Markets also cooperated by being mostly in bullish trend leading to fund inflows. Remember, VG has been the king of fund inflows.
Flipside of the connection between VG OEFs and ETFs is that when there were large redemptions/outflows in 2020 (and in any other years), both the VG OEF and the related VG ETF had similar CG distributions. See the short table below.
Self-standing non-VG bond ETFs didn't have this issue. Much of the benefit from the ETF structure is from the combination of indexing and nontaxable in-kind trading. There are some additional benefits from the VG patented structure of having OEF and ETF classes. VG didn't license its patent to anybody else and others didn't really beg VG for that license. But things may change in/after 2023.
2020 CGs for several VG bond funds
VEDTX /EDV 3.16%
VBLAX /BLV 2.69%
VBILX /BIV 0.71%
VSIGX /VGIT 0.71%
VSBSX /VGSH 0.60%

Vanguard designed a process which eliminated capital gains distributions for select equity index mutual funds.
They basically added an ETF share class to an existing index mutual fund and used so-called heartbeat trades.
These trades rapidly pump money into/out of the ETF to wash away taxes for mutual fund shareholders.
Vanguard is the only firm using this innovation - they were awarded a patent in 2001 which is valid until 2023.
Other firms may copy this when the patent expires.
More detailed info here.
Edit: Added "equity" before "index mutual funds".

Many variations are fund specific. Moderate-allocation (MA) funds may have many moving parts.
PRWCX isn't really a moderate-allocation funds (despite its classification as such my M* and others). It is capital-appreciation and has more of HY (65.19%). Also may have unusual positions such as recently in utilities (but top sectors now are tech, healthcare, financials) and long-time position in GE turnaround (#4 holding).
DODBX had a policy change and is trying shorting and had beginner's luck.
VWELX also had an untimely policy change away from value into blend/growth just as that was losing momentum.
FBALX and FPURX have been run hot with growth orientation and higher equity % sometimes approaching aggressive-allocation (AA).

Hello, again.
I looked at Abbey Capital's Multi-Asset Fund, MAFIX. New to me. Once again, M* screwed up: their OWN website lists minimum entry at $1,000.00 and additional chunks minimum = $1,000.00. M* shows $1M minimum. the numbers look great, actually. but still a rather young fund.
*Edited to add: MAFIX is EXTREMELY concentrated, looking at the portfolio. (Per M*.). But on Abbey's webpage, I find it quite impossible to FIND the portfolio!
...OOPS. That's not a PERIOD. That's a COMMA. It IS actually a $1M minimum to get in. Listen to me giggle as I walk past. ...

Few questions...
1) How much capital have they raised for the Fund?
2) How much do they plan to raise for the Fund?
3) When do they expect to close the Fund for new investment?

VTAPX absolutely is a short-term bond fund as far as the models for target date funds are concerned, and that's what I'm talking about and so is the article. In fact, in the Vanguard Target Retirement 2020 Fund for retirees, there are no other short-term bond funds in it but VTAPX: https://investor.vanguard.com/investment-products/mutual-funds/profile/vtwnx#portfolio-composition
The fund has a larger allocation to regular intermediate term bond funds like Vanguard Total Bond Market II Index, which has not faired as well. But if you looked at any target-date fund, I would wager that the short-term bond funds in it have faired better than the intermediate and long-term ones, even if it was more focused on corporate debt than TIPS. That is a natural effect from duration and interest rate risk in a rising rate environment. Investors want that duration to be as short as possible so long as rates are rising. You want to go long once the rate increases are over. But the discussion I'm having is about target date funds specifically.

Good Afternoon,
I'll just stay away from the political perspectives on this thread (I doubt you are going to sway me and I doubt I'm going to sway you)...but will say this.
Wouldn't the better way to do this be to in addition to Soc Sec be to implement a kind of forced savings program thru an uncapped "I-Bond" like program and for cripes sake why is there an income cap on SSN? the SSN tax should go all the way up. Even I say that and believe you me, I don't care for all these taxes.
I think Lewis B in the past has stated that there is NO guarantee that on a go forward basis the stonk market will provide the returns many need to retire in resonable comfort.
Also, the guy who runs Standpoint BLNDX stated something on one of his podcasts that the stock market is NOT a utility, it is only there to provide for capital formation/funding to grow companies, it is NOT there to provide you with a smooth 8% a year...he mentioned that commodities are only there to provide a hedge for commercial hedgers. I'm paraphrasing so don't take my interpretation to seriously.
We're all maybe kind of giddy with the double up volume and the bounce....but who knows the whammo could be around the corner, no one knows...it is kind of crazy to put your life savings on the line to a great extent....but to the victors belong the spoils...
Good Luck and Good Health to ALL,
Baseball Fan

A sign someone is making stuff up to bolster their case: They use familiar cliche stats like “nine times out of ten.” Really, she interviewed sex workers and hit men and they said it was their fathers who got them into the business via nepotism nine times out of ten? That must be an interesting fatherly chat about future careers when they’re children. While I agree nepotism is a problem, it tends to be more of one at the top than the bottom. Why not instead of glib statements, do some real analysis? How prevalent is it actually, in what jobs and what industries?
It’s also amusing to me she’s fine with the government stepping in to address the “big risks” like a “crazy” stock market crash but seems to take issue with addressing millions of workers problems with retirement savings. Socialism for the rich in the form of a stock market bailout is OK in 2020, but everything else for workers is too much nanny state. Most Americans either have little stock exposure or none at all because they have little left over after they pay their bills. So why should the government bail the stock market out? In general, Main Street not Wall Street needs the bailouts. The two are interconnected to a degree, but not nearly as much in 2022 as they were in 1929.
While I agree defaulting to short term bonds as target funds do when someone retires is overly simplistic, I imagine many workers are thankful they owned the short rather than long-term bonds right now. Also, short term bonds adjust to inflation and interest rate increases more quickly than long.

As of the date of this prospectus, only the following investors may make purchases in the Virtus KAR Small-Cap Core Fund and the Virtus KAR Small-Cap Growth Fund:
• Current shareholders of the funds, whether they hold their shares directly or through a financial intermediary, may continue to add to their accounts through the purchase of additional shares and through the reinvestment of dividends and capital gains. Financial intermediaries may continue to purchase shares on behalf of existing shareholders only.
• Exchanges into the funds may only be made by shareholders with an existing account in the funds.
• An investor who has previously entered into a letter of intent with the Distributor prior to the closing date may fulfill the obligation.
• Trustees of the funds, trustees/directors of affiliated open- and closed-end funds, and directors, officers and employees of Virtus, its affiliates, and their family members, may continue to open new accounts.
• New and additional investments may be made through firm or home office discretionary platform models within mutual fund advisory (WRAP) programs and other fee-based programs established with the Distributor prior to July 31, 2018 for Virtus KAR Small-Cap Core Fund and September 28, 2018 for Virtus KAR Small-Cap Growth
Fund.
• The funds will also remain open to Defined Contribution and Defined Benefit retirement plans and will continue to accept payroll contributions and other types of purchase transactions from both existing and new participants in such plans.

Thanks to everyone for your posts and for your suggestions above. Greatly appreciate it. I spent the weekend analyzing a number of funds and Virtus KAR Small Cap core seems to have the best risk reward stats in the small cap space. It's a Great Owl and also honor roll fund. To me the things that appeal are that it had a MaxDD of 18.3% back in March of 2020 and this year through end of June of that MaxDD was 15.7%. That compares quite favorably to other funds in the space and gives it a low risk rating on Morningstar. Also Beta is only .82. Combine that with top % decile performance in the past 1, 3, 5, 10, and 15 years. I also like the fact that the fund manager has conviction behind his picks with a concentrated fund. At any rate, I plan to purchase the fund. Thanks again for contributing. If anyone else has been following this particular fund, I'd love to hear your thoughts.

Renewable energy is the cover story in the current Barron's. LINK1 LINK2
COVER STORY, “Clean Energy’s Future Has Arrived/6 Stocks to Play the Rush for Renewable ENERGY”. AES, BE, FCX, LG Energy (S Korea), PLUG, RUN, etc; ETF TAN
TRANSITION from wood to coal took200 years, from coal to oil 100 years, but that from fossil fuels to RENEWABLES (solar, wind, batteries, hydrogen) to be in only a few years? Global renewable power was 29% in 2020, and by 2030, may be 60% in Europe, 38% in the US, 38% in China. Both the US and Europe, each, are adding 30 GW of renewable power capacity now and that may be 80 GW/yr by 2030. There are transition TAX CREDITS/INCENTIVES everywhere. Russia-Ukraine war has set back some current efforts (coal has come back and natural-gas is scarce) but has accelerated the push for future transitions. Europe has committed $200 billion, the US Inflation Reduction Act will have $370 billion, and private investments will kick in $1.2 trillion. This may be the end of boom-and-bust energy cycles. Many countries have NET-ZERO carbon emission goals by 2050+. However, be very selective on companies in the renewable energy area. Besides the companies mentioned earlier, other beneficiaries may include VWDRY, NLLSF, XOM, CVX (old energy companies won’t be sitting still).

@hank, I only watched the first five minutes or so and likely not get to it until late Sunday. A

It would be nice to hear any takeaways after you’ve watched. Generally, the recent rally in equities seems to have surprised everyone, including most of WSW’s guests. If you listened to Summers every week I suspect you would have burried your head in the sand the past 6 months (financially speaking). One notable exception is frequent guest, Sarah Ketterer, Causeway Capital CEO & Fundamental Portfolio Manager. She’s been more positive than most over the year I think. Schwab’s Liz Saunders, while more cautious, also offers a balanced and circumspect picture.
One (unrelated) sign that things have improved is that PRWCX has clawed its way back from doubled-digit loss territory to only - 4.71% YTD.

@hank I suspect you're right. I believe the private sector works best with wants and the public sector best with needs. The government has no business manufacturing luxury items and the private sector has no business controlling our water supply. If the private sector is to be involved with essentials like water, it must be heavily regulated by government to prevent abuse. The private sector also tends to work better for society (as opposed to for itself) when supply and demand are at equilibrium, but if demand greatly outstrips supply, say, of a life-saving drug, again abuses often occur--price gouging, etc. Obviously, monopolies can control supply.
Gated communities truly are their own world, as you said. I wonder, though, how many people living in them once went to public schools, have received FEMA protection for their coastal communities or value the troops protecting our nation as much as they claim to. They also I imagine have to leave the gated community sometimes and drive on a public road, and they probably appreciated the government stock and bond bailouts of 2008-09 and 2020. But many I suspect believe the "self-made man" mythology, and feel they don't have to give back to the country that actually helped make them. I wouldn't know for sure as I don't recall ever being inside a gated community. Maybe I've blotted the memory out if I have.

anything govt touches/ rent/ run may turned to doodoos...

I sometimes look at the government buildings constructed downtown during the Great Depression by the WPA and realize they are ten times more solid, prettier and stable than anything the private sector has built since. The Hoover Dam, our electrical grid and our roads and bridges were once the envy of the world until we were told that government can’t do anything and starved government of infrastructure capital so things started to fall apart. I’d be tempted to turn the saying on its head: Anything the private sector touches turns to doodoo. There are plenty of examples of this regarding disastrous privatization of once public government run infrastructure and services. But that isn’t true either. The private sector, properly regulated by government, can produce nice things. It’s called having a functional society.

https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/1331971/000113322822005289/jhfiiarcf-html5301_497.htm
497 1 jhfiiarcf-html5301_497.htm JHF II ABSOLUTE RETURN CURRENCY FUND_497
Prospectus Supplement
John Hancock Funds II
John Hancock Absolute Return Currency Fund (the Fund)
Supplement dated August 8, 2022 to all current Prospectuses, the Summary Prospectus and the Statement of Additional Information (SAI), as may be supplemented
The following information supplements and supersedes any information to the contrary relating to all classes of shares offered by the Fund contained in the Prospectuses, Summary Prospectus and SAI.
First Quadrant, LLC (First Quadrant), the subadvisor to the Fund, announced on June 16, 2022 that it has entered into an agreement with Systematica Investments Limited (Systematica), under which Systematica would acquire First Quadrant. The transaction is expected to close in the fourth quarter of 2022. Announcement of the transaction and the impending change in ownership at First Quadrant triggered an extensive due diligence review process by John Hancock Investment Management LLC, the Fund’s investment adviser, to understand the potential impact of the transaction on the Fund and the Fund’s ability to meet its investment objective. In connection with this process, effective after the close of business on September 6, 2022, shares of all classes of the Fund may no longer be purchased by new investors, except as noted below.
1. Existing shareholders of the Fund as of the close of business on September 6, 2022 may continue to purchase additional shares of the Fund in their existing Fund accounts, and may continue to reinvest dividends or capital gains distributions received from the Fund.
2. New accounts established with existing shares of the Fund by transfer, such as transfers because of a change in broker, transfer-in-kind, divorce, or death, will be permitted.
3. Participants in group employer retirement plans, including 401(k), 403(b) and 457 plans, non-qualified deferred compensation, and health savings account programs (and their successor plans) (a “plan”) may establish an account in the Fund if the Fund has been approved by September 6, 2022 as an investment option under the plan (or under another plan sponsored by the same employer).
4. Group retirement models or broker-dealer discretionary programs that include the Fund as an investment option, or have approved the Fund as an investment option as of September 6, 2022, may continue to make Fund shares available to new and existing accounts.
If a shareholder redeems all Fund shares in his or her account, the shareholder will not be able to buy additional Fund shares or reopen his or her account.
The Fund reserves the right to change or make exceptions to these policies at any time and may permit new accounts in the Fund to be opened by certain investors, including investors not identified above.
You should read this Supplement in conjunction with the Fund’s Prospectuses, Summary Prospectus and SAI and retain it for your future reference.
Manulife, Manulife Investment Management, Stylized M Design, and Manulife Investment Management & Stylized M Design are trademarks of The Manufacturers Life Insurance Company and are used by its affiliates under license.

10m-old troll piece from the Hill, yawn
... penned by this lower-tier rightwinger:
https://www.rstreet.org/team/alex-j-pollock/
whose name I knew, sort of, from his mortgage-doc simplification initiative.
"His interests include ... the pursuit of clarity." Me too!
As for the content, much of it could be used as a strawman demo, or possibly, but that aside, the first two history examples are crisis-related (still horrible!!), the third is arguably not exactly a default, is it?, although I remember it because my then recently deceased grandfather used to give us kids silver dollars as presents. The last genuine crisis has to do with other govs, and lets Pollock give away his motive with the complaint "allowing the unlimited printing of dollars by the Federal Reserve today." (Horrible!)
Oh, well.
Weeds and more weeds, in excelsis, about 1971 (https://www.nber.org/system/files/chapters/c6883/c6883.pdf, omg):
One reconciliation of these points may lie in the fact that what is critical for
the smooth operation of a system of stable exchange rates is not continual
policy convergence per se but a commitment to exchange rate stability with
sufficient credibility to reassure agents that policies will be consistent with
stable exchange rates over the long term. Monetary and fiscal policies could
and did diverge in the short run. But market participants were confident that
industrial countries pegging to the dollar would eventually adjust their policies so as to reconcile them with the maintenance of a pegged dollar rate. So
long as this remained the case, international capital movements stabilized
nominal rates, rather than destabilizing them, until those policy adjustments
took place. The relative stability of other variables followed.
PKrug draft, on contexts for such crises:
https://www.princeton.edu/~pkrugman/next generation.pdf
complete with a droll tagline.

Thank you, @Crash. Yes, those k-1s... They tend to have their special place in your taxes, kind of have to remember where to plug them in... It helps if you know where it needs to go on 1040. I tend to use software...Used to use TurboTax, but there were very slow updates during covid/2020, but HR Block released the tax forms updates faster, so now I am using HR Block.
By the way @Mark, have you tried other software besides TurboTax? Was TT easier to use?

i concur. and i had not heard about teresa kong's leaving. where did she go? does anyone know? I will take a look.....
...Found this. RETIRING???? She can't be that old.....
https://citywireselector.com/news/a-rated-bond-boss-to-exit-matthews-asia/a2391349
Or is the word being used here in a non-standard way?

Exactly. All the portfolio managers that left have been Teresa's age or younger. Firm has lost an entire generation of leaders on the investment team. Teresa is not that old herself, she's <50 years old if I had to guess? It's a really bad sign.
Looking at the direction of the company, its not a surprise. Why stay on the proverbial sinking ship when your skill set is in high demand? Having felt the change there over the years, I'm not sure why matthews didn't make a leadership change sooner at the top. It almost seems too late at this point. You all might remember they brought in some outside leaders, but they ended up resigning or leaving after very short stints. Yu Ming Wang famously joined in 2020 as Global CIO/President, but resigned within 9 months. That is also a really bad sign and highly unusual. Actually I've never heard of such a thing happening.
https://www.pionline.com/money-management/matthews-asias-presidentglobal-cio-resigns

Added NLSAX to my alternative sleeve last week. Replaced GATEX. I think it will be a good fit. Held up quite well 1st quarter 2020. I’m very diversified. Largest single holding (DODBX) is at 8.7%. NLSAX is 7.95%.