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Here's a statement of the obvious: The opinions expressed here are those of the participants, not those of the Mutual Fund Observer. We cannot vouch for the accuracy or appropriateness of any of it, though we do encourage civility and good humor.
  • All Asset No Authority Allocation
    "It consists simply of splitting your investment portfolio into 7 equal amounts, and investing one apiece in U.S. large-company stocks (the S&P 500 SPX, +2.28% ), U.S. small-company stocks (the Russell 2000 RUT, +2.26% ), developed international stocks (the Europe, Australasia and Far East or EAFE index), gold GC00, +0.04%, commodities, U.S. real-estate investment trusts or REITS, and 10 year Treasury bonds TMUBMUSD10Y, 3.562%."
    Absolutely not taking any particular "side" here, but the way that I read the substance of the above is that by dividing a portfolio into seven specific groups of dissimilar securities, one can achieve a good return over a long period of time.
    What specific vehicle is used (etfs, etc.) to represent each group may change over time- the main thrust of the article is to observe those seven groups, not any specific vehicles.
    Added note- not having followed this thread previous to this post, I just took a look at the page generated by the original link... it certainly looks like a financial article, not an advertisement, to me.
  • All Asset No Authority Allocation
    good grief, reading comp
    It is NOT an ad.
    Brett Arends has been a v smart financial writer for decades
    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brett_Arends
    The article:
    Brett Arends's ROI
    This ‘crazy’ retirement portfolio has just beaten Wall Street for 50 years
    by Brett Arends
    This strategy beats the market with less risk, fewer upsets and no ‘lost’ decades
    You could call it crazy.
    You could call it genius.
    Or maybe you could call it a little of both.
    We’re talking about a simple portfolio that absolutely anyone could follow in their own 401(k) or IRA or retirement account. Low cost, no muss, no fuss. And it’s managed to do two powerful things simultaneously.
    It’s beaten the standard Wall Street portfolio of 60% U.S. stocks and 40% bonds. Not just last year, when it beat them by an astonishing 7 percentage points, but for half a century.
    And it’s done so with way less risk. Fewer upsets. Fewer disasters. And no “lost” decades.
    Last year, 2022, marked the 50th year of this unheralded portfolio, which is termed “All Asset No Authority,” and which we’ve written about here before.
    It’s the brainchild of Doug Ramsey. He’s the chief investment officer of Leuthold & Co., a long-established fund management company that has sensibly located itself in Minneapolis, a long, long way away from Wall Street.
    AANA is amazingly simple, surprisingly complex, and has been astonishingly durable. It consists simply of splitting your investment portfolio into 7 equal amounts, and investing one apiece in U.S. large-company stocks (the S&P 500 SPX, +2.28% ), U.S. small-company stocks (the Russell 2000 RUT, +2.26% ), developed international stocks (the Europe, Australasia and Far East or EAFE index), gold GC00, +0.04%, commodities, U.S. real-estate investment trusts or REITS, and 10 year Treasury bonds TMUBMUSD10Y, 3.562%.
    It was Ramsey’s answer to the question: How would you allocate your long-term investments if you wanted to give your money manager no discretion at all, but wanted to maximize diversification?
    AANA covers an array of asset classes, including real estate, commodities and gold, so it’s durable in periods of inflation as well as disinflation or deflation. And it’s a fixed allocation. You spread the money equally across the 7 assets, rebalancing once a year to put them back to equal weights. And that’s it. The manager — you, me, or Fredo — doesn’t have to do anything else. They not allowed to do anything else. They have no authority.
    AANA did way better than the more usual Wall Street investments during 2022’s veil of tears. While it ended the year down 9.6%, that was far better than the S&P 500 (which plunged 18%), or a balanced portfolio of 60% U.S. stocks and 40% U.S. bonds, which fell 17%.
    Crypto? Er, let’s not talk about that.
    Last year’s success of AANA is due to two things, and them alone: Its exposure to commodities, which were up by about a fifth, and gold, which was level in dollars (and up 6% in euros, 12% in British pounds, and 14% when measured in Japanese yen).
    Ramsey’s AANA portfolio has underperformed the usual U.S. stocks and bonds over the past decade, but that’s mainly because the latter have gone through a massive — and, it seems, unsustainable — boom. The key thing about AANA is that in 50 years it has never had a lost decade. Whether the 1970s or the 2000s, while Wall Street floundered, AANA has earned respectable returns.
    Since the start of 1973, according to Ramsey’s calculations, it has earned an average annual return of 9.8% a year. That’s about half a percentage point a year less than the S&P 500, but of course AANA isn’t a high risk portfolio entirely tied to the stock market. The better comparison is against the standard “balanced” benchmark portfolio of 60% U.S. stocks and 40% Treasury bonds.
    Since the start of 1973, according to data from New York University’s Stern business school, that 60/40 portfolio has earned an average compound return of 9.1% a year. That’s less than AANA. Oh, and this supposedly “balanced” portfolio fared very badly in the 1970s, and badly again last year.
    You can (if you want) build AANA for yourself using just 7 low-cost ETFs: For example, the SPDR S&P 500 SPY, +2.29%, iShares Russell 2000 IWM, +2.25%, Vanguard FTSE Developed Markets VEA, +2.76%, abrdn Physical Gold Shares SGOL, +1.94%, a commodity fund such as the iShares S&P GSCI Commodity-Indexed Trust ETF GSG, +0.55%, the iShares 7-10 Year Treasury Bond ETF IEF, +1.29%, and the Vanguard Real Estate ETF VNQ, +2.69%.
    The list is illustrative only. There are competing ETFs in each category, and in some — such as with commodities and REITs — they vary quite a lot. GSG happens to follow the particular commodity index that Ramsey uses in his calculations.
    There are many worse investment portfolios out there, and it’s a question how many are better. AANA will underperform regular stocks and bonds in a booming bull market, but do better in a lost decade.
    For those interested, Ramsey also offers a twist. His calculations also show that over the past 50 years the smart move to make at the start of each year was to invest in the asset class in the portfolio that performed second best in the previous 12 months. He calls that the “bridesmaid” investment. Since 1973 the bridesmaid has earned you on average 13.1% a year — a staggering record that trounces the S&P 500. Last year’s bridesmaid, incidentally, was terrible (it was REITs, which tanked). But most years it wins, and wins big.
    If someone wants to take advantage of this simple twist, you could split the portfolio into 8 units, not 7, and use the eighth to double your investment in the bridesmaid asset. For 2023 that would be gold, which trailed commodities last year but broke even.
    Crazy? Genius? For anyone creating a longterm portfolio for their retirement there are certainly many worse ideas — including many embraced by highly paid professionals, and marketed to the rest of us.

  • All Asset No Authority Allocation
    So, All Asset No Authority Allocation is a fixed allocation model for your portfolio? Paul Farrell at Marketwatch tracks a few Lazy Portfolios:
    https://www.marketwatch.com/lazyportfolio
    Coffeehouse, for example, suggests you can ignore the whims of Wall Street and turn your creative energy towards things in your life that matter like financial planning, your career, family, and community.
    https://coffeehouseinvestor.com/resources/portfolio
  • Anyone Buying Funds at E*Trade?
    There seem to be several "mostly closed" funds that are listed as open at E*Trade. Closed funds often have a loophole - that you can open a new account if you are investing through an advisor who already has money with the fund. (Another common exception is investing directly with the fund.)
    So I'm wondering whether these funds are really open to DIY investors, or whether you need to be working with a Morgan Stanley Financial Advisor, or whether a personal rep as @fundly mentioned suffices, or ...
    Here are some (semi) closed funds that E*Trade shows as open:
    ARTJX - investor class (1.31% ER), $1K min
    APDJX - advisor class (1.15% ER), $0 min
    (Other closed Artisan funds, e.g. ARTFX, ARTKX are closed at E*Trade.)
    RPHYX - retail class (1.14% ER), $100 min
    RPHIX - inst class (0.89% ER), $100K min
    CIPNX - inst class (1.01% ER), $0 min
    (The more expensive advisor class CIPSX is closed to new investors.)
    DHMAX - inv class (1.21% ER), $2.5K min
    (Another closed DH fund, DHLAX, is closed at E*Trade.)
    Franklin Templeton - cheaper Advisor shares of some funds are open (e.g. FGADX, FRDAX); most brokerages sell more expensive A shares NTF. Also open are institutional shares of some Salomon Bros/Smith Barney legacy funds (now branded Clearbridge), such as SAIFX and SBLYX.
    Invesco - older, cheaper Investor shares of some funds are open (e.g. LCEIX, FSTEX); most brokerages sell more expensive A shares NTF
    PEMGX - A shares, NTF (0.93% ER), $1K min
    PCBIX - inst class (0.67% ER), $0 min
  • Is 2023 the time to wade back into bond funds? Thoughts?
    I had an investment with Dodge a number of years ago, but left when they carried a heavy load of financial & got toasted in 07-08 .
    Yes @Derf. I remember it well.
    The last thing I would ever do is try to steer anyone into any particular fund. But I like to note that DODBX’s track record extends clear back to the 1930s. Longevity - if not consistent performance!
    Thanks for the comments.
  • Is 2023 the time to wade back into bond funds? Thoughts?
    Thanks for the reply @hank . I had an investment with Dodge a number of years ago, but left when they carried a heavy load of financial & got toasted in 07-08 .
  • Riverpark Short Term High Yield - divs and availability
    RPHYX / RPHIX just paid a whopping monthly interest dividend - over 5x the next largest monthly dividend in 2022. For RPHIX, it was 14.11¢ per share vs. 2.5*¢ per share in Aug, Sept, and Oct.
    This pattern of larger (but not this large!) December divs seems to have started in 2020, when the Dec div was about 10% higher than the next highest monthly div, and accelerated in 2021, when the Dec div was double that of the next highest monthly div.
    http://riverparkfunds.com/assets/pdfs/rpsthyf/RiverPark_Short_Term_High_Yield_Institutional.pdf
    http://riverparkfunds.com/assets/pdfs/rpsthyf/RiverPark_Short_Term_High_Yield_Retail.pdf
    Any guesses as to what's happening? This fund does not invest internationally so currency hedging cannot be the cause, which is what Yogi speculated could explain FMIJX 's large div.
    All I've turned up so far is Russell Investment's generic explanation for variable December income divs:
    The last distribution of the year in mid-December may vary from other monthly distributions more significantly. This distribution reflects actual income received by the fund for part of the month of December plus an estimate for the remainder of the month of December. Also included in these distributions are tax adjustments and adjustments required as a result of the audit of financial statements, reflecting the full year of operations of a fund. Therefore, these adjustments may significantly increase or decrease the mid-December distributions relative to other monthly distribution
    https://russellinvestments.com/-/media/files/us/funds/income-dividend-distributions-004519958.pdf
    Setting aside mid-month estimates (Riverpark distributes at end of month), that leaves tax adjustments and financial statement adjustments. Whatever those mean.
    ---
    This fund is mostly closed to new investors. The only investors who may open new accounts are those who already hold an existing account with the fund, or invest directly through Riverpark, or "are clients of any financial adviser or planner who has client assets invested in the Fund.”
    http://riverparkfunds.com/assets/pdfs/RiverPark_STHYF_Summary_Prospectus.pdf
    This is why the fund is closed through intermediaries like Fidelity, Schwab, and Vanguard. But RPHYX does seem to be open at Firstrade and at E*Trade. Even more interesting is that RPHIX seems to be open to new investors at E*Trade with no transaction fee, albeit with a $100K min.
  • Fund News From Barron's, 1/2/23
    LINK1
    COVER STORY, ”The Best INCOME Ideas for 2023”. (I have arranged the orders as OEFs, ETFs, CEFs, individual securities)
    Energy Pipelines: AMLP, NTG, EPD, ET, KMI, WMB
    US Dividend Stocks: SCHD, NOBL, VYM, KBWB, C, INTC, JPM, PNC, USB
    Foreign Dividend Stocks: IDV, SCHY
    Real Estate: VNQ, RQI
    Convertibles: MCIFX, CWB, AVK, busted convertibles
    HY: HYG, HYT, JQC
    Munis: PHMIX, VWITX, NEA
    Preferreds: PFF, PFFR, JPM-M, T-C, WFC-Z, REITs-preferreds
    Telecom: T, TMUS, VZ
    Cash Alternatives: VMFXX, VUBFX, BIL, SHV, 3-mo T-Bills, T-Bill ladders
    Treasuries: SHY, TLT, STIP, TIP
    Utilities: XLU, UTG, DUK, ED, NEE, SO, XEL
    UP AND DOWN WALL STREET. The Fed RATE hikes and yearend tax-loss harvesting (TLH) have depressed bond CEFs including the MUNI CEFs. As there isn’t any systemic problem looming in the muni market, these may be good for trade with small amounts: NEA, NAD, BTT, NVG; unleveraged NUV.
    LINK2
    CRYPTO ice age or not, FIDELITY is pushing ahead with its crypto initiatives (institutional, retirement, retail). It says that it wants to provide its clients with choices. Its digital assets unit has 500+ people and hiring continues. It will offer Bitcoin within its 401k and more cryptos on its regular platform. Lawmakers, the SEC and DOL have been warning firms and investors. Critics point to FOMO; despite an early start, Fido missed the train on ETFs. Fido is counting on first-mover advantage by lending its reputable name in a devasted, washed-out and scandal-ridden industry. It has urged the SEC to approve “physical” crypto ETFs; its own application was rejected by the SEC (like many others), but Fido is moving ahead with ETFs in crypto-related areas (FDIG, etc). It sees its competitors as HOOD, COIN, PAYPL, SQ, etc. Although financial risks are small for Fido, it risks regulatory risks and reputational damage if things go wrong. Other major brokers (SCHW, IBKR) are watching.
    FR/BL funds offer attractive yields (SOFR + 400-500 bps spreads; SOFR is a LIBOR alternative) from lower-quality credits. That is a big risk in recession, especially when many such loans are covenant-lite. Beware of (unmanaged) index funds in specialized and illiquid areas. Hybrid PRWCX manager GIROUX has 15% in FR/BL. Also mentioned are OEFs BFRAX, FFRHX, FRFAX, PRFRX, etc and ETFs BLKN, SRLN, etc. By @LewisBraham
    Brian DEMAIN of mid-cap growth JDMAX (ER 1.12%; load 5.75%) watches upside/downside capture ratio (U/D CR); discounted cash flows; sustainable growth; GARP. Fund has low turnover due to its longer-term horizon. In 2023, the cost of capital will be higher due to Fed rate hikes; some growth multiples are still too high; inflation should moderate; the economy will slowdown. His current themes include EVs; semis; renewables; sport franchises.
  • The PCE index, an inflation measure closely watched by the Fed, slowed to 5.5% in November
    Thanks, @hank- I'm hoping that one of our real financial gurus (which I sure as hell ain't) can help on this.
  • Buy Sell Why: ad infinitum.
    ..... Just checking up on JRSH. Not for the first time, I notice extreme bullshit activity in that stock with the effing "shorts." Overnight, the price is driven up, then it will crash during market-hours. Just like my ill-fated foray into Chilean utility company last year: ENIC. I don't need that shit. I'll look for an opportune moment, then get out. 52 week low today. I'll put that money to better use elsewhere. Prospects just discovered: CMTV, a small chain of banks in northern Vermont. HQ is right on the border with Quebec, in Derby. Also: NRIM. Bank out of Anchorage, offices spread all over the State. Wait for a pullback on that one.

    I'm not a fan of bank stocks, but CMTV looks kind of nifty, actually. Their annual report, upon first glance, was rather readable. No Level-3 assets on the books, either!
    Plz tell me what "Level 3 assets" are? Thanks.
    Nevermind. :)
    Just found this:
    "Level 3 assets are financial assets and liabilities that are considered to be the most illiquid and hardest to value. Their values can only be estimated using a combination of complex market prices, mathematical models, and subjective assumptions."
  • Off-Shoring: "There's no such thing as Free Lunch"
    But it seems to me that the US needs to intensively examine what critical resources we are presently importing from potential enemies (ie: precursor drug ingredients) that could also be manufactured or sourced here, or from a friendly alternate backup location.
    Again, an observation that comes laden with a lot of issues.
    Precursor? I'm guessing you are referring to active pharmaceutical ingredients (APIs).
    Critical? An input ("precursor") to something downstream (final product) would seem to be critical only if at least one of its final product were critical. As an example of a final, non-critical product, it is hard to think of Zantac (old formulation) as a critical drug.
    Friendly? If a nation is a potential enemy but is currently friendly, what then? Is India friendly? Can't help but think of Tom Leher's line from Who's Next in the early 1960s about France: "they're on our side, I believe". (For context: "Franco–American antagonism of the 1960s ... culminated with France's partial withdrawal from NATO in 1966")

    On a nation by nation basis, India supplies about half of all APIs. (I believe this pie chart represents unweighted percentages of all APIs, not weighted by volume produced.) Of course this doesn't mean that for any given API there is any source outside of China.
    Another graphic can be found here (use arrows to move to slide 2). I believe this represents percentages by amounts produced ("global market share"); China is at 40%, India at 20%, US at 10%.
    image
    Source: https://qualitymatters.usp.org/geographic-concentration-pharmaceutical-manufacturing
    From your description of the precursor risk, I'm guessing that you're talking about active ingredients tainted with nitrosamines.
    https://www.bloomberg.com/news/newsletters/2022-08-17/a-threat-of-contaminated-drugs-persists-four-years-later
    Here's a good, short piece, admittedly commentary, from Science:
    https://www.science.org/content/blog-post/sartan-contamination-story
    The writer reports that a related contaminant was found in a drug using an API manufactured by a company in India. (See also here.) He goes on to speculate that based on the chemistry, it looks like the industry changed its process for producing these APIs around 2012. Thus, there was a problem that wasn't caught for years, and to address your point, sourcing domestically wouldn't have changed anything.
    I may have less faith in the FDA than you. The FDA is the organization keeping us safe from Canadian certified drugs. Did you know that if you want to mail order drugs from Canada you have to use Amex because the government has pressured MC and VISA to refuse to process these sales?
    In March [2004], Visa and MasterCard announced that they will not service Canadian mail order pharmacies because they have been under pressure from the FDA to cease their support of payment processing. They cited pressure from the FDA and have warned their member financial institutions to avoid so-called ``illegal'' transactions.
    https://www.govinfo.gov/content/pkg/CHRG-108shrg93889/html/CHRG-108shrg93889.htm
  • They never stop trying: Wells Fargo to pay $3.7B over consumer law violations
    Following is the complete text from a current newsletter by Matt Levine, who writes the "Money Stuff" column for Bloomberg. The newsletter is free, so there should be no issue with it's reproduction here.
    If you would kike to subscribe to this free newsletter from Matt Levine, here is the link.
    Oh Wells Fargo
    I think often about the time I wrote:
    If you have U.S. dollars in a bank account at JPMorgan Chase & Co., and I have U.S. dollars in a bank account at JPMorgan Chase & Co., and I want to send you 100 of my dollars, what we do is I tell JPMorgan to subtract 100 from the number of dollars in my bank account and add 100 to the number of dollars in your bank account. This gets dressed up in a lot of procedures, because it would be bad if JPMorgan got the math wrong or if it moved money from one account to another without getting the proper authorizations, but as a matter of, like, computer science, it is dead easy. JPMorgan keeps a list of people and how many dollars they have, and you and I both trust JPMorgan to keep that list (that’s what it means that we bank there!), and so we just tell JPMorgan to update the list to reflect the transaction between us.
    And lots of computer engineers tweeted and emailed to be like “no, actually, it is a hard problem of computer science to have a big database of who has what, and to update it instantly and reliably to reflect transactions from many different sources.” And I was like, sure, fine, I guess. I still feel like I was entitled to be right: A bank is, at its heart, a computer for keeping track of who has money, and for updating its ledger as people send and receive money. And at a high level you and I could describe how we’d expect that computer to work — “if I deposit $100 in an ATM, the bank will increase the number in my account by $100,” that sort of thing — and we will be disappointed if it doesn’t work that way, if the bank loses track of who has the money or how much they have, or if it doesn’t update its ledger promptly or process transactions in the right order. If the bank messes up and says “look I am sorry but keeping track of money is a hard job and you can’t expect us to do it with 100% accuracy,” we will say things like “yes we can” and “that is literally exactly what we expect of you” and “if keeping track of the money is too hard for you then maybe you should not be a bank” and “now you have to pay an enormous fine.” And yet, sure, empirically, banks do sometimes mess it up. It’s not as easy as it sounds.
    Wells Fargo, for instance, messes it up a lot:
    The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) is ordering Wells Fargo Bank to pay more than $2 billion in redress to consumers and a $1.7 billion civil penalty for legal violations across several of its largest product lines. The bank’s illegal conduct led to billions of dollars in financial harm to its customers and, for thousands of customers, the loss of their vehicles and homes. Consumers were illegally assessed fees and interest charges on auto and mortgage loans, had their cars wrongly repossessed, and had payments to auto and mortgage loans misapplied by the bank. Wells Fargo also charged consumers unlawful surprise overdraft fees and applied other incorrect charges to checking and savings accounts. Under the terms of the order, Wells Fargo will pay redress to the over 16 million affected consumer accounts, and pay a $1.7 billion fine, which will go to the CFPB's Civil Penalty Fund, where it will be used to provide relief to victims of consumer financial law violations.
    Here is the CFPB’s consent order from yesterday, which is basically just a litany of “Wells Fargo’s computers messed up.” For instance:
    Respondent also assessed borrowers erroneous fees and interest because of technology, audit, and compliance failures. As an example, from at least 2011 until at least March 2019, Respondent sometimes incorrectly entered the effective date of a payment deferment in, or omitted it from, its servicing system-of-record, which resulted in $26.5 million in erroneously assessed late fees to more than 688,000 borrower accounts.
    If you owe Wells Fargo money on a car loan, and you don’t pay it, and you have a payment deferment, they won’t charge you a fee, but if you don’t have a payment deferment they will. But if you have a payment deferment, but they don’t write it down in the right place, they will also charge you the fee, and then they will get in trouble. In some sense this is profit-maximizing behavior by Wells Fargo: If they agree to defer payments, and then charge you the fees anyway, they will make more money in fees. But it doesn’t seem intentional, and the CFPB doesn’t think it was. (Why say you agree to the deferment, and then charge the fees?) It seems like a failure of systems, of “technology, audit and compliance”: Wells Fargo did not do a good job of keeping track of deferments, so it sometimes charged fees by mistake.
    Or:
    From at least 2011 through 2022, Respondent experienced other types of servicing errors, which had the potential to contribute to a borrower’s delinquency, and in some cases led to improper repossessions. For example, Respondent repossessed vehicles despite the borrower having made a payment or entering into an agreement to forestall the repossession.
    (Continued)
  • They never stop trying: Wells Fargo to pay $3.7B over consumer law violations

    Following are lightly edited excerpts from a current report by the Associated Press:

    WASHINGTON (AP) — Consumer banking giant Wells Fargo agreed to pay $3.7 billion to settle charges that it harmed customers by charging illegal fees and interest on auto loans and mortgages, as well as incorrectly applying overdraft fees against savings and checking accounts.
    Wells was ordered to repay $2 billion to consumers by the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, which also enacted a $1.7 billion penalty against the San Francisco bank Tuesday. It’s the largest fine ever leveled against a bank by the CFPB and the largest yet against Wells, which has spent years trying to rehabilitate its image after a series of scandals tied to its sales practices.
    Regulators made it clear, however, that they believe Wells Fargo has further to go on that front. “Put simply: Wells Fargo is a corporate recidivist that puts one out of three Americans at risk for potential harm,” said CFPB Director Rohit Chopra, in a call with reporters.
    The bank’s pattern of behavior has made it necessary for regulators to take additional actions against Wells Fargo that go beyond the $3.7 billion in fines and penalties, Chopra said.
    The violations impacted more than 16 million customers, the bureau said. In addition to improperly charging auto loan customers with fees and interest, the bank wrongfully repossessed vehicles in some cases. The bank also improperly denied thousands of mortgage loan modifications for homeowners.
    Wells Fargo has been sanctioned repeatedly by U.S. regulators for violations of consumer protection laws going back to 2016, when employees were found to have opened millions of accounts illegally in order to meet unrealistic sales goals. Since then, executives have repeatedly said Wells is cleaning up its act, only for the bank to be found in violation of other parts of consumer protection law, including in its auto and mortgage lending businesses.
    Wells paid a $1 billion penalty in 2018 for widespread consumer law violations, the largest against a bank for such violations at the time. Wells remains under a Federal Reserve order forbidding the bank from growing any larger until the Fed deems that its problems are resolved. That order, originally enacted in 2018, was expected to last only a year or two.
    CEO Charles Scharf said in a prepared statement Tuesday that the agreement with the CFPB is part of an effort to “transform operating practices at Wells Fargo and to put these issues behind us.”
    While Wells Fargo tried to frame the agreement with the CFPB as a resolution of established bad behavior, CFPB officials said some of the violations cited in Tuesday’s order took place this year.
    “This should not been seen as Wells Fargo has moved past its problems,” Chopra said.
    (Text emphasis added)
  • Political Instability as a risk factor
    @larryB- Larry, if you've been monitoring MFO for any length of time you are fully aware that my personal feelings on all of this are very much the same as yours.
    However, MFO is primarily dedicated to financial and investment discussions, and you asked if discussing political instability was an appropriate subject for the financial and investment forums.
    As I noted, it certainly can be, if it remains as a general discussion and does not degenerate to heated political accusatory and inflammatory commentary.
    For discussions which do not fit that description, MFO has, for very good reasons based on the expressed preferences of the great majority of MFO posters, established the Off-Topic arena. Like the rules generally observed for deciding elections, that majority opinion should be honored.
    Frequently I also would prefer it to be otherwise, but as long as we are guests here we have an obligation to honor the rules established for this community.
  • Political Instability as a risk factor
    @larryB, instability like the debt ceiling crisis of 2011 (and again in 2013)? The Wiki article on the 2011 version characterizes the effect on markets this way:
    The crisis sparked the most volatile week for financial markets since the 2008 crisis, with the stock market trending significantly downward. Prices of government bonds ("Treasuries") rose as investors, anxious over the dismal prospects of the US economic future and the ongoing European sovereign-debt crisis, fled into the still-perceived relative safety of US government bonds.
    And that was a crisis that was resolved before any default took place.
  • Barron’s Article: Higher Medicare Premiums / How to Contain Them / Investing Tactics
    One more reason to like Roths ….. ISTM
    Excerpt: IRMAA is short for income-related monthly adjustment amount. It frequently surprises retirees because it is tacked on to standard Medicare premiums for people with incomes above certain cutoff points. Although it is aimed at higher-income retirees, “you don’t have to be rich to fall into the penalty box,” notes Denver financial planner Phil Lubinski.
    This year, IRMAAs hit individuals with modified adjusted gross incomes of more than $91,000, and for couples, more than $182,000. Instead of paying the standard annual Medicare premium of $2,041.20, higher-income individuals are paying from $3,006 to $7,874.40. Couples can pay double that.
    Each year, Medicare charges are reset based on the income that people reported two years earlier. Even retirees who never had a problem can be blindsided by an IRMAA after an unusually high-income year.
    Ignorance isn’t bliss in such cases. People can often make income adjustments before year end to dodge an IRMAA threshold, such as selling losing investments to offset capital gains. Cutting income by as little as a penny can slice almost $1,000 off an individual’s annual Medicare premiums at the lowest levels, and thousands at higher levels.

    Source / Barron’s https://www.barrons.com/articles/medicare-premiums-taxes-irmaa-51671059739
    (Link may or may not work.)
    Disclaimer - Not an expert on this - or even well informed. Highly recommend the article.
  • Barron’s Posts past year’s “Winning Record” (stock picks)
    "It is a good chance that US is entering a recession"
    Of course the SF Bay Area is more exposed to technological layoffs than most other areas, but I'm also seeing lots of layoff commentary on non-tech business such as DHL logistics, for example. San Francisco is really going to be a ghost of it's recent self before this is over. Between the pandemic and now an approaching recession things are not looking good at all. Municipal tax revenue is already seriously compromised, with city government already instructed to curtail the filling of open job positions and prepare for future personnel cuts.
    A significant number of financial commentators that I follow are suggesting that we are already in a "rotating" recession, as layoffs cascade from business to business.
  • Are the risks of Financial Account Aggregation really worth it?
    @sven
    I think it is possible for a hacker to impersonate your phone SIM card and break the two factor authentication.
    I use LastPass but not for financial sites.
    Does anyone knw any more about LastPass hack? second time this year but company says no passwords were compromised.
    Anybody think 1Password etc any better? Anyone other than @Observant1 have experience with KeePass?

    I neglected to mention that KeePass is used only on my PC.
    I do not use KeePass (or any password manager) on my mobile devices.
  • Are the risks of Financial Account Aggregation really worth it?
    @sma3, unless your phone is compromised with malware, the unique IMEI # associates with your phone/SIM card could be at risk. Breaking the 2FA is not that trivial as it made out to be. The user gets to choose what the other factor is in order to identify themselves.
    For security, I seldom use cell phones for financial transaction. I much prefer to use my Mac and Linux computers with a VPN service. No i have not use any of those apps you mentioned.
  • Are the risks of Financial Account Aggregation really worth it?
    @sven
    I think it is possible for a hacker to impersonate your phone SIM card and break the two factor authentication.
    I use LastPass but not for financial sites.
    Does anyone knw any more about LastPass hack? second time this year but company says no passwords were compromised.
    Anybody think 1Password etc any better? Anyone other than @Observant1 have experience with KeePass?