rate hikes."
• It gives as its rationale for not studying rising rate periods earlier than 1986 that "many fixed income sectors did not exist prior to 1986." So presumably it excludes securitized assets prior to the 1999 period of rising rates for the same reason. Yet MBSs (a major portion of secutized assets) certainly did exist then. FMSFX dates to 12/31/1984 and VFIIX got its start 6/27/1980.
• It explains that in the fourth rising rate period it studied, intermediate term bonds (actually aggregate bond portfolios) outperformed short term bonds in part because "short-term rates [rose] much more than longer-term rates, as shown by the flattening of the yield curve ". These days, there's not much more flattening to be had. Just a ¾% difference between a 3 month T-bill and a 30 year T-bond. Short term rates could again rise faster than long term rates, but that would result in an inversion not a flattening.

.

Here's a June 2016 study I quickly fund this morning:
Rising Interest Rates: Impact on Fixed Income
Though this study seems to promote the author's brand funds (Vantage Point Funds) it also provides a good overview of how different Income Assets historically behavior during rising interest rate environments.
One of many charts in the attached article:
https://screencast.com/t/VoK0BcUrr

I tend to view fund inflows and outflows as a contrary indicator. You wouldn't believe how many active funds had large outflows in 2018 yet went on to record truly exceptional returns in 2019 - some of them more than doubling SPX, DOW and Nasdaq index funds year to date.
That's "dumb" money for you...

facebook groups and email lists and the like are way more up to date about town meetings, business closings, school schedules, sports, gossip, police logs, firings and resignations and hirings, and everything else --- a local paper cannot come close, not remotely ... as an ex-newspaperman I try and support local print pubs also, but I understand why they are dying, the triumph of free over anything that costs

@davidrmoran,
(1) Where’s the accountability?
(2) Who checks the accuracy of the information?
(3) Who ferrets out those sources bearing a personal grudge, conflict of interest, or posting surreptitiously on behalf of a well funded special interest group ?

I would argue that people lose far more in terms of depth and diversity of knowledge of their communities than what they gain in speed from information disseminated via social media. Aside from misinformation on social media, there is also the echo chamber effect on Facebook where only like-minded people are communicating with each other. Also, having a neighbor tell you such and such is going on locally on Facebook is not the same as having a group of people at a paper whose full-time job it is to get to the bottom of what's happening in your community, informing you about ideas, events, risks, machinations and coverups a neighbor would never discover. What it meant to pick up a newspaper I think 30 to 40 years ago was to serendipitously discover something perhaps you never even considered about your hometown and hear opinions different from your own. I think part of the divisiveness we see today is from that lack of exposure to alternative voices outside one's social media self-reinforcing feedback loop or bubble.
More to the point, there is research that indicates communities that have lost newspapers vote less on average and have more political corruption on average because people are just less engaged and less in the know as to what's going on:
https://pen.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/11/Losing-the-News_Executive-Summary.pdf
Yet there is no question that news spreads faster on Facebook. Whether it is useful news or thoughtful in depth analysis is another question entirely.

Yep - I do not understand the decline in local journalism, Why on earth would people prefer to rely on social media for news about their state and local government? I subscribe to 3 different locals (from different nearby communities) in an attempt to stay informed, all print copies - 1 daily and 2 weeklies, But they are all a complete joke, The daily keeps getting bought up or merged with other big corporations. It’s currently part of the latest merger between Gate-House and Gannett, which I hear will cost even more jobs. And 2 of the 3 local TV stations are owned by Sinclair. (I shouldn't have to tell anyone how awful that news programming is.)
@BenWP - At least we still have Tim Skubick. When he retires, we’ll really be in the dark. Maybe have to call up @rono to find out what the h*** is going on in Lansing.

https://www.google.com/amp/s/seekingalpha.com/amp/article/4310599-vanguard-wellesley-fund-exceptional-conservative-mutual-fund-hidden-in-plain-sight
vanguard Wellesley fund

Hi, Mike.
At the very least, it's a function of the MFO Screener. Get a list of up to 12 funds, click "analyze" then "correlation." It will default to the longest period that includes all of the funds on your list; for example, if your youngest fund is 40 months old, it will construct a 36 month correlation. If you're willing to ignore that fund for the moment, you could run a longer-term correlation.
I have a vague recollection that some correlation data is available elsewhere. Portfolio Visualizer is the name that pops to mind, but I'm not sure of it though I'm certain other folks could share.
David

Oodles is such a subjective word when pitiful would work better. Do they pay dividends? Yes. Could you do much, much better building your own ETF by buying the top 10-20 holdings in these vehicles outright? Yes. You just have to interested and willing to do the work required. To each their own.

@Gary I don't know how any one can legitimately argue that the old-school media outlets "have done it to themselves." :https://theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2018/12/post-advertising-future-media/578917/

It’s tempting to think that this is the inevitable end game of Google and Facebook’s duopoly. The two companies already receive more than half of all the dollars spent on digital advertising, and they commanded 90 percent of the growth in digital ad sales last year. But what’s happening in media right now is more complex. We’re seeing the convergence of four trends.It’s not just Facebook and Google; just about every big tech company is talking about selling ads, meaning that just about every big tech company may become another competitor in the fight for advertising revenue.Amazon’s ad business exploded in the past year; its growth exceeded that of every other major tech company, including the duopoly. Apple is building tech that would skim ad revenue from major apps such as Snapchat and Pinterest, according to The Wall Street Journal.

and:

Ultimately, however, the market might not support some forms of journalism. For example, the number of local reporters today is at its lowest point since the 1970s, despite the fact that the U.S. population has grown by 50 percent. Research has shown a direct connection between declining local journalism and less civic engagement. If local news is a public good, it may deserve public support—perhaps in the form of government subsidies. But asking for public assistance might seem like an act of pure desperation.

https://investorplace.com/2019/12/5-etfs-for-oodles-of-monthly-dividends/
5 ETFs for Oodles of Monthly Dividends
Dividend ETFs can provide plenty of needed monthly income in retirement

Here's the press release:
https://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/vanguard-to-introduce-total-international-bond-ii-index-fund-as-new-component-for-funds-of-funds-300970047.html
Identical to VTABX, but designed for Vanguard's funds of funds. Also, it does not offer an ETF share class. Int'l Bond I has the BNDX share class.
From the prospectus:

Share Class Overview
This prospectus offers the Fund's Investor Shares and Admiral Shares. A separate prospectus offers the Fund's Institutional Shares, which are generally for investors who invest a minimum of $5 million.

From the prospectus of Vanguard Total International Bond Index Fund (VTABX):

Share Class Overview
This prospectus offers the Fund‘s Investor Shares and Admiral Shares. A separate prospectus offers the Fund‘s Institutional Shares, which are generally for investors who invest a minimum of $5 million. Another prospectus offers Institutional Select Shares, which are generally for investors who invest a minimum of $3 billion. In addition, the Fund issues ETF Shares (an exchange-traded class of shares), which are also offered through a separate prospectus.

@catch22- Thanks for posting that "first" page. Fun to see that some of us are still around, but sad to see how many of the really good posters are no longer with us.
I think that @Derf is actually asking how long the "MFO Community" option has been available from Accipiter's "Look up this fund on:" table. I'm uncertain as to the exact time frame, but as I recall that table was one of Accipiter's bells-and-whistles that was added a fair amount of time after April, 2011, and I'm thinking that the "MFO Community" option was not an original table option, but was added later on- when, exactly, I'm not sure.

https://www.financial-planning.com/list/vanguard-blackrock-fidelity-mutual-funds-and-etfs-have-largest-inflows-of-2019
Funds with the largest inflows of 2019
With an eye on market volatility and rate cuts from the Fed this year, the bond fund universe has seen a surge of new money.
The 20 mutual funds and ETFs with the largest year-to-date inflows are home to more than $2.5 trillion in combined assets under management, according to Morningstar Direct. These funds, mostly index-trackers, underline the continued trend toward low-cost investing, says Greg McBride, senior financial analyst at Bankrate.

Since the early 1990s, index-based investing, also known as passive investing, has been quite popular amongst investors looking to mirror an index and copy the market returns for an individual portfolio.
Seems a bit tautological (except for the 1990s part). Investors who want to mirror an index are virtually by definition interested in index-based investing.
the important fact to keep in mind is active portfolio fees, i.e. 12b-1 fees ...
12b-1 fees are servicing/marketing fees that have nothing to do with the management of a fund. For example, index funds such as GBIAX and TBILX have 12b-1 fees.
The whole purpose of an active strategy is to beat market returns and present an added value for active investors.
Some actively managed funds seek to reduce volatility and don't even try to match the market let alone beat it.
VMVFX: While the fund’s goal is to limit the volatility of global stock investing, we caution against expecting any low or minimum volatility investment to outperform, or even match, the global equity market over the long term.
https://investor.vanguard.com/mutual-funds/profile/VMVFX
In municipal debt funds, comparatively, there aren’t many variables other than interest rate risk and credit risk to justify the active management fees for municipal debt portfolios.
Pre-refunded, callable, subject to extraordinary redemption, GO vs. revenue, sector selection (some affected by local demographics), AMT exposure, geographic concentration risk, etc.
A given bond, with given attributes, can on average be expected to behave a certain way. IMHO a bond is a very mathematical type of security. (So if you diversify away issue selection risk, with bonds you have a very good idea of what to expect.) That's a far cry from saying that the only attributes that affect a fund's returns are credit risk and interest rate risk.

Hi David,
If I were prone to conspiracy theory I would be doing a head scratch with this from September 18, in Reuters (I did read the article linked below twice and scratched my head then. I thought I posted this at MFO...did not).
From the article:
More information is needed to assess whether the moves are a sign of a broader problem, other investors said.
“It’s probably nothing,” said Willie Delwiche, investment strategist for Baird. “But there is a risk that there is some trouble in the monetary plumbing in the economy.”

Complicating matters is the recent departure of two key markets experts, leaving vacancies at the New York Fed that some worry may have slowed down the U.S. central bank’s response to the volatility this week.
The two market-focused officials abruptly departed in June: Simon Potter, who oversaw the New York Fed’s trading desk, and Richard Dzina, who ran the bank’s financial services group. To date, neither has been replaced, leaving the central bank without permanent leadership in a key part of its operations.
>>>Abruptly, being a key word with the above statement. I've witnessed several abrupt departures over many years at a corporate level and knew the problem was an operational disagreement between individuals, a how to run the business problem.
Perhaps there exists an operational disagreement at the NY Fed. Perhaps the large banks are attempting to have rule changes made for reserve requirements, and then they'll rejoin the repo party. Perhaps there exists a serious problem in the monetary system that is way past my understanding.
Full Reuters story HERE.
Lastly, aside from the normal written story search, Youtube offers some videos discussing the REPO markets; as well at Khan Academy.com.
Regards,
Catch

A bunch of news outlets reported today or yesterday that "The Federal Reserve Bank of New York added $95.56 billion in temporary liquidity to financial markets Tuesday. The intervention came in two parts. One was via overnight repurchase agreements, or repos, that totaled $77.8 billion, and the other was via 14-day repos totaling $17.76 billion." Wall Street Journal in that case.
Two thoughts: (1) this might resonate with the concerns we reflected in our December liquidity story. (2) If you Ecosia "fed adds liquidity" - I'm experimenting with the Ecosia web search engine and figured that if that other search engine can be turned into a verb, so can these guys - it appears that a quick hundred billion is becoming a near-monthly event. Same thing was needed in November.
David

The month/year you joined. Early April, 2011; if you mean by the full MFO name. You are member #182.
To the best of my knowledge, this is the first formally archived page.