There are two rules (that I know of) in CARES regarding $100K distributions from traditional IRAs. If one could combine them, one would have a fantastic loophole on Roth conversions. I don't think it works, though.
First, the basics. As catch noted, no RMDs for 2020. So the rule that "RMD amounts are not eligible to convert to a Roth IRA" doesn't apply this year since there are no RMDs. So you're free to convert any or all money you take out of a traditional IRA this year.
There never is an early withdrawal penalty for doing a Roth conversion.
One of the $100K CARES rules is that instead of being forced to do a rollover within 60 days, you can make an IRA withdrawal and then take up to three years to put the money back into a tax-sheltered account. Even better, you can put it back in parts, e.g. take out $100K, put $50K back in a year, and $50K back two years after that.
CARES Section 2202(a)(3).
I haven't been able to interpret this rule as allowing one to withdraw money from a T-IRA and take three years to put the money into a Roth (i.e. do a 60 day Roth rollover conversion). But I'm not an authority.
The second of the $100K rules says that if you don't put the money back into into a tax-sheltered account: a) you don't pay an early withdrawal penalty, and b) you get to declare the income over three years, 2020, 2021, 2022 ($33.3K/year).
Section 2202(a)(1) - no early withdrawal penalty
Section 2202(a)(5) - spread income over three years
Since there wouldn't be a penalty for a Roth conversion, all that might matter is the ability to spread income over three years. As with the rollover rule, I have a hard time seeing how it could be applied to Roth conversions.
But if you could apply both of these rules to a Roth conversion, you could take $100K from a traditional IRA, play with it for up to three years, deposit it into a Roth, and spread the taxes over three years, 2020-2022. Sweet deal if the law actually allowed that.

Hi VF
This is a very short form of info. Lots of info available, including your (I would hope) accounts web site.
--- When converting a traditional IRA, keep in mind:
If you are required to take a required minimum distribution (RMD) in the year you convert, you must do so before converting to a Roth IRA.
RMD amounts are not eligible to convert to a Roth IRA.
Generally, converted assets in the Roth IRA must remain there for at least five years to avoid penalties and taxes.
A distribution from a Roth IRA is tax-free and penalty-free provided that the five-year aging requirement has been satisfied and at least one of the following conditions has been met: you reach age 59½, die, become disabled, or make a qualified first-time home purchase.
Is the bold above the penalty you're asking about ???
Also, NO RMD for 2020. Waived by the CARES ACT. Perhaps there is more regarding this in the CARES ACT.
Catch

I measure portfolios with max 60% in stocks against my 2 long term funds.
For a portfolio of 30-40% stocks, I use VWIAX.
For 1 portfolio of 60-65 stocks, I use PRWCX.
So VWIAX VS CFTAX shows that VWIAX was a better choice since inception in 2012 (link)
CAGR...VWIAX 5.85%...CFTAX 5.67%
SD.........VWIAX 4.49%...CFTAX 5.1% (lower is better)
Worse year + Max draw...VWIAX leads by a lot
Sharpe+Sortino...VWIAX leads
CFTAX ER=0.69%...VWIAX ER=0.16%
BUT
If you test it for 3 years CFTAX comes ahead (link) with similar performance but only about half of the SD=volatility.

@FD100, but what the idea is is to stay invested in a diversified balanced portfolio through the good years and exit automatically when a black swan event unexpectedly pushes you into some place you don't want to be, 20-25% loss. I don't think many retirees want to take more than a 10-15% loss on retirement money in an unexpected occurrence. With minimizing the loss you may not have any long term affect on your life style.
I agree though that if done, it should be a % of the total. But maybe a substantial %.

You can do the above. Suppose your portfolio is 50/50 and you invested 20%(out of the 50%) in SPY with a trailing stop market at 10%. It means that as long as SPY goes up the trailing stop follows but when SPY starts going down and eventually hits it SPY will be sold at 10% (could be higher if the market is moving really fast) loss and now you will have only 30% in stocks.

In a recent thread a contributor indicates they don't want to increase their income if it raised their marginal tax rate,I can sort of understand not wanting to work harder doing physicaL LABOR OR WORKING MORE HOURS and have the govt take more money from you but when it comes to investing I don't get it.If the govt takes a bigger share but you make and take home more money are you not better off?

......I'll chime in: we are in a hybrid situation. I'm retired, wife still works. Personal circumstances matter a lot. We could not live HERE in the 50th State without:
a) giving up some privacy
b) effectively getting a subsidy from extended family, who live with us. Rent, food. gas. We share all of that.
We don't want to bump ourselves into a higher tax bracket. For several years, on our tax returns, we have come out OWING ZERO TAX. If we had not very much more income to report, it might negatively affect our ability to even do the little bit of investing we do, for heirs as well as for ourselves. And the dividends and capital gains we get are non-taxable for us, in the lowest bracket.
We've paid-in for years and years. It's time the rules worked to OUR advantage, rather than the billionaires and millionaires: every bit of ALL of my earnings have always been subject to Soc. Tax. For them? They pay-in only until their income reaches the legal upper limit. These days, it's something like $127,000. (Hey, politicians! REMOVE THE CAP!) The crisis with SS is manufactured.

Retirees on Social Security and Medicare also have an incentive to limit their income (or at least watch it very closely). The Medicare premium brackets are tied to income. Go one dollar over an IRMAA threshold and a married couple could pay $2500 in extra Medicare tax two years hence.
David

I think of net income in terms of total return. Investment gains are often part of taxable income. Marginal tax brackets do increase the drag on total return or better said marginal tax brackets diminish total return.
Most of us need a certain income to afford our life style. Recent data shows that ninety percent of income earners spend more than 100% of their earning so they need to take on additional debt as a means of affording their lifestyle. That math doesn't work.
Income graph:
https://screencast.com/t/rUJS2IeZ6ah
To your second point:
I remember having a conversation with a colleague who couldn't understand why I chose to retire early. My point to him was that he was working for the difference between what he would make (his work income) and what he would receive in retirement (pension income). I further pointed out that he could go elsewhere and work another full time or part time job making his total return (net taxes) much higher. Obviously by staying with his job he was adding years of service to his pension making his eventual pension income higher.
I consider taxes with regard to tax loss harvesting, Roth conversions, and potential qualifications for various benefits (HSA contributions, ACA Insurance subsidies, etc)
Taxes and tax brackets do have many nuisances (tax rules) beyond the marginal taxes brackets. I have always thought a simple flat tax would level the playing field.

Additional information:
https://www.janushenderson.com/en-us/advisor/bio/alec-perkins/
Alec Perkins is a Portfolio Manager at Perkins Investment Management LLC responsible for co-managing the Perkins All Cap Value strategy since 2011 and the Value Plus Income strategy since 2018. Additionally, he has managed the Perkins All Cap Value Select strategy since 2013. Mr. Perkins also serves as a Research Analyst covering U.S. REITs, a position he has held since joining Perkins in 2002.
Mr. Perkins received his bachelor of arts degree in history with a minor in economics and Chinese from Middlebury College. He earned his master of arts degree from Stanford University and MBA from the University of California – Berkeley, Haas School of Business. Mr. Perkins has 18 years of financial industry experience.

From the author:
"The stock market has declined by 25% or more on 11 occasions since 1871. The median recovery time from this point has been 1.8 years.
Investors who shifted to cash after the 1929 crash faced a 34-year wait to break even, compared with 15 years for those who remained invested and less than 7 years for those who drip-fed additional small amounts in.
A “dash for cash” in 2001 and 2008 would still have left investors out of pocket today"
I would add that one needs to be aware of their own investment time horizon.
https://www.schroders.com/en/insights/economics/downturns-this-deep-can-take-a-long-time-to-recover-from-financially-and-mentally/

@FD100, but what the idea is is to stay invested in a diversified balanced portfolio through the good years and exit automatically when a black swan event unexpectedly pushes you into some place you don't want to be, 20-25% loss. I don't think many retirees want to take more than a 10-15% loss on retirement money in an unexpected occurrence. With minimizing the loss you may not have any long term affect on your life style.
I agree though that if done, it should be a % of the total. But maybe a substantial %.

According to this NYT article that I have linked below it took only 4.5 years for the stock market to recover from the 1928 stock market crash. It goes on to say that the average investor recovered by mid 1932.
https://www.nytimes.com/2009/04/26/your-money/stocks-and-bonds/26stra.html

I was reminded of why I sold ARIVX (in which I made decent money, no complaints) when I went to PVCMX's website and read Cinnamond's commentary. He's an Austrian school hard money guy who thinks monetary policy has been propping up a bubble for the last 30 years or so, and that we'd be better off just letting large parts of the economy crash and burn.
I think that's wrong. I also think it doesn't reflect the world we live in and the Fed we've got. And I don't want to invest with an ideologue whose ideology guides his investing. More the pity because it seems like when he does buy stocks, he picks good ones.

I am assuming by the tenor of the replies here most people believe the author of the initial article in Foreign Policy is wrong. Otherwise, why would one be in stocks at all? If this author is right regarding unemployment, GDP growth, etc., this will be worse than the Great Depression. Here's what Investopedia has stat wise regarding the Depression:https://investopedia.com/ask/answers/042115/what-caused-stock-market-crash-1929-preceded-great-depression.asp

Before this crash, which ruined both corporate and individual wealth, the stock market peaked on Sept. 3, 1929, with the Dow Jones Industrial Average (DJIA) at 381.17. The ultimate bottom was reached on July 8, 1932, where the Dow stood at 41.22. From peak to trough, this was a loss of 89.19%.
The price of blue chip stocks declined, but there was more pain in small-cap and speculative stocks, many of which declared bankruptcy and were delisted from the market. It was not until Nov. 23, 1954, that the Dow reached its previous peak of 381.17.

As I've said in previous posts, every day is different, but unemployment, GDP, earnings from the previous two, etc, have driven stocks in the past. If this author is right, then there really is no point in owning stocks at all. Declines like the Depression are unlike anything most investors have experienced in their lifetimes, and taking 25 years to recover exceeds most people's investment time horizons. It is far worse than what happened in the 1970s as referenced in other posts. So, I am hoping he's wrong. And I think there is evidence he could be.

I remember Cinnamon very well from years ago. His fund looked good when the market crashed and then it looks pretty bad. How long can a high % in cash works?
The following is from the last report. As expected PVCMX had over 92% in cash on 1/1/2020 and probably in 2019 too.
The Palm Valley Capital Fund gained 0.79% for the quarter ending March 31, 2020, while the S&P Small Cap 600 and the Morningstar Small Cap Indexes lost 32.65% and 31.61%, respectively. The Fund began the quarter with 92.4% of its assets held in cash and equivalents and ended the period with 52.0% cash.
I will pass on this fund..."fool me once, shame on you. fool me twice, shame on me."

Howdy folks,
@FD1000 mentioned the revolution occurring in education. F2F to virtual. My Econ 101 Prof was so good they taped him in the early 80s and ran his tape for years. Why should I pay thousands in tuition when there's no classroom interaction. Even if I can video chat with the Prof it's not the same. Tuition needs to be cut by 50%. Oh, and scrap intercollegiate athletics once and for all and focus on education.
My huge fear on the k12 front is computers and internet access for all the kids. Damn, we already have to import educated workers and we have so many brilliant people that are simply not receiving the education. Another reason why we need universal education. A step in that direction would be to erase the interest and penalties on all the federal student loan debt. Have them pay off the principal.
And so it goes
Peace and Flatten the Curve
Rono

The entire investing world has been telling us to invest in short term bonds since the great recession. It pains me greatly to see how short term bonds have performed against long term bonds.
Of course I'm not invested in a fund that's returned 8% over 5, 10.5% over 10 and 8.5% over 15 years. Because I listen to reason and reason said if you owned long dated bonds in your portfolio then you are an idiot.
Well, fact of the matter is I AM an idiot, but for the exact opposite reason. As long as I do not invest in WHOSX, it will continue doing well.

It is hard to imagine a more backward conclusion than this. Who on earth does he think is offering active, non-transparent ETFs? Oh, yes, the mutual fund companies.
American Century, Fidelity, T. Rowe Price ... The mutual fund companies have faced two major impediments. One, an antiquated regulatory system designed in 1940 and periodically patched since then. That system imposes a series of direct and indirect expenses on OEFs (state registration fees and taxation of realized capital gains, e.g.) that ETF regulations do not. One fund company president who is looking to transition one of his smaller funds directly into a non-transparent ETF estimates that regulation and the fee structure for middlemen represent over half of all of the expenses his firm bears. Two, the "mutual funds are dinosaurs" mantra that caught on with the media, anxious for stories, and advisers anxious to "add value."
There are 656 ETFs that are three years old or less; dozens more were launched and liquidated or "repurposed" (the Drone ETF becoming the Cloud Economy ETF) in the same period. Of those 656, nearly 400 are no economically sustainable. That cutoff there, established by people who study ETF liquidations, is $30M AUM.
And whose funds are rolling in the cash? Looking just at these younger funds that have drawn $1B or more: JPMorgan, State Street, Vanguard, Deutsche, Franklin, BlackRock, Principal. Which is to say, old-line mutual fund companies. (As an aside, most also have a captive adviser workforce whose "recommended" list of ETFs are in-house products.)
Among the 25 largest newer ETFs, only two come from the upstart community: GraniteShares Gold (BAR) and GlobalX US Preferred (PFFD). Global X is owned by Mirae Asset, a Seoul-based firm that also owned Brown Brothers Harrison and the BBH Funds.
I don't know whether, a generation hence, PRWCX will be structured as an OEF under the '40 Act, an ETF under the Precidian Rule, both or neither. But I do know that the firms with the global reach, global recognition and multi-trillion asset bases that dominate the fund industry are more likely to cast the CNBC favorites of the world into deep shadow than vice versa.

Hi @Old_Skeet
You noted:

"1974 was a bad year in the stock market. As it began to turn upward so did the economy."

Am I to understand your statement that the stock market was front running the economy and knew (somehow) things were improving before the consumer was aware, thus supporting the economic growth??? I fully understand the numerous temporary economic conditions that have existed back to 1974. There is no comparison to any modern (post- 1974) economic circumstance that relates to today.
I'll stick with this below % number, as it has been in place from the math for many years .....
Consumer spending comprises 70% of GDP. The retail and service industries are critical components of the U.S. economy.
It was easy to look around our community and towards the larger city communities as Michigan began the shutdown of normal business functions. I fully support these actions; as there remains too many dumb asses who continue to argue that their constitutional rights are being violated. Fine, you'all can move to one location to hang out together until ; well, that is the question, eh?
I don't need an economics degree to see how far down into the previous employed population impacts in all areas. The magnitude of the depth of unemployment is easy enough to consider when looking at all the variables into how many other business companies are impaired when any one business, large or small closes.
@rono expressed this several weeks ago from a common sense view. I remain fully in agreement.
I submit my adjusted quote from the movie, "August Rush":
The "economic" music is all around us, all we have to do is listen.
Lastly. What will it take to move me back into what was "normal", pre-COVID? A hell of a lot more than what is in the Washington, D.C. plan....that isn't a viable plan at this time.
I say this, for myself and numerous others here; by the mere fact of our birth dates, that our survival rate from contracting COVID is low to 0. I'm not ready to leave this third rock from the sun just yet; and will have to adjust my societal involvement.

This is what Marks said on March 3rd (link).
"These days, people have been asking me whether this is the time to buy. My answer is more nuanced: it’s probably a time to buy. There can be no unique time to buy that we can identify. The only thing we can be sure of today is that stock prices, for example, are a lot lower in the absolute than they were two weeks ago."
On March 3rd the SP500 was less than 7% down for year-to-date. Marks started buying way too early and what is known as falling knives. Marks claims that he is using intrinsic valuation, after just 7% drop for the longest bull market, how much intrinsic valuation can you find?
But my main problem that you will find anything you like in most of his memos. Do nothing, it's too expensive, buy now, prices can go lower/higher and many what ifs to cover any angle.
BTW, buying on the way down isn't recommended, IMO a better way if to start buying and keep buying only on the way up. When you buy lower and lower and the price goes down you will lose more money.
Do You realized that Marks hardly ever quantify his memos because when you do that you actually have to put the time and analyze the numbers :-)
I was trained from an early age at school that saying no isn't enough, you must come up with a good example or a solution. With that in mind, see below.
If you want to read great memos from a manager that actually manages money please read David R. Giroux who manages PRWCX. Giroux can invest in stocks + bonds and navigate market extremely well and why PRWCX performance for 3 thru 15 years is in the top 3%. The following (link) is PRWCX 12/31/2019 annual report. You will find so many specific ideas and additional numbers/estimates.

Over the years I posted many times about Marks. You will never find actionable items but lots of narratives that go both ways.
This article is no difference
"Stocks may turn around and head north and you’ll be glad you bought some. Or they may continue down, in which case you’ll have money left to buy more. That’s life for people who accept that they don’t know what the future holds."
"In my opinion, however, there’s simply no room for certainty in investing, and today more than usual."
Please let me know what you learned :-)

Harry Truman said:
“Give me a one-handed Economist. All my economists say 'on one hand...', then 'but on the other hand...”