I need help with my calendar. Or a working link.
Where I live it's only 20200524. And I can't find the article mentioned by Old Skeet.

I use FR(floating rates) funds only for trades. FR are one of the best bond categories when rates are going up because of their very short duration. FR are a subcategory of HY and when market conditions are risky they lose money just like HY do.
Let's discuss higher distribution of all types, from stocks to bonds and others. I have been debunking it for years now that higher distribution investments are superior to lower ones. You must look at risk/reward and only then look for higher distributions. The most disturbing is when a retiree MUST have a certain % withdrawal and insist on investment to support it. Sure, if it's 2-3% no problems but the ones that MUST have 4-5% and more should look at risk/reward first.
The most important is TOTAL RETURNS which includes distributions.
Stocks-if the high tech companies such as MSFT didn't convince you now after decades of great performance then nothing will.
Bonds-do I must go for HY to get better risk/reward? of course not.

Similarly, USAA has an announcement about its mutual fund transitioning once you log in:
Important Notice: Victory Capital and USAA are updating the final technology transition date for USAA Mutual Funds and USAA 529 College Savings Plan accounts. The full technology transition to vcm.com will occur in the third quarter of 2020.
While your accounts will transition automatically at no cost to you, there are some actions you may need to take to ease the technology transition. You will have continued access to your accounts through usaa.com until the technology transition occurs. For more information, see Review Important Transition Dates found in the To Do List.

@hank - and so it shall be.
Lyn Alden Schwartzer's May 19 article, "First Liquidity, Then Solvency," is a brief, detailed and chart-laden description of today's economy and market.
"Does it get better from here, or is this a big fake-out for another round of selling as we move deeper into this year? ...
"The next several years are likely to be challenging for many companies with weak balance sheets, so make sure you know what you own.
"...the top 5 mega-cap stocks have held up the major American stock market indices like Atlas holding up the world, and reached levels of concentration not seen in nearly four decades."
"...policymakers around the world can't afford to let a massive deflationary economic collapse occur, and for millions and millions of people to be unable to afford the necessities of life and for half of large companies to go out of business, so they will be forced to keep the stimulus taps open, funded with printed money, with a willingness to devalue currency to avoid the worst case economic scenario."
Lyn Alden Schwartzer's May 19 article

https://www.forbes.com/sites/michaelfoster/2020/05/23/floating-rate-funds-in-a-covid-19-world-buy-or-sell/#6141b51b6eff
Floating Rate Funds In A COVID-19 World: Buy Or Sell?
Volatility has taken over, and if you’re like most folks, you’re wondering where to find the safe dividends you need to sustain your savings—and income stream—as this pandemic drags on.
enjoy

Nice basic portfolios. I find it interesting that he selected DODBX over VWELX.
As I've written in other posts, 2020 skews the figures. A 6% performance difference YTD is enough to make VWELX look better over any time frame. But this is (we hope) a once in a century situation. Outside of this period, DODBX looks better. OTOH, what 2020 highlights is the higher risk inherent in D&C funds.
David Snowball perhaps addresses this in his sidebar on index funds: although not best in bad markets, good over the long term. The same could be said of D&C funds.
One small nit to pick: PONRX is a load fund. As it says in its prospectus: "distribution fees ... may cost you more than other types of sales charges, such as [front end loads]. Therefore, ... the distribution fees payable on ... Class R shares may, over time, cost you more than Class A [front end loads]".
Better to buy PONAX load waived. The embedded (level) load in PONRX is reflected in its lower Morningstar (retrospective) star rating and its lower Morningstar (prospective) medal rating.

https://www.forbes.com/sites/jrose/2020/05/22/do-you-have-a-long-term-plan-if-the-coronavirus-bear-market-continues/#73b450b0c391
Do You Have A Long-Term Plan If The Coronavirus Bear Market Continues?
2020 has been a wild ride in the stock market. After setting an all-time high on February 19, the market slid a stunning 34% by March 23 – a space of barely 5 weeks.
Then it did something probably nobody at the time saw coming – it took an equally dramatic turn upward. Through April 30 the market recovered 32% from its March lows, as measured by the S&P 500.

Using your "good until it wasn't" Pimco bond fund PONAX, one sees that DSEEX's performance since April 30th was roughly the sum of CAPE's and PONAX's. (Remember that DSEEX is leveraged for 200% exposure: 100% CAPE, 100% bond.)
See graph here. (Graph only shows CAPE through 5/21; it closed up 0.24% on 5/22)
The graph does show fairly clearly that the bond portion of DSEEX is not, however, mimicking PONAX. If it were, the spread between DSEEX and CAPE would have been microscopic until a week ago (since PONAX was roughly flat for the first couple of weeks in May).
DSEEX: +1.86%
PONAX: +1.20%
CAPE: +0.35% + 0.24% (Friday)
Total: +1.79%

The Dividend Builder ETF prospectus, as yet incomplete.
My understanding is that the conversion was pursued in order to level the playing field by eliminating structural costs. The managers win if and only if the new wrapper carries dramatically lower fees than the original, and fees lower enough to win back the attention of the advisor community. So far, those haven't been published.
Jim Atkinson, btw, once noted that this fund was vastly more popular in Europe than in the US. "Something about the underlying logic really connects with the German investor," he said.

Starting end April DSEEX pulled ahead of CAPE and then a week or so ago ahead of SP500. Maybe the bond sauce has been reformulated. (Some of the Pimco gogo vehicles have perked up also.)

2020 skews results. Some funds have done way better than their long term performance would suggest, LLSCX has done remarkably worse (99th percentile of mid cap blend category).
Looking instead at 1/1/2010 through 1/1/2020, LLSCX has done okay. Not an endorsement or a commentary on its investments, but rather a suggestion to look at more than one snapshot in time. Especially given that the outsized impact of the 2020 market effectively transforms some "long term" figures into "what have you done for me lately" pictures.
Here's a chart over that timeframe comparing LLSCX, R2K (its stated benchmark), midcap blend (its M* category since 2011), and small cap value (it claims to buy small cap companies, and Longleaf generally claims to be a value family). It just edged out R2K (210% cumulative return vs. 206% for R2K), and did better against the MCB and SCV category averages.
M* comparison chart
If you don't like looking at charts (personally I prefer to read numbers), the LLSCX summary prospectus says that the fund's average return over the past ten years was 11.98% vs 11.83 for the R2K. That's 2010-2019.
Why bother? Lots of better funds out there.
Can't argue with that :-)

[Did not see David's post above as I was constructing this one.]
LewisBraham:
Of course I am not sure, but I believe that it is (more or less) a first.
Did a Google search that came up only with one story from 2008 [!]:

Claymore Advisors announced that the shareholders of Claymore/Raymond James SB-1 Equity Fund (RYJ) have approved the [closed-end] fund’s reorganization into an ETF format.

(Ignoring Vanguard's patented mutual fund/ETF structure.)
These 2019 stories suggest that this could be a first.

https://www.etf.com/sections/features-and-news/how-mutual-funds-convert-etfs
https://www.bbh.com/en-us/insights/making-the-switch--turning-a-mutual-fund-into-an-exchange-traded-fund-38254
https://www.thompsonhine.com/publications/converting-a-mutual-fund-to-an-etf-key-considerations

The last (7-15-2019) from the Thompson Hine law firm, states:

To date, no mutual fund has been converted into an ETF. Such a conversion raises regulatory and operational issues, none of which are insurmountable.

So, think it is probably a first.
(Will you let us know what you discover?)
-----------------------------------------------
May 30 Update: See LewisBraham's May 28 post below.

I have been in and now out of Longleaf funds for decades. I finally gave up. While their reports are wonderfully detailed, and they make compelling arguments for all of their positions, the market seldom agrees.
I think they make some disastrous mistakes over the years, and stuck with large positions that were cheap and stayed cheaper or got cheaper.
Neither LLSCX or LLPFX have beaten their benchmark over the last decade. 11% of LLSCX is in Century Link which is down 35% since they first bought it. While CTL owns a large chunk of the internet backbone, it is loosing revenue quickly.
Why bother? Lots of better funds out there.

Too much bad news still out there. I'm slowly selling things as market rises to build cash. I think we're going to have a lot more businesses going south this summer. We're starting to see small businesses locally (WA state) announce going out of business sales. I think that will continue. And big companies like JC Penney and Hertz announced this week too. I think that trend will continue as so many businesses are leveraged to the hilt (as the MBA degree folks think that is the best way to do things).
So right now I'm taking profits and building cash. I've made a bunch of money in this rebound with QQQ although I sold my last of that this week. I'm about 50% stocks now where I'm usually more like 75. Still about 10% down for the year; that happens but I don't want to take a big drop.

May 23rd Episode:

I also wish to thank @Puddnhead for all the informative and entertaining B/ S threads over the years. I suspect that’s a favorite read for many who don’t actively participate.
@Mark - Your Lyn Alden Schwartzer article would also fit under the “What The Hell is The Stock Market Doing?” thread: https://www.mutualfundobserver.com/discuss/discussion/56135/what-the-hell-is-the-stock-market-doing-cullen-roche

Lyn Alden Schwartzer's May 19 article, "First Liquidity, Then Solvency," is a brief, detailed and chart-laden description of today's economy and market.
"Does it get better from here, or is this a big fake-out for another round of selling as we move deeper into this year? ...
"The next several years are likely to be challenging for many companies with weak balance sheets, so make sure you know what you own.
"...the top 5 mega-cap stocks have held up the major American stock market indices like Atlas holding up the world, and reached levels of concentration not seen in nearly four decades."
"...policymakers around the world can't afford to let a massive deflationary economic collapse occur, and for millions and millions of people to be unable to afford the necessities of life and for half of large companies to go out of business, so they will be forced to keep the stimulus taps open, funded with printed money, with a willingness to devalue currency to avoid the worst case economic scenario."

Roubini again
https://nymag.com/intelligencer/2020/05/why-the-economy-is-headed-for-a-post-coronavirus-depression-nouriel-roubini.html

LG is where it's at for true growth.

Yeah. Trying to see any args against all VONG all the time; slicing and comparing past subsample periods and all that.
VONG started later than the awful late summer of 08 and on to the April 2010 recovery, but taking TRBCX as a sort-of proxy (it performs slightly better than VONG, and yes, has holdings in the low hundreds as opposed to the low 500s), it is only from Aug 08 to Feb 09 that LG underperforms SP500, and by a nontrivial gap, like 10%. But then back to even, after that brutal half-year.

News article concerning reopening:
https://www.advisorperspectives.com/articles/2020/05/22/southeastern-the-exceptional-opportunity-in-small-cap-value?topic=energy
Southeastern Asset Management excerpt concerning LLSCX reopening:
We designed this reopening in a thoughtful way. We are only targeting $2.5 billion of AUM. If we get there quicker with a performance bounce-back, that's great. We'll close again. We've shown over the years that we focus on doing the right thing for those clients who are already with us.