I'm so glad I transferred most of my money to Schwab. I got several thousand cash reward + I trade with no warnings.
You can't do the following easy trade at Fidelity. Suppose your IRA has $100,500 in PIMIX and you want to buy $100K of JMUTX instead. At Schwab, you enter both trades. At Fidelity, you enter your sell but now you must call a rep. Then, they allow you to buy only 90% of the $100.5K...crazy irritating stuff.

What I have been doing (and I’m a nobody, so get out your magnifying glasses so you can find a grain of salt...lol), is setting price point alerts at various yield percentages: 8.5% for PCI/PDI (they are already there); 9% for the above 2, as well as PTY, RCS, PCM, PKO; and 10% for all (and 9% range PFN/PFL) on the big blowout days. Also 8% for PCN (a generally investment grade fund that traded in the 6% yield range before this recent volatility). Currently have 10% of PCI in my dad’s account, and added a little more last week. And trade around dividends and recent volatility in the rest. Waiting for a 10% yield on RCS (which purportedly has the highest quality portfolio) to add more. Probably have close to 20% total in these PIMCO CEFs right now (<15% most of the time).
Even rattling around the idea to ONLY hold these funds, along with VCSH, VCIT, MINT, and maybe another ST/ultra short term/high quality floating rate bond ETF as ballast/cash to draw from during drawdowns (and opportunistically buy more of the CEFs). Maybe 60/40 or 70/30...your cash flow will be much higher than a typical equity/bond 60/40 portfolio, and performance may be close. There’s a poster of Morningstar who only holds PCI, PDI, and PTY and has since ~2016 or so. And probably been pretty happy with his portfolio (though much much higher volatility than bond mutual funds, volatility similar to equity).
As to your question, PCI recently raised its distribution and has generally yielded more than PDI (and their portfolios are similar now), and PCM, so I went with PCI for the middle quality fund. PCN is a higher quality fund, and is yielded almost 8% (esp if you can catch some near the lows on these big down days). And PTY is a little lower quality, slightly lower quality earnings to cover the distribution, so would hold this in lesser amounts (more price volatility, as Mark says above). And PFN/PFL are similar, and consistently in the 9’s% yield; and again, lower quality so a smaller piece of portfolio. PCM and PKO are slightly different portfolios, and they are less mentioned and lower trading liquidity.
I think (grain of salt, again) you can hold these in a portfolio, hold a core position (especially after recent sell offs), and trade opportunistically around the edges based on price movements. PIMCO uses all the tools in the toolbox, and have access to some of the smartest people in retail-available fixed income portfolio management.
Above is not to be construed as advice :-)

Structurally they're all pretty much the same but I have found PTY to be the most exposed to volatility in it's pricing. I use selloffs to buy more in bulk but generally just reinvest the distributions. You might find further information in the linked M* community discussion along with a lot of flotsam as well. I used to have a table laying out the various differences but I can't locate it at the moment. I'll post it if I find it.
PTY v. Other PIMCO CEF's
Edit: You can also dig out differences by examining the 'Portfolio' of each fund on M* or similar. Not the 'Portfolio Holdings' - hardly anyone can figure that out besides probably capecod but rather just the 'Portfolio'.

I've been waiting years for an opportunity to get into some of Pimco's amazingly high performing CEFs, and I'm thinking I'm going to get it. (These will go into my solo 401K, with retirement 15+ years away, so I'm happy to wait out volatility.) Anyone have any insights as to the big differences between the three and which might make the better long-term bet? It seems like PTY has much lower leverage (and therefore expenses), as well as a lower premium, but it doesn't seem much different in the end result.

Only 75 ?!
Derf

By Christine Benz at M*
"Lower lifetime earnings and longer life expectancies paint a troubling picture about the state of women's retirement preparedness."
Article Link

FPFIX is a pretty good fund invested mainly in securitized and low duration=1.7 and a good "cash sub". Another similar fund is DHEIX with duration=1.4. Both invested mostly in IG bond rating. I like DHEIX a bit more because it's yield = 3.9 while FPFIX = 2.6.
Securitized is my favorite category for years because deals better with rates.
I ran it thru Port Vis (link)
and DHEIX looks better for performance, SD and Sharpe

I bought a starter long-term position in Equinor just before the markets rolled last month; down 25% but not selling.

https://www.marketwatch.com/story/billionaire-sam-zell-says-hes-investing-at-ridiculously-low-prices-in-one-particular-sector-amid-coronavirus-scare-2020-03-05?siteid=yhoof2&yptr=yahoo
Billionaire Sam Zell says he’s buying at ‘ridiculously low’ prices in one particular sector amid market volatility
Anyone added more energy recently

Appreciate your commentary FD1000 and others. Always find something to take away and ponder.
Curious as to your thoughts regarding:
FPFIX, FPA Flexible Income Fund, appears to hold higher rated bonds and potentially has capability to deal with rising interest rates
Dominion Energy Reliability Investments, works like a money market, free redemption on demand, complete access to your funds at any time, 2.7% for investment over $50k, on line access, NOT FDIC insured but than again neither are any of the bond OEF being discussed either
Good Health to all,
Baseball Fan

Related
https://apnews.com/435cb3786f0d6692c8143a07e29c3e79
Interesting summaries regarding coronavirus...maybe dreadful volatile market/slowed world economies for ??? 8 or 16 wks, more downfalls perhaps. Took china 6 - 8 wks to handle the problems...
Dows maybe loosing 10 to 25% more imho
Time to research/buckle up /buy more good qualities bonds perhaps

The following is a research I have done for myself
I was looking for a fund to park my money until things come down but also make some money and searched for the followings:
1) higher rated bonds.
2) flexible. The above 2 mean...the Intermediate Core-Plus category.
3) The securitized category should be the biggest because this category behaves better in rate changes. Also some IG Corp bonds.
4) higher income than 3% which is harder to find in a fund with higher rated bonds.
5) ST+LT + last 1-2 weeks with good performance
and I found only one winner PINCX(link). ER=0.74....AUM=2.7 Bill....yield > 3%....IG rating > 90%....Duration=5.1....securitized > 62%
TGLMX has better performance YTD but not 1-3 years and no corp but Yield=3.9%. PTIAX is another possibility, mainly in lower-rated securitized + some Munis, yield about 3.9%. PINCX has better performance for YTD+one year. (Chart) of all 3.
BCOIX,DODIX,USIBX,PDBZX performance trails for YTD,1,3 years and yield < 3%
GTO is another option.
Basically, all the funds I mentioned above are pretty good.

TGBAX is both a bond fund and a currency fund. Hassenstab seems to invest in bonds anywhere in the world based on how he expects those bonds to perform independent of currency movements. In that sense, one can think of the fund as a hedged international bond fund.
But rather than hedging back to the dollar, he takes these assets and makes big currency bets. He can be long on country A's bonds while being short on country A's currency. So he not only decouples bonds from currency, he extensively plays the currency markets as well.
Lewis is correct that Argentinian bonds burned the fund. While in the long term I expect the fund to do well, this shows the risks one takes in concentrated portfolios. A manager's best ideas sometimes are not all that good.

His unusual approach: concentrating investments in a handful of countries that he surmised would offer the highest returns without defaulting. He became a major lender for countries such as Uruguay, Ghana and Ukraine, and government officials routinely visited him seeking his investments.

https://www.wsj.com/articles/franklins-hasenstab-girds-for-a-downturn-11571304601
The fund has been a great diversifier, though. No matter which way your other funds moved, this fund did not move the same way. That's because it hasn't been moving in any direction - returning roughly nothing for the past few years.

https://www.wsj.com/articles/the-market-meltdown-has-a-surprising-survivor-junk-bonds-11583326802
The Market Meltdown Has a Surprising Survivor: Junk Bonds
High-yield debt is weathering coronavirus scare better than stocks

I loved this fund as a diversifier. Now it seems to be lagging quite a bit for a good 5 years or more.
Is all well at Templeton?

I am strongly debating switching from bond OEFs, which currently comprise 10% of my dad’s income-managed retirement portfolio (essentially bucket 1), to bond ETFs (and i friggin’ hate bond ETFs/indexes).
At TDA, the 180-day holding period made it hard to opportunistically sell out of bond holdings (albeit temporarily) to purchase things that were selling off (and had become good values), such as the PIMCO CEFs (some of which traded at 1.5-2% higher yields last week). VCIT, VCSH, and some of the more conservative (oxymoron?) IG CEFs, such as BTZ and TSI. Currently hold IOFIX (arguably the best multi-sector), PONAX (steady ~5% income), and SEMPX (enhances cash) in this spot. I know OEFs (esp bond OEFs) aren’t for trading...
Ugh. That means I would be holding bond funds for ballast. Yikes....

I am strongly debating switching from bond OEFs, which currently comprise 10% of my dad’s income-managed retirement portfolio (essentially bucket 1), to bond ETFs (and i friggin’ hate bond ETFs/indexes). At TDA, the 180-day holding period made it hard to opportunistically sell out of bond holdings (albeit temporarily) to purchase things that were selling off (and had become good values), such as the PIMCO CEFs (some of which traded at 1.5-2% higher yields last week). VCIT, VCSH, and some of the more conservative (oxymoron?) IG CEFs, such as BTZ and TSI. Currently hold IOFIX (arguably the best multi-sector), PONAX (steady ~5% income), and SEMPX (enhances cash) in this spot.

@VintageFreak, I thought those two funds were different versions of the same portfolio haha.
But I just looked at performance charts comparing the two funds, and VLAAX actually outperformed over almost every time frame. And over 10 years, it’s $5K difference (not sure if either fund changed their mandate over that time frame). Just something I picked up, as VLAAX has gotten a lot of talk recently :)

@Mona - I can't find any precise data to answer your question. I suppose you could give them a call at (800) 645-3923. (Phone number obtained from the Fact Sheet)