These ETMFs sound like a natural progression in the products coming out.

I think so too John. I'm looking forward to them as a welcome advance.
Personally, I'd like to see actively managed ETFs expand in a big way. Right now, if you have an account at brokerage A, it costs too much to purchase a Vanguard mutual fund, or any mutual fund not in the no transaction fee platform. Often $50 just to buy or sell a mutual fund not on the NTF platform. Too much. Active ETFs will put away all that nonsense, and equal the playing field. And I want to continue to see ETFs as a whole expand, advance and improve. Sure, there's a lot of bad products coming out, but also good products. All of these make investing better for the little guy and tend to equal the playing field.

I looked up ACCNX which I own.
AAA. 45.88%
AA. 8.81%
A. 9.65%
BBB. 19.88%
BB. 8.38%
B. 4.10%
CCC. 1.28%
CC. 0.32%
C and below. 1.69%
Per the prospectus; at least 65% in investment grade. Up to 35% in high yield and or emerging market debt. No more than 10% in non-dollar debt.
I'm sure every fund will interpret the Plus differently. Some may be hinging on unconstrained.

@Mike_E, that is good info on the 11.32% convertibles, 6.1% preferred stocks.
So really 25.53% stocks as you mentioned above. How is one supposed to fit this into their asset allocation? Eaton Vance is a load firm. Wonder what advice they are giving all their dealers, about how to use this fund. Where does it fit into a portfolio?

Asset Allocation 7 More Information
AS OF 8/31/2014; MORNINGSTAR CATEGORY: MULTISECTOR BOND
Cash 19.12%
Convertibles 11.32%
Domestic Bond 19.41%
Preferred Stock 6.10%
Foreign Bond 21.02%
Foreign Stock 3.21%
Others 3.61%
Domestic Stock 16.22%
https://fundresearch.fidelity.com/mutual-funds/view-all/277905246?type=o-NavBar
Scroll halfway down the page.
Just summing the domestic, foreign, and preferred stocks = 25.53%
Add to that 11.32% in convertibles and you have a fund with a market beta approximately = 0.64 (per portfolio visualizer regression analysis). That's on the high side for me for a multi-sector bond fund.
http://www.portfoliovisualizer.com/factor-analysis
Mike_E

EVBAX is down nearly 3% more than it's (Lipper) category average in the last month (challenging market environment). I realize that one month is a very short period of time and will hold. Any thoughts?

Thanks for pointing this out. Had no idea. A very rough month and 3 months for the fund. Underperforming the total bond market index by 5.85% over 3 months. That's a lot for a bond fund over 3 months. Speaks to how 'unconventional' some of the unconstrained and multi-sector bond funds are, and how these funds may diversify or not diversify the stock portion of a portfolio.

Very eye-opening numbers over the past three months, I must say.

Cashin has only been on the floor of the NYSE for something like 50+ years.
Edited to add: Bio http://www.businessinsider.com/art-cashin-biography-2012-7?op=1

EVBAX is down nearly 3% more than it's (Lipper) category average in the last month (challenging market environment). I realize that one month is a very short period of time and will hold. Any thoughts?

Thanks for pointing this out. Had no idea. A very rough month and 3 months for the fund. Underperforming the total bond market index by 5.85% over 3 months. That's a lot for a bond fund over 3 months. Speaks to how 'unconventional' some of the unconstrained and multi-sector bond funds are, and how these funds may diversify or not diversify the stock portion of a portfolio.

I'm connecting this with my holding in DLFNX (DoubleLine "core") which I've seen referred to here as a core-plus fund. I've owned it for just over 2 years, now. It's a tiny slice of my pie, 2.56% of portfolio. It's taken two years for it to gain 5.7% for me. I'll keep it.

I'm close to 13%. It helps to dampen volatility and is supposed to be "less" correlated to the market.
For an quick and dirty view, on a day when my benchmark is down 1.4%, my portofolio was down 1.1%
BPLEX continues to be the cream of the crop: up 5% YTD

@MFO Board Member: Now it appears that Art Cashin has become relevant, at least in the eyes of John Wayne (Aka. John Chisum). As many of you know, a while back I linked his daily commentaries on a regular bases. I stopped doing so because I got tired of the negative comments directed ar Art. Here is the video of this thoughts on resistance at 1925 on the S&P 500.
Regards,
Ted
http://video.cnbc.com/gallery/?video=3000318836&play=1

1905 is the 200d simple moving average, which is apparently why he mentions 1900-1905 in the piece. But there's no rationale given for anything he's quoted as saying, so it's anyone's guess.
A blowthrough of the 200d (especially one that's sustained for a couple of days) could trigger significant additional selling.

Looks like I linked an old article. Oops. In the article the next stop was 1900-1905. Basically we are there now.
Art is a technical guru and a good one. For the day traders his info might be good. For most of us here it probably doesn't matter anyway.

Art Cashin is one of the better personalities on CNBC.
http://www.businessinsider.com/art-cashin-on-sp-500-1925-2014-10

Please tell me some of these "leads" are generated automatically by a computer App limited to no more than a 50 word vocabulary. Either that, or these writers hand their finished work off to their teen-aged kids to supply the caption.

In my gradually expanding experience, buying 5* funds in fund categories (not including sector funds, where one has to get the sector plus the manager right), adds a bit to performance. Must admit that the health care sector seems a lock, and I think that health biotech will prove to have been a "lock" for anyone with a ten year horizon.

Thinking about this subject this weekend and I have a question or two. It seems to me that the benefit of these long-short funds only shows itself if one invests a large amount or all of their portfolio. Having 10 or 20% does not benefit the portfolio in a meaningful way.
On the bond side, how much percentage of your portfolios would you place in fixed income during a bear market? Also would a balanced portfolio of 50% fixed income and 50% L/S funds be a mix that might work? I am not thinking of doing that but just throwing the question out there.
Have a great weekend to all.

FAIRX actually had great relative performance today. Down 0.14%, versus -1.25% for the Total US Stock Market Index.

I was just over at the Pimco site earlier this evening. There are so many funds there that could be pruned out of their stable of funds. Too much money I guess

Yeah, way too many funds. I was looking at David's October commentary. Gross was responsible for 35 different funds. But one of those funds has multiple versions, e.g., "37 iterations of PIMCO GIS Unconstrained Bond". Not just blaming Pimco here.
"According to the last count there are more than 10,000 mutual funds in North America! That means there are more mutual funds than stocks."
investopedia.com/university/mutualfunds/mutualfunds1.asp