After falling like a stone, IOFIX slowly but steadily rises up again. This may not mean much because the outbreak is far from over, and panic selling may lead to the same problem for the managers. Or maybe the worst is behind them, because it was once in a century storm?
The copy of the letter from IOFIX placed to the Fund Discussions by davfor on March 21 ends by the words: "If you would like to schedule a call with one of the portfolio managers, we are happy to schedule it." Perhaps this was a part of a separate message, because I do not see it in the pdf file that I downloaded from their website, or maybe they changed the text. But I wonder whether someone already tried to contact the managers, or everybody gave up on the fund?

FWIW: If memory serves me, Junkster ran a very tight ship. I believe he would have exited iofix on March 11 ,nav at $13.16.
As for me, staying the course, & bought a little on the drop.
Schwab says cost bias, only 3 or 4 in the green at this time.
Have a good week to all, Derf

@Charles - you mentioned "Our friend Junkster always touted the importance of having predefined "exit" criteria. He was/is a day trader so he watches for instabilities typically in price movements of what he calls "tight channel" funds. If he sees them, he exits the trade.
Others like Meb Faber practice trend following ... when price drops below say the 10-mo running average, they exit their position, either to cash or something (thought) safer."
Then asked "So curious if any on the board practice, in disciplined fashion, such techniques?
And, perhaps even more curious of whether buy-and-hold investors, especially retired ones, EVER think of exiting. Or, is it always just about re balancing?"
Tough questions but I'll try. NO I do not ever think about exiting. I'm pretty much all invested 99% of the time. While accumulating it was 95/5 figuring that SS would cover my wild abandon. Once retired I drifted down to roughly 75/25 by swapping some REIT's for PCI and PDI. MY portfolio is primarily a mix of individual dividend growth stocks and a handful of equity CEF's for income, PIMCO bond CEF's + IOFIX and 5 mutual funds BIAWX, GLFOX, MGGPX, POAGX and VLAAX. I do hold a pittance in SFGIX but I'm not sure why, maybe in case it ever becomes unstuck from it's funk. It is hard to apply the techniques I use across all holdings equally so I use certain ones for certain types.
I pretty much never touch the mutual funds. That's what I hired their managers for.
Likewise the bond holdings although I do check them occasionally trying to follow Junksters lessons along with a weekly MACD signal. I won't get into what it's all about suffice to say that MACD is an indicator used in technical analysis to identify aspects of a security's overall trend. Most notably these aspects are momentum, as well as trend direction and duration. MACD uses moving averages (trend lines and duration) and plots that difference between the two lines as a histogram which oscillates above and below a center Zero Line. The histogram is a good indication of a security's momentum and so I watch for crossovers signalling buying when moving up from a trough or selling from a peak. Ideally I'd check them more often than I do but I try to pretend I have a life away from watching market action so sometimes I'm behind the curve unless price action screams at me.
My equity holdings are also rarely touched because most were bought during previous market debacles and now have considerable capital gains even after this current hosing. If I found suitable similar replacements I might swap them. Or not.
With these holdings, in addition to the MACD signal I also watch the RSI and the Chaikin Money Flow indicators. Again I am never on top of these 100% of the time but I check them occasionally and whenever Mr. Price beats on me. I use RSI to identify the general trend and watch for divergence especially from overbought or oversold conditions.
The Chaikin Money Flow tells the real story of how much demand there is for a stock whether positive or negative. The concepts of divergences comes into play here as well. If money flow starts to fall while price is rising, then the price will generally follow downward soon. Again, a change in money flow is a signal that something is about to change with price. The weekly and monthly tell you the real big money trend and I want to be on the side of the big money. A day trader could use daily I suppose.
Anyway, in this current meltdown all things seemed to have suffered equally so I see no reason to play with rebalancing and frankly I never look at my portfolio and think that I should. Crazy right? But my portfolio works for me and was planned out to do what I needed it to do which was to provide me with enough income to cover my modest needs along with a little extra to play with. To date I have only had one holding that suspended their dividend (can you say lucky) but I fear that we may be just in the first few innings of this game. Good luck out there.

@Charles
I agree with your assessments. I also think that non-agency RMBS/CMBC/other will come around in several months(maybe weeks) and where I will start buying again.
The question is do I want to be in funds with mostly securitized (IOFIX,EIXIX,SEMMX,VCFAX,DPFNX) and making more money potentially or take a less risky approach and buy something like PIMIX(more diversified) or both.
If I look at YTD (chart), EIXIX would be my choice to get back into this category but we are not there yet :-)

I think you missed my main point. If you use his services he has 3 portfolios for you to select from, the funds/ETF/CEFs/whatever in each and all the trades he does. So yes, you do know his portfolios in detail.
Going to cash with these portfolios and/or what other managers do? I doubt many do it because most managers don't have this flexibility, after all, you pay them to invest your money. Over the years I looked at many mutual funds and from memory, I remember Romick with FPACX at 30-40% cash and Eric Cinnamond in 2008-9 (can't remember the fund) was over 50% in cash.
I don't know any fund that invests at any given time so much in cash.
But, I can do what I want and it's the first time I ever sold everything. It was a great move I will remember for many years to come and probably saved me about 25-30%.
I did sell in the past 20-40% but never that much.
My situation has changed too, I'm retired now so protecting my capital is very important.
So, maybe you should say good for you. I love when other investors are making money and making great moves.
Since I'm flexible I can own any fund at any given time and since last week I'm mostly in HY munis. Why do you need to see my portfolio at all times? if you know my style (2-3 funds) and I said in January this year and several times after that I owned HY Munis and the 3 funds I like are NHMAX,ORNAX,OPTAX and the rest are in Multi and I mentioned IOFIX as the best one, you don't need to be rocket scientist to know that I probably own 2-3 funds out of these 4 funds.
In the last 1-2 days, I also said that since last week I'm in again mostly in HY munis, which funds do think I have? really?

I think right now Munis would be my highest bond conviction asset and why I'm invested in them in at a very high %. There was a lot of carnage but the Fed is supporting treasuries and Munis.
I don't want to be in treasuries which relate to rates
Don't want HY which correlates to stocks.
Corp bonds are going up too but harder to figure out because they go from junk to high-rated but...are high-rated bonds really high when the company is in trouble.
Munis may be OK no matter what rates or stocks are doing. The Muni ETF and funds are exploding up for several days.
MBS/securitized is untouchable such as VCFAX,SEMMX,IOFIX,even DHEAX lost a lot
Multi can be another option if you don't know what to do.
PIMIX looks OK but PDIIX rebound is better + AUM is smaller + much more diversified

Yay! HYD and HYMB also up strong today and closed discounts to VWLAX prices. Maybe too this will help redemptions stop for IOFIX. Maybe it's fed intervening in market in general, offering MF firms interest free cash for redemptions. I don't know. Maybe a sense from SPY that things will not be as bad as thought ... today in fact we entered a bull market. (Smile.) c

@MikeW,
I am still holding onto my IOFIX position.

Good one MikeM. M* kinda of rubbing investors' noses in it ... "You should have been invested in one of our metal rated funds." And yes, they get to take a bow ... this March I sure wish I had been in PIMIX! But honestly, for the last 3 years, I was happier in IOFIX. Can I add that into the ROI equation? Otherwise, I think the article is pretty informative.
https://www.morningstar.com/articles/974632/market-turmoil-has-bent-bond-mutual-funds-but-most-have-not-broken

From a M* article posted today--
The most vulnerable strategies in the current environment have been flashing red well in advance. For example, AlphaCentric Income Opportunities (IOFIX), a multisector bond fund that has invested the majority of its assets in mezzanine subprime MBS, has experienced heavy redemptions in recent weeks. Given that the portfolio was roughly 95% invested in nonagency residential mortgage credit, it’s highly unlikely the managers were able to raise cash to meet those redemptions without locking in losses in the current environment. The fund has erased more than 40% of its value for its shareholders since the beginning of March, with most of those losses coming in the last several trading days.
But that fund’s highly aggressive approach already made it an outlier relative to competitors in the multisector bond category, which is home to funds with a greater appetite for credit-sensitive sectors. Its portfolio chock-full of subordinated mortgage credit avoided by other fund managers, its indeterminate credit quality profile (most of the fund’s holdings were nonrated), and absence of high-quality holdings to provide liquidity should have raised concerns for any investor. The fund’s chart-topping returns in recent years--its trailing three-year annualized return of 10.4% through February 2020 outpaced its next closest competitors’ by a full 300 basis points--should have also raised questions about the risks its managers were taking to achieve those results.

Still own IOFIX. Found a recent article similar to Davfor concerning IOFIX sell-off:
https://www.reuters.com/article/us-health-coronavirus-alphacentric/fund-manager-alphacentric-looks-to-raise-cash-as-coronavirus-bites-idUSKBN21A1PG
(similar excerpt about IOFIX in today's WSJ)

wow, IOFIX only -1.3% today
But, SEMMX (more conservative with SD around 1-1.2) was down another -2.95%

@Graust, not sure what you were looking at. As of yesterday's close, IOFIX was down over -34% for 1Y, and even through Friday's close it was about -25%.
@BenWP, I get the joke, but maybe you could use another analogy given SA's horrendous record of racehorse deaths? I'd hate to think that our investments could go down for the count at any time.
@franktrdr, I read that article on SA, and others describing the mayhem in the FI markets. I believe the author may have been mistaken about CEF NAVs. AFAIK, they are still only published weekly. M* shows a daily as of date, but in the cases of the CEFs I hold, the manager's website only updates weekly and the value on M* only changes weekly. I'm not certain as to whether or not there are any other sources which are updated more frequently.
In all my days, and I'm talking pre-1987 crash by more than a decade, I've never seen anything like this environment, and, I can also say that I've never seen a fund with a perfect '100' scorecard across all linked time-periods on M*, as is the situation for this fund. 'Never say never'.
To try and figure out whether this fund is ever worth going back into, much less now when things are so crazy that, e.g. Vanguard's Muni MM has a 7-day yield of 3%!!!!, Charles is absolutely right, things need to settle down, and then I'd look for funds that maybe weren't so great on the way up, but didn't kill you on the way down.
One final comment on the TLT price breaks vs. NAV. USTs are the Gold Standard for collateral, repos, derivatives, etc., so when things start to unwind, and counter-parties can't make payments, they can lose the bonds and the new holders may be very eager to liquidate because they don't want the interest rate risk (in addition to whatever else is on their balance sheets). Hence, fire sales abound. There was also a story last week about a CME clearing firm (Ronin Capital) that went belly up (dealer-to-dealer) and whose assets had to be auctioned off.
Be careful out there!

@catch22 Actually I would challenge the notion. It is not secret I am bond challenged. I've also mentioned 007 doesn't know jack s*** - stirred tastes better than shaken.
When I buy bond funds I HAVE to trust the manager. This the reason I seldom buy bond funds outright. Imagine buying IOFIX "knowing what's under the hood". I'm just glad I didn't buy it.
Back to RPHYX and RSIVX. I expected these to be low risk funds. Now "low risk" is in the eye of the beholder. However when I look at FPNIX, at least I have some confidence. With RPHYX...mea. With RSIVX I'm not happy.
I bought RPHYX and FPNIX risking funds I would otherwise have put in money market.
I bought RSIVX because I thought PTTRX is risky. WTF? Please tell me ONE person who thought PTTRX is a better risk/reward bets in the "sky is falling on bonds" world where every Tom, Dick and Harry is saying buy funds with short durations. They've been wrong on this for at least 10 years.
But tell you what. Let me but PTTRX. It will promptly tank 20%.

ANGLX joined the party of "LOW SD SECURITIZED" category when it lost -3.6% today.   From the high(or pretty close to it) on March 4th, SEMMX lost 16+%...ANGLX 14+%...VCFAX close to 14%....IOFIX over 42%...DPFNX 19%...DHEAX 8.5...PMZIX 17%...BDKAX over 60%

The SAGA of securitized isn't over yet

Crazy that IOFIX still has a double digit 1 year return.
Could this possibly be a way to play normalizing bond markets....whenever that actually occurs? Will it’s portfolio dramatically “reprice” and “gain” NAV rapidly? Just asking hypothetically (I completely lucked out and sold from all accounts I have/help with at the beginning of March (when it was only losing a percent or two, every day, not 10-20%)).

New filing for IOFIX concerning liquidity risk:
https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/1355064/000158064220001282/alphacentric497s.htm

For what it is worth I think the issue with IOFIX is they were forced to sell thinly traded bonds at any price to meet redemptions after they exhausted their line of credit ( I seem to remember $200 million??)
Since these bonds probably sell "by appointment" and I think by phone anybody they called knew they were in trouble and offered low ball prices seeing if they would bite. They had not choice
Once they sold at those low ball levels, there is a price and more of the portfolio gets "marked to market" and the NAV is automatically that much lower, even if the bonds in the fund are really worth much more.
With corporate bonds that mature, like in ZEOIX, the mangers will tell you just to hang on and bonds that mature will mature at par in a few months or so, raising the NAV by that much. I don't know the duration of IOFIX, but if the mortgages mature in 10 to 15 years it will be a long time before they hit "par". Many homeowners may also have enough equity to refinance but that would be a redemption at par and would just reduce the interest payment. but "raise" the NAV.

Got it. So in this environment we must all be watching prices daily? I know that is a strategy and certainly works well for Junkster. I understand one reason ETFs started was in response to Black Monday 1987. Maybe some assets (and some types of funds ... IOFIX?) need to be traded daily. Junkster is a day trader. It is one approach to investing, which I suspect is not suitable for most of us. Our MFO screening tools only use monthly data. Of no use here. March's month ending data will (most likely) mark the end of the last bull market (the 5th since 1960) and the beginning of a new business cycle.

Yep, in a real meltdown like 2008 and 2020, correlation goes much higher. CEFs actually lost a lot more. Funds with extra risk such as NHMAX+IOFIX lost more than similar funds.
In the above situation, treasuries do best. Remember Bogle 2 simple indexes SP500 + US Total bond index(which is not all treasuries but a good LT index)?