PG&E bonds have faced steep declines this year, with some declining more than 30%. PG&E has approximately $18 billion in outstanding senior unsecured bonds. At present, PG&E’s most actively traded bond is trading at a higher yield than junk bonds.
This decline has been sparked by news regarding PG&E’s likely liability related to recent California wildfires. The Public Employees Retirement Association of New Mexico filed a securities suit against PG&E earlier this year based on misrepresentations that PG&E allegedly made regarding its vegetation management (the practice of making sure vegetation is clear from power lines to avoid fire risk), fire prevention, and other policies related to the company’s wildfire prevention efforts and potential liabilities. That suit centers around wildfires that occurred in 2017 and a series of disclosures that began in October 2017 and sent PG&E shares tumbling.
In the midst of the most recent California wildfires, PG&E has filed additional disclosures regarding the limitations of its liability insurance to cover any liabilities related to the fires. PG&E also disclosed that it had filed an electric incident report with the CPUC relating to an incident at the same place and time that the most recent wildfire began, leading to the possibility of even more dramatically increased wildfire liabilities for PG&E.
I see no bondholder suit as of yet, though it is pretty clear that bondholders are impacted here, and should have standing to pursue their own action.

Here is the Weekly Market Recap for November 18th. Thinking Ted had a misfire this morning.
https://www.stocktrader.com/2018/11/19/weekly-market-recap-nov-18-2018/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed:+Stocktrading101+(StockTradingToGo)

FYI: This past week was saw another positive move up by bulls – especially in the Dow and S&P 500; the NASDAQ was not quite as enthusiastic. Wednesday’s rally was on the legs of an election that was seen as market friendly or at least not as bad as it could have been. Essentially – paying people a lot of money to get nothing done the next 2 years – woo hoo!
Regards,
Ted
https://www.stocktrader.com/2018/11/11/weekly-market-recap-nov-11-2018/

FYI: This week will be a short week with markets closed on Thursday for Thanksgiving Day, and markets will close at 1 p.m. ET on Friday.
Regards,
Ted
https://finance.yahoo.com/news/thanksgiving-existing-home-sales-need-know-week-ahead-155607713.html

"Roth notes, fee-only advisors are also conflicted. If they’re charging, say, 1% of a client’s portfolio, they may ...advocate complicated strategies simply to justify their own fee."
Does he have evidence that this is happening to a significant degree? What is happening to a large enough extent that it has raised concern at the SEC, is reverse churn, essentially the opposite of what Roth is describing.
https://www.stratifi.com/blog/reverse-churning/
"Less than 100% of a realized capital gain will be taxed, because you’ll have some sort of cost basis on the shares."
No, assuming a cap gain is recognized, 100% of that gain is taxed. The reason why less than 100% of the proceeds from a security sale is not taxed is that some of those proceeds represent cost. But 100% of the part that is gain is taxed.
Right idea, but horribly expressed.
An example of where a cap gain is realized but not recognized is in the sale of a primary residence. The first $250K of gain by an individual is realized but not recognized for tax purposes.

@Old_Joe, How’s the President’s attempt to make “political hay” out of this enormous tragedy going over out there in California?
https://www.businessinsider.com/trump-continues-to-blame-wildfires-on-forest-mismanagement-2018-11

Here's the Investment News link:
https://www.investmentnews.com/article/20181115/FREE/181119943/money-in-donor-advised-funds-can-make-impact-before-distribution
The article's first statement, that "money sitting in the [donor-advised] fund actually works against their values" is misleading. The rest of the article (and the Cornerstone study) go into ways that the money sitting in DAFs could be invested to make a positive impact. That's different from suggesting that the money that's sitting there is having a negative impact, i.e. actively working against their values.
Still, the point is that one could/should consider what good the money's doing while awaiting donation. For example, here's Fidelity Charitable's list of its four investment pools available for "sustainable and impact investing":
https://www.fidelitycharitable.org/investment-options/impact-investing-pool.shtml

Decent write, with charts and graphs. A salute to @Charles and all involved in this world of data.
Have a pleasant day.
MFO, Great Owl ETF's, Seeking Alpha article

FAIRHOLME
http://www.fairholmefundsinc.com/Bulletin/FAIRXFOCIXFAAFXEstimateQ42018.pdf

BROWN ADVISORY https://www.brownadvisoryfunds.com/media/pdfs/2018 Distribution Calendar_vFINAL.pdf
OAK ASSOCIATES https://www.oakfunds.com/articles/2018-capital-gains-and-dividend-distributions
SMEAD https://smeadcap.com/files/4915/4100/0987/2018_Dividend_Estimates.pdf
VALUE LINE (New) https://vlfunds.com/gains

FYI: ALLAN ROTH likes to describe himself as argumentative—and, on that score, it’s hard to argue with him. But it’s also hard to argue with the points he makes, because he has this nasty habit of being right.
Regards,
Ted
https://humbledollar.com/2018/11/simple-isnt-easy/

FYI: Charitable investors who set up donor-advised funds to ultimately give the proceeds to specific issues, like gender-based causes or environmental protection, may be surprised to find their money sitting in the fund actually works against their values.
According to a new study from Cornerstone Capital Group, a growing number of people want to invest the money in their DAFs for impact. However, only a small portion of the more than $23 billion contributed to donor-advised funds in 2016 was used for such purpose, according to the National Philanthropic Trust.
Regards,
Ted

Just clean your cache, and I had no trouble. Standard tool like CCleaner will do the job. A decently interesting read. I find myself these days interested in such things! Already own enough junk bonds. (TUHYX.) PTIAX is still performing well for me, but with rising rates, it's not giving .13 cents/share every month anymore. These days, more like .07. My other is PRSNX which is sturdy and dependable, but only .03 cents and a fraction each month. I'm at 42% bonds now. That includes PRWCX.

@AndyJ- The SF Chronicle recently reported that PG&E currently carries 1.4 Billion (!) of such insurance, but that the potential losses from the Paradise fire alone will be well over $15 billion.
A better question might be "who is stupid enough to insure PG&E?". (If I was an insurance company I would charge PG&E $1.50 for every dollar of coverage.)

In my post (above) I mentioned that "Sacramento is preparing to initiate legislation similar to last year's, again allowing PG&E to fund their liabilities by revenue bonds if that becomes necessary."
Here is a link to an article in the San Francisco Chronicle regarding that information.

FYI: Life is getting better, and tougher, for income investors. Bond yields have climbed this year, lifted by the Federal Reserve’s tightening regimen. The 10-year Treasury was recently yielding 3.12%, up from around 2.4% a year ago.
Related Data
Rising rates, however, have pressured bond prices. Many bond categories are underwater in 2018, as the accompanying table illustrates. Stocks, another income vehicle, have returned a lackluster 2.7%.
But there’s no need to sit back and suffer. Plenty of ideas and strategies for achieving respectable returns were bandied about at a conference this week focused on dividend and fixed-income investing.
Regards,
Ted
https://www.barrons.com/articles/yield-seeking-tactics-for-a-tougher-time-in-the-bond-market-1542301955?mod=djem_b_Weekly Feed for Barrons Magazine

@MFO Members: VanEck Announces Preliminary Yearend Distribution Estimates for VanEck Vectors Equity ETFs:
Regards,
Ted
https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20181116005538/en/VanEck-Announces-Preliminary-Yearend-Distribution-Estimates-VanEck
https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20181116005538/en/VanEck-Announces-Preliminary-Yearend-Distribution-Estimates-VanEck

@MFO Members Here is the latest on PG&E Bonds from Blooberg.
Regards,
Ted
PG&E bonds rose sharply in Thursday’s trading session and continue to climb higher on Friday, but have not yet returned to levels seen before news of the wildfires emerged. Some of its notes have tightened more than 120 basis points today, which translates to about a 5.7% increase in dollar price.
The company’s most-actively traded bonds, its 6.05% notes due in 2034, have tightened about 85 basis points above Treasuries since Wednesday. The bonds, however, still trade at levels similar to high-yield securities.

Above mentioned PG&E bond already dropped YTM to 6.1% after announcement that California regulators do not expect company's bankruptcy. Stock jumped up 30%. Now PG&E bonds are trading in the same range as GE Capital bonds.

This says that Vanguard will be integrating its 401(k) processing with Health Equity's HSA. It doesn't sound like any new HSA product is being offered. Interestingly, it seems to characterize HSAs as retirement savings:

For Vanguard participants who elect to save in a HealthEquity HSA, Vanguard’s Retirement Readiness Tool technology will integrate their HSA information with their 401(k) balance and other assets to give them a comprehensive view of their current and future retirement savings.

Vanguard already offers some of its funds through Health Equity and through a couple of other HSAs. Here's Vanguard's retail page for those HSAs:
https://personal.vanguard.com/us/whatweoffer/overview/healthsavings
Health Equity overhauled its HSA about three years ago. It used to offer inexpensive access to a pretty good set of funds if I recall correctly, but switched to all Vanguard. Its HSA account costs 40 basis points/year. If you've got $10K in your HSA that costs more than several other HSAs, though if you want a fairly wide selection of Vanguard funds, this HSA can still work well for you.
It offers index funds through cheaper institutional clones rather than through Admiral shares of retail funds, but how much of a cost difference does that amount to?
HealthEquity retail HSA:
https://www.healthequity.com/doclib/hsa/hsa-invest.pdf