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source:The Federal Reserve has continued to unwind the buildup in its balance sheet. It accumulated a lot of Treasury debt and mortgage backed securities (MBS) during 4 separate rounds of quantitative easing (QE), and since early 2022 it has been letting those mature and roll off. That action is referred to as “quantitative tightening”, or QT.
QT is a bearish force on the stock market, because it takes liquidity out of the banking system. But QT has been getting mitigated by something else the Fed is doing. Starting in 2021, the Fed began accepting a whole lot of “reverse repurchase agreements” or RRPs. An RRP involves a bank borrowing Treasuries from the Fed, to make its balance sheet look better. That bank pledges some of its loan book as collateral for the borrowed Treasuries. The effect of this on the stock market is that RRPs lock up money in the banking system so that this money is not available to do things like help lift stock prices. You can read the NY Fed's description of the process at https://www.newyorkfed.org/markets/rrp_faq
It will be interesting to see how much FL/NC policy premiums drop as a result of this good news!The late season strike of Hurricane Helene and Hurricane Milton in Florida could have caused ILS prices to return again to HARD market pricing seen in the first quarter of 2023. But like Ian in 2022, the hurricane tracks turned at the last moment to make landfall away from the most property rich part of the coast (Tampa, Clearwater, and the Tampa Bay area),” the consultancy explained. “The two hurricanes caused significant, but manageable, losses for the reinsurance market and the ILS market. Prices are at neutral levels and absent any further natural catastrophes before year end, we expect them to stay neutral or soften further for January renewals.”
and,
“As of Oct 20 the implied ILS- estimate of loss caused by the two storms was $380 Mn. Allowing for modest losses earlier in the year – perhaps due to aggregate creep and loss development and rounding up for further loss development – say to $500 Mn. for the year – it is still is below expectations. Hence prices will stick in neutral, or soften, absent new Catastrophic events,” Lane Financial concludes.
It is not all that unusual for fund families, especially boutique firms, to sell funds only through third party distributors.
When selling or exchanging shares, you should be aware of the following fund policies:
For accounts held through a financial intermediary, each fund typically expects to pay sale proceeds to the financial intermediary for payment to redeeming shareholders within two business days following receipt of a shareholder redemption order; however, each fund may take up to seven days to pay sale proceeds."
Bizarre wording given that you can buy them only through intermediaries and not directly through the fund.
In any case, the above general settlement time language is similar as in many mutual funds' prospectus. Below is the link to the prospectus (strange that I pulled it in my Schwab account and I get a morningstar.com link.)
https://doc.morningstar.com/docdetail.aspx?clientid=schwab&key=84b36f1bf3830e07&cusip=808515605
https://doc.morningstar.com/home.aspxThe Clients We Serve
The Morningstar Document Library is ideal for brokerage firms or retirement plan service providers that want to outsource costly document collection and maintenance. In addition to this web interface, the Document Library can also be private-labeled or provided through APIs. Advisors and plan providers can grant investors direct access to the library via their own websites, ensuring investors receive immediate access to key documents. Fund companies and compliance officers find it a valuable resource for current and archived proprietary and competitor filings.
https://rightprospectus.com/Providing the right document solutions at the right time, every time
Donnelley Financial Solutions′s RightProspectus is the next generation in compliance communications for mutual fund, variable annuity, and retirement product providers, as well as broker/dealers and clearing firms. With RightProspectus, documents in our repository are automatically tracked and updated as changes are filed with the SEC, ensuring constant access to the most current and accurate prospectuses. RightProspectus represents a quantum leap forward featuring a new, state-of-the-art online platform.
It's a very interesting topic and can appear convoluted. Couldn't an argument be made that we (the public) transfer more of our money to the government than we did years ago?@bee I'm not sure I like the wording, "government transfers." I take it as a gift from the gov., which most of it isn't. VA Benny's all earned as is my SS monthly check.
Bottom line, we pay more today in public transfers to local, county, state, and federal governments so they can orchestrate these transfers out.
How does Medicaid financing work?
Medicaid financing is shared by states and the federal government with a guarantee to states for federal matching payments with no pre-set limit. The percentage of costs paid by the federal government varies for specific services and types of enrollees and depending on whether the costs are for medical care or program administration.
The federal share of spending for services used by people eligible through traditional Medicaid, which includes individuals who are eligible as children, low-income parents, because of disability, or because of age (65+), is determined by a formula set in statute. The formula is designed so that the federal government pays a larger share of program costs in states with lower average per capita income. The resulting “federal medical assistance percentage” or “FMAP” varies by state and ranged from 50 percent to 78 percent for FFY 2023 (Figure 5).
States can use provider taxes and IGTs (intergovernmental transfers) to help finance the state share of Medicaid. States have some flexibility to use funding from local governments or revenue collected from provider taxes and fees to help finance the state share of Medicaid within certain limits and rules. Provider taxes are an integral source of Medicaid financing, comprising approximately 17% of the nonfederal share of total Medicaid payments in SFY 2018 according to the Government Accountability Office (GAO). All states (except Alaska) have at least one provider tax in place and many states have more than three (Figure 8). The most common provider taxes are on nursing facilities (46 states) and hospitals (44 states). As of July 1, 2022, 32 states including DC also reported at least one provider tax that is above 5.5% of net patient revenues, which is close to the maximum federal safe harbor or allowable threshold of 6%. Federal action to lower that threshold or eliminate provider taxes, as has been proposed in the past, would therefore have financial implications for many states.
The most common Medicaid provider taxes in place in FY 2022 were taxes on nursing facilities (46 states), followed by taxes on hospitals (44 states), intermediate care facilities for individuals with intellectual disabilities (33 states), and MCOs7 (18 states).
https://kff.org/report-section/medicaid-budget-survey-for-state-fiscal-years-2022-and-2023-provider-rates-and-taxes/
Link to "Fee Only" List of Personal Financial Advisors:Morningstar’s retirement guru Christine Benz discusses the often overlooked non-financial aspects of retirement planning during this conversation about her new book, How to Retire: 20 Lessons for a Happy, Successful, and Wealthy Retirement.
On the health side of breaches, you can add Change Healthcare. I'd never heard of them, but I received a long notice in the mail a week ago (dated Sept 23). Like McCamish, they seem to be tight lipped about their industry customers.It's OLD news.
The insurance industry uses 3rd party services from Infosys/McCamish and it had a breach. But companies have been tight lipped about it and the news is coming out like cockroaches. Those that have admitted so far are T Rowe Price/TROW, NY Life, Principal Life Insurance Co., Prudential Insurance Co. of America, Oceanview Life and Annuity Co., TIAA, Fidelity, etc.
No, that's only what happened. Why it happened is, as others have said, that this company did a cost benefit analysis. It decided that it was cheaper not to put in dollars to train people on best practices (I agree with @rforno that this is the biggest hole) and tighter security and instead pay the petty fines (if any) assessed for this negligence.Notice of Data Breach
We are sorry to tell you about a privacy event. This letter is from Change Healthcare ("CHC"). We work with many doctors, health insurance plans, and other health companies to help provide health services or benefits. This event may have involved your data.
What happened?
On February 21, 2024, CHC found activity in our computer systems that happened without our permission. We quickly took steps to stop that activity. We [did x, y, and z after the horse had left the barn].
On March 7, 2024, we learned a cybercriminal was able to see and take copies of some data in our computer system. This happened between February 17, 2024 and February 20, 2024. ...
What information was involved?
We have told our business customers about this event. Starting on June 20, 2024 we began notifying our business customers ... We encourage you to remain vigilant ... The data that may have been seen and taken includes contact information (such as name, address, DOB, phone #, and email) plus one or more of the following:...
- Health insurance data (such as ... ID numbers ...)
- Health data (such as medical record numbers, doctors, diagnoses, medicines, test results, images, care, and treatment)
- Billing, insurance claims and payment data (such as ... account numbers, billing codes, payment cards, financial and banking ...)
- Other personal data (such as SSN, driver's license ...)
Why did this happen?
A cybercriminal accessed our computer system without our permission.
IBM SECU became IThink FinancialIdentity theft is a billion dollar business for thieves and a billion dollar loss for the rest of us. In fact, it is the most common type of consumer fraud complaint made by Americans. According to the FTC, cleaning up the mess after an identity theft has occurred costs the average consumer approximately $1,000.
To provide our Members with additional account safeguards, iTHINK Financial includes a comprehensive Identity Theft Protection Program and Credit Monitoring Service with our myChoice Checking account at no additional cost.*
This article might lend itself to help determine how these income producing assets impact net worth.For example, if your pension pays out $40,000 a year, you expect to live 30 years, and your discount rate is 4%, then your pension would be worth around $692,000 today. You can get this value by plugging all of these values into a financial calculator [Payment = $40,000, Future Value = $0, Interest/Year = 4%, Periods = 30, Periods/Year = 1] and then solving for the Present Value. In other words, if you had $692,000 today (Present Value) that was earning 4% per year, you would be able to withdraw $40,000 per year for 30 years before running out of money.
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