PIMIX had a sizable drawdown in 2020, -11.3% and finally recovered for the year. So the risk aspect is higher than expected. Performance-wise the fund is way way too big and trailed other bond funds for last several years.
PRSNX had a smaller drawdown and recovered quicker. 2020 was a unusual year where the boring total bond index fund performed quite well. Will see how bonds will do this year with higher inflation, but Fed will keep rate flat for another year.

Pretty much disagree with your take on PIMIX (though I know most share it). The bond market is enormous. While funds having billions in assets can't take advantage of niche opportunities like a very small fund can, most of the funds discussed here are in that same boat. That's OK if what you're looking for in bonds is mostly stability with some decent distributions. Go ahead and compare PIMIX to many of the funds mentioned here back to January 2016. PIMIX still has the highest Sharpe ratio, lowest drawdown and no down years. The same holds mostly true back to 2009 (except PIMIX was down a modest 5.47% in 2008). Hartford strategic may look great now but it suffered a hair-raising 21% drawdown and was also down 17% in 2008. There are no free lunches here. If you want to take on more risk it's simple, a no-brainer really, DHHIX.

I own both active and passive funds.
Investors should be mentally prepared for active funds to periodically underperform their relevant benchmarks.
I agree with @LewisBraham that it is difficult to find active funds which will outperform their benchmarks over the long-term (10 yr, 15 yr, etc.). PDF
Many intelligent, highly-educated portfolio managers compete against each other.
Company* and stock market information is now readily available to all.
This makes it extremely challenging for anyone to gain an edge.
The higher costs of active funds are also an important factor since they detract from returns.
*Regulation FD was enacted in October 2000 to prevent selective disclosure of material nonpublic information. Link

M* currently places FSMAX in the Mid Blend category but in the Mid Growth style box.
Category placements are based on three years of style box data.
This article discusses recent fund style box moves at M*. Link
It appears that Fidelity, Lipper, and M* all use different criteria for determining fund categories.
Sometimes certain funds won't fit neatly within the available categories.
For example, M* classifies NWFFX as a Diversified Emerging Markets fund but developed markets comprised 48.7% of its assets as of September 2020.
These type of anomolies can make fund category comparisons challenging.

Using Portfolio Visualizer from 1/1/08 to 2/05/2020-$10000 beginning balance PRBLX 34,714
VFIAX 27,452. Since I'm a tech-luddite I can't link to the screen. Maybe use 2 different funds in case 1 turns into the next Sequoia or Third Avenue Value !

T. Rowe Price presented opportunities for 2021 on equities and bonds:

The financials and energy sectors could offer particularly attractive shorter‑term value opportunities in 2021, according to Giroux:
Financials: Steepening yield curves have improved net lending margins, and the reserves set aside to cover expected pandemic loan losses appear to be larger than needed, Giroux says. European banks appear especially cheap based on price/book value multiples, Thomson adds.
Energy: A broad collapse in capital spending should reduce excess oil and gas supplies, potentially supporting prices, Giroux predicts. An easing of the pandemic could boost travel in 2021, reviving demand. However, the longer‑term outlook for traditional fossil fuel producers remains challenged by renewables and regulatory pressures.

https://www.troweprice.com/financial-intermediary/be/en/thinking/articles/2020/q4/global-market-outlook-managing-other-side.html

PIMIX had a sizable drawdown in 2020, -11.3% and finally recovered for the year. So the risk aspect is higher than expected. Performance-wise the fund is way way too big and trailed other bond funds for last several years.
PRSNX had a smaller drawdown and recovered quicker. 2020 was a unusual year where the boring total bond index fund performed quite well. Will see how bonds will do this year with higher inflation, but Fed will keep rate flat for another year.

My update - PTIAX and RCTIX is not available in TRP Brokerage. I am deciding between PIMIX, HSNIX and TRP's own PRSNX...I've owned PONAX in another account and they have receovered well from March 2020 volatility. Next, from what I can see the PRSNX seems to protect better on the downside and it's USD Hedge adds a unique wrinkle. The top performer in the past 3 & 5 years, HSNIX, seems to take the most risk and potentially protect less. Although it came roaring back...

Although, I no longer post on the MFO board I still visit and read it. The last time hank visited was December of 2020. His extended absence gives me pause. With this, I'll be keeping him in my thoughts and prayers. Hopefully, he will be back soon. Skeet
Here is a link to the last post made by hank. https://mutualfundobserver.com/discuss/discussion/57465/which-of-these-2-funds-is-riskier-safer-over-the-next-1-3-years-dodfx-vs-dodix

Well I watched WAITING FOR SUPERMAN, so I guess I'm now allowed to state opinions again. It throws a ton of different issues into the air, so commenting intelligently on them would take as long as the documentary. While some may choose to disagree, I saw a lot of things which agreed with what I was saying: Kids who are willing to work hard have involved parents, and who operate under reasonable levels of discipline; self-applied or otherwise, are likely to be successful. Others will tend not be. Pretty much what I said going in.
Yes, there are systemic problems. Yes, not all teachers are 'good', work hard, etc; just like any other field. The film strongly implied that unions were a major problem. Is it worth my time to point out that many of the very worst state educational systems (per the documentary) do not have unions while some of the best do? Is it worth noting to anyone that my home district, and the one in which I taught for twenty years, was 50% minority, provided free lunch to a huge percentage of its population, and was famously the inspiration for the NY Magazine article "Welcome to Newburgh, Murder Capital of NY".
https://tcf.org/content/commentary/welcome-to-newburgh-murder-capital-of-new-york/?session=1
Yet despite all of this, Newburgh integrated its schools by being one of the first NY districts to institute 'magnet schools'. While there were initially parochial schools; in time, ALL kids attended the public schools in Newburgh. People didn't flee because discipline was enforced and the educational program was superior to anything around. It was not uncommon for the very best students to graduate with a year of college credit. In my senior year, out of a class of approximately 1000, we ended up graduating 850; not the 300 and something suggested by the SUPERMAN documentary. Many of those who did not graduate chose to drop out as soon as possible and go to work. This was especially a problem with the latino population.
Tenure is proclaimed to be a problem, and it can be in some cases...but...one has to ask why, after three years of observing, a district gets itself saddled with a poor teacher? Can part of the problem be poor administrator oversight? Or maybe good candidates don't grow on trees and districts have to take what they can get? Why would that be? As for getting rid of tenured teachers, the hitch seems to be that you have to document the problem, and that seems to be difficult for administrators to do (which comes back to that oversight issue).
And if kids are being "passed along" and the school "failing" as a result, it's not the teachers doing it. In these cases, they are instructed to pass the kid along. Why would unions have any effect on THAT? If you abdicate your responsibility, have no standards, refuse to accept failure or impose consequences, how could you possibly expect a favorable outcome? We absolutely need to fix the system and get good people in there, but there is no simple and painless fix.

I dont know if you can access this page from Bloomberg without a subscription but it addresses the equity duration issue less comprehensively in the context of bond duration as well
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2021-02-06/danger-lurks-in-global-markets-transfixed-by-rising-bond-yields?sref=OzMbRRMQ
"Equity duration is a bit trickier to grasp. Some use dividend yields to calculate how many years it will take to get one’s capital back without any dividend growth, with more time equating to higher duration -- broadly speaking, a lower dividend rate means a higher duration."

There is little accountability for stock market predictions.
Wrong predictions from individuals or firms are often forgotten in the future.
Here's a little context.
Link1
Link2
“Nearly everyone interested in common stocks wants to be told by someone else what he thinks the market is going to do. The demand being there, it must be supplied.”
-Benjamin Graham

Thanks for posting this, Observant1 - the first link, especially, is a thorough study of faulty predictions both positive and negative. As they say - nobody knows.

Great points. MSSMX, for example, was ranked as follows in the SCG cat:
2018: 18
2019: 12
2020: 1
2021: 1
My eyesight and analytical skills are both fading somewhat, but that doesn't look much like luck to me.
Aside: I'm routinely accused of being lucky...retired early, defined benefit pensions, retiree health, the list goes on an on. My standard retort is, " I believe that people tend to create their own 'luck'."

Catch, I have recently taken to “disruptive” investing. Ark funds and others are pushing the point that the 2020’s may be a decade of new technology displacing many of the old standbys (gasoline engine, oil/carbon-based fuels, buying things from physical locations, going to casinos to bet, storing energy and powering homes and business...yada yada).
And honestly, it was Chowder, of the famous “Chowder rule” (adding dividend yield plus dividend growth to try to achieve greater than 8% or some higher value), who got me really on this kick....similar to him, I manage my parents’ portfolios (mid-70s retirees) as income portfolios, but more reliance on higher yielding things than he likely does (preferreds, CEFs, etc.). He has a blog in which he discusses disruptive investing, and he owns ARK funds along with individual holdings of some new tech/clean energy/biosciences companies. It really clicked in my head....plus the new administration likely pushing for advances in clean energy and the like.
This is all a long-winded way to say I’m on-board with you here. I would add, don’t forget some of the miners and other companies that have to mine/process the “high tech” metals to be put into all the “newfangled doohickeys.” There’s even a rare earth metals ETF, REMX, which I own in most of the portfolios (well, 3, lol) I help manage. Cheers!

There is little accountability for stock market predictions.
Wrong predictions from individuals or firms are often forgotten in the future.
Here's a little context.
Link1
Link2
“Nearly everyone interested in common stocks wants to be told by someone else what he thinks the market is going to do. The demand being there, it must be supplied.”
-Benjamin Graham

Taxes. BIG problem for lots of investors, and as you've described for many MSSMX shareholders. Fortunate enough to have successfully executed a life-long investment strategy to still have 95% in tax-deferred a/c's post-Medicare age. Hold only a few munis outside the umbrella.
All that said, trusting there are far worse problems these days than paying taxes on out-sized gains.

Somebody has to pay the IRS if the gains are realized. Either the MF makes a massive distribution at year-end affecting the shareholders of record at that time, or the shareholder sells the fund resulting in a big short-term gain. Taxes are on my mind as my 1099s start arriving. Having a big spike in income in one year might be seen as a « high class problem, » but it can have an impact beyond the tax year in question. Short-term gains are taxed at the taxpayer’s highest rate, for one. Retirees on Medicare, in addition, who see their AGI rise suddenly will be subject to steep increases in Medicare premiums because of the one-year spike. If AGI reverts to a « normal » level it will be necessary to file a form explaining why there was a spike and requesting a return to the status quo ante. IOW, a PITA. I like a fund or stock that shoots up as well as anyone, but the resulting high can be followed by hangover. A grad student at MIT, earning $36K annually, was featured in the WSJ because of his $200K from a small investment in GME. I have to wonder how much of that windfall he’s going to keep.

B shares converting to A shares was my wife's experience. Her Capital Group R shares have a low expense ration but I am not surprised that in some cases C shares and R shares are egregiously high. Further load-waived is common now.

Awesome find @MikeW. Thanks for sharing.
Helps answer the question, "After being UP ~150% in 2020, what can you possibly do for an encore?"

Thanks for the update! I had been checking the EDGAR database looking for the proxy results. I noticed that FPA dropped FPA Capital from its "Fund Pricing" so I suspected that the merger had been approved. My FPPTX has been converted to QRSIX; my shares have been adjusted for the higher NAV of FPPTX.

"GameStop frenzy helps fuel sharp gains for Morgan Stanley fund"
A little insight into those gains at MSSMX.... https://amp.ft.com/content/f8dd7dba-3ba3-4ed8-bf7f-dffadab6112d