My basic screen:

The difference in ERs between institutional class shares and A shares at PIMCO is on the order of 0.3% - 0.4%. So just subtract that from the performance figures. Admittedly, these are larger difference than the 0.25% 12b-1 fee difference one finds at most fund families.
Total Return Fund share classes
Income Fund share classes
PMDRX is only available in institutional class shares.
A shares are indeed the equivalent of retail, no load. They're where all the D share investors were moved. More generally, I don't think that A shares should be load adjusted for several reasons:

• Most people buying the shares on their own are not getting charged the load (as noted)
  
• People buying these shares with a load with the help of advisors are receiving value for that payment - the services of the advisor. (One can debate whether this "value" has any value, but that's a different question.)
  
• People who buy these shares themselves with a load perhaps do need an advisor; they should get what they pay for.
  
• There is no clear amortization period for the load. Just because we're looking at five year returns doesn't make five years the correct length of time.

With respect to C shares, they are automatically "load adjusted", because the load is embedded in the ER and thus in the performance figures. Using the logic above (that this is a fee for advice, not a cost of running the fund), I respectfully suggest that the load portion of the ER be backed out when evaluating the performance of the fund itself. Though as David observed, this gets to be an absurd exercise with dubious benefit.
Finally, with respect to 5 years being arbitrary and skewed by recent performance. It is certainly arbitrary. I've commented in a few other posts about how a recent sharp downturn can skew even long term figures, especially with more aggressive and/or volatile funds.
That said, I didn't add the comment in my post above because at least for vanilla bond funds, YTD performance is positive and in line with long term performance. Of course, the more one moves away from vanilla, the greater the skew:
Intermediate Core: YTD: 3.27%, 5 year 3.22%
Intermediate Core Plus: YTD 1.17%, 5 year 3.15%
Multisector: YTD -6.61%, 5 year 2.13%
High Yield: YTD -9.98%, 5 year 2.09%

There are various strategies for asset allocation that seem to work out about the same. Consequently, I honestly think the choice comes down more to what feels right than to a real difference in outcome or even overall risk.
To the extent that I invest in dividend paying stock funds, I do that to diversify my equity portfolio, not for a cash stream per se. ISTM that what matters when investing in a company is how profitable the company will be. Whether it retains its profits (because it feels it can put the cash to good use), or pays them out to me as divs, doesn't matter.
At a macro level, what works for me with cash is allocating enough to "real cash" to last a couple of years, to "near cash" for 1-2 more. I also maintain a secondary liquid cache (see below). Along with a modest bond buffer that sits between cash and equities I can wait out almost any equity downdraft. Essentially I can bury my head in the sand until it all blows over. Which is one's natural inclination anyway - not to look at figures that are down 30% or more :-)
I think the micro level is what you're asking about - how am I splitting up that cash and near cash. In my mind, cash is something that's available for immediate use without fluctuation in value.
Right now I do like no-penalty CDs since they give me that flexibility and better rates than MMAs (let alone MMFs). Until recently, something like Vanguard's Treasury MMF did better on an after-tax basis (state tax exempt). I do keep a few months cash in MMAs. They pay not much less than the CDs (though I expect MMA rates to fall), and they're a bit easier to deal with than the CDs. When one cashes out a CD, it's all or nothing. So I pay a small amount (in lost interest) with the MMAs for a small added convenience.
Moving up the scale, I use both taxable and muni "near cash" funds. I've written before that one expects these to do better over a span of a couple of years, though they could underperform cash (or even lose a penny or two) over shorter periods of time.
I also have a second level "cache" - mostly older I-bonds. Liquid, no penalty, state tax exempt, tax-deferred, and aside from tax benefits competitive with MMAs. Not replaceable - there are limits on how much one can buy in a year, they have penalties for five years, and the fixed rate on new ones is now 0%. If I need to wait out a long market decline, these are available as backup.
So long as rates are stable or dropping, I don't expect to move money from cash (MMA, MMF, no penalty CDs) to "near cash" (short term and/or short duration funds). I'd rather have the rate lock on the CDs. When rates take a sharp jump up, I'll see what vehicles are offering the best yields.
Overall, while this is a conservative cash strategy, it lets me be more aggressive with equities, both in percentage allocation and in the type of equities. For other people, a traditional 60/40 portfolio provides a greater level of comfort and they don't have a cash drag from a significant cash allocation. Or, they can be more aggressive with their cash. Different paths to hopefully the same positive results.

Here's a rough approximation of an answer, responding to Lewis's concern about the skew created by institutional shares. I searched the MFO database for all PIMCO funds with a five-year record and an investment minimum of $10k or less. Basically, the "A" and "C" share classes of each fund.
113 results, pretty much half "A" and half "C." EM Currency and Short-Term Investments doesn't report a "C" class, which is why the number is odd rather than even. So, 57 "A" share classes.
Of the 57, 35 (61%) have peer-beating absolute returns, 3 exactly match their peers, 19 lag.
If you switch to Charles's MFO Rating, a risk-adjusted return metric that uses the more conservative Martin Ratio rather than the Sharpe ratio as its basis, 20 of 57 funds have four or five star (above to much above average) ratings and another 21 have three star (just a bit above or below average) ratings. One fund, a money market doesn't have a rating. So, 72% "okay to excellent" over the past five years.
- - - - -
What unites the real stinkers? Mostly the word "real." PIMCO created a series of inflation-proof funds with the word "real" in their names. They incorporate hedges like TIPs, commodities and so on. Absent inflation, they've really sucked.
Also "Dividend and Income," for reasons I haven't explored.
- - - - -
But remember: five years is an arbitrary period based solely on the number of fingers and toes we possess (rolls eyes) and the measurement in question ends in the midst of a massive downturn which skews the results.
On whole: relatively few strategies have been soaring over the past five years, and many of them ignore traditional virtues like valuation, income-production and diversification. That would make me cautious of using them for a guide.
For what that's worth,
David

@msf
Thanks for the info. I am unsure if you are sitting 100% in your CDs. If so how will you decide to move money anywhere else?
Keeping enough cash to live on for some period of time gives you the opportunity to take some risk with the rest. However, it is hard to believe that there is not going to be another serious equity downturn. Bonds are generally unappealing but look better than most stocks as the "E" in P/E ratios is a complete unknown.
I am carefully buying some higher dividend positions with good balance sheets in defensive sectors but avoiding utilities ( who knows how many people wont pay their electric bill?) and REITS ( although industrial and cell tower reits might do ok)
I think higher quality bonds from the same companies will be OK, and if there is worse economic news ahead might even have a price uptick.
We are in uncharted times, but there is nothing wrong with lots of cash if you do not need an income stream

In 2015, 10 year treasuries yielded 2.14%, in 2016 it was 1.84%, then 2.33% (2017), 2.91% (2018), 2.14% (2019), and 1.17% (annualized) so far this year. So just looking at yield, one might have hoped for a tad north of 2%/year.
https://www.macrotrends.net/2016/10-year-treasury-bond-rate-yield-chart
IEF, an ETF of 7-10 year maturity Treasuries has an average duration of 7.6 years.
https://www.ishares.com/us/products/239456/ishares-710-year-treasury-bond-etf
Let's figure that over five years rates dropped by around 1% and duration was around 7.6 years So applying some back of the envelope calculations, appreciation was around 7% (allowing for some convexity) giving us maybe 1.3%/year annualized appreciation over five years.
Keep in mind these are all very crude estimates. Still, that adds up to around 3.5%/year over the past five years for the intermediate treasury market. Non-treasuries yield more but may not have had the same appreciation.
VFITX (intermediate treasury) has returned 3.26% annualized over the past five years.
VSIGX (interm treasury index) has returned 3.39%
VISCX (intermediate corp index) has returned 4.22%, and its benchmark index is at 4.41%
(All Vanguard data from Vanguard's site.)
Disregarding junk and securitized debt (categories that have done worse), one expects an intermediate term fund to have had returns falling somewhere between these figures. So PTTRX (3.89%), PIMIX (3.85%), even PMDRX (3.24%) seem to have held their own.
Over five years, PTTRX is 0.67% above its category, 0.04% above its index.
PIMIX is 1.58% above its category and matching its index.
PMDRX is 0.02% above its category, though 0.61% below its index.
(Data in this paragraph is from M*)
The record that seems "unbelievably bad" is not PIMCO's but that of the market. PIMCO has done fine with bonds. Arnott is a completely different story.

I find the following to provide a manageable starting point for me to drill down:
Period Metrics & Ratings
• Sharpe Rating In Category: 3 - 5 Average or Better
• Sortino Rating In Category: 3 - 5 Average or Better
MFO Designations
• Family Rating: Top , Upper , Middle
Purchase Info
• Expense Ratio (ER) Rating In Category: 3 - 1 Average or Less
• Front Load: None
Portfolio Info
• Turnover, Annual: 75% or Less
I'm curious where others start from.

+1

@rabockma1. You're telling me.

@LewisBraham, what a difference a couple of months makes. Last time I looked MACGX was a 2 star fund by M* and now is 5 stars. Of course, FMIJX used to be 5 stars and now at 2 stars. MACGX is up 40% for the last month, but I will pass on investing as I already am in MSEGX which is a LCG fund run by the same Counterpoint Global team of Dennis Lynch & company and up 18% YTD. But thanks for alerting us of their recent performance.

@jojo26 There are 2000 stocks in the Russell 2000 Index of small caps and 1391 stocks in the Russell 2000 Value Index. JSCVX holds 79 stocks. If you think that's a "closet indexer," you're delusional. Also, it's expense ratio is 0.92%, not "1%+." A manager can still be very active in the small-cap space with 100, 200, 300 stocks, even more. JSCVX's active share metric is 92.4--good enough in my book: https://cdn.janushenderson.com/webdocs/Active+Share+Report_Mutual+Funds_March+2020_exp_07-15-20.pdf

I would rather not have to set up another account, especially a retirement account to buy Marcus CDs. While FDIC guarantees work ( I lost two CDS during the 1980s housing crisis) it does take some time to get your money back so there is some opportunity cost.
1.5% after taxes will not beat inflation, unless you think there is a massive deflation coming. There are a number of 1 year A+ bonds paying up to 2.5% from companies that are highly unlikely to go bankrupt in the next year ie, Kimberly Clark, Home Depot, Wells Fargo. If a good analyst knows what they are doing I think they can avoid bankrupcies and make more than that with longer duration bonds.

Certainly moving money around in IRAs is more difficult. In a post I made on another board I acknowledged that. Here, it just didn't occur to me that the question concerned IRAs. You're right that they're more problematic.
I used to work with someone who had taken delight in putting money into the most shaky Texan S&Ls in the early 80s. He said that he had gotten his money back a few days after each institution failed. Apparently your mileage did vary :-)
I am curious about the bonds you're looking at. I did a search on Fidelity's site, expanding the parameters to look for corporate bonds with maturities through Nov. 2029, and S&P or Moody's rating of at least BBB+/Baa1 respectively. Fidelity showed an inventory of 1139 bonds. When sorted by YTW (highest to lowest), the highest yielding WF bonds I found were:
94974BGL8, 2.922%, BBB+/A3, 7/22/27
94974BFY1, 2.558%, BBB+/A3, 6/3/26
95000U2D4, 2.497%, A-/A2, 1/24/29 (call 10/23/28)
95001D6P0, 2.314%, A-/A2, 4/17/28 (call 4/17/22)
949746SH5, 2.181%, A-/A2, 10/23/26
949746RW3, 2.108%, A-/A2, 4/22/26 (and callable)
94974BFN5, 1.975%, BBB+/A3, 8/15/23
94974BGP9, 1.940%, A-/A2, 9/29/25
No other Wells Fargo bonds yielding at least 1.92%. The bond I bolded comes closest to what you were describing - it should be called in two years (not quite a one year bond) and it is rated just a couple of notches below your A+ or better requirement.
Corporates rated A+ or better that I can find with YTW over 2.5% that may be redeemed sometime in 2021 are premium bonds callable next year. One expects premium bonds to be called, so I would count these as 1-1.5 year bonds; at least until problems prevent them from being called. So some possibilities do exist, albeit with liquidity risk (they may not be called, and there are added trading costs to sell rather than wait for redemption).
They're largely from health companies and banks - BP Capital, Credit Suisse, Barclays, UnitedHealth, Merck, etc. But no Wells Fargo, no Home Depot, no Kimberly Clark. The Schwab screener lets you look for issuers, and the only bonds it shows for these three companies are generally rated A-/A2 for Wells Fargo, or A/A2 for the others.

@Jojo26 There's a difference between a 5 stock portfolio's idioyncratic stock risk and a 50 stock portfolio's idiosyncratic risk. If having idiosyncratic risk was uniformly a good thing for active management, you wouldn't want a portfolio at all and would just buy one stock. The smaller or weaker the companies are, the less idiosyncratic risk you want. Small companies typically have only have one or two lines of business, fewer customers and weaker balance sheets. They are more prone to blow ups and being driven out of business entirely. It's absurd to say that the two choices are maximum idiosyncratic risk or index funds. There's a middle ground. LLSCX has just 20 stocks and 11% in one stock--that is a lot of idiosyncratic risk.

You keep paying your 1%+ for your closet indexers. I'll spend my risk budget in managers I believe can add value (and they do that by taking considerable idiosyncratic risk).

@MikeW JSCVX has been hurt this year like every other small-cap value fund from coronavirus. The point is in funds that are style box dependent whether the fund is beating its peers within the style box. JSCVX is this year, beating 81% of small-value funds in 2020. Other reasons to like it--below average 0.92% expense ratio for active management, moderate turnover 39% so lower trading costs, but most important I think is its tilt towards high quality small-value, more resilient small companies that can hopefully survive the recession we are entering. But this is by no means an "absolute returns" fund focused on positive returns each year. If small value is down, it will be down too. This is a relative return fund seeking to beat other small-value funds and the Russell 2000 Value index. Absolute return funds are a completely different animal.

@Jojo26 There's a difference between a 5 stock portfolio's idioyncratic stock risk and a 50 stock portfolio's idiosyncratic risk. If having idiosyncratic risk was uniformly a good thing for active management, you wouldn't want a portfolio at all and would just buy one stock. The smaller or weaker the companies are, the less idiosyncratic risk you want. Small companies typically have only have one or two lines of business, fewer customers and weaker balance sheets. They are more prone to blow ups and being driven out of business entirely. It's absurd to say that the two choices are maximum idiosyncratic risk or index funds. There's a middle ground. LLSCX has just 20 stocks and 11% in one stock--that is a lot of idiosyncratic risk.

It makes sense to think that the dividing line traditionally used by investors will become more blurry now that the Fed and ECB have crossed it.....

...the latest move may well turbo-charge the departure from ratings-defined investment processes, especially the cliff-edge division between high-yield and high-grade debt.
“What active managers have been doing since the financial crisis is increasing the flexibility of their mandates,” said James Vokins, head of investment-grade UK credit at Aviva Investors.
...central bank support could be a powerful impetus for more flexibility, especially as yields, or returns, on high-grade debt tumble further and junk markets swell...

https://reuters.com/article/us-health-coronavirus-ratings-analysis/as-central-banks-break-the-junk-debt-barrier-investors-will-follow-idUSKBN22I1WW

@Bitzer SCPZX is one of the funds that did well this year esp in March, but M* is leery
"But such wins depend on precise timing, and mistakes can sting. The strategy slashed its 40% agency mortgage-backed securities stake to 4% in late 2008 and doubled down on commercial mortgage-backed securities (to 34%), for example, missing a rally in the former and getting hammered by the latter."
@msf I would rather not have to set up another account, especially a retirement account to buy Marcus CDs. While FDIC guarantees work ( I lost two CDS during the 1980s housing crisis) it does take some time to get your money back so there is some opportunity cost.
1.5% after taxes will not beat inflation, unless you think there is a massive deflation coming. There are a number of 1 year A+ bonds paying up to 2.5% from companies that are highly unlikely to go bankrupt in the next year ie, Kimberly Clark, Home Depot, Wells Fargo. If a good analyst knows what they are doing I think they can avoid bankrupcies and make more than that with longer duration bonds.
Unfortunately even the most conservation fund seems temped with asset backed securities and even emerging markets
I can't argue with cash, other than it pays very little and I want some diversification but also want to avoid the potential for capital loss.
Correlation are helpful in the big picture, but they are really backward looking as we don't know what is coming. While some individual companies will go under, the Feds entire reason to buy stuff is to keep the system from going under.

Another perspective ... With S&P projecting S&P 500 TTM earnings to be in the $115.00 range for the next six months or so and based on current valuation for the Index at a 2850 valuation produces an earnings yield of about 4%. From this perspective, and from my view, stocks are expensive and too expensive for me to buy more of them at his level. If you were a shrewd investor to have bought at their 52 week low of 2237 then this computes to an earnings yield of 5%. With this, I'm not a buyer of equities, at present, even if I was short of equites within my asset allocation model. And, if you had bought at the top (3386) with the current TTM earning porjections being %115.00 then the earnings yield computes to about 3.4% For me, I'm now looking at hybrid funds that have at least a 3.4% yield.

All ratings have been updated on MFO Premium site, including MultiSearch, Great Owls, Fund Alarm (Three Alarm and Honor Roll), Averages, Dashboard of Profiled Funds, and Fund Family Scorecard. The site now includes several analysis tools, including Correlation, Rolling Averages, Trend, Ferguson Metrics, Calendar Year and Period Performance.
Considering world economies appeared to be ending in March, through April, markets don't look so bad ... S&P 500 off just 9.3%. Russell 3000 -10.4%. MSCI World ex USA -19.9%. NASDAQ near even. AGG +4.9%. TLT +23.8%
Can read a bit more here.

Yesterday's new "Major Trend Analysis" from the Leuthold Group was accompanied by good news and bad news.
Good news: while bull rallies occur in bear markets, it's almost unheard of for a bull rally to exceed 30% gains and then pull back into a bear. Typical "trap rallies" are in the 20% range. The only (admittedly uncomfortable) other occurrence of 30% rallies that collapsed were during the 85% skyrocket early in the Great Depression.
Bad news: "The blue chips’ bounce has driven their valuations back to levels that exceed all but the March 2000 and February 2020 market tops. If our S&P 500 metrics were to eventually retreat to 'only' the new-era valuation low that accompanied the mild recession of 2001, losses from here would be on the order of 30-35%."
Today's Shiller 10-year CAPE is 26.88, with "normal" being about 16; a sort of mid-point between the average and median values. The 10-year CAPE hit 27 in early 1929, then not again until mid-1996. It stayed at or above 27 for about a decade, declined to the low 20s after the GFC then worked steadily back up. The recent unpleasantness whacked about six points off the average.
David