"But [ I ] am considering PNM as a bond equivalent in my taxable portion when one of my bonds cashes in mid 2016. "

slick, PNM is a stock that fell -28% in '07 and another -50% in '08. From the M* graph it looks like it took almost 7 years to come back to it's '07 peak value. Bond equivalent??? My goodness.

Thanks Ted,
Also discussed here:
mutualfundobserver.com/discuss/discussion/comment/71065/#Comment_71065

FYI: Over the past year, small-company value funds
have provided little value for their shareholders. On average, funds that focus on cheap small-capitalization stocks lagged both the small-cap Russell 2000 index and Standard & Poor’s 500-stock index, which tracks big-company stocks. One small-cap fund
that bucked the trend was James Micro Cap (JMCRX), which whipped the category average by nearly 11 percentage points.
Read more at http://www.kiplinger.com/article/investing/T041-C009-S002-james-micro-cap-wins-with-tiny-companies.html#QI3AOtuUv7DztvMr.99
Regards,
Ted
http://www.kiplinger.com/article/investing/T041-C009-S002-james-micro-cap-wins-with-tiny-companies.html#
JMCRX Is Ranked #13 In The (SCV) Fund Category By U.S. News & World Report:
http://money.usnews.com/funds/mutual-funds/small-value/james-micro-cap-fund/jmcrx

FYI:
Regards,
Ted
http://news.investors.com/photopopup.aspx?path=WebMFperf111115.gif&docId=780140&xmpSource=&width=1000&height=562&caption=&id=780142

@Old_Joe
Including the bond side of life, I'm leaning more towards.....
3.14159265359
Now go have a piece of "pi". Free to veterans today.
Lastly, I'm still pondering negative swap rates in bondland; and wondering if a good butt kicking is ahead on the road to successful investing.
Take care,
Catch

Gee, not 5% or 3%. Just 4%. Should this make us feel good?

Well, ask and sometimes the World hears you.
http://www.ft.com/intl/cms/s/0/e86a211e-847f-11e5-8e80-1574112844fd.html?siteedition=intl
"US interest rate swaps, popular derivatives that track government bond yields, have experienced a spectacular collapse this month with an array of reasons being suggested by traders. [...] Analysts at Deutsche Bank say the recent swap spread tightening reflects 'tighter macro prudential regulation, higher capital requirements and reduced dealer balance sheet capacity.' Also playing a role is swapping activity from companies selling debt.
Some say swaps are a broken market... Under normal market conditions the current inversion should be swiftly reversed, but thanks to tougher bank capital regulation, derivatives trading appears to have entered a new era. Currently, no one appears willing to normalise the relationship between swap rates and Treasury yields.
Trading Treasuries and swaps relies on funding via the repurchase or repo market. Thanks to balance sheet constraints, the use of repo by dealers is shrinking, another factor sustaining negative swap spreads."
So, as I read it, the consequences for us would be that our bond/income fund managers, for the time being, have just had a hedging tool taken out of their toolkit. And, once again, we see that the repo market is involved, a part of the shadow banking system that remains largely under-regulated because of humongous efforts by the global financial players to keep it that way.

I think I've commented on this particular writer before. So many writers come in with a cliche point of view but fail to martial their facts.
"The expenses are higher (and returns lower) for other share classes of the [PIMCO] Total Return fund, such as B-share class (PTTCX)"
He's writing about something that doesn't exist (anymore). PTTBX (not PTTCX) vanished around the end of 2014, when the last of the B shares automatically converted to A shares. (Nov. 2009 prospectus closed this share class, and the shares purchased in the years preceding that closure converted 5 years from purchase. That's why Shadow won't - I think - find any explicit termination of PTTBX.)
"Looking at performance, ABNDX loses to the index in the one-, three-, five-, 10-, and 15-year returns.
"Furthermore, the holdings for ABNDX average out to be intermediate-term bonds with an A credit rating. This type of bond fund fills the space of a core holding, which is the same for VBMFX.
"Why not just hold a bond index fund?
Perhaps because looking at performance, VBMFX loses to ABNDX in the YTD-, three-, and five-year returns? Or perhaps because, as John Bogle points out, bond index funds hold too much in treasuries?
I'm not saying that one couldn't reach the same conclusions in spite of the amended facts I provided. Just that there are lots of financial "writers" who seem more intent on making points (or filling space) than backing them up with accurate facts.

FYI: Stop using “bubble” every time you want to express disenchantment with the stock market.
Please.
Stock market bubbles are extremely rare events. When we indiscriminately throw “bubble” at everything we think has become overvalued, a fad or simply disapprove of, the term risks becoming meaningless.
Regards,
Ted
http://www.marketwatch.com/story/theres-only-a-4-chance-were-in-a-stock-market-bubble-2015-11-10/print

@Crash : glad to see you do so much homework, and thanks for posting websites to go to. I use FRUAX for my utilties exposure , about 5% and have been pretty happy with it, but am considering PNM as a bond equivalent in my taxable portion when one of my bonds cashes in mid 2016.

@dryflower: Try Yahoo Finance which updates funds between 5:00PM-7:00PM CST.
Regards,
Ted

TTI is short for Trend Tracking Index (hopefully you didn't lose too much sleep).
Here's a bit about how this TTI in the Q&A section of Ulli's site:
"Q: Ulli: Thanks for your online free service, it is appreciated. My question has to do with using a 39 week simple moving average. I noticed that when the chart is looked upon at the end of the week when it is updated that it is easy to see the price relation to the moving average. You report often where the TTI is in the middle of the week for instance my question is how do you know what the weekly moving average number is until the end of the week? I would appreciate your input. (7/31/2015)
A: Larry: The answer is simple. I update the TTI prices daily to not only show the changes but to also to be prepared for a trend line crossing and the resulting ‘Buy’ or ‘Sell’ signal.
Since I use a weekly moving average (M/A), that number is only calculated every Friday, and I usually have it updated/corrected in the ETF/Mutual Fund Tracker by about 6 PM PST. It remains the same until the following Friday when it gets recalculated again."
theetfbully.com/questions-answers/

THANKS for the info, Slick!
@Catch22 : I did not own a utility fund, and I knew my utility exposure across my portfolio was rather low. Even if they get hit by a rate hike, over the long haul, it will be a good dividend payer. Utility stocks are historically good defensive positions, come hell or high water. I lived briefly in NM, too. So the idea did not seem literally foreign and strange to me. I'll be 62 at my next birthday, and looking for reliable income. They are taking steps to transition away from coal to natgas. Their San Juan Generating Plant (coal) is already half-shut-down. The company is taking bids right now for a natgas generating facility, to operate on that site. There were 4 "units." Two are shut down. And now, at least one of the two remaining will before too long be operating using gas, rather than coal. This is all Clean Air Act compliance stuff.
Last summer, they requested a rate increase. It was rejected. The State's agency wanted more information. So, they re-filed in August or September. It's not approved YET. PNM's service area is in NM and in separated geographical pockets in Texas, via a sister-utility, under the same umbrella: TNMP.
I checked P/E. Not out of bounds, yet. The stock price has been rising, so the yield is down from 3% to about 2.82%. Whoever the professional Analysts are, they are rating PNM Resources a 4.3 out of a possible 5, averaged-out, as listed on Morningstar's page. I also looked at the stock using a webpage called "Simply Wall Street." It's a cool tool! And of course, I went and read a bunch of stuff on the PNM website. By now, though I'm not a pro, I'm not still a "babe in the woods" when it comes to translating those "forward looking statements." It's like reading Real Estate listings: "fixer-upper" means the place is a disaster, and you are merely buying the property, while the structure will need to be demolished, and something new erected in its place. ;)
"FlashRatings" was another webpage I went to. ...... And the DSPP lets me get in without saving-up a fortune before I can move on my choice. Nice. ... Gotta run, now. ...

FYI: Vanguard announced that the $50 billion Vanguard Emerging Markets Stock Index Fund, including its ETF share class (ticker: VWO), will begin tracking a new FTSE transition index, in the first phase of a two-phase change to a new target index, FTSE Emerging Markets All Cap China A Inclusion Index. This change will be effective with the opening of trading on November 2, 2015.
Regards,
Ted
https://pressroom.vanguard.com/content/press_release/Press_Release_Emerging_Markets_Transition_110115.html

FYI:
Regards,
Ted
http://investorplace.com/2015/11/biggest-mutual-funds-not-worth-fees-pttax-rprcx-abndx/print

Without taking a closer look at the specific holdings, I'll just give my instinctive feeling about the fund's issues. Basically a cop-out: the issues seem like a little bit all of the above.
The fund is supposed to hold around 50% in bonds that are due in under 90 days (or are expected to be called in that short a time). Sounds a little like prerefunded, but clearly more risky (no stash of cash backing up payments). The book value of a company is supposed to be enough to cover 100% of the bond's value, but that depends on the company's business (is it bleeding cash and so reducing book value, did it just fail to increase book value due to a failed IPO, etc.) And even if a company can cover bond payments if it goes bust (book value exceeding bond value), that doesn't mean it will go through bankruptcy and pay off when the bonds mature.
Remember too that most of the bonds held are junk. That rating can include expected defaults, even for truly "money good" bonds. The fund has an interesting strategy, and one that should generally work well in small doses (thus the concern raised by a poster above about the fund being too large). But by definition, junk bonds, even ultra short ones, carry risk.
I'm still uncomfortable about the explanations given. Maybe I'm just looking for something along the lines: there is judgment involved here, otherwise we could not get this sort of yield. Judgment isn't 100% perfect - even when everything looks good, stuff happens. Here's what happened in these cases ...
I figured that the yield was good enough to provide a buffer in case of a blow up (i.e. it would still come out better than a bank account). So far, that's true, but without much margin of error left, at least until the fund resumes performing better.

Any thoughts on Foreign Developed Markets US Hedged options?
Maybe PIPDX
Short Term Bonds?
Maybe VSTBX, MWLDX, ACSNX, FMEQX, FSHBX, WSHNX (most with Manager Tenure of 15+ years)
High Yield Bond:
Maybe BUFHX, FAGIX, CIOZX

Updated for Nov 2016:
I use (CTRL) + (F) and then type in a fund ticker symbol to find a fund more quickly.
theetfbully.com/Tables/MFCutline11062015.pdf

I haven't seen this before. I don't even have an idea what this could mean--- that traders have more confidence in the swap counterparties than in the Treasuries themselves? Weird.
http://www.alhambrapartners.com/2015/11/06/the-quick-burn-of-balance-sheet-capacity-is-the-recoverys-mangled-end/

swap spreads have been sinking fast and to unprecedented levels. Though mainstream commentary will provide plausible-sounding excuses, mostly about corporate or even UST issuance, that is only because these places will not even consider that Janet Yellen has it all wrong; thus, they only search for possibilities that allow that narrative to remain undisturbed even though that narrative itself can never account for negative spreads.
the nonsense nature of negative swap spreads is precisely the point – for them to be negative in the first place, let alone highly so (like the 30s again), is a pretty unambiguous signal of malfunction if not full distress. It is only great imbalance that can change the information content of a market price into meaninglessness; therefore we can interpret that case as some great reduction in balance sheet capacity since it is dealer capacity that determines the nature of the spreads.

FYI: The BRIC era is coming to an end at Goldman Sachs Group Inc.
The bank’s asset-management unit folded its money-losing BRIC fund, which invests in Brazil, Russia, India and China, and merged it last month with a broader emerging-market fund. Goldman Sachs pulled the plug on the nine-year-old product because it doesn’t expect “significant asset growth in the foreseeable future,” according to a filing to the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission.
Regards,
Ted
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2015-11-08/goldman-s-bric-era-ends-as-fund-closes-after-years-of-losses