The PIMIX assessment was based solely on PIMIX previous years. In 2018 it was at 18% in its category but making 0.6% is pretty low when PTIAX made 2% and SEMMX made 3.9%.
Possibly the comparison with PTIAX alone was deemed not sufficiently persuasive. Regardless and for whatever reason, the ringer SEMMX was tossed in - a fund that isn't a multisector fund (per M*). Which begs the question: why stop with just the third best nontraditional fund of 2018?
Instead of cherry picking SEMMX, a 1* fund with a tarnished reputation, one could have cherry picked CLMAX, a 5* fund. Its 2018 performance of 7.58% not only nearly doubled that of SEMMX, but it made PTIAX look anemic.
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Argentinian fiasco? PIMIX had just a 2% exposure to bonds that dropped in value to 71¢ on the dollar.
https://www.pionline.com/markets/pimcos-bet-argentine-bond-paying-75-rate-hit-peso-rout
As that column noted: "PIMCO's profits or losses on the bonds would depend significantly on the extent to which it hedged its foreign-exchange exposure." PIMCO stated that half of PIMIX's position (i.e. 1%) was dollar-denominated.
The proof is in the pudding. In August, PIMIX dropped 1.11% vs. the category's 0.83% gain. It made up that 1.94% underperformance in the remainder of the year by outperforming monthly by 0.65%, 0.40%, 0.36%, and 0.50%. (Data from M*)
Interesting how attention is called to some some black swan events with small impact, while others are disregarded ("You can't look at PIMIX YTD and compare it to BND (high rated bonds) when we had a black swan")
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PDBAX is not a M* Multi category fund but a Intermediate core plus fund
People here generally understand that M* categories are not the be-all end-all (see, e.g. RPHYX). I mentioned PDBAX specifically because M* does not calls it multisector, writing:

I ...suggest[] again to take a look at core plus funds. Generally core plus funds carry a bit less credit risk than multisector funds, though there's a fair amount of overlap between the most aggressive core plus and the more tame multisector funds. ... For example PDBAX.

The data I presented and that you quoted supports that thesis. What was your point?
FWIW, ADVNX is not a Lipper multi-sector income fund but a flexible income fund.
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2) SD(volatility) lower than 5
3) Morningstar return above average or high
These are effectively the same test. Since standard deviation is a second moment, a single outlier will skew the calculation. If a fund's SD is not distorted by March's performance figure, then March's performance must not have been an outlier. This in turn virtually mandates that the fund's return be relatively high (i.e. without a significant dip).

Skeeter,
As I sold all funds to cash in February before I retired I was in all cash when the pandemic started. Moved monies to Schwab and have been slowly adding funds. Bought EGFFX, RPHYX, CPOAX, JENSX, PTIAX, SWAGX, GGSOX for a start. Still have 65% in cash for now.
Art

I listed the funds because they meet the performance and risk parameters I was describing. Some I'm more familiar with than others. Generally I try not to say what I own because each person's needs are different, but I'll go so far as to say that I do own at least one fund on the list.
Beyond that, I'll just comment on a couple of the funds. I don't own BCOIX, but I've written about it a few times. I don't own it but I do own a similar fund with very close performance both short and long term. So I've never found a reason to change or to use it for management diversification.
Nor do I own TRBUX. I haven't written about this fund, but I have written positively about RPHYX and its use as a place for intermediate term (1-2 year) cash. For much of its life, TRBUX has returned significantly less than RPHYX (see chart here). Further, it fell a little harder than RPHYX in March.
But over the past three years, the two have tracked closely. And it bested RPHYX by nearly 3% since the end of March. While I still need to look at why each of these funds did the way they did, the past three years suggest that TRBUX could serve as a fine "near cash" fund.

Just reporting, I've sold my RPHYX and RSIVX in my IRA. I will be doing options trading for generating income. After approximately a month of doing so in my taxable account, I feel quite comfortable I can exceed the returns either / both funds can provide and with a KNOWN level of risk. In other words, I've decided to trust myself instead of a fund manager.
Going back to my stance prior to buying outright bond funds. No more.
PS - Just to close out the situation with Vanguard. Getting options approval is so painful, I'm just not doing it. I have approval at Fido and Schwab, so I'm moving money out of Vanguard and will do options with them at other brokerages.

I have Merrill Edge. If there is one, they are making a good job of hiding it. Frankly as I mentioned on another thread, I've resorted to learning how PUT options work and selling "way out of the money puts". I'm getting comfortable with doing so and really, really close to ditching even RPHYX and RSIVX as well.
I'm expecting very very low yield environment. Election year, stock market has to be pumped up, Corona is not a beer anymore, and fed doubled down on printing money = rates going to zero.

commisions are non-existent. you only pay by # of contracts you trade. And it is 65 cents at Schwab, Fidelity and TD Ameritrade. At Vanguard it is $1.0
I made $500 selling OTM puts in SPY last week in my fidelity account. SPY has 3 expiry dates every week. I just sold PUTs the day before each expiry. It was ridiculously easy.
There is something called beginners luck. I'm going to give this couple of months. If I continue to generate this kind of money I don't need RPHYX and RSIVX.

All I want now is people stop calling RPHYX as a proxy for "cash". And then "interpret" it. It's like any other fund you invest in which holds bonds.
Serves me right for trying to grow a brain and invest in bond funds. I never did it pre-financial crisis. Now I know I should never have. Going forward I never will. Really have to rethink my FPNIX investment as well.
I think someone has said investing in bonds is harder than investing in stocks. No kidding! Perhaps it's also because stocks can be manipulated easily by news or otherwise than bonds. Or maybe I'm wrong there as well. In any case, no more 007s in my life. I'll stick to balanced funds at best. At least I know my tax loss candidates for 2020 since hindsight is now also 20-20. Hah!

Hi, expatsp!
I remain comfortable with RPHYX. It's doing what I anticipated. The manager continues finding opportunities, some reportedly remarkable.
Mr. Sherman has never compared his fund to an insured savings account. He's also said that it comes with risks but that he thought the risks were definable and manageable. He's allowed that the fund might be underway for six-nine months but was comfortable that investors would be made whole in something like that time. (Might it be nine months this time? Maybe. Don't know.)
That roughly aligns with the fund's history: the historic recovery period for RPHYX has been seven months, MINT has been six, ZEOIX has been five. ZEOIX tends to fall harder and rebound faster.
- - -
I would be very thoughtful about what I compared my investments to. When people celebrate the success of "plain vanilla bond indexes," what they might actually be seeing is the performance of the Treasury component of indexes. What has succeeded over the past month have been the panic-purchase investments. The only Vanguard bond indexes above zero over the past month are Treasuries (or GNMA which is government-backed).
Vanguard Short-Term Treasury (VFISX) yields 0.8%, costs 0.2% and has risen 1.47% in four weeks. That's equivalent to 10 months of its normal (5 year) annual returns. Currently the yield on one-year Treasuries is 0.25%; deduct the 0.2% and you're yielding 0.05% a year.
Intermediate and Long-Term Treasuries have both returned more in four weeks than they normally would in an entire year.
If you look at the Vanguard bond index returns, the longer the term on Treasuries, the higher the four-week return. If you look at the Vanguard corporate bond indexes, all are substantially negative and the longer the term, the greater the loss.
- - -
I entirely understand folks' concern. I'm with ya 100% - maybe 150%; some days, 162.4%. We all want to look at see green somewhere. I would have felt all warm and fuzzy if RPHYX, at least, was above water. That was my feeling in 2013 when RPHYX was up 3.4% while the Total Bond Market was down 2.3% and Long-Term Treasuries, today's heroes, were down 13%. As is, I'm merely calm and patient.
For what that's worth,
David

Different people have different expectations and risk can mean different things to them.
There's a difference between expectations and certainties. Stocks had a dismal decade in the 2000s. "Investors would have been better off investing in pretty much anything else, from bonds to gold or even just stuffing money under a mattress."
https://www.wsj.com/articles/SB10001424052748704786204574607993448916718
Stuff happens. It doesn't mean that rather than investing in stocks one should stuff a mattress. It means that sometimes one's expectations are not met; that's the nature of risk.
Personally, if a fund like RPHYX underperformed VMMXX over a period of several years, it wouldn't bother me, so long as the margin of underperformance was within my tolerance range. I'm willing to accept the possibility of underperformance for extended periods, given the expectation that over time I'll outperform. Meanwhile, I can live with the small losses. But each person is different.
With that in mind:
1) Yes, RPHYX is supposed to be more risky than VMMXX. Especially now that the government has once again put its thumb on the scale to reduce the risk to VMMXX.
2) As I noted in my post seven years ago, Strong had recommended a time frame of 1-2 years for its Advantage fund. I felt then and continue to feel that this is a reasonable recommendation. Over this period of time one expects to do better than a MMF, but that is different from saying it will always happen.
3) As I tried to show above, taking on any risk means that sometimes things don't work out. That's true whether it's investing in a MMF that could break a buck or in stocks for a decade. One takes on the risk because the anticipated, the hoped for reward is sufficiently high to compensate for the occasions when outcomes are worse than anticipated.
Each individual weighs risks and rewards differently. It's personal and there's no single right decision. YMMV.

@msf You said: "It is best used for the cash portion of one's asset allocation, not for daily expenses"
First, I'm responsible for my own decisions and I'm not blaming anyone else. However, when we put it the way you put it, what should one conclude when we say "cash portion"?
I agree it is unrealistic to expect RPHYX to "not break the buck" in a manner of speaking. So at this time I have the following questions
1) Is RPHYX supposed to be more risky than a non-FDIC insured MM fund like Vanguard Prime Money Market?
2) If answer to 1 is "Yes", then what is a reasonable amount of time I should expect to wait for it to perform better than Vanguard Prime Money Market - this can be an opinion.
3) If answer to 1 is "No", then what is/are the reason(s) to invest in RPHYX.
I have to ask these questions because while I didn't expect NAV of RPHYX to stay constant, I expect over 6-month time frame I don't lose my principal. To me this is what I - and IMHO any reasonable person - can tolerate for his "cash portion" and I'm happy to wait that time. If anyone disagrees with that I'm open to someone re-defining my notion of "cash portion".
If one's "cash portion" is say 30% of the portfolio, like some "absolute value" mutual funds, I don't think they would tolerate RPHYX behavior , but I welcome any evidence to rebut this as well.

In this crash, it [RPHYX] has underperformed both vanilla bond funds like MWTRX and Vanguard's bond index fund, VBMFX ...
It was supposed to offer minimal downside. As it turns out, in this stress situation, it has offered more downside than a total bond market index fund ...

RPHYX is supposed to offer a more steady ride, not outperform over mid- to long-term. In that, it has succeeded.
Here's a graph plotting the 3 month performance of these three funds. The "crash", or "downside" begins for the vanilla bond fund VBMFX and the core plus bond fund MWTRX (and the average intermediate core plus bond fund) begin around March 8th.
Here's the graph comparing their performance from March 8th on.
Average core plus: -8.2%
MWTRX: -5.3%
VBMFX: -4.4%
US bond index: -4.1%
RPHYX: -2.3%
Not quite the steady eddy one might have hoped for, but half as much loss on the downside. As others have pointed out, there's a difference between cash and any fund not pegged to a $1.00 NAV. RPHYX is not a checking account. It is best used for the cash portion of one's asset allocation, not for daily expenses.

Hi @David_Snowball, yes, my comment was about RPHYX, and I was actually thinking of you when I wrote that comment, since I know you've invested heavily in it.
In this crash, it has underperformed both vanilla bond funds like MWTRX and Vanguard's bond index fund, VBMFX, which is positive for the year. It has also underperformed over the medium and long terms.
It was supposed to offer minimal downside. As it turns out, in this stress situation, it has offered more downside than a total bond market index fund, while also underperforming the index by over 100 bps/year over the last 5 years.
I have enormous respect for you, so I am curious if you are rethinking your investment in this fund.

@MikeM and @expatsp you are right. However, RPHYX *was* touted as a cash substitute. For RSIVX I can take 100% of the blame.
Looking on the positive side, this market has taught me 2 things.
Don't effing buy what you don't understand. I still wanted to own some bonds and paid the price.
Diversifying with more long-short funds is not the same as diversifying with equity funds.
I own NCLIX and I own RMBFX at Schwab. One doing the trick, one not. i expect to reduce one fund, no guesses for which.

I'm expecting massive sell-offs. Since I'm using RPHYX as a near-cash substitute, I want to know if he gets hit with redemption fever, how much actual cash is on hand versus "in 30 days" cash.
Like the suggestion that he's picking up 5% yields on the cheap, but maybe that means that someone like him is also having to get liquid.

Just as a reminder, RPHYX is the Short Term High Yield Fund and RSIVX is Strategic Income. The former is down 2.5%, the latter down 14.5% as of 3/23/20.

@VintageFreak. It's not just PTTRX. Pretty every well-run, vanilla intermediate-term bond fund has held up better in this crash than RPHYX, while also providing better medium and long-term returns.
The promise of RPHYX was to sacrifice some potential upside in return for minimal downside. It hasn't delivered on the latter compared to old-fashioned, easy-to-understand core bond funds, or even bond index funds like VBMFX.
So what, please, is the point of this fund, if it can't even provide better downside protection than an bond index fund?
Btw, I sold my holdings in RPHYX over a year ago, so I've no dog in this fight. I'm just curious.

@catch22 Actually I would challenge the notion. It is not secret I am bond challenged. I've also mentioned 007 doesn't know jack s*** - stirred tastes better than shaken.
When I buy bond funds I HAVE to trust the manager. This the reason I seldom buy bond funds outright. Imagine buying IOFIX "knowing what's under the hood". I'm just glad I didn't buy it.
Back to RPHYX and RSIVX. I expected these to be low risk funds. Now "low risk" is in the eye of the beholder. However when I look at FPNIX, at least I have some confidence. With RPHYX...mea. With RSIVX I'm not happy.
I bought RPHYX and FPNIX risking funds I would otherwise have put in money market.
I bought RSIVX because I thought PTTRX is risky. WTF? Please tell me ONE person who thought PTTRX is a better risk/reward bets in the "sky is falling on bonds" world where every Tom, Dick and Harry is saying buy funds with short durations. They've been wrong on this for at least 10 years.
But tell you what. Let me but PTTRX. It will promptly tank 20%.

I want some answers on RSIVX not RPHYX.

RiverPark just posted David's update, which should download if you click on it, and we had a few minutes to chat at the end of his lunch hour.

1. The fund is performing well. It's down 2.1% YTD. That compares to MINT at -4, Zeo at -10 and ultrashort bonds as a group at -3.8%.
   
2. By its nature, Short Term High Yield is generating investable income for him every day. The "ultra short" part means that he doesn't have to sell portfolio holdings so much as letting them mature and be redeemed, which happens regularly. About 40% of the portfolio, $270 million, will rollover into cash in the next 30 days.
   
3. He's buying. The nature of panics is that they favor folks with dry powder and a willingness to buy. He's picking up things that, under the right circumstances, are offering annualized returns of 7-50%.
   
4. He's willing to talk with you. Both he and Morty Schaja have offered to join us on a conference call if that's something that might be useful and generate enough interest among board members / readers to justify the effort.

Let me know what you think. In particular, let me know what topics you'd want to hear about if a call occurs. As a caveat, there are likely to be some topics where David & Co. would be unable to comment for legal reasons.
By way of disclosure: I own shares of RPHYX and last week bought additional shares - as I did with most of my holdings - but we have no other financial ties with Cohanzick or RiverPark.
For what that's worth,
David

Quick update. I noted that I was trying to buy additional shares of BIAWX yesterday but didn't because (1) $50 transaction fee and (2) four-hour hold time to talk with TD Ameritrade. Got through this morning, after a 40 minute hold. Two notes. First, they have a callback queue but disabled it because so many people were leaving stacks of callback requests that the system couldn't keep them straight. Second, they were very agreeable about waiving the transaction fee.
That purchase complements yesterday's tiny buys in each of my other TD funds: FPACX, MACSX, MAINX, RPHYX, GPROX.
No idea of where "the bottom" is (Leuthold estimates the market is 4% overvalued though bears do blow through "fair value"), but I figured my managers are good and could use the money. In an vaguely parallel vein, I also made contributions to my local food bank (their shelves are getting bare, too), One Tree Planted and a local small business initiative to provide coffee for first responders and medical personnel. That's 'cause Tom Hanks told me to be a helper!
David