Yes, I go back as far back as PV allows, to fund inception if possible. This is extremely relevant absent a change in how the fund operates over that period. How funds perform in Black Swan events (like '08 and Covid) is as and maybe more important then everything else. Just look at IOFAX, years of gains wiped out in a few sessions. So, yes, back to inception matters particularly if you go back to '08. Scroll down to the drawdowns on PV and you'll see...TCW has the lowest drawdowns, and overtime losing less matters, quite a lot. As I noted elsewhere, I'm a big fan of BIV (and BSV) but active management and portfolio mix can add value over a long period of time. TCW and Metwest Total Return share similar mngt yet the securitized portion of the market that TCW focused on back to Gundlach has paid off big in sell offs.

It's all good, FD. PIMIX is still good for long term holders. I'm meeting my goals. That is what is important to me. Keep convincing yourself that getting 5% per year with low SD is the only game in town. I guess there's a reason people live in Georgia :o}

Again, the thread is not about me but after you couldn't come up with anything to debunk the original post you resort to make it personal. I never said that what I do is the only game in town, it works extremely well for our portfolio. I actually posted many times that the average Joe should buy several funds (indexes+managed) and hardly trade.
But, please don't worry about me. I posted the following about a week ago, so I will just copy it below.
Remember, since I retired in 2018, we have enough money to sustain our standard of living for another 40-50 years if our portfolio will make just 4% annually including inflation. Our portfolio is 35+ times our annual expense without our SS. This is why I set up the following goals: make 6% average annually with the lowest SD I can get (preferably under 3) and never lose 3% from any last top. We don’t care about maximizing performance anymore but to meet our specific goals. To do that I use mainly bond mutual funds + several short term trades (hours-days) using stocks/ETF/CEFs/other. The 3 year results are much better than my goals. I never lost more than 1% from any last top in the last 3 years. Below is a copy from my Schwab accounts as of yesterday 10/14/2020 which is about 95% of our total money. There is no way to achieve these results without being a good trader and why I posted other funds too
3 year performance/SD...SPY 13.1%/17.7...VBINX (60/40) 10%/11.1....VWIAX (40/60) 7.04/6.6%...PIMIX 3.75%/5.6....IOFIX 0.2%/23.7
My portfolio performance was 9.9% annually for 3 year with SD=2.18
Below you can see an image of performance as of 10/14/2020 from Schwab. Column 1=one year...Column 2=YTD...Column 3=one year...Column 4=3 years

Below is the SD for one year and 3 years

BTW, welcome to MFO.

if you've won the game stop playing.
Ah, the Suze Orman approach to investing (circa 2007):

Do you enjoy spending money? Oh, yes. My greatest pleasure is still flying private. I spend between $300,000 to $500,000, depending on my year, on flying private.
What do you do with the rest of your money? Save it and build it in municipal bonds. I buy zero-coupon municipal bonds, and all the bonds I buy are triple-A-rated and insured so that even if the city goes under, I get my money.

(Even Orman concedes that in this low interest rate environment she puts some money into stocks, though most is still in munis.)
I'd like to introduce the "Dumbbell portfolio"
:-)
Universal Basic Income being discussed

The idea isn’t new. As [David] Frum notes, Friederich Hayek endorsed it. In 1962, the libertarian economist Milton Friedman advocated a minimum guaranteed income via a “negative income tax.” In 1967, Martin Luther King Jr. said, “The solution to poverty is to abolish it directly by a now widely discussed measure: the guaranteed income.” Richard Nixon unsuccessfully tried to pass a version of Friedman’s plan a few years later, and his Democratic opponent in the 1972 presidential election, George McGovern, also suggested a guaranteed annual income.

https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2014/08/why-arent-reformicons-pushing-a-guaranteed-basic-income/375600/
Virtually every fund prospectuses (including those pertaining to bond funds) contains the warning: “You may lose money”.
That includes not only bond funds but money market funds, including Treasury MMFs. It's a matter of understanding what the risks are and rationally evaluating whether particular choices are worth the risks to you. (I know that sounds like motherhood; the key word is rationally.)

Again, Fed's Bazooka has yet to be fired:

As companies furloughed millions of workers and stock prices plunged through late March, Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin offered a glimmer of hope: The government was about to step in with a $4 trillion bazooka.
The scope of that promise hinged on the Federal Reserve.

NYT Article:
https://nytimes.com/2020/10/21/business/economy/fed-lifeline-funds.html

Advances in robotics and artificial intelligence will lead to a net increase in jobs over the next five years but the coronavirus pandemic will result in “double-disruption” for workers, according to the World Economic Forum (WEF).
That will require a significant level of “reskilling” and “upskilling” from employers to ensure staff are sufficiently equipped for the future of work. According to the WEF, half of all employees will need some level of retraining in the next five years.

how-coronavirus-could-usher-in-a-new-age-of-automation

Now you're on a slippery slope toward a traditional portfolio asset distribution and away from a barbell (zero risk and high risk, nothing in the middle). Once you add bonds, you're proposing a different allocation regimen with likely higher risk as you noted (whether of negative rates or loss of principal from rising rates).
His barbell strategy:

A traditional strategy (note that the leftmost category excludes bonds):

FWIW VWINX 36.46 % VS HBLYX 41.46 % Would it not be possible VWINX returned more in 2020 than HBLYX ? It's what in the pot cooking not so much the size of the pot.
Derf

The equity profiles are quite similar, .....

Important to note significant differences between the two funds in equity holdings: VWINX 36% with HBLYX holding 44%.

True the equity/bond asset allocations are a bit different. Still, the equity profiles are similar:
VWINX vs. HBLYX:
LCV: 69% vs. 73%
LCBl: 21% vs. 15%
LCG: 2% vs. 3%
MCV: 5% vs. 6%
MCBl: 0% vs. 1%
Others: 0%
VWINX: 9.5% of equity is foreign (1.47% Canada, 1.48% UK, 6.59% Europe developed)
HBLYX: 9.4% of equity is foreign (1.69% Canada, 1.34% UK, 6.35% Europe developed)
Even in terms of equity allocation, the historical differences tend not to be quite so large. Closer to 5% than to 8%. Again from M*, VWINX vs. HBLYX:
2020: 36.46% vs. 41.46%
2019: 38.11% vs. 42.87%
2018: 36.90% vs. 40.15%
2017: 38.56% vs. 43.25%
2016: 38.30% vs. 41.27%

I'm less concerned than some others with the modest increase in duration of DODIX. To explain why, I'm going to have to go into why I feel that MBS durations understate risk. Negative convexity. Bear with me here.
I'll try explaining this by analogizing to a vehicle in motion. Duration can be thought of as a measure of speed. A duration of five years means that you're "driving" at 5% per 1% rate change. That is, for every 1% increase in interest rates, you lose 5% in value. That's your "speed".
If you were "driving" at a constant speed, you'd lose 5% for each 1% increase in interest rates, like driving a steady 5MPH down a road. The way vanilla bonds work, it's as though you were tapping the brakes. (A gentle tapping, nothing more, with apologies to Edgar Allen Poe.) So at the first instant, you're losing money at 5% per 1% rate change. But as soon as you start losing principal, you slow down. That's good, you don't lose money so quickly. You lose less than 5% as rates drop 1%.
With negative convexity, instead of decelerating (positive convexity), you're accelerating. You're not gradually dropping from 5MPH to 4MPH, but you're stepping on the gas, and speeding up, say to 6MPH. Instead of losing 5% as rates drop 1%, you're losing more than 5% as your losses accelerate.
One way of looking at this is that an MBS with a 5 year duration will lose more value than a vanilla bond with a 5 year duration. (So duration understates MBS interest rate risk.) Another way of looking at this is that an MBS with a shorter duration will lose just as much as a vanilla bond with that 5 year duration.
What DODIX did was shift from somewhat shorter duration MBSs to somewhat longer duration vanilla (corporate) bonds. So even though the duration looks longer than before, the expected loss if rates increase should still be comparable.

In the first six months of 2020, we established new positions in over a dozen corporate issuers at what we believe were exceptionally attractive valuations. These purchases, along with many additions to existing corporate issuers, increased the Fund’s Corporate sector weighting by 11 percentage points to 45%.
To fund these purchases, we sold certain Agency MBS and U.S. Treasuries, which now make up 31% and 8% of the Fund, respectively. We lengthened the Fund’s duration modestly through the aforementioned corporate bond purchases, though we remain defensively positioned with respect to interest rate risk.

https://dodgeandcox.com/pdf/shareholder_reports/dc_income_semi_annual_report.pdf

2 new ETFs from First Trust claim to help limit downside in equities if the market declines. Not sure if these products would interest anybody here. Also not certain if they will "work", but I will probably track them (DOCT and FOCT) for now. DOCT has lower limits than FOCT. I remain skeptical until I see how they perform.
FT Cboe Vest U.S. Equity Deep Buffer ETF - October (DOCT)
Investment Objective/Strategy - The investment objective of the FT Cboe Vest U.S. Equity Deep Buffer ETF - October (the "Fund") is to seek to provide investors with returns (before fees, expenses and taxes) that match the price return of the SPDR® S&P 500® ETF Trust (the "Underlying ETF"), up to a predetermined upside cap of 9.34% (before fees, expenses and taxes) and 8.49% (after fees and expenses, excluding brokerage commissions, trading fees, taxes and extraordinary expenses not included in the Fund's management fee), while providing a buffer against Underlying ETF losses between -5% and -30% (before fees, expenses and taxes) over the period from October 19, 2020 to October 15, 2021. Under normal market conditions, the Fund will invest substantially all of its assets in FLexible EXchange® Options ("FLEX Options") that reference the performance of the SPDR® S&P 500® ETF Trust.

@Old_Joe, There is also the ineffectiveness of Fed Policy (Cares Act):
federal-reserve-treasury-coronavirus

Perched above this whale is a mountain of untapped Fed Help (Cares Act Money) :
federal-reserve-treasury-coronavirus/

In New 60/40 Portfolio, Riskier Hedges Are Displacing U.S. Debt

Many investors have no choice but to stick with Treasuries because of fund mandates, or they do so since they’re unconvinced it’s worth taking a chance on something else. Yet others are exploring riskier assets -- from options to currencies -- to supplement or fill the role of portfolio protection that U.S. government debt played for decades, a trend that highlights the dangers that the Fed’s rates policy can create.
and,
Options Hedge
Swan is a longtime skeptic of Modern Portfolio Theory, which was made famous by economist Harry Markowitz in the 1950s and is the thinking upon which the 60/40 mix is based. Two decades ago, Swan created a strategy of using long-term put options plus buy-and-hold positions in the S&P 500 to limit huge losses during economic downturns.
That approach has since been expanded to include positions in exchange-traded funds indexed to small cap stocks, and developed and emerging markets. It relies on constant allocations of 90% to equities and 10% to put options purchased on the underlying ETF portfolio.

Are riskier-hedges-are-displacing-u-s-debt

maybe; will be intriguing to watch fed policy struggles if biden wins, in only 2w
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/10/19/business/dealbook/biden-tax-economy.html
(earlier: https://www.nytimes.com/2020/10/01/opinion/trump-biden-economic-policy.html)
higher-level views:
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/10/18/business/biden-tax-plan-economy.html
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/10/19/opinion/joe-biden-deficit-spending.html
completely ot, this is shocking even by current standards:
https://www.theverge.com/21507966/foxconn-empty-factories-wisconsin-jobs-loophole-trump

“Stimulus Roulette” is how one pundit labeled the market action today. ... :)
In an indirect way, Covid is implicated in today’s hit, since the stimulus bill being debated in Washington is supposed to provide Covid relief to the economically afflicted (but also stands to boot the whole economy). Markets seem to be reacting to whichever way the wind blows as those talks continue.
Hard to make out much looking at my funds or watch list. Gold price was quite steady, but some of the miners took a hit. OPGSX lost 2.32% - my worst performer. On my watch list, a bit of coincidence as Price’s Blue Chip (TRBCX) matched the exact percentage loss of the S&P. Both down 1.63%. You don’t suppose ...?
Bonds were steady, as Crash observed. Surprisingly, both high yield funds I watch were unchanged. Real estate fell - often a sign of rising rates.
Here’s a CNBC story on the latest stimulus talks.

The issue in the trials was safety of the vaccine generally. One of the purposes of phase 3 clinical trials is to test the safety of pharmaceuticals in a broad population sample. Each trial was paused to allow the companies to determine whether an illness was due to effects of the vaccine.
https://www.statnews.com/2020/10/13/covid-19-clinical-trials-pauses-at-jj-and-eli-lilly-could-be-bumps-on-a-hard-road-or-mere-blips/
Since these pauses occurred almost a week ago, I doubt that they were a reason for today's declines, especially since the markets opened on the upside and didn't go negative until 10:30 or so.
Mass manufacturing and distribution has its own set of issues. Followup data from post- trial inoculations will be needed to show that manufacturing was safe and that over time a vaccine remains effective. See, e.g. the Cutter Incident.
https://www.cdc.gov/vaccinesafety/concerns/concerns-history.html
Monday's market:
https://www.usatoday.com/story/money/markets/2020/10/19/dow-stocks-fall-hopes-new-covid-19-stimulus-fade/5984119002/

MAXDD is a monthly number and why VCOBX is only at -0.8%. Use 03/01-04/1. See this (link).

Dimensional Funds
https://www.mydimensional.com/dfsmedia/f27f1cc5b9674653938eb84ff8006d8c/43847-source/options/download/pdf-2020-distributions.pdf
Dodge and Cox (new)
https://www.dodgeandcox.com/pdf/shareholder_services/dc_estimated_year_end_distributions_2020.pdf
Oakmark Funds
https://oakmark.com/news-insights/2020-fund-capital-gain-distribution-estimates/
Third Avenue (new)
https://thirdave.com/2020-estimated-income-capital-gain-distributions/

FPPTX has been a laggard for years since Robert Rodriguez left managing the fund. Only good news was I was able to get in the fund while Bob was still managing the fund (and pay a load) before it closed for the last time.
Also, the asset base of FPPTX is nearly double that of QRSVX. There should be a sizeable capital gain loss remaining for a little while after the funds merge.

Passing on the loss is a plus; the problem is that while this is a loss existing shareholders have "earned", they now have to share that benefit with other shareholders. Their benefit (an embedded capital loss) is getting diluted. Were the fund not to be acquired, or were the fund to have offsetting gains, then all the losses would stay with the existing shareholders.