From your M* link I went to the performance tab. At the bottom of that page M* creates a list for your...minus the tickers. You might look at the portfolios of these funds as they may hold a considerable amount of global companies. Also, FMIJX is a solid risk adverse MC/LC blend fund in the international space. PRIDX and ARTJX might be two other considerations.

Given that this fund holds leveraged ETFs amplifying exposure 3X the S&P 500, I don’t find it particularly defensive. I imagine the goal is to get out of them in time during market slides. Be careful.

For the loves of all that's holy, this is not a fund worth investing in and paying 2% ER for the privilege. It currently ONLY holds a 60/40 split between the Vanguard 500 ETF and ProShares UltraPro S&P500 .... pretty much any investor could do the same thing for free.

I'm puzzled by the question. I mean, we do our best to do our homework, due diligence, to find the mutual funds which have great track records, are suited to our goals and risk tolerance. I confess I'm not an expert, so I trust the Fund Managers to deploy my money, and everyone else's who invest in the fund, with knowledgable deftness regarding issues like inflation, political risks, dollar strength and weakness, and whether to play defense or go on offense and be aggressive, when circumstances warrant it. I just think it's almost impossible to be reacting in a meaningful way to global macro headlines. Buy low, sell high. If inflation takes hold--- or God forbid--- STAGFLATION---- the cycle will have to play out. Hopefully, we're paying attention and can make our own individual informed decisions as to whether we want to hide in Treasuries or... whatever. I do believe it is wisest to be moderate, not trying to shoot out the lights in the arena, or "shoot the moon." Cover as many bases as you can. Do not expect skyrocketing profits--- as long as you're being PRUDENT. Is your time-horizon short? Then priorities and strategies will be different than a lot of us.
I'm retired but have my eye on the future, for my heirs. So I'm less conservative than I'd be, otherwise. Still, I own more BONDS than I did just 4 or 5 years ago. Yes, bonds have almost become "return-free risk." Giggle. They pay very little these days, with the global ZIRP being embraced by governments around the world. But the ballast in my boat feels comfortable. And I am still exposed to stocks: 42%. So I'm still grabbing SOME of the stock run-up. At this moment, Morningstar X-Ray tells me my profit will match the SP500 going out 5 years from now, in terms of projected earnings per share growth. And my projected YIELD over the same period, looking ahead five years, = 58% better than the SP500. I'm pleased. I keep in mind the words from the Springsteen song, "Badlands."
"Poor man wanna be rich,
Rich man wanna be king,
And the King ain't satisfied till he rules everything."
....Ya, that's NOT me. And that's OK. All there is left to do is to be thankful. If things go South, then I'm screwed. But there are some things I can do to mitigate that. Worrying about my portfolio vis-a-vis inflation is not a thing I can control very well. Although I recognize that inflated prices probably will show up in the share prices in the funds I own. :)

OSTIX started August 30, 2002. So it's been around for about 19 years. It was classified as a multisector fund for just over 11 of those years, and as a high yield fund for nearly the past 8 years. You describe the 11 years (or less) when you owned it (during which time M* classified it as multisector) as "many many years". While the 8 years since M* reclassified the fund are described as just "a few years".
As I said, people's perception of time is often nonlinear. Perceptions don't matter, though. What matters are the actual numbers. Nearly 8 years since reclassification. Long enough that it would be inappropriate to compare OSTIX with multisector funds even based on historical performance.
The fund's portfolio for many years did, as you said, strongly resemble its current portfolio. However, its earlier portfolios did not. In its early years, OSTIX was significantly more diversified.
As M* described the fund its Dec 2011 analysis, "The managers can and have bought convertible bonds, preferred stock, and floating-rate notes in the past, but currently--and for much of the past few years--the portfolio has focused on shorter-term high-yield corporate bonds."
Multisector funds typically are more diversified than high yield funds. As OSTIX became less diversified, it more closely resembled high yield funds. Hence the reclassification in 2013, albeit with a substantial lag.

I would consider this investing strategy if it was an etf;however, with $50 tf and 5k minimum investment,not at this time.

TIPS attempt to predict future inflation rates:

with inflation, we have a really easy way to see what the market expects inflation to look like through time. By looking at the spread between the yields of TIPS (Treasury Inflation Protected Securities – basically treasury bonds that adjust based on inflation) and Treasury bonds of the same maturity, we can see how much people are willing to pay to remove inflation risk. The difference between those two yields is what the market expects inflation to look like over the life of the bond.

link:
occams-inflation

So it's clear it's chiefly a mental health thing for some --- instead of deciding anything, you can (have to only) talk with someone and be done.
If you can diy and leave alone with a clear head and low enough anxiety to get through the day, obviously the biggest if of all, you could do FZROX at zero ER and FXNAX at 0.025% 50-50 and then try and forget all about it.

One type of Chinese tech stock got really killed yesterday, the companies offering after-school tutoring, the biggest of which is TAL. Declines of 65% were seen after the Party announced it might move to regulate or curtail such academic instruction. Korea went through the same type of educational reform quite a number of years ago. Wealthy families were paying exorbitant fees to tutors to help their kids get into college. In Japan and Korea, and possibly China, entrance to a university is the greatest hurdle. It is widely recognized that the quality of education in universities leaves something to be desired and that once admitted, students don’t have to work very hard to get a degree. The CCP can appear to be limiting elitism while at the same time taking control of companies that might not hew the Party line. Government intervention is mentioned as a risk factor in the prospective of EM funds, but this example is striking. I was expecting the Kristian Heugh managed funds, that have been big holders of the tutoring companies, to take a nosedive yesterday, but only MSAUX had an outsized loss of +4%.

CRDBX Conquer Risk Defensive Bull fund - interesting new vehicle, in that it shifts over to Cash on occasion. You can see that if you look at a chart. It is run by a Fund Mgr who focuses on quant trading systems.
Its available at FIDO, but with a $50 TF. When not in cash, its very volatile and it generates higher returns. Will that really continue is the $100M question.
I'll stick with the much more boring CTFAX fund for my "thermostat" holding, but CRDBX could be fun for a small allocation. It goes on my watchlist.

I would not want to do that myself, but I have thought it would be the best arrangement for my wife if I go first, and I have told our advisor that.

Vanguard offers this for .3% (that's 0.3%) as well as access to Admiral shares. Minimum of $50K to start.
wealth-management/services

July 23, 2021 Episode

What stillers said.
OP --- silly question, silly answer, rich-enough couple writes in ... why? Mattress sale?
Otherwise clickbait --- nobody learns anything new, only confirmation of whatever.

I had to think about this - and I read YouTube comments, they are all cryptic - at best. Anyway, could this be real? They are 100% stocks & they are considering going to 0% stocks, 0% bonds & zero annuities. All Peter the Planner can offer is: “ Talk to a licensed professional about your options. But yes, you can absolutely stop subjecting your nest egg to investment markets.”
My response would be something along the lines of - taxable or tax deferred?
If taxable, minimize taxes to the extent possible while getting to 50/50 or 50/25/25. And yes, 100/0/0 is making all of us anxious (and we don’t even know you). But you could have a large chunk in Puritan or Wellington. And then a chunk in FADMX or some equivalent bond fund.
Between the 2 of you, you might need 10+ years of assisted living at $70k+ /year so don’t think you’ll never need that money.
All caveats apply.

To see how these worked and what was available, it was necessary for me to open an account. TIAA does make some additional funds (or their institutional share class) available NTF. But there are so many oddities that you must really want something they offer to go through the effort of working with these accounts.
TIAA IRAs are structured as annuities with a brokerage window. So when transferring cash in, it technically goes through the annuity into the brokerage account. More importantly, I believe this means that one cannot transfer assets in or out in kind.
In order to actually have access to the annuity funds (mostly CREF funds), you have to have some relationship with TIAA's employer plans. You might have a 403(b) with them yourself, or you might be related to someone who does. If not, then while you can open the IRA annuity with TIAA, you won't be able to invest on the annuity side.
In order to get a brokerage window, TIAA will "qualify" you. This makes no sense to me. I could understand TIAA "protecting" you from yourself if this were an employer plan, where the employer has liability. But we're talking IRAs here. When one goes to, say Schwab, one opens a brokerage IRA, period. No qualifications.
As part of that qualifying process I had to declare how much (roughly) I expected to put into the IRA and upload a statement showing the outside account from which the assets would be transferred.
It took three days for the brokerage window to be up and running. (I haven't funded the account.)
The short term trading period for NTF funds appears to be six months. On the plus side, the min investment for a fund is $500 unless the fund requires more. The fund screener (not accessible until you have a brokerage window open) won't tell you whether a fund (or share class) is open or closed. You have to do research on your own or call TIAA and ask.
I checked on a couple of popular funds here:
PRWCX - it would have a $1K min in an IRA and $2.5K in a taxable account (same as Fidelity), but of course it is closed. I had to ask.
CQTRX - $500 min (TIAA brokerage min); this has a slightly lower ER than COTZX which is NTF at Vanguard
GLIFX - $500 min in IRA (TIAA brokerage min); NTF

I owned OSTIX for many many years, and M* chose to place it in the multisector bond category during those years, even though it held almost exclusively high yield bonds. ... During those years, its portfolio looks almost identical to what it holds today. However, a couple of years ago, M* chose to move OSTIX from the multisector bond category to the High Yield Bond category...

Perceptions of time are often nonlinear (elongated, compressed, etc.) It was further back, some time in the last couple of months of 2013 when M* moved OSTIX from the multisector bond (MU) category to the High Yield Bond (HY) category.
On the M* page below, click on the "Expanded View" tab to see all of the past ten years and how the fund was classified in each of those years.
http://performance.morningstar.com/fund/performance-return.action?t=OSTIX
Fortunately, the Wayback Machine took a snapshot of the M* fund portfolio page as of Oct 31, 2013. The portfolio data on that page is dated Sept 30, 2013. It shows that the last time OSTIX was placed in the multisector bond category, an eighth of the bonds were rated AAA. IMHO that's not a portfolio that's "almost exclusively high yield bonds".
By the same token, that strikes me as a significant difference from today's portfolio, where only 2.35% of the bonds are investment grade, and none above BBB.
http://portfolios.morningstar.com/fund/summary?t=OSTIX&region=usa&culture=en-US
I'm not very familiar with this fund, so all I'll say about the strategy (having just looked at a few snapshots over time and read the strategy section of its prospectus) is that I'm inclined to agree that its strategy hasn't changed over time. But ... that strategy may led it to begin investing "almost exclusively [in] high yield bonds" some time after the stock market took off post GFC. Same strategy, changed market conditions, changed classification.

Everyone is different. The "bucket" approach has alot of followers, although it is hard to track down M* Christine Benz's original articles anymore.
Still, from a purely intellectual basis, it makes sense to set up priorities
1) Money to live on. The amount you keep in cash depends on how much you want to be able to spend and how necessary it is, but it's purpose to to keep you from selling equities at a market bottom.
Then you have to decide how long the bottom will last. Using the longest bear market since my college years, 3/24/2000, it took seven years for the SP500 to recover.
1/11/1973 to 7/16/1980 was 7.5 years.
So I think five years may not be enough, although if interest rates were higher, you could count on replenishing this account with dividends and interest.
2) Everything else ie equities

@wxman123
Interesting EFT...an ETF fund of ETF funds...I charted HNDL against VWINX which appears to have a similar bond/equity mix...obviously not the same sectors. HNDL overweights Tech, Energy and Communication Tech.

Read about HNDL's methodology on its webpage, it's more than a static allocation fund like AOM or AOK. Who knows how it will perform over the long-term but it handled the covid crises quite well. It's what I'm buying when I buy these days.

@wxman123
Interesting EFT...an ETF fund of ETF funds...I charted HNDL against VWINX which appears to have a similar bond/equity mix...obviously not the same sectors. HNDL overweights Tech, Energy and Communication Tech.

Obviously the Diamond Hill HY team is great, I've been with them for years and very happy. My existing Brandywine fund (LFLAX) has been just as great in its own right.

You might want to explain what you mean by "just as great in its own right." It must include metrics beyond TR but I'm not seeing how any other metrics could cause someone to see these two HYB funds as "equally great."
TR 1yr, 3 yr, 5yr, Life
DHHIX: 17.3%, 10.6%, 10.3%, 9.1%
LFLAX: 5.6%, 7.0%, 5.9%, 6.2%

LFLAX is not a HY fund. It's a multisector bond fund. Compare it to its category and you will better understand my comment.

Oh, my bad. As the thread is about OSTIX, a HYB fund, I guess I incorrectly assumed that any comparisons/suggestions would be HYB funds.

Obviously the Diamond Hill HY team is great, I've been with them for years and very happy. My existing Brandywine fund (LFLAX) has been just as great in its own right.

You might want to explain what you mean by "just as great in its own right." It must include metrics beyond TR but I'm not seeing how any other metrics could cause someone to see these two HYB funds as "equally great."
TR 1yr, 3 yr, 5yr, Life
DHHIX: 17.3%, 10.6%, 10.3%, 9.1%
LFLAX: 5.6%, 7.0%, 5.9%, 6.2%

LFLAX is not a HY fund. It's a multisector bond fund. Compare it to its category and you will better understand my comment.