21 feb, 2025.
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/videos/2025-02-21/bloomberg-real-yield-02-21-2025-video
consumer sentiment down, inflation fears rising. Expectations for sticky inflation are highest in 30 years...Direction trend in the yield of the 10-Year is rather uncertain... Friday: 4.4546%.
brian rheling, wells: expecting higher rates. Inflation a bit higher by the end of 2025. Estimate 10-year at 4.75 by year-end.... jonathan duensing, amundi usa: assuming 2 percent corporate growth, 4.5 percent on the 10-year seems reasonable.... reduced immigration will reduce growth and consumption. Gotta see what happens legislatively also re: spending reductions. (My insertion: And what about all the recent Musk related firings?). Uncertainty lately flowing out of Washington. People want to see some reliable policy decisions and how they will affect us and trading partners.
rehling: Markets have digested the higher level of uncertainty pretty well. Even so, there will be a fair amount of volatility. Markets already becoming desensitized to the extreme rhetoric from the gummint recently.
Europe: Record quick start to the year, getting to 500B euros of issuance. Tops the record set just last year...USA I.G. issuance last week of $52B... Treasury issuance: 20-year: 4.83% and 30-year TIPS: 2.403%. (Why is anyone putting money there?)
Winnie Cisar on Junk: there is optimism in that market that is not justified. So, too many factors to the potential downside are being ignored. Ashley Allen generally agrees. Even so, yields do look attractive. True of both I.G. and Junk. ... What to avoid: Cisar: stay away from stuff that may take a hit from surprise policy changes, shifting global macro trends. Basic Materials, retail. ... Allen: investors are yield-hungry. Just be careful, cautious.

Buffett's Annual Letter https://www.berkshirehathaway.com/letters/2024ltr.pdf
From Annual Report (150 pages), https://www.berkshirehathaway.com/2024ar/2024ar.pdf
Cash & cash-equivalents $334.201 billion (28.96%)
Stock portfolio $271.588 billion (23.54%)
Insurance assets $315.379 billion (27.33%)
Railroad, utilities, energy assets $232.713 billion (20.17%)
TOTAL ASSETS $1,153.881 billion (100%)
Insurance float is $171 billion - that's the premium pool from insurance written & outstanding that will cover future claims over many years.
"Cash" is high, but the above data provide the overall picture of BRK assets.

Some members, including myself in the past, have sought to heighten awareness of important threads in “Off Topic” by posting a separate thread in “Other Investing” containing a link to the off topic thread. It’s well meaning and possibly unavoidable if the topic has both ”off topic” and ”other investing” implications. However, sometimes this leads to two duplicate threads running concurrently with some members posting to the OT thread and others posting to the investing thread.
The situation can get confusing and even led to some “hard feelings” being misdirected at one board member by another recently (thread). The more important facet of all this is that some readers are viewing only 50% of the ongoing discussion. (Readers in OT may not be viewing comments made in the investing section. Readers in Other Investing may not be reading the associated comments posted in OT.)
Since the intent of these second (ancillary) threads would seem to be to call attention to a thread in OT, is there some way posters could be blocked from posting comments under the ancillary thread and directed instead to the original thread in OT? Presumably, they would click on to the attached link, be directed to the OP and then post their comments in the OT section. Not to criticize anyone. Just seeking to minimize confusion and avoid the problems noted.

@msf's mention of the Plato/Socrates Allegory of the Cave in regard to reality versus illusion reminds me of reading Plato fifty years ago. Those of us who read that stuff will remember that what most of us call reality was regarded as illusion by Plato, and according to Plato, Socrates. Somewhere there is a true ideal that only has reflections in our world. Which is probably why we have the old quip about whether a table is a table.
I'm not sure how that ties into reporting NAV's except to say that the prisoners in the cave probably had a better grasp of reality than good old Plato, bless his heart.
I better stop now before I start quoting Nietzche or going on about Gnosticism. Time to get to the local fitness center.

If VTCLX floats your boat, there are a couple of ETFs tracking the R1K. VONE (Vanguard) and IWB (iShares). VTCLX also tracks the R1K though more loosely for better tax efficiency.
The ETFs have slightly higher tax cost ratios than VTCLX (0.41% and 0.40% respectively vs. 0.31%). Over the past 1 and 3 years they have slightly outperformed VTCLX pre-tax (with Vanguard's ETF being the best), though VTCLX has done slightly better over five years.
Here's Portfolio Visualizer's comparison of these funds over 10 years.
VTCLX has 65% in unrealized gains while the ETFs have lower exposure (likely due to their ETF structure): 17% for IWB and 35% for VONE.
Again, when it comes to tracking market cap weighted indexes, you can often find "regular" funds that are comparable to ones focused on tax efficiency. This tool may help finding comparable ETFs:
https://etfdb.com/tool/mutual-fund-to-etf/

We have not paid FIT/SIT since 2012 and won't take RMDs until Age 73, so no direct experience (yet) with your question. That said, it will be a very important question for us in a few years.
We will start our analysis at that time with a comparison of all other options versus ITOT, VOO and the like. We expect there will be plenty of better tax-efficient options than the VG (or other) tax-managed mutual fund options. But that's a job for us for another day a few years from now.
Here's a primer for your current analysis:
https://russellinvestments.com/us/blog/understanding-tax-managed-funds-and-strategies
https://www.fidelity.com/learning-center/investment-products/etf/etfs-tax-efficiency
https://www.morningstar.com/funds/25-top-picks-tax-efficient-etfs-mutual-funds
https://www.bogleheads.org/wiki/Tax-managed_fund_comparison

My parents have been in QLENX for the last 4 years or so and have been happy with the yield and appreciation. As Mark said, the dang fund just keeps marching.

msf: His point, as I take it, is that the numbers, though accurate are misunderstood. So things are worse than people get from the numbers reading them simplistically. True enough. But then he goes and does the same thing by simplistically presenting some reasons why the numbers don't say what people think they say.
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Actually, I understood him to say that the tools and metrics do measure what they are supposed to measure, but it's the wrong stuff. It offers a cloudy picture of what it is we want to know: unemployment, inflation. I did not take away a message that the monthly numbers are misunderstood; rather, the wrong tools are being employed.
In a single magazine (online or not) article, not necessarily aimed at the number-crunching wonks, I'd be willing to say that a very particular and in depth presentation would have been out of place. He made his case. He asserted that the tools he and his team created offer a more accurately focused picture of true life. Too early for me to disagree. If he would make available a follow-up which exposes his new statistical method to the light of day, then we could agree or disagree about that. For a million years, I have known that the current metrics are screwy: just simply not presenting a real-life snapshot that corresponds to Reality very well.
He's illuminating and expressing a thing that we all take for granted. Every month, people and the Markets react to the published numbers, but the numbers --- every time--- deliver a "head-fake." As I said above, I'll bet he and his team prefer to keep their method proprietary. We'll see. I'm with OJ: this business needs to be examined and acknowledged, rather than assumed, again and again.

Its funny what we consider "employment" and what we consider important "statistics".
I stopped my "full time career employment" at age 51. I spent the next 7 years caring for my elderly mom. I went from a well paying 8 hour job to a non-paying 24 hour job. Since this new job paid nothing and provided no resources it required many long nights of research to identify resources and funds for my mom's care. Over these eight years, I managed both my mom's diminishing health and her dwindling net worth.
Most of my other seven siblings were too busy with their employed lives to help much when it came to this non-paying family care position. As alone as I was, I am not the only one who has taken on this type of non-paying work.
From young Moms and Dads who stay at home to care for their children to middle aged adults taking care of their elderly parents, many working age Americans choose to work outside of the workforce, often for their entire working life.
My mom raised 8 Kids; never took a day off in her life, but also never had an "employment record". When my dad passed, at age 54, she received nothing more than a survivor's benefit. At age 88, adjusted for inflation, her survivor benefit was a meager $800/month.
For me, working until 65 would have made a huge difference in my retirement savings, but I am not sure I could have lived with that decision. I chose to care for my mom because she chose to care for the eight of us.
These articles focus on workplace employment statistics, yet ignore the very important non-paying and non-workplace work many of us chose to do for our loved ones and how these hard choices impact the workplace.

Kyrie Irving has been a Vegan since 2017 and playing pro Basketball at All Star level.
I knew some vegetarian families that for 1000s of years only ever had milk and yogurt for animal products.
I was a vegetarian for more than 40% of the years of my life. After that I ate everything available, including snakes. Now I am down to fish and egg whites. Though no eggs for the last one month because of shortage and I do not miss them. There are other vegetarians in this forum.
I can not imagine there is a standard diet that is a fit for every individual.

I've maintained exposure to international equities for many years.
MIEIX (CIT clone) is my core foreign fund which I've owned for years
while ARDBX is an auxiliary fund owned for under a year.
International equity funds have underperformed domestic equity funds for an unusually long period.
Perhaps reversion to the mean will occur between these two asset classes sometime in the near future?

my old roommate invests in 2 country based international funds. Israel and Poland. he's sworn to me for over 15 years I need to do so as well. Its basiclly matched a international index.
I personally use AVDE and AVEM from Avantis since 2021. That replaced DFIVX which I owned for 5-6 years previously in my 401k.

Lest my passing comment about eggs be misconstrued: I abandoned the standard American Diet (SAD) quite a number of years ago. I consume no animal products, processed foods, no chemical additives and try to limit sugar and oil consumption to strict minima. Eggs, therefore, do not have a place in my diet. Nor does bacon, the other hot-button grocery product mentioned frequently during the last presidential election campaign. It appears to be one of the worst foods one can consume. The most influential sources that pushed my wife and me towards this diet are The China Study by Campbell and Campbell, and two books by Michael Gregor: How Not to Die and How Not to Age. According to a workshop presentor I heard just recently, Dr. Gregor’s next book will consider how not to get cancer. In a nutshell, we follow a Whole Foods Plant Based (WFPB) diet. I try to respect others’ choices, fully aware as I am that challlenging others’ perceptions of what constitutes a healthy diet may instigate a food fight. The science behind the Campbells’ and Gregor’s work appears sound to me; however my academic training and professional work are not in science. My cholesterol level has dropped to 103 from about 135 20 years ago, but there are practitioners in the dietary field who say that 100 and below is the right target.

I can accept buying as an idea but would keep somewhat tight stops so one does not get called on their bluff or bluff on bluffs. Part of my friction is that I can wager on risks but I can not wager on uncertainties. We are in a perfect environment for nimble traders, which is a very small percentage of market place participants.
(As to timing sales, that is a difficult art even for the pros like Stan Druckenmiller. Over the years, I have sought and not received good sell strategies. There was an academic paper on this and it concluded that monkeys fared better than professional investors in timing when to sell. (This is not an issue for nimble traders.))

Each to their own, of course .... as for me, I don't do stops unless it's for a specific situation/concern. Too easy to get whipsawed out of positions due to volatility in today's 'modern' markets ... I learned that a long time ago when actively trading futures.

I too no longer do resting stops. I totally agree about whipsaws from stops. Too many times it just felt like someone had access to my stop limit information and grabbed my resting stop order. But I have mental stops and do not let my greed and fear override it and I exit whenever I see the price is below my mental stop. Obviously, when I am adding to my long term holdings, stops or violating stops is not a big concern.

In the Off-Topic section @Mark has posted "Voters Were Right About the Economy. The Data Was Wrong", a non-political economic report which I believe to be absolutely accurate, and of major significance. It describes how the government information on the major facets of American economic life fails miserably to accurately reflect reality.
I strongly recommend that anyone interested check out Mark's posting.

I can accept buying as an idea but would keep somewhat tight stops so one does not get called on their bluff or bluff on bluffs. Part of my friction is that I can wager on risks but I can not wager on uncertainties. We are in a perfect environment for nimble traders, which is a very small percentage of market place participants.
(As to timing sales, that is a difficult art even for the pros like Stan Druckenmiller. Over the years, I have sought and not received good sell strategies. There was an academic paper on this and it concluded that monkeys fared better than professional investors in timing when to sell. (This is not an issue for nimble traders.))

Each to their own, of course .... as for me, I don't do stops unless it's for a specific situation/concern. Too easy to get whipsawed out of positions due to volatility in today's 'modern' markets ... I learned that a long time ago when actively trading futures.

@Junkster,
Appreciate you visiting and posting in this forum.
@rforno,
I have given much thought to your question. US default (even a tactical default) does not rank in the top 10 problems that would precede why our investments (other than US treasuries) might take a hit. I think Junkster gave a good lead. He always does.

Oh I would not be selling stocks in such a scenario -- if they swoon in sympathy, I would be buying.

I can accept buying as an idea but would keep somewhat tight stops so one does not get called on their bluff or bluff on bluffs. Part of my friction is that I can wager on risks but I can not wager on uncertainties. We are in a perfect environment for nimble traders, which is a very small percentage of market place participants.
(As to timing sales, that is a difficult art even for the pros like Stan Druckenmiller. Over the years, I have sought and not received good sell strategies. There was an academic paper on this and it concluded that monkeys fared better than professional investors in timing when to sell. (This is not an issue for nimble traders.))

”We've heard over and over, do not let the political environment sway your investing decisions.”
@Crash - That’s probably great advice for 80-90% of investors - mostly younger and employed - who research shows are usually better off letting it ride. I’d still give that advice to a 25 year old just starting out with maybe 40 years to retirement.
But take a look at the “Buy Sell” thread. ”Set-it- and-forget-it” ? Huh? ISTM most who frequent financial forums like this one do alter their investments quite a bit year-to-year. So, of course, political climate affects their decision making and is worth discussing.

Right. Dare I assert that most of us here are NOT spring chickens anymore? I'm having repeat surgery coming up in March.... As Leonard Cohen said: "I ache in the places where I used to play." (Tower Of Song.)
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Skip right to 0:20. (LOUD start!)
Crescent Street mural, Montreal:

”We've heard over and over, do not let the political environment sway your investing decisions.”
@Crash - That’s probably great advice for 80-90% of investors - mostly younger and employed - who research shows are usually better off letting it ride. I’d still give that advice to a 25 year old just starting out with maybe 40 years to retirement.
But take a look at the “Buy Sell” thread. ”Set-it- and-forget-it” ? Huh? Not to pick on the thread … but ISTM most who frequent financial forums like this one do alter their investments quite a bit year-to-year. So, of course, political climate affects their decision making along with a myriad of other considerations / assessments and may be worth discussion.

I agree with @msf (different thread) that ”Many people find government pronouncements and actions relevant to investing.”
- There’s a thread along that line offered up by @Soupkitchen January 28 in the OT section - mostly buried now by the avalanche of anti-Trump posts & comments. Worth a second look. Where America is Heading and your Investments.
Like everyone else I’m looking for clues. From the two financial blogs / newsletters I subscribe to, here’s what I’ve gleaned …
- On February 3 Bill Fleckenstein wrote: ”Lastly, on the subject of Trump tape bombs, while we should expect them to be a feature of his term, they may become less frequent, and we may get a better handle on what they individually mean. Even so, I think they mandate carrying a little bit more cash or being slightly less aggressive than one might ordinarily be because they can literally come out of nowhere and gaming whether Trump is serious or not will be hard to do in real time.” https://www.fleckensteincapital.com/dailyrap.aspx?rapdate=02-03-2025
- James Stack (InvestTech) actually raised his recommended “Net-Long” market exposure a few percentage points from around 55% to 58% about the time Trump took office (but didn’t connect the two). Stack has been extremely cautious for a couple years. The remainder, he advises, should be in T-Bills or money market funds. https://www.investech.com/
- And Barron’s this week features several Trump related articles - not all complementary. One, titled ”11 Tariff-Proof Dividend Stocks”, mentions consumer staples, financials and energy as among the better plays on that theme. Another article, ”The Markets Trust Trump. How to Trade It”, focuses on options plays. A third article notes that there has been a sharp uptick in very wealthy investors moving wealth abroad, some out of fear of a weaker dollar, but in some cases from fear of retribution by the party they opposed.
It should go without saying that other investment ideas / suggestions are appreciated. Nobody really knows at this point. But risk is inherent in most investing. If it were safe or easy the rewards would be small.