https://www.financial-planning.com/list/bond-funds-with-the-worst-15-year-returns
Bond funds with the worst 15-year returns
By Andrew Shilling
All of the fixed-income industry’s worst long-term performers recorded gains over all time horizons, with only one in the red so far in 2021.
The 20 worst-performing bond funds of the past 15 years, with at least $100 million in assets under management, notched an average gain of nearly 1.5%, Morningstar Direct data show. Over the past 12 months, the same funds — all actively managed like those in last week’s top-performers ranking — had an average return of 2.28%.
With Treasury yields hovering around 1% over the better part of the decade, Amy Magnotta, co-head of discretionary portfolios at Brinker Capital Investments, says it’s no surprise that the industry's shortest-duration bond funds had a large presence.
“All of the funds on the list with the worst 15-year returns are short-term bond funds, both taxable and municipal,” Magnotta says, adding, “The yield on the one-year Treasury bill has averaged just 1.16% over the last 15 years, and it spent most of the time period below 1%, which is not an attractive starting point for returns of shorter maturity securities.”
For comparison, the iShares Core U.S. Aggregate Bond ETF (AGG), which has a 0.04% net expense ratio, recorded a 15-year gain of 4.29%, data show. Over the past year, the fund had a gain of 0.60%. The iShares 2-3 Year Treasury Bond ETF (SHY), which tracks the ICE BofA 1-3 Year Treasury Index, had 1- and 15-year gains of 0.17% and 2.2%, respectively.
In stocks, the SPDR S&P 500 ETF Trust (SPY) and the SPDR Dow Jones Industrial Average ETF (DIA) have had 15-year returns of 10.30% and 10.32%, respectively. In the past 12 months, SPY and DIA had gains of 48.69% and 44.79%. The funds have net expense ratios of 0.09% and 0.16%.
Fees among bond funds in this ranking were higher than the industry average. With an overall net expense ratio of 0.58%, funds here were only slightly pricier than the 0.45% investors paid for fund investing in 2019, according to Morningstar’s most recent annual fee survey.
When discussing bond fund performance over any time horizon with clients, Magnotta says it’s key to also have a conversation about their role in a diversified portfolio.***
Anyone owe these lemons?

https://www.marketwatch.com/story/a-capital-gains-tax-hike-might-sink-stocks-heres-how-financial-advisers-and-their-clients-can-stay-a-step-ahead-11619222398
A capital gains tax hike might sink stocks. Here’s how financial advisers and their clients can stay a step ahead.
Higher taxes for the ultra-wealthy when they sell stocks would have a ripple effect on all investors
Many financial advisers follow Warren Buffett’s lead, adopting a buy-and-hold mentality and urging jittery clients to shrug off scary headlines to achieve long-term gains. But what if those headlines signal a threat to a long-term investment plan?***
More muni tax exempt bonds eh??? Think we heard that advise numerous time in this forum

Rbrt: "I think FD and I have discussed this before - we both think buying equity mutual funds is investing and we both think buying bond mutual funds in investing. However, I think buying a cash investment fund is also investing. FD does not."
Schwab has a number of mutual funds that they offer for cash. SWVXX is their default fund for the cash you accumulate, when you sell a fund focused on equities, bonds, and other volatile assets. However, Schwab has several alternative funds that you can also select that have more security, such as government guaranteed assets, which many of us, chose at the height of 2020 crash selling options. It is a form of investing, but more based on what level of security you want, and type of asset you most trust. If you had a large amount of cash, you could get a higher amount of interest with some of the alternative options to their default account. When I was with Fidelity, you had similar options/alternatives, that Fidelity allowed for cash accounts. You are not going to make any meaningful total return with such funds, but sometimes investing involves putting your cash in funds that rarely, if ever, lose money, and have a NAV that stays the same under all types of market conditions.

(This one will probably run off the tracks - though wasn’t the intent.)
* I’ll roughly summarize a second interesting tidbit from Forsyth this week:
- Private pension funds have done well lately, now being on average 98.4% fully funded - up 17% from July 2020. There’s 2 reasons. First, the hot equities markets / Second, the increase in interest rates which allows the pension funds to inject higher expected bond returns into their formulas.
- Pension funds can lock in these advances in funding by selling equities and buying bonds at relatively higher rates than before (which might help explain why rates reversed and headed down recently).
- Public pension plans haven’t done as well as the private, starting from a worse position. However, there’s wide disparity, with the better ones currently 90+% fully funded.
- The incentive for public plans to sell equities in favor of bonds is therefore less.

“Only 25% of U.S. equities are owned by U.S. taxable investors, with the remaining 75% held by people and entities not subject to capital gains levies, such as pension plans and other retirement accounts, endowments, and foreign investors ... (according to UBS).”
From Randall W. Forsyth - Barron’s April 26, 2021

https://www.investors.com/market-trend/stock-market-today/dow-jones-futures-bitcoin-dives-below-50000-intel-snap-move-biden-capital-gains-tax-hike-plan-hits-market-rally/
https://finance.yahoo.com/news/cryptocurrency-bitcoin-ethereum-xrp-dogecoin-joe-biden-capital-tax-gain-075447840.html
The drop is due to the desire to raise the capital gains tax?
Hmmm... it has nothing to do with.... the 1.55 billion in bitcoin options that expire today?
I may wait just a little longer or by EOD to add to my tiny position.

I haven’t read everything above but I say cash is form of bonds. When I started investing in 1982 cash reserve funds were the high flyers. Of course conditions then were much different than they are now but still, cash reserves are ultra short bonds. Johnathan Clements discussed his thoughts on cash in a recent article in his Humble Dollar blog
At this point, half my bonds are termed “cash”. Another 25% are in a Stable value fund - neither true bonds or cash. Maybe I should advocate that we call all these bond like instruments “fixed income”.

I did and what I have done since I started investing and now at retirement. I'm fully invested at 99+%, only several thousands in cash at the bank. All my brokerage accounts have zero or close to zero in MM. I only go to cash since 2010-11 when I started planning my retirement, when I see very high risk, that happened about 2%. Since 2010-11 I started to change my asset allocation gradually from a very high % in stocks funds to mainly bond fund today.

“Comcast Corp.’s NBCUniversal has hired an executive from measurement giant Nielsen to help steer its effort to better show marketers the effectiveness of buying TV and digital ads across its properties. The company named Kelly Abcarian, who had been general manager of Nielsen’s Advanced Video Advertising Group, to be executive vice president of measurement and impact , a newly created role. She will report to Krishan Bhatia, president and chief business officer of advertising and partnerships at NBCUniversal.”

From The Wall Street Journal April 22, 2021 - (Under “Business & Finance”)

You can argue that all the bad news is factored into India and Brazil BUT each is only down by 5 to 6% YTD and compared to loss 50% March 2020. If their covid rates are skyrocketing, the impact on local economy is hard to predict. Agree DCA would be wise, but if you wait till "all clear " it will be late. I would not use money you need for anything in the next 3 years.
There is an increasing consensus that the Chinese vaccine is almost worthless with efficacy of just 50% apparently just beating WHO requirements ( why does that not surprise me?) JNJ vaccine will be much better bet for EM despite very rare Cerebral vein thrombosis issues. But it will take months to roll out

1. It is likely that COVID-19 pandemic will be brought into control with vaccination along with other mitigation practices, but it will take time and resources. Federal reserves across the globe have pledged to support this effort. As long term investors it would prudent to DCA into international funds over several months instead one lump sum, since this pandemic may take a year or longer before it stabilizes.
2. Right now countries such as New Zealand, South Korea, and Taiwan who have gotten their COVID infection under control early and are doing well economically. US is playing catch-up with rapid deployment of vaccines (FEMA) and lots of resources. Delivering 200 million vaccines within 100 days is remarkable. However, there is a sizable population who do not want the vaccines and this will prevent US to reach the herd immunity this year. It is the rapid mutation of the coronavirus that is most concerning. The worst scenario would be the new variants would greatly reduce the efficacy of COVID vaccines, and render them much less effective. So far these variants are found to be more contagious but not necessary more lethal.
3. The FANNG stocks along with those that enable remote working have advanced more than the rest of the S&P 500. The market have broadened out the economically sensitive value stocks in fall 2020. Recent interview with Leann Sonder (Schwab) posted by @Derf also discussed the recent change of stock leadership and the direction moving toward “quality” stocks.

“A U.S. mutual fund that suffered nearly $500 million of losses appears to have misvalued its large derivatives portfolio, according to an analysis of the fund’s disclosures by The Wall Street Journal, academics and traders.
The Infinity Q Diversified Alpha Fund disclosed in filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission valuations of investments that in at least three instances were incorrect or inconsistent with market conditions, said traders and academics. One valuation was mathematically impossible, said a former Morgan Stanley managing director who reviewed the disclosures. In one instance, the disclosures show, Infinity entered two nearly identical swaps contracts referencing the same index over the same period, yet booked a gain on one that was more than three times as large as the other—an outcome analysts said defied logic.
The SEC informed Infinity of evidence that the firm’s chief investment officer, James Velissaris, was adjusting parameters of third-party pricing models used to value its derivatives, leaving Infinity unable to accurately value its holdings, the firm has said. ... The Federal Bureau of Investigation and prosecutors at the Manhattan U.S. attorney’s office are also investigating, the people familiar with the matter said ...
The mutual fund, which launched in 2014 and is a part of Infinity Q Capital Management LLC, sought to generate returns that weren’t as tied to the returns of other assets like stocks and bonds, its disclosures showed ... It appeared to pay off, particularly during the brunt of last year’s selloff. In March 2020, the mutual fund posted a return of about 7%, while the S&P 500 fell 12.4%, its worst month since 2008. That month, the fund drew its highest inflows ever, according to Morningstar Direct data.”
Excerpted / (Edited for Brevity) from The Wall Street Journal, April 21, 2021
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I haven’t read everything above but I say cash is form of bonds. When I started investing in 1982 cash reserve funds were the high flyers. Of course conditions then were much different than they are now but still, cash reserves are ultra short bonds. Johnathan Clements discussed his thoughts on cash in a recent article in his Humble Dollar blog
At this point, half my bonds are termed “cash”. Another 25% are in a Stable value fund - neither true bonds or cash. Maybe I should advocate that we call all these bond like instruments “fixed income”.

Interview with Jeffery Gundlach:
Nov 2020

The Value of Investing Mistakes
Time Horizon
Concentrated Bets
Risk Management
Beta Trades are rare and requires raising funds for such situations
His outlook for the next 18 months ahead from Nov 2020:
-US Stocks are in the late stage of the momentum trade
-PRPFX looks like a good option right now... since Nov 2020 its up 14%

I agree with Sven that posts would be more helpful if they included some comment about why the poster found an article or fund interesting.
carew388 identifies one of the first two questions I ask specifically about CEFs. The other is the amount of leverage, since CEFs are often highly leveraged. This information is easy to find ...
Leverage is 20% (CEF Connect), and DLY started its short life with a nearly 10% premium before plunging in fall 2020 to a 10.5% discount (per M*) and then settling in to a "not substantial[]" discount still greater than any of the dozen other leveraged multisector funds in the CEF Connect database.
Regarding Crash's concern about the frequency and certainty of dividends: there is little special about CEFs in this regard. OEF bond funds may declare dividends annually (e.g. LSGLX), quarterly (e.g. BEGBX), monthly (e.g. VTABX), or even oddly (e.g. FBIIX in April, June, Oct, Dec).
With OEFs you are left "waiting around to see IF a quarterly dividend were declared." BEGBX "generally expects to pay distributions of substantially all of its income, if any, quarterly, but may pay less frequently" (per prospectus). In reality, it has paid income dividends only three times in the past five years!
According to CEF Connect, DLY pays monthly, and is a managed payout fund that has paid the identical amount in each of the 11 months of its short lifetime.
Little of this raw data says why one might be interested in this fund.

Bill Miller - Founder, Miller Value Funds
“Some of the great investors of our time, Stanley Druckenmiller, Paul Tudor Jones, are gold bulls. Many people, if they're not gold bulls, they at least believe that it's possible inflation comes back with the Fed gunning the money supply here, and with more fiscal stimulus. I think it's reasonable to own gold.
With respect to bitcoin...it's been a great month for bitcoin, but it's also been a great year, year to date, 3 years, 5 years, 10 years, and then inception, bitcoin's inception was 12 years ago, and it's been the single best performing asset category in every one of those periods. Not that it hasn't had a bad time, it went from nearly $20,000 down to the $3000-$4000 range, so it's been very volatile. But I think right now it's staying power gets better every day. I think the risks of bitcoin going to zero are much much lower than they've ever been before. And you're getting greater adoption. I mean, you know, MicroStrategy put half their cash, $400mm into bitcoin. Paypal announced that people can buy bitcoin. Square had blow out numbers yesterday due to their sales and demand for bitcoin. And the bitcoin story is very easy, which is that its supply demand it's it's economics, not 101, point 01, which is that bitcoin's supply is growing at about 2.5% per year, and the demand is growing faster than that. And there's gonna be a fixed number of them. So I think every major bank, every major investment bank, every major high net worth firm is gonna eventually have some exposure to bitcoin or what's like it.”
6 Nov 2020

DLY: A Discounted Fund For Monthly Income
Apr. 18, 2021 6:41 AM ETDoubleLine Yield Opportunities Fund (DLY)
https://www.google.com/amp/s/seekingalpha.com/amp/article/4419616-dly-discounted-fund-monthly-income
DLY
Summary
DLY launched at the beginning of 2020, just in time for the COVID-induced panic selling.
Since that time, the fund has clawed back and headed higher.
The fund pays an attractive monthly distribution and is traded at a discount, though is not substantially undervalued either.
This article is also comparing extensively with DSL, another DoubleLine offering that frequently gets brought up together.
Concept of business growth, profit, development and success. Hand planting seedling growing step in garden with sunshine
Photo by Galeanu Mihai/iStock via Getty Images
Written by Nick Ackerman, co-produced by Stanford Chemist
Jeffrey Gundlach is one popular fixed-income guru - sometimes referred to as the "Bond King." He has several closed-end funds that are offered from his DoubleLine investment management firm. While he is much too busy doing CNBC interviews to do the day-to-day operations of the fund, his name is attached to them. Though I'd venture to say that he doesn't really have an active role in the fund. One of these funds is the DoubleLine Yield Opportunities Fund (DLY). It was launched earlier in 2020 and has put up respectable performance compared to a basket of other multisector bond FUND
DLY investment objective is quite simple: "seek a high level of total return, with an emphasis on current income." To achieve this, the fund will "invest in a portfolio of investments selected for its potential to provide a high level of total return, with an emphasis on current income. The Fund may invest in debt securities or other income producing investments of issuers anywhere in the world, including in emerging markets, and may invest in investments of any credit quality."

Based on MFO Premium analysis:
1. RPGAX rated higher than DODBX on lower risk over 1, 3, and 5 years period.
2. RPGAX has lower maximum drawdown in March 2020, -15.7% versus -21.0%, than that of DODBX. The recovery period is 7 months versus 11 months in favor of RPGAX.
3. The ulcer index and Martin ratio are higher in RPGAX than those of DODBX.
If you already own a growth-oriented allocation fund such as PRWCX, pairing it with the DODBX would allow you to capture the recent shift to value stocks.
Even DODBX's $15B asset is not small, the firm should able to manage it well. BTW, D&C only managed 6 funds.
If I don't have any balance fund, RPGAX would be a solid choice.

@Sven said, “Other investment opportunities??”
Materials and energy are extremely volatile places to play. Very sensitive to the economy. As far as PRNEX goes, I’ve avoided it in recent years as just too erratic. It had a better manager many years ago than now I think. PRAFX is a cut above it and a bit less susceptible to the fortunes of the energy and equity markets. Folks shouldn’t overlook real estate in this area either. PRAFX typically allocates a substantial portion (30% or more) to real estate.
Currently I have only 7-8% allocated to my “real assets” sleeve. Down from 10% at the end of 2020. The three I hold in that sleeve: PRAFX, BRCAX, OPGSX. Suggest the last one only for those who enjoy walking over mine-fields. :)
(Earlier answer edited for brevity.)

“Lumber prices are up more than 35% this year, at $1,180.70 per 1,000 board feet as of April 13, after more than doubling in price in 2020. Also this year, steel futures have jumped 40% and iron ore trades nearly 7% higher. Copper has climbed 15%”
Barron’s April 15, 2021
LINK Link may not work. One trick I’ve learned is to do a web search for the exact words (cut and pasted) from a quoted article.
BTW - Columnist Jack Hough has a fascinating take on this in the same issue of Barron’s, asking “How about a wood-based cryptocurrency?” Suggested name ... Barkcoin
:)

What he says: “Last year was an aggressive year for fixed-income performance with global central banks slashing rates as a result of COVID-19, and at the same time re-engaging in secondary market bond purchasing ...
True. But it went much further ...
“The Fed originally said participants in the corporate bond-buying facility must have at least a BBB credit rating as of March 22. That's the lowest rung of investment grade. However, it later opened the program to ‘fallen angels,’ which are investment-grade companies that have recently been dropped into junk territory. ... Not all junk-rated companies can participate. Firms must be rated at least BB- at the date of the purchase.” Source
Yup - If you start using Treasury’s printing press to scour up & guarantee some marginally investment grade BBB bonds along with some good ol’ junk-rated BB- you’re going to light a fire under the corporate bond market. That’s the reason corporates did so well. The Fed’s rate cutting plus frightened equity investors running into bonds didn’t hurt either.