https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/1103243/000141304224000172/castlefocussupp.htm
497 1 castlefocussupp.htm
Castle Focus Fund
A series of PFS Funds
Supplement dated March 11, 2024
to the Prospectus and Statement of Additional Information
each dated November 1, 2023
The Board of Trustees (the “Board”) of the PFS Funds (the “Trust”) has approved a Plan of Liquidation (the “Plan”) relating to the Castle Focus Fund (the “Fund”), effective March 7, 2024. Castle Investment Management, LLC, the Fund’s investment adviser (the “Adviser”), has recommended to the Board to approve the Plan based on its representations of its inability to market the Fund 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 March 22, 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 1-877-743-7820 or the Adviser at 703-260-1921.
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 November 1, 2023, provide relevant information for all shareholders and should be retained for future reference. Both the Prospectus and the Statement of Additional Information dated November 1, 2023 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 1-877-743-7820.

Here's a companion reading from JP Morgan:

At this interesting juncture, we are pleased to launch the 2024 edition of J.P. Morgan Asset Management’s Long-Term Capital Market Assumptions (LTCMAs). In our 28th year of producing capital market estimates, we incorporate more than 200 asset and strategy classes; our return assumptions are available in 17 base currencies.
Over the years, many investors and advisors have come to depend on our assumptions to inform their strategic asset allocation, build more resilient portfolios and establish reasonable expectations for risks and returns over a 10- to 15-year time frame. Additionally, with each passing year, we aim to readjust our long-run approximations, incorporating new information presented by markets, policymakers and economic data.
In this edition of our LTCMAs, our economic and asset class forecasts generally hold steady.
While the 60/40 stock-bond portfolio remains at the core, it requires extension, expansion and enhancement. The insights presented here aim to help clients identify the right adaptations for their risk and return objectives as they build smarter portfolios for a world in transition.

Assumptions on Bond Returns:
Fixed Income Return Projections
Outlook for Real Estate:

Despite some well-flagged issues in some segments of U.S. commercial real estate and persistent weakness in China, we believe that the outlook for core real estate is strong. In the wider real assets complex, the return outlook remains resilient, with core transport forecasts rising 20bps to 7.7% and core infrastructure up 50bps to 6.8%. In addition to attractive returns, real assets offer a diversifying potential that is especially welcome, given the greater volatility in inflation that we anticipate over our forecast horizon.

On Cash LT:

While high cash rates appear compelling, investors should remember that sitting in Treasury bills might mean collecting 5% for limited risk today, but it misses
out on compounding of returns over the longer run. In short, extending out of cash is imperative. We estimate that a dollar invested in cash will be worth, in real terms,
USD 1.04 a decade from now, whereas in a simple public market 60/40 it would grow to USD 1.54, and in a 60/40 with 25% alts it would be worth over USD 1.60.
So for investors that have already extended out of cash, the capacity to extend further within their asset opportunity set – factor allocation, international diversification, currency overlays, etc. – is not constrained by higher cash rates. Compared with last year, equity valuations are higher and translate to a modest cyclical headwind for stocks. By contrast, elevated starting
yields are a cyclical tailwind for bonds.

Capital & Active Management:

when capital is provided by asset buyers with a financial stability objective, they buy indiscriminately, but when capital is provided by investors with a return objective, they buy selectively. More selective investment means more differentiated asset performance and greater potential for active styles of investing.

Industrials:

The tax incentives in the U.S. Inflation Reduction Act (IRA) support greener commercial buildings and more efficient air conditioning units, which will benefit U.S. electrical and air conditioning companies. Electricity providers will also benefit from reshoring supply chain policies, as electric grids need to be strengthened. More broadly, reshoring supply chains will stimulate the use of U.S.-made inputs across the U.S. industrial sector, potentially benefiting U.S. manufacturers relative to their competitors in Europe and China. In addition, reshoring should fuel global spending on factory automation to offset higher domestic production costs, a boon to global suppliers of factory-automation software. Finally, rising geopolitical tension is increasing global spending on combat readiness, a clear benefit to defense companies.

Utilities:

The U.S. Inflation Reduction Act (IRA) will benefits renewable...most of the largest renewables developers in the U.S. are European.

Semi-Conductors:

Over the near term, expanding chip manufacturing should benefit the tech companies that provide the required equipment, software and design that support chip production. However, chip tech equipment companies may face competition in the longer term as Chinese companies are incentivized to develop their own equipment.

2024 Long-Term Capital Market Assumptions
Asset Allocation Chart:
Robust portfolio optimization

Yes, I see that Schwab and TRP have some sort of affiliation. Dunno how old the arrangement is.

The T. Rowe deal went into effect "on or about Feb. 1" [2022]. ... [The annual fee paid by TRP, anticipated to be around $10M] far surpasses the fees that other firms pay to be part of Schwab's OneSource. ... A T. Rowe Price spokeswoman says ... "Our I Class is now available at no-transaction-fee for RIAs who custody with Schwab. This share class is not currently available commission-free at any other custodian."

RIABiz, April 22, 2022
More generally, Schwab has created a second, cheaper platform (12-19 basis point fee vs. 40 basis points for OneSource) called INTF that 18 families including TRP participate in.
https://advisorservices.schwab.com/institutional-no-transaction-fee
The actual fee that TRP paid in 2022 (partial year) to Schwab was $5.9M. This was in addition to the usual platform fees paid to Schwab for shelf space. What TRP gets from Schwab is promotion of "actively managed T. Rowe Price mutual funds and ETFs to Schwab's clients and the clients of Registered Investment Advisors that custody assets at Schwab, and ... additional mutual fund and ETF marketing support". Schwab acknowledges the arrangement creates a conflict of interest (it benefits from pushing TRP funds).
https://www.schwab.com/legal/financial-and-other-relationships#panel--text-44781

The fees and restrictions are different for each platform, but are expensive.

Unless a fund family is so popular that a brokerage finds value in offering the funds without charging a platform fee. Vanguard, D&C, Fidelity.

Caution: You may be limited to doing such a within-60-days rollover only once every 365 days. It depends on what form of IRA is moving to what form of IRA.
See pub 590a, p. 22. (Pub 590a for tax year 2022.)
A direct fund-to-fund transfer of proceeds from sale of shares is better.

The rule is actually pretty simple now. With the exception of Roth conversions, the one rollover a year limit is for all IRAs combined, regardless of form. Roth conversions are unlimited.

You can make only one rollover from an IRA to another (or the same) IRA in any 1-year period regardless of the number of IRAs you own. The limit will apply by aggregating all of an individual's IRAs, including SEP and SIMPLE IRAs as well as traditional and Roth IRAs, effectively treating them as one IRA for purposes of the limit. However, trustee-to-trustee transfers between IRAs aren’t limited and rollovers from traditional IRAs to Roth IRAs (conversions) aren’t limited

Pub 590a, p. 24

@bee I have ceased to be impressed.
"A trustee-to-trustee transfer is a transfer of assets from one retirement plan or account to another, facilitated by the two financial institutions involved in the transfer. It is the simplest way to transfer an IRA from one institution to another and does not trigger taxes. The transfer can be initiated by opening an IRA account at the new institution and contacting the original and new IRA providers to initiate the transfer."
Is this not the very thing that CAN'T be done, because going to cash is necessary with the Bruce shares?

Quite some time ago one of our MFO stalwarts suggested that "Technology and Unemployment", a paper by Robert M. Solow, might be insightful. I downloaded the paper in pdf format, but the text was so cramped and the format so uninviting that I left it for a rainy day.
Well, it's been raining all weekend here in Northern CA, so I finally reworked the paper into a format that was, for me at least, readable. And in fact the paper proved to be highly readable, and interesting.
In that paper Mr. Solow made an observation that might easily apply to this thread:
"I conclude only that people ought to stiffle the tendency, in matters that they do not understand, to project the last six months into an irreversible trend."
He wasn't discussing the financial markets, but his observation might be valid here as well.

March 2 Episode

In a “Tearing Down the Pink Wall” event, three top women in finance, former super star strategist, now business school professor Abby Joseph Cohen, top ranked equity strategist Savita Subramanian and leading business professor Mila Getmansy Sherman share their journeys to making it to the top in finance.

Podcast
https://wealthtrack.com/abby-joseph-cohen-savita-subramanian-mila-getmansky-sherman-share-powerful-financial-career-advice/

https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/889284/000139834424004960/fp0087395-1_497.htm
STERLING CAPITAL FUNDS
SUPPLEMENT DATED FEBRUARY 29, 2024
TO THE
CLASS A AND CLASS C SHARES PROSPECTUS AND THE
INSTITUTIONAL AND CLASS R6 SHARES PROSPECTUS,
EACH DATED FEBRUARY 1, 2024
This Supplement provides new and additional information beyond that contained in the Class A and Class C Shares Prospectus (the “Retail Prospectus”) and the Institutional and Class R6 Shares Prospectus (the “Institutional Prospectus”), each dated February 1, 2024:
On February 2, 2024, Guardian Capital Group Limited (“Guardian”) announced that it had entered into a unit purchase agreement under which Guardian’s wholly owned subsidiary, Guardian Capital LLC, will acquire 100% of the ownership interests of Sterling Capital Management LLC (“Sterling Capital”) from Truist Financial Corporation (“Truist”) (the “Acquisition”). The closing of the Acquisition (the “Closing”) is subject to certain conditions and is expected to take place in the second quarter of 2024.
Guardian has indicated that, following the Closing, it plans to operate Sterling Capital as a standalone entity, led by the current team of management and senior professionals, providing continuity, stability and continued excellence for Sterling clients.
The Acquisition will result in a change of control of Sterling Capital effective as of the Closing. Pursuant to the terms of the current investment advisory agreement between Sterling Capital and Sterling Capital Funds, on behalf of each of its series (the “Funds”), the Acquisition may be deemed an assignment of the investment advisory agreement and result in its automatic termination. In anticipation of the termination of the existing investment advisory agreement, it is expected that the Board will consider a new investment advisory agreement containing substantially similar terms as the current investment advisory agreement with Sterling, including identical advisory fees.
At a special meeting of shareholders of the Funds expected to be held prior to the Closing, shareholders will be asked to consider and approve the new investment advisory agreement. Shareholders of record of each Fund as of the record date will be entitled to vote at the meeting and should expect to receive a proxy statement providing more information about the Acquisition and the new investment advisory agreement.
SHAREHOLDERS SHOULD RETAIN THIS SUPPLEMENT
WITH THE PROSPECTUS FOR FUTURE REFERENCE.

OK. Now, where was I ...
Latest new features include:
1) screen for specific shareclass, like Inst (adviser request),
2) include etf and best-fit benchmarks with other criteria,
3) screen for better than etf or best-fit benchmark return,
4) set display period to any calendar year back to 2008,
5) screen for apr vs best-fit or etf benchmark values and ratings,
6) screen for up-market deviation values and ratings, in addition to bear market,
7) screen for family metrics at any display period,
8) family metrics are now broken into their own group, separate from mfo designations,
9) reamer ratio and rating now in return metrics, separate from mfo designations,
10) set display period to life of best-fit or etf benchmarks, fund manager and bond maturity tenure (devesh requests), or david's take (since profile published dates),
11) screen for multi-period apr, apr vs best-fit and etf benchmark ratings, for up dot-com bubble (dbc), great financial crisis (gfc) and covid (cv-19) bull and bear markets,
12) screen for batting average vs best-fit benchmark, in addition to batting average vs category average.
c

@Crash - You see, here on MFO, the community opinion on many aspects of financial houses. Have you noticed a whole lot of complaints about the Schwab site? If not, perhaps your opinion may be suspect.
When you log in, go directly to your account summary. Everything you need to know about your current accounts is right there.
If you are looking for information on potential purchases, it is going to take a bit of experience to know where to look, because there is an overwhelming amount of information available.
If you need help in navigation, just ask here on MFO- I'm pretty sure that lots of folks here can answer any questions that you might have.

@Edmond

At least one answer to that question is many of the chemical companies. Depending on their output, natural gas represents THE major input cost to create many of the chemicals which these companies produce/sell. Lower input costs mean fatter profit margins. The chemical industry is very cyclical/volatile. Probably the 'safe choice' here would be Dow Chemical which presently has divd yield just below5%. Value Line assesses Dow's financial strength as "A:".
I have no opinion, nor any direct holding in any chemical company at the present time.

FSCHX might be a consideration, though Dow is not part of its top 10 holdings.

No, Berkshire has no control over PG&E rates, and I surely wasn't implying that they did. I'm simply pointing out that Berkshire's complaints about the "regulatory climate" as being responsible for the financial disaster that is now PG&E are incomplete and misleading.
I would hope that Berkshire has no investment in PG&E, nor should they at this point. But certainly not for the reasons that they have chosen to proclaim. PG&E is in this mess not because of the "regulatory climate", but because of deregulation, and the desire to abandon a regulatory system that worked just fine in favor of a "fast buck" in supposed deregulated profits. At least Berkshire could have been honest about that.

With respect to PG&E, the facts are a bit more complex than the shotgun evaluation from Berkshire. For many years PG&E grew safely and profitably, with a reasonable return mandated by the regulatory environment. As the Berkshire report itself observes, this system worked perfectly well. Because of it's financial stability PG&E was regarded as a "widows and orphans" stock- plodding but safe and dependable- predictable dividends right on schedule.
Then came, from the "conservative" political forces, demands to "free" the utilities from the "artificial regulatory burdens" and allow them to "compete" in a free-for-all environment that would "unlock" their potential for greatly increased profits. The Berkshire report very conveniently "forgets" how PG&E and other utilities were raped by entities like Enron in this new era of "regulatory freedom".
PG&E management, it turned out, were sheep who after years of cozy and protective regulation, were completely unsuited to life in the wild, and were duly herded into the corral and slaughtered. Bankruptcy followed in 2001, with of course, "new management" following.
The new management cut back severely on any equipment purchases or upgrades, and their maintenance forces were left to wither. Their once new and shiny service vehicle fleet became more of a traveling junkyard of faded-paint and obviously over-used equipment. Maintenance support personnel were cut back to the point where even the office support staffs had no resources to document what little construction or repair work was being done.
This resulted in the first of a long line of subsequent safety-failure episodes: in 2010 a massive explosion and eight-alarm fire in a major natural gas line just to the south of San Francisco killed eight and destroyed or severely damaged some forty homes. The US Geological Survey registered the explosion and resulting shock wave as a magnitude 1.1 earthquake.*
PG&E's service resources were so depleted that it took them over an hour just to determine what had happened, and to respond. The fire was only fifty percent contained after four hours, and continued to burn for another 12 hours.* It later was found that that section of gas pipe was fabricated of scrap piping material, incorrectly welded during installation, and incorrectly documented in PG&E records.
This disaster was followed by a long series of major fires caused by faulty or aged PG&E electrical equipment, leading eventually to a second bankruptcy in 2020. We PG&E customers now have the dubious honor of having the highest electrical rates in the entire United States, as PG&E attempts to rebuild what they neglected for so many years.
And Berkshire now has the temerity to complain about "profits". Right.
* per Wickipedia

This link is directed to Nvidia from last August. I can't find a recent video from Bloomberg providing similar current information regarding cost and sell pricing. Yowee !!!
Let this snippet sink in:

Nvidia is raking in nearly 1,000% (about 823%) in profit percentage for each H100 GPU accelerator it sells, according to estimates made in a recent social media post from Barron's senior writer Tae Kim. In dollar terms, that means that Nvidia's street-price of around $25,000 to $30,000 for each of these High Performance Computing (HPC) accelerators (for the least-expensive PCIe version) more than covers the estimated $3,320 cost per chip and peripheral (in-board) components. As surfers will tell you, there's nothing quite like riding a wave with zero other boards on sight.
Kim cites the $3,320 estimated cost for each H100 chip as coming from financial consulting firm Raymond James. It's unclear how deep that cost analysis goes, however: if it's a matter of pure manufacturing cost (averaging the price-per-wafer and other components while taking yields into account), then there's still a significant expense margin for Nvidia to cover with each of its sales.

Ted Oakley of Oxbow was recently interviewed, and when asked to address the energy sector, he cited EPD and Williams among his choices. I gathered these were not recent purchases of his, but long-held positions).
there are several gas-heavy producers. I guess it depends on what exactly you wish to bet on: do you want to be that NG will increase in price -- which would tend to favor most gassy producers, to the extent they do not engage in significant hedging activities. I've tended to avoid gas-heavy producers. Instead, I tend to favor mixed- or oil-heavy producers. I've always viewed EOG as a best-in-class producer, though at the moment, my only energy exposure is XOM and CVX. If you are agnostic on individual companies just consider XOP or XLE.
OTOH, if you want to bet that NG stays low, ask yourself: "who benefits from low NG prices?". At least one answer to that question is many of the chemical companies. Depending on their output, natural gas represents THE major input cost to create many of the chemicals which these companies produce/sell. Lower input costs mean fatter profit margins. The chemical industry is very cyclical/volatile. Probably the 'safe choice' here would be Dow Chemical which presently has divd yield just below5%. Value Line assesses Dow's financial strength as "A:".
I have no opinion, nor any direct holding in any chemical company at the present time.

This ad-hoc feature returns this week. LINK BarronsLINK
FUNDS. Use active funds to exploit the fire sale in HEALTHCARE stocks. MANY biotech stocks were selling below their cash on the balance sheets in 10/2023 and there has been a good rebound since with XBI +40% (still well below 2/2021 peak). Mentioned are BHCFX (37% SC/MC), JAGLX, PHSTX (value), PRHSX (all-caps with some risky bets), VGHCX (giant/biggest, so LC orientation). (By @LewisBraham at MFO)
ECONOMY. EVERYONE knows that BOGLE/ Vanguard started the first SP500 mutual fund. But who started the first US total market index? That was Wilshire 5000 (W5000) in 1974 by Dennis TITO/ Wilshire Associates (names after a CA blvd) and now several firms/indexers offer total stock market indexes. While a catchy “5000” has always been in the name, W5000 had 7,378 stocks in 1998, and only 3,392 in 01/2024. The number of US stocks has shrunk from M&A, LBOs, bankruptcies, and the new listings haven’t been enough. W5000 has gone through several hands and prefixes – FT-, DJ-, back to None-, and now again FT- (so, FT W5000). Vanguard was probably the 1st to offer a total stock market FUND in 1992 under a license from Wilshire Associates, but Vanguard has changed the underlying index several times – to MSCI, and now CRSP. Wilshire Associates also started the mutual fund WFIVX / WINDX in 02/1999 (current AUM $253.4 million only). Dennis Tito, 84, sold Wilshire Associates in 2021 to two private-equity firms (CEO a former FTSE executive Mark MAKEPEACE) and they spun off Wilshire Indexes to a group that includes themselves, Mark Makepeace, FT, Singapore Exchange. And obviously, Wilshire indexes have gone global. (By Allan SLOAN, an award-winning independent journalist)
Q&A/Interview. Suni HARFORD, President of Asset Management, UBS. She thrives on business challenges and financial crises. She thinks that the US stocks below the highflying mega-caps are fine. Russia-Ukraine war has been a huge setback for Europe. Asia has been dragged down by China that can turn on a dime, but Japan has been rallying. Many countries will have elections in 2024, so that should be a support for economies. Allocation 60-40 is making sense again, but she recommends carving out 20% for alternatives – real estate, private-equity, private-credit, etc. Interest rates are normalizing and aren’t high by historical standards. Customized direct indexing for separately managed accounts (SMAs) is in favor and is a big and growing business for UBS. The ESG is less popular in the US as there is lot of anti-ESG misinformation; even Texas has 30% from renewable energy now. But ESG is growing in Europe and Asia with new twists – nature-based solutions, blended investment-finance combo projects, etc. Women have come a long way in business and finance, but more are needed. This industry offers more flexible schedules but requires hard work and has good rewards. Her husband retired 12 years ago, and her UBS stint in 2017 was to be a short post-retirement job, but she may finally leave after the Credit Suisse integration.
RETIREMENT. Target-Date Funds (TDFs) were thought to be set-and-forget funds, but their short history has revealed some problems. The TDFs have adjusted by offering variations within each TDF 20XX as some wanted slightly more or less equity. So, instead of glide-path, we have glide-band. Many TDFs are passive, but several are active or with active-passive mix; some include both mutual funds and ETFs. Their bond sleeves have been stodgy, often with too much of TIPS, but some are now including HY, EMs, FR/BL, etc. (TDFs benefitted hugely from the laws that allow them to be the default options for 401k/403b/457 plan auto-signups and auto-escalations)

I found this section somewhat interesting and sparking deeper thoughts on the sector, reminding us (er, me) that proper due diligence and analysis always is required. Speaking of which, I wonder what Giroux' take on them would be since last I saw he remained bullish on utes....

Our second and even more severe earnings disappointment last year occurred at BHE. Most of its large electric-utility businesses, as well as its extensive gas pipelines, performed about as expected. But the regulatory climate in a few states has raised the specter of zero profitability or even bankruptcy (an actual outcome at California’s largest utility and a current threat in Hawaii). In such jurisdictions, it is difficult to project both earnings and asset values in what was once regarded as among the most stable industries in America.
For more than a century, electric utilities raised huge sums to finance their growth through a state-by-state promise of a fixed return on equity (sometimes with a small bonus for superior performance). With this approach, massive investments were made for capacity that would likely be required a few years down the road. That forward-looking regulation reflected the reality that utilities build generating and transmission assets that often take many years to construct. BHE’s extensive multi-state transmission project in the West was initiated in 2006 and remains some years from completion. Eventually, it will serve 10 states comprising 30% of the acreage in the continental United States.
With this model employed by both private and public-power systems, the lights stayed on, even if population growth or industrial demand exceeded expectations. The “margin of safety” approach seemed sensible to regulators, investors and the public. Now, the fixed-but-satisfactory- return pact has been broken in a few states, and investors are becoming apprehensive that such ruptures may spread. Climate change adds to their worries. Underground transmission may be required but who, a few decades ago, wanted to pay the staggering costs for such construction?
At Berkshire, we have made a best estimate for the amount of losses that have occurred. These costs arose from forest fires, whose frequency and intensity have increased – and will likely continue to increase – if convective storms become more frequent.
It will be many years until we know the final tally from BHE’s forest-fire losses and can intelligently make decisions about the desirability of future investments in vulnerable western states. It remains to be seen whether the regulatory environment will change elsewhere.
Other electric utilities may face survival problems resembling those of Pacific Gas and Electric and Hawaiian Electric. A confiscatory resolution of our present problems would obviously be a negative for BHE, but both that company and Berkshire itself are structured to survive negative surprises. We regularly get these in our insurance business, where our basic product is risk assumption, and they will occur elsewhere. Berkshire can sustain financial surprises but we will not knowingly throw good money after bad.
Whatever the case at Berkshire, the final result for the utility industry may be ominous: Certain utilities might no longer attract the savings of American citizens and will be forced to adopt the public-power model. Nebraska made this choice in the 1930s and there are many public-power operations throughout the country. Eventually, voters, taxpayers and users will decide which model they prefer.
When the dust settles, America’s power needs and the consequent capital expenditure will be staggering. I did not anticipate or even consider the adverse developments in regulatory returns and, along with Berkshire’s two partners at BHE, I made a costly mistake in not doing so.

I do wonder privately often, whether I'm shooting myself in the foot with my own system, plan, approach. My funds own the Mag7. Can't do much about that. I've seen SMCI run-up, too, LATELY. @MikeM. I deliberately avoid crowded trades. I like to wander away from the beaten path. Don't like to invest in companies which do stuff I don't like, ethically. THAT is a near-impossible job, though. They all own each other, fer crissakes. How long have I been waiting for BHB to move? Too long. It's dead money. For now. All promises are that it will rise with other financial institutions, when rates come down. But The Fed "is in no hurry." Dooky, Scum, pus and stinky poopies.
Giant party in the Markets today. I got no invitation. Apart from TS. And it did manage to drop from the opening bell, rather than rise. More dog feces. But only in a back-handed way, sure. Anyhow, with the rest of my single-stocks, I'm not at the party, but sitting home with house-brand coffee and fried eggs and toast, rather than Filet Mignon and caviar.
My funds are still the vast majority of the money. They will cheer me up today. ORK!

I just published "My Investment Picks For Retirees In 2024" on Seeking Alpha. An account is required, but it is free. The main point is about where assets should be located based on spending needs and tax characteristics. Funds with good long term performance are identified for Buckets/accounts.
https://seekingalpha.com/article/4671471-my-investment-picks-for-retirees-in-2024
The topics covered are:
Regrets and Life in Retirement
2024 Investment Environment
Financial Advisors
Tax Characteristics of Accounts
Bond Performance Following Rate Cuts
Yield Curve
Lipper Category Rotation
Investment Picks

Here’s an “interesting” take an interest rates and credit worthiness:

The simple truth is that with or without a personal fortune which is said to exceed $1 billion, Swift is credit personified. Getting more specific, her greatest source of collateral wouldn’t be physical possessions, but the future value of the immense talent that she would bring into any financial institution. It’s just a reminder that credit or interest rates can’t be decreed, rather credit is what we bring to financiers.

Should we think of the US economy in the same manner?
can-the-fed-increase-the-rate-of-interest-charged-to-taylor-swift/?

I was assigned a Schwab rep. The guy is a pro with vast knowledge, has Series 7, 63, 66 Securities Licenses
From Schwab: "Dedicated Financial Consultants are generally made available to clients with $500,000 or more in assets at Schwab and more complex investing needs."
https://www.schwab.com/invest-with-us/professional-advice
From FINRA: "The Series 7 exam ... assesses the competency of an entry-level registered representative to perform their job as a general securities representative."
https://www.finra.org/registration-exams-ce/qualification-exams/series7
Regarding Series 63, "The Series 66 is a combination of Series 63 and Series 65 and allows securities industry professionals seeking to transact securities business as a broker-dealer agent and provide investment advice for a fee as an investment adviser representative."
https://mastercompliance.com/2022/11/understanding-the-difference-series-63-series-65-or-series-66/
Much as an AA degree can be just a stepping stone to a BA, it sounds like a series 63 license can be a stepping stone to a series 6 license.
In any case, most assigned reps at Fidelity and Schwab have Series 7 and 66.
https://digital.fidelity.com/prgw/digital/faa/0/connect-with-an-advisor
https://client.schwab.com/public/consultant/find
As to free services, it really depends on what you want and how you use the services. For example:
- Schwab charges at least $15 for an international wire; at Fidelity they're free. I typically send a small number of international wires a year. Most people don't.
- Fidelity gave me free Turbotax (this year it's $5 to download). Its value more than compensates me for the few $5 auto-purchase fees I pay. Other people trade more frequently and have said they cut deals with Schwab.
- OTC trades are free at Fidelity; at Schwab they cost $6.95. But I trade stocks infrequently and never trade penny stocks. This may matter to others.
Medallion stamps - Schwab would send my paperwork over to the next county to stamp; Fidelity stamps my papers while I wait. This is another infrequent need.
Schwab and Fidelity are both fine organizations. IMHO these differences are just noise around the edges. If Schwab works for you, that's great. If you're happier with Fidelity, more power to you. If you want to split the difference and have accounts at both places, go for it.
Trekkie vs. trekker, more than you ever wanted to know:
https://memory-alpha.fandom.com/wiki/Trekkie
And get a life (Shatner, SNL):
https://www.dailymotion.com/video/xmagzq