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Hello. The style-box has changed. What should I be on the lookout for? Now it's showing up with a preponderance of holdings in the LOW quality, and EXTENSIVE interest-rate exposure.... Half my stuff is in PRSNX.
Investing with TRP for bonds is a tough call. I’ve used Spectrum Income (RPSIX) as my primary bond fund at TRP for many years. It’s largest holding is PRCIX, but it also holds plenty of high yield, foreign and EM bonds and dividend stocks. I’ve considered using PRSNX because it’s all bonds with no stocks, but I’m not comfortable holding that much in foreign and EM bonds — particularly with yields so low in many developed foreign nations. Currently, I have about one-third of my TRP bond portion in TRBUX, ultra short bond, because I’m not convinced that interest rates will remain so low.
Sold out of my position in June for the above reasons. Too much risk for the payout. Purchased my state muni bond fund which pays a distribution rate of 2.83% at my tax level with a duration of 5 years. Sleep much better now.
@hank uses RPSIX too. I'm going to watch this month's dividend. Thanks for the responses. PRSNX doesn't seem very volatile to me, but the lower div. in June is duly noted... I'll be coming into a bit of money soon. More than likely will start a position in RPSIX. I like the small portion in equities there. Kinda "juices" the returns just a bit.
Just looked at the new M* fund pages for PRSNX, and here I thought they couldn't make the portfolio bond holdings info any less useful than it was in the previous incarnation. Now they show only top level holdings info: government, muni, corporate, and securitized. If they're still using the old sub-classification scheme of the previous version, that means the following fall under the same heading:
* Super-risky EM sovereigns (think Iraq and Turkey, for example) are buried together with U.S. Treasuries under "government."
* IG and HY corporates, loans, preferreds, and convertibles are all buried together under "corporate."
* Mortgages of all kinds and asset-backed junk like auto loans are buried together under "securitized."
Investors need to be able to differentiate among holdings with such different characteristics. This latest scheme means there's no sense whatsoever using M* for debt fund investments; the providers' sites are the place to go for the necessary info. Some of them aren't perfect, but I've never seen one as useless as M* is now.
Edit: Maybe actual useful data takes a premium subscription now ... but it'd be hard to justify paying up for info easily found on a fund website.
@Crash There is no reason to not use the data at the "Mother Ship" (fund provider) for whatever one's holdings may be, yes? M* may have been an easy quick view for some data, but I login to Fidelity to have the full picture.
Comments
* Super-risky EM sovereigns (think Iraq and Turkey, for example) are buried together with U.S. Treasuries under "government."
* IG and HY corporates, loans, preferreds, and convertibles are all buried together under "corporate."
* Mortgages of all kinds and asset-backed junk like auto loans are buried together under "securitized."
Investors need to be able to differentiate among holdings with such different characteristics. This latest scheme means there's no sense whatsoever using M* for debt fund investments; the providers' sites are the place to go for the necessary info. Some of them aren't perfect, but I've never seen one as useless as M* is now.
Edit: Maybe actual useful data takes a premium subscription now ... but it'd be hard to justify paying up for info easily found on a fund website.
There is no reason to not use the data at the "Mother Ship" (fund provider) for whatever one's holdings may be, yes? M* may have been an easy quick view for some data, but I login to Fidelity to have the full picture.