This stuff does open the debate between those employed vs retired. The employee wages do rise with inflation (maybe not quite as much after tax adjustment), but still in the direction. Whereas retirees are on their own and have to manage the portfolio to get to that positive outcome. Given the total returns in 60/40 over the last 2 years combined one can see where the angst divide lives.

Interesting BBG piece about how a new crop of PE funds (and the existing players) may be setting up for market drama in the coming years due to insanely-crowded trades and positioning ...
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2023-11-30/ken-griffin-s-citadel-hedge-fund-rivals-draw-scrutiny-over-crowding-leverage?srnd=premium#xj4y7vzkg
Nevertheless, I'm sure those highly-compensated pension fund advisors will continue singing the praises of such 'alternates' as a good 'diversifier' despite their risks and often exhorbitant fees.....and that many pension fund committees will be only too happy (or stupid / untrained) to go along with it or ask serious questions.

So, an interesting development on the CDs I've posted about here recently.
The previously referenced bank that had loaded 40K-60K of CP CDs in most of the respective maturities (2-yrs thru 5-yrs) accelerated the execution of the Settlement of my two BUYs.
More importantly to others, they pulled all of the outstanding Quantities from the Fido platform.
Not sure what happened there. I've spoken several times over the years to very experienced Fido FI guys and been told institutions sometimes goof on BUYs and their errored/re-thunk BUYs duly end up on the Secondary Issues lists.
Perhaps this bank goofed on the loading side? I dunno. (But I think it did!) I do know I've never seen this happen before.
Bottom Line: The trend continues DOWN on available CP CD rates and Quantities Available.

"record amount of charges on credit cards"... yeah, I've been reading that one for over 70 years now...
"food still very expensive."... now that's for damned sure.

Yup. Every week that I shop at Aldi's, another item that I purchase is up in price. This week it's Clancy's Tortilla Chips up from $1.99 to $2.09 and Friendly Farms Light yogurt up $0.15.

“I step out of my bed these days and then sit down in my wheelchair. So I am paying some price for old age. But I prefer it to being dead. And whenever I feel sad about being in a wheelchair, I think well you know, Roosevelt ran the whole damn country for 12 years in a wheelchair. So I’m just trying to make this wheelchair thing last as long as Roosevelt did.”

"record amount of charges on credit cards"... yeah, I've been reading that one for over 70 years now...
"food still very expensive."... now that's for damned sure.

Charlie Munger was my favorite curmudgeon investor.
He was Warren Buffett's closest friend and consigliere for many years.
His influence on Berkshire Hathaway was tremendous.
I liked that Mr. Munger always spoke his mind - you knew exactly where he stood.
The Washington Post published a nice story about Mr. Munger earlier today.
RIP Charlie Munger.
https://www.msn.com/en-us/money/savingandinvesting/charlie-munger-dry-witted-sidekick-to-warren-buffett-dies-at-99/ar-AA1kGpRF

Hi @BaluBalu. This is the information I was looking for earlier regarding Part D, but covers Parts A and B. The page read is short and contains decent examples. Note: About 15 years ago I knew a retired lady who was a good accountant and managed the tax books for her daughter's small hardware store. The mother had always had good health, had started Medicare at age 65, including Part D for meds. A number of years passed and she didn't really have any benefit from Part D, as she didn't take any meds. The daughter was paying the monthly premiums as an expense from the store operations. Together they decided to STOP Part D. A few years later she needed to start taking prescriptions and decided the Part D plan would help with pricing. She was able to obtain a Part D again; but from having stopped and started again, she had a monetary penalty applied monthly that remained until her passing. Medicare and avoiding late enrollment penalties.

Just a side note to this discussion on Medicare IRMAA. I see IRMAA started in 2003. I wonder what has kept the government from enacting the same type regulation to Social Security? If they did it with Medicare 20 years ago, a precedent, why hasn't it even been debated for SS? Just surprising to me.

Thanks Yogi. Excellent chart / post. A few years ago I thought nothing of having 10 K sitting at the credit union earning near 0. Cash rates were so low it didn’t much matter and I felt good supporting the local CU. But like most everybody now I’d guess, that cash has migrated to mm funds. So it goes,

It may not be everyone's cup of tea, but I bought a government agency bond, AA+ rating, at 6.25%, 10 year duration. Callable - yes. Will it last 10 years? Most probably not, But I'll take the rate as long as they want to give it.

”On the way to my doctor, I found I was leaking brake fluid.”

I hope the doctor plugged that leak. :)
Anybody’s guess as to why all the insurance ads. Gosh - Several I’ve thought over the years were damned funny. Well written. Well acted. Talent on display. You don’t have to buy their insurance. What’s not to like?
Recently, Progressive’s “The Other Side of the Rest Stop” caught my fancy. Plays on class division - How the the rich live vs the common folks. Darned funny if you pay attention. Corny too I’ll admit.
https://images.app.goo.gl/kP9kuEc6wkVf24oFA

Some more background info:
Intro piece on mREITS, including basic mechanics and risks:
https://money.usnews.com/investing/real-estate-investments/articles/how-to-invest-in-mortgate-reits

[Head of income equities at TCW, Iman] Brivanlou says: "Dividend yields are a direct function of the riskiness of the underlying collateral as well as the amount of leverage employed by the mREIT, so we would urge caution and increased scrutiny if an mREIT is offering an unusually high yield." ...
"Most mREITs employ leverage to produce their returns," Brivanlou says. "Without leverage these entities could not operate profitably, which makes them dependent on a stable source of funding."

The two main parts of the real estate market in which SEVN invest are middle market and transitional. Each is a section of the real estate market where one hopes to get above average returns with all that implies for risk. Background sources below are from companies working in these markets (thus interested in promoting them).
Middle market: https://www.primealpha.com/middle-market-real-estate-2018-06
Transitional: https://lev.co/blog/financing/transitional-real-estate/
For a sense of rates associated with middle market, see p. 9 on Morgan Stanley's 3Q2023 report on floating rate loans. It shows that average coupons on middle market loans are higher than BBB, BB, and B rated leveraged floating rate leveraged loans, and only slightly higher than coupons on CCC rated loans. CCC's 19.4% YTW is way above market average; middle market at 13.6% is next highest, still well above market average.
https://www.morganstanley.com/im/publication/insights/articles/article_floatingrateloanmarketmonitor_q32023.pdf
To refine yogi's comment about most of the YTD return coming from January, SEVN gave back 3/4 of that gain between March and May, and then gained a similar amount from May to July.
https://stockcharts.com/h-perf/ui?s=SEVN&compare=&id=p67735641417
Over the past five years, its total return has been almost exactly zero. I'd call that "flat", except that its volatility is off the scale. See this comparison with JNK:
https://stockcharts.com/h-perf/ui?s=SEVN&compare=JNK&id=p02208364318

@Crash, I took your challenge. It seems that pages exist but cannot be found from the main Durable Cap link. The "tech guys" need serious web help. There is also some clickable mumbo-jumbo at the end.
https://www.durablecap.com/team-bios/
His bio at Price also needs updating - it reads like he is still there, but he left 4 years ago! May be Price thought that his Durable Capital stuff will flop & he will return.

”PRNHX is a MCG fund (and not a very good one!) and it is NOT Closed.”
Thanks for helping make my point. As I noted earlier, PRNHX has not been a very good fund recently. But a decade or so ago it was.
Bloomberg (subscription only) article from August 18, 2013:
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2013-08-16/john-laporte-t-rowe-price-manager-who-beat-peers-dies-at-68
A few excerpts from above linked article:
- “John H. Laporte, a onetime Morningstar fund manager of the year who beat three-fourths of his peers in his 22 years managing T. Rowe Price Group Inc.'s New Horizons Fund, has died. He was 68.”
- “From 1987 to 2010 he was lead portfolio manager for small-cap growth portfolios as well as chairman of the investment advisory committee for New Horizons, one of the firm's oldest funds, created by firm founder Thomas Rowe Price Jr. in 1960.”Laporte oversaw a quintupling of assets in the fund, to $5.9 billion, during the two decades he ran it.”
- “Morningstar Mutual Funds, a newsletter published by Chicago-based Morningstar Inc., named him domestic stock fund manager of the year after New Horizons returned 55 percent in 1995 compared with 30 percent for the Russell 2000 Index.”
- “His successor at the helm of New Horizons, Henry Ellenbogen, hasn't dropped the torch. The fund had the highest total return over the past three years and the best risk-adjusted performance among small-cap funds that buy U.S. stocks, according to the Bloomberg Riskless Return Ranking. As of July 31 it had $13.2 billion in assets, according to data compiled by Bloomberg, more than twice as much as when Laporte left.”
That was then. This is now. Memory is a funny thing.

After Laura Geritz founded Rondure, there were numerous articles praising her prior record at Wasatch.
I thought ROSOX might be a potentially good foreign fund.
I haven't followed the fund or firm for years.
ROSOX performance has certainly been underwhelming.
The fund's 5 Yr return (as of 11/24/23) of only 0.85% lagged 99% of Foreign Large Growth funds.

By any measure known to me, the Rondure funds disappoint.

Yes. First time I’ve looked at it, but ROSOX doesn’t seem to have held water as overseas funds go. Wondering how much, if any, the fund is hedged against currency fluctuations. That can play a huge part.
I’m not sure comparing any equity fund to cash is fair. By definition, funds that invest in just about any asset class aside from cash (stocks, commodities, bonds) should be expected to endure periods of underperformance. Agreed - at 7+ years of age, you’d expect this fund to have made a more respectable showing.

@BaluBalu, thx for the reply...I'm referring to short duration T-Bills...of which most would say are the "safest" investment one could make....so why pay fees, take risk for a fund that cannot even out perform T-Bills....
To your point of choice comparative asset...I fully recognize that I am not comparing apples vs apples (cash vs interantioanl stock fund) but...looking at it as a benchmark hurdle, point of entry...what does it say about a fund mgr 's acumen and capaiblities who cannot outperform "cash" over several years?

FUNDS. Another piece on high yearend CG distributions. (This piece by Lauren Foster seems to be based on a longer piece by @LewisBraham in the Guide to Wealth supplement, see below)
INCOME from EM dividend-stocks – CEMDX / CEMIX with holdings in Brazil, China, Greece, Mexico.
RETIREMENT. The good news is that Americans have $39 trillion in RETIREMENT ACCOUNTS. But the bad news is that only 54.3% have defined-contribution (DC) retirement accounts, 13% have traditional defined-benefit (DB) pensions, and accounting for overlaps, that leaves lots of Americans without ANY retirement funds beyond Social Security (1935- ). The average balance in DC accounts is only $86K. In the very old days, people worked until they died. Pensions were a creation of Industrial Revolution to make room for younger employees by luring older workers to “retire”, and the first retirement fund was by American Express in 1875. It didn’t catch on right away, and then the Great Depression came (1930s), and the SSA was created. Employees liked old pensions, but employers saw them as growing liabilities. According to the father of 401k, Ted BENNA, 401k was by accident from the short 869-word section (subtitled 401k) in the 1978 revenue Act that allowed pretax employer and employee contributions for retirements (unclear who slipped that in). Companies caught on to this quickly, and by 1983, there were already 7.1 million 401k accounts, now 60 million accounts. The great shift from old pensions to 401k/403b also started. But 401k/403b aren’t perfect, and while auto-signups and auto-escalations have helped, that hasn’t been enough (especially for lower-income and self-employed groups and small businesses). (By Kenneth Pringle who has authored some great historical pieces)
Supplement, GUIDE TO WEALTH.
Yearend tips for portfolios: Max 401k/403b, make IRA contributions and/or Roth conversions, payoff high-rate debt, deploy some tech profits into bonds, rebalance if far from targets, consider alternatives, keep cash in higher-rate money-market funds. Some stock and bond ideas are also included.
Several high 2023 yearend mutual fund distributions are mentioned: IYVAX, KLCKX, FMXKX, CREEX, DHSCX, JPDEX (tax-aware!), BTIIX (SP500!). Heavy outflows and/or manager change are reasons. The ETFs avoid this problem due to their tax-efficient design. There are also direct-indexed accounts that can do TLH; some of these accept mutual funds (in-kind) that they can slowly adjust with TLH. Mutual fund holders with huge CG distributions may also sell them ahead if their unrealized gains are not large. For individuals, excess TLH net losses beyond $3K/yr offset of ordinary income can be carried over to future years. Tax issues don’t matter in tax-deferred/free accounts. Charitably inclined may contribute highly appreciated securities to DAFs or directly to charities (but one has to itemize to claim charitable deductions). (By @LewisBraham at MFO)
Top yearend ideas from 5 financial pros:
Cheryl HOLLAND/Abacus: Family talks about finances around holidays.
Patrick FRUZZETI/Rose-Hightower: TLH, QCDs, CRTs from IRAs, DAFs.
Matthew SPRADLIN/Godfrey & Spradlin-Steward Partners: 529s – split w/spouse to max state tax benefits; use 5-yr forward for 5x annual contributions (but cannot contribute more for 5 years), individual 401k for proprietors.
Indrika ARNOLD/Colony Group: Gifting with purpose – it’s a good feeling when gift recipients benefit from gifts while you are around.
Mark MUMFORD/Hollow Brook: TLH, gifts.
LINK
Those interested may also check the International Roundtable in Part 1.

Love to you all. You have been so good to this troll over the years.