thanks for the responses. i will have to check the details, but last i checked, my advisor wasn’t paid fees on the funds. he is paid an annual fee.
the bond funds are a mix of short term treasuries, except one high-yield fund which i’m uncomfortable with. when i told him so, he said (his explanation as i understood it) – a lot of high yield corporate bonds got hammered because of the sub-prime fiasco since nobody wanted to touch any high yield bonds. however, a lot of these are AAA (again, his words) so short term panic is making good bonds appear worse than they are because of the taint.
i hope i’ve conveyed what he said with some sense. apologize if this explanation amounts to garbage…