@MikeM, Quite honestly I don’t fully understand how to calculate the expected return from MF/ETF. So I hesitate to invest much in TIPs and limit myself to T bills and CDs at auction.
Now I am looking into individual agency bonds to get a bit higher yield than T bills. My goal is to get 5% yield annual without trading off the principal unlike TIPS funds. Like your don’t want to invest much in anything unless I understand how they work.

Notice that the treasury yield curve has changed since summer 2022:
1. The inverted curve started to flatten as 1 yr, 2 yr and 10 yr yields moving upward in the last several weeks.
2. As of yesterday, the 6 mo and one year yields reached 4.98% and 4.99%, respectively. @yogibb mentioned that is the sweet spot.
3. 10 year yield is moving upward and that is negatively impacting other bond prices. My core bond funds have moved down since the beginning of the year. Yields are over 4% now so I will dollar-cost-average back to my target %.
@MikeM, Please note that individual TIPs bond is not the same as TIPs funds/ETFs. TIPs fund/ETF bond price is volatile and 2022 was a down year YTD even when inflation is high. In order to take advantage of the CPI, one needs to buy individual TIPs of 5 yr, 10 yr or 20 yr, and hold them to maturity. More explanations from David Enna.
https://tipswatch.com/tips-in-depth/

The bull case for TIPS goes something like this. Max real rate ranges have been,
5-Yr TIPS -1.87% to +4.24%, current +1.49%
10-Yr TIPS -1.10% to +3.06%, current +1.41%
So, IF one assumes that in the current environment the real rates are peaking too, and IF at some future time they move to new lows (and negative), then TIPS would have a giant rally. But note 2 "IFs".
As I said before, I am not speculating in this area. But I can also see @Devo's point after TIPS funds have been trashed along with regular bond funds (and those have bounced more).
https://fred.stlouisfed.org/graph/?g=105kz

I trust Devo understands this investment in TIPs, but even explained to me I can't say I really understand why they are positioned to move up. I can't invest in something I don't understand. Inflation continued to rise and TIPS continued to fall in 2022. If I look today, the ETF TIP is down ~13% in the past year, treading water YTD.
Schwab gives this analysis:

Trend Analysis
TIP appears to be consolidating within a longer term downtrend. Shares are presently below the 200-day moving average, which is falling along with the 10-day moving average. However, the Average Directional Index, or ADX, is below 20, indicating that shares have exhibited sideways movement recently. Comparative Relative Strength analysis shows that this issue is lagging the S&P 500.
As of 11:28 AM ET Wednesday, 02/15/2023
Momentum
Momentum for TIP is strongly bearish. The 14-period Slow Stochastic oscillator is below 20, the level which many analysts call oversold. This means that investors have been actively selling shares and driving the price lower.
As of 11:28 AM ET Wednesday, 02/15/2023

I'm pretty sure their day is coming as Devo says. I believe his analysis and investment ability but can't say I fully understand it. Bottom line, for me, if I don't understand their movement I can't invest.

I first tried instant X-ray before "rolling my own". I couldn't ignore the fact that M* only shows larger holdings.
Two of SCHD's top ten holdings, Lockheed Martin (LMT) and Blackrock (BLK), are not shown to overlap with the S&P 500. (They're very small parts of the S&P 500.)
These aren't isolated cases. Continuing down the list of SCHD's holdings, #11 IBM, #14 ADP, and #15 Altria are also S&P 500 components that don't appear to overlap. And so on.
What this x-ray does show is that the two funds are not all that similar.

@Derf, not really. 6-mo T-Bills are the sweet spot now - they have now crossed 5%.

M* Instant X-Ray with a portfolio of 50% SCHD, 50% SPY will also show overlaps/nonoverlaps for larger holdings. https://www.morningstar.com/instant-x-ray
https://i.ibb.co/VtFSfBv/Screenshot-2023-02-15-10-02-14.png

msf
I am sure I am not alone in dying to know what (7.) ff is.

The next step follows from my last sentence: "Of course the weightings of each company are completely different in SCHD and S&P 500."
The percentage of holding overlap, independent of weight, isn't especially meaningful. Consider funds holding just two securities: 99% and 1% in fund A, and 1% and 99% in fund B. These funds are essentially totally different, yet they have 100% overlap.
Or to give a less hypothetical example, compare an equally weighted index fund with a market weighted index fund. Significantly different, yet here too, 100% overlap.
So 7. is to compute active share. I did this a very quick and dirty way; I'm sure there are more elegant Excel functions to accomplish this. Steps are below.
The result is that SCHD has an 88% active share, relative to the S&P 500. It would be expected to, and does, behave very differently. Though over the long term it averages out to be rather similar.
As Lewis observed, the difference in behavior along the way may make SCHD a better choice (easier to hold). For the "true buy & hold types" this shouldn't matter.
7a. Copy the 500+ Ticker and weight columns of the S&P 500 components vertically on a separate page; start it in row 3 (columns A and B).
7b. Transpose (i.e. convert columns to rows) the ticker and weight columns of the SCHD components into rows 1 and 2.
https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/office/transpose-function-ed039415-ed8a-4a81-93e9-4b6dfac76027
7c. Fill in the cells of matrix (504 rows x 103 columns) with a formula that computes the absolute difference of the weights if the ticker is the same for that row and column. The formula looks like:
=IF(C$1 = $A3, ABS(C$2 - $B3) ,0) [this is for cell C3; cut and paste for the whole matrix]
7d. SUM the weights in the matrix.
7e. Compute the weights of all the Tickers in SCHD that are not in the S&P 500. This is done by using step 4 (with 0 if the ticker is not in S&P 500, 1 if it is). The formula looks like:
=IF(T2,0,P2)
7f. Sum these weights.
7g. Repeat this exercise (steps 4 and 7e-7f) to get the weights of all S&P 500 components that are not in SCHD.
7h. Compute active share: add absolute difference of weights for securities in both indexes (7d), weights of securities only in SCHD (7e), and weights of securities only in S&P 500 (7f); divide the sum by 2.
https://www.mutualfundobserver.com/active-share/

The thing about a properly run S&P 500 index fund is the unknowns are “known unknowns.” We never know how the market will perform in the future, but if you own a low cost index fund that tracks the market well, you know you will get that market return. That brings a certain level of comfort psychologically that other strategies do not bring, and that comfort enables many investors, especially unsophisticated ones, to stick with their investment strategies to achieve their financial goals.
But with any other strategy, the truly unknown unknowns can upset investors. When the active or smart beta fund is underperforming the market, many investors get upset and sell, often at the worst time near the bottom. And when the fund is outperforming the market, investors can’t help chasing that performance, and buy, again often at the worst time, near the peak. I’ve seen such performance chasing even with sophisticated investors, sometimes even on this board. A number of studies reveal how investor returns in funds are often significantly less than the funds themselves because of such poor timing. This is especially so in volatile but top-performing funds. Investors tend to fare better in low-volatility active and smart-beta strategies. In this way, SCHD could still work for the patient long-term investor. Just don’t assume the moon.

@Crash. I have been favoring only 5-yr TIPS, not TIPS funds (ST or IT/LT). The idea is to capture CPI approximately, see chart below - I don't know why the StockCharts hasn't updated CPI for January in comparison charts (it has in separate CPI chart). And I am thinking that slowing inflation will catch up with individual TIPS too, just as it has with I-Bonds. I do have 5-yr TIPS from last year, but I am unclear about new purchase(s).
For me, m-mkt funds, T-Bills, 5-yr TIPS, SVs, I-Bonds are just the cash-side of fixed-income. I have plenty of equity exposure for risk.
https://stockcharts.com/h-perf/ui?s=VTIP&compare=TIP,SCHP,$$CPI&id=p24810227377
https://stockcharts.com/h-sc/ui?s=$$CPI&p=D&b=5&g=0&id=p17805591940

Also he sold majority of Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing that he acquired a year ago.
https://cnn.com/2023/02/15/tech/warren-buffett-tsmc-chips-earnings-hnk-intl/index.html

@BenWP
>> I don't know what happened to DEESX, either.
My post and phrasing were about CAPE and CAPE only.
As for DSEEX, the M* chart for DSEEX
https://www.morningstar.com/funds/xnas/dseex/chart
shows its growth from end October 2013 to yesterday to be >203%, compared w SP500's 181%. For ytd it's >13% vs <8%.
That's all. Not making any other claims about it. Don't hold it anymore. 5y and 1y show it lags SP500 somewhat.

I-Bonds use 6-mo change in unadjusted CPI for their May 1 & November 1 announcements. That is definitely collapsing on May 1.
TIPS use monthly CPI changes with 2-mo lag. How is that looking now?
I am definitely skipping I-Bonds, but I am still evaluating 5-yr TIPS.

Yogi, can you unpack that for me? Thank you. I own SCHP (TIPS.)

Specifically, if you exclude SCHD's last 25 or so holdings (out of ~100), which contribute a minuscule amount to performance, you do see that the remainder appear to be in SP500 (I'm not 100% positive about this, as I got tired searching within the long columns).
Simple and relatively fast way to do this analysis:
1. Download SCHD into a spreadsheet from the Schwab site; here is the link for the .csv file.
2. Download a current (or at least recent) list of S&P 500 companies. I used Finasko; here's the direct link for an Excel file.
3. Cut and paste the ticker column (roughly 500 rows plus heading) into the SCHD spreadsheet.
4. Use COUNTIF to test whether each SCHD ticker is in the S&P 500 list. The COUNTIF function will return 1 if the SCHD ticker is in the S&P 500 and 0 otherwise. You should adjust the column letters appropriately; the expression I used is:
=COUNTIF($O$2:$O$504, B2)
5. Sum the counts. There are 55 SCHD companies in the S&P 500. The other 48 are not. The first company not in the S&P 500 is #49, First Horizon Corp (FHN).
6. By multiplying the weight of each ticker by its '1' or '0' result, you get a column of weights of just those SCHD companies that are in the S&P 500.
94.06% of SCHD companies (by weight) are in the S&P 500.
Of course the weightings of each company are completely different in SCHD and S&P 500.

@davidrmoran: I don't know what happened to DEESX, either. I see from the charts that it reached its nadir on 3/22/2020, having fallen some 7 percentage points more than FXAIX at that point. It never really caught up and I can't devise a chart that shows it outperforming FXAIX. Maybe at exactly 9.5 years, as you say. I wrongly assumed as a shareholder of DSEEX that the bonds would serve as ballast in a down market; it seems the opposite was true and that the "secret bond sauce" appeared to accelerate the move downward. I was a CAPE fan and said so on MFO. I sold, disillusioned. Fortunately, MOAT has proven itself over the long haul. I've traded it, but have never been out. MOTI and SMOT, which adopt a similar "moat" methodology, have been welcome additions in recent months.

@MikeM, I don't know and can't easily uncover what the heck happened w CAPE as of 4/22, but I am sure someone here knows. DSEEX has still outperformed FXAIX for 9.5y and also ytd :) --- but not, as others would, or will, instantly point out, for various stints in between. (QQQ likewise looks appealing at 10y and ytd, not quite so much in between.)
I wasn't being facetious in rhetorically posing the question of where the breadth sweet spot is. Or can reliably be said to be, if we seek investment goals and guidelines. Some of the above apples-oranges (categories) objections are silly, but someone else also mentioned subsets of sets; and so I began to wonder whether everything in SCHD was in SP500 and everything in SP500 in VONE, and everything in VONE in VT.
For the first it turns out not, but close, so far as I had the energy to parse. Specifically, if you exclude SCHD's last 25 or so holdings (out of ~100), which contribute a minuscule amount to performance, you do see that the remainder appear to be in SP500 (I'm not 100% positive about this, as I got tired searching within the long columns). SCHD applies a seriously delimiting quantified quality criterion. Could there be an SCHD for the VONE universe? (For some periods, of course, that is sort of what VONG and VONV do.)
Unappreciated (why I also mentioned comparative UI) was the 'leveling' effect the SCHD criteria appear to exert. But maybe UI is arguably overvalued as well. Gustibus.

https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/1587982/000139834423000515/fp0081452-1_497.htm
Sunbridge Capital Emerging Markets Fund
Institutional Class (Ticker Symbol: RIMIX)
A series of Investment Managers Series Trust II (the "Trust")
Supplement dated January 10, 2023 to the currently effective
Prospectus, Summary Prospectus and Statement of Additional Information ("SAI").
The Board of Trustees of the Trust has approved a Plan of Liquidation for the Sunbridge Capital Emerging Markets Fund (the "Fund"). The Plan of Liquidation authorizes the termination, liquidation and dissolution of the Fund. In order to perform such liquidation, effective immediately the Fund is closed to all new investment.
The Fund will be liquidated on or about February 10, 2023 (the "Liquidation Date"), and shareholders may redeem their shares until the Liquidation Date. On or promptly after the Liquidation Date, the Fund will make a liquidating distribution to its remaining shareholders equal to each shareholder's proportionate interest in the net assets of the Fund, in complete redemption and cancellation of the Fund's shares held by the shareholder, and the Fund will be dissolved.
In anticipation of the liquidation of the Fund, Sunbridge Capital Partners LLC, the Fund's advisor, may manage the Fund in a manner intended to facilitate its orderly liquidation, such as by raising cash or making investments in other highly liquid assets. As a result, during this time, all or a portion of the Fund may not be invested in a manner consistent with its stated investment strategies, which may prevent the Fund from achieving its investment objective.
Please contact the Fund at 1-877-771-7721 if you have any questions or need assistance.
Please file this Supplement with your records.
******I had the institutional shares which were converted to the investor shares (the new institutional shares) only to have the shares liquidated.
Share conversion filing as of 9/20/22:
https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/1587982/000139834422018768/fp0079714_497k.htm

Thanks for the FinViz VIX chart. But mine from StockCharts looks different. It shows 1/24/22 high of 38.94.
https://stockcharts.com/h-sc/ui?s=$VIX&amp;p=D&amp;yr=1&amp;mn=3&amp;dy=0&amp;id=p89899821759