I accidentally snorted out whisky at reading half of these ... I was only trying to find the quote that no one has yet devised, concocted, imagined, or plausibly advocated a use case
https://www.cryptoaltruism.org/blog/15-quotes-about-the-potential-of-blockchain-and-crypto

Bitcoin was designed to be a currency that people could use for trustless transactions—transactions that could be carried out without need for a financial intermediary such as a bank. But transactions in which bitcoin is used to buy or sell goods and services make up only a tiny fraction of the currency’s total trading volume, most of which is made up of people buying or selling bitcoin itself.
...
[B]itcoin was designed to facilitate decentralized person-to-person transactions, but most bitcoin trading, at least in the West, now takes place on centralized exchanges. Again, in its liberatory promise, bitcoin was supposed to not just be independent of traditional financial institutions and government, but also enable alternatives to them. Yet the big engine of the price boom of the past two years has been bitcoin’s integration into the conventional investment industry (through such vehicles as exchange-traded funds, or ETFs), increased purchases by institutional investors and corporations, and now the prospect of legitimization by the government itself.

https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2024/12/how-bitcoin-became-boring/681141/

Fixed rate deferred annuities, if used as savings vehicles (and not annuitized) are very much like CDs. Like CDs, and unlike funds, stocks, etc., their value cannot go down.
https://www.blueprintincome.com/fixed-annuities-cd-comparison
There is the risk of the insurer issuing the annuity going under, just as there is the risk of a bank failing. In the case of a bank failure, a government agency (FDIC) steps in, tries to get another bank to assume your bank's liabilities. If it succeeds (almost all the time), you may be forced to choose between taking you money (including interest to date) and running, or accepting a lower return for the remainder of the time on your CD.
In the case of an insurer (the issuer of your annuity) failing, it is a state government agency that steps in. As with banks, states first try to "rehabilitate" insurers - either get them back on their feet or have another insurer take over their liabilities. Should they not succeed, the insurer is liquidated.
Here's Pennsylvania's general description (not state-specific) on how that proceeds. A state-created guaranty association pays for losses not to exceed state limits. Again, similar to what the FDIC does for banks. A key difference is that state guaranty associations are typically underfunded. So it is important to stick with better rated insurers. (Rehabilitation/liquidation is to be avoided in any case.)
Pennsylvania FAQ on insurance company liquidations
Single Premium Deferred (fixed) Annuities are rather simple vehicles if one does not annuitize (i.e. one uses them like CDs). The key numbers are:
- guarantee rate,
- number of years rate is guaranteed,
- floor for annual renewal rate after that (insurer might offer more depending on market),
- penalty each year for early withdrawal (e.g. 7% in year 1, 6% in year 2);
- amount/percentage that can be withdrawn annually without penalty
There should not be a penalty for withdrawing everything once the multiyear guarantee period is past.
Something that has been added in the past decade or two is MVA - market value adjustments. Suppose interest rates have gone up since you purchased your annuity. Then, like a bond, the value of your annuity has dropped. If you close out your annuity early (effectively "putting" your policy), you are forcing the insurer to overpay (i.e. pay 100% of face value minus any early redemption charges). MVA lets the insurer adjust the payout accordingly, so that it doesn't overpay.
Conversely, if interest rates drop, your annuity is worth more than face value (plus interest). MVA adjusts the payout upward, so you "win". Many annuities but not all these days come with MVA.
https://smartasset.com/financial-advisor/market-value-adjustment
MVA seems to enable insurers to issue policies that pay a bit more. But they're shifting market risk onto you, in case you redeem early.
Here are Mass Mutual's rate sheets for its 3-5 year Stable Voyage Policies (no MVA) and for its Premier Voyage Policies (with MVA). The latter have higher rates, e.g. 4.25% or 4.35% on policies under $100K, while the Stable Voyage Policies (no MVA) pay 4.2%.
Stable Voyage rate sheet (Dec 30th)
Premier Voyage rate sheet (Dec 30th)
Important: These rates are dated Dec 30th. They are less than the rates I found quoted today. So rates on these annuities are about to drop.

Another observation. Do Fidelity, Schwab, and Vanguard have their own Dow Jones funds? No, they don't. Do they have the SP500? YES.
Years ago, back when Vanguard was providing free financial plans, my mother had them work up a plan. Several years prior, Vanguard had introduced its own index funds (working with MSCI to develop more tax efficient indexes). Yet the plan used Vanguard 500 rather than its broader based, better performing (at that time) large cap index fund.
I asked the planner why. As near as I could decipher the response, it was because Vanguard 500 was better known/more popular. Financial decisions are often made by "popular demand" and not by objective analysis.
This is not to say I think the DJIA is especially representative of "the market". Just that looking at who is offering what is not the best way to validate that.
OTOH, which market index does Fidelity display by default on its home page? Clue: it's up 200 points today and it's not the NASDAQ.

What is The Dow Jones (DJIA)
"The Dow Jones Industrial Average (DJIA), sometimes referred to as the Dow or Dow 30, is a stock market index that tracks the performance of 30 large, publicly traded companies in the United States. Created in 1896, it is the oldest continuous barometer of the U.S. stock market, and one of the most widely quoted indicators of the stock market’s overall health. The DJIA takes the weighted average of the stock prices of the 30 component companies."
Text emphasis is mine. Not to shabby for an index nobody follows. Allegedly. Draw your own conclusions.
Could it be that it's too concentrated (30 companies) to be included in 401k's?

#1b (upstream giving) looks like a pretty big loophole for mass affluent/high net worth investors (with significant assets but under roughly half the estate tax exemption limit). This one never occurred to me.
As a loophole, it works with appreciated assets that you plan to hold for a few more years. Gift them to your 90 year old grandparent or parent, or for that matter any elderly person you trust with money. Have them bequeath that asset back to you in their will or via a TOD account.
Presto, in a few years the capital appreciation tax liability has vanished and you have your assets back intact. It doesn't seem all that proper to me, but it also doesn't seem to be illegal. As Schwab writes, the assets can be left to any "selected beneficiary". That means even you.
It's not quite as efficient as the way an ETF dumps appreciated assets onto authorized participants. But it is similar in spirit - use a straw man of sorts who has a way to make the tax liability disappear.

YBB,
I suggested both FIO and OFR be folded into the Treasury department. It seems both of them already report into the Treasury department and those directors are appointed by the Secretary of the Treasury.
That only leaves the following to screw around and i do not think any of them should be folded into the Treasury department, though I think each of them should be streamlined to eliminate overlapping functions, if any:
The Comptroller of the Currency (OCC);
The Director of the Bureau of Consumer Financial Protection (CFPB);
The Chairman of the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC);
The Chairperson of the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC);
The Chairperson of the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC);
The Director of the Federal Housing Finance Agency (FHFA);
Overtime, every department builds their own fiefdoms. That is what humans do. So, once in a while a fresh look at their functions is needed. Give them a good hair cut to resize.
Change is necessary and should not be confused with chaos but some people just love car crashes and many that claim to be in favor of disruption are disguised anarchists or opportunists looking for personal benefits. Human history is full of people who gained power and personal prosperity based on claims of change and the common man turned out to be worse off each time.
At the end of the day, everything boils down to quality of leadership. That is why I love companies with good CEO leadership - I do not care about Board of Directors if the CEO is good.

Federal Insurance Office (FIO) is already a newer smallish unit within the Treasury. As much of the insurance regulation in the US is under the states, the FIO has no separate regulatory authority. But FIO (i) keeps tabs on insurance business, (ii) deals with international issues on insurance (typically beyond the sate insurance regulators), and, critically, (iii) advises the Treasury Secretary if the FDIC should get involved in the rescue of a failed insurer too big to be handled by the states and when that insurance failure may also lead to bank failures or cause systemic financial issues. One cannot expect the Treasury Secretary to make those decisions out of the blue, so FIO was created under Dodd-Frank in 2010.
I don't see anything saved by trashing FIO under DOGE.
https://home.treasury.gov/policy-issues/financial-markets-financial-institutions-and-fiscal-service/federal-insurance-office/about-fio
https://content.naic.org/insurance-topics/federal-insurance-office

I did not know these two existed and may be should be folded into the Treasury Dept.
The Director of the Office of Financial Research;
The Director of the Federal Insurance Office;
Overlapping oversight / regulatory authority can be unproductive and businesses may be able to play one against the other, with no one taking responsibility when things go wrong. Think of Boeing.
If FDIC and OCC are folded in, they should be into the Federal Reserve system and not the Treasury but we know that is not what Trump team wants.

There is the Financial Stability Oversight Council (FSOC) now that is chaired by the Treasury Secretary and includes all of the important financial agencies that exist. Just folding everything into Treasury may make Treasury a super agency. That may or may not lead to cost savings or efficiencies.
Real motivation may be to get rid of separate laws that govern these multiple agencies. If all were part of the Treasury, then just the Treasury Secretary (and of course, the President) can hire/fire those agency heads at will. They all become Treasury staffers.
This may open a broader discussion of independent federal agencies - why they exist, should there be sunset laws for them, etc.
https://home.treasury.gov/policy-issues/financial-markets-financial-institutions-and-fiscal-service/financial-stability-oversight-council/about-fsoc/council-members
"The Council’s voting members are:
The Secretary of the Treasury who serves as the Chairperson of the Council;
The Chairman of the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System;
The Comptroller of the Currency (OCC);
The Director of the Bureau of Consumer Financial Protection (CFPB);
The Chairman of the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC);
The Chairperson of the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC);
The Chairperson of the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC);
The Director of the Federal Housing Finance Agency (FHFA);
The Chairman of the National Credit Union Administration (NCUA); and
An independent member with insurance expertise who is appointed by the President and confirmed by the Senate for a six-year term.
The Council’s nonvoting members, who serve in an advisory capacity, are:
The Director of the Office of Financial Research;
The Director of the Federal Insurance Office;
A state insurance commissioner designated by the state insurance commissioners;
A state banking supervisor designated by the state banking supervisors; and
A state securities commissioner (or officer performing like functions) designated by the state securities commissioners.
The state insurance commissioner, state banking supervisor, and state securities commissioner serve two-year terms"

Per WSJ...
"The Trump transition team has started to explore pathways to dramatically shrink, consolidate or even eliminate the top bank watchdogs in Washington.
In recent interviews with potential nominees to lead bank regulatory agencies, Trump advisers and officials from his newfound Department of Government Efficiency have, for example, asked whether the president-elect could abolish the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp., people familiar with the matter said.
Advisers have asked the nominees under consideration for the FDIC, as well as the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency, if deposit insurance could then be absorbed into the Treasury Department, some of the people said."

Gift link from the WSJ, free for all:
https://www.wsj.com/finance/regulation/trump-advisers-bank-regulations-fdic-efa761dc?st=5QeEfJ&reflink=desktopwebshare_permalink
... if, if, IF this ever happens, I'd expect the next financial crisis will make 1929 look like a quaint fun-filled tea party....

The myth about Apple, read (https://usa.kaspersky.com/resource-center/threats/mac-vs-pc-security)

Some good/interesting points, even if it comes from a company recently booted from the USA.....

It’s also not as if Kapersky doesn’t have a financial reason to make your think your computer is less secure than it is (and many of its contentions about security updates on MacOS and Safari are just plain wrong).

I’ve been forgetting who I am ever since I turned 75. Maybe I’ll take a look.
Thanks for the heads-up Yogi. I don’t post or read financial discussion boards anywhere else. Something similar happened at Amazon years ago where real names became attached to the product reviews. By going into profile settings it was possible to re-set things and revert back to the user names.

One thing being overlooked... ALL that data being fed into AI is human produced. SO.... if the auditors, financial people at companies make mistakes or enter garbage data to make the last quarter look good, last year look good, current conditions look good as often happens what is AI going to tell you? Maybe over the long term but short term it's still garbage in garbage out.

I am a computer illiterate.
Does security features in an OS translate into prevention of virus and malware being implanted in your device? If not, what are the means thru which these things get into my device? I am starting to use mobile Apps on occasion to access financial institutions.

Be careful what you click on. Better yet, don't click on anything.
My daughter transferred some money from her bank to her brokerage account the other day. The stupid bank sent her a text with a link to confirm. She asked my opinion--Dad is still good for some things :) --and I told her to call the number on the back of her bank card.

I am a computer illiterate.
Does security features in an OS translate into prevention of virus and malware being implanted in your device? If not, what are the means thru which these things get into my device? I am starting to use mobile Apps on occasion to access financial institutions.

Many times, yes. It's a combination of security features designed by the vendor (eg SIP or Gatekeeper on Macs that are on by default) or users taking steps themselves, such as downloading a more secure browser, using different security/privacy plug-ins or their browser, etc, etc.
Mobile apps from major companies/vendors tend to be trustworthy, as long as they're downloaded from the App Store and are 'certified' by Apple/Google and not downloaded from some third-party site. Further, I don't usually trust the vast majority of apps that anyone can throw up into an App Store for sale, though. That's where a lot of the problems come in, especially on Android.
I use financial apps on my iPhone w/o worry ... you can, too.
Of course, it's always good to be vigilant and if something feels funky, get it checked out by an expert!

I am a computer illiterate.
Does security features in an OS translate into prevention of virus and malware being implanted in your device? If not, what are the means thru which these things get into my device? I am starting to use mobile Apps on occasion to access financial institutions.

Not me. If @Mark and I were financial planners; this information would be of special value for our/your investment planning. :)

We owe much of our present financial independence to previous holdings of long-term Capital/American funds.

The December 2024 issue of the Mutual Fund Observer has been posted.
Dear friends,
Welcome to the Remembrance Day / Start of Winter / Invite a Viking to Christmas / December issue of Mutual Fund Observer https://mutualfundobserver.us2.list-manage.com/track/click?u=a779898c08f5883a95650fcbf&id=3ed3901189&e=c40301c47d.
Financial markets are, in a technical sense, structurally chaotic. Beyond that structural chaos, there’s a prospect of political chaos that plays out over the weeks and months ahead. Chaos is not good for your portfolios or your sanity. Lynn Bolin and I, separately but with knowledge of what each was doing, have offered advice on crafting “a chaos-protected portfolio” (Lynn) and “a chaos-resistant portfolio” (me). Our recs are different but, we think, complementary.
Lynn also offers up advice for investing in 2025. He identifies key challenges for investors in the coming years:
1. High stock valuations and interest rates
2. Slow economic growth
3. Risk of another secular bear market
4. Sticky inflation
5. Increasing national debt and budget deficits
His analysis is somewhat at odds with the good folks at Kiplinger’s, who start with the assumption of six or seven interest rate cuts. Lynn’s prudent recs: anticipate lower long-term returns, trust active investment management during potential secular bear markets, and maybe ease back on equities if you’re of a certain age.
John Rekenthaler retired from Morningstar in mid-November. He and the other founders of Morningstar have helped guide a nearly unimaginable evolution of the power of individual investors, from a world where fund companies did not even deign to disclose the names of the people managing their funds to one where, for better and worse, investors have nearly unlimited choice and unlimited information. I wrote a short reflection on JR’s career and contributions.
Our colleague Charles offers useful new capabilities at MFO Premium (for the inflation-resistant price of $120, virtually unchanged in its decade of operation).
The Shadow keeps it real and keeps us grounded by reviewing the industry’s news, innovations, and twists in “Briefly Noted.”
And we haven’t forgotten fans of the long-scroll version (hi, Roger!): it’s here https://mutualfundobserver.us2.list-manage.com/track/click?u=a779898c08f5883a95650fcbf&id=8dedbfe7a2&e=c40301c47d!
(This post was copied from a recently received email.)

https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/1103243/000141304224000954/cweil497.htm
497 1 cweil497.htm
Christopher Weil & Company Core Investment Fund
A series of PFS Funds
Supplement dated December 6, 2024
to the Prospectus and Statement of Additional Information
each dated March 28, 2024
The Board of Trustees (the “Board”) of the PFS Funds (the “Trust”) has approved a Plan of Liquidation (the “Plan”) relating to the Christopher Weil & Company Core Investment Fund (the “Fund”), effective December 5, 2024. Christopher Weil & Company, Inc., the Fund’s investment adviser (the “Adviser”), has recommended to the Board to approve the Plan based on its representations the Fund is no longer a core focus of the Adviser’s business, the Fund’s assets have declined and the Adviser sees limited prospects for increasing assets, and the Adviser’s indication that it does not desire to continue to support the Fund. As a result, the Board has concluded that it is in the best interest of the shareholders to liquidate the Fund.
In connection with the proposed liquidation and dissolution of the Fund called for by the Plan, the Board has directed the Trust’s principal underwriter to cease offering shares of the Fund immediately as of the date of this Supplement. Shareholders may continue to reinvest dividends and distributions in the Fund or redeem their shares until the liquidation. While undergoing an orderly liquidation, the Fund will invest in cash equivalents and will not be pursuing its investment objective.
It is anticipated that the Fund will liquidate on or about December 23, 2024. Any remaining shareholders on the date of liquidation will receive a distribution of their remaining investment value in full liquidation of the Fund. If you have questions or need assistance, please contact your financial advisor directly or the Fund toll-free at 1-888-550-9266 or the Adviser at 1-858-724-6040.
IMPORTANT INFORMATION FOR RETIREMENT PLAN INVESTORS
If you are a retirement plan investor, you should consult your tax advisor regarding the consequences of any redemption of Fund shares. If you receive a distribution from an Individual Retirement Account or a Simplified Employee Pension (SEP) IRA, you must roll the proceeds into another Individual Retirement Account within sixty (60) days of the date of the distribution in order to avoid having to include the distribution in your taxable income for the year. If you receive a distribution from a 403(b)(7) Custodian Account (Tax-Sheltered account) or a Keogh Account, you must roll the distribution into a similar type of retirement plan within sixty (60) days in order to avoid disqualification of your plan and the severe tax consequences that it can bring. If you are the trustee of a Qualified Retirement Plan, you may reinvest the money in any way permitted by the plan and trust agreement.
This Supplement, and the existing Prospectus dated March 28, 2024, provide relevant information for all shareholders and should be retained for future reference. Both the Prospectus and the Statement of Additional Information dated March 28, 2024 have been filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission, are incorporated by reference, and can be obtained without charge by calling the Fund toll-free at 1-888-550-9266.