Somewhat in line with the above, while some see only opportunity and exploit it, others see only risk and stay far away. I started a small e mail group for bond traders and investors back in April. Four of us are traders and three investors and all of very low risk tolerances. Our one commonality was our recognition that the mortgage funds BDKAX, SEMPX, but most especially IOFIX were the bond trades of the decade. IOFIX remains the one thread that still keeps us together. It is nice to talk history after the fact with charts and all, but our group was actually there in real time. Many in our group inhabit this board but keep a low to non existent profile. Kudos to them for being at the right place at the right time.

wxman123,
PIMIX is still a good fund but when I owned it I like the way it was. Since PIMIX is so huge the managers had to compromise and own more HY + EM + lower the distributions and still behind. PIMIX ranked at 78 in category in 2019 and 52 in 2020. The best risk/reward in bond land was in securitized. I'm never concerned about outperformance, it's what I do.
JAVSX is a small fund where the managers can be flexible and use their best ideas.
The question as is always what investor you are, goals and style. You need to do your own due diligence to suit your needs
==================
dtconroe,

I am willing to revisit usage of funds like VCFIX/VCFAX as a fund that was considered one of the safer, less riisky funds, prior to the crash, especially when you look at its relatively smooth performance track since the crash. When a reputable brokerage, like Schwab, is willing to put it on its Select fund list, I tend to give that fund more "benefit of the doubt" than funds like IOFIX, DHEAX, and SEMPX, which had terrible crash performance

If you look at 3 years prior to the crash and compare VCFIX,IOFIX,SEMMX,PIMIX (link) you see the following:
1) SEMMX+IOFIX had the best risk/reward with Sharpe+Sortino.
2) SEMMX had good performance annually over 5% with very low SD=0.9.
3) IOFIX had double the performance with reasonable SD=2.6
4) VCFIX had good risk/reward and beat PIMIX
March 2020 changed is all.
I don't invest based on crashes just as I didn't after 2008. There are investors who see danger while I see an opportunity (chart).
But I understand what you do and it suits your style.
HOBIX is another fund with good risk/reward since March 2020 see (chart).

10 years is too long. PIMIX was great until 01/2018 but its AUM got much bigger than 5-6 years ago, the managers had to look outside their best ideas in securitized and now more HY and EM and the yield is now at 4%.
For mostly special securitized and still lower SD you can use JASVX. 2 of the managers are from SEMMX but this fund performance was much better in March 2020 than SEMMX,PIMIX,VCFIX and good YTD. I know it's new but the managers aren't. YTD (chart)

I like and own JASVX but it is not exactly the same type of fund as PIMIX at this point. Also not sure I see PIMIX doing so bad outside of this year (still up 4.6%) and last. Agree that the bloat won't allow "secret sauce" outperformance going forward, but still can be a good fund. Definitely watching closely. My concern with JASVX is it's outsized performance this year. I have a rule that when you see a fund outperform that much you need to expect that it could underperform just as badly, like IOFIX. Put differently, I'd tell my elderly mom it's fine to park a good chunk of her savings in PIMIX, not so sure about JASVX. But being the bond master I'm interested in your take on this.

The March crash has "complicated" SD, as a selection factor. Most of the M* Risk ratings are based on 3 and 5 year SD factors, and you have to look at the March crash impact on these risk ratings. There are all kinds of factors that impacted poor/better March crash performance, including liquidity issues and use of derivatives, for each fund. Many are under the impression that poor performance can simply be correlated with credit risk issues, but you see many funds with lower credit ratings that did better in the March crash than investment grade bond oefs. It is hard to generalize about why each fund did poorly or better in the March crash. I am willing to revisit usage of funds like VCFIX/VCFAX as a fund that was considered one of the safer, less riisky funds, prior to the crash, especially when you look at its relatively smooth performance track since the crash. When a reputable brokerage, like Schwab, is willing to put it on its Select fund list, I tend to give that fund more "benefit of the doubt" than funds like IOFIX, DHEAX, and SEMPX, which had terrible crash performance. Bond oefs like BASIX, have been around for awhile, run by a very respected company, and has achieved a M* Gold star rating, with rather glowing recommendations in the M* Fund Analyst considerations. Each investor has to develop their own criteria for fund selection, and have to decide if their selection is a simple "trade" choice, or is it selected because it has longer term holding potential. I don't recommend funds very often anymore, but I find myself having to deeper due diligence, post crash, in funds I am willing to put on watchlists and worthy of "consideration" as a fund for my portfolio.

Observations for one month as of 11/27/2020:
November was a great month for stocks and bond and interest rates were up. There were so many good performance monthly funds it was difficult to select just several.
Multi: Several did 2-3%.

Uncontrain/Nontrad: Several did over 2% for the month.
HY Munis: Several did over 2% for the month.
High Rated Bonds: Rates were up but several funds made over 1.5% for the month.
Bank loans: EIFAX +2.4%.
HY+EM: Both (FNMIX,HYG) over 3.5%.
Corp: PIGIX 1.9%.
SP500(SPY): 7.5%. VXUS(international): 11.6 is doing better than SPY for 1-3 months.
PCI(CEF): 8.5%. YTD still at -10.1%

My own portfolio
I started the month with IOFIX+JASVX (both securitized). In the middle of the month sold JASVX and bought NHMAX. The performance was so good in November that securitized fund performance lagged the best. It was another good month for me, I made about 2% and it was one of the strongest month.

Both funds are in mostly securitized.
IOFIX(link): concenrated mostly (over 78%) in legacy RMBS.
JASVX(link): 2 of the managers came from Semper (SEMMX) but as you stated JASVX held pretty well while IOFIX+SEMMX lost a lot more in 03/2020. This fund is more diversified with RMBS,CMBS,ABS.CLO but also 14.8% in corp + cash and Gov.
I have been using both. See my thread(link)

Has anyone taken a close look at James Alpha? Wondering why/how it held up so much better than IOFIX in the face of covid. Is it just better credit quality? Any thoughts would be appreciated.

MWTRX is a good fund but GIBLX has a better record for 1-3-5 years.
Both are not funds I use since I'm mainly a bond investor in the last several years and their past performance (6% average for 3 years) will not happen in the future.
I'm also not impressed by LT record, DODGX had a great record years ago but now it trails the "stupid" index SPY for 10 years already
BTW, I used to be at 80-90% equities until several years prior to retirement where I change gradually to more bonds.

Can you please explain your comment? Are you saying that you won't buy a fund with good performance because it can't keep up? Not sure how you can be confident that a newer fund will outperform established winners. I have substantial positions in both MWTRX and GIBLX, a very big fan of the latter.

For the average Joe investor: KISS investing
1) I believe in using up to 5 (maybe 7) funds
2) The core portion should be about 70% and use very cheap indexes, the rest may be in managed funds that have something special.
3) Hardly trade which means looking at your portfolio 1-2 times annually and make small adjustments of 1-2 funds.
With that in mind:
1) Core: I would use SPY/VTI for most of my stocks. BIV as my generic bond fund.
Explore: PRWCX, VWIAX, PIMIX.
2) Let's check MWTRX and GIBLX in the last 5 years. I don't see MWTRX as anything more/special beyond BIV but GIBLX is different enough which is why I may use it in my explore portion. See 5 year

chart.
1) I'm a flexible investor with specific goals. Making over 6% annually using mainly bond funds, be positive every year, SD < 3, never lose 3% from any last top.
2) I mainly hold very concentrated portfolio of 2-3 funds. I may own a fund, weeks or years. I held PIMIX for 6-7 years, PHMIX for 3 years, IOFIX easily over 50% in the last 3 years.
3) Even if I own a fund for years, I may sell it for days to several weeks when market conditions are extreme which is one of my goals. This is not your usual trader as someone who buys 10 stocks and keep changing them.

Well, BIV and MWTRX will get you to the same place over time...but MWTRX has an SD of 3.53 (Sharpe 1.29) versus 5.19/.89 for BIV (still a big fan of BIV when I don't want to get locked into a mutual fund). I must say FD you are quite impressive in your trading skill, no doubt about that but I do question whether you might also get to the same place just holding quality bond funds like these two and say PIMIX. You say you've had very large positions in IOFAX and I recall you jumping out before it cratered, but had you guessed wrong you would have lost significant life savings in a matter of days. I could not live with that possibility...so I'd rather make my 5% to 6% by combining PIMIX with MWTRX, which is what PV say I would have made on average since 2008.

MWTRX is a good fund but GIBLX has a better record for 1-3-5 years.
Both are not funds I use since I'm mainly a bond investor in the last several years and their past performance (6% average for 3 years) will not happen in the future.
I'm also not impressed by LT record, DODGX had a great record years ago but now it trails the "stupid" index SPY for 10 years already
BTW, I used to be at 80-90% equities until several years prior to retirement where I change gradually to more bonds.

Can you please explain your comment? Are you saying that you won't buy a fund with good performance because it can't keep up? Not sure how you can be confident that a newer fund will outperform established winners. I have substantial positions in both MWTRX and GIBLX, a very big fan of the latter.

For the average Joe investor: KISS investing
1) I believe in using up to 5 (maybe 7) funds
2) The core portion should be about 70% and use very cheap indexes, the rest may be in managed funds that have something special.
3) Hardly trade which means looking at your portfolio 1-2 times annually and make small adjustments of 1-2 funds.
With that in mind:
1) Core: I would use SPY/VTI for most of my stocks. BIV as my generic bond fund.
Explore: PRWCX, VWIAX, PIMIX.
2) Let's check MWTRX and GIBLX in the last 5 years. I don't see MWTRX as anything more/special beyond BIV but GIBLX is different enough which is why I may use it in my explore portion. See 5 year chart.
My style isn't recommended to anybody.
1) I'm a flexible investor with specific goals. Making over 6% annually using mainly bond funds, be positive every year, SD < 3, never lose 3% from any last top.
2) I mainly hold very concentrated portfolio of 2-3 funds. I may own a fund, weeks or years. I held PIMIX for 6-7 years, PHMIX for 3 years, IOFIX easily over 50% in the last 3 years.
3) Even if I own a fund for years, I may sell it for days to several weeks when market conditions are extreme which is one of my goals. This is not your usual trader as someone who buys 10 stocks and keep changing them.

Semi-month update for limited funds
Observations for one month as of 11/14/2020:
Rates for 5-10 year Treasury went up in the last month
Bonds: Surprisingly, it was good for all the above funds. Several funds in Multi, Non Trad, HY muni, EM, Bank Loans, HY, Proffered made over 1%. Even higher-rated bond funds were up too.
Stocks: did well but QQQ was down after a very strong YTD
My own portfolio
In the last week of October I sold most of my portfolio for the third time this year. When VIX goes above 30-35 and both stocks+most bonds categories are going down it’s a good sign for me to sell. I bought back (IOFIX,JASVX) at 99+% at the beginning of the month. YTD: so far it's the best risk-adjusted return I have ever had.

@FD1000

I'm not a long term holder but a trader and avoided the big losses of March 2020.

Were they really big losses?
If you had instead, not sold and just held your positions the draw down for JASVX was 6% in March of 2020. By May of 2020 you would have recovered from that loss without timing the market.
Had you been taking monthly withdrawals, those withdrawals would have been impacted slightly over 2 months. Having a 3-6 month cash position for withdrawals would solve that problem.
To be fair, IOFIX and SEMMX have yet to recover. Owning these two funds (that exhibit deep draw downs and slow recovers) may not the best choice for those seeking "yield with safety". I learn this the hard way owning THOPX.

JASVX - Hindsight is a great thing when you can look back until today :-)
I have used PIMIX until 01/2018, SEMMX for most of 2018 and then IOFIX in 2019+2020. HOBIX,JASVX are funds I started using in 2020.
The above are all mentioned on my thread (link)
JASVX - at least one of the managers came from SEMMX but it did much better than SEMMX. I love fresh new funds where the managers can do better.
These funds can have very good risk/reward for months, even years, until markets are volatile and why I exit. VIX > 35-40 is a good indicator of that.

@FD1000

I'm not a long term holder but a trader and avoided the big losses of March 2020.

Were they really big losses?
If you had instead, not sold and just held your positions the draw down for JASVX was 6% in March of 2020. By May of 2020 you would have recovered from that loss without timing the market.
Had you been taking monthly withdrawals, those withdrawals would have been impacted slightly over 2 months. Having a 3-6 month cash position for withdrawals would solve that problem.
To be fair, IOFIX and SEMMX have yet to recover. Owning these two funds (that exhibit deep draw downs and slow recovers) may not the best choice for those seeking "yield with safety". I learn this the hard way owning THOPX.

Yep, I have been using Fidelity CC 2% cash back and Penfed CC 5% cash back on all gas for years. We charge all we can from $1 to paying our property taxes with no additional fees.
But, that's not really the subject of this thread :-)
As part of my goals and style I mainly use bond funds + trading on momentum. I'm concentrated on total returns and not higher income but I have noticed that I used funds such as PIMIX for years until 01/2018 and since then SEMMX,IOFIX,EIXIX,HOBIX,JASVX and they pay at least 4%. I'm not a long term holder but a trader and avoided the big losses of March 2020.

hank, from your link, this thread is about "The average rate paid by banks on basic, federally insured savings accounts"
Someone who seriously looks for the above isn't going to invest in a fund that lost about 9% as TMSRX. This is why I posted about ICSH, JPST, BSV=VBIRX.
There are several banks that will pay much higher than 0.05% but the writer as many other is lazy and/or doesn't want to do extensive research for serious options.
There are several other options but it depends on what you are trying to achieve.
Do you want/need? Ballast, higher income, more performance, lower taxes.
As you know I try to avoid black swans and why I'm out when risk is elevated and I don't like market conditions. It also depends on your style. I'm a trader. While IOFIX was down sharply (just in 3 weeks), it's up over 50% since the crash. I love short term volatility and then calm water.

Observations for one month as of 10/30/2020:
October was not a good month for stocks and most bonds (Interest rates were up). High rated bonds were down for 1 and 3 months. The best bond categories have been Multi+Non Trad.
Multi: 0.1% for the month but securitized shined again(IOFIX,DHEAX). HOBIX with 1%.
Uncontrain/Nontrad: +0.2 for the month. Securitized(JASVX) did better at 0.8%
HY Munis: (-0.3) for the month but BSNIX(new fund from Baird) has done better all year.
High Rated Bonds: (-0.3%) for the month. The index BND -0.56%
Bank loans: Flat but EIFAX +0.3%.
HY+EM: HY 0.25 and EM= +0.1 for the month and this time no correlation to stocks.
Corp: -0.2% for the month. PIGIX -0.5%.
SP500(SPY) Down month at -2.5, YTD=2.9%.
PCI CEF (-5.1%) for the month. YTD still at -18.1%
My own portfolio
I started the month with IOFIX+JASVX (both securitized) + NHMAX(HY Muni). Early in the month sold NHMAX and bought HOBIX. It’s pretty obvious that funds loaded with securitized bonds are doing well. HOBIX continues to have good performance for 1-3 months. It was another good month for me, even last week I made 0.1%.
In the last week of October I sold most of my portfolio for the third time this year. When VIX goes above 30-35 and both stocks+most bonds categories are going down it’s a good sign for me to sell. Since I retired in 2018 I don’t see any reason to be invested when markets crash. I can be out until markets look better. Sure, sometimes it’s just a false alarm but I rather be out. It works well with my trading style and not recommended for anybody else.

Diversification didn’t help you much in October. SPY down -2.5%, FSPSX(International index) -4%, BND -0.56%

The problem with all/most alternative funds is...they don't sustain their risk/reward long.
Arnott with PAUIX sounded so great in 2010 just to disappoint in the next 10 years..
AQR have several funds based on their research(risk parity, futures, macro, alternative,,,) and disappointed too.
IOFIX wasn't a surprise for me. When investors want their money immediately and there are no buyers, the price will go way down, especially with niche, special holdings.
But look at IOFIX LQD is liquid high-rated Corp bond fund. Peak to through it lost over 18% until the Fed announced it will start buying these bonds. If the Fed wouldn't do it the situation would be worse.

IQDAX, Q Infinity fund
positive returns, low correlation to the stock and bond market, liquid, high alpha, low beta, good asymmetric risk/reward profile, high minimum, black box aspect, yes, but what the heck am I really invested in, is your risk manager up to the task, or will I get a nasty "surprise" one day "ala IOFIX"?
Best,
Baseball_Fan

I sold almost everything. My portfolio lost just -0.1% from its last top.

But you must still have taken the hit yesterday in the downdraft? How can you be sure you will buy back in at a better price than you sold? How long are you willing to be out of the market? To each his own, but given that you're almost all in bond funds (I think) how much can really be gained by market timing, even if you mostly guess right on your buys and sells? Just wondering, not criticizing,

My bond funds didn't take a hit. I had IOFIX,JASVX and HOBIX.
Below are my portfolio numbers as of yesterday from Schwab
YTD performance is 14.9%.
3 year average annually = 10.13%...SD(volatility)=2.16
In 2018 I lost less than 1% in Q4.
In 2020 I sold most of my funds in late Feb and all early in March (documented in this thread)
The key is good timing in/out + using momentum + not your usual funds + several times per year I trade riskier stuff (stocks, ETFs, CEFs, GLD, whatever) for hours-days based on technical analysis.

(link) The Fund was created to act as a solution for fixed income exposure in all market environments. It invests in an array of global fixed income sectors with ability to adjust sector allocations as necessary.
The fund’s experienced managers may selectively use leverage through the use of credit swaps and futures only when conditions are favorable. This may mean CEFs.
Basically, SVARX is a fund of other fixed income funds. Their risk/reward is very good.
I don't know their history, but they use a lot of securitized by investing...drumroll...in 2 funds with high risk + reward, IOFIX+BDKNX. If you trade them well, you do well.
Interesting managers BIO (link).
That's what I do manually :-)
but its daily volatility is too high for my taste. Yesterday it was -0.6%. Last September it was down almost 2%.

VIX closed over 30 means I got to sell some, so I sold 50% of my portfolio which was in IOFIX. If VIX goes back under 30 I will buy it again.
It's probably just a temporary spike but I have got very little to lose. I'm already at 15% for 2020 + only one down week at -0.3% (I write down weekly results every weekend).