I'm willing to ride this out for two to three years if I have the confidence it will at least get back to what we paid for it. It seems to me they just sell bonds every month to pay the dividend and, therefore, the price keeps going down. When you purchased the bond fund, your goal was different from when you purchased the Janus Mercury Fund. You were using the Dreyfus Short Term High Yield Fund for monthly income. Instead of concentrating on share price, you should be paying attention to yield.
Yield is what is paid to an investor on a regular basis.
For an income investor, the share price is not as important as is the current yield. On the other hand, when you purchase a fund like the Janus Mercury, you are not looking for a current distribution and thus yield is not important. In analyzing bond funds, the key is interest rates. When interest rates rise, the value of bond funds declines, and when interest rates decline, the value of bond funds rise. Since you purchased your fund, we have had four interest rate increases.