I have PVIVX since 11/10/20 (this cycle). It was one of small cap funds I had when small cap was running 5-6 yrs ago.

Hi Guys,
The historical data suggests that outperformance on the plus side persists in the short term but ultimately it regresses to the average. Underperformance is far more persistent.
Here is a useful Link:
https://www.jstor.org/stable/2329556?seq=1
Here is a good summary quote from that article:
“The only significant persistence not explained is concentrated in strong underperformance by the worst-return mutual funds. The results do not support the existence of skilled or informed mutual fund portfolio managers.”
Luck happens but doesn’t persist. Poor invest decision making does seem to persist unfortunately. It seems like the negative outcome always seems more robust. I wish good luck to all, even for the short term.

Another sign of the times:

The measure for the Bloomberg Barclays U.S. Corporate High-Yield index dipped to 3.96% on Monday evening, making it four straight sessions of declines.
Issuance conditions have been so conducive that some of the riskiest types of transactions come to market, such as bonds that are used to fund dividends to a company’s owners and so-called pay-in-kind bonds that allow a borrower to pay interest with more debt.

Junk Bonds

PRBLX's poor years against its large-blend benchmark were 2017 especially, but also 2015 and 2016. Yet another strong fund overall.

I hold a large position in this index through my 401k plan. It really is a small/mid cap blended fund. It's a great fund to get exposure to the rest of the U.S. market that isn't the S&P 500 and that's how its used in my 401k. It's done quite well over the long term. Do any of you have any recommendations on actively managed small cap blended funds that you hold or like? I've been running some screens but haven't located one that I really like yet. I'm looking for blend fund here -- not growth -- because I want some exposure to financials, industrials, consumer cyclical, etc. thanks!

Using Portfolio Visualizer from 1/1/08 to 2/05/2020-$10000 beginning balance PRBLX 34,714
VFIAX 27,452. Since I'm a tech-luddite I can't link to the screen. Maybe use 2 different funds in case 1 turns into the next Sequoia or Third Avenue Value !

What I'm saying is the funds that routinely beat their bogeys and/or the S&P are relatively easy to find because they pretty much do it ALL THE TIME.

No, they aren't easy to find and no they don't do it all the time.
https://spglobal.com/spdji/en/spiva/article/us-persistence-scorecard
In fact, if you include 2008 into any stock benchmark comparison and go until 2021, you probably won't find a single large-cap blend fund that beat the S&P 500 every calendar year. Even the best managers have fallow periods and performance tends to be lumpy. I doubt you've looked at the truly long-term history of most funds and I doubt you've made apples-to-apples comparisons for funds investing in similar style/size stocks to the benchmark. FLPSX is an exceptional fund, but it is not a fund to compare to the S&P 500, but to a mid-cap value benchmark currently and shifting benchmarks throughout its history, but almost never large-blend like the S&P 500 I bet. And it too has had lagging years versus its Morningstar benchmark, 2016 notably. In fact, if you look at the three-year period of January 1, 2014 through December 31, 2016 of FLPSX versus the IWS mid value index ETF, you would've seen IWS produce a 32% return versus FLPSX's 17%--a significant underperformance during a three-year period. And yet FLPSX remains a great fund.

The challenge is to find persistence long term out-performance thru full market cycle. The The dominance of FANNG stocks in S&P500 is not easy to overcome. Perhaps the hurdle is lower in smaller cap funds.

It's really not that hard to beat the market. Simply BUY the funds in the smaller percentile that ALWAYS do.

OK, that's funny, like saying It's easy to get a 100 on a test. Just don't get anything wrong.

Hmmm...it's not intended to be funny, rather instructional.
What I'm saying is the funds that routinely beat their bogeys and/or the S&P are relatively easy to find because they pretty much do it ALL THE TIME.
FIND them. BUY them. Repeat.
HINT: Perform screens to identify the funds that are 5* funds for 3, 5 and 10 years, appear at/near the top of the screens in ALL of those columns and the 1-yr, YTD and Life of Fund columns. Dig a little deeper with your DD, especially regarding the PM(s), and select the very best.
Fido even assists investors by identifying "Fund Picks from Fidelity." You can probably even routinely beat their bogeys and/or the S&P if you just bought those.
But no, I'm not inclined to spoon feed them here. Several though are littered throughout my posts. If you swing and miss on one, not to worry as you likely blew away their bogeys and the S&P with the others.
Just don't EVER think you can pick THE ONE fund that's the best. Select 2-3 in each cat and if you did it properly, you very likely scored BIG on at least one or two of them. How many mistakes you think you could have made and STILL outperformed bogeys/S&P if you would have JUST bought and held FLPSX (see my prior post) from its inception?
Many investors have been coded to think that this is either impossible or will take too much of their time. And that's unfortunate.

Good point @sma3. Note also that it does hold 40+% munis and they are generally longer duration.
I don't like to engage in too much of the bond detail stuff, but it is a necessary evil of owning them. For those who do and may need a primer/refresher:
https://finance.zacks.com/effective-duration-vs-average-maturity-5206.html

M* portfolio lists PTIAX maturities with 30% over 20 years and 20% between 15 and 20 so likely duration is high

@JonGaltIII
Great post.
It's a tired old debate that at best provides confirmation bias to those who want to believe it or just don't want to try to beat the market.
To wit: I own 11 dedicated, actively managed stock funds. All 11 easily beat-to-blow away their bogeys. 10 of 11 do the same vs the S&P, the only one being a SCV fund that I bought last year. This scenario has been the case with my port for about 40 years now.
When I say blow away, I mean blow away....
I don't own it any more, but take a look at FLPSX, which I bought near its inception and owned (as my only fund for about five years circa early 90's and) all the way up to the last couple of years.
Value of $10K, 12/27/89 to Current:
VFINX: $208,480
S&P 500 TR: $215,986
FLPSX: $495,523
Note: There are no typos there and your eyes are NOT deceiving you.
True, LOTS of funds fail to beat their bogeys and many come nowhere close to matching the S&P. That's why statistically writers can truthfully pump out hair-on-fire (Thanks, Dick!) articles like these.
It's really not that hard to beat the market. Simply BUY the funds in the smaller percentile that ALWAYS do, or at least ALWAYS do over time.
Also, use of the word "NEVER" is usually not a good idea in these contexts. LOTS of PMs and analysts last year predicted Small Caps, Value, Foreign and EMs were places to be this year. So far, they weren't right, they were very right.

Thanks for sharing. If I understand the premise of the article - it's really about Index Funds vs. Active Management. It makes a compelling case for just investing in the S&P 500 Index and not trying to find the "hot hand" or chase a portfolio manager because they can't consistently beat the Index 95-97% of the time. It's what Warren Buffett is doing with his money when he passes away.
I understand the Index vs. Active discussion and I own some index funds. I agree that it's very difficult to have a portfolio that consistently beats the S&P over the long term.
Using MFO Premium ... let's take BFGFX as an example. The fund has been around for 14 years. It's +4.8 to the S&P over the life of the fund. It's APR has never trailed the S&P in it's history and last year it beat the S&P by 96.7 and +31.7 the year before.
Would it be safe to assume that this fund is part of the 3-5% that found a way to beat the S&P 500 Index (at least over the last 14 years)? What am I missing? Or is that the point? We won't be successful at trying to beat it over the long term. Genuine ?

i Guys,
We think deeply and often talk about our strategies to outperform the various markets, but our success rates are close to dismal. No, I’m wrong! They are dismal. Only about 5% of us manage to win this challenging task! Why?
We underestimate the many factors that both influence the complex marketplace while we consistently overestimate our abililiries to evaluate them. That is a recipe for disaster, and disaster is indeed the common ending. It seems like the less I try to outplay this game, the better I do. These days I just ignore the daily predictions and their predictors. This works for me. Trying harder generates poorer outcomes for me. What works for you?
Here is a Link to an article with a few insightful and interesting comments and statistics.
https://www.aei.org/carpe-diem/more-evidence-that-its-really-hard-to-beat-the-market-over-time-95-of-finance-professionals-cant-do-it/
I especially liked the following paragraph:” Similarly, over the 15-year investment horizon, 92.43% of large-cap managers, 95.13% of mid-cap managers, and 97.70% of small-cap managers failed to outperform on a relative basis.“
I wish you all successful investing and realize the huge odds against that global outcome. We can’t all be winners.

Hi Guys,
We think deeply and often talk about our strategies to outperform the various markets, but our success rates are close to dismal. No, I’m wrong! They are dismal. Only about 5% of us manage to win this challenging task! Why?
We underestimate the many factors that both influence the complex marketplace while we consistently overestimate our abililiries to evaluate them. That is a recipe for disaster, and disaster is indeed the common ending. It seems like the less I try to outplay this game, the better I do. These days I just ignore the daily predictions and their predictors. This works for me. Trying harder generates poorer outcomes for me. What works for you?
Here is a Link to an article with a few insightful and interesting comments and statistics.
https://www.aei.org/carpe-diem/more-evidence-that-its-really-hard-to-beat-the-market-over-time-95-of-finance-professionals-cant-do-it/
I especially liked the following paragraph:” Similarly, over the 15-year investment horizon, 92.43% of large-cap managers, 95.13% of mid-cap managers, and 97.70% of small-cap managers failed to outperform on a relative basis.“
I wish you all successful investing and realize the huge odds against that global outcome. We can’t all be winners.

Look closely at interest rate risk, usually measured by duration. Be wary of anything over 5 years avg duration. It is the reason I left a couple possible bond OEFs off my list.
Note that PTIAX does not publish its duration. Spoke to them years ago and was told the reason is basically to protect us average investors from ourselves. Interest rate risk is not completely/accurately measured by avg duration and the firm does not want its avg duration to be incorrectly interpreted as a measure of PTIAX's interest rate risk.
Disclaimer: LT owner of PTIAX and comfortable with whatever avg duration it has, albeit largely unknown.

My update - PTIAX and RCTIX is not available in TRP Brokerage. I am deciding between PIMIX, HSNIX and TRP's own PRSNX...I've owned PONAX in another account and they have receovered well from March 2020 volatility. Next, from what I can see the PRSNX seems to protect better on the downside and it's USD Hedge adds a unique wrinkle. The top performer in the past 3 & 5 years, HSNIX, seems to take the most risk and potentially protect less. Although it came roaring back...

Although, I no longer post on the MFO board I still visit and read it. The last time hank visited was December of 2020. His extended absence gives me pause. With this, I'll be keeping him in my thoughts and prayers. Hopefully, he will be back soon. Skeet
Here is a link to the last post made by hank. https://mutualfundobserver.com/discuss/discussion/57465/which-of-these-2-funds-is-riskier-safer-over-the-next-1-3-years-dodfx-vs-dodix