Several comments
1) FMIJX ranks in M* in its category for YTD and 1-3 years at 92-94 which is at the bottom 6-8%. In the last 5 years it ranked in the top 10% in 3 years but at the bottom 2 years. That should tell you its inconsistency. Up to 2016 it was a much better performer.
2) From their 3/31/2020 outlook "At this early stage, COVID-19 has hurt value investors much more than their growth counterparts. Many sectors and industries in the value camp, such as financials, energy, industrials, travel and hospitality, have been the hardest hit by the virus. Intensifying the market pressure, Saudi Arabia’s unexpected move to open the spigots has crushed the price of oil. Nearly all energy-related companies, including businesses that only have moderate energy exposure, have seen their stocks decline precipitously. Year-to-date, value has underperformed growth by 10.69%, as the MSCI EAFE Value Index has declined 8.20%,"
3) You can switch to CWVGX with better performance + risk. See PV(link)
4) I have been avoiding international for years now. The SP500 gets about 40% of its earnings from abroad and QQQ about 50%.

Hi @VintageFreak, I share your concerns. With the low yields on cash ... and, the thought that equities will run low on gas ... I hope to be at my target allocation of 10% cash, 45% income and 45% equity come the first part of summer. Within equities I'm about half in the good dividend paying value type funds with the other half being in growth.

Just found Fidelity closed three of its money market funds a couple of weeks ago (sorry if this was already posted previously):
https://www.pionline.com/investing/fidelity-closes-3-money-market-funds-new-investors
or
https://www.nasdaq.com/articles/fidelity-shuts-three-money-market-funds-to-most-new-investors-2020-03-31
or
https://finance.yahoo.com/news/fidelity-shuts-three-money-market-205320236.html

Vanguard says this is to preserve yield as rates on Treasury paper plummet. If there isn't a lot of money flowing in (net), the fund doesn't have to buy a lot of low yielding notes all at once. So closing is a good thing for existing investors.
Based on that, I would expect it to reopen in 3-6 months, when most of the portfolio has turned over. By then, rates should have stabilized (at 0?). So even if it has to buy more paper after reopening later, that shouldn't hurt the yield.
I could have sworn that this fund was yielding around 1.2% not long ago. It's now down do 0.63%. So one can understand Vanguard's interest in doing what it can to slow the decline.
Even now, that 0.63% is so low that I'd rather keep money in a bank account. There are several yielding 1.5% or better.

I moved money from Vanguard Prime to this fund because it would be "safer". I need to move it to high interest money market I guess. Or make some other plans.

April 17th, 2020 Episode:

I thought we would make it to month end before I'd be scribing another barometer report but with Friday's upward move and +75 point day gain in the S&P 500 Index puts Old_Skeet's market barometer into overvalue range with a reading of 143. This is a 10 point decline for the week. The overvalue reading is on the low side of the barometer's scale, from fair value, with the readings of overbought and extremely overbought following as the barometer readings decline. Generally, a lower barometer reading indicates that there is less investment value in the Index over a higher barometer reading.
For the week the Index moved upward +85 points from 2790 to 2875 for a +3.0% gain. This puts the Index up off it's recent 52 week low by +28.5% but down by -15.1% off it's 52 week high. With this, the Index remains in correction territory. The yield advantage remains with the stock Index at 2.07% vs 0.65% for the US10YrT. Short volume in the Index remains high at 69% (weekly average) while the VIX has declined to the mid 30% range. Seems, the shorts continue to bet against the rally. For the week the three best performing sectors were consumer discretionary +7.86%, health care +6.34%, and technology +4.79%.
So where does this put Old_Skeet with respect to his portfolio? As of Friday my portfolio bubbles at 13% cash, 38% income and 49% equity. My temporary rebound asset allocation is 10% cash, 45% income and 45% equity. With the FOMC & Treasury buying bonds and lending to state and municipal governemnts I'm still with my plan to continue to buy on the income side of my portfolio. I plan to soon start a rebalance process where I will be reducing my equity allocation and moving the sell procees to the income side of my portfolio. Overall, my portfolio is performing much like a conserative asset allocation fund that holds 30% to 50% equity.
For the week my three best performing funds were on the equity side of the portfolio. They were SPECX +6.42% ... KAUAX +5.89% and, AGTHX +5.83%. Year-to-date my best performing fund is CTFAX +9.59%. It is a flexible portfolio fund that adjust it's stock allocation to the movement of the S&P 500 Index. At the beginning of the stock market swoon it was 15% equity and now holds 70% equity. Sometime within the next week (or the next) I look for it to start it's rebalance process where it will begin to sell down its equity allocation, booking some profit, and increasing it's bond allocation. Based upon the S&P 500 Index's current reading of 2875 I look for it to adjust to a 35% (maybe 40%) equity allocation with the balance being in bonds and cash.
For those interested, you can learn more about CTFAX by clicking on the below link.
https://www.columbiathreadneedleus.com/investment-products/mutual-funds/Columbia-Thermostat-Fund/Class-A/details/?cusip=197199755&_n=1
Thanks for stopping by and reading.
Take care ... be safe ... and, I wish all ... "Good Investing."
I am, Old_Skeet

Vanguard says this is to preserve yield as rates on Treasury paper plummet. If there isn't a lot of money flowing in (net), the fund doesn't have to buy a lot of low yielding notes all at once. So closing is a good thing for existing investors.
Based on that, I would expect it to reopen in 3-6 months, when most of the portfolio has turned over. By then, rates should have stabilized (at 0?). So even if it has to buy more paper after reopening later, that shouldn't hurt the yield.
I could have sworn that this fund was yielding around 1.2% not long ago. It's now down do 0.63%. So one can understand Vanguard's interest in doing what it can to slow the decline.
Even now, that 0.63% is so low that I'd rather keep money in a bank account. There are several yielding 1.5% or better.

https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/891190/000168386320003566/f3655d1.htm
497 1 f3655d1.htm VANGUARD TREASURY MONEY MARKET FUND 497
Vanguard Treasury Money Market Fund
Supplement Dated April 16, 2020, to the Prospectus and Summary Prospectus Dated December 20, 2019
Vanguard Treasury Money Market Fund (the "Fund") is closed to all new investors (with the exception of participants who invest in the Fund only through defined contribution plans that offer the Fund as an existing option).
The Fund will remain closed until further notice and there is no specific timeframe for when the Fund will reopen. During the Fund's closed period, all current shareholders may continue to purchase, exchange, or redeem shares of the Fund online, by telephone, or by mail.
The Fund may modify these transaction policies at any time and without prior notice to shareholders. You may call Vanguard for more detailed information about the Fund's transaction policies. Participants in employer-sponsored plans may call Vanguard Participant Services at 800-523-1188. Investors in nonretirement accounts and IRAs may call Vanguard's Investor Information Department at 800-662-7447.

Agree. Very nice set of papers from @sma3.
I've been going through the NEJM paper and have some clarifying questions about the oxygen support figures. From a high level perspective, this detail doesn't matter, but I do try to understand various figures.
With respect to invasive/non-invasive mechanical/non-mechanical ventilation, the NEJM study seems to characterize ventilators as invasive mechanical, and ECMOs ("similar to the heart-lung by-pass machine used in open-heart surgery") as invasive non-mechanical ventilation.
So of the total 34 patients receiving invasive ventilation, it appears that 30 were on ventilators and 4 on ECMOs. That's out of the 53 that completed the study.
The text talks about "a decrease of at least 2 points from baseline on a modified ordinal scale (as recommended by the WHO R&D Blueprint Group) ... The six-point scale consists of the following categories: 1, not hospitalized; 2, hospitalized, not requiring supplemental oxygen; 3, hospitalized, requiring supplemental oxygen; 4, hospitalized, requiring nasal high-flow oxygen therapy, noninvasive mechanical ventilation, or both; 5, hospitalized, requiring invasive mechanical ventilation, ECMO, or both; and 6, death."
Looking at Figure 1, first column (invasive oxygen support at baseline), I see "only" 16 patients (48%) dropping at least two points. So I'm puzzled by this line in the post above: "They were able to reduce their oxygen requirements by 2 steps ( from ventilator to nasal oxygen for example) in 56 % of patients which implies that they are getting much better."
The paper also describes a finer granularity of oxygen support, including "low-flow oxygen, nasal high-flow oxygen, [and] noninvasive positive pressure ventilation [NIPPV]", Perhaps sma3 is using another scale where high-flow oxygen and NIPPV are counted as separate levels. If so, it would help to see what that scale looks like.
None of this changes the generally positive results reported in the paper. I'm just trying to understand the definitions and numbers.

...but it is still expensive.
https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/1370177/000139834420008148/fp0053131_497.htm
RIVERNORTH FUNDS
RiverNorth Core Opportunity Fund
Institutional Share Class
(Ticker Symbol RNCIX)
April 17, 2020
SUPPLEMENT TO PROSPECTUS DATED
January 28, 2020
The RiverNorth Core Opportunity Fund Institutional Share Class to Reduce Initial Minimum Investment Amount.
On April 6, 2020 the Board of Trustees (the "Board") of RiverNorth Funds approved a change to the initial minimum investment amount for the Institutional Share Class for the RiverNorth Core Opportunity Fund (the “Fund”). Effective on April 24, 2020, the minimum initial investment amount for the Fund’s Institutional Share Class (ticker RNCIX) will reduce from $5,000,000 to $100,000.
RIVERNORTH FUNDS
c/o ALPS Fund Services, Inc.
1290 Broadway, Suite 1100
Denver, Colorado 80203
1-888-848-7569
Please retain this supplement with your Prospectus for future reference.

I assume that the studies will have enough patients in them so eventually we will have lots of data on effectiveness on patients in hospital. I do not know what egibility criteria they are using to add a patient to the study; presumably on assisted ventilation ( ie at least BiPap) or significant oxygenation or other measures of severity but if they are smart they have included patietns in early stages to see if it prevents deterioration
Keep in mind thought that even if it is extremely effective and say reduces mortality or deterioration by 50% it will not stop transmission or new cases. People will still be worried about getting sick and the still increased ( if lower) risk of death.
Thus a wildly successful drug may lessen the panic and fear, but may not do as much to reopen things as people will still be worried about getting sick
I very much doubt Hydroxychloroquine will do much, but we will know more shortly.
Several small better studies than the one Trump touts have shown little to some smaller benefits
https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.04.10.20060699v1
https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.03.22.20040758v3
But we need to know all of data definitions and how studies were done. For example in latter study what does "improved pneumonia" mead? Did the doctors who read the patients xrays know the patient was taking hydroxychloroquine?
These are standard protocols that must be followed if we are to have confidence these drugs will be effective.
Without this is as if Trump had decided that Boeing had "done enough" to fix the Max 737, certified it to fly by presidential edict and told the FAA to stop the investigation.
Who would get on such an aircraft?

I have a background in clinical epidemiology and research design and have followed all this carefully.
Better data is published from the compassionate use study in the NEJM
https://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJMoa2007016
It seems the folks were appropriate for compassionate use... that is they were doing very poorly 34 were on ventilators and 3 on heart lung bypass machines
The available studies from China and Italy and Seattle have different criteria for hospital admission so I looked just at the patients on ventilators from their studies. . They also mix in "non invasive mechanical ventilation" which is hard to tell what that means without digging thru the supplements, presumably BiPap.
Of the patients on ventilators in Redesivir study the mortality thus far is 18% ( 6 of 34) but only 24% ( 8 of 34) are out of the hospital so 58% are still hospitalized. So highest mortality if all remaining in hospital died would be 76%
They were able to reduce their oxygen requirements by 2 steps ( from ventilator to nasal oxygen for example) in 56 % of patients which implies that they are getting much better
There are very few studies I have seen to compare.
Seattle ventilator patients https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jama/fullarticle/2763485
had 67% mortality with 24% still "critically ill" ( so possibly up to 91% dead) but these patients had more comorbidities ( 85% vs 68% with one coexisting condition, and 10% organ transplants, 42% heart failure, and 10% on dialysis. I doubt patients this sick were considered for compassionate use.
Wuhan https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140-6736(20)30566-3/fulltext
had 31/32 patients who needed ventilators die and 24/26 patients who needed non invasive mechanical ventilation die. This is a general population and maybe more comparable to Remdisivir
To compare Redesivir and Wuhan numbers, let us assume the only survivors are those currently discharged ( and none of them go on to die), and anyone left in hospital at time of publication dies, AND THAT WUHAN AND USA PATIENTS AND HOSPITAL ARE SIMILAR
Comparing 8/34 survivors (Redesivir) vs 3/58 (Wuhan) or 24% survival vs 5%.
The chi-square statistic is 11.139. The p-value is .000845. Significant at p < .05.
But this is a very very marginal way to determine health policy!!! This is why we need controlled trial in the same institution. We need to know if the patients are similar, and even if they are, the controls should be chosen at the same time as the treatment group , chosen in a randomized fashion and in the same country and health system. I doubt any of us would want to rely on a drug that was proven to work only in Wuhan China. The opposite should be true.
Hopefully we will not get to the point where like Hydroxychloroquine,no o ne will want to participate in such a study, fearing they will not get a life saving drug. Consequently this type of study should be the only way this drug is available.

@msf If you look at the original article, this was from a phase 3 trial. But yes, it's only one small part of that trial, so Gilead is correctly saying it's promising but too soon to be sure.
Poking around a bit further, it seems that even if it works, they could produce a million doses by the end of the year.
That wouldn't be enough to end this pandemic, though it would save a lot of lives.
Seems to me the market is betting that something is on the way, whether this drug or something else or a comob, so the end is in sight.

This sounds Promising but the report is only anecdotal at this point. We need to see the full results from the clinical trials that are ongoing. This is information from one site in Chicago and there are 152 clinical trial sites around the world for this drug. We should learn more in the next couple of weeks.

"The virus is in charge, no economics or the Fed."
Correct.
https://www.politico.com/news/2020/04/15/coronavirus-hot-spots-farm-belt-189272

Speaking of FEMA.
WA state had the earliest case of COVID19 and should be among the first to try to exit the lockdown. If exiting requires testing for people who are hot and people who are immune, we have a slight problem in my area. It seems FEMA is diverting test equipment to the bridge to nowhere or places unknown. The suspicion is that they are buying with taxpayer dollars, transferring to private industry to maximize the profit for the private on the taxpayer equipment.
https://www.cascadiaweekly.com/cw/currents/feds_divert_medical_supplies_from_peacehealth
This article has some of FEMA's response:
https://www.bellinghamherald.com/news/coronavirus/article241884351.html
This, of course, is unrelated to the Fed's dislike for Governor Inslee or such things.

I think the answer to "So who's right?" is it depends.
Here in mid April, there is still no widespread testing available in the U.S.
Aggressive widespread testing (for the virus itself as well as for antibodies) & contact tracing/surveillance would not only start to give control of containing the infection but would also go a long way in boosting confidence in the business world with some semblance on how to proceed going forward. It would definitely be the most cost effective way to do so & with the most surgical precision. And even though this is not a panacea (with false negative viral tests, the unknown at what level of antibody titers actually confer immunity, best treatment options, etc.), at least it's an effective start & a plan of action & can start to address specific issues as they come up. It seems like a logical first step.
Instead this is the white house plans for reopening:
"The plan lays out three phases: Preparing the nation to reopen with a national communication campaign and community readiness assessment until May 1. Then, the effort through May 15 would involve ramping up manufacturing of testing kits and personal protective equipment and increasing emergency funding. Then staged reopenings would begin, depending on local conditions."
https://www.washingtonpost.com/health/2020/04/14/cdc-fema-have-created-plan-reopen-america-heres-what-it-says/
It's a long way between now & May 15.
"prepare for the best & hope for the best" is probably not the answer.

Good morning. In checking a few things this morning the futures look to be up in Europe and the States ... the options market is sending a cautious bullish signal ... and, the VIX is now down to the mid thirties. I'm still with my thoughts that stocks will be mostly be range bound, but with a slight upward tilt, as we move thorugh most of the summer months. The short volume in the Index was elevated yesterday with a reading in the 70% range of total volume for SPY. Perhaps, today they will do some covering.
I have the Index as of market close 4/15 down -17.8% off its closing 52 week high and up +24.4% from its closing 52 week low. With this, I am not looking for stocks to have the upward surge that they have had the past couple of weeks as things most likely will move more slowly and... hopefully ... upwards as we work our way through Q1 earning season. In checking my source ... S&P is projecting that TTM earnings for the S&P 500 Index will be in the mid 130's. With an earnings yield of 5% this puts the Index with a valuation somewhere around 2700 range. From the 2700 range ... I'm thinking ... we will move upwards with good news and downward with bad. And, by the way, Old_Skeet's market barometer has the Index at fair value on it's scale as I write.
Have a good day ... be safe ... and, I wish all ... "Good Investing."

Consider someone working 11 hours a day, leaving 5 hours for personal time, and 8 hours for sleep. That person would not be especially inclined to give up one of those few personal hours for extra pay.
Suppose that nevertheless this person would, for some amount of money, be willing to give up a precious hour. Then the person would be willing to give up that hour for half as much, a quarter, even for minimum wage.
This comes from the assertion that netting less money would not increase the reluctance (decrease the willingness) to work an extra hour.
Now suppose the contrary. That this hardworking person would not be willing to trade that hour for any amount of money. Not for time and a half, not for double pay, not for 10x. Since the reluctance to give up that hour would be absolute, it likewise would not be amplified by netting less money.
Those would seem to exhaust the options. P or not P. Willing to work the extra hour or not willing to. The former suggests that this overworked person would give up another personal hour for peanuts. The latter says that this supposedly hardworking person wouldn't work another hour for a king's ransom.
Speaking for myself, I have a certain nonzero value I place on each hour of my personal time. If someone wants me to do some extra work, I'm going to have to net at least that much to make it worth my while. The more I'm taxed, the more I'm going to have to charge to net that target amount.

yes, the consumer spending thing is going to be brutal for many of the obvious venues, restaurants, dentists, summer camps and the like, orthopedists and dermatologists and similar, and on and on and on.
So no one knows how it will play out; some informed guesses are smarter surely than others.
In 02 I was laid off as a manager from a successfully but then suddenly failing SW startup of many years, and talked right away w an old tech writer friend from an earlier gig who said I think this is going to be a long haul for you (he was employed), and I said, hmm, huh, oh, well.
And so it turned out. I had good contracting work for several years, or good enough, but it was 3y of moderate misery and anxiety, 05, before I got a staff job again, in the same editorial area, though this time DoD proposal work.
My adult kids now, it is interesting, and fearful.
The one who works at a mid-high level for a huge family-owned business centered on international travel and education is still employed but fears for the future, not surprisingly, as the company's business and model are stalling.
Her husband, who works for a local construction PM consulting firm, still has work, onsite at local university, which is closed but proceeding w repairs and rebuilds and such, even some new construction planning.
My other child is a new consultant at the biggest of management consulting firms, and so far he plenty of work, but there are freezes all round.
Finally his wife is a part-time pedi (school) nurse, now repurposed to public-health nurse, so gets to talk to, you know, parents whose kids are CV-positive and ill-ish, but who themselves are asymptomatic --- but test positive, and had been out and about at grocery and pharmacy for the past month. What lies ahead for her is unknown, though perhaps this will prove a lasting slight career shift from pedi to public if schools do not reopen for a year-plus.
And these are all highly fortunate and privileged and count-our-blessings situations. Imagine those for whom little of this applies.
Since income is spending and vice-versa, it will be a long trauma as that cycle grinds down.