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To be fair, though, this is, I think, just price. It additionally picked up probably 8.5-9% in dividends.
Only price matters and the one you can trade with. NAV is a good way to assess other stuff. My numbers are from M* and I think the price total returns include all distributions. Price = -10.1 NAV= (-5.16) You can also look at SharpChart(link). It's off many times by a bit. There is a huge difference between NAV and Price and why ShrapPrice is another good source to verify M*
Anyway, the purpose of this thread is bonds OEFs, the rest is just an additional info. If you want to invest and discuss CEFs please open another thread. I use riskier stuff(stocks,ETF,CEF,gold, whatever moves) for short term trading of hours to days but this is another subject. It's a long discussion in the past several years. When fix income leveraged CEFs doing great everybody talks about the price, when they crash the ones who lost money talk about NAV and how beautiful are the distributions. I only look at total returns it's the thing I see in my account. Again, please open another thread if you want to discuss high distribution investment.
For What It is Worth, BASIX is a very good NonTraditional Bond fund, that has a very favorable M* Fund Analyst Report, and has held up pretty well in 2020, and has a nice longer term performance record. Its portfolio has a very diversified mix of Government, Securitized, and Corporate holdings. At Schwab, it is a NTF offering that has very low requirements to invest in the fund.
Another fund worth looking at is VCFIX, an institutional class fund at Schwab, that is now available with very low initial investment requirements. It got clobbered in the March crash, but has had a very smooth performance trend since then. Schwab now has it as one of 2 funds in its "Select list" of recommendations for the Multisector bond oef category.
I agree that BASIX is pretty good, MNCPX looks better when you look at performance + SD.
Schwab have 2 recommended Multi funds JMSIX,VCFIX and I think they are not as good the others on my list. TSIIX is clearly better as a generic fund. PTIAX is another good one specializing in securitized and Munis. If I wanted to use riskier fund I would go with HSNYX over these two. It has much better performance for 1-3 years and lower SD
Over the last 10 years the best performance and Sharpe would have been delivered by PTIAX and PIMIX, and with no down years. Hard to recommend others when we have these (agree PIMIX is not doing so great lately, so will need to watch).
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)
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.
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.
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).
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.
@Junster : Thank for sharing. So the way I read it ,they rode it up & got out before the cookie crumbled. Then picked up the crumbs & went forth ?! Have a nice Holiday season, Derf
FD: "But I understand what you do and it suits your style"
I did quite a bit of trading this year, but limited my trading to more risk averse trades, consistent with my rather conservative Retirement objectives--bought GIBLX in a trade this year and was very pleased with its performance until it cooled off. I hope to return to my preferred investing approach for the remainder of 2020 and 2021--trying to select solid bond oefs, that I hope to hold for longer periods. IOFIX and SEMMX may be good for traders, but they would not fit my more risk averse fund selection criteria. I am trusting that VCFIX will return to its lower risk days going forward, but that is just my optimistic projection, based on what I have seen from it in the last 6 months. Schwab's embracing of it in their Select Fund lists, is reassuring to me and my approach to fund selection. I wish you continued success with your trading and look forward to following how that is working out for you.
wxman: "GIBLX hasn't really "cooled off." It is a bond fund, and a darn good one
From the end of March 2020 to August 7, GIBLX had a steady increase in total return, with no downturns. From August 7 to the end of October, Giblx had a small downturn and did not get back to its August high until close to the end of October. Since the end of October to the end of November, Giblx had another uptick. From a "trading" standpoint, I considered the 3 month period of flat/negative performance as "cooling off". If you are not a trader, but more of a buy and holder, then you have a different set of criteria for total return performance.
dtconroe. I'm OK with VCFIX but the meltdown of over 18% was too much, even PIMIX was down less than that around 11%. I don't put a lot of faith in Schwab bond selections. I think Fidelity is better and free to all investors even if you are not a client, right now their selected Multi list(link) is as follows:PTIAX, HSNAX, BMSAX, DINAX, JHFIX (PONAX/PIMIX used to be on this list for years). Fidelity always promote their funds as selected but I disregard it until I verify their superiority and in most cases I can find better choices. I think funds like TSIIX,PTIAX are more of a hold than VCFIX. As usual, I don't trust any fund/managers, volatility can show up any time and I hope not to be there.
wxman, GIBLX is still doing well in its category at one month=2.2% and 3 months=1.4% This is still in the top 15% in its M* category. For most investors who are looking for a ballast, performance and longer term hold, it's a great fund. For a much smaller group of investors like me, who rely more on bonds for higher performance and use momentum successfully, I hardly ever use Core and Core Plus funds. I would not recommend this for most investors.
Junkster, I stayed away from IOFIX for several months after the crash, I made most of my money after that with HY munis. I wanted to see more calm and was glad the Fed actions worked. I sure missed a lot of performance from the bottom but I also missed all the meltdown in March of 2020 (documented in this thread). Every Saturday I write down my portfolio performance for the last week and YTD. I can't complain too much when I'm up 18% in 2020, only one week loss at -0.3%, 5 weeks at zero and the rest are all up.
FD: "I'm OK with VCFIX but the meltdown of over 18% was too much, even PIMIX was down less than that around 11%. I don't put a lot of faith in Schwab bond selections."
We all look at criteria a bit differently in our analysis of bond oef selections. I calculated peak to trough losses in the March crash, and determined that IOFIX had a peak to trough loss of 41%, SEMMX a peak to trough loss of 24.5%, PUCZX a peak to trough loss of 16.8%, VCFIX a peak to trough loss of 16%, JMSIX a peak to trough loss of 14.8%, and PIMIX had a peak to trough loss of 12.8%. If I were looking only at peak to trough losses, I would definitely avoid IOFIX and SEMMX, of the other remaining funds PIMIX looks like the best choice. But I also look at how volatile the rebound performance is after the trough period, and funds like PIMIX and PUCZX, were very choppy and not smooth at all.
VCFIX peak to trough loss is troublesome, but its performance after the trough loss, has been one of the smoothest of all these funds. I am not all "comfortable" with VCFIX as a "safe" choice now, but it shows some positive, low risk, low volatile after crash performance. It is just a fund worth considering, but everyone has to be comfortable with the criteria they have adopted. I am not recommending VCFIX to anyone, so everyone has to look at it from the perspective of their investing approach. You and I both got criticized significantly after the March crash because we did not do a good job of telling others that we were doing a lot of selling of the funds mentioned above, and as a result I will not tell anyone what I am investing in any longer. I only mentioned VCFIX as a fund worth looking at again based on Schwab recommendations and the smooth rebound performance pattern of VCFIX
My calculation for peak to trough...VCFIX -19.7% from M* new charts found (here) from 2/25 (10000) to 3/25 (8027.67). Stockchart gives me -19.85% for VCFAX(link)
I agree with you that if you are looking for a securitized bond fund VCFIX is a good one. I actually posted in several sites that I'm selling almost everything at the end of 02/2020 and the rest several days later. I don't feel guilty at all. These sites are just for information and each investor should do their own due diligence but I see your point
FD:"My calculation for peak to trough...VCFIX -19.7% from M* new charts found (here) from 2/25 (10000) to 3/25 (8027.67). Stockchart gives me -19.85% for VCFAX(link)"
I used the performance chart system that Yogi sent out via email some time ago. On a YTD basis, VCFIX high was on 2/28 ($10,194) and its low was on 3/27 ($8553) for a difference of $1641.When you divide $1641 by $10194, that gives you 16.09% drop
Talk about the hackneyed “ different strokes for different folks”. The sole purpose of my bond email group in April was the recapture of value play in the beaten down mortgage funds. This was the result of the Black Swan liquidity meltdown. Our selection basis was focusing on the ones who had the WORST peak to trough. So throughout the spring and summer our three main players were BDKAX, IOFIX, and SEMPX - the funds that had the most recapture value. Then eventually based on performance came down to almost solely IOFIX. But basically you could have used any of the many bond categories that were impacted by the March meltdown such as junk corporates, junk munis, and even many investment grades areas.
Can’t recall his name but one prescient market analyst was spot on when he said in late March/early April this would be a credit story/rally recapture of value play. This recapture of value play has been the steadiest, most persistent rise with nary a down day I have ever seen since my first bond trade in January 1991. Just when you think you have seen it all, along comes this one of a kind rebound. There was a similar credit rebound - and in many cases a greater one percentage wise - among almost all bond categories in 2009. But it hasn’t had the trend persistency exhibited by the mortgage funds.
Edit: By the way, something I haven’t mentioned here before but in the past month Alphacentric (IOFIX) has finally begun cracking down on in and out traders via a lifetime ban - or at least the ones they deem disruptive to the fund, And they give you no warning notice either - just the ban. It is about time although I would have preferred a 1% or 2% short term redemption fee.
FD:"My calculation for peak to trough...VCFIX -19.7% from M* new charts found (here) from 2/25 (10000) to 3/25 (8027.67). Stockchart gives me -19.85% for VCFAX(link)"
I used the performance chart system that Yogi sent out via email some time ago. On a YTD basis, VCFIX high was on 2/28 ($10,194) and its low was on 3/27 ($8553) for a difference of $1641.When you divide $1641 by $10194, that gives you 16.09% drop
You looked at the old M* chart and I verified your numbers but I don't think they are accurate. I don't use the old M* chart anymore. The new M* chart is better.
I can see closer numbers to mine it in 2 places + yahoo data below verifies that.
dtconroe. I'm OK with VCFIX but the meltdown of over 18% was too much, even PIMIX was down less than that around 11%. I don't put a lot of faith in Schwab bond selections. I think Fidelity is better and free to all investors even if you are not a client, right now their selected Multi list(link) is as follows:PTIAX, HSNAX, BMSAX, DINAX, JHFIX (PONAX/PIMIX used to be on this list for years). Fidelity always promote their funds as selected but I disregard it until I verify their superiority and in most cases I can find better choices. I think funds like TSIIX,PTIAX are more of a hold than VCFIX. As usual, I don't trust any fund/managers, volatility can show up any time and I hope not to be there.
wxman, GIBLX is still doing well in its category at one month=2.2% and 3 months=1.4% This is still in the top 15% in its M* category. For most investors who are looking for a ballast, performance and longer term hold, it's a great fund. For a much smaller group of investors like me, who rely more on bonds for higher performance and use momentum successfully, I hardly ever use Core and Core Plus funds. I would not recommend this for most investors.
Junkster, I stayed away from IOFIX for several months after the crash, I made most of my money after that with HY munis. I wanted to see more calm and was glad the Fed actions worked. I sure missed a lot of performance from the bottom but I also missed all the meltdown in March of 2020 (documented in this thread). Every Saturday I write down my portfolio performance for the last week and YTD. I can't complain too much when I'm up 18% in 2020, only one week loss at -0.3%, 5 weeks at zero and the rest are all up.
Great work FD, I wish I could say the same for my portfolio...but happy I'm up a bit. Been about 47% cash all this year. On the other hand, you could have stayed in ANBEX (one of your choices) and been up over 17% YTD while you did nothing but sip wine and coffee!
FD, I have not been following M* recently and am not familiar with the newer M* performance charts, but I have a hard time believing that the old M* performance charts are so inaccurate, that there is a difference of 3% peak to trough differences in VCFIX. I have posted a new thread on M* to learn more about why there are such differences. I have read that many of the performance charting systems, is more in line with stocks, and often do not do a good job of capturing distributions from bond oefs in calculating total return. If the old M* performance charts are that inaccurate, I would have expected that someone would have noticed and challenged that over the years. Since I have not been following M* for several months, this might have been addressed in some previous M* discussions--do you have a theory as to why the old M* performance charts are so inaccurate and what performance charting errors have been correcting in the newer charting systems?
There's more to analysis than reading numbers off a table or a chart. One needs to understand what they represent.
First, notice that according to Yahoo, the return was 0.00% (no change) between March 4 and March 6. In contrast, M* reports a gain of 1.25 basis points from the 4th to the 5th, and a total gain of 5.02 basis points to the 6th. That's for both old and new charts.
Best guess is that M* is reporting total return, including accrued divs. That's something Yahoo can't do because it doesn't get this data. It only gets the monthly paid divs, not the daily declared divs. Over the long haul, Yahoo is fine, but you two are quibbling over days' worth of returns.
Second, while I don't have Yogi's email, if one looks at the old M* chart for the fund YTD a and mouses over Feb, one sees only weekly data points, not daily ones. Notice the dates given: 2/28 and 3/27, exactly four weeks apart (leap year). While not conclusive, this is evidence that the data presented had weekly granularity.
Stockcharts? Try this link instead, it's a much cleaner performance graph. If you need to reset it to the appropriate period, set the slider width to 23 days (double click so that you can enter "23"), and slide it over (using arrow keys for fine tuning) to begin on Feb 24th. You'll notice that Feb 28th is 0.24% higher than the starting point of Feb 25th. Offhand, I'd guess that Stockcharts, like Yahoo, is looking at monthly divs paid rather than daily divs accrued. Hence the jump on the date the div was paid.
Thus, according to Stockcharts, the max drawdown started on Feb 28th. (Set the slider width to 19 days, start the window on Feb 28; this goes through March 25th.) Stockcharts says that drawdown is -19.96%. But this excludes the daily divs, even though it purports to be a performance chart. So it overstates the magnitude of the drop, and it doesn't identify the correct date range for the max drawdown.
We now return this channel to angels dancing on the head of a pin.
Attached is a reply from M* Poster Yogibearbull, who is probably the most respected and knowledgeable poster on M* regarding M* Performance Charts:
"I don't like new M* charts. They show reinvestments for mutual funds only, not for ETFs. And they cannot be linked, and taking screenshots and uploading them all the time is a headache.
Old M* were/are great. We knew/know tricks to force reinvestments in almost everything. [They are not so good for CEFs as they work with NAVs only].
Now to the observed discrepancy for VCFIX.
New M* Charts show daily data for 1M, 3M, 6M, YTD, 1Y, 3Y, and weekly data for 5Y, 10Y, Max.
Old M* Charts show daily data for 1M, 3M only, and weekly data for YTD, 1Y, 5Y, 10Y, Max [these may change for funds with long histories as longer period views change to monthly]
[@Gary1952 (Customer) , note that Portfolio Visualizer data are monthly, so the drawdown shown there is different]
YTD view shows relevant Feb-April period and the data sampling then is different, daily for New M* Charts, weekly for Old M* Charts. But I also forced daily data in Old M* Charts by using a shorter custom window to capture Feb-April decline [see link below].
Old M* Charts weekly data show -16.33% decline from 2/28/20 to 4/10/20.
Old M* Chart daily data show -19.72% decline from 2/25/20 to 3/25/20 [matches New M* Chart data]
>> [new M* charts] show reinvestments for mutual funds only, not for ETFs
wow, how dumb
What does this chart supposedly without reinvestments show? Just price appreciation, or price appreciation plus divs with 0% return (i.e. one just piles up the cash divs over the years), or ...?
Over the past decade (12/6/10 to 12/4/20), the new M* chart for BND shows $10K growing to $14,306.99. (The link is just to the page; you have to pull up the graph yourself.)
Over the past decade, using M*'s old ETF chart, the total (not annualized) price appreciation was 8.15%, i.e. $10K worth of shares appreciated to $10,815. NAV appreciation wasn't much higher, at 8.24%. So the new chart is showing much more gain than mere price appreciation.
FWIW, using div data from Yahoo, one gets another 28.29% in cash over the decade. If not reinvested these divs plus the share appreciation (28.3% + 8.2% = 36.5%) is much less than the total return shown in the new chart (43.07%). So whatever the chart is showing isn't just appreciation plus unreinvested divs.
The new interactive chart for BND shows that between 11/30/10 and 11/30/20, $10K grew to $14,327.71. Vanguard's performance page for BND has a graph showing growth of $10K ending 11/30/20. Set the tab to 10 years and mouse over the tail of the graph. According to Vanguard, $10K grew to $14,327.70.
Okay, M* is off a penny. It sure looks like these graphs are showing total returns, including reinvested divs, of the BND ETF.
I use mainly the new M* chart and only use the old for links because I can do more with the new charts. The old charts don't work if you want to see more than one newer funds + older funds. Try to see PIMIX+MWFSX+EIXIX on the same chart. You can start with MWFSX and add PIMIX but not EIXIX. If you start with PIMIX you can't add any of the others. MWFSX has more than 2 years history.
The new M* can handle all the above.
You can link to the old but not to the new. One plus to old M*.
New M* Charts show daily data for 1M, 3M, 6M, YTD, 1Y, 3Y, and weekly data for 5Y, 10Y, Max. Old M* Charts show daily data for 1M, 3M only, and weekly data for YTD, 1Y, 5Y, 10Y, Max. Huge advantage for the new M*.
Much easier reading with the new M*, it actually tells you the % instead of calculating it with the old which is harder when it's negative.
In the example of VCFIX from 2/25 to 3/25. The old shows you just chart numbers, the new shows you chart numbers + the % near the ticker at -19.72%
ETF: I tried HYG,HYD and they were wrong with the new. Then I tried BIV and it was accurate with the new. I try to stay away from ETF and for comparison I use OEFs VBILX=BIV, VBTLX=BND. 10 years: old M* 10K grew to: BND=14.36K VBTLX=14.356K new M* 10K grew to: BND=14.3K VBTLX=14.3K
Then I tried VBILX, for YTD old M* chart was close at 9.05, new chart 8.77%, real number 9.06. So now the new chart is also bad?
Comments
d'oh --- and the big annual div comes Tuesday
You can also look at SharpChart(link). It's off many times by a bit. There is a huge difference between NAV and Price and why ShrapPrice is another good source to verify M*
Anyway, the purpose of this thread is bonds OEFs, the rest is just an additional info. If you want to invest and discuss CEFs please open another thread. I use riskier stuff(stocks,ETF,CEF,gold, whatever moves) for short term trading of hours to days but this is another subject.
It's a long discussion in the past several years. When fix income leveraged CEFs doing great everybody talks about the price, when they crash the ones who lost money talk about NAV and how beautiful are the distributions. I only look at total returns it's the thing I see in my account. Again, please open another thread if you want to discuss high distribution investment.
Another fund worth looking at is VCFIX, an institutional class fund at Schwab, that is now available with very low initial investment requirements. It got clobbered in the March crash, but has had a very smooth performance trend since then. Schwab now has it as one of 2 funds in its "Select list" of recommendations for the Multisector bond oef category.
Stay Safe, Derf
I agree that BASIX is pretty good, MNCPX looks better when you look at performance + SD.
Schwab have 2 recommended Multi funds JMSIX,VCFIX and I think they are not as good the others on my list. TSIIX is clearly better as a generic fund. PTIAX is another good one specializing in securitized and Munis. If I wanted to use riskier fund I would go with HSNYX over these two. It has much better performance for 1-3 years and lower SD
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)
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, 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).
Have a nice Holiday season, Derf
I did quite a bit of trading this year, but limited my trading to more risk averse trades, consistent with my rather conservative Retirement objectives--bought GIBLX in a trade this year and was very pleased with its performance until it cooled off. I hope to return to my preferred investing approach for the remainder of 2020 and 2021--trying to select solid bond oefs, that I hope to hold for longer periods. IOFIX and SEMMX may be good for traders, but they would not fit my more risk averse fund selection criteria. I am trusting that VCFIX will return to its lower risk days going forward, but that is just my optimistic projection, based on what I have seen from it in the last 6 months. Schwab's embracing of it in their Select Fund lists, is reassuring to me and my approach to fund selection. I wish you continued success with your trading and look forward to following how that is working out for you.
From the end of March 2020 to August 7, GIBLX had a steady increase in total return, with no downturns. From August 7 to the end of October, Giblx had a small downturn and did not get back to its August high until close to the end of October. Since the end of October to the end of November, Giblx had another uptick. From a "trading" standpoint, I considered the 3 month period of flat/negative performance as "cooling off". If you are not a trader, but more of a buy and holder, then you have a different set of criteria for total return performance.
I'm OK with VCFIX but the meltdown of over 18% was too much, even PIMIX was down less than that around 11%. I don't put a lot of faith in Schwab bond selections. I think Fidelity is better and free to all investors even if you are not a client, right now their selected Multi list(link) is as follows:PTIAX, HSNAX, BMSAX, DINAX, JHFIX (PONAX/PIMIX used to be on this list for years). Fidelity always promote their funds as selected but I disregard it until I verify their superiority and in most cases I can find better choices.
I think funds like TSIIX,PTIAX are more of a hold than VCFIX.
As usual, I don't trust any fund/managers, volatility can show up any time and I hope not to be there.
wxman, GIBLX is still doing well in its category at one month=2.2% and 3 months=1.4% This is still in the top 15% in its M* category. For most investors who are looking for a ballast, performance and longer term hold, it's a great fund.
For a much smaller group of investors like me, who rely more on bonds for higher performance and use momentum successfully, I hardly ever use Core and Core Plus funds. I would not recommend this for most investors.
Junkster, I stayed away from IOFIX for several months after the crash, I made most of my money after that with HY munis. I wanted to see more calm and was glad the Fed actions worked. I sure missed a lot of performance from the bottom but I also missed all the meltdown in March of 2020 (documented in this thread). Every Saturday I write down my portfolio performance for the last week and YTD. I can't complain too much when I'm up 18% in 2020, only one week loss at -0.3%, 5 weeks at zero and the rest are all up.
We all look at criteria a bit differently in our analysis of bond oef selections. I calculated peak to trough losses in the March crash, and determined that IOFIX had a peak to trough loss of 41%, SEMMX a peak to trough loss of 24.5%, PUCZX a peak to trough loss of 16.8%, VCFIX a peak to trough loss of 16%, JMSIX a peak to trough loss of 14.8%, and PIMIX had a peak to trough loss of 12.8%. If I were looking only at peak to trough losses, I would definitely avoid IOFIX and SEMMX, of the other remaining funds PIMIX looks like the best choice. But I also look at how volatile the rebound performance is after the trough period, and funds like PIMIX and PUCZX, were very choppy and not smooth at all.
VCFIX peak to trough loss is troublesome, but its performance after the trough loss, has been one of the smoothest of all these funds. I am not all "comfortable" with VCFIX as a "safe" choice now, but it shows some positive, low risk, low volatile after crash performance. It is just a fund worth considering, but everyone has to be comfortable with the criteria they have adopted. I am not recommending VCFIX to anyone, so everyone has to look at it from the perspective of their investing approach. You and I both got criticized significantly after the March crash because we did not do a good job of telling others that we were doing a lot of selling of the funds mentioned above, and as a result I will not tell anyone what I am investing in any longer. I only mentioned VCFIX as a fund worth looking at again based on Schwab recommendations and the smooth rebound performance pattern of VCFIX
I agree with you that if you are looking for a securitized bond fund VCFIX is a good one. I actually posted in several sites that I'm selling almost everything at the end of 02/2020 and the rest several days later. I don't feel guilty at all. These sites are just for information and each investor should do their own due diligence but I see your point
I used the performance chart system that Yogi sent out via email some time ago. On a YTD basis, VCFIX high was on 2/28 ($10,194) and its low was on 3/27 ($8553) for a difference of $1641.When you divide $1641 by $10194, that gives you 16.09% drop
Can’t recall his name but one prescient market analyst was spot on when he said in late March/early April this would be a credit story/rally recapture of value play. This recapture of value play has been the steadiest, most persistent rise with nary a down day I have ever seen since my first bond trade in January 1991. Just when you think you have seen it all, along comes this one of a kind rebound. There was a similar credit rebound - and in many cases a greater one percentage wise - among almost all bond categories in 2009. But it hasn’t had the trend persistency exhibited by the mortgage funds.
Edit: By the way, something I haven’t mentioned here before but in the past month Alphacentric (IOFIX) has finally begun cracking down on in and out traders via a lifetime ban - or at least the ones they deem disruptive to the fund, And they give you no warning notice either - just the ban. It is about time although I would have preferred a 1% or 2% short term redemption fee.
I can see closer numbers to mine it in 2 places + yahoo data below verifies that.
First, notice that according to Yahoo, the return was 0.00% (no change) between March 4 and March 6. In contrast, M* reports a gain of 1.25 basis points from the 4th to the 5th, and a total gain of 5.02 basis points to the 6th. That's for both old and new charts.
Best guess is that M* is reporting total return, including accrued divs. That's something Yahoo can't do because it doesn't get this data. It only gets the monthly paid divs, not the daily declared divs. Over the long haul, Yahoo is fine, but you two are quibbling over days' worth of returns.
Second, while I don't have Yogi's email, if one looks at the old M* chart for the fund YTD a and mouses over Feb, one sees only weekly data points, not daily ones. Notice the dates given: 2/28 and 3/27, exactly four weeks apart (leap year). While not conclusive, this is evidence that the data presented had weekly granularity.
Stockcharts? Try this link instead, it's a much cleaner performance graph. If you need to reset it to the appropriate period, set the slider width to 23 days (double click so that you can enter "23"), and slide it over (using arrow keys for fine tuning) to begin on Feb 24th. You'll notice that Feb 28th is 0.24% higher than the starting point of Feb 25th. Offhand, I'd guess that Stockcharts, like Yahoo, is looking at monthly divs paid rather than daily divs accrued. Hence the jump on the date the div was paid.
Thus, according to Stockcharts, the max drawdown started on Feb 28th. (Set the slider width to 19 days, start the window on Feb 28; this goes through March 25th.) Stockcharts says that drawdown is -19.96%. But this excludes the daily divs, even though it purports to be a performance chart. So it overstates the magnitude of the drop, and it doesn't identify the correct date range for the max drawdown.
We now return this channel to angels dancing on the head of a pin.
"I don't like new M* charts. They show reinvestments for mutual funds only, not for ETFs. And they cannot be linked, and taking screenshots and uploading them all the time is a headache.
Old M* were/are great. We knew/know tricks to force reinvestments in almost everything. [They are not so good for CEFs as they work with NAVs only].
Now to the observed discrepancy for VCFIX.
New M* Charts show daily data for 1M, 3M, 6M, YTD, 1Y, 3Y, and weekly data for 5Y, 10Y, Max.
Old M* Charts show daily data for 1M, 3M only, and weekly data for YTD, 1Y, 5Y, 10Y, Max [these may change for funds with long histories as longer period views change to monthly]
[@Gary1952 (Customer) , note that Portfolio Visualizer data are monthly, so the drawdown shown there is different]
YTD view shows relevant Feb-April period and the data sampling then is different, daily for New M* Charts, weekly for Old M* Charts. But I also forced daily data in Old M* Charts by using a shorter custom window to capture Feb-April decline [see link below].
Old M* Charts weekly data show -16.33% decline from 2/28/20 to 4/10/20.
Old M* Chart daily data show -19.72% decline from 2/25/20 to 3/25/20 [matches New M* Chart data]
Old M* Chart VCFIX 2/15/20-4/15/20"
wow, how dumb
Over the past decade (12/6/10 to 12/4/20), the new M* chart for BND shows $10K growing to $14,306.99. (The link is just to the page; you have to pull up the graph yourself.)
Over the past decade, using M*'s old ETF chart, the total (not annualized) price appreciation was 8.15%, i.e. $10K worth of shares appreciated to $10,815. NAV appreciation wasn't much higher, at 8.24%. So the new chart is showing much more gain than mere price appreciation.
FWIW, using div data from Yahoo, one gets another 28.29% in cash over the decade. If not reinvested these divs plus the share appreciation (28.3% + 8.2% = 36.5%) is much less than the total return shown in the new chart (43.07%). So whatever the chart is showing isn't just appreciation plus unreinvested divs.
The new interactive chart for BND shows that between 11/30/10 and 11/30/20, $10K grew to $14,327.71. Vanguard's performance page for BND has a graph showing growth of $10K ending 11/30/20. Set the tab to 10 years and mouse over the tail of the graph. According to Vanguard, $10K grew to $14,327.70.
Okay, M* is off a penny. It sure looks like these graphs are showing total returns, including reinvested divs, of the BND ETF.
So much for his cred.
https://www.morningstar.com/funds/xnas/fxaix/performance
interactive sublink
Compare with VOO as ETF. You do have to choose a little bit carefully, to ensure posting of ETF VOO.
The new M* can handle all the above.
You can link to the old but not to the new. One plus to old M*.
New M* Charts show daily data for 1M, 3M, 6M, YTD, 1Y, 3Y, and weekly data for 5Y, 10Y, Max.
Old M* Charts show daily data for 1M, 3M only, and weekly data for YTD, 1Y, 5Y, 10Y, Max.
Huge advantage for the new M*.
Much easier reading with the new M*, it actually tells you the % instead of calculating it with the old which is harder when it's negative.
In the example of VCFIX from 2/25 to 3/25. The old shows you just chart numbers, the new shows you chart numbers + the % near the ticker at -19.72%
ETF: I tried HYG,HYD and they were wrong with the new. Then I tried BIV and it was accurate with the new.
I try to stay away from ETF and for comparison I use OEFs VBILX=BIV, VBTLX=BND.
10 years:
old M* 10K grew to: BND=14.36K VBTLX=14.356K
new M* 10K grew to: BND=14.3K VBTLX=14.3K
Then I tried VBILX, for YTD old M* chart was close at 9.05, new chart 8.77%, real number 9.06. So now the new chart is also bad?
Derf