I don't look at M* ratings by category (Medal ratings) as a significant criteria for determining "Best" Bond funds. I think "Best" is only relevant to each individual investors portfolio criteria for what purpose/role an individual investor is attempting to fill in their portfolio. Portfolio criteria can vary widely, based on age, risk metrics, total return metrics, etc. and you may reach a different conclusion if you are a trader, a buy and holder, and how important longer term total return performance is likely to repeat itself going forward. I am a preservation of principal investor in my retirement years, but I do look for enough total return to offset RMDs annually, and to hopefully increase my overall principal amount each year. I am on the sidelines right now, with a nominal positive year in total return, but I choose to wait and see how this election is going to play out, how this Covid 19 pandemic will be addressed, and then sort through total return and risk information in the latter part of 2020, and early part of 2021, and build back my portfolio going forward. M* medal ratings will have minimal importance to me in my investing decisions.

Charles Schwab to Cut 1,000 Jobs in TD Ameritrade Integration
The move will trim the combined workforce by about 3%, San Francisco-based Schwab said Monday in a statement. The cuts are part of an effort to reduce “overlapping or redundant roles.”
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2020-10-27/charles-schwab-to-cut-1-000-jobs-in-td-ameritrade-integration?srnd=premium&sref=368neHRO

https://www.cnbc.com/2020/10/26/ant-group-to-raise-tktk-billion-in-biggest-ipo-of-all-time.html
"Ant Group would raise $34.5 billion in its dual initial public offering after setting the price for its shares on Monday, making it the biggest listing of all time.....The Chinese financial technology giant previously said it would split its stock issuance equally across Shanghai and Hong Kong, issuing 1.67 billion new shares in each location.....the largest IPO of all time, putting it ahead of previous record holder Saudi Aramco, which raised just over $29 billion.....Ant’s valuation based on the pricing would be $313.37 billion, larger than some of the biggest banks in the U.S., including Goldman Sachs and Wells Fargo....."

VIX closed over 30 means I got to sell some, so I sold 50% of my portfolio which was in IOFIX. If VIX goes back under 30 I will buy it again.
It's probably just a temporary spike but I have got very little to lose. I'm already at 15% for 2020 + only one down week at -0.3% (I write down weekly results every weekend).

Hi, Crash.
My dirty take: https://www.mutualfundobserver.com/2020/10/harbor-global-leaders-investor-hggix/.

I believe the age for distributions has been moved up. I got screwed again !

Not as much as you think.
Someone born between Jan and June in 1951 would have been required to start their RMDs in 2021 (age 70.5). Now they can start in 2023 (age 72). Two years grace. Same two year grace for anyone born between Jan and June in years after 1951.
Someone born between July and Dec in 1950 would have been required to start their RMDs in 2021 (age 71). Now they can start in 2022 (age 72). That's only one year's grace. Same one year grace for anyone born between July and Dec in years after 1950.
Someone born between Jan and June 1950 would have been required to start their RMDs in 2020. Now they can start in 2022 (age 72). That's still two extra years, though one of those is coming from the fact that no one has to take RMDs this year.
Someone born between July and Dec 1949 would have been required to start their RMDs in 2020 (age 71). Now they can start in 2021 (age 72). So they're also getting one year of grace, though that is coming from the 2020 waiver, even without the age extension.
Someone born before July 1949 gets a year of grace (2020) not because of the change in RMD age but because everyone is excused this year. So they're also getting one year of grace.
In short, these "oldsters" get a one year break. That's the same amount as those born between July and December of any year from 1949 on, and just one year less than the two years anyone born between Jan and June from 1950 on get.
People born late 1949 are the ones who should be complaining. They're covered by the extension to age 72, but that doesn't get them even a single year extension.

@catch22 ...A 3 or 4 year plan to rebuild a house on the cheap, in the Philippines, on the lot my wife's family owns. Her cousin and brothers will get it done. The lion's share of everything we have invested has always been in T-IRA. The allocation and location of the money (taxable or tax-sheltered accounts) has never been ideal. The initial amounts were dropped in my lap, unscheduled, at the passing of family members, while I was still working. So, I dumped the money in T-IRA and grabbed the deduction, at the time. So, the plan is to take only profit, not bite into the balance in the T-IRA, and redeploy it in a taxable account, in order to grow it, over that 3 or 4-year time period. We are in the 10% bracket and don't have to worry about taxes on cap gains/dividends, as long as we are not stupid with the money. Wife still works, under the table. I get decent retirement income. Spacing the withdrawals seems the way to go. We won't have to face the taxes this way, and the $$$ will grow in the new account, hopefully. Right now, the Fed is backstopping everything. I appreciate your interest. :)

Think of it as the inverse of investing in a bond and combine that with your current financial situation and you should figure out whether it's worth paying off. If you were the debtor instead of creditor, how would you think about the 30-year bond where you're paying 6% versus a ten year bond where you're also paying 6%. The investor wants more yield the longer the maturity of the bond as his capital is locked up longer, preventing him from buying alternatives and exposing him to the vagaries of interest rates. The debtor will often--but not always--want the opposite. If your financial position is strong, you wouldn't mind paying off the debt's principal sooner. If it's weak or just OK, stretching it out might make more sense, even if you have more interest to pay. Figuring out how exactly your finances will look after paying it off is critical. How much do you have left over? Is it enough for most emergencies, expensive illnesses insurance doesn't completely cover such as Alzheimer's perhaps? Your children's own finances which might be strong or precarious--those kinds of things.

Yeah, great thread. Very informative. And in addition to "green hydrogen", battery storage solutions have been improving at a breakneck pace, mostly due to research and engineering into EVs. Merely 10 years ago a tiny subcompact like the Nissan Leaf had only a 72 mile range. Today 250 to over 300 miles of range is becoming the norm. The 2020 Tesla Model S is rated at over 400 miles. Illustrating how far battery tech has evolved in only a decade.
I must admit, I always thought of solar as a "local" power solution. If this is a feasible option, it seems like a real game changer. Imagine a continent like Africa, with all it's economic hurdles, becoming a vast exporter of energy to far-flung locations.

Thanks for the heads up on this one. I missed it in the Commentary. They focus on high growth small cap innovators and have a high portfolio turnover rate.
9/30 Quarterly Commentary:
https://sevencanyonsadvisors.com/newsandinsights/wagtx-commentary-q3-2020
9/30 Fact Sheet:
https://static1.squarespace.com/static/5e31f61806a57f2c2ea37a4a/t/5f91dfc8c3521479efade89d/1603395530032/seven_canyons_world_innovators_fund_fs_3q20_final+%281%29.pdf

Contribution limits are generally the same for T-IRAs and for Roths: $6K (or $7K for those age 50 and above), not to exceed your compensation. That's a combined limit, i.e. you can split the amount allowed between Roth and Traditional.
There is also an income cap on Roth contributions. Here's the IRS table:
https://www.irs.gov/retirement-plans/plan-participant-employee/amount-of-roth-ira-contributions-that-you-can-make-for-2020
Should your Roth contribution be capped, you are still free to contribute the remainder of the allowable amount into a traditional IRA, albeit without taking a deduction. For example, if you are allowed to make $7K in contributions, but your Roth contribution is capped at $3K, you could make a nondeductible contribution of $4K to your traditional IRA.
It doesn't matter whether you create a separate T-IRA for nondeductible contributions. They are all aggregated for tax purposes. You are making a commitment to keep track of your nondeductible contributions for life, or until you deplete all your traditional IRAs. The form is easy, but you're still stuck with it for life.

@FD1000, your article's chart sure looks a lot like cart linked below.
FSRPX vs VFINX shown here since 1999:
Consumer Discretionary Sector has significantly outperformed the S&P 500

Both are close...Mine=$876K...yours=$847K.
I ONLY CARE about numbers adjusted for inflation.

If you ONLY CARE about numbers for inflation, you might stop saying that your number is $876K. Adjusted for inflation, it is $543K, which amounts to a 2.64%/year loss in real value over 22.81 years.
Try this: Run a portfolio of pure cash (CASHX), no withdrawals. I've even set it up for you. I hope you'll agree that cash lost value to inflation over the past 22 years. Prove it. What's the inflation adjusted ending value of a $1M starting portfolio? How did you adjust for inflation, and did you do the same thing with your $876K amount?
Alternatively, you could just take your $876K and divide by 1.60, which is roughly the cumulative inflation between 1998 and now. That comes out to $548K. (The difference between this and $543K is likely due to the fact that 1.6 represents inflation until 2020. Add another 1% inflation for the first three quarters of the year and you're down to around $543K. Though the figures are close enough I really don't care about the cause of the 1% discrepancy.)

@msf, I added VWINX to your link...interesting performance:
Inflation Adjusted (Final Balance) VFINX / FBNDX is $846,764 and VWINX is $1,098,373.
Comparing Withdrawals & Performance - VWINX to a 50/50 allocation

The idea in using historical data is to use historical data. One doesn't input one's own hypotheticals. In particular, one uses actual inflation rates (which PV supports).
Also, the idea is to reproduce Bengen's scheme, not introduce one of your own design. Bengen starts with a fixed amount (4.5% of the initial pot), and adjust that dollar amount annually by the actual rate of inflation. What you did instead was withdraw 7% of the portfolio value at the end of each year.
From Bengen's original paper:

The withdrawal dollar amount for the first year (calculated as the withdrawal percentage times the starting value of the portfolio) will be adjusted up or down for inflation every succeeding year. After the first year, the withdrawal rate is no longer used for computing the amount withdrawn; that will be computed instead from last year's withdrawal, plus an inflation factor.

https://www.retailinvestor.org/pdf/Bengen1.pdf
Here's Bengen's model in PV applied to the time frame you selected.
At the end of the 22+ years, it shows a remaining portfolio value of $1.366M, or $847K in inflation adjusted dollars (check the inflation-adjusted box at the bottom of the graph). It's hard to see this investor's portfolio going down to zero in the next seven years, given that it's only dropped 15% in real value over the first 22 years.
FWIW, the annualized inflation rate for the years 1998-2019 (based on the NYU/Stern figures I previously cited) is 2.16%, and the current year's inflation rate is even lower.

I like simplicity. We never had CAPE > 30 and interest rates so low which isn't a good start from here.
For my portfolio sustainability I always add inflation. The last time CAPE was over 30 was in 01/1998. I'm trying to be fair and not start at much higher CAPE such as 01/2000.
PV(link) shows that 4.5%(withdrawal)+ 2.5%(inflation) = 7% withdrawal in PV isn't good enough. I know, it's not 30 years but almost 23 years is still a good one.
It's worse now because bonds future returns will be worse in the next 30 years.

The last section, on risk, is fascinating to contemplate; want to see braham and msf weigh in --- is the arg really in favor of equal weighting, or just stick with the winner-bias approach?
https://www.marketwatch.com/story/how-to-invest-in-the-sp-500-without-betting-on-faamg-stocks-2020-10-23

>> I wonder if he still feels this way.'
One's "feeling" about immutable historical numbers does not change. Though one can add more historical data as time passes. What I illustrated is that today, all the historical data, including the additional dozen data points since Kitces' piece, (probably) does not change the Kitces' result. Of course all the additional data since Bengen's original work does not change his conclusions, as he reiterated them (with refinements) in his current work.
>>My curiosity, as I said, is about what the scenario might look like
That's a different question. You're asking what they would speculate about future data. I addressed that in writing "Bengen doesn't make market predictions."
The curiosity is understandable. The closest you're going to come to an answer is Bengen's observation: "Unfortunately, as Michael observed in his 2008 article, the “CAPE needle” has been jammed against the upper valuation stops for almost all of the last 25 years. As a result, almost the only choice for safe withdrawal rates has been the highest CAPE value in each table."
That means that there are now a few 30 year spans that started with high CAPE ratios. Obviously not enough for Bengen to break out into a separate (higher CAPE) bucket, else he would have done so in his current paper. You can hope that he revisits his partitioning of CAPE ranges in a few years when he has more high CAPE data points to work with. Though as I've tried to show, the 4.5% withdrawal rate still works with the first few periods that have rolled in since Kitces' paper.
I expect the 4.5% withdrawal rate to succeed with the next data point (1991-2020) as well. PV shows that after 29 years (1991-2019) one would be left with 4.2x one's starting value.. For the annual inflation-adjusted withdrawal at year end (Dec 31, 2020) to exhaust that portfolio would require an incredible market swoon in the last two months of the year.

Just keeps getting better!!
Fidelity® Q2 2020 Retirement Analysis: Steady Contributions Combined With Market Performance Lead to Double-Digit Rebound Across Retirement Account Balances
Retirement account balances rebound in Q2. The average IRA balance was $111,500, a 13% increase from last quarter and slightly higher than the average balance of $110,400 a year ago. The average 401(k) balance increased to $104,400 in Q2, a 14% increase from Q1 but down 2% from a year ago. The average 403(b) account balance increased to $91,100, an increase of 17% from last quarter and up 3% from a year ago.
https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20200811005276/en/Fidelity®-Q2-2020-Retirement-Analysis-Steady-Contributions#:N^P]™\˜YÙILŒ™]\™[Y[LŒXØÛÝ[LŒ˜[[˜Ù\ÉLŒLŒLŒLŒLÍÉLÍŒLŒLŒLŒLLÍŒLŒLŒLŒLÉLÌLŒ

Michael Kitces is my favorite writer: a better choice is to start with lower % in stocks in early retirement years and increase the % with age.
As I've posted before, this work by Pfau and Kitces work breaks down when rates are low. Dr. Pfau acknowledged this, writing that

It does indeed seem that retiring at times with particularly low bond yields, which can be expected to increase over time, may not favor rising equity glidepaths during retirement. It essentially causes the retiree to lock in low bond returns and even capital losses on a bond fund as bond yields gradually increase (on average) over time.

Kitces, incorporating CAPE P/E 10 data, concluded that the safe withdrawal rate is never less than 4.5%, and can be increased if the ratio at the start of retirement is under 20.
The only enhancement that Bengen made to Kitces' work was to incorporate inflation, i.e. part of what you are concerned about.

Inflation directly affects the periodic withdrawals, as it is assumed that dollar withdrawals are increased annually by CPI. If inflation is high, it results in rapidly increasing withdrawals. ... the inflation trend hints at a reliable cause-and-effect relationship. As inflation (defined as the trailing 12-month Consumer Price Index at retirement) increases from top to bottom, SAFEMAX correspondingly declines.

Now he says SP500 performance will be around 7%.
You may have misread Marketwatch's writing: "Historically, he says, the average safe withdrawal rate has turned out to be about 7%." Bengen doesn't make market predictions.

I should also issue the usual cheerful disclaimer that this research is based on the analysis of historical data, and its application to future situations involves risk, as the future may differ significantly from the past. The term “safe” is meaningful only in its historical context, and does not imply a guarantee of future applicability.

Also on point regarding predictions, he writes: "if you have strong feelings that the inflation regime will change in the near future, you can choose another [presumably more conservative] chart".
Thanks to @bee for having posted Bengen's article yesterday, so that one could read what he actually wrote.
https://mutualfundobserver.com/discuss/discussion/57156/william-bengen-revisits-the-safe-withdrawal-rate-at-retirement