Hi Fred,
You inquired about GAVAX, here is a link to David Snowball's review:
Link
FYI: here is the performance of the funds I mentioned, along with FIKFX and VASIX, during the March swoon. See this chart:
"https://stockcharts.com/freecharts/perf.php?GAVAX,CTFAX,TMSRX,SWAN,VSCGX,VASIX,fikfx"
CTFAX and GAVAX are tactical allocation funds, so I'm looking/hoping for the managers to help with defense.
Re: CTFAX, I believe its strong performance during the March swoon reflects its new mandate, so that's encouraging.
Best of luck, happy new year!
Rick

It's funny how most studies on market performance ignore the Great Depression as if it never happened, yet the first article does reference it:

The author does mention that this price performance ignores dividends so the recovery rate would've been sooner than 25 years with that, but I wonder how many people during the Great Depression would have had the stomach or the financial wherewithal with 25% unemployment to hold on and reinvest their dividends as the market went into free-fall.

For SP500 w full reinvestment:
This is even true for the peak starting 9/2k --- it took ~6y, though, following the ensuing dip --- and for the peak starting 11/07 --- and that one took, following the ensuing dip, just under ~5y. To break even.
Sobering, but if one stays optimistic ....
Worse, as everyone knows, if you 'ignore' (somehow) the second peak (and had gone all in Labor Day 2k), it was not until xmas 2010, over a decade later, that you were breakeven on paper --- and that while suffering ~27% inflation.
Such a scenario certainly seems more likely now going forward than anything else, with the market 'foaming at the mouth':
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/12/26/business/investors-bull-market-pandemic.html

If you're interested in multisector bond funds, you may want to consider RCTIX.
Fact Sheet

Thanks for the suggestion, Observant.
RCTIX is already on my watch list and I am currently monitoring its risk/reward performance. So far, so good.
Thanks, again.
Fred

If you're interested in multisector bond funds, you may want to consider RCTIX.
Fact Sheet

It is confusing and very messy when dealing with portfolios of all different maturities, coupons and ratings (different yield curves). That's why it's easier thinking about these questions with a single bond or a homogeneous portfolio of bonds all the same.
If you own a bond and sell it before maturity, even assuming that rates remain the same, you'll get a bit more than YTM. This is because longer term bonds pay higher rates. Since SEC yield reflects YTM, I don't believe this return is reflected in that yield.
Think of a two year bond paying interest annually. Let's say that market rate for a two year bond is 2% and market rate on a one year bond is 1%. (This time I'll ignore pennies for simplicity). If the two year bond pays 2% each year, it will cost you $100 (par).
A year after buying, you get a 2% interest payment. You're now holding a 1 year bond with a 2% coupon (that's above the 1% market rate for a one year bond). So you're able to sell that bond for $101 (1% premium). Your net return: 2% market rate interest plus 1% in capital gain.
[A buyer of your bond, if holding to maturity would net 1% on that bond (2% coupon less 1% loss in value). There's your 4% total return over two years.]
There's no difference between you doing this with your own bonds and a fund manager doing this with the fund's portfolio. You get more total return by turning over bonds because you're taking on more risk.
When holding a two year bond to maturity the average maturity over that time is one year. If instead you sell a two year bond after a year (and replace it with another two year bond), your average maturity over time is 1.5 years. You're always holding a bond that matures between one and two years from now.
We didn't assume rates were changing here - just that we didn't have an inverted yield curve where shorter bonds pay higher yields than longer bonds.
Rates changing complicates this. If you swap one bond for another of the same maturity, nothing's going to change. It's as if you sold your bond and then simply repurchased it. Your sale price and your purchase price will be equally affected by the rate change.
But if you're selling shorter maturity bonds and replacing them with longer maturity ones, then a change in the yield curve is going to affect how much you get for extending that average maturity. In ways I honestly don't want to work through right now :-)

@msf. Thank you for your always great explanations. Since bond funds are buying and selling bonds every day and not holding them to maturation usually, I would imagine that the SEC yield is the cumulative yield of all the bonds in the fund held until maturity only on that day when published. If bonds are sold prior to maturity the yield would be more based on market rate changes. Correct? Would this also be accounted for in the SEC yields? Probably not?? Would it be noted in capital gains or losses and not in the SEC yields? So your true total return may not be accounted for by SEC yields only. Thanks again for your help with this subject which I find quite confusing.

Take a look at Vanguard's W funds, VWIAX and VWENX. You won't get big dividend %, but they also throw some good cap gains. Works for me.

ARK Innovation ETF is discussed in the following blog post.
Other "hot" funds from the past are also mentioned.
A Short History of Chasing The Best Performing Funds

My point with those funds (which do make an interesting list) is that value simply hasn't performed as well as blend, let alone growth. Lewis made this point as well in asking whether you were disappointed with the fund or with value in general.
KGIRX was not a fund I was familiar with. Something to note about it is that unlike most of the other better performing foreign LCV funds is that it has a large measure of EM. Really large. 43%.
I ran a few searches, and the closer one hews to low risk, foreign LCV, the more similar the performance becomes. For example, one screen was:
Category = foreign large value or foreign large blend
Large Cap Value >= 25%
Large Cap Growth < 10%
Bear market percentile < 50%
YTD return > 0
For me rapid spikes down or up don't matter. Unless one is planning on selling within a small window of time, ISTM that recovery time is more important than how deep a plunge is. Since the 2020 spike (decline) was between January 17 (when the market hadn't risen much YTD) to March 23, it seemed reasonable to look for funds to "break even" over the current year, hence YTD return > 0. (Between 1/17 and 3/23, many funds seemed to have drawdowns of 34% - 35%.)
Not too many funds pass this screen. (Variants include increasing the percentages of both LCG and LCV while keeping a significant difference between the two.) One of the few that did was PRCNX, which led me to believe you were looking for very similar funds.
Another fund that came out of that initial screen (LCV >= 25, LCG < 10) was GSAKX. This sits on the border of value and blend. It wanders along the dividing line; M* called it value in 2019-2020, but blend in the prior three years. It's highly concentrated (34 stocks), and very Eurocentric @ 79% including UK. Its 1/17-3/23 drawdown was 34.5%, just slightly less than VEA's 35.1%.
Changing the screen slightly (LCV >= 35, LCG < 25) gives a few different funds. One is LZIOX. This is a more wide ranging fund from what is generally a value shop. It's generally been blend, though it had a year as a LCG fund and is now LCV. It has a more conventional 70 equities. It has performed respectably, though it too fell 34.6% between 1/17 and 3/23. Over the past three years it has done significantly better than TBGVX.
BRXAX is another fund from this screen. It's been LCV for the past four years, but this year its portfolio is blend and M* has placed in in the blend category. 149 stocks, including a bit more than 20% EM. Likewise, it fell 34.5% between 1/17 and 3/23.
None of these funds is going to set the world on fire. They're lower risk, reasonably performing, relative value funds. In contrast, TBGVX is a "deep-ish value" fund.

Eye-watering!
It has five funds returning more than 100% from April thru November … six, if you count the one it sub-advises ... see here.
Five of its funds have returned more than 80% YTD!

This link seems a little dated, but it seems to answer some of your questions. I would verify any changes for 2020.
https://finance.zacks.com/can-shortterm-capital-loss-tax-writeoff-against-ordinary-gains-3687.html

Notes:
- Ark ETFs are actively managed ETFs.
-The concept of "cash-like equities" is mentioned by Ms Woods.
What are your cash like equity mutual funds?
-Tesla's future aims at Autonomous Taxi Services.
-Bitcoin is the flight to safety currency in Cryptocurrency space. Large gains will be captured by the IRS, not the individual investor.
-Social Media continues to be an important part of modern day financial services.
-Capitalizing on how the world is changing:
- Artificial Intelligence, Robotics, Energy Storage, DNA Sequencing & The Blockchain.
- Quantum Computing

Problem Solving Portfolios:

“Disruptive innovation is often not priced correctly by traditional investment strategies because people may not understand how big the ultimate opportunities are going to be. They aren’t sizing the opportunity and they aren’t analyzing the disruption.”

https://bloomberg.com/news/articles/2020-12-18/cathie-wood-sees-control-fight-ending-lifting-cloud-over-ark?source=content_type%3Areact%7Cfirst_level_url%3Anews%7Csection%3Amain_content%7Cbutton%3Abody_link&sref=DWzi38c2

Waiting to "buy the dips" (the strategy to wait for a 10% peak-to-trough loss before buying, then holding for at least 12 months or until the drawdown threshold is exceeded before returning to cash) doesn't work verses Just "Buy and Hold":

Linked Article:
reasons-why-you-shouldnt-wait-for-the-stock-market-to-crash

I was wondering if the below info is correct as per the writer , especially the $3K to offset other ordinary income ? I was thinking write off $2k & carry forward the remainder $4K
Another thing you should know is that you don't need to use up your entire capital loss for the tax year in which you take it. Say you take a $6,000 loss this year, but you only have $2,000 in capital gains to negate. From there, you're left with $4,000, of which $3,000 can be used to offset ordinary income. But you don't lose the remaining $1,000 tax benefit. Instead, you can carry it with you into 2021 and use it then.
Merry Christmas to All, Derf

@msf. agreed- Several great ideas ! ( thanks ) and I think it has gotten a bit confusing because....
1. I asked to consider a "global blend manager" in the hopes that might put the decision making between Value & growth in the hands of the manager. Perhaps that is not the smartest way to gain the exposure that I think I need. As I stated in the opening post - it has been a long wait for the value proposition to kick in. I welcome your comments on the issue of Value vs. Growth at this time
Here are my priorities
2. I am willing to give up on the upside for protection on the downside - so I have been looking at the Sharpe and Martin Ratio, and Max DD in the MFO screener. Is there better process for evaluating the risk ?
3. EM was only referred to because I stated that I was moving on to researching small/mid and EM next/separately - I am not screening it as an alt to TBGVX.
TBGVX is 68% Western Europe 13% U.S (that slug of US probably helped the performance vs. a strict Foreign only fund - ARTKX has outperformed in 1/3/5 years, but as you point out has had steeper MAXDD in 2011 and 2018.
I am already holding MINIX, TBGVX (in a 401k that I did not sell), DFALX that I can't sell due to cap gains in it.
does that add clarity ? Your advice is welcome.

Since 1988, investing at all time highs of the S & P 500, has been a better strategy:

Article:
investing-in-stocks-at-all-time-highs/
Article on Investing During Market Highs:
what-if-you-only-invested-at-market-peaks

PRCNX lands in Morningstar's Foreign Large Blend category although its investment style was classified as Foreign Large Value in 2019 and 2020. The fund's trailing 3 Yr. and 5 Yr. returns were average while its risk was below average (according to M*).
The lead manager, Federico Santilli, has also steered RPICX (PRCNX clone) since 07-27-10.
Since inception, RPICX annual returns have been top-quartile in six out of nine calendar years.
The fund's trailing 10 Yr. return was top decile while its risk was low (according to M*).
Here's a snippet of William Rocco's (M*) take on PRCNX published on 11-25-20.
Santilli pursues compellingly priced companies with superior
competitive positions in attractive industries, strong
fundamentals, solid balance sheets, and proven
leadership. While doing so, he invests across the
market-cap and style spectrums, readily allows his
stock selection to lead to atypical country and sector
exposures, and invests in roughly 60-70 stocks while
keeping the largest positions moderate in size. This
approach is sound and distinctive and has an attractive
mix of bolder and tamer traits that provide this fund
with a fighting chance of outperformance without
taking on excessive risk.

https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/1697196/000158064220004585/acpmi497.htm
497 1 acpmi497.htm 497
AlphaCentric Prime Meridian Income Fund
(the “Fund”)
December 22, 2020
The information in this Supplement amends certain information contained in the Fund’s current Prospectus and Statement of Additional information (“SAI”), each dated April 24, 2020.
______________________________________________________________________________
The Fund’s Board of Trustees approved increases in the minimum purchase requirements for regular accounts from $2,500 to $10,000 and for retirement plan accounts from $1,000 to $10,000.
All references to the minimum investment amounts contained in the Fund’s Prospectus and SAI are hereby revised accordingly.
* * *
You should read this Supplement in conjunction with the Fund’s Prospectus and SAI, which provide information that you should know about the Fund before investing. These documents are available upon request and without charge by calling the Fund toll-free at 1-888-910-0412, or by writing to the Fund at c/o U.S. Bancorp Fund Services, LLC, 615 East Michigan Street, Milwaukee, Wisconsin 53202.
Please retain this Supplement for future reference.