FWIW: If memory serves me, Junkster ran a very tight ship. I believe he would have exited iofix on March 11 ,nav at $13.16.
As for me, staying the course, & bought a little on the drop.
Schwab says cost bias, only 3 or 4 in the green at this time.
Have a good week to all, Derf

@Charles - you mentioned "Our friend Junkster always touted the importance of having predefined "exit" criteria. He was/is a day trader so he watches for instabilities typically in price movements of what he calls "tight channel" funds. If he sees them, he exits the trade.
Others like Meb Faber practice trend following ... when price drops below say the 10-mo running average, they exit their position, either to cash or something (thought) safer."
Then asked "So curious if any on the board practice, in disciplined fashion, such techniques?
And, perhaps even more curious of whether buy-and-hold investors, especially retired ones, EVER think of exiting. Or, is it always just about re balancing?"
Tough questions but I'll try. NO I do not ever think about exiting. I'm pretty much all invested 99% of the time. While accumulating it was 95/5 figuring that SS would cover my wild abandon. Once retired I drifted down to roughly 75/25 by swapping some REIT's for PCI and PDI. MY portfolio is primarily a mix of individual dividend growth stocks and a handful of equity CEF's for income, PIMCO bond CEF's + IOFIX and 5 mutual funds BIAWX, GLFOX, MGGPX, POAGX and VLAAX. I do hold a pittance in SFGIX but I'm not sure why, maybe in case it ever becomes unstuck from it's funk. It is hard to apply the techniques I use across all holdings equally so I use certain ones for certain types.
I pretty much never touch the mutual funds. That's what I hired their managers for.
Likewise the bond holdings although I do check them occasionally trying to follow Junksters lessons along with a weekly MACD signal. I won't get into what it's all about suffice to say that MACD is an indicator used in technical analysis to identify aspects of a security's overall trend. Most notably these aspects are momentum, as well as trend direction and duration. MACD uses moving averages (trend lines and duration) and plots that difference between the two lines as a histogram which oscillates above and below a center Zero Line. The histogram is a good indication of a security's momentum and so I watch for crossovers signalling buying when moving up from a trough or selling from a peak. Ideally I'd check them more often than I do but I try to pretend I have a life away from watching market action so sometimes I'm behind the curve unless price action screams at me.
My equity holdings are also rarely touched because most were bought during previous market debacles and now have considerable capital gains even after this current hosing. If I found suitable similar replacements I might swap them. Or not.
With these holdings, in addition to the MACD signal I also watch the RSI and the Chaikin Money Flow indicators. Again I am never on top of these 100% of the time but I check them occasionally and whenever Mr. Price beats on me. I use RSI to identify the general trend and watch for divergence especially from overbought or oversold conditions.
The Chaikin Money Flow tells the real story of how much demand there is for a stock whether positive or negative. The concepts of divergences comes into play here as well. If money flow starts to fall while price is rising, then the price will generally follow downward soon. Again, a change in money flow is a signal that something is about to change with price. The weekly and monthly tell you the real big money trend and I want to be on the side of the big money. A day trader could use daily I suppose.
Anyway, in this current meltdown all things seemed to have suffered equally so I see no reason to play with rebalancing and frankly I never look at my portfolio and think that I should. Crazy right? But my portfolio works for me and was planned out to do what I needed it to do which was to provide me with enough income to cover my modest needs along with a little extra to play with. To date I have only had one holding that suspended their dividend (can you say lucky) but I fear that we may be just in the first few innings of this game. Good luck out there.

Agree with @FD1000 on muni MM. The 3+% yield is illogical and it has been drifting downward daily! Never thought liquidity issues would impact muni money market until @msf pointed out the fine points.

Even at -20% loss, the 60/40 stocks/bonds allocation is still a lot better than 30+ % loss of S&P500.
The massive QE seem to stabilize the bond market and the liquidity. One data point on commercial (corporate) bonds was released today.

Friday’s data represents the most consistent fall in those rates across the quality spectrum since March 4. It suggests that there has finally been a return of some liquidity to the market since the Fed on March 17 said that it would reinstate the Commercial Paper Funding Facility (CPFF), an operation used during the 2008 financial crisis, in which the central bank acts as a lender of last resort for companies otherwise unable to borrow in the short-term market.

https://reuters.com/article/us-usa-corporate-debt-commerical-paper/commercial-paper-rates-fall-signaling-feds-program-working-idUSKBN21H2FD
If the bond market returns and functioning, there is no reason the 60/40 porfolio will not fare well going forward. The psychological element of losing less allow one to maintain their perspective and stay invested until recovery. Going to all cash is only a temporary solution since it pays little in today's low interest rate environment.

Charles noted:

Our friend Junkster always touted the importance of having predefined "exit" criteria. He was/is a day trader so he watches for instabilities typically in price movements of what he calls "tight channel" funds. If he sees them, he exits the trade.

For me, the most important word above is, "see"; in regard to its meaning below.
@Junkster offered pieces now and then, of what he could "see". He didn't make such a notation to impel or compel any one investor to take a particular action within their own portfolio. But for me, his observation(s); based upon his credibility with me, would be enough to cause me to be more curious as to a given circumstance.
To see: discern or deduce mentally after reflection or from information; understand.
We all "see" differently. I noted on March 11 what I could see relative to our portfolio:

>>>>> From a long ago song lyric: "Nowhere to run to, nowhere to hide."
All of the below government bill through bond types are down in pricing.
Our 72% bond/28% equity portfolio has no support from any area as of 12:30 EST.
Has this happened before in modern times??? Where the correlation between UST issues and equity markets have little meaning to one another.
ADD: Is the U.S. Treasury playing in the background to support yields???
--- SHY = (1-3 yr bills)
--- IEI = (3-7 yr notes)
--- IEF = (7-10 yr notes)
--- TLT = (20+ Yr UST Bond
--- EDV = (Vanguard extended duration gov't)
--- ZROZ = (UST., AAA, long duration zero coupon bonds) >>>>
This was my observation then, from my years of watching and learning, I could "see" that something was broken to hell in the AAA Treasury issues. Was this actionable information for others? I don't know, as this was only my observation.
One's escape plan is personal to the point of what was "seen", to find a portfolio that has arrived to where it is now, and what one "see's" now, relative to the composition of the portfolio going forward.
As to an escape plan for this house. Barring a fully worthless portfolio, which would suggest a full collapse of the global financial structure, for any number of reasons; we will remain with a 75% bond/25% equity portfolio at this time. We're fully invested, and can not invest in other areas without a sale of some other area.
Hoping this is understandable for most.
NOTE: more could be added, but other priorities exist for the moment.
Take care of you and yours,
Catch

I am a 70 year old retiree. 80% of my portfolio is invested long term in OEFs. The other 20% is currently more actively invested.
What has changed for me since January 1? These are some off the top of my head thoughts....
There has been the onset of a pandemic. It will take maybe one to two years for a new normal to emerge (maybe significantly less). The worlds' economies will most likely recover successfully. (That's been typical after black swan events.)
There has been a major shock in bond land. The Feds actions last Monday have calmed the bond markets so far. This will need to be watched. (Central banks throughout the world seem to be acting in unison regarding this issue.)
It appears there will be a flood of deficit spending in most major countries throughout the world. This will tend to promote some inflation as time passes.
Cash has emerged in the short run as an alternative to owning stocks or bonds in our low interest rate world. Will that last? Too soon to tell but I doubt it.
I don't understand why a 1930's style depression will be a likely outcome from this event. Why might it be a likely outcome?
So far, the balance point for my investments remains at 55% stocks. It dipped to about 50% at the low so far this year. I fed the stock side a little during the initial downturn. Fido tells me I am at 53% stocks as I type this.

@Charles
I agree with your assessments. I also think that non-agency RMBS/CMBC/other will come around in several months(maybe weeks) and where I will start buying again.
The question is do I want to be in funds with mostly securitized (IOFIX,EIXIX,SEMMX,VCFAX,DPFNX) and making more money potentially or take a less risky approach and buy something like PIMIX(more diversified) or both.
If I look at YTD (chart), EIXIX would be my choice to get back into this category but we are not there yet :-)

° The traditional balanced portfolio of 60% stocks and 40% bonds lost 20% from its peak value.
° This is only the fourth time in 75 years it has suffered such a decline with the other moments coming in August 1974, September 2002 and January 2009, according to Michael Batnick of Ritholtz Wealth Management.
° An investor who rebalanced holdings back to the 60/40 asset split at the end of the month when a 20% decline was first registered would have been positioned for attractive returns in subsequent years.
° But some believe there are reasons to be skeptical that holding fast to the 60/40 stance this time will fare as well as in past decades.
Read Article from CNBC

The rates that you see on Muni MM (3-4%) are just the results of the last several days/weeks. You will not get anything close to it and they will revert back to 1-1.5% and lower than prime MM. If Muni MM could give you even 2-2.5% performance all the cash would be invested in them.
In fact, Muni MM and prime MM can have the following: "The fund may impose a fee upon sale of your shares or may temporarily suspend your ability to sell shares if the fund's liquidity falls below required minimums because of market conditions or other factors."
In this market, I stay away from the above MM and invest in Fed or treasury MM where I will able to sell at any time and buy something if I need to. It is not worth the additional small performance.

I share your fear @Charles. I want to treat this as a typical bear market that will come back in some historically defined amount of time, but in the back of my mind I know this is unprecedented. It feels like possibly the only thing that comes close to it historically in a financial way is the great depression. And that took decades and a world war to get over.
At 66, my plan to semi-retire in May has been put on hold (self imposed) until I see what this will ultimately end up as. So far I've been buy-and-hold except for selling my remaining shares of IOFAX. But even with that I took 1/2 the proceeds to buy into BRK/B and put 1/2 into MM. So I guess I remain B and H in a sense.
One comfort I do have and what keeps the exit door closed is that I set aside 3 years of withdrawal money (safe bucket) in anticipation of semi-retirement. I'm not trying to make suggestions to others, but I think that bucket would be prudent for retirees, even setting one up now, (damn, that is a suggestion :) ). If only for it's mental affect, knowing it gives you some time for the rest of your portfolio to recover.
Good luck to all, especially retirees. I'm trying to stay optimistic for now.

In my long-long term account, I DRIP everything and let the quality holdings do their thing. Unless the company itself screws up (ie, Boeing) I will watch them and otherwise let them ride.
In my personal account, I exit longer-term positions when a position has appreciated considerably and now it's just hanging around w/o doing anything. The momentum, as assessed by the proverbial 'gut feeling' is what works for me based on what the stock is doing within the context of my assessment of the overall market sentiment. Is it 100% perfect? Nope. But more often than not it works for me -- to wit: more recently, I sold out of several stock positions in mid-February acting that way quite literally the week before the crash began.
By the same token, I've had my finger ready to do something, chickened out, and then find out the next day that I would've been totally right and extremely profitable. A few Fridays ago I *really* wanted to go short over the weekend for various reasons, but chickened out. Monday gapped lower and that one modest-sized futures trade would've netted me probably $30K. Alas.
Apart from some minor TLH, for the most part i've been buying in recent weeks. I rarely if ever sell on big down days, or buy on up big days.

Howdy folks,
I'm of the school of 'owning a piece of the broom'. For years, I've tried to own companies that I did business with and that paid a dividend. Examples are my utilities such as CMS (2.8), DTE(4.2), T(7.0), VZ(4.7). And as a secret that I'm sharing again, I've been all over NCV (normally around 10 but up to 17.9) for years.
As for allocation, cripes, the kid pretty much went to the mattresses after 'the Ides of November'. Note that this is also when I had the Serenity Prayer tattooed on the inside of my eyelids so whenever things get too crazy I can just close my eyes.
Since then, I've continued to tamp down our portfolios. Wifey in particular, is very conservatively invested. At the bottom recently, she had only lost 8% [note for the record that she's still very, very pissed]. So this was a victory. [don't tell her about her Roth IRA]. Otherwise, things are good.
That said, a lot of my 'going to the mattresses' has been moving money overseas via int'l and emerging mkt bond funds (PREMX, PRSNX, RPIBX) at Price while adding TRAOX, PRJPX, and Matthews funds MAPCX, MCHFX, and MATFX).
And of course, as usual, the kid is playing the precious metals in various and sundry ways. feh. SLV, SILJ, GDXJ, CEF, and several penny silver miners.
and so it goes,
peace and flatten the curve,
rono

@charles, Still have few more years to go before retirement. I have learned and survived through several market crisis. The key is to stay invest so you can regain the loss in the future days. In the last two weeks, the market declined at a rate even greater than 2008-2009. However, the government across the globe came quickly to the rescue with massive QE in form of lowering interest rates, loans, and purchasing of bonds. In the near term this should stabilize the market as the COVID-19 continue to impact the economy.
Assuming that you are in the appropriate asset allocation between stock, bond and cash. Your loss should be much smaller than say S&P500. This should provide comfort knowing that the recovery period will be shorter than S&P500 for example. During 2008 crisis I stayed fully invest in a conservative allocation and the magnitude of loss was much lower than the typical 40% loss. New $ was invested in stock throughout that period despite it was a scary time. I managed to regain the loss and more in about 2.5 years. Since my retirement is near and the market was getting expensive, I rebalanced several times in 2019 to 15% cash, 35% bonds and 50% stocks. Again my loss is smaller compared to that the market's. I have full confidence that I will get through this crisis.
Our MFO contributor to the Monthly Commentary, Charles Lynn Bolin also writes for Seeking Alpha. Several excellent articles he wrote describe how he constructing low risk and well balanced portfolios utilizing the historical data from MFO Premium site (that you put together).
https://seekingalpha.com/article/4331201-performance-of-low-risk-vanguard-portfolio-year-to-date
https://seekingalpha.com/article/4333593-conservative-portfolios-of-funds-for-this-bear-market
Best of luck.

Back to CEFs. Given my Irish background, I have casually watched IRL, ever since I bought it in the 1990s and sold for a very small profit. Life was in upheaval, then. Share price started the year at $10.00. NAV was at $12.00. Ordinarily, a very attractive discount. Tonight--- Sunday, 29/03/20, shares cost $6.07 and NAV stands at $8.00. I'm using Morningstar's numbers. YTD, shares are down over 39% almost. NAV is at -34.47% YTD. Portfolio holds 28.68% US stocks now. 70.18% non-US. Presumably in Irish companies...
BUT WAIT! 25% in UK. (Some or most of that could be in Northern Ireland. These days, for many purposes, the border between the Republic and Northern Ireland is fluid or non-existent--- but Northern Ireland still uses pound sterling, of course, rather than the euro.) Holdings in "Europe Developed" = over 43%.
Mind you, it's a very concentrated fund. Only 31 holdings reported to Morningstar.
Oh, and Smurfit Kappa is GERMAN. Saint-Gobain is FRENCH. So is Veolia Environmental. IPL Plastics is Canadian.
So, then: This is hardly the IRISH fund it used to be. By the way, ZERO cash holdings, but that's no suprise, eh?

For me, I'm an asset allocator and I manage risk and opportunity through maintaining and/or adjusting my asset allocation based upon my needs, risk tolerance and market conditions. Plus, I limit how much exposure I have to any one fund to better deal with fund manager and strategy risk.. I'm now 72+ years of age and have been an investor since the age of 12.
In 2008 & 2009 my asset allocation was 10% cash, 20% income and 70% equity. With this, I averaged down the equity side, booking a good bit of losses, as the market continued to side through this process. However, when things turned at the S&P 500 price level of 666, I was there to enjoyed the ride back up.
Through the years as equities became more overvalued I kept trimming my exposure to them and at retirement I was at an asset allocation of 15% cash, 35% income and 50% equity. This would have been around 2014. I maintained this asset allocation until a little better than a year ago. I continued to reduce my exposure to equities as they became more overvalued and reconfigured to a 20% cash, 40% income and 40% equity asset allocation. I wrote about doing this.
With the recession now in place I have moved to a 15% cash, 40% income and 45% equity allocation. Thus far, in this debacle, I have sold nothing and have been a buyer on the equity side of my portfolio. Now that I have reached a near full asset allocation to equities I have now become a buyer on the income side of my portfolio. This is because many bonds have now taken a hit and from my perspective they offer better value than just holding a greater percentage of cash. Since, my portfolio also generates a good bit of income this gives me the ability to continue to buy in down markets or take the money to my wallet, if needed.
I've been on the board back into the FundAlarm days and have detailed my investment activity through these years. For me, the asset allocation model of investing has worked well although, at times, I've traded around the edges using special investment positions (spiffs). I've written about these in the past as well.
FWIW ... Overall, my success in investing, through the years, has come by staying invested and receiving the benefit of organic growth plus compounding. I was there in 1974 with that debacle as well as those that came during the 80's. And, I've been a buyer in all of them including this current bear market which will pass as well.
And ... so it goes.
Wishing all ... "Good Investing."
I am ... Old_Skeet

Hi Sirs...
Maybe too late to get out now. Old_skeet snd catch22 post good investing monthly commentary/strategies. Maybe others posted good guides to follow if retired /closed to retirement. I am so glad following many others advise and place mom retired portfolio into conservative last year, 35/65. She lost very little past few months. I got out after Ted got out in ~ 2019.
I think we will see seesaw patterns next 4-6 weeks /much volatility until everything open up again/slow recovery. Not everything is working currently even CDs so low yields. You can argue stocks are getting cheaper now and these maybe good vehicles to buy moving forward. Corp Bonds not doing well because companies have no revenues going forward and may not be able to pay their creditors.
If you feel unease perhaps consider place at least 40-60% of portfolio divided in incomes based products [corp bonds/munis/US Tbonds]. Rest of portfolio divided evenly in cash and stocks. You may not loose much on downs days but may not go up if indeed recovery is on the way. Once you see there us indeed recovery 3 -6 months from today perhaps start slowly buy more equities by then.
Stocks /market maybe lower 4-5 weeks from today, but could be much higher 4-5 years from today
Maybe another easier lazy approaches maybe redistribute bulk of your portfolio into Tdf 2015 and cash. let it ride by itself, not much worries.
If you have schwab or fidelity, maybe reasonable to visit their cpa/investment advisors then possibly make up/draw up new escape plans after
On other thought, maybe a great buyer market imho if you have 15 yrs left.

...At some event level, is there a tipping point? That whatever I can get in CDs is good enough? OMG, just look at the available rates. Investing in CDs would be like shooting yourself in the foot, eh? I checked out a not-so-new-anymore thing in Canada: TFS. Tax-free savings accounts. But that animal is designed for people who have every other conceivable base covered. They were offering less than 1%.

Our friend Junkster always touted the importance of having predefined "exit" criteria. He was/is a day trader so he watches for instabilities typically in price movements of what he calls "tight channel" funds. If he sees them, he exits the trade.
Others like Meb Faber practice trend following ... when price drops below say the 10-mo running average, they exit their position, either to cash or something (thought) safer.
So curious if any on the board practice, in disciplined fashion, such techniques?
And, perhaps even more curious of whether buy-and-hold investors, especially retired ones, EVER think of exiting. Or, is it always just about re balancing?

@MikeW. The fund's thesis was that senior non-agency RMBS debt once considered toxic was now much more credit worthy because: 1) borrowers now fully entrenched in their homes, 2) home values now exceed money owed ... more so each month due to both appreciation and debt paid down, and 3) record employment.
The last two arguments have been crushed by the credit tsunami brought on by CV-19.
I have to assume the fund sold-off its most liquid holdings to meet redemptions ... look how well that worked out. If the fund can hold on long enough, the promise of a strong dividend will attract new buyers, perhaps enough to cover any continued redemptions.
The legacy owners were as much attracted to its low volatility as they were to its performance. (Reminds me a bit of Berkowitz's Fairholme Fund of 2000's versus 2010's.)
Long run still think RMBS will be OK, but can't see a correction that makes legacy holders whole again.
Would appreciate other thoughts. But right now, I don't see it possible.
Of course a blind man should have seen the threat coming in early March, even sooner, which makes me worse than blind.