One could argue that the fund has successfully navigated a very rough patch in 2020. It has very active management (and thus high turnover). We have beaten the dead horse as regards use of leverage.
Can SVARX succeed while facing the next wave of market challenges (i.e. rising rates or the next black swan)? You would be trusting that "active management". The fund is nimble and the PM is not afraid to pivot.

I would like to know how I can find out how much leverage is used in a fund. I use the Schwab platform. Tkx!

It's being delved into here:
https://armchairinvesting.freeforums.net/thread/733/introducing-svarx

The above will not show you how much and how long leveraged was used over the years. The managers can change it anytime.
I found the semi-annual report for SVARX (link) from 3/31/2020 and more than 50% is in treasury bills, mutual funds about 30%, MM at 13.8%(maybe used for leverage).
What was the leverage 3-6-12 months prior at any time? no way to know

Historical market data can’t help you predict the future but I still find it useful as a way to understand the potential risks and rewards you can see as an investor.

Looking through 93 years of returns for stocks, bonds and cash won’t help you predict future returns for these asset classes.
But it can give you a better sense of the risk involved in these asset classes since risk is much easier to predict than returns.

Stock, Bond & Cash Returns: 1928-2020
stock-bond-cash-returns-1928-2020/

CEF ROC can be destructive, constructive, or other.
Here's M*'s writeup, via Fidelity, of pass-through and of and constructive ROC.
https://www.fidelity.com/learning-center/investment-products/closed-end-funds/return-of-capital-part-two
I agree with you that in general ROC is destructive. This is why I tend to suggest caution in focusing too much on current yield. Whether from a CEF, ETF, or OEF, including OEFs comprised of bonds.
If market rate on a one year bond is 1% and your bond has a 2% coupon, it will be priced at 101. A year from now (assuming one coupon per year for simplicity) you'll get that 2% in "interest" but you'll have lost 1% in principal. That 2% payment is really 1% in interest and 1% ROC. In fact, for individual bonds, that's how the IRS treats it. See boxes 11-13 on form 1099-INT.
https://wiki.1099pro.com/download/attachments/89456651/image2020-5-18_11-3-3.png

From another thread...
newgirl
January 17 Flag
@Benwp and @MikeW ... I 'd love for you to start the thread on Small Cap and EM Asia .
I am very interested in thorough analysis!
Not either of those posters, and not sure I can provide thorough analysis, but...
First, for EM, see a good discussion at
https://www.mutualfundobserver.com/discuss/discussion/57597/some-questions-on-emerging-market-funds#latest
Small Caps: IMO, the rotation is REAL and has been happening now for several months. Getting frothy perhaps but appears there is still a LONG way to go and it's not too late to participate. To wit, SCs are set to Rock the Casbah again this AM.
First entry into the cat in a BIG way was on the value side, selected FCPVX (UP 7.3% YTD), then a smaller play with Foreign SCB/MCB FISMX (and its arguably unique splatter).
More recently bot MSSMX (UP 11.3% YTD, UP 150% in 2020), Morgan Stanley's gem of a SCG fund.
Others considered:
SCG: WMICX, ARTSX, FDSCX, PXSGX, QUASX
SCV: RYOFX
EM SC: VAESX, WAEMX
Foreign, EM and SC (all cats that generally require a bit of bravery/insanity for retirees at least) are providing some REAL energy to otherwise (temporarily?) lackluster, US LC-laden ports these days, and I expect that to continue this year and possibly beyond. Suggest DCA'ing at this point as an interim pullback seems likely. YMMV.

Think of it this way: Inflation can be good for the seller and bad for the buyer. Investors, most of whom are high net worth, are the buyers of financial assets. But who is the seller in this case--the issuers of stocks and bonds. In the case of securitized assets for say credit cards, homes or auto loans, the sellers backing the issuers are people taking out loans and the more expensive the financial asset is for the buyer, the cheaper it is for the seller or issuer or in this case the debtor to finance their car or house or purchases or even their new businesses. Although sellers of equity are only corporations, there are advantages to having asset inflation there too, but to a lesser degree. High priced equity can be used to finance R&D or various other forms of growth in the right executive hands. Unfortunately, most CEOs haven't proven to be good long-term capital allocators and too often use their expensive equity to make equally expensive acquisitions, or to pay themselves rich bonuses.

SIGIX (SFGIX) was a disappointment to me. Not a disaster, but I did get out of it. After Foster left Matthews, I went over to his new fund. He is a good communicator, but eventually, I tired of him admitting to mis-timed decisions or just bad investments in particular stocks. But the fund had quite a good 2020.
FSEAX had a partial change in management of the fund at the end of 2019 or maybe just into January, 2020. The fund really took off! I think under the current Covid regime, it looks like a "gooder" to me: governments everywhere are doing anything and everything to "juice" their economies. As long as the advanced, industrialized countries continue this way, the EM markets will follow nicely along on the coattails. Just my 2 cents. :)

1.99% car loan, just a year ago. But lately, bonds have been misbehaving. We make sure not to pay interest on anything except the car loan. 4 years to go with that. Paying interest is like paying a tax you aren't required to pay. Unless unavoidable, like on big-ticket items, like a car. Strategy: I could have plunked-down the full price in cash, and pay no interest on the car. But I'd then never be able to grow the portfolio back to where it was, beforehand. That would mean reduced monthly dividends and yearly cap gains forever, thus permanently hobbling ourselves. Meanwhile, the portfolio is growing well beyond 1.99%.

Thanks, davfor. Interesting how SVARX brought exposure down from highly leveraged at 12-2019 206% all the way down to 28% in 1Q 2020. Sometimes market timing works.

For anyone with an interest, here are a couple more links:
1. Spectrum Investment Advisors - archive of links to quarterly Newsletters:
https://client.spectruminvestor.com/189/quarterly-newsletters/2020-newsletters
2. Spectrum Financial Inc. - Archive of links to the quarter Full Spectrum newsletter. Scroll down the page to get to the archived links:
https://investspectrum.com/newsletter.cshtml

I re-balance twice yearly. Also I prefer to reapportion monthly dividends/gains to positions of my own choice based on the economy, my current financial and tax situation or cash needs. Typically I would do about 40 buys/sells a year. At Wellstrade that would have been $1,600/yr. At Fidelity about $800-1000/yr. Same at Vanguard. A free cash management account with checks/ATM card is available with 25K or more in the account, which I have. With the greater availability of cheaper institutional/advisor class funds and all no load funds (over 12,000) being NTF this was a no brainer for me. As always ,each to his/her own. I realized great cost savings and I wanted to share this ,with those who might be interested.

The April 2020 quarterly newsletter describes the SVARX active management approach over the preceding two years. The chart provides a good visual description. Scroll down to the Active Management section of the newsletter. (Reviewing the 12/31/19 and and 3/31/20 portfolio composition in the table above that section is also instructive.)
THE FULL SPECTRUM - April 2020

Thanks for the info. The chart in the link above is worth watching and see how SVARX compared to PIMIX and other bond funds

But since 2020 SVARX made so much more than these funds, see 1 year (chart) and how PIMIX lost more than 12% while SVARX lost less than 2%
Reminder: there is no guarantee that risk/reward will continue. I'm not going to buy it because I have been doing my own trading and portfolio protection.

Just wondering if there’s an option to upload documents to TRP’S website so you don’t have to rely on the mail being sorted? I’ve used this option at Schwab in the past and am in the process of doing the same to transfer a 401k out of the nightmare called Empower Retirement so as to eliminate one weak link in the chain.

I did find out an interesting tid-bit though, not all closed funds are really closed funds. He told me that if the amount is large enough for moving 401k funds in, that they could be deposited into currently closed funds. I've been looking at PRWCX Capital Appreciation and was told I could open an account and actually deposit funds into it if it's the right amount. Does this sound right?

Yes, this is a open secret that occasionally comes up here. I used this loophole by transferring part of a small 401k to TRP and opening a Rollover IRA in PRWCX a couple of years ago.
Then I transferred one share of PRWCX from this new IRA to an existing IRA at Fido. This let me buy additional shares of PRWCX in my Fido IRA.

VONE* has outperformed VFIAX and VTSAX** over the trailing 5 Yr. and 10 Yr. periods ending on 12/31/2020. You may also want to consider VTCLX. It is an actively-managed mutual fund which tracks the Russell 1000.
Its unique approach attempts to track the benchmark, while minimizing taxable gains and dividend income by purchasing index securities that pay lower dividends.
Here are some comparison charts:
5 Yr
10 Yr
15 Yr
*09/20/2010 inception date, excluded from 15 Yr. comparison
**benchmark index changed from MSCI to CRSP on 06/03/2013

Is it really the midcaps that make VONE/VRNIX look better? Over its lifetime it has performed slightly worse than VV/VLCAX, which has a higher average market cap ($167B vs. $132B) and less market coverage (85% vs. 92%).
M* chart comparing VRNIX with VLCAX over VRNIX's lifetime (starting 9/21/2010).
Is the relative underperformance of VFIAX due perhaps to what @catch22 suggested - the S&P 500 exclusion of TSLA, which has since been "corrected"? Or perhaps it's just a matter of "what have you done for me lately?". These can be tested by chopping the last year off the chart and doing another comparison. This time I've added VFIAX (S&P 500) and VTSAX (CRSP total market index, covering 100% of the US market).
M* chart comparing VFIAX (S&P 500), VLCAX (CRSP LC index), VRNIX (R1K), VTSAX (CRSP total market), 9/21/2010 to 1/16/2020
The total returns are in that order: VFIAX > VLCAX > VRNIX > VTSAX
Personally, if I were investing in an index fund like this, I wouldn't bet on a particular part of the market. I'd just buy the whole market and be done with it. Or if I really wanted a large cap index fund, I'd avoid the S&P (I'm not fond of its methodology).
Though it hasn't created cap gains distributions, VRNIX's 8.7% turnover ratio is higher than VLCAX's 1.6%. VFIAX has a 1.8% turnover ratio as of 12/31/2020, so that may already include the impact of having added TSLA.

@MikeW: I tried to get a discussion going a couple of weeks ago about Distillate Capital, the company running DSTL and DSTX. Kiplinger's put me onto checking out this manager in its listing of the best ETFs for 2021. DSTL figures in the list and it had been a previous recommendation. You know I've been a fan of MOAT and CAPE (or the OEF strategy DSENX) for some time. I like relatively concentrated funds with a comprehensible (to me) strategies; the Distillate theory of free cash flow and how a security's value should be determined as well as the fact that DSTL has outperformed MOAT and CAPE since its inception pushed me to read the DC white papers on their website and to dip my toe in DSTL. DSTX uses the same value strategy as applied to international stocks and I am willing to put some bucks into it as a vehicle for testing my belief that international and value will do well in this climate. On the domestic SC side, I bought CSB to play the rise in SCV and that is working out. Check out Distillate Capital; their stuff is readable.

The April 2020 quarterly newsletter describes the SVARX active management approach over the preceding two years. The chart provides a good visual description. Scroll down to the Active Management section of the newsletter. (Reviewing the 12/31/19 and and 3/31/20 portfolio composition in the table above that section is also instructive.)
THE FULL SPECTRUM - April 2020

Don’t forget the most important part of the fund.
The 49% leverage and the huge position in swaps.
With the recent spike in the 10 year and if the rise in interest rates continues, the higher borrowing costs will be detrimental to this funds huge position in leverage.
Do your own due diligence on this fund.

Absolutely do your own diligence. First, we don't know how long or how high the leverage has been. Second, the 10 year was much higher years ago and the fund did OK too. Third, the manager has been using short positions too. Per M* fund holdings I can see 2 positions at -10.03% and -9.89
I found the semi-annual report from 3/31/2020 (link)and more than 50% is in treasury bills, mutual funds about 30%, MM at 13.8%(maybe used for leverage).
===============
JD_co: that's correct, Ralph Doudera, also runs HFSAX/SFHYX which also has a good risk/reward, but the min is 1 million for HFSAX at Schwab and the other is only for institutional customers. I can still buy SVARX at $5000 min + $49.95 fee, but I can't buy the Ins SVASX, Schwab doesn't recognize it.
3 years performance/SD...HFSAX 14.5/7.6...SPY 14.1/18.7

Thanks. On another note, their call wait music is the bomb...well not so much after the first 2 hours.

Brubeck is great, but yeah, the same refrain from Time Out on repeat is deafening.
I tried to do some moves to cash reserve online and had to call in. The first rep sounded like he was in a broom closet and dropped my call transferring off speaker phone. Second rep was very patient and helpful, but the transactions took almost 2 hours on the phone. I did find out an interesting tid-bit though, not all closed funds are really closed funds. He told me that if the amount is large enough for moving 401k funds in, that they could be deposited into currently closed funds. I've been looking at PRWCX Capital Appreciation and was told I could open an account and actually deposit funds into it if it's the right amount. Does this sound right?
Last time I did a similar transfer to yours it took all of ten minutes. I wondering if the new division/group is having an impact? That is another question all together.

Liz Ann Sonders is the featured guest on this episode of 'The Long View' podcast. Link
Schwab's chief investment strategist discusses the impact of the pandemic in 2020 and what the new year will bring for the market and the economy.