Short lists and explanations in 2nd half below.
I invest for total return, not income. That leads to the question I keep asking myself, so why invest in bonds at all, when equity does better over the long term?
One reason is diversification - one never knows what will do better from one year to the next. Using bonds for this purpose is a bit like buying insurance. It costs you money (bonds won't do as well long term), but it provides protection against short term drops in the worst case.
I buy that, but only to a limited degree. So I'll use more aggressively managed bond funds that include areas like high yield that are more equity-like. (That is, I favor core plus and multisector over vanilla core funds.) I'm not giving up quite as much in return, but I'm also not getting quite the diversification benefit that a vanilla fund would provide. It's how I choose to position myself on the risk/reward curve. Each person has his or her own comfort level.
With that same nod to aggressiveness, I also use bond funds as cash alternatives. Obviously this is a different type of bond fund from those used for total return.
General attributes I would like the funds to have :
- Low costs. Really important in bond funds, where correlation between performance and cost is high.
- Convenience, but I'll only pay a little for that. I've no problem paying $5 to Fidelity to buy more of a TF fund. On a $5K purchase, that comes out to 0.1%, often less than the cost of owning a different fund that's NTF, especially over longer periods of time.
Personal dislikes:
- Leverage. I'm fine with 100% exposure to risk with my investment. Don't give me 150% risk exposure.
- MBS. The fact that there are several pricing models shows that these are hard to value. More important is that with their built in call options (early payoffs), they behave badly when yields shift quickly. A rise in rates causes borrowers to hold on to their mortgages, thus increasing duration and amplifying the drop in bond price. (Negative convexity.) A side effect is that duration numbers for these securities can be deceptive. They're good diversifiers in a broad bond fund; I just don't want a fund hooked on them.
Macro observation: I almost never time markets. But one must pay attention to the fact that we've had a 35-40 year decline in interest rates that has begun to reverse. IMHO the question is how fast and how far that will go, but not if. This makes it important to watch how interest rate risk is handled.
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Core plus funds (nothing without some blemishes):
- BCOIX - good performance, low cost. Flexible with credit risk (i.e. it's core plus), it can't do much about duration. "The Advisor attempts to keep the duration of the Fund’s portfolio substantially equal to that of its benchmark."
- MWTRX - you used to be able to get MWTIX with a $25K min at Schwab. Now it's $100K. Retail class is slightly pricey. Years ago, managers contrasted their fund with Pimco Total Return by saying that they had the luxury of focusing on issue selection, while Gross was limited to macro calls due to the size of his fund. Now MWTRX is bloated and performance has declined over the past three years. Still fine management.
- DODIX - cheap, good performance, flexible on credit risk, defensive on interest rate risk. All positive. Not a fund I would have thought of as core plus (my impression was more vanilla), but upon closer look has a nice mix of securities. Main concern is its increasing popularity and girth.
- WCPNX - just started looking at this (see
MFO thread for others' thoughts). Slightly pricey (0.61%), but FWIW, NTF. More importantly, I was impressed a few years ago (last time I looked) with Weitz Short-Intermediate (now Weitz Short Duration) fund WEFIX. Same managers here. I also like that this fund has a somewhat short duration. Needs more research.
- EIBAX - Gaffney's been there for 2.5 years. She didn't do well at her first EV charge EVBIX. Perhaps she was trying too hard to prove herself, but she got overly aggressive, loading up with equities and commodities. This is a tamer fund, though still wild. Hard to even call it a core plus, given that it's allowed 35% in junk and 35% in foreign. That describes a multi-sector fund, leading us to ...
Multi-sector funds (the usual suspects) - used for manager-allocated exposure to junk and foreign bonds.
- PIMIX - sharp manager, great past performance, but with qualifications I've already noted, like leverage and a fondness for MBS. Also, what happened to all the voices who seem to cry out "mean reversion"? (Here though, there are specific market conditions that one can point to that suggest lower returns going forward.)
- LSBDX - a manager who claims experience in investing the last time interest rates rose; that raises succession as a concern. Ridiculously volatile, but acceptable to me for something this far out on the portfolio risk curve (aggressive multisector). I like that it has shortened its duration. A quirk in its prospectus allows unlimited Canadian investment, perhaps a way to increase non-dollar exposure without going overseas.
- FSICX - an easy buy if you use Fidelity, else costly. Generally solid fund.
"Enhanced cash"-ish bond funds - used as buffer for equity investments (to draw from when funds have dropped in value)
Muni funds - you need to go out at least a couple of years in duration to get yields high enough to justify skipping the bank account.
- BTMIX - a young fund, but with a solid management team that's been around a long time
- VMLTX - Vanguard = low cost, conservative management
Taxable funds
- RPHYX - pricey, but with a unique strategy that keeps it sufficiently ahead of banks to justify the risk. I still don't think it scales, so it is good that this is closed.
- FPNIX - I've followed this since the Rodriguez days, when you couldn't get it without a load. Now you can, but Atteberry may have tamed the fund a bit too much. Where else do you find interest only derivatives used so extensively for defensive purposes? That dates back to Rodriguez.
Comments
RPHYX. " I still don't think it scales, so it is good that this is closed."
I'm missing your point. Would you draw me a picture, so to say.
Thanks, Derf
That makes this, as Prof. Snowball wrote, a niche market. You don't get large competitors moving in because it isn't worth their while. But you also aren't seeing boutique competitors entering the market.
With a supply that small, one expects increasing demand (even if it comes just from RiverPark) to diminish the value of what it can find. To continue my analogy, it's like having a few nickels and pennies lying around. After picking up the nickels, there's still free money, but the effort to fetch additional coins now gets you less than before.
If you run around faster (more investors) trying to pick up the nickels, you'll just exhaust the nickels. The process doesn't scale - at any moment there are just so many nickels (bonds) to go around.
The problem here is not that a specific fund will get too large, but that the market demand as a whole will get too large and returns will suffer. It may still be positive (pennies to fetch), but perhaps no longer worth the risk.
If you like RPHYX, what do you think of RSIVX? It hasn't gotten a lot of love on this board since David's initial write-up, but it seems to be doing what it promised: providing a little less return than standard high yield bond fund with quite a bit less risk.
I'm tempted to put some money in it that I expect to need for a down payment in 2 years or so.
RSIVX - this will undoubtedly sound like 20/20 hindsight, since I'm not on the record with my impressions when the fund was announced. Nevertheless, I was skeptical because it sounded like it was being promoted as an extension (in bond maturity) of the RPHYX strategy. That didn't (and doesn't) make too much sense to me.
RPHYX buys bonds that are somewhat like pre-refunded bonds - the money is there and all you're waiting for is for the clock to run out. With RSIVX you're saying that the bonds are "money good" because the company is worth enough (book value?) to cover the bonds. But with a longer time frame, stuff happens. The type of research would seem to be different. For RPHYX the difficulty is in finding and acquiring lots of little pieces. For RSIVX you have to dig more deeply into the companies.
Either I misunderstood (and continue to misunderstand) the fund, or the marketing was based on reputation. Either way, I wasn't inclined to look more closely at this fund, especially since it wasn't a good match for the type of fund I was most interested in. Doesn't mean it isn't good, just means I haven't looked enough.
WCPNX - I listed it because it had shown up in some recent screening, though I couldn't tell you exactly what parameters I used. The cursory check I did you already read - management that I recognized, cost, performance. I may have been going by the name. I agree that those low numbers are not suggestive of a core plus bond fund. But I'd like to look more closely at its portfolio history before saying more one way or the other.
Thanks Derf
My take is category will matter more then fund selection when deciding what bond funds to own. If you want a straight forward domestic fund, pick the best intermediate fund. If you want your bond fund to have some flexibility, pick a multisector fund (nothing better then PONDX IMHO). There are short term duration, even short term HY funds, some better than others, that will give you lower volatility but less reward. Some of these are even called cash alternatives here. If you can handle more risk and possibly more reward, now-a-days anyway, you may want an EM or global bond fund.
You gave a great list of options in some of these categories. But going forward, choosing categories may be the most important part of the bond portion of a portfolio. Myself, I prefer a good manager or management team to decide where they see potential, sector or region. That would be multisector. PONDX is my choice.
Regards,
Ted
Mark, you are into risk - reward and reward you have gotten with PDI PCI. More power to you.
I noted in the thread on DODIX that on average, over the long term (full market cycles), leverage adds value. I'm just not comfortable with the type of risk it adds, especially when interest rates may rise for many years.
PIMIX leverage specifically seems to be relatively recent (again, see DODIX thread). In fairness, the way that fund is using leverage might be thought of as arbitrage. In a "traditional" sense, leveraging is borrowing against assets to buy more, e.g. 2x funds. You're amplifying risk by buying more of the same.
But PIMIX, at least at the moment, seems to be borrowing shorter term (-48% cash exposure) to "safely" lend long term (using the borrowed cash to buy US gov/Treasuries). That's what banks do. Works okay most of the time, but rising rates can create a squeeze when borrowing rates rise while they're locked into earning fixed long term rates.
A couple of other blind spots of mine - loads and high cost bond funds. Well, high cost anything, but especially when it comes to bonds. For those reasons, I haven't looked at IOFCX. Perhaps I can offer a suggestion about the load problem. Instead of buying level load C shares, you should be able to buy IOFAX A shares NTF at Schwab, and get rid of 0.75% in 12b-1 fees.
Schwab page for A shares.
I hadn't looked at SEMPX for a different reason. I prefer to delegate some asset management to my fund managers. So I don't explicitly seek out junk (I'm happy using multisector funds for that). I took a quick look now - virtually all MBS, potentially leveraged, low grade junk (single B average). Yikes! Definitely not my cup of tea, but it seems to work for you. Everyone builds their portfolio differently.
And 2018 is not looking promising unless it’s a negative year for stocks. Normally you can always find some sector in bonds beating the S&P. But can’t see what that could be next year. January and February are usually the tell so real curious what bond sector shines. Maybe IOFIX and non agencies continue their winning ways? Or maybe emerging market bonds get even stronger? Or bank loans have a year like 2016 especially with short term rates continuing their rise but at a more rapid rate. But who knows, maybe we just see a bear and a reset in both stocks and bonds next year. Fine with me.
Here is looking at you @MikeM.
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Re: Bond OEFs - what now
Junkster 11-02-2017, 11:05 AM | Post #3880685 |
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>>>> FD says "Most of my money is in 3 horses PIMIX,IOFIX and NHMAX(switched from PHMIX was luck or skill??). IOFIX last jump was 8/22, are we going to see the next one this month? let's see if the pattern will continue.<<<<<<
Hope you are right about IOFIX FD. My problem is when a pattern becomes too well known and predictable....... Last year it had a big jump on September 30 and then it wasn't until February 24 of this year for the next one. Plus AUM which have grown dramatically may impact the pattern. But I will stay put with IOFIX for awhile. Pimco's Mark Kiesel said just the other day that non agencies are mispriced and " are among the few bonds that have price upside"
I've found a newer fund and a mini IOFIX I haven't seen mentioned anywhere. It's not available in all states and I contacted them to have it blue skied in my home state of KY which takes but a few weeks. I went through that process with SPFRX when it was a young fund back in 2015. Regardless, looking forward to 2018 and seeing where the momentum will be. Junk corporates are so unloved because of valuations they may surprise. Or maybe bank loans because we may have more aggressive rate hikes.
Will check back in next year. After this post immediately deleting all my trading and investing forums. Winter off trail hiking is just around the corner. At 70 years old hanging out on forums has lost much of its appeal. Good luck to everyone.
Never ever tried to stir things up as your state. You stated, that they paid attention over at the Morningstar board so with this I felt inclined to make you post available for those that follow you on this board. @MikeM commented that he was going to have to write down your calls and pay closer attention to them. Felt he (and some others) would like to read what you wrote.
Your way to the top of the mountain works for you; and, you do a good job of making some good calls on funds to be invested in for the short term ride. Heck, Junkster I have made a few dimes off your post myself ... But, I also know there is more than one path to the top of the mountain. With this, I plan to keep posting on what I am doing ... and, like wise, I think it would be good for you to do the same as to what you are doing.
One of the things that makes the board what it is the different perspectives and views each of us has and brings to the board. This is one of the many things that makes investing great along with the many ways to experience success. You have your way ... and, I have mine.
Indeed, I am sorry you took this the wrong way ... and, I don't plan to dwell on it.
Old_Skeet
Website:
alphacentricfunds.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/01/IOFAX-Presentation-January-2017-Retail.pdf
Thanks for posting your findings on IOFIX. Indeed, I found the review of the material to be interesting. Don't know how Junkster finds these kind of funds ... but, I am sure glad he makes "some" of his better findings know on the MFO board.
I'm looking to read what he has to say (on his picks and thoughts) come January.
In addition, I just came form viewing the earnings outlook on the S&P 500 Index for 2018 on several sites I use for reference. Seems forward estimates are looking towards $155.00 full year on down towards the $135.00 range. Let's see ... $135.00 X 20 = 2700 ... $155.00 X 20 = 3100 ... and, a blended number of $145.00 X 20 = 2900.
Your guess is a good as mine ... but, the blended number bubbles pretty good.