So what you're saying mirrors my own statement. You can find people for which each approach could be 'correct' or 'incorrect'. Your original post said nothing about "the average Joe". For someone who trades, the fund is probably the inferior product. As with so many things, it depends.

I agree in principal with your statement but not in actuality, because average Joes are over 90% and great traders are less than 10%.
So,

depends is a great word, but not when 90+% are your average Joes. :-)

The point is, FD, that when you make sweeping generalizations, which allow for no exceptions, a single instance which is contrary makes the original statement incorrect. "In principle", or "in general" have nothing to do with anything after the fact. Had you included the distinctions you now want to add at the time, then you would have been fine, but you didn't choose to do that (You call that "wiggle room"). That makes your original statement simply not true; though your subsequent ones may be.
Sweeping generalizations are seldom true; they are, in effect, predictions of the future and allow for no exceptions. That's why I avoid them in most cases (See what I did there?). When you're tempted to say something like "This results in this"; it has to be true 100% of the time, or it's incorrect!

So what you're saying mirrors my own statement. You can find people for which each approach could be 'correct' or 'incorrect'. Your original post said nothing about "the average Joe". For someone who trades, the fund is probably the inferior product. As with so many things, it depends.

I agree in principal with your statement but not in actuality, because average Joes are over 90% and great traders are less than 10%.
So, depends is a great word, but not when 90+% are your average Joes. :-)

On the main "Discussions" and "Discussions that have comments" pages each thread has a small "star" icon out at the end. If you click on that star it saves the thread to your "My Bookmarks" list, making it very easy to find that thread in the future.

Thanks @Old_Joe
A very educational thread. I was up half the night poring through income-oriented ETFs and CEFs. Some very interesting prospects - maybe for another day. I’ll keep my final selection to myself. It’s not always a matter of finding the very best fund out there. Sometimes it’s a matter of buying what complements the other 90% of your portfolio and serves the overall risk profile you are working to maintain.
Not opposed to owning a black box or two. To me a “black box” is an often complex difficult to understand methodology which the fund management firm / fund manager probably understand better than the shareholder does. They typically employ derivatives, leverage, shorting strategies, computer driven algorithmic trading - or a combination of these. Almost always they are more expensive than funds designed for “the average Joe”.
Looking around for a better definition of an Black Box, I uncovered an interesting article from 2022 by our own Charles Lynn Bolin.

interesting to note that vhcax, the 3rd primecap vanguard fund w/admiral fees, has not reopened.
its largest holding, lilly @$2.5b in value, is bigger than the next 4 combined.
if i had to guess one secret sauce for primecap and giroux, its avoiding sentiment plays from the onset but letting business winners run.

If you look at the top 10 or 20 holdings, they were first purchased 20 years ago. And per M*, the turnover is 6%.

What do the seasoned investors on this board think of capital groups ETF’s as a whole? But In particular, CGUS, CGDV, CGGR?
I’ve never invested in Capital Group funds until they entered the ETF market. I currently hold double-digits in CGUS and CGDV. I’ve been pleased with their performance so far, although they have a little more overlap (per etfrc.com).
I like to invest in active funds to compliment the passive funds I own. FYI : I only hold a handful of funds.
There seems to be enough uniqueness because they often zig/zag somewhat.
Any comments or thoughts are greatly appreciated! Thx. Matt

AF equity products have largely become closet index funds. That said these ETF's have less than 10billion in assets so don't necessarily have the bloat. I assumed originally that these were largely ETF versions of their larger flagships but as of now they are slightly different.
for me they are different enough to pay attention to but I also feel like eventually they'll become more aligned with their indexes than they should.
CGGR is the only one i've tracked and as of now it is underperforming its index but 2 months ago it was beating it and 2 years is really not much of a record to make a decision on.
I think the real value for these are people who invest outside of retirement accounts. regardless of performance the tax implications of AF funds are pretty big. the ETF wrapper allows you to stay in AF but not have the huge tax hits year in and year out.

one of the reasons i retired early was that status within the corporate world was partly determined by FF status.
not only were people wasting their lives in airport lounges, but 1 month later could not cite anything the trip accomplished. it was very much driven top-down, with ~2% of the company using 90% of the travel budget...until the CFO needed to hit some annual savings metric.

Fund Allocations (Cumulative), 5/31/24
Notable shifts into stocks. The changes for OEFs + ETFs were based on a total AUM of about $34.59 trillion in the previous month, so +/- 1% change was about +/- $345.9 billion. Also note that these changes were from both fund inflows/outflows & price changes. #ICI #Funds #OEFs #ETFs
OEFs & ETFs: Stocks 60.59%, Hybrids 4.53%, Bonds 17.88%, M-Mkt 17.01%
https://ybbpersonalfinance.proboards.com/post/1533/thread

$5 -$10 player at crap table. Think I'll stay away.

Even when the technology works, it doesn't make sense.
I tried to close our IRAs (empty accounts), but the system refused. Rep finally found that system supposedly waits 14 days after account is zeroed, and then automatically closes it. This is to ensure that all transfers settle. So the story goes.
But, I'm able to close my taxable accounts online, even the one I emptied out yesterday (cash transfer). And other empty Vanguard accounts (a taxable brokerage account and legacy platform IRA accounts) stayed open for months until I closed them recently myself.
I'm one of the few people who didn't complain about Vanguard's rigid rules. But those rules have to be published and make some sort of sense. How Vanguard is handling account closures is not documented and is superficially loony.
Finally, there is the possibility (remote, I hope) that I'll still get charged for closing the empty IRAs if/when they automatically close in July:
"Vanguard Brokerage may charge a $100 processing fee for account closure or the transfer of account assets to another firm"
https://personal1.vanguard.com/pdf/v414.pdf

Don’t get megoing on the airlines …
- Of 3 trips since the first of December I’ve been boarded and then taxied and returned to the terminal 4 times.
- On a 5th we got within a couple hundred miles of the final destination (home) and turned back to land at the departing airport (ORD) due to mechanical problems.
- On one the departing flight was cancelled at 1 PM and checked luggage returned. But the flight then departed at 8 PM.
- On 2 of those 3 trips I was stranded overnight in Chicago after the first flight landed anywhere between 5 and 8 hours late causing a missed connection.
- On one (into Key West) the incoming flights were so backed up we waited 90 minutes to get off the sweltering plane out on the tarmac.
- On one, after we’d taxied back to the gate for mechanical issues, a woman ahead of me in first class began screaming at the male flight attendant: “I want another drink. Bring me a drink now!” But he refused to jump rope at her command. Settled down only after he threatened to bring the plane’s skipper back to talk to her. I believe I’ve since seen this woman several times on Bloomberg being interviewed about stocks. Very important Wall Street person (at a big investment bank).

The use of ETF is inferior because some people may panic and sell in the middle of the day just to find later the price reverse.

Cuts both ways, though. Some may hold the OEF throughout the day just to find out that the price may have been higher had they been able to sell an ETF early on!

hank

Thanks FD. I’m trying to go up the ladder in credit quality for portfolio purposes. Also unsure of how big a distribution I’ll be taking or exactly when. Would prefer not to buy into a (OEF) mutual fund at this time.

Since we are discussing Multi sector, credit quality, it is less important, especially in a black box like PIMIX,PYLD. The whole idea is to let the managers decide on what bonds to buy and make the right switches.
Add to it the use of options/futures/derivatives with PIMIX,PYLD and you don't know what you get. The 1-3 charts proved that RCTIX is a better risk/reward fund, and BTW, it's distribution is higher too.
The use of ETF is inferior because some people may panic and sell in the middle of the day just to find later the price reverse.
Good luck.

AAII Sentiment Survey, 6/26/24
BULLISH remained the top sentiment (44.5%, above average) & neutral became the bottom sentiment (27.2%, below average); bearish became the middle sentiment (28.3%, below average); Bull-Bear Spread was +16.2% (above average). Investor concerns: Elections, budget, inflation, economy, the Fed, dollar, Russia-Ukraine (122+ weeks), Israel-Hamas (37+ weeks), geopolitical. For the Survey week (Th-Wed), stocks mixed (growth down, cyclicals up), bonds down, oil up, gold down, dollar up. Data breaches (LockBit) & fintech app safety (Synapse, Yotta) were in the news. #AAII #Sentiment #Markets
https://ybbpersonalfinance.proboards.com/post/1532/thread

I never received a response to my BBB complaint filed on June 17 (seven business days elapsed).
The Customer Care Manager I've previously worked with called me today to report the missing
Confirmation Statements were now available. I just confirmed this issue has finally been resolved.
It took thirty-one business days and multiple emails/phone calls to fix this problem!
Customers should not have to expend this much effort to remediate issues especially when UMB was at fault.

You're looking at M*'s economic exposure view, not a the "classic" asset view.

The Economic Exposure View displays the sensitivity of portfolio return to various asset classes. Economic Exposure will model the impact of these instruments based on their inherent leverage rather than solely based on their market values. Compared to the Classic Asset Allocation, this view provides additional clarity to investors around how funds use derivatives to adjust the portfolio’s risk profile in addition to more clearly depicting sources of risk and return.

More clear to some, perhaps.
M*'s "classic" view is a bit closer to what you described:

Asset Class	Net	Short	Long	Cat.	Index
U.S. Equity	0.00	0.00	0.00	1.39	0.00
Non-U.S. Equity	0.00	0.00	0.00	0.15	0.00
Fixed Income	120.71	12.73	133.44	112.15	99.98
Other		-0.07	0.10	0.03	0.15	0.00
Cash		-21.69	77.90	56.21	13.39	0.00
Not Classified	1.05	0.00	1.05	3.42	0.02

Then there's M*'s market value view that shows net cash exposure of -3.86%. That is close to what you described. (Note that Blackrock describes its allocation table as percentages of market value.) Differences are likely due to Blackrock reporting as of June 25 and M* reporting as of June 13.
P.S. When you cut-and-paste these tables, precede them with <PRE> and follow them with </PRE>. Asside from needing to add a few tabs to get the alignment right, this will display the tables cleanly. (I had to add a tab after "Other" and after "Cash".)
Blackrock reports 14.23% B rated (as well as 21.79% BB rated); this is close to M*'s 13.96% B rated and 20.82% BB.
https://www.blackrock.com/us/individual/products/331752/blackrock-flexible-income-etf

We've had this discussion before - see DSEEX: 100% notional exposure to stocks, 100% actual exposure to bonds, and (roughly) -100% effective exposure to cash. (Per M*, it's currently -91%.)
DSEEX is a good case study because it is conceptually simple. Derivatives provide the exposure to a stock index, and the "real" cash is invested in bonds. Fairly transparent relative to Pimco.
It's not the negative cash exposure per se that's confusing, it's Pimco's management in general. As yogi suggested, investing with Pimco is to some extent a matter of faith.

This was a tough day for duration. The 10-Year spiked to 4.34% (10 basis points).
A few bond funds I watch, with today’s move …
JPIE -0.09%
LSST -0.14%
BINC -0.15%
PYLD -0.16%
GNMA -0.32%
JPIB -0.40%
BRTR -0.52%
GBAB -0.88%
It’s of little importance longer term. But if you’re trying to keep daily volatility lower or balance out a risk somewhere else (equities, junk bonds, commodities) than you might care about how your bond fund moves under varying circumstances.

” -31.09% "net other short duration instruments,"
Thanks @AndyJ. Sounds like M* was off by roughly a factor of 3. When I held PYLD in the past, Fido’s analytics didn’t seem to notice anything abnormal. Appeared to read it as a normal bond allocation in computing my allocation across all assets.

@catch22. And excellent recall to you. Saw The Who at Cobo Hall around 1970 or so. Memorable.

Instead of PIMIX or PYLD(both are similar), look at RCTIX.
One year chart(https://schrts.co/JRNGpRmT)
3 year chart(https://schrts.co/RfSCENuJ)
The above is not a recommendation or a guarantee; do your own due diligence.
I sold PIMIX in 01/2018 after I invested over 50% of my money in it for years.