I used to be a proud owner of FAIRX for about 7-8 years during 2001-2008. It's part of my system(link).

With high inflation (CPI-U), it may be worthwhile to buy short-term/5-yr TIPS directly. Here are some basic and practical details.
5-yr TIPS are auctioned in April, June*, October, December*; those marked * are reopenings, not brand-new issues (see link for tentative schedule for 2022). Retail investors buy them noncompetitively in the multiples of $100s at Treasury Direct (TD; brokerages may have different multiples, say, 1,000s) up to $5 million. Basically, the auction determines a single clearing price relative to 100-par for all buyers, competitive (institutional, dealers) and noncompetitive (retail, institutional). All Treasuries have positive coupons, but TIPS have tiny/small coupons, and auction prices above par may easily lead to negative real rates.
Buying at Auction – You can do this via TD or brokerage account (and commission-free at major brokerages). Key dates are Announcement Date after which the buy orders can be entered up to the early morning on the Auction Date (but it is safer to enter buy orders the day before by midnight); Auction Date when the auction occurs in late mornings; Settlement/Issue Date when transactions are settled, and securities issued. Beware that money from your account will be gone on the morning of the Auction Date (not on the Settlement Date as is typical for normal brokerage transactions, and if money is not available, the order will be cancelled). One exception to this may be when you also have Treasuries in the same or greater amount(s) maturing in the auction week, and then your brokerage may indeed settle all Treasury events on the Settlement/Issue Date (but do check this in advance with your brokerage). It is convenient that Treasuries maturity dates coincide with the Settle/Issue dates for auctions during the auction week.
Buying/Selling in the Secondary Market – This can be done at any time at brokerages. Treasuries trade at tiny bid-ask spreads and major brokerages don’t charge commissions for trading Treasuries. If you hold Treasuries in your TD account, you have to transfer them out to your brokerage to sell them before maturity. TD accounts are just for buying at auctions and holding them to maturities.
Selling/Redeeming at Maturity – Your TD or brokerage account gets credited with the proceeds.
Taxes – Even though TIPS accumulate interest/coupon and inflation-adjustment and those are paid only at maturity, the IRS want to be paid annually. You will get 1099-INT for interest and 1099-OID for inflation-adjustment every year and those should be reported in your IRS 1040; Treasury securities are exempt from state and local taxes, so make appropriate adjustments to your State 1040.
Procedures are similar for other Treasury securities, e.g. for T-Bills (up to 1-Yr), T-Notes (1+ to 10 yrs), T-Bonds (10+ to 30 yrs). T-Bills don’t have coupons but are sold at discount to 100-par and mature at par (like Zero-coupon bonds).
Upcoming 5-Yr TIPS Announcement Date 4/14/22 (Thursday); Auction Date 4/21/22 (Thursday), Settlement/Issue Date 4/29/22 (Friday).
Upcoming 1-Yr T-Bill Announcement Date 4/14/22 (Thursday), Auction Date 4/19/22 (Tuesday), Settlement/Issue Date 4/29/22 (Friday)
TIPS, General https://www.treasurydirect.gov/indiv/products/prod_tips_glance.htm
TIPS, Rates & Terms https://www.treasurydirect.gov/indiv/research/indepth/tips/res_tips_rates.htm
TIPS FAQs https://www.treasurydirect.gov/indiv/research/indepth/tips/res_tips_faq.htm
Treasury Auction Schedule https://home.treasury.gov/system/files/221/Tentative-Auction-Schedule.pdf
Compare TIPS vs I-Bonds https://www.treasurydirect.gov/indiv/products/prod_tipsvsibonds.htm

They provide different levels of human service. The two earlier packages, and likely this new one, are based on Vanguard's robo-advisor.
The Digital Advisor is pure robo. It costs 20 basis pts/year, but that is reduced by the revenue Vanguard gets from funds in the managed portfolio. Vanguard estimates that a robo-managed portfolio of Vanguard ETFs would have a net advisory cost of 0.15%. (That is, you'd be paying 0.20% including the ERs for the Vanguard ETFs.)
Portfolio Advisory Services is a hybrid robo-advisor. You get periodic conversations with a dedicated advisor ($500K+) or with some program advisor ($50K+).
This new INVEST for Amex by Vanguard service appears to take one step closer to a wrap account. At least for $100K+ accounts, where one gets unlimited access to human advisors.

While technically correct, Fido shows monthly distributions for FIPDX at $0.000000001-0.000000002/shr and M* just calls it $0/shr (it tracks dividends to 4 decimal places only). There is a noticeable yearend distribution (from tiny coupon and inflation-adjustment) that gives it 4.91% TTM.

Thanks for looking into this. It seems that Fidelity has muddied things a bit.
To three decimal places, the fund paid $0.531 "distributions from net investment income" for 2021, and $0.000 in "distributions from net realized gain" (per the annual statement). Fidelity's web page shows this distribution under neither dividend history nor under cap gains history.
Contrast that with T. Rowe Price (PRIPX), which also declares daily. Price reports a large dividend payment in December, as you described. At least this makes a little more sense.

I used to own FAIRX and TAVFX too but bailed out many moons back. Bruce made some great calls post 2008 crisis (especially on Bank Of America when it was below $10) but his overall performance over the decade of 2010 was meh.

@Blitzer, individual TIPS held to maturity will also get CPI-U adjustments. There is monthly index of values that Treasury publishes. But they do trade, and if sell before maturity, then the market valve depends on several factors. Specific details are different from I-Bonds. In response to your question, I simply pointed out that TIPS are available in the wrappers you mentioned (OEFs, ETFs), but I-Bonds are not.
https://www.treasurydirect.gov/indiv/research/indepth/tips/res_tips_rates.htm
"Treasury provides TIPS Inflation Index Ratios to allow you to easily calculate the change to principal resulting from changes in the Consumer Price Index. To determine your inflation-adjusted semi-annual interest payment, simply follow this three step process:
1. Locate your TIPS on the TIPS Inflation Index Ratios page. Follow the link and locate the Index Ratio that corresponds to the interest payment date for your security.
2. Multiply your original principal amount by the Index Ratio. This is your inflation-adjusted principal.
3. Multiply your inflation-adjusted principal by half the stated coupon rate on your security (i.e., 2%). The resulting number is your semi-annual interest payment."
More on I-Bonds vs TIPS https://www.treasurydirect.gov/indiv/products/prod_tipsvsibonds.htm

Respectfully I disagree. Hindsight is always 20:20 of course but here are some stats on VWINX and a few others over the last 3 year period. I have not looked at the 5 and 10Y stats but pretty sure that other funds have done better than VWINX in terms of higher APR, lower max DD and higher Sortino ratio
- VWINX: Max DD=8.6, APR=11, Sortino=2.33
- SFHYX: Max DD=3.1, APR=17.5, Sortino=6.29
- JHEQX: Max DD=5.1, APR=13.6, Sortino=3.37
- MAFIX: Max DD=7.5, APR=20.3, Sortino=3.38

Hi @stayClam, Are those monthly stats, rather than daily stats? Cause i see for the March 2020 draw down, using daily stats, JHEQX and VWINX had the worse DD (-19%) while SFHYX was the best. MAFIX was second best (-9%).
During the 2018 Q4 DD, MAFIX (-13%), JHEQX (-7%), SFHYX & VWINX (-5%).
Seems like SFHYX protected better over several DDs. My comparison of these funds may not be fair to the managers as these funds provide different strategies - may be SFHYX and MAFIX have comparable strategies.
Edit: upon re-reading, I noticed the underlined word (fair) was missing and is now added.

MAFIX was recently discussed in the "What are you buying . . ." thread. I figured this post belongs more here. Q1 information is now available at the fund site -
https://www.abbeycapital.com/multi-asset-fund/
Also, I have noticed some members have sold JHQAX in Q1 (possibly to increase equity exposure, to reallocate some to the other funds in the JPM Hedge Equity series, etc.). With Q1 behind us and the market down (or choppy / treacherous if you prefer) for a full quarter for the first time in a few years, I figured a re-discussion of JHQEX could be timely.
Both these funds were mentioned in this thread.

While technically correct, Fido shows monthly distributions for FIPDX at $0.000000001-0.000000002/shr and M* just calls it $0/shr (it tracks dividends to 4 decimal places only). There is a noticeable yearend distribution (from tiny coupon and inflation-adjustment) that gives it 4.91% TTM.

Yes, you can. Some have bought in Dec 21 and Jan 22.

@BaluBAlu, buying T-Bills now at brokerages or Treasury Direct is better than m-mkt funds. https://home.treasury.gov/resource-center/data-chart-center/interest-rates/TextView?type=daily_treasury_yield_curve&field_tdr_date_value_month=202204

Thanks @Yogibearbull. That is definitely one likely explanation and one I had included as a possibility. It avoids the ER of MM funds and there are no commissions to pay for these trades at the brokerages I know. Of the 1mo, 3mo, 6mo, & 1 yr maturities, which one would you buy at this time if you were to buy some treasury bills. Below I include the current rates from CNBC. You are not responsible for your answer. (I moved the taxable accounts' cash to online savings accounts but need to do something with the cash in the IRAs.)
US 1-MO 0.228
US 3-MO 0.757
US 6-MO 1.186
US 1-YR 1.685

Howdy folks,
Good discussion. If I bought an I-bond back in December 2021, am I able to purchase another one at this time? Should I? or should I wait?
Thanks,
peace,
rono

According to the latest prospectus, the expense ratio remains 1.00%
https://sec.gov/ix?doc=/Archives/edgar/data/1096344/000119312522086680/d437018d485bpos.htm#toc437018_3

Hi all, so I have owned FAIRX for a long time. I briefly bailed when Morningstar gave it a negative rating back in 2013 (I think) but came back. It has been rated negative by Morningstar for a long time now. I am holding on in the hopes that Fannie Mae preferred will eventually be good $. So far the court system (including supreme court) has been in favor of the gov and against hedge funds. More lawsuits are coming. TAREX owns preferred as well. Ackman owns Fannie Mae stock. Bill thinks that gov will eventually release them. However, since Dem and Rep can't agree on anything, not sure about Bill's thinking. Bruce lowered fees to 0.8 or 0.85 a little while ago and I am assuming that is still the case. Morningstar shows fee to be 1%. Bruce has been buying pipelines recently but FAIRX mostly in JOE. Bruce now publishes 3 paragraphs every 6 months (annual and semi annual reports). He went from talking a lot (TV, wealthtrack,..) to now just giving a 3 paragraph summary of the fund. Assets have held up at ~ $1 billion for a bit (more recently) since performance of JOE has been good. Not sure who owns the fund beside me (I am a very small time individual investor). Him and directors own ~ 20% I think. One FAIRX director retired or left recently. I also used to own TAVFX but bailed on that fund a while ago.

Thanks Yogi for providing recent sales numbers. I still can’t get myself to mess with these. Maybe 15% would be enough. :)

@Derf, it shouldn't matter for funds, so you can sell/exchange VG TDF 2015 whenever you wish.
Individually held TIPS "pay" interest every 6 month from the issue date, like all Treasury bonds. However, the TIPS interest is not actually paid out but is just added to the principal, and all (principal + interest) is paid out on maturity. In the interim, the trading price of TIPS reflects principal and accumulated/accrued interest, but also depends on other market factors (current rate environment and inflation-expectations).
TIPS funds are different. They have to payout inflation adjustment annually, whether earned or not, whether you like it or not. So, a fund may have to sell some TIPS to payout inflation-adjustment if it doesn't have enough cash on hand. Also, the fund NAV will reflect principal + interest at any point of time.
There are problems with how the funds report 30-day SEC yield for TIPS funds. I have posted on this and will try to find the related link and add it here later via Edit.
Misleading TIPS Fund Yields https://ybbpersonalfinance.proboards.com/post/301/thread

Agreed, but it is the one stock issue I'm referring to here when there are literally thousands of potential stocks to research and invest in worldwide, not to mention many more bonds, preferred stock and other securities to consider. The notion that only one of those should make up more than three-quarters of a fund's portfolio is bizarre. And then to pay several million dollars in fees each year for that one stock even stranger. For 1% in fees, I expect a manager to if not turn over every single rock, to turn over at least more than one. I have a hard time believing there aren't other attractive, perhaps much more attractive, companies to invest in.

@yogibearbull :: How do "generous inflation adjustments" get paid ? Why I'm asking. Vanguard will be rolling their 2015 TRF in the Retirement Fund. I thought about selling or exchanging into another fund , but don't want to lose the "adjustment".
This will be done in July so have some time to figure out what to do. This money is in taxable account.
Thanks for your time, Derf
PS Off the topic,
sorry about that.

$1.5 billion in assets X 1% expense ratio = $15 million annually.

And in bad years, like 2020, when his fund dropped (47%)...Bruce still collected 1% in fees...$7.5 million-ish. But that's true with every fund manager. They get paid in both up and down markets.