The money Google spends on their employees is mind boggling. My son's best friend works there.
2 or 3 free high end meals a day, multiple services, allowed to work anywhere in the world
A few years ago the average bonus was $80,000. Probably not this year.

@hank, Weekend Barron's articles start trickling in at Barron's Online about midweek. Most of them are available Friday when I start my Summaries. I guess based on categories and authors. The current Editor tends to rotate authors and also has multiple articles that may fit a category - in the old days, column authors sort of owned their columns, but not now (just imagine Alan Abelson - Editor himself - rotated in/out from Up and Down Wall Street).
It used to be that Barron's market impact was felt on Mondays, but now, it can be in the late week (Thursday-Friday). The articles on gold in this issue were available on Friday, but gold still tanked on Friday.
To your question, the ENTIRE weekend issue is available at Barron's Digital early-AM on SATURDAY - 4am Central is the earliest I have checked, but just months ago, it was after 6am CT only. I also rely on my home delivery that is between 5am-7am CT on Saturday; Barron's can expect a call from me about missed delivery and redelivery request around 7am+ CT Saturday.
My Summaries are out on Saturdays - Part 1 by early-AM, Part 2 by late-AM. About 2 years worth of Summaries can be found at this link (searchable) but I have decades worth of Summaries (also searchable) in my PC.
https://ybbpersonalfinance.proboards.com/board/12/market-insights

Thanks @msf / Your math has always been impeccable. And the idea of using tax deferred money (and paying taxes on such) to do a conversion is flawed as your math has shown before. OTOH, I wouldn’t discourage someone from doing so if they felt it met their needs. You acknowledge some other benefits.
My view on the matter is of course biased - and probably overly-simplistic. Interestingly, I’d just begun drawing SS at the time the markets tanked in ‘08, having subsided on pension alone for a few years prior. So the additional income stream was put to work converting a sizable chunk at distressed market valuations (early ‘09). Everyone should be as lucky.
ISTM there was a 1-time change in the law at the time allowing 3 years to cover the tax hit from conversions. But I might be mistaken. Research turned up only such an an extension instituted in 2010.

Whether conversions, having the up front tax hit, make sense … that’s a different matter and msf for one has effectively, I think, cast that into doubt. Still, conversions at lower market valuations seem a good idea to me.
Assuming no change in tax rates, you can come out ahead doing conversions if you can pay the taxes with money from a taxable account. If the tax money comes out of a tax-sheltered account, it's a wash.
At lower valuations, you come out even further ahead if paying taxes with taxable account money. Curiously, if you're paying taxes with tax sheltered money, it's a wash regardless of whether the market is up or down.
Briefly, that's because when the value of the investment you're converting is down, so is the value of the portion of the investment you're using to pay the taxes. Still, if you want to convert a given dollar amount, lower valuations let you convert a bigger percentage of your IRA at a single time.
Also, there are other benefits to Roth conversions beyond saving money. For example, heirs (who may be younger, working, and in higher tax brackets) won't have to deal with taxes on inherited IRAs. Especially now that they have to pull everything within 10 years. Also, when you pull from Roths instead of traditional IRAs you have a lower MAGI for things like IRMAA.

Down to 21.5% left in Traditional IRA (compared to 100% when I retired over 20 years ago). Most now in Roths. Some in TOD. When you pull necessary funds from a Roth w/o the immediate tax-hit it’s kind of reminiscent of a Yogi Berra expression: ”And they give ya real money.”
The plan has been to pull mainly from the Traditional IRA annually for normal needs, saving the Roth $$ for the occasional larger needs. Whether conversions, having the up front tax hit, make sense … that’s a different matter and @msf for one has effectively, I think, cast that into doubt. Still, conversions at lower market valuations seem a good idea to me.
Lots of websites will calculate your RMD - including, I believe, some from the govt. Doesn’t hurt to do some cross-checking among sites if the amount / time periods are critical for you.
Under recent market conditions have been tilting the Roth more in the direction of growth, while fixed-income holdings and a few small equity hedges are concentrated in the traditional account. Were the equity markets to bounce hard, would probably gradually increase income-oriented component of the Roths as a defensive measure.

@Graust To add to YBB's comment; this is from Lord Abbett Investment Company site:

529 plan to Roth IRA rollover – Effective in 2024, SECURE 2.0 authorizes 529 plan funds to be directly transferred to a Roth IRA tax and penalty free. Importantly, several conditions must be satisfied to be eligible: The Roth IRA receiving the funds needs to be in the name of the 529 plan beneficiary, the 529 plan must have been maintained for a minimum of 15 years, any contributions (plus earnings) to a 529 plan in the last five years are ineligible to be transferred, the annual transfer limit is the Roth IRA contribution for that year (i.e. $6,500 in 2023), and the lifetime rollover is limited to $35,000.

Perhaps to let the 'dust' settle on this legislation for the full language markup, if needed. No actions may be taken until 2024, so you have enough planning time. Further clarification will be able to be discovered at the IRS site.

The strategy had $400million+ in assets 10 years ago....now, $33million. It's been a tough time to focus on this part of the world. A tough 10 year run. Economics can't make sense to keep this running.

Probably stating the obvious here - but the waivers became necessary several years ago as short term rates sank to near 0 to keep money market fund yields from potentially going negative. I get the print version of Barron’s. Don’t recall seeing the article last weekend. Perhaps it will publish in the Feb. 6 issue?

Year 2000 inception. Down for the full period by -49.47%. For the previous 1-year, to 02 Feb, it's down -80.38%. Share price at inception was typical: $10.00. Share price tonight = $2.96. Rather dismal. I suppose it's been exactly the wrong geographical area to open a new dedicated fund. Think about Hungarian nonsense with Orban. Think about the putrid leadership in Belarus, Russia. Think about the invasion of Ukraine. Moldova might be a bright spot, but there's corruption there, so I've read. But at least the leadership supports Ukraine. The Russian-led insurgency in Transnistria is like a boil on the ass of Progress, not to mention the injustice of it all. (Integrity of national borders, and all that good stuff. But that means nothing to the Poot-doink.)
Montenegro: In 2015, the investigative journalists' network OCCRP named Montenegro's long-time President and Prime Minister Milo Đukanović "Person of the Year in Organized Crime." Dreadful.
The wrong fund at the wrong time. But 23 years ago, things looked different, surely.
For convenience, here's the ticker: TREMX.

@mark
Yes should be "less" Thanks. Don't get me started on VA! They do the best they can, given the restrictions imposed by politics.
@BenWP
Humira Story gets worse.
From Barrons
"ABBV ‘s anti-inflammatory drug Humira, one of the top-selling prescription drugs in history, is facing generic-style competition for the first time this week since its introduction 20 years ago.
Hopes that competition would bring immediate cost savings was tamped down on Tuesday, however, when Amgen (ticker: AMGN) announced a pricing scheme for its generic-style competitor that raises new questions about how effective so-called biosimilars will be reducing spending on high-price drugs.
The first, Amgen Amjevita, launches Tuesday. The company said early Tuesday it will sell Amjevita at two different list prices: One at 55% below Humira’s list price, and one at 5% below Humira’s list price. Humira’s list price is $6,922.62 for a four-week supply.
Both prices buy the same product. It’s up to the middlemen known as pharmacy-benefit managers, or PBMs, which are generally owned by big insurance companies, to decide whether to pay the higher or lower price. The high-price version appears to be intended to allow Amgen to pay higher rebates to the PBMs.
“This pricing strategy is likely designed to give PBMs and plans the flexibility to choose the version that suits their needs, either a low price/low rebate or high price/high rebate version depending on the plan’s individual strategy,” Cowen analyst Yaron Werber wrote in a note early Tuesday."
Seems like this really should be illegal.

They had some pretty decent stores in northern Michigan. Used to visit / shop in them occasionally. But, how does one compete with the likes of Amazon? (on small appliances especially.) And with inflation, it’s likely now that more low-income folks are turning to the Dollar stores.
Good article in the WSJ few days ago. Focused on the two gentlemen co-founders who are retired, 80+, and living in Florida. Apparently the franchise slipped from profit to loss very quickly - within 2 or 3 years. One wonders if “activist” investors may have been involved - just a guess.

I have filed K-1s on TurboTax for several years. It takes extra time and occasionally some fudging ( PTP income requires two separate K-1s for each company) but it can be done without hiring an accountant.
OF course the sums involved in my case are not huge ( under $5,000) so if I screwed up the IRS probably doesn't care.
The biggest problem is some of the companies do not issue K-1s until late, even after April 15th.
If you want to invest in energy MLPs a lot easier to use one of the ETFs or Mutual funds that do so, although it will charge the management fee

You can always put forth a proposal for the annual meeting if you own shares directly.
While that's what many people think, that's not quite the way it works.
Companies don't want Johnny-come-latelies buying a share just before the record date just to introduce a proposal at an annual meeting. Rather, they want you to have some skin in the game before they accept your proposals for a vote. Not much skin, but skin nevertheless.
The law allows a company to require shareholders submitting proposals to have a small but substantial pecuniary interest in the company. In 2020, the SEC "adopted amendments to Exchange Act Rule 14a-8, the shareholder-proposal rule."

[It] amend[ed] Rule 14a-8(b) by:

• replacing the current ownership threshold, which requires holding at least $2,000 or 1% of a company’s securities for at least one year, with three alternative thresholds that will require a shareholder to demonstrate continuous ownership of at least:
  • $2,000 of the company’s securities for at least three years;
    
  • $15,000 of the company’s securities for at least two years; or
    
  • $25,000 of the company’s securities for at least one year.

https://www.sec.gov/news/press-release/2020-220
For completeness (and to split hairs even more finely), you don't necessarily have to own shares directly (i.e. be shareholder of record) in order to submit shareholder proposals.
What I think you're alluding to are the limited rights that mutual fund owners have with respect to the underlying companies in the portfolio. There, fund owners don't even hold company shares indirectly. Often indirect ownership is sufficient. The most common example likely being street name ownership.
Again looking at Rule 14a-8:

There are two types of security holders in the U.S.: registered owners and beneficial owners [footnote omitted]. Registered owners have a direct relationship with the issuer because their ownership of shares is listed on the records maintained by the issuer or its transfer agent. ...
The vast majority of investors in shares issued by U.S. companies, however, are beneficial owners, which means that they hold their securities in book-entry form through a securities intermediary, such as a broker or a bank. Beneficial owners are sometimes referred to as “street name” holders. Rule 14a-8(b)(2)(i) provides that a beneficial owner can provide proof of ownership to support his or her eligibility to submit a proposal...

https://www.sec.gov/corpfin/staff-legal-bulletin-14f-shareholder-proposals

"Do you look at the posts by category? "
Absolutely. I keep two permanent tabs on my browser...
https://www.mutualfundobserver.com/discuss/discussions/discussionsplus
https://www.mutualfundobserver.com/discuss/categories/off-topic
... and select whichever I'm interested in. Years ago there was such dissension among MFO posters because of the extreme intrusion of political comments and agendas that the "Off-Topic" section was deliberately "sealed off" from the investment sections so that the posters who come to MFO strictly for financial information are not constantly looking at political controversy.
I believe that my social credentials are not exactly a secret here. Lifelong Democrat, West Coast center-left, totally repulsed by whatever remains of a once legitimate Republican party. And yes, at times I too cross the line in my posting. But I do respect the guidelines set out by David Snowball years ago, and believe that all of us have a responsibility to do that.
To continuously disrespect those guidelines, saying whatever we want, wherever we want, only emulates the behavior of the Trumpian Republicans and leads to the continued destruction of the social fabric.

@WABAC and @sma3: I appreciate your responses. A few years ago, while watching my CELG shares make a huge climb upward, I rationalized that I was offsetting my rapidly increasing out-of-pocket healthcare expenses by investing in the sector. Now I feel a certain amount of guilt that I, as opposed to a retiree on a very limited budget, have enough discretionary capital to be able to profit from the misfortune of others. I also realize that I do not screen my funds or stocks with anything like a social responsibility screen. While I own BIAWX, it's not because its "responsible," but because it's a good growth fund. I invest in healthcare because it's "defensive," yet I may not like the fact that profits are made because sick people will always need treatment. I like the fact that healthcare funds don't decline as much as the rest of the market on down days. A Hobson's choice, I suppose.

@LewisBraham
Thank you for your kind response and discussion.
America's tortured history of race indeed should be discussed in schools at all levels, including discussions about the motivations of slaveholders in the Revolution.
But I am trying to make the point that the approach to subjects like these needs to be done in a very careful, well researched manner that will encourage the people whose minds are perhaps still a little open to participate in the discussion.
By that I mean extreme care should be taken to avoid statements and opinions that either political extreme can pick up and run with, such as "one of the primary reasons ... was because they wanted to protect the institution of slavery".
But I don't think extreme care was taken in the lead 1619 essay. Professor Leslie Harris was asked to fact check the essay before they published it and warned Hannah-Jones and the NYT this statement was inaccurate
"On August 19 of last year I listened in stunned silence as Nikole Hannah-Jones, a reporter for the New York Times, repeated an idea that I had vigorously argued against with her fact-checker: that the patriots fought the American Revolution in large part to preserve slavery in North America."
(The quote comes from the article below which is also a good summary of the rapid increase in the last 30 years in American Historical scholarship on slavery, which Harris applauds and has been part of and claims that Gordon Wood has not)
https://www.politico.com/news/magazine/2020/03/06/1619-project-new-york-times-mistake-122248
The NYT eventually backed down, sorta, " We stand behind the basic point, which is that among the various motivations that drove the patriots toward independence was a concern that the British would seek or were already seeking to disrupt in various ways the entrenched system of American slavery". Not very convincing is it?
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/03/11/magazine/an-update-to-the-1619-project.html
I do not really know the NYT editors motivation in publishing the original statement, but ideology certainly seems to have payed a part, rather than a rigorous search for the truth.
The right wing has unfortunately used this to ban 1619 books, and now AP courses in African American history ( which does include sections that some parents would find inappropriate for high school), and now a few people and one right wing foundation are attempting to muzzle basic support for diverse viewpoints and LGBT people in any school n Michigan, because state law allows parents to opt their child out of "sex education".
https://popular.info/p/inside-the-audacious-new-scheme-to
You should look at it "Judd at popular information" on Substack, He does an immense amount of work tracking down dark money supporting these legislative movements, and tracks corporations spending on politics very carefully. Most corporations claim they support equal rights for women, LGBT, and election integrity but give lots of money to election deniers, and bigots. Their money has clearly been a major source of the divisive poisonous political atmosphere we find ourselves in.
It is unclear to me why US corporations believe that fostering these political confrontations will be positive in the long run or good for their business. I assume they are too scared not to cough up the cash, after seeing what happened to Disney in Florida.

K-1s normally come in late-March or early-April, so any early filing is out.
They need more forms. Brokerage 1099 reports are not reliable but one has to use some info from 1099 and other from K-1.
I dealt with K-1 for years, so it's a doable mess. But I am now K-1 free and I sleep better.

This will be my first year with a K-1. (ET, Energy Transfer.) So, my brokerage provides a 1099? But somehow, that is incomplete? I am aware, per the TRP website, that the required K-1 must come directly from the company I'm invested in..... But somehow, both forms must be included with the tax return?
What GENIUS is in charge of this crap?
I am considering another: it's an oil royalty trust with TWO (count 'em!) employees, and an official HQ address out of the quaint town of Keene, New Hampshire. But nowhere on their website do they mention a K-1. Nor do they refer to themselves as a Limited Partnership. It's squishy. The website explains that specific information for tax filing will be sent with a year-end report. But no official IRS form number. The info comes in a "letter."
NRT. http://www.neort.com/
.....Fun and games. But the profits MIGHT be worth the trouble? My tax guy is the one who will have to worry about it all, anyhow. And with probably zero tax due, and just a small refund, maybe it's just not a big deal in my situation.

K-1s normally come in late-March or early-April, so any early filing is out.
They need more forms. Brokerage 1099 reports are not reliable but one has to use some info from 1099 and other from K-1.
I dealt with K-1 for years, so it's a doable mess. But I am now K-1 free and I sleep better.

Even better-FXF issues a 1099-not a K1 tax form. Unfortunately, UUP , an etf I was interested in years ago, issues a K1 !

Why are people allergic to the K-1? Is it because they are typically issued late?

Even better-FXF issues a 1099-not a K1 tax form. Unfortunately, UUP , an etf I was interested in years ago, issues a K1 !