thoughts on durability
https://nymag.com/intelligencer/2020/05/us-unemployment-rate-jobs-report-stock-market-dow.html

Hi guys ... The S&P 500 Index keeps climbing and as of today's close of 2930 puts it up about 31% from its 52 week low and down 13.5% from its 52 week high. For the barometer, it keeps dropping and scores the Index as extremely overbought based upon its metrics. Can the Index keep going higher while the barometer keeps falling? Remember, this is a Fed induced rally with large amounts of money having been injected into the financial system. With this, I'm now thinking that the market can rally on. And, when the barometer starts rising again ...Well, this may be a signal for more volatility ahead. Much like the restaurants, bars & grills in the Carolinas make a last call shout out about a half an hour before closing time.

VWINX is a fine one stop fund for income and some capital gains. It is paying only a little more than a core bond fund but subject to more equity risk. IT lost 8% in the recent crash.

Looking at VWINX's most recent Drawdown (-8.5%):
https://screencast.com/t/HKfu96M9JFC

I "love" when someone says averages. You can do better than the average and/or find better than average funds. It also depends on when you start and end the results.
Any time you start before a crash and end after a crash, "safer" higher-credit bonds look better.
So, if I compare PIMIX to BND from 01/2010 to 01/2018(link). PIMIX did 3 times better and why PIMIX was a major % of my portfolio. Since 01/2018 it wasn't as good but IOFIX was great until end of 02/2020 when I sold it.
Basically, it depends what kind of investor are you, style, goals, retiree or accumulator and more.

Fyi -Gold have been on a tear 10-20s%+ return past few months
maybe mid-long term returns could be questionable indeed if equity market bounce back
https://www.google.com/amp/s/seekingalpha.com/amp/news/3572185-gold-etfs-already-annual-inflow-record

@msf
Thanks for the detailed explanation. I am recently retired and purposely reduced equity exposure before Covid as I was concerned about a 30 to 50% drop in my retirement accounts immediately if something like this came along. I guess I lucked out but now of course it is how and when to get back in. I am aiming to increase my income production gradually over the next year or so especially as MMF and most CDs are now paying almost as little as savings accounts. Fortunately I have enough to live on
It is very difficult to identify vehicles for reasonable ( over 2 or 3%) income returns without taking a lot of risk in these times. Many of the usual ideas like REITS and utilities have been decimated and will soon be forced to cut their dividends too. It will take a long time for a utility to recover from a 20 or 25% drop in share price.
Unfortunately many of the "income" strategies seem to ignore absolute returns claiming all that counts is the income, but I think that is short sighted, as dividend cuts usually follow share declines of this nature.

@davidrmoran Yes, trailing S&P500 by "only" 9% or so YTD. I've added DSEEX to my "good until it wasn't" list (along with PONAX, IOFIX, just about anything AQR, etc.), but will hold this one.

That said, I didn't add the comment in my post above because at least for vanilla bond funds, YTD performance is positive and in line with long term performance. Of course, the more one moves away from vanilla, the greater the skew:
Intermediate Core: YTD: 3.27%, 5 year 3.22%
Intermediate Core Plus: YTD 1.17%, 5 year 3.15%
Multisector: YTD -6.61%, 5 year 2.13%
High Yield: YTD -9.98%, 5 year 2.09%

Agree. This year Multisector bonds lag the Intermediate core bonds by ~10%, indicating flight to safety.

Several Berkshire Hathaway's managers including Adit Jain, Greg Abel, and Todd Combs are part of the succession plan for sometime now. When Warren Buffet is not make big move now other than selling ALL airline stocks should signify there is little chance of this sector of returning to profitable in the near future.
https://barrons.com/articles/coronavirus-news-updates-51588687892
He has more cash now than 2008 crisis when he bought a number of financial stocks, most notable Bank of America.

ooh, ooh, DSEEX the last 10 days has rocked past SP500 (rocked meaning slightly outpaced)

https://oilprice.com/Energy/Energy-General/Is-It-The-Right-Time-To-Buy-Into-The-Oil-Price-Rally.html
/After a heavy dose of doom and gloom, the oil markets seem to be finally getting their footing back. Crude prices have almost fully retraced their historic nosedive three weeks ago, with WTI crude for June delivery following up Monday's 22% rally with a 13.5% gain at 9 am ET on Tuesday. /
Oil energy continued to do well if economy staring open up...we have been adding slowly to this sector past few wks. Whether future returns are attained, hard to say but mid 20s bucks per barrel appear extremely cheap and perhaps only one way is to go is UP

Gee there really is a MASKX
Who would have known?
On a sadder note, my sister in the Texas Hill country says people are yelling at her for wearing a mask and she is avoiding certain grocery stores because of the hostile reaction she has had from MAGA wearing customers in the parking lot.
She says "down hear you assume everybody is carrying a firearm"
It is happening elsewhere
https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2020/05/07/oklahoma-city-mcdonalds-shooting-2-workers-shot-customer/3086975001/

The difference in ERs between institutional class shares and A shares at PIMCO is on the order of 0.3% - 0.4%. So just subtract that from the performance figures. Admittedly, these are larger difference than the 0.25% 12b-1 fee difference one finds at most fund families.
Total Return Fund share classes
Income Fund share classes
PMDRX is only available in institutional class shares.
A shares are indeed the equivalent of retail, no load. They're where all the D share investors were moved. More generally, I don't think that A shares should be load adjusted for several reasons:

• Most people buying the shares on their own are not getting charged the load (as noted)
  
• People buying these shares with a load with the help of advisors are receiving value for that payment - the services of the advisor. (One can debate whether this "value" has any value, but that's a different question.)
  
• People who buy these shares themselves with a load perhaps do need an advisor; they should get what they pay for.
  
• There is no clear amortization period for the load. Just because we're looking at five year returns doesn't make five years the correct length of time.

With respect to C shares, they are automatically "load adjusted", because the load is embedded in the ER and thus in the performance figures. Using the logic above (that this is a fee for advice, not a cost of running the fund), I respectfully suggest that the load portion of the ER be backed out when evaluating the performance of the fund itself. Though as David observed, this gets to be an absurd exercise with dubious benefit.
Finally, with respect to 5 years being arbitrary and skewed by recent performance. It is certainly arbitrary. I've commented in a few other posts about how a recent sharp downturn can skew even long term figures, especially with more aggressive and/or volatile funds.
That said, I didn't add the comment in my post above because at least for vanilla bond funds, YTD performance is positive and in line with long term performance. Of course, the more one moves away from vanilla, the greater the skew:
Intermediate Core: YTD: 3.27%, 5 year 3.22%
Intermediate Core Plus: YTD 1.17%, 5 year 3.15%
Multisector: YTD -6.61%, 5 year 2.13%
High Yield: YTD -9.98%, 5 year 2.09%

Here's a rough approximation of an answer, responding to Lewis's concern about the skew created by institutional shares. I searched the MFO database for all PIMCO funds with a five-year record and an investment minimum of $10k or less. Basically, the "A" and "C" share classes of each fund.
113 results, pretty much half "A" and half "C." EM Currency and Short-Term Investments doesn't report a "C" class, which is why the number is odd rather than even. So, 57 "A" share classes.
Of the 57, 35 (61%) have peer-beating absolute returns, 3 exactly match their peers, 19 lag.
If you switch to Charles's MFO Rating, a risk-adjusted return metric that uses the more conservative Martin Ratio rather than the Sharpe ratio as its basis, 20 of 57 funds have four or five star (above to much above average) ratings and another 21 have three star (just a bit above or below average) ratings. One fund, a money market doesn't have a rating. So, 72% "okay to excellent" over the past five years.
- - - - -
What unites the real stinkers? Mostly the word "real." PIMCO created a series of inflation-proof funds with the word "real" in their names. They incorporate hedges like TIPs, commodities and so on. Absent inflation, they've really sucked.
Also "Dividend and Income," for reasons I haven't explored.
- - - - -
But remember: five years is an arbitrary period based solely on the number of fingers and toes we possess (rolls eyes) and the measurement in question ends in the midst of a massive downturn which skews the results.
On whole: relatively few strategies have been soaring over the past five years, and many of them ignore traditional virtues like valuation, income-production and diversification. That would make me cautious of using them for a guide.
For what that's worth,
David

In 2015, 10 year treasuries yielded 2.14%, in 2016 it was 1.84%, then 2.33% (2017), 2.91% (2018), 2.14% (2019), and 1.17% (annualized) so far this year. So just looking at yield, one might have hoped for a tad north of 2%/year.
https://www.macrotrends.net/2016/10-year-treasury-bond-rate-yield-chart
IEF, an ETF of 7-10 year maturity Treasuries has an average duration of 7.6 years.
https://www.ishares.com/us/products/239456/ishares-710-year-treasury-bond-etf
Let's figure that over five years rates dropped by around 1% and duration was around 7.6 years So applying some back of the envelope calculations, appreciation was around 7% (allowing for some convexity) giving us maybe 1.3%/year annualized appreciation over five years.
Keep in mind these are all very crude estimates. Still, that adds up to around 3.5%/year over the past five years for the intermediate treasury market. Non-treasuries yield more but may not have had the same appreciation.
VFITX (intermediate treasury) has returned 3.26% annualized over the past five years.
VSIGX (interm treasury index) has returned 3.39%
VISCX (intermediate corp index) has returned 4.22%, and its benchmark index is at 4.41%
(All Vanguard data from Vanguard's site.)
Disregarding junk and securitized debt (categories that have done worse), one expects an intermediate term fund to have had returns falling somewhere between these figures. So PTTRX (3.89%), PIMIX (3.85%), even PMDRX (3.24%) seem to have held their own.
Over five years, PTTRX is 0.67% above its category, 0.04% above its index.
PIMIX is 1.58% above its category and matching its index.
PMDRX is 0.02% above its category, though 0.61% below its index.
(Data in this paragraph is from M*)
The record that seems "unbelievably bad" is not PIMCO's but that of the market. PIMCO has done fine with bonds. Arnott is a completely different story.

I find the following to provide a manageable starting point for me to drill down:
Period Metrics & Ratings
• Sharpe Rating In Category: 3 - 5 Average or Better
• Sortino Rating In Category: 3 - 5 Average or Better
MFO Designations
• Family Rating: Top , Upper , Middle
Purchase Info
• Expense Ratio (ER) Rating In Category: 3 - 1 Average or Less
• Front Load: None
Portfolio Info
• Turnover, Annual: 75% or Less
I'm curious where others start from.

Look at https://www.pimco.com/en-us/investments/mutual-funds
This is an unbelievably bad record - look at the 5 year return column.
The only funds which made a reasonable amount of money are the long bond funds --- even Rob Arnott's RAFI (Research Associates Fundamental Index = equal weighted index) have done poorly.

@LewisBraham, what a difference a couple of months makes. Last time I looked MACGX was a 2 star fund by M* and now is 5 stars. Of course, FMIJX used to be 5 stars and now at 2 stars. MACGX is up 40% for the last month, but I will pass on investing as I already am in MSEGX which is a LCG fund run by the same Counterpoint Global team of Dennis Lynch & company and up 18% YTD. But thanks for alerting us of their recent performance.

@jojo26 There are 2000 stocks in the Russell 2000 Index of small caps and 1391 stocks in the Russell 2000 Value Index. JSCVX holds 79 stocks. If you think that's a "closet indexer," you're delusional. Also, it's expense ratio is 0.92%, not "1%+." A manager can still be very active in the small-cap space with 100, 200, 300 stocks, even more. JSCVX's active share metric is 92.4--good enough in my book: https://cdn.janushenderson.com/webdocs/Active+Share+Report_Mutual+Funds_March+2020_exp_07-15-20.pdf