In May 2020 it was announced that Mr Beini Zhou ex-Matthews was going to run a SCV fund for Artisan. Does it normally take two years to get a fund up and running?

M* article from Auguat, 2021, https://www.morningstar.com/articles/1056134/capital-groups-fashionably-late-entry-to-the-etf-party
"Capital Group, the parent of American Funds, expects to introduce its first suite of exchange-traded funds early next year. According to preliminary prospectus filings on Aug. 24, 2021, the firm will launch six actively managed, transparent ETFs in the latter half of 2022's first quarter: fixed-income strategy Capital Group Core Plus Income CGCP; U.S.-centric equity mandates Capital Group Growth CGGR, Capital Group Core Equity CGUS, and Capital Group Dividend Value CGDV; and international/global equity strategies Capital Group Global Growth Equity CGGO and Capital Group International Focus CGXU....."

The fund family notorious for funds with loads pushed through RIAs, will be launching the subject ETFs tomorrow. I am just opening this thread for a discussion of those ETFs.

https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/935015/000119312522048733/d293939d485apos.htm
Excerpt:
Principal Investment Strategies
The Fund’s investment team employs a fundamental investment process to construct a diversified portfolio of securities of undervalued, primarily non-US small companies. The team seeks to invest in what the team considers to be high quality, undervalued companies with strong balance sheets and shareholder-oriented management teams.
The team’s investment process focuses on four key characteristics:
■Undervaluation—Determining the intrinsic value of a business is the heart of the team’s research process. The team believes that intrinsic value represents the amount that a buyer would pay to own a company’s future cash flows. The team seeks to invest at a significant discount to its estimate of the intrinsic value of a business.
■Business Quality—The team seeks to invest in companies with histories of generating strong free cash flow, improving returns on capital and strong competitive positions in their industries.
■Financial Strength—The team believes that investing in companies with strong balance sheets helps to reduce the potential for capital risk and provides company management the ability to build value when attractive opportunities are available.
■Shareholder-Oriented Management—The team’s research process attempts to identify management teams with a history of building value for shareholders.

Thanks for the input gang. Appreciate your wisdom. In 2020, I watched Heugh chart the meltdown with some strategic adds, including Zoom, Disney, etc. that paid off. I'm not really sure what he's doing now, but whatever it is, it's creating some current pain.

Don't like to jump around, but losing my confidence in Int'l fund managers. Hold VWILX and MGGPX. Thinking of reducing positions and adding to VTSAX, a smoother ride. These guys did weather 2020 pretty well, but are getting beat up now. Stay the course? Thoughts needed!! Thanks!

When a fund house (VG) can tumble from #3 to #43 in a year there’s something wrong with the gage being used.

When the cause of that decline is laid (in part) at the foot of VPMAX, there's more wrong than just the gauge.

Vanguard's drop occurred, in part, because of weaker relative performance in two of its three biggest funds, the $72 billion Vanguard PrimeCap (ticker: VPMAX) and the $59 billion Vanguard International Growth (VWILX).

At the end of 2020, the fund had $70B in assets (per quarterly filing), so its weighting didn't change much.
Its one year performance in 2020 put it at the 93rd percentile of LCG funds (per M*). Its one year performance in 2021 put it at the 88th percentile of LC Blend funds. M* changed its category in 2021, but its portfolio had been blend since 2018. If it had been ranked against LCG fund in 2021, it would have been ranked at the 54th percentile (same 2021 performance as BLYRX).
No matter how you slice it, Primecap's relative performance in 2021 matched if not exceeded its relative performance in 2020. So, rather than pulling Vanguard's 2021 ranking down, Primecap should have either had little effect or raised Vanguard's 2021 position. Poor performance both years, but slightly less poor from a ranking perspective in 2021.

@hank, sorry about the confusing title.
She questioned the possibility of recession. Given the last quarter's GDP of over 4%, it has to get much worse to go negative. She mentioned high inflation but did not elaborate consequences.
As for us, changes were made last year. They are bearing fruits now: rotated from growth to value funds (both US and oversea), added precious metal and commodity funds, moved bond funds to short duration bonds and TIPS, and cash. Otherwise, our portfolio is down modestly. Considering the market condition, it would be down even more.

Thanks for the nice summation. Being “down a bit” comes with the territory if you’re invested for capital appreciation / growth. I don’t mind being down a few % some years. Limiting losses is about the best one can hope for unless you go into cash or some types of fixed income. In 2008 I lost 21%. Hurt a bit. But time horizon was much longer then and made it up in subsequent years. Situation much different today. Age forces some of us to take less risk and protect against double-digit losses.

Mona, look up TDF retirement & their 2020 TDF. You could use one or the other or split the two. I believe the 2015 TDF is close to rolling into the Retirement fund. You will get tips also. I haven't checked Life Strategy allocation. The 34% cash maybe a problem to find a bench marking fund. If you combine cash & bonds as one , you could luck out & find one.
FWIW, Derf

From above post :
"A number of posters have referenced possibly investing 100% in their chosen benchmark fund. Not a bad idea. "
Had I done this , put 50 or 100 % in a TDF at Vanguard, I would have blown my fuse do to the LARGE cap gains that were issued for this tax year !
This subject was discuss about 2 months ago.
Enjoy your Sunday, Derf

It's impossible to keep track of all these series without a scorecard, and even then, I'm not sure.
Until 2013, T. Rowe Price offered an aggressive, but stable (unchanged glidepath) product, unlike its leading competitors, Vanguard and Fidelity.
2011 Ibbotoson Paper, Bait and Switch: Glide Path Instability

“In 2008 and 2009, there was increased interest in adjusting our glide path more conservatively,” said Jerome Clark, portfolio manager of T. Rowe Price’s retirement funds. “We avoid making glide path changes based upon short-term market environments, which is consistent with the message we communicate to our investors to stay the course when markets swing to extremes.”

https://www.investmentnews.com/target-date-glide-paths-are-unstable-at-some-major-plan-providers-37617
By 2013, T. Rowe Price and Vanguard had well outperformed Fidelity over the preceding five years because of their more aggressive glide paths. Consequently, Fidelity again changed its glidepath, bringing it in line with its competitors. It seems like a stretch to say that T. Rowe Price at the same time introduced a less aggressive line of funds because of loud complaints received years ago as it began multi-year run of superior results.

Still, it is notable that as of Aug. 22, [2013] T. Rowe Price launched new funds that recognize that some investors are more risk averse as a complement its core T. Rowe Price Retirement Funds, which had $88.1 billion in assets as of March 31.

https://riabiz.com/a/2013/9/27/after-a-lot-of-flak-fidelity-investments-does-a-study-and-pledges-to-change-how-it-manages-its-170-billion-of-target-date-funds
Meanwhile, Fidelity was not only tinkering with its initial Freedom series, but creating a slew of variants: Freedom Index (same idea, but w/index funds), Managed Payout Funds and Simplicity RMD Funds (originally Income Replacement Funds launched in 2008, with dates every two years). That change came about around 2017.
You can find those four series on Fidelity's Asset Allocation funds page (click on Asset Allocation tab).
https://www.fidelity.com/mutual-funds/fidelity-funds/overview
What Fidelity isn't showing you there is that it has a fifth(!) series of funds. Fidelity Freedom Blend funds, which is a "blend" of active and passive management. See, e.g. FHARX. These date from 2018.
As Yogi noted, in 2020, T. Rowe Price decided change the glide paths of both of its series to make them more aggressive. Rather than make a quick change, it changed the allocations over a period of two years, which should be complete in the middle of this year.
In 2021, T. Rowe Price launched a series of blend funds (that appear to make more extensive use of index funds to reduce cost). These follow the same new ("enhanced") glide path that the Retirement Series are migrating to. But since the Retirement Blend series is new, it doesn't need to transition to the new glide path, it starts with that immediately. The two series, Retirement and Retirement Blend, should be tracking the same path within a few months.

• The Retirement Blend Fund series is designed for investors who prefer a single, simplified, professionally managed solution for retirement investing and who want an approach that marries the benefits of active and passive investment styles, including placing a greater emphasis on managing overall cost.
• The Retirement Blend strategy has been in place at T. Rowe Price since 2018 but it was previously available only in the collective investment trust format. This mutual fund series extends the firm's Retirement Blend approach to a wider range of investors for whom a mutual fund is the preferred or most appropriate vehicle.
• The Retirement Blend Funds use the enhanced glide path and the same diversification and tactical asset allocation as T. Rowe Price's existing Retirement series of target date portfolios.

https://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/t-rowe-price-adds-retirement-blend-funds-to-target-date-lineup-301343055.html
I respectfully disagree that T. Rowe Price has made this confusing to the max. IMHO that "honor" goes to Fidelity, with its ever changing glidepaths, its greater multiplicity of series, its "hidden" series of blend funds, and its changing of series names and objectives. And lest I forget, a slew of share classes, including K and K6, and Fidelity Advisor variants with their alphabet soup: A, C, M, I, Z, and Z6.

@Derf, leave to Price to make it confusing to the max.
So, there were the original TDFs going back to around 2002. These are now called (TRP) Retirement 20xx. These were/are known as the most aggressive among the TDFs.
To address the criticism (that was LOUD in 2008-09), Price introduced a new but tamer TDF series around 2013 called (TRP) Target 20xx (see the naming trick?)
In 2020, Price decided to change glide-paths of its TDFs so that they keep higher equity for longer. This opened Price to criticism again that retirees may be hurt in big downdrafts.
So, Price decided in 2021 to make even softer cousins, "blends" it calls, of its original TDF series, and these were named (TRP) Retirement Blend 20xx (I think Price needs better fund-naming execs).
So, now Price has 3 variations for each retirement date. For 2010, they are (TRP) Retirement 2010 TRRAX (2002- ), (TRP) Target 2010 TRROX (2013- ), (TRP) Target Blend 2010 TBLQX (2021- ); these 3 are Investor classes, and there are 3 corresponding Institutional classes, so 6 2010 TDFs, or 6x the dates in the TDF series. Do you want add CITs to the count?
Clear? May be call Price on Tuesday and see if its customer service even has a clue.
Well, the others have a better system where each TDF is labeled as (BlaBla) Target/Retirement 20xx Aggressive, (BlaBla) Target/Retirement 20xx Moderate, (BlaBla) Target/Retirement 20xx Conservative; most just have one type per TDF date.

I hadn't looked at the performance tabs on Yahoo. That's a really nice feature.
Now, if Yahoo would only report accurately. FGMNX had three losing calendar years: the two you mentioned and also 2021. Yahoo show 2021's return as N/A, though it knows better. Yahoo gives December 31 adjusted closing figures as 11.58 (2021) and 11.68 (2020) for a loss of 0.85%, matching Fidelity's official figure.
https://fundresearch.fidelity.com/mutual-funds/performance-and-risk/31617K105?type=sq-NavBar
FWIW, according to the Yahoo performance tab, the fund's worst calendar quarters were in 1987: 2Q (-2.48%) and 3Q (-3.40%). The worst three month drawdown, irrespective of month boundaries, was around 6½%, from the close on July 17, 1987 to the close on Oct 16 (a Friday) or Oct 19 (a Monday) 1987. Nearly double the calendar quarter max loss.
I got this by downloading the daily adjusted close figures from Yahoo and playing with Excel to approximate quarterly returns day by day.

I have no problem with strong opinions. In fact, CW may well deserve them in time. What bothers me the most for now (as Cramer pointed out) was her utter lack of humility. She will either turn out right ala her Tesla call (she says this is currently the greatest misallocation of capital in history) or she will be more like the PBHG special fund (remember that one fellow old-timers?). "Special" alright. I'm putting my "gambling" money on CW given her still-relevant outperformance, but no more than that.

USAA basically got out of the investment business to focus on insurance and personal finance services to military families.
USAA sold its brokerage business to Schwab and its mutual fund business to Victory Capital. It got caught in the transition period in the Barron's review this time.

14th in the ranking? USAA? Really?
USAA out sources...

Victory Capital supports USAA members with USAA Mutual Funds

https://investor.vcm.com/member
USAA sells out...
Also, USAA brokerage accounts were sold to Schwab for a handsome profit.
($1.8 Billion)
charles-schwab-to-buy-usaa-assets-in-1point8-billion-deal
So, my feeling... they should be much lower in the ranking.

You can also use M*'s new "Interactive Charts". You'll find them on the home (quote) page for each fund. You need to click on the "Show Interactive Chart" button at the upper left of the graph shown.
While I prefer M*'s legacy pages for most purposes, the interactive charts have the advantage of showing you the cumulative gain in percentage between the dates you specify. So if you give dates of 12/31/97 and 12/31/98, it will tell you the annual gain for 1998 without your needing to do the long division.
Yahoo's finance pages also provide figures that one can use to deduce annual returns. Select the historical range of data to cover the years of interest. Then look at the adjusted price on Dec 31 of successive years and divide to get the growth for the selected year. Adjusted prices incorporate the effect of dividends, splits, etc., so it represents total return. You can download the data and let Excel do the division for you.
https://finance.yahoo.com/
There are minor differences. For DODGX, the M* interactive chart reports a gain from the end of 2020 (12/31/2020) to the end of 2021 (12/31/2021) of 31.73%. This is also what M* reports in digital form on the fund's performance page, confirming that these are the right endpoints to use.
M*'s performance page for DODGX
Yahoo Finance reports adjusted closing prices of 186.20 and 245.26 at the end of 2020 and 2021 respectively, for a gain of 31.72%. Going to the horse's mouth, D&C reports a 2021 return of 31.68%.
Yahoo Finance, DODGX data
D&C performance page
This illustrates why I try to go as far upstream as possible to the data source if accuracy is important. One can find 10 years of performance data in a fund's prospectus, so by looking at a prospectus that's 15 years old one can get the annual returns for years 1997-2006, and by looking at a prospectus that's 5 years old one can get the annual returns for years 2007-2016.
SEC fund filing search page: https://www.sec.gov/edgar/searchedgar/mutualsearch.html
For example, for DODGX, here are the bar charts for those 20 years and the prospectuses they come from:

Dodge and Cox Prospectus, May 1, 2007        Dodge and Cox Prospectus, May 1, 2017

Actually, Morningstar categorizes GQG as Large Growth. Your large red arrow should be pointing at the "Category" menu to the left. The "Investment Style" box is usually considered a temporary phenomenon, albeit it is possible if the style stays that way for a while Morningstar will re-classify it as Large Blend. But if you look at the historical style box classification for the fund, it was in Large Growth for 2018, 2019 and 2020, and only more recently shifted to Blend, so Morningstar has maintained its Large Growth categorization.
PRBLX has better returns than GQEPX, but not better risk ratings--drawdown maximum three-month returns in 2020, beta, standard deviation or Sharpe ratios:
https://morningstar.com/funds/xnas/gqepx/risk
https://morningstar.com/funds/xnas/prblx/risk
Here's another one--AKREX.

Fed's primary business is T-Bills, T-Notes, T-Bonds, TIPS, so that restriction makes sense. One can potentially execute yield-curve positioning plays with Treasury-only funds.
In 2020, only IL tapped Fed's muni liquidity facility, but other states could (problem was that the Fed set muni rates too high). The Fed never dealt with munis before, and Powell and others held munis. Anyway, state muni restrictions also make sense just in case the muni liquidity facility is activated.

https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/810893/000119312522046660/d115005d497.htm
497 1 d115005d497.htm 497
PIMCO Funds
Supplement dated February 18, 2022 to the
International Bond Funds Prospectus dated July 30, 2021,
as supplemented from time to time (the “Prospectus”);
and to the Statement of Additional Information dated July 30, 2021,
as supplemented from time to time (the “SAI”)
Disclosure Related to the PIMCO Global Bond Opportunities Fund (Unhedged) (the “Fund”)
The Board of Trustees of PIMCO Funds (the “Trust”) has approved a Plan of Liquidation for the Fund pursuant to which the Fund will be liquidated (the “Liquidation”) on or about June 17, 2022 (“Liquidation Date”). This date may be changed without notice at the discretion of the Trust’s officers.
Suspension of Sales. Effective May 20, 2022, the Fund will no longer sell shares to new investors or existing shareholders (except through reinvested dividends), including through exchanges into the Fund from other funds of the Trust or funds of PIMCO Equity Series. The Fund may deviate from its investment objective at any time prior to the Liquidation Date.
Mechanics. In connection with the Liquidation, any shares of the Fund outstanding on the Liquidation Date will be automatically redeemed as of the close of business on the Liquidation Date. The proceeds of any such redemption will be equal to the net asset value of such shares after the Fund has paid or provided for all of its charges, taxes, expenses and liabilities, including certain operational costs of liquidating the Fund. The distribution to shareholders of these Liquidation proceeds will occur as soon as practicable, and will be made to all shareholders of record of the Fund at the time of the Liquidation. Additionally, the Fund must declare and distribute to shareholders any realized capital gains and all net investment income no later than the final Liquidation distribution. Pacific Investment Management Company LLC (“PIMCO”), investment adviser to the Fund, intends to distribute substantially all of the Fund’s net investment income prior to the Liquidation. PIMCO will bear all operational expenses associated with the Liquidation pursuant to the Second Amended and Restated Supervision and Administration Agreement between the Trust and PIMCO.
Other Alternatives. At any time prior to the Liquidation Date, shareholders of the Fund may redeem their shares of the Fund and receive the net asset value thereof, pursuant to the procedures set forth under “Purchases, Redemptions and Exchanges – Redeeming Shares” in the Prospectus. Shareholders may also exchange their shares of the Fund for shares of the same class of any other fund of the Trust or any fund of PIMCO Equity Series that offers that class, as described in and subject to any restrictions set forth under “Purchases, Redemptions and Exchanges – Exchanging Shares” in the Prospectus.
U.S. Federal Income Tax Matters. Although the Liquidation is not expected to be a taxable event for the Fund, for taxable shareholders, the automatic redemption of shares of the Fund on the Liquidation Date will generally be treated as any other redemption of shares, i.e., as a sale that may result in a gain or loss for federal income tax purposes. Instead of waiting until the Liquidation Date, a shareholder may voluntarily redeem his or her shares prior to the Liquidation Date to the extent that the shareholder wishes to realize any such gains or losses prior thereto. See “Tax Consequences” in the Prospectus. Shareholders should consult their tax advisers regarding the tax treatment of the Liquidation.
If you have any questions regarding the Liquidation, please contact the Trust at 1-888-877-4626.
Investors Should Retain This Supplement For Future Reference
PIMCO_SUPP1_021822