Also be careful with taxation of SS income. The percentage of SS that's taxable can go as high as 85% depending on "combined income", a form of MAGI.
Then there's the IRMAA surcharge. Another MAGI effect in addition to phaseouts.
Next, there are state taxes to consider. Some states exempt retirement income such as IRA withdrawals (such as Roth conversions), but only up to certain limits. If you convert more, you may exceed this cap.
The $6K extra deduction is scheduled to expire after 2028. So unless you're planning on this being extended, you've got just four years to take advantage of it.

Same downside as SP500, so what reason is there to buy even one of the best convertible funds? -15.7% in 2022.

Signs Scream Recession, Dollar Spiral: How Fund Manager Beats 'End Of Money' | David Sherman
David Lin
Jul 14, 2025 #economy #investing #bonds
David Sherman, Founder and CIO of CrossingBridge Advisors, discusses high valuations in equities and real estate, tight bond spreads, and recession risks, predicting a steeper yield curve with lower short-term rates and potential dollar devaluation due to Fed policies and tariff impacts.

Just posted all ratings to MFO Premium site, using Refinitiv data drop from Friday, 11 July 2025. FLOW combo tool updated through yesterday.
Typically, we try to post on Saturday, day of Lipper drop. But we incorporated a new Navigation Bar, which includes links to new stand-alone pages that used to be embedded in the Welcome page: What's New, Screenshots, Webinars, and Summary Download table.
The top line of the Navigator includes Site Info links. The 2nd line includes links to free search tools for the MFO community. And the 3rd line includes links to premium search tools and analytics.
Hoping the new format will help improve visibility into all the tools and resources offered on the site. But it involved quite a bit of coding, so if you see something amiss, please post to Discussion board or email me at [email protected].
Enjoy!

https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/1318342/000139834425013046/fp0094248-1_497.htm
497 1 fp0094248-1_497.htm
Bahl & Gaynor Income Growth Fund
Class A (AFNAX)
Class C (AFYCX)
Class I (AFNIX)
A series of Investment Managers Series Trust (the “Trust”)
Supplement dated July 11, 2025 to the currently effective
Summary Prospectus, Prospectus and Statement of Additional Information.
*** Important Notice Regarding Proposed Fund Reorganization ***
The Board of Trustees of Investment Managers Series Trust has approved an Agreement and Plan of Reorganization (the “Plan”) for the Bahl & Gaynor Income Growth Fund (the “Target Fund”), a series of the Trust, providing for the reorganization of the Target Fund into the Bahl & Gaynor Income Growth ETF (the “Acquiring Fund”), a series of ETF Series Solutions. The reorganization of the Target Fund is subject to approval by its shareholders.
The Acquiring Fund has substantially similar investment objectives and similar principal investment strategies as the Target Fund. Bahl & Gaynor, Inc. (“Bahl & Gaynor”) serves as investment advisor to both the Target Fund and the Acquiring Fund.
The Plan provides for the Target Fund to transfer all of its assets to the Acquiring Fund in return for shares of the Acquiring Fund and cash in lieu of fractional Acquiring Fund shares (if any), and the Acquiring Fund’s assumption of the Target Fund’s liabilities. Shareholders of the Target Fund will receive shares of the Acquiring Fund and cash in lieu of fractional Acquiring Fund shares (if any) equal in value to the shares of the Target Fund held by the shareholder prior to the reorganization. The reorganization is not expected to result in the recognition of gain or loss by the Target Fund or its shareholders for federal tax purposes (except with respect to cash received by shareholders in lieu of fractional shares, if any). Bahl & Gaynor will bear the costs related to the reorganization.
The Target Fund operates as a mutual fund and the Acquiring Fund operates as an actively managed exchange-traded fund (“ETF”). ETFs may provide benefits to shareholders compared to mutual funds, including additional trading flexibility, increased transparency, and the potential for lower transaction costs and enhanced tax efficiency. Additional information regarding the differences between mutual funds and ETFs and potential impact to shareholders will be included in the proxy statement noted below. In order to receive shares of the Acquiring Fund as part of the Reorganization, Target Fund shareholders must hold their shares of the Target Fund through a brokerage account eligible to hold and trade shares of an ETF. Shareholders holding their Target Fund shares through accounts that are not eligible to hold shares of an ETF will not participate in the reorganization and will instead receive a cash distribution equal to the net asset value of their Target Fund shares in full redemption of their Target Fund shares. Such cash distribution may result in the recognition of gain or loss for federal tax purposes. If you are unsure about the ability of your account to accept Acquiring Fund shares, please call 1-833-472-2140 or contact your financial advisor or other financial intermediary.
The Trust will call a shareholder meeting at which shareholders of the Target Fund will be asked to consider and vote on the Plan. If the required shareholder approval for the reorganization of the Target Fund is obtained, the reorganization of the Target Fund is currently expected to take effect in the fourth quarter of 2025.
Shareholders of the Target Fund will receive a proxy statement with additional information about the shareholder meeting, the proposed reorganization, and the Acquiring Fund. Please read the proxy materials carefully, as they will contain a more detailed description of the proposed reorganizations.
Please file this Supplement with your records.

After a meeting in Brussels today, the EU warned it would impose countermeasures
against the punishing 30% tariffs if no agreement is reached by August 1.

I wonder if that item should guide our choice of airline on our trip to Brussels next year? 25th wedding Anniv. Wife's cousin has married and moved to Belgium.

I am considering doing Roth conversions over the next 4-8 years (from age 65-73).
With help from the standard deduction plus bonuses deductions ($2k + $6k) for tax filers over age 65 the 12% bracket has effectively just got wider:

the new $6,000 deduction is stacked on top of both the regular standard deduction — $15,750 for single filers or $31,500 for married couples filing jointly in 2025 — and the 65-plus addition. For instance, a 65-year-old single taxpayer who qualifies for the full $6,000 deduction would be able to deduct a total of $23,750 from these three tax breaks on their 2025 tax return. A qualifying 65-year-old couple could deduct up to $46,700.

source:
taxes/what-to-know-new-tax-law-2025
I am looking to fill the 12% Federal tax bracket ($48,475 for single filers for TY2025) with yearly Roth conversions over the next 4-8 years.
Anyone else see this as an opportune time to execute Roth conversions?
convert-a-traditional-ira-to-a-roth-in-retirement

The June 2025 budget recorded a surplus of over $27 billion, the first monthly surplus since 2017. Economists had expected a deficit of $41.5 billion for the month. A key factor was the surge in customs duties, which totaled roughly $27 billion for the month...up from $23 billion in May...

That’s a $68.5 billion swing in the wrong direction for the experts.
It’s not surprising to me. Economist forecasts make for great conversation—but that’s about it.
If you choose to base your investments on their predictions, that’s your call.
I don’t.

It's not surprising when someone cherry-picks random data in a vain attempt to score a victory for "their side."
The customs duties are not free money.
How will tariffs affect U.S. consumers' finances and spending patterns?
What will be the impact to company's margins?
If you choose to ignore the consequences of ill-conceived tariff "plans," that's your call.
I don't!

update regarding charter schools in muni bonds , above in thread :
bloomberg 2025 july:
"Municipal bonds sold by colleges and charter schools became distressed at record levels in 2024, as the amount of defaulted state and local government debt hit a three-year high...
And for higher-risk sectors like charter schools, investors can still find opportunities that offer a decent payout, according to Gabriel Diederich, a portfolio manager at Baird Asset Management :It’s important to remember that the charter school sector is diverse (variety of sizes, geographies and education models) and can be a great sector for investment, Charter schools have become an essential part of our national education system.”

When you want to make a transaction on the 529 plan, you log onto your Vanguard account, not some state Government website. While Vanguard does not technically own the 529 in a legal sense, you make transactions on your Vanguard account. So why make that comment that implies that “Vanguard has nothing to do with 529 plans”?

EU-Japan-Canada coordination in the works at a level not seen before.
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2025-07-13/eu-to-extend-suspension-of-countermeasures-to-allow-for-us-talks?srnd=homepage-americas
I'm looking at the list above. No penguins? ORK?

One can link their bank account to their 529 plans online. The 529 plan site needs the bank routing and checking numbers. We set it up for monthly investment and buying/selling. It should not take months…
Vanguard products, index funds, are widely used in many state sponsored 529 plans. Vanguard does not runs 529 plan.
As a former Flagship clients for several decades, the poor service and human support caused us to move most of our asset to Fidelity. Much less frustrated.

Vanguard ranked last out of eight major brokerages for customer satisfaction with website performance and mobile apps in a recent survey of 2,700 investors conducted by Investor’s Business Daily:

Case in point, I had a frustrating website experience at Vanguard yesterday.
I am managing a friend's portfolio and wanted to sell "all shares" of an OEF on line. Got a nonsensical error message that the transaction could not be completed because the fund had insufficient shares. Requested I call an agent. Was on hold for 45 minutes until I finally got an agent on the phone. However, he got the same error message and spent the next 15 minutes in the "back office" trying to complete my transaction request. Seemed to be as frustrated as I was.
Thankfully, he finally was successful, but I wasted a good hour on the phone. It was also a good reminder why I prefer not to have an account at Vanguard. Low cost or not.

That would drive me to drink. First, anytime I’d had trouble transacting online at Fidelity it has been because I did not understand how something worked. A call to their rep always cleared things up (with the exception of one very minor instance). Second, I can’t remember waiting more than 5-10 minutes for a rep to pick up. If it was a specialized problem I called about then there’d be another wait for them to get the right person on the line. So the wait could run another 10-15 minutes. But that would be exceedingly rare.

The June 2025 budget recorded a surplus of over $27 billion, the first monthly surplus since 2017. Economists had expected a deficit of $41.5 billion for the month. A key factor was the surge in customs duties, which totaled roughly $27 billion for the month...up from $23 billion in May...

That’s a $68.5 billion swing in the wrong direction for the experts.
It’s not surprising to me. Economist forecasts make for great conversation—but that’s about it.
If you choose to base your investments on their predictions, that’s your call.
I don’t.

The 1/5/99 event might want to come with an asterisk. Dinky linky.

In the two years leading up to March 24, 2000, the S&P 500 gained 38.1%.
The Dow hit its dot-com era peak in January 2000, but the Nasdaq and the S&P 500 didn’t top out until March. The S&P 500 hit an intraday high of 1,552.87 on March 24.
Over the next two years, the S&P 500 dropped 24.8%, but it held up relatively well compared to the 62.7% drop in the Nasdaq.
Following its March 2000 peak, the S&P 500 wouldn’t make new all-time highs again until 2007. However, it fared much better than the Nasdaq, which wouldn’t surpass its dot-com bubble peak until 2015.

One might wonder, what were the signals to sell in March 2000?

According to the quote in the OP: "Now, Vanguard isn’t eliminating SpecID—but they are making it harder to use by removing it as a default option for your accounts."
This change does indeed better align Vanguard with industry standards. I wrote in my original response: :"Vanguard is a bit unusual in that it allows you to effectively select 'none' as the default method of selecting which shares you are selling. "
Brokers are required to have clients select what Fidelity calls a default "disposal method". In this way clients tell the broker the order in which to dispose of shares in a sale if the client does not specify which shares are to be sold at the time they place a trade.
If a client says that their default disposition method is specific ID, then they are effectively giving no default method to be used in lieu of specific ID. No other institution I'm aware of has allowed clients to explicitly give "specific ID" (i.e. "none") as the default disposal method.
Regarding this change affecting only some Vanguard clients: It is true that only clients that had selected "specific ID" as their default disposal method are directly affected (and I'm guessing are the ones who received email notice). Still, all clients were affected when this change took place because they became unable to change their default disposal method to "specific ID".
This change has already taken place generally. Vanguard currently writes: "[Specific identification] method is not available as a preferred cost basis method".
https://investor.vanguard.com/investor-resources-education/taxes/cost-basis-methods-available-at-vanguard
As to restricting the use of specific ID to market orders, Vanguard's FAQ addresses the rationale. Consider the following limit order to sell 300 shares @$25.00 from three specific lots and only 150 are sold:
Lot 1: 100 shares purchased on 7/1/23
Lot 2: 100 shares purchased on 7/1/24
Lot 3: 100 shares purchased on 7/1/25
The specific ID order says only that these 300 shares are to be sold. Suppose one lot is sold @25.10, then the bids over $25 dry up. A few hours later, the price recovers and the broker is able to dispose of another 50 shares at $25 even. The remaining 150 shares remain unsold.
Which shares did the broker sell at $25.10, which at $25.00? Had a market order been placed, they all would have sold at virtually the same time. (Though admittedly there could still be sold at slightly different prices - placing a market order reduces but does not eliminate the pricing problem.)
The answer to this question affects long term vs. short term cap gains and also current gains (assuming the various lots were acquired at different prices.)
Fidelity is the only place I've found that answers this question (sort of). On its help page for trading specific shares it answers this question:

What is tax lot priority?
If your order receives multiple executions, the first tax lots selected will be used to determine the gain/loss for the shares executed. The shares sorted and selected first (at the top of the list of tax lots) have the highest priority.

As to the order of the tax lots selected, the closest Q&A I can find is:

How are the lots available for trading displayed?
Since the shares you hold may have been acquired at different times and different prices you can choose to have your shares sorted by long-term shares (with a holding period of greater than one year) or short-term shares (with a holding period of one year or less). A secondary sorting option allows you to sort the shares you hold by highest or lowest cost. In addition, you can attempt to minimize your gain or loss. If you do not request a specific sort option, the tax lots will be displayed in first in, first out (FIFO) order - that is, oldest shares acquired to the newest shares acquired.

All well and good, but Vanguard's FAQ raises the question of what happens with automatic distributions (or automatic rebalancing). WIth a default disposal in place, that is the ordering applied. And as I explained above, "specific ID" is tantamount to having indicated no default method.

when the new CEO was selected, base rates for his background were not inspiring ; he made his bones based on hyperscaling ETFs for fees.
with actually zero 'technology' expertise, the more likely outcome for vanguard was same quality of service costing more, and\or cuts to functionality not serving up profits.
now IAV jumps in on a 'not-for-profit' company whose CEO likely is compensated similar (~$30m/yr) to blackrock's Fink.
IAV post 2025 july:
"Many long-term investors have built wealth using low-cost index funds. But it’s the selling of those index funds—not owning them—that’s been filling Vanguard executives’ bank accounts...
Just because Vanguard is private doesn’t mean it can’t disclose compensation details. It simply chooses not to...
For a firm that prides itself on penny-pinching and low-cost indexing, Vanguard’s leaders sure seem to be stuffing their bank accounts with a lot more than pennies."

According to M* VOO is up 6.39% YTD.
I wasn't looking for anything. Stating that the S&P 500 is up 25+% in just 3 months demands a closer look is all in the long run.

You must be missing my point here. I said that a 25% gain in a three month period is a rare historical event. A closer look? It has occurred five other times since 1950.
3/7/75
10/21/82
1/5/99
5/29/09.
6/15/2020.
After those five other times the market was up an average of 16.9% six months later and 22,3% one year later. It was never down 6 months or one year later. Streaks are meant to be broken so time will tell if this new signal will be the sixth winner since 1950. Just maybe a clue the market is going higher. The two Zweig signals ( also rare historical events) in April mentioned here were obviously a better time to have entered or added, but most here were more focused on the negative tariff headlines and not the Zweig signals.
Source Carson Research.
Edit - I see Carson Research must have updated their numbers now showing 13.8% and 21,4% six and 12 months out, The latest signal dated 7/10/25.

According to M* VOO is up 6.39% YTD.
I wasn't looking for anything. Stating that the S&P 500 is up 25+% in just 3 months demands a closer look is all in the long run.