FYI: The three main U.S. indexes climbed to fresh record-highs for the fourth day in a row on Thursday, fueled by gains in technology stocks, including Microsoft (MSFT.O) and Amazon.com (AMZN.O).
Nine of the 11 major S&P indexes were higher, led by the information technology .SPLRCT and financial .SPSY sectors. Tech stocks, which have powered much of the recent rally, have risen about 26 percent this year.
Regards,
Ted
Bloomberg:
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2017-10-04/dollar-bonds-are-listless-as-oil-drops-below-50-markets-wrap
Reuters:
http://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-stocks/wall-street-indexes-scale-fresh-record-highs-on-tech-gains-idUSKBN1CA18I
MarketWatch:
http://www.marketwatch.com/story/us-stocks-set-to-hover-at-record-levels-with-fed-speakers-in-the-spotlight-2017-10-05/print
IBD:
http://www.investors.com/market-trend/stock-market-today/nasdaq-leads-solid-up-session-as-bull-run-continues-unabated/
CNBC:
https://www.cnbc.com/2017/10/05/us-stocks-sp-record-high.html
AP:
http://hosted.ap.org/dynamic/stories/F/FINANCIAL_MARKETS?SITE=AP&SECTION=HOME&TEMPLATE=DEFAULT
Bloomberg Evening Briefing:
https://www.bloomberg.com//news/articles/2017-10-05/your-evening-briefing
WSJ: Markets At A Glance:
http://markets.wsj.com/us
SPDR's Sector Tracker:
http://www.sectorspdr.com/sectorspdr/tools/sector-tracker
SPDR's Bloomberg Sector Performance Pie Chart:
https://www.bloomberg.com/markets/sectors
Current Futures: Positive
https://finviz.com/futures.ashx

As I have expressed before, IMO; one may continue to name the ongoing markets since the big melt as still feeling the effects of policy(s) and that "this time is still different" and thus the "mean regression chart line" is progressive/dynamic, not static and has the baseline in "float" mode. The 2008/2009 market melt was/is an overwhelming shift in the financial marketplace that is still impacting and discovering its future path.
In other words, jolts to the market come along that can take years to work their way through. There may or may not be an ultra long term static "mean regression chart line", but at least for these multi-year periods, it's dynamic.
Even assuming an ultimately constant mean, because of these jolts it seems one needs an extremely long time frame to compute that average - say 100 years or more, in order to include the jolt of the Great Depression, or maybe 150 years back to the panics of the late 1800s, or ... At some point you're essentially averaging the entire "modern" history of the stock market.
More info from the 1928-present NYU/Stern data set I've cited (this table was in the spreadsheet, they're not date ranges I selected):

Period     S&P 500   3 mo Treas   10 Yr Treas
1928-2016  11.42%     3.46%        5.18%
1967-2016  11.45%     4.88%        7.08%
2007-2016   8.64%     0.74%        5.03%

. The S&P 500 is up "only" about 15% YTD. If it ends 2017 up 20%, that would raise arithmetic mean of 2007-2017 just to 9.68%. If you're a believer in a constant long term mean, that suggests that recovery from the 2008 jolt still has years to go.

Hi @msf
Thank you for your presentation.
I started this reply to the thread relative to the bond portion of this discussion. I've obviously blipped more just below.
What I'll name, The Exquisite Investor; being without much meaningful flaw as to getting the timing right 75% of the time and being patient enough to wait until the next trading (buy/sell) shows its face via technical numbers in particular, but with an understanding of real world events that can/do/may factor into why the technical numbers arrive and depart creating a more possible profitable investment.
I suppose this process could place this as to one being a "value" investor; being careful enough to try to understand that some "value" within investment sectors is cheap for a good reason and may remain cheap for a long time; a perverted "mean".
As I have expressed before, IMO; one may continue to name the ongoing markets since the big melt as still feeling the effects of policy(s) and that "this time is still different" and thus the "mean regression chart line" is progressive/dynamic, not static and has the baseline in "float" mode. The 2008/2009 market melt was/is an overwhelming shift in the financial marketplace that is still impacting and discovering its future path.
I may be completely wrong about any or all of this....tis my view at this time. @Tony may respond as to the technical side.
The below chart compare for about 10 years for EDV and SDY may surprise a few folks for total returns over the time frame. I recall @bee using EDV for reference points against other sectors for cross over points, etc. I fully expect most folks would not consider a holding as EDV or similar versus a more likely holding of a total bond fund or a 10 year Treasury fund for a bond area investment. One is able to view the movement of EDV and cross overs points relative to my pick of SDY for reference, especially during the ongoing turmoil of the markets for several years after the melt. Europe, in particular; was still attempting to find a path forward for several years, which includes events as "Greece" being in the news headlines as well as the ongoing, questionable stability of many European banks during the "recovery" period.
Yes, the 10 year Treasury will remain a reference point and this is valid for on overview of risk on or off conditions, but remains a choice of various bond types, eh?
http://stockcharts.com/freecharts/perf.php?EDV,SDY&n=2467&O=011000
Okay, time for another coffee, yes?
Regards,
Catch

Hi Guys,
Change happens; it is a certainty.
"Richard Russell, the famous Dow Theorist, once noted that over a shorter time frame almost anything can happen in the financial markets, but over much longer, meaningful periods of time (referring to years), the surest rule in the stock market is the rule called "regression to the mean.""
This quote was extracted from this regression advocating article:
https://seekingalpha.com/article/2315705-regression-to-the-mean-and-why-investors-should-not-ignore-its-importance
I am in complete agreement with the main theme of this article. There is a compelling and irresistible market pull towards a regression-to-the-mean. In any single year, almost any extreme is possible; anything can and does happen even if probabilities are low. But as the timeframe expands, the marketplace adjusts to deliver more predictable average returns. Over time, sanity rules.
I have zero confidence that I can predict tomorrow's market returns, but I am very comfortable about staying in the market for the loooong run.
Best Wishes

Thanks for linking this article @Ted,
Well worth the read:

The second, specifically in the fintech world, is the blockchain. Many technologists tell me the block chain is the most important innovations in human history. They equate it in terms of importance to fire, the wheel and the internet.
The typical financial advisor has either never heard of the blockchain or is unable to describe it, meaning that advisors today are as clueless as their clients. And that’s not a healthy situation for the client. The blockchain is the underlying technology that was used to develop bitcoin, the world’s first digital currency.

Since XT's inception it has trailed QQQ:

FYI: Ric Edelman, founder of Edelman Financial Services, and one of the driving forces behind the creation of the $1.35 billion iShares Exponential Technologies ETF (XT), has had an interest in technology as well as its implications for advisors and investors. His most recent book, The Truth About Your Future, is all about how rapid technological advances will radically change how we live, invest and retire. ETF.com chatted with him about how fintech is helping bring to fruition the future he anticipates.
Regards,
Ted
http://www.etf.com/sections/features-and-news/fintech-will-change-advisory-game?nopaging=1
MFO's Link To amazon.Com: Ric Edelman: "The Truth About your Future"
https://www.amazon.com/Truth-About-Your-Future-Money/dp/1501163809/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1506935763&sr=8-1&keywords=the+truth+about+your+future
IShares Fact Sheet XT:
https://www.ishares.com/us/products/272532/XT?cid=ppc:ishares_us:google:tickers&gclid=Cj0KCQjwx8fOBRD7ARIsAPVq-NkxaNRvf4UP9fJvwQ8ya_n8PHh-IZj-j0uKaem2DNGg8tALlkAiKKoaAkfPEALw_wcB&gclsrc=aw.ds
M* Snapshot XT:
http://www.morningstar.com/etfs/XNAS/XT/quote.html

Here's the full Natixis 2017 global survey report:
http://durableportfolios.com/global/understanding-investors/2017-global-survey-of-individual-investors-retirement-report
and the full Natixis press release on the US slice of that survey:
https://ngam.natixis.com/us/resources/2017-global-individual-investor-survey-press-release
(note that the table at the bottom of that US press release is global data, not data limited to US participants)
Just looking at the figures in the excerpt Ted quoted, my reaction was: what are these people smoking?
The historical real return of the US large cap market over the last century has been 7%. Depending on your source, bonds (10 year Treasuries) have returned between 2% and 6% less than stocks.
[See the stock link above: risk premium of stocks over bonds of 6%, historical nominal bond return of 5% with inflation average of 2%-3%, or simply the difference in nominal returns of stocks and bonds, which has been 2% or greater over the past 90 years.]
So even if the markets produce average real returns going forward (not expected over the next decade), you'd need a very aggressive (nearly all stock) portfolio to get to the 5.9% real return that advisors are supposedly predicting. (The 5.9%/advisors and 8.9%/investors figures are not in the Natixis releases, so they must come from the full survey.)
The FA Mag article says that there's a disconnect (51% difference) between investors and advisors, based on these two figures. If there is this disconnect, what does that say about the job that advisors are doing in educating and guiding their clients?
But there is another possibility. Investors may not understand what real return means, and are simply reporting nominal return expectations. That 3% difference would fall within a reasonable range of inflation possibilities. The Natixis report seems to support this interpretation of the data, as it observes that only 1/6 of Millennials (17%) "have factored inflation into their retirement savings planning." (The next sentence of the release hypothesizes a 3% inflation rate.)
Finally, note that the survey may not be representative of American households - just ones with money. It surveyed only investors with over $100K in investable assets. (About 30% Gen X, 30% Gen Y, 30% Boomers, 10% Retirees.) Most households don't have nearly that much in net worth let alone investable assets, though that's a whole 'nuther story.

FYI: While some market analysts are anticipating real market returns of 1 percent or less over the next decade, investors in a recent survey by Boston-based Natixis are expecting more -- much more.
Respondents said that they would need returns 8.9 percent above inflation to meet their goals, 51 percent higher than the 5.9 percent real returns expectation of financial advisors surveyed by Natixis. When asked in 2016, respondents said that they would need 8.5 percent real annual returns.
Regards,
Ted
https://www.fa-mag.com/news/investors-need-8-9-percent-real-returns-from-their-portfolios-34967.html?print

A few topics:
--Strategies for withdrawing retirement funds.
--How to build the emergency cash cushion.
--How to find and evaluate a financial adviser.
So, none of these looks like a topic discussed on MFO?
Christine Benze has done an enormous amount of good for M* readers. I am unsure why her latest effort was imported to MFO discussion board. Only to scoff?

Not sure why this should surprise anyone, or even be newsworthy...
Homo sapiens generally engages in herd behavior WRT financial issues. -- Besides, 'doing something' to protect one's portfolio would have resulted in enormous opportunity cost over the past 1-, 3-, & 5-year period. So we few who did it/are doing it are seen as stupid bumpkins.
Compounding the natural herding behaviour is the dogma of 'buy and hold'. Hey, 'set it and forget it'. Everybody is worrying about trimming a couple hundredths of a decimal point off their ETF's expense ratio. I am always amazed how the most adamant 'buy and holders' are so tight-fisted about expenses, yet quite happy to pay extravagant prices for the underlying assets -- and urge others to do the same. Tulips anyone?
The business cycle has not been repealed. Bear markets have not been outlawed. There will come (another-) reckoning.
Until then, I'll just 'go fishin' (or the equivalent.--This evening, I just put in some orders for next week's T-bill auctions.)

This article reminds me of a few of the misplaced,
misunderstood aphorisms that Wall Street has appropriated
from popular culture… since they have so few original ideas.
“Cash is King”
We all know that when the famous Bible thumping music critic
Chester Hunkelbum made that comment, he was referring
to Johnny Cash. How could he ever know that Wall Street
would steal and make it their own?
“It will not be broke by prophet”
Okay, Hunkelbum had bad grammar. But he was referring to
Abraham the prophet when he tripped and almost broke the
10-commandment stone tablet that Moses had placed in his backpack
for safekeeping. Along came some financial adviser who bastardized this
into something about not going broke if you take a profit.
“Every ship at the bottom of the ocean has a chartroom”
It’s easy to see how Hunkelbum became depressed years later when
struggling to maintain his credibility. The computer age was, as he said,
“uncharted territory”. As readers began logging off his web site,
he lamented, “We’re bottoming. Another ship has left the chat room.”
Leave it to Wall Street to snatch this comment and twist it to their liking.
We shall miss Chester Hunkelbum

https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/1217286/000119312517296892/d463886d497.htm
497 1 d463886d497.htm JPMORGAN TRUST I
JPMorgan Diversified Real Return Fund
(All Share Classes)
(a series of JPMorgan Trust I)
Supplement dated September 28, 2017
To the Prospectuses, Summary Prospectuses and Statement
of Additional Information dated December 29, 2016, as supplemented
NOTICE OF LIQUIDATION OF THE JPMORGAN DIVERSIFIED REAL RETURN FUND. As previously communicated to shareholders, the Board of Trustees of the JPMorgan Diversified Real Return Fund (the “Fund”) has approved the liquidation and dissolution of the Fund on or about December 8, 2017 (the “Liquidation Date”). In preparation for the liquidation, the Fund may liquidate its investments in securities and other direct investments and may invest in other J.P. Morgan Funds and exchange-traded funds (ETFs) (collectively, “Underlying Funds”) to gain exposure to inflation-sensitive and other asset classes that have exposure to broad equity, fixed income and alternative markets. Effective September 28, 2017, J.P. Morgan Investment Management Inc. and/or its affiliates will waive additional fees and/or reimburse additional expenses related to the investment in Underlying Funds to the extent Total Annual Fund Operating Expenses including the Cayman Subsidiary and Underlying Fund fees (but excluding dividend and interest expenses related to short sales, interest, taxes, expenses related to litigation and potential litigation, and extraordinary expenses) exceed 1.00%, 1.50%, 0.75, 1.30% and 0.65% of Class A, Class C, Class I, Class R2 and Class R5 Shares, respectively. In addition, the Fund may depart from its stated investment objective and strategies and liquidate any or all of its assets including any or all of its investments in Underlying Funds as it increases its cash holdings in preparation for its liquidation.
Unless you have an individual retirement account (“IRA”) where UMB Bank n.a. currently serves as the custodian, on the Liquidation Date, the Fund shall distribute pro rata to its shareholders of record all of the assets of the Fund in complete cancellation and redemption of all of the outstanding shares of beneficial interest, except for cash, bank deposits or cash equivalents in an estimated amount necessary to (i) discharge any unpaid liabilities and obligations of the Fund on the Fund’s books on the Liquidation Date, including, but not limited to, income dividends and capital gains distributions, if any, payable through the Liquidation Date, and (ii) pay such contingent liabilities as the officers of the Fund deem appropriate subject to ratification by the Board. Capital gain distributions, if any, may be paid on or prior to the Liquidation Date. If you have a Fund direct IRA account, your shares will be exchanged for Morgan Shares of the JPMorgan U.S. Government Money Market Fund unless you provide alternative direction prior to the Liquidation Date. For all other IRA accounts, the proceeds will be invested based upon guidelines of the applicable Plan administrator.
Upon liquidation, shareholders may purchase any class of another J.P. Morgan Fund for which they are eligible with the proceeds of the liquidating distribution. Shareholders holding Class A Shares or Class I Shares will be permitted to use their proceeds from the liquidation to purchase Class A Shares of another J.P. Morgan Fund at net asset value within 90 days of the liquidating distribution, provided that they remain eligible to purchase Class A Shares. They may also purchase other share classes for which they are eligible. If shareholders of Class C Shares purchase Class C Shares of another J.P. Morgan Fund within 90 days of the liquidating distribution, no contingent deferred sales charge will be imposed on those new Class C Shares. At the time of the purchase you must inform your Financial Intermediary or the Funds that the proceeds are from the liquidated fund.
FOR EXISTING SHAREHOLDERS OF RECORD OF THE FUND AS OF AUGUST 24, 2017, ADDITIONAL PURCHASES OF FUND SHARES WILL BE ACCEPTED UP TO AND INCLUDING DECEMBER 1, 2017 AFTER WHICH NO NEW PURCHASES WILL BE ACCEPTED. FOR ALL OTHER INVESTORS, PURCHASES OF FUND SHARES WERE NO LONGER ACCEPTED AFTER AUGUST 24, 2017.
INVESTORS SHOULD RETAIN THIS SUPPLEMENT
WITH THE PROSPECTUS, SUMMARY PROSPECTUS AND
STATEMENT OF ADDITIONAL INFORMATION FOR FUTURE REFERENCE
SUP-DRR-LIQ-917

Saturna Capital Funds:
https://www.saturna.com/performance/distributions
Schneider Small Cap Value Fund:
https://www.schneidercap.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/11/2017-Distribution-SCMVX-Estimates.pdf
Seafarer Funds:
http://www.seafarerfunds.com/distributions/
Sequoia Fund:
http://www.sequoiafund.com/communications.html
Smead Value Fund:
https://smeadcap.com/index.php/download_file/984/180/
Sound Shore Fund:
http://www.soundshorefund.com/cap_gains.asp
SSGA Funds:
https://www.ssgafunds.com/resources/capgain/index.seam
Sterling Capital Funds:
https://www.sterlingcapitalfunds.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/12/SC-Funds-Est-Capital-Gains-2017.pdf
SunAmerica (AIG) Funds:
https://www-1012.aig.com/pdf/capital-gains-estimates-as-of-10-31-17-with-nav.aspx
Sun Global Life Investments:
http://www.sunlifeglobalinvestments.com/static/slgi/PDF/2017_Annual_Distribution_Estimates_Final_EN.pdf
TIAA-CREF Funds:
https://www.tiaa.org/public/pdf/2017_estimated_ye_distributions_retail.PDF (Retail)
https://www.tiaa.org/public/pdf/2017_estimated_ye_distributions_advisor.PDF (Advisor)
https://www.tiaa.org/public/pdf/2017_estimated_ye_distributions_institutional.PDF (institutional)
TCW Funds:
https://www.tcw.com/en/Funds/TCW_Funds/Equities#TCW_capGain
or
https://tcw.com/en/~/media/Downloads/TCW_Funds/Distribution_and_Tax_Information/TCW-FUND-Estimated_Distributions
TFS Capital Funds:
https://www.tfscapital.com/wp-content/uploads/2017-Distributions-Announcement-for-Website.pdf
Third Avenue Funds:
http://thirdave.com/2017-estimated-income-capital-gain-distributions/
Thompson IM Funds:
https://www.thompsonim.com/pdf/2017EstDistributions.pdf
Thrivent Funds:
https://www.thriventfunds.com/support/tax-resource-center/capital-gains.html
Touchstone Investments:
https://www.touchstoneinvestments.com/documents/pdf/TSF618.pdf
Transamerica Funds:
https://www.transamerica.com/images/2017 capital gain distribution estimates 09.30.17_tcm73-37718.pdf
Tweedy, Browne Funds:
http://www.tweedy.com/resources/library_docs/general/2017 Estimated Distributions 8-31-17.pdf
UBS Funds:
https://www.ubs.com/us/en/asset-management/individual-investors-and-financial-advisors/products/mutual_fund/_jcr_content/par/accordionbox/linklist/link_6.0084443176.file/bGluay9wYXRoPS9jb250ZW50L2RhbS9pbnRlcm5ldGhvc3RpbmcvdXNfbGlicmFyeS9lbi9tdXR1YWwvY2FwX2dhaW5zLnBkZg==/cap_gains.pdf
USAA Funds:
https://content.usaa.com/mcontent/static_assets/Media/MutualFundDist_PreNotification.pdf?cacheid=1568111223_p
VanEck Funds:
https://www.vaneck.com/vaneck-funds-2017-estimated-yearend-distributions.pdf
Vanguard Funds(updated 12/8):
https://investornews.vanguard/upcoming-capital-gains-information/
Virtus Funds:
https://www.virtus.com/assets/files/1ks/7065_capgainsestimate_2017.pdf
Voya Funds(it works for 2017 despite 2015 in link):
https://investments.voya.com/Investor/Products/Mutual-Funds/Tax-Center/General/2015-Estimated-Capital-Gain-Distributions.htm
Vulcan Value Partners:
http://www.vulcanvaluepartners.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/10/MF-Estimated-Cap-Gains-2017-1.pdf
Waddell & Reed Funds(& merged funds)
https://documentdownload.hartehanks.com/AssetDisplay?acc=WRSC&itemCode=WRCAPGAINS
Weitz Funds:
https://weitzinvestments.com/funds_and_performance/distribution_and_tax_information.fs
Westchester Capital Management Funds (Merger Fund):
http://www.mergerfund.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/05/Capital_Gains.pdf
Westcore Funds:
http://test.westcore.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/11/2017_10-31-Distribution-Estimates.pdf
Westwood Funds:
http://www.westwoodfunds.com/pdf/2017/8885/Fund Distribution Est. 10.18.17.pdf
William Blair Funds:
https://www.williamblairfunds.com/resources/docs/funds/other/Estimated Distributions 2017_I and N.pdf
Wilmington Funds:
http://wilmingtonlit.com/downloads/performance/capitalgains/2017_Estimated_Capital_Gains.pdf
Wilshire Funds:
http://advisor.wilshire.com/DownloadFile.aspx?fid=ZQevYgPcJAk=&name=Distribution-Summary
Wintergreen Fund:
http://www.wintergreenfund.com/reports/dividends/
WisdomTree:
https://www.wisdomtree.com/-/media/us-media-files/capital-gains-estimates-schedule/preliminary-estimated-capital-gains-distributions-2017.pdf?la=en
1919 Funds:
http://www.1919funds.com/pdfs/all/1919-Capital-Gains.pdf
361 Funds:
http://361capital.com/wp-content/uploads/361Capital-2017-Estimated-Distributions.pdf

FYI: (Sorry, I'm a little late with this news.)
D Ameritrade Holding Corporation (Nasdaq: AMTD) announced today that it has completed its acquisition of Scottrade Financial Services, Inc.
For TD Ameritrade, the transaction adds significant scale and distribution capabilities for its investing services and education. The combination of its award-winning trading technology and long-term investing solutions with Scottrade’s larger branch network is expected to enhance the investing experience for millions of investors.
The newly-combined company serves nearly 11 million client accounts holding $1.1 trillion in assets.1
Regards,
Ted
http://www.amtd.com/newsroom/press-releases/press-release-details/2017/TD-Ameritrade-Closes-Acquisition-of-Scottrade-Financial-Services-Inc/default.aspx
How The Chicago Cubs Owners Made Their Millions:
https://www.fool.com/investing/general/2015/10/18/how-chicago-cubs-owners-bought-americas-favorite-t.aspx

Yes they can, though there may be laws I'm unfamiliar with when the distributions are involuntary (e.g. if the company exercises its right to close a small account or if your mother is required to take distributions by the IRS).
Years ago I worked for a small company that used class B (contingent deferred sales charge) shares. (The 1% 12b-1 fees were used to pay for the cost of the plan - common in small plans.)
The "financial advisor" who set up the plan for the company "promised" that the deferred loads would be waived. But when the company was acquired and I left (taking my plan money with me), I was charged those fees. I'm not sure if I raised any objections with the acquiring company, but it would have been hopeless in any case.

FYI: Dividend strategies have drawn increasing interest from investors around the world as central banks have pursued both quantitative and qualitative easy monetary policies, keeping interest rates at what have been exceptionally low levels since 2008.
But this preference isn’t entirely new; it has long been known many investors have a preference for cash dividends. From the perspective of classical financial theory, this behavior is an anomaly.
It’s an anomaly because dividend policy should be irrelevant to stock returns, as Merton Miller and Franco Modigliani famously established in their 1961 paper “Dividend Policy, Growth, and the Valuation of Shares.”
Regards,
Ted
http://www.etf.com/sections/index-investor-corner/swedroe-vanguard-debunks-dividend-myth?nopaging=1

@MSF You're right that there is some conflation which occurred because of limited space. I meant subsidization in the indirect sense of the number of patients covered affecting hospitals' cost structures or as you comment "like saying that hospitals are subsidized because people receive tax subsidies for buying insurance." Providing for the uninsured has long been a financial burden on hospitals, which the ACA has eased. But in a story that has to cover a lot of ground and various topics in little space nuance can often be lost.

" Also promised—repealing the Affordable Care Act, which subsidizes muni-bond-financed health-care facilities via Medicaid reimbursements."
This seems to be conflating two different factors - changes in Medicaid coverage (which pays for hospital services just as "regular" insurance pays for services), and changes to hospital subsidies that are made via Medicaid.
The ACA reduced the number of uninsured. The number of individuals getting insurance from private insurers (not through the government or employer) increased by several million. The number of individuals covered by Medicaid increased even more significantly.
Because many more individuals were covered, hospitals had to absorb the costs for many fewer people. If you were to remove the Medicaid expansion and eliminate the individual mandate, the number of people covered would drop, and hospital costs would regress.
Such changes in coverage would have constituted the largest impact that the AHCA would have on hospitals. But this is just changing the number of people covered, not the subsidies to hospitals (except in an indirect sense, like saying that hospitals are subsidized because people receive tax subsidies for buying insurance).
The writers of the ACA recognized that because of better coverage, hospitals would be spending less providing for the uninsured. So they put a provision into the ACA to cut actual hospital subsidies. These subsidies are called disproportionate share hospital (DSH) funding. While these cuts have been repeatedly deferred, they are currently scheduled to kick in on Oct. 1.
Modern Healthcare, Billions in federal uncompensated-care funds to be cut starting in October
The AHCA (by undoing the ACA) would have restored these subsidies - the opposite of what the article seems to be saying.
On balance, the AHCA would indeed have cost the hospitals about $2B/year over the next decade, but that's more because people would have lost coverage (and thus cost hospitals more to take in as patients), than it is because of changes to subsidies (which would have been restored).
See Exhibit 3 in:
The Commonwealth Fund, The Financial Impact of the American Health Care Act’s Medicaid Provisions on Safety-Net Hospitals
Both Medicaid and Medicare have DSH programs.
Here's a short column on Medicaid's DSH. It talks about how the SC ruling that Medicaid expansion was optional hurt the hospitals and motivated the government to delay Medicaid's DSH cuts.

Medicare's use of DSH to subsidize care of the poor is a bit more convoluted (since it gradually evolved from a payment to care for higher-maintenance poor seniors to a more general payment to support hospitals serving the poor of all ages). AFAIK, these subsidies are not affected by any proposals floating around Congress now.
There are many moving parts here. A lot of effort went into ensuring that facilities were able to serve everyone regardless of economic status. It's really not fair for me to pick on a sentence or two that Lewis wrote in a space-limited column. I'm not doing the issue much justice here, either. If you care, and have the time, look through some of the links above.

"But in journalistic (and financial adviser) idiom, rightly or wrongly, an uncorrelated asset is one that does the opposite of or at least is reliably different from, the rest. In my experience."
Uncorrelated means unreliably different. What you're describing is negative correlation. My experiences with financial writings (I fastidiously avoid advisers) are different. Excerpts from Vanguard and Schwab papers:
Vanguard Research, Dynamic correlations: The implications for portfolio construction:

two assets that are “uncorrelated” could be expected to show no systematic, linear relationship between their returns over time. ...
Correlation is a statistical measurement used to convey the strength and direction of a linear relationship between two random variables. In finance, these variables can be anything from an individual security to an entire asset class. Increasingly positive (negative) correlation indicates an increasingly strong (inverse) relationship between the two variables, up to 1 (–1), which indicates a perfectly positive (inverse) relationship.

Schwab, Schwab Intelligent Portfolios™ Asset Allocation White Paper

Diversification offers substantial benefits. As noted above, the diversification benefits associated with combining assets into a portfolio are driven primarily by how closely the returns on those assets move together. When two assets move in perfectly positively correlated (correlation of +1), there are no benefits from combining them in a portfolio. When two equally risky assets are perfectly negatively correlated (correlation of -1), combining the two assets into a portfolio can eliminate all volatility. A correlation of zero means that the two assets are uncorrelated and don’t move together at all.

"Can you think of something zero-correlated in the actual investing world? "
I thought I addressed that above. Cash. Backing me up is another Schwab paper.
Schwab Intelligent Portfolios™ The Role of Cash Investments in Asset Allocation:
"Relatively few assets have low or negative correlations with each other. However, as a result of its low volatility, cash is an asset class that tends to have lower correlations relative to all other asset classes."