joining me now is john gittelsohn, who covers pimco.he total return fund is doing fine, by what measure, absolute, relative terms? >> relative to the benchmark barclays aggregate and compared to other returns. and aabove the index almost 90% of its peers. scarlet: how much of this improved performance is a result of its smaller size? it only has $92 billion in assets now compared to more than $200 billion in 2013. >> that is right. it is a challenge to manage when you are losing funds. these guys have done pretty well. what happened to the high-yield funds, for example, that ran into trouble this year, they had a lot of redemptions and they were stuck with the least liquid stuff. that can be challenging because they had big positions relative to other traders out there. what was it that allowed them to outperform some of their peers, were they very selective, did they take a more defensive posture? >> they were definitely defensive, imported -- avoided traps like emerging markets, derivatives,d some betting on corporate high-yield stuff