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Here's a statement of the obvious: The opinions expressed here are those of the participants, not those of the Mutual Fund Observer. We cannot vouch for the accuracy or appropriateness of any of it, though we do encourage civility and good humor.
  • Suggestion for a fund for my grandson?
    Most (if not all) of the funds at T Rowe Price have a $1,000 minimum for an IRA (including Roths). Not the lowest expense ratio in town, but reasonable. You’d be setting him up with one of the most respected outfits out there.
    First $1,000 POMIX - T. Rowe Price Total Market Index fund. That’s the one Jack Bogle always recommended as his top choice index. ER .30%
    Next $1,000 PIEQX - T Rowe Price Developed Markets Ex-North America index fund. ER .45%
    Thereafter - two-thirds of contributions to former and one-third to latter.
    Sure, there’s a lot of great managed funds out there (of which I own some). But with a 50-year investment horizon, index is the way to go. Lower fees (not visible at first glance) and you avoid potential managerial changes and / or mistakes.
    If you can find the $1,000 minimum somewhere else offering those indexes, than of course you can elect them. I’m pretty much T. Rowe so not aware of minimums at other houses. But I’d think the $1,000 minimum is going the way of the plasma TV. (rapidly disappearing). Also, T. Rowe is no-load. I think some of the ones with lower initial investments charge a front-end load, which you don’t want.
  • Suggestion for a fund for my grandson?
    Hi @Donna,
    Not a suggestion ... Just what I'm doing for my grandaughter. However, this concept might be of some help.
    I have my 18 month old granddaughter in AMECX, CAIBX, ANCFX and SMCWX at American Funds, The min. for each fund is $250.00. I make quarterly gift contributions to her account splitting the money evenly. Her mutual fund distributions pay to AFAXX which is a money market fund to accumulate until they become invested into ABALX which is a balanced fund. In this way she will have an awarness of just how much interest, dividends and capital gain distributions play in the overall sucess of investing. I'm thinking over time ABALX will become larger that the first four starting funds by the time she becomes 21 (age of majority).
    Even though this is invested conseratively it is up better than 8% over the past rolling year. At her age and with the many years she has ahead I feel a conserative steady as you go approach is the wise one over an agressive growth portfolio that will have, at times, some good volatility associated with it. This might lead one into trading over staying invested for the long term.
    I became an investor as a teenager at age 12 (1960). I started investing with some money my great grandparents gifted to me. And, it was put into Franklin Income (FKINX). My father's broker told me that this fund will give you some exposure to income generation (put a little gingle in your pocket if you wish) and also give you exposure to both stocks and bonds as well. It will be a good fund for you to build a base from and help you to understand the facets of investing. My next fund that I ventured into was American Funds Income Fund of America (AMECX) during my early twenties as I was learning don't put all you eggs in one basket, by this time. Today, these two funds are my largest holdings within my portfolio now just short of fifty funds split among twelve investment sleeves. I went the conserative route in the beginning and branched out from there. Now stock market volatility is viewed, by me, as a buying opportunity. While some run and sell ... I am a buyer even at the age of 72. I bought during the past market swoon and now that stocks have recovered I have been selling into the now present market strength.
    If you wish to view how the asset allocation, of my grandaughter's portfolio bubles, or any of the other suggestions that has been made, below is a link to Morningstar's Instant Xray analysis tool. It's a good tool to learn how to use.
    https://www.morningstar.com/instant-x-ray
    Just enter the ticker symbols and amount invested in each fund then press Xray and the Portfolio Xray analysis will appear. For my granddaughter, I felt it wise to mix some income generation funds on the income side with some value and growth stocks funds on the equity side. Sometimes, with the income generation that protfolios produce keeps folks invested. My late father had a saying ... "Income never goes out of style." Thus far, in my lifetime, he has been correct.
    Your grandson can follow his portfolio through M*'s portfolio manager which is another tool I use.
    My best wishes to you and your grandson in starting this endeavor. It is something that he can begin small and build upon through his lifetime. In the years to come he will remember ... this is something my grandmother got me started me on. And, give thanks that you did.
    Old_Skeet
    edited on 7/23/2020
  • Suggestion for a fund for my grandson?
    It's not a fund per se, but Schwab has introduced "stock slices", where he could invest as little as $5 to purchase a partial share in companies such as Amazon, Google, Facebook, Netflix, McDonald's, Electronic Arts, Nike, Home Depot, Target and Apple. They advertise that you can buy a basket of all 10 for $50.
  • Mining & Minerals Paper

    It opened Monday at 12, I bought in a lowball bid at $11. It's up big to 14.50 in today's aftermarket on news about its plans, plus DOD restarting funding of rare earths projects ... at first I thought it was a pump-and-dump thing by their execs, but it apparently wasn't. And there aren't many Robinhooders holding the stock, either ... yet. :)
    Your speculative play has paid off -- FVAC is up to $12.40
    Did you get in at the initial $10 price?
    A relevant article: https://investorintel.com/sectors/technology-metals/technology-metals-intel/us-rare-earths-industry-comeback-begun-mp-materials-announces-nyse-listing-via-merger-fvac/
    David
  • Vanguard brokerage account conversion round 3
    Before I start sounding like a Vanguard apologist, let me say that in my experience Vanguard's human service is inferior to that of other providers including Fidelity, Schwab, and T. Rowe Price (where I've been helped not only with fund investments but with administering an individual 401k plan).
    That said, how does the Vanguard brokerage platform (VBS) compare with the T. Rowe Price brokerage platform? I haven't tried the latter for a few reasons: without being a customer I cannot find what third party funds TRP offers (NTF or otherwise); and its trading costs (which I can find) are quite high.
    On the other hand, at Vanguard one can buy DODFX for $20 or less (vs. $35 at TRP), and one needs only $25K to invest in PIMIX (vs. $100K at Schwab). When it comes to some third party funds, the VBS platform does have its advantages.
    I really did mean that Vanguard should push people onto their VBS platform. My sense is that their mutual fund platform support is now so weak that the risk of losing customers alienated by the platform's poor support is comparable to the risk of losing customers displeased by being moved to their VBS platform. Assuming that's correct, it makes no business sense to continue expending resources in providing inferior support for the fund platform.
    My last fund platform experience is informative. It involved a cash IRA transfer from an outside account to Vanguard. I filled out a paper transfer form (required by Vanguard). I directed Vanguard to invest the cash in Prime MMF. Instead, Vanguard opened a new Federal MMF on the fund platform.
    ISTM it might make this blatant error if it has become so focused on the VBS platform that it has forgotten how to process fund platform transactions. Only on the VBS platform must all cash go through the Federal MMF. It didn't make any difference that the instructions were in writing on its own form. It's time for Vanguard to give up the ghost.
    That's my rational observation. Subjectively, I won't move (because the features are different) until kicked off their fund platform. IMHO Vanguard's best course of action is to do that, and leave me grumbling about the lost features. What bothered me about the note I posted is that they dismissed the lost features as "minor changes" without giving people advance notice of what these changes are.
  • Q: As you Spend Down Your Portfolio in Retirement...
    Hello @bee,
    I’ve been an infrequent poster but have been snooping on MFO for some time. In 2002, after the dotcom implosion, I crafted an Excel file to keep track of our (with DW) investment accumulations. I would track the bi-weekly changes, as well as the starting totals on January 1st of each year.
    As we got closer to retirement, I calculated our current expenses and projected a retirement budget for comparison. The retirement budget had/has two versions = “Frugal Lite” and “Frugal Extreme.“ With those numbers, I then calculated the taxes to add to this total number. From this number I calculated the percentage passive income we needed to offset this total expense need. I calculated a 2.5%, 3.0%, and 4.0% yearly return. I use 2.5% as my S.W.A.N. figure.
    I then projected the social security we would each receive and subtracted that amount from the total expense budget. The remaining balance was the amount our portfolio would need to generate each year. When 2.5% would cover this cost, I believed that I would/had come to a place I considered - “financial independence.”
    All of this data is the “Rube Goldberg” that comes down to the final number. That is, the difference between what is needed for living expenses & aspirations, and how much our portfolio generates. My concern is that this number be on the “positive” side of the ledger even with withdrawals (RMDs, etc.). If it should dip to the negative, then we would need to shift our expenses from the “frugal lite” to the “frugal extreme“ budget.
    I am in my 3rd year and my DW her 6th year of retirement. So far so good.
    Best to all,
    Brian
  • Q: As you Spend Down Your Portfolio in Retirement...

    @WABAC, hope this thread helps your headache. Your retirement income needs will come from SS, maybe a pension, maybe part time work, maybe a portion of your personal retirement accounts (RMDs or other withdrawals).
    If considering an annuity run some withdrawal scenarios with a fund like VWINX which may provide a similar withdrawal rate to an annuity and still allow you to have full control over it.
    Not too worried about headaches at the moment. Aside from market performance, we are saving cash every month under the current conditions. This has been an interesting stress test.
    Used to spend 135$ a month filling up the cars. Now, one car, or the other, gets filled up every third month,
    The little numbers might be small for what some folks here may need. But they add up quick for our situation.
    While I have "enjoyed" the accumulation stage. I'm not so sure I want to manage the RMD stage. We're still 7-8 years out from that. And I don't have to sort it out today.
    But it's something to think about so long as we can entertain the idea of relying on our retirement accounts, without tapping into taxable accounts.
    The recent changes in the way inherited retirement accounts are treated by the IRS has influenced my thinking.
  • Mining & Minerals Paper
    This is a good, in-depth discussion on the mining that will be necessary to meet the needs of the renewables industry from the Manhattan Institute. manhattan-institute.org — mines-minerals.pdf
    Some observations:
    All energy-producing machinery must be fabricated from materials extracted from the earth. No energy system, in short, is actually “renewable,” since all machines require the continual mining and processing of millions of tons of primary materials and the disposal of hardware that inevitably wears out.
    He says: Compared with hydrocarbon using devices, green machines entail, on average, a 10-fold increase in the quantities of materials extracted and processed to produce the same amount of energy. But I don’t see where he includes the extraction of fossil fuels for the conventional devices. Also, no mention of nuclear power is this report.
    Expansion of today’s level of green energy—currently less than 4% of the country’s total consumption (versus 56% from oil and gas)—will create an unprecedented increase in global mining for needed minerals.
    Among the material realities of green energy:
    Building wind turbines and solar panels to generate electricity, as well as batteries to fuel electric vehicles, requires, on average, more than 10 times the quantity of materials, compared with building machines using hydro-carbons to deliver the same amount of energy to society.
    Replacing hydrocarbons with green machines will vastly increase the mining of various critical minerals around the world. For example, a single electric car battery weighing 1,000 pounds requires extracting and processing some 500,000 pounds of materials. Averaged over a battery’s life, each mile of driving an electric car “consumes” five pounds of earth. Using an internal combustion engine consumes about 0.2 pounds of liquids per mile. (note, I think “consumes” is a misnomer here, the half a ton of materials are not actually consumed. Also, this 5 lbs to 0.2 lbs talk is not an apples to apples comparison)
    By 2050, with current plans, the quantity of worn-out solar panels—much of it non- recyclable—will constitute double the tonnage of all today’s global plastic waste, along with over 3 million tons per year of unrecyclable plastics from worn-out wind turbine blades. By 2030, more than 10 million tons per year of batteries will become garbage. (While a million tons seems to be a large amount, we really don’t know that it is for a country of 350 million people.)
    In sum
    Even without subsidies, mandates, and policies that favor green energy, the future for both America and the rest of the world will see many more wind and solar farms and many more electric cars. That will happen precisely because those technologies have matured enough to play significant roles. And given the magnitude of pent-up global demand for energy and energy-using machines and services—especially after the world struggles out of recession — the world will need “all of the above” in energy supplies.
    Note this report is a follow up to a report the author wrote in early 2019. Here’s a link without discussion https://manhattan-institute.org/green-energy-revolution-near-impossible
  • Old_Skeet's Market Barometer ... Spring & Summer Reporting ... and, My Positioning
    @MikeW,
    Thank you for your question about how I follow the markets.
    The barometer is not geared to follow the foreign markets as it follows the S&P 500 Index. However, the way I have my portfolio organized is by sleeves. I have three sleeves that are global in nature. Two are in the growth & income area of my portfolio and one in the growth area. All of the sleeves within the portfolio are set up in M* Portfolio Manager and are followed for performance as well as the funds contained in each sleeve. With this, I can tell what is moving and what is not by sleeve and by fund as well.
    My three best performing sleeves ... One Month Leaders ... are my global growth sleeve +5.83%, domestic growth large mid cap sleeve +5.52% and my global growth & income sleeve +3.85%. The global hybrid sleeve is the laggard (of the global sleeves) at +1.82%; but, it is an income generating sleeve with a yield of 3.9%.
    In comparison, my portfolio, as a whole (which includes my allocation to cash) has gained 2.14% over the past month and produces a yield of about 3.4%.
    In addition, I have a compass that tracks a number of equity and bond etf's, domestic, global and foreign.
    For my global compass the one month leaders are EEM +7.17% ... GSP +6.18% ... and, CWB +5.94%.
    For my domestic compass the one month leaders are XLB +9.21% ... XLV +6.20% ... and, XLK +4.52%.
    I'm thinking that any investor that wishes to actively engage the markets needs a way to follow the asset classes they wish to invest in. To do this I use my compass and my portfolio sleeve system as it provides data as to what is moving within my portfolio and what is not.
    Generally, any equity ballast (or spiff position) that I might position into centers around the S&P 500 Index which the barometer follows.
    Again, thank you for your question. I hope my answer has been helpful.
    Old_Skeet
  • Q: As you Spend Down Your Portfolio in Retirement...
    Chapter I -Too complex for me. Fortunately I purchased the DejaOffice App at Apple around the time I retired. It has proven highly reliable and very versatile for creating various files and keeping backups. Updating the most recent backup to all devices (weekly) works reliably. So I have basic records of just about everything related to investing since retiring 20+ years ago. Annual returns, additions from other sources, withdrawals by year, total withdrawals to date, total gains to date, Roth conversion dates and amounts, etc. etc. I also record every fund exchange, transfer or sale I make, but normally discard those files after 3 years. The thought of having to maintain all that garbage in some type of paper file (as might have been common 25 years ago) is daunting to say the least.
    Chapter II - I don’t worry too much about any overarching plan. Looking at those detailed records gives me some degree of confidence I’m heading in the right direction. We’ve skated around the related issue in the past of whether it’s better to keep a 3-5 year cash reserve to smooth out those market shocks or to just pull what you need from the overall blend of assets. The former allows for a more aggressive investment approach of course (but with fewer dollars). Good arguments both ways. I’m in the minority here as I believe in not maintaining a separate cash reserve. However, am quite conservatively invested,
    Chapter III - In terms of how much and when to withdraw? Depends on needs. Pull substantial amounts for a new car or home renovation maybe every 5 years. Lesser amounts for other years. If worried about market levitation I do a 6 month “advance” by transferring the next year’s anticipated needs into cash still within the tax-sheltered domain. I did that mid-way through 2019. Not planning on doing that this year. Politicians have gone spending crazy in an election year. A trillion here ... a trillion there ... Hell to pay some day. But I expect the markets to hold at least until November. As far as those drawdowns for major purchases go ... if the market’s sucking air and your investments are way down, postpone whatever you’d intended. Wait for a better time. I suspect that in that regard the human brain is better enabled to make the decision than would be MonteCarlo or any other computer simulation.
    Chapter IV - Can’t quite get my head around the popular notion of “spending down” assets. My invested assets have increased (in nominal terms) during retirement. I expect them to continue to increase. (That’s after whatever withdrawals were taken.) There’s something to be said for having an increasing “net worth” at any age. In fact, it seems counterintuitive to me to be “investing” (presumably for growth) while at the same time planning how to divest oneself of said assets. Maybe it’s because I have a decent pension. Don’t know. But it’s a real brain stopper for me.
  • Why 'Sleeping on It' Helps- a strategic investing style?
    This might be a very strange post.
    I had a new electrician over my house the other day. A real sharp guy with 50+ years of experience & a streak of the philosophical. My house which was built in the 1970s is a landmine of aluminum & copper wiring. Typically I handle most of the wiring myself but for this I needed a professional. I was mentioning that it was sort of like detective work trying to figure out where the short was when while standing on the ladder looking at the wiring issue, he turned to me & said "you know this might sound really weird but I do my best problem solving when I'm sleeping". I didn't think it was weird at all.
    Which brings me to this post.
    I really respect & appreciate someone like Old_Skeet's barometer postings which lays out a very robust systematic way of investing using numbers.
    However, that's not how I roll even though I have at times tried. I've most likely left good money behind in the process but fortunately also avoided any major blow-ups along the way. I have tried to put as much on auto-pilot regarding finances as I can & have tried to idiot-proof the process along the way (to guard against my own bad decisions).
    The encounter with the electrician (who is now my go-to electrician for me when needed) crystallized how I do approach investing as with most of my life. My best problem solving & subsequent decisions come to me while either on a walkabout (hike of some sort) or sleeping. Not very scientific but has worked out extremely well for me throughout my life. I have been out on my own since I was 16 & have done okay. I also have done either yoga or tai chi throughout my life which I find helps immensely in clearing my mind. The more I consciously think about investing, the worse decisions I generally make. I tried rule-based investing for stocks for a short time, but wasn't very successful. Yikes, I sold Amazon at $400.
    I do try to stay stay informed & am not data-phobic. Information gathering (from a multitude of sources including here at MFO) is important & helps the unconscious processing.
    This process also is helped if one does not carry a lot of expectation. One has to be okay with the unknown.
    Why 'Sleeping on It' Helps
    So that's my strategy for investing.
    Any thoughts or comments?
  • How Did Members First Find MFO? IOW What Got You Here?
    I remember Ed’s depth of knowledge as well as the “wickedly sarcastic sense of humor” Mark references. His last post ISTM was to the effect he didn’t want to participate in a board he characterized as “Links Central” or something fairly close to that. So often when people leave - or threaten to - they’re back again. In Ed’s case I can’t remember his ever posting again. A true loss.
    I’m fairly certain that remark might be buried in the board’s extensive archives, as it was after we transitioned from FA to mfo.
    @msf - Thanks or all the digging.
    @bee - Thanks for the link to a 2001 Fund Alarm page. It appears that was before my time. Being a science buff, I surely would have remembered a handle like Neutron. How clever and unique!
    For convenience, here’s that link again.
    https://web.archive.org/web/20011205080443/http://64.45.57.12/wwwboard/wwwboard.html
  • Pimco Income bond fund Another one that was good until it wasn't?
    The simple way of computing an average credit rating would be to score AA's as 1, BB's as 2, etc. (with fractional adjustments for AAA, A, etc.). That's what many sources do.
    M* instead weights each grade by the risk it represents. BBB bonds have around 4-5x the default risk of AAA bonds, CCC bonds have around 50-100x the default rate of AAA bonds. So it's pretty clear that a simple average won't do if what you're interested in is a sense of average default risk.
    image
    Source:https://www.livewiremarkets.com/wires/quantifying-the-risk-of-bonds-with-s-p-credit-ratings
    Add to this the fact that M* counts non-rated (NR) bonds as BB or B, and one begins to see how PTIAX could have a weighted credit risk "score" of BB.
    Ted posted a thread last November entitled Are Bond Funds Misreporting Their Portfolio Holdings?
    https://mutualfundobserver.com/discuss/discussion/54229/are-bond-funds-misreporting-their-portfolio-holdings
    This linked to a story about an NBER white paper, Don't Take Their Word For It: The Misclassification of Bond Mutual Funds. The thesis was that funds themselves are overstating the quality of their holdings. That would tend to make even M*'s fund credit ratings too optimistic.
    https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=3474557 (Actual research paper)
    This paper generated some back and forth between the authors and M*. I don't know if the M* page below represents the tail end of that exchange, but it should help anyone who's interested get started in sorting through the issues.
    https://www.morningstar.com/learn/bond-ratings-integrity
    One of the papers M* links to gives this hypothetical fund scoring:
    Credit Quality	Weighting %	Default Score	 Average Score
    AAA 15.00 0.00 0.00
    AA 24.00 0.56 0.13
    A 18.00 2.22 0.40
    BBB 34.00 5.00 1.70
    BB  9.00 17.78 1.60
    B  0.00 49.44 0.00
    Below B  0.00 100.00 0.00
    Not Rated  0.00 49.44 0.00
    Average Score 3.83
    Since M* considers all funds with weighted average scores between 3.47223 and 9.02778 to be of BBB quality, this hypothetical fund would get a BBB rating from M*.
  • Pimco Income bond fund Another one that was good until it wasn't?
    If one of you bond meisters (maybe msf?) can explain this to me it would be surely appreciated. I am looking heavily into bond funds now as I reach retirement .M* rates the PTIAX bond avg rating as BB in the style box area . Yet it then reports these bond rating percentages as present in the fund. AAA 32.71%,AA 31.37% A 10% BBB 5.75% BB 1.33% B 0.92% Below B 8.59% and NR 9.13%. I have seen similar numbers on M* where the bond avg rating is far below the actual percentages which are much greater among the higher rated bonds. It would seem to me that the above PTIAX bond rating avg would be more like A and not BB as noted. Am I missing something here?
  • Old_Skeet's Market Barometer ... Spring & Summer Reporting ... and, My Positioning
    Hi guys,
    In looking back though the thread I see where the last report was made on July 4th with a reading of 125 indicating that the S&P 500 Index was extremely overbought. Since then, not much has changed with the barometer reading; and, as of Friday July 17th it scores the Index with a reading of 121 reflecting that the Index remains extremely overbought.
    Recently, Jim Cramer made a call based upon some charting that he believes we might be in for a pullback towards the end of July. We will see if this comes to be. For me, I'm also thinking that there is some near term downside coming.
    Here is the link to Mr. Cramer's call https://www.marketwatch.com/story/cnbc-mad-money-host-jim-cramer-uses-this-chart-to-predict-the-exact-date-the-stock-market-could-hit-the-skids-2020-07-15
    Since last report ... I have reduced my equity allocation from about 45% equity to 40% equity and raised cash by a like amount. This now puts my asset allocation at about 15% cash, 45% income and 40% equity. From here I do not have any buy or sell activity planned; and, I await the next stock market pull back building cash from my portfolio's income generation. Most likely, I'll do a little equity buying should we get into a stock market pull back which would be a decline, for the Index, of -5% (3065) to -10% (2900) from its near term high of 3225. Currently, the Index is off it's 52 week closing high of 3386 by about -5% and is up off it's 52 week closing low of 2237 by just short of +45%. That is a strong run upwards, form the 52 week low, without a major pull back.
    For me, a dip is a decline of up to -5%, a pull back is a decline from -5% to -10%, a correction is a decline of -10% to -15%, a downdraft is a decline of -15% to -20%, and a bear market is a decline greater than -20%.
    Generally, stocks go soft during the summer ... so be cautious. I know, I am.
    Take care ... and, be safe.
    Old_Skeet
  • Pimco Income bond fund Another one that was good until it wasn't?
    Hi guys,
    Yes, have owned PONAX even before it was that and the ER increase. ...
    God bless
    the Pudd
    PONAX's ER bounces around quite a bit because the SEC requires it to include the costs of traditional leveraging. These are genuine costs: borrowing $1 to make $2 still costs you interest on that dollar. But there are also ways to create leverage that have costs that aren't included in the ER.
    This makes some funds appear cheaper than others, even though they're not.
    Here's a M* article on this phenomenon and how M* adjusts the ER figures it reports.
    https://www.morningstar.com/articles/969612/one-expense-ratio-to-rule-them-all
    Currently, 0.55% of the ER for PONAX (and other share classes) is this interest expense.
    See footnote 1 in the summary prospectus.
  • Pimco Income bond fund Another one that was good until it wasn't?
    The PIMIX assessment was based solely on PIMIX previous years. In 2018 it was at 18% in its category but making 0.6% is pretty low when PTIAX made 2% and SEMMX made 3.9%.
    Possibly the comparison with PTIAX alone was deemed not sufficiently persuasive. Regardless and for whatever reason, the ringer SEMMX was tossed in - a fund that isn't a multisector fund (per M*). Which begs the question: why stop with just the third best nontraditional fund of 2018?
    Instead of cherry picking SEMMX, a 1* fund with a tarnished reputation, one could have cherry picked CLMAX, a 5* fund. Its 2018 performance of 7.58% not only nearly doubled that of SEMMX, but it made PTIAX look anemic.
    ==========
    Argentinian fiasco? PIMIX had just a 2% exposure to bonds that dropped in value to 71¢ on the dollar.
    https://www.pionline.com/markets/pimcos-bet-argentine-bond-paying-75-rate-hit-peso-rout
    As that column noted: "PIMCO's profits or losses on the bonds would depend significantly on the extent to which it hedged its foreign-exchange exposure." PIMCO stated that half of PIMIX's position (i.e. 1%) was dollar-denominated.
    The proof is in the pudding. In August, PIMIX dropped 1.11% vs. the category's 0.83% gain. It made up that 1.94% underperformance in the remainder of the year by outperforming monthly by 0.65%, 0.40%, 0.36%, and 0.50%. (Data from M*)
    Interesting how attention is called to some some black swan events with small impact, while others are disregarded ("You can't look at PIMIX YTD and compare it to BND (high rated bonds) when we had a black swan")
    ========
    PDBAX is not a M* Multi category fund but a Intermediate core plus fund
    People here generally understand that M* categories are not the be-all end-all (see, e.g. RPHYX). I mentioned PDBAX specifically because M* does not calls it multisector, writing:
    I ...suggest[] again to take a look at core plus funds. Generally core plus funds carry a bit less credit risk than multisector funds, though there's a fair amount of overlap between the most aggressive core plus and the more tame multisector funds. ... For example PDBAX.
    The data I presented and that you quoted supports that thesis. What was your point?
    FWIW, ADVNX is not a Lipper multi-sector income fund but a flexible income fund.
    =========
    2) SD(volatility) lower than 5
    3) Morningstar return above average or high

    These are effectively the same test. Since standard deviation is a second moment, a single outlier will skew the calculation. If a fund's SD is not distorted by March's performance figure, then March's performance must not have been an outlier. This in turn virtually mandates that the fund's return be relatively high (i.e. without a significant dip).
  • Pimco Income bond fund Another one that was good until it wasn't?
    Hi guys,
    Yes, have owned PONAX even before it was that and the ER increase. Made money then and now on 3-26-20 made a large 5-digit buy and am up 6.93%---again, Fido numbers, not mine. In that timeframe, I sold all bond funds except this one.....and in the future this could go, too.
    God bless
    the Pudd