https://finance.yahoo.com/news/record-stock-fragility-sends-warning-103000061.html

Stock fragility, a measure of a company’s daily share-price move relative to its recent volatility, is on track to reach its highest in more than 30 years among the largest 50 stocks in the S&P 500 Index, based on the average magnitude and frequency of such individual shocks so far in 2025, according to Bank of America Corp. strategists.

How does tariff theater play into this?

“The sideways range the stock market has been in for almost three months is hiding a big increase in volatility for individual stocks,” Matt Maley, chief market strategist at Miller Tabak + Co., said via email. “When you combine this with higher bond yields and concerns over tariffs, it has created a much higher level of uncertainty and nervousness than we usually see when the market is near an all-time high.”

Cleanest dirty shirt in the hamper just got a helluva lot dirtier after 20th January, '25.

“There’s nothing to study,” he said. “It’s going to go well.” Have tariffs EVER gone well - mooted or not?
The market has tuned this all out thus far. If inflation remains sticky, can US stock prices continue to rise?
The idea that there is nothing to study is disturbing. These policies will have consequences. Our economy in 2025 could turn into a lab experiment gone bad, as the lab director pulls all the machine levers at once.....with his eyes closed.

Here is the email I received this evening from GP:
Feb 13, 2025
Dear Fellow Investors,
Mark Madsen, portfolio manager (PM) for our Global Contrarian strategy and the industrials tranche of our Global Reach strategy, has decided to leave the firm to pursue a new opportunity.
Robert Gardiner, Grandeur Peak’s chairman and co-founder, is nearing the conclusion of his three-year service sabbatical. When he returns this summer, he plans to be a PM on Global Contrarian, as well as a PM on the Global and International Opportunities Funds.
Robert is a strong believer in Global Contrarian, having pioneered the idea of a value fund in a growth shop and launching small and micro-cap value funds over two decades ago while at Wasatch Global Investors. He was the driving force behind the launch of Global Contrarian in 2019 and acted as its Guardian PM for its first three years.
Until Robert’s return, Blake Walker, CEO, will serve as the interim PM on the Global Contrarian Fund. He’ll be joined by Dane Nielson, who has worked directly on the Fund for most of its five-year life.
Our Industrials sector research will continue to be covered by Matt Kaelberer and Cyrus Crockett. Matt and Cyrus will report directly to Randy Pearce, CIO, who will provide oversight and support.
As we frequently explain, one of Grandeur Peak’s most distinguishing features is that all of our portfolios rely heavily on the work done by our sector and geography teams. This team-driven structure allows us to fully leverage our “multiple minds” investment philosophy and mitigate key person risk.
If you have any questions related to this news, please reach out to a member of our Client Relations Team.

Really?
So why Mexico, Canada, and others made a change?
If this was true, the SP500 would be down at least 10%...but it's close to the top.
Another TDS thread.
Please use the off topic forum.

It seems reasonable to suggest that "prices could go up" bears indirectly on "Other Investing".
Trump said he would not commission any studies into how his mooted tariffs could affect prices for Americans. “There’s nothing to study,” he said. “It’s going to go well.”
Edited excerpts from a current article in The Guardian.

Donald Trump threatened to ramp up his economic assault on some of America’s biggest trading partners on Thursday, vowing to impose new tariffs on countries that target products made in the US within weeks.
The US will impose “reciprocal” duties, the president announced. “We want a level playing field,” he declared in the Oval Office, pledging to roll out a “beautiful, simple system” of new US import duties that match those imposed by other countries.
No new specific tariffs were announced, however, triggering a relief rally on Wall Street. Instead, Trump signed a presidential memorandum ordering the development of a comprehensive plan to address what the White House described as “longstanding imbalances” in the global economy.
Americans could face “some short-term disturbance” if the US imposes higher tariffs on foreign goods, Trump acknowledged. “Prices could go up somewhat short-term,” he said. “But prices will also go down.”
“What will go up is jobs,” claimed Trump. “The jobs will go up tremendously.”
It is the latest bid by Trump to strain Washington’s trade ties with countries across the world – allies and rivals alike – to obtain political and economic concessions.
A press notice circulated by the Trump administration promised it would take action to “put the American worker first, improve our competitiveness in every area of industry, reduce our trade deficit, and bolster our economic and national security”.
US officials pointed to a series of examples of tariffs and other trade barriers that they said demonstrated how other countries were not treating the US fairly. They pointed to the European Union’s 10% tariff on cars, alongside the 2.5% US tariff on cars, and claimed that shellfish from 48 states cannot be exported to the EU, while the bloc “can export all the shellfish it wants to America”.
They also cited a 100% tariff imposed by India on US motorcycles, while the US only charges 2.4%, and an 18% duty in Brazil on US ethanol, while the US charges 2.5%.
Trump also called for Russia’s return to the G7 group of industrialised nations, saying it had been a mistake for Moscow to be expelled. Russia was suspended from the group – then known as the G8 – in 2014, following the annexation of Crimea, and announced its permanent withdrawal in 2017.
The administration has so far threatened more tariffs than it has introduced. Duties on Colombia were shelved when it agreed to accept military aircraft carrying deported immigrants; duties on Canada and Mexico have been repeatedly delayed; and modified duties on steel and aluminum, announced earlier this week, will not be enforced until next month.
An additional 10% tariff on goods from China is, for now, the only threatened trade attack actually enforced since Trump returned to the White House. On Friday, it emerged that a key component of this – removing the longstanding duty-free status of low-cost packages – had been delayed.
Inflation is already proving stubborn. In January, as Trump returned to office, it ticked up to an annualized rate of 3%. Egg prices have been soaring in recent months, as many US consumers continue to grapple with the elevated cost of living.
Trump said he would not commission any studies into how his mooted tariffs could affect prices for Americans. “There’s nothing to study,” he said. “It’s going to go well.”
Asked whether the Trump administration’s plan to align US tariffs with those imposed by other countries risked raising prices for US consumers, Lutnick – standing alongside the president – sought to shift responsibility onto other countries. “​If they drop their tariffs, prices for Americans are going down​,”​ he said.
Trump has frequently highlighted the US’s trade deficit with the world – the fact that the value of its imports greatly exceeds that of its exports – as evidence of unfairness.
“Closed markets” overseas reduce US exports, while “open markets at home result in significant imports”, the White House notice said, arguing that this had undercut the US’s ability to compete.

Edit: Feel free to go to the "A Solution" at the bottom of this post and skip the body of this post about the problems I had logging into my Vanguard account.
*************
Does anyone here use the Vanguard two factor authentication to login?
I tried the Vanguard two factor service today for the first time. After not receiving the code by text for 10 times, I requested a phone call with the code. The call came in and said press 1 for the code. I pressed 1 and the phone got disconnected. After 3 attempts of trying this alternative, I thought may be it will work after regular market hours. Same problem after hours too. The code from other sites came to my phone instantaneously which means it is not AT&T screwing up.
I waited for another 30 minutes and tried again and I received the security code. So, I logged in and immediately disabled the two factor authentication. Then I logged out to make sure I can log back in without two factor authentication. The first screen that came up required me to signup for the two factor authentication service and did not allow me to bypass. So, begrudgingly I signed up again and provided my telephone number to send the code. The screen immediately changed to "Sorry, we are having technical difficulties, please contact customer service (hyperlinked) but no tel number provided. So, I clicked on the hyperlink and the screen looped back to signing up for the two factor authentication. I repeated the process with the same result.
With the CPFB gone, there is no incentive for Vanguard to get better.
Hopefully, you keep Vanguard telephone number in your notes. I got lucky I had it in my notes.
I called them and persisted on speaking with a human who tried for the last 15 minutes to disable the two factor authentication and has now put me on hold to get hold of someone else to do the job and then I got disconnected.
Talking to a second Rep who helped with a solution.
A Solution: download the Vanguard App and set up to login to your account through the App using face ID. After that when you try to login from your computer, in addition to receiving codes to your phone, you also have a choice to authenticate through your mobile Vanguard App which worked well. When you set up login through the mobile App the first time, you still need to receive a code to your phone that one time. Luckily, I did receive the code that time. I will not need to receive codes to my phone in the future.

Gosh, why would Dump want to remove consumer protections????
https://www.thedailybeast.com/more-than-800k-have-lost-2b-on-trumps-meme-coin/
"President Donald Trump’s cryptocurrency, called $Trump, has cost investors billions. Trump announced the launch of his meme coin—a type of cryptocurrency that features Internet memes or celebrity mascots—just three days before his inauguration. [... ]Meanwhile, the Trumps have raked in over $100 million in trading fees as Trump makes moves to curb government efforts to regulate cryptocurrencies.
“The president is participating in shady crypto schemes that harm investors while at the same time appointing financial regulators who will roll back protections for victims and who may insulate him and his family from enforcement,” Corey Frayer, who recently left his job as a crypto adviser to the Securities and Exchange Commission, told the New York Times."

Danielle R. Sassoon, the US attorney who prosecuted Sam Bankman-Fried for fraud involving the cryptocurrency exchange FTX, just resigned as interim head of the SDNY office. Though not because Trump didn't like her (he had just named her interim head), nor because of a lack of the "right" credentials (she had clerked for Scalia and is a member of the Federalist Society).
Rather because she refused to drop the prosecution against (soon to be former?) Mayor Adams.
https://www.nytimes.com/2025/02/13/nyregion/danielle-sassoon-quit-eric-adams.html

Published October, 2024. Author: John Sindreu
“The performance record isn’t great. Over the past 15 years, these vehicles have delivered an average annual return of 12.4% in U.S. blue-chip stocks, compared with 13.5% for their passive brethren, or 12.6% for active open-ended mutual funds. Fees, which average 0.31% for active ETFs and 0.07% for their passive counterparts, add to the performance drag.”
MSN Link (originally WSJ)

I have seen that large redemptions can be in-kind (although few mutual funds do it), but not for purchases.
I don't see any advantage for regular funds except saving a selling step and may be avoiding 1-2 days out of the market.
But there are 351-ETFs that offer tax-advantages for doing this.
Link https://ybbpersonalfinance.proboards.com/thread/762/351-exchange-etfs

AAII Sentiment Survey, 2/12/25
BEARISH remained the top sentiment (47.3%, high) & neutral remained the bottom sentiment (24.3%, below average); bullish remained the middle sentiment (28.4%, below average); Bull-Bear Spread was -18.9% (very low). Investor concerns: Budget, debt, inflation, the Fed, dollar, geopolitical, Russia-Ukraine (155+ weeks), Israel-Hamas (67+ weeks; cease fire). For the Survey week (Th-Wed), stocks down, bonds down, oil up, gold up, dollar up. NYSE %Above 50-dMA 48.78% (positive). CPI +3%, core CPI +3.3%; Fed target +2% average. #AAII #Sentiment #Markets
https://ybbpersonalfinance.proboards.com/post/1880/thread

On tariff news, CLF spiked Monday intra-day to $12+ and I sold my modest stake. Jim Liebenthal said on CNBC said he was not a seller. Today the stock dropped considerably, ending up at $10.56.

Thanks.
FYI - if your TD account was transitioned over to Schwab, I am told by Schwab rep that both of your consolidated 1099s will appear on the 1099 Dashboard under the new Schwab account number (and not in a separate, clearly identified subsection).
My dashboard says I will receive them on Feb 28.
Has anyone received their’s.

An update. The above information is incorrect. (Now you know why I keep checking with you guys about answers I receive from brokerage Reps.)
If your TD account was transitioned over to Schwab, under the 1099 Dashboard section (in the Statements and Tax Forms tab) the TD 1099s will appear under a separate heading "TD Ameritrade Tax Forms" below the group of Schwab 1099s which would be under "Charles Schwab Brokerage Tax Forms." If you have a few accounts in the Dashboard, you may have to scroll down a bit to get to the TD Ameritrade Tax Forms sub section (right above the Statements and Documents section). (In my linked accounts, the TD Ameritrade Tax Forms sub section or heading was not there as of yesterday, which prompted me to call Schwab yesterday to find out how I would locate the TD 1099s when they become available.)
You can also get to all your tax forms by going to the Statements and Documents section (make sure the Tax Forms option is selected). However, know that this feature can be glitchy sometimes and may not display properly (like right now it shows zero documents for me but when I started drafting this post, it was fully populated). My suggestion is to use 1099 Dashboard as your primary access for 1099s.
Yesterday, when I spoke with the Rep, I suggested to him that they put all the TD tax forms in a separate subsection but he insisted it is too late for that suggestion and that for each account, TD 1099 will be labeled with TDA and placed below the Schwab 1099 (which does not have a Schwab label and that is how you know what is available). I can not imagine Schwab redesigned the webpage presentation overnight based on my suggestion - may be other customers too already made similar suggestions or the Rep I spoke with was simply wrong. I must say Schwab, as a company, has acted on more of my suggestions than all other financial institutions combined. TDA made Schwab a better company for me and I am happy with the merger /acquisition.
P.S.: my legacy Schwab account 1099 was available on Jan 24. My transitioned TD 1099 became available today. My transitioned Schwab 1099 is still pending. For the accounts I baby sit, all the legacy and transitioned 1099s became available today. I personally am not in a hurry to get the 1099s as I would rather Schwab does not have to issue Corrected forms. Only letting the forum members know that many of the previously "available 2/28/2025" tax forms already became available. So, keep checking your account if you are anxious to get your tax return going.
(Not necessarily useful information to this post - As much as I love the new Schwab, one thing I would like Schwab Reps to learn is to assess the customer's level of sophistication before opening their mouth to make the conversation productive (short and sweet) - TDA Reps were very good at this and I could till today tell which Schwab Rep is a legacy TDA Rep and which one was hired by Schwab.)

beat him by a month

Not even close.
Bowley is a trader that has been trading in/out and owning leading categories and single stocks. Someone who listens to him can do almost nothing if the S&P 500 is doing OK or use his categories/stock ideas. He states his opinion every week on where the markets are and what they will likely do.
Marks is all about generic stuff, not specifics, and hardly ever what to do NOW.

Inflation is the delta to new price levels. When inflation "inflates prices", prices of things often remain at these new price levels until the next round of inflation deltas prices higher.
The 70's saw inflation step up over and over again. That was difficult on the economy (and the people who operated within it).
Longer term it's these new sticky "higher price levels" we have to contend with and struggle to afford.
Workers:
Wage inflation can help us keep pace with these new higher prices, but technology (and it's deflationary efficiencies) can negatively impact jobs and wages which might be the very thing 25- 65 year old workers don't need to help them keep pace with inflation.
Seniors:
Seniors often have nothing but there nest egg to crack over inflation (higher prices). Taking risk in the market or owning/renting real estate is challenging for senior, but may be some of their best options to fight inflation.

The Federal Reserve’s preferred inflation gauge moved even higher in December, driven largely by rising energy prices as well as food. However, a closely watched measurement of underlying inflation trends indicated some progress in the fight to rein in price hikes.
The Personal Consumption Expenditures price index rose 2.6% in December from the year before, heating up from November’s 2.4% increase, according to new Commerce Department data released Friday.
On a monthly basis, prices rose 0.3% as compared to 0.1% in November.

https://cnn.com/2025/01/31/economy/us-pce-inflation-consumer-spending-december/index.html#:~:text=The%20Federal%20Reserve's%20preferred%20inflation,to%20rein%20in%20price%20hikes.
Food price is rising in our area with eggs at $10/dozen, and the supply is limited. FED will likely to keep the rate high and longer through 2025.

Brokerages use the IRS Method, so the info is also useful for tax-loss harvesting (TLH). When they also provide account return info, they do it in the way investors would calculate TR. I don't see why one would bother going through extra steps @linter mentioned to mess with the brokerage set up.
As an example, suppose you bought a fund for $100, it paid $5 in distribution that you reinvested, and its price after 12 months was $102.
The IRS Method would add $5 distribution to your cost basis (because you will be paying tax on that), so your new cost basis is $105 and your potential loss on sale would be 102/105 = 0.9714, or -2.86%. This is NOT your total-return (TR) but indicates your potential tax-loss.
But as an investor, your potential gain on sale would be 102/100 = 1.02, or +2%. That's more like your TR.
As mentioned previously, M* has a setting for both ways, while brokerages use the IRS Method by default.

1099 delays are most likely due to how long it takes the funds/companies you hold in an account take to report. So the fact that someone else got a form from your brokerage means little. They may not have anything their account that reports slowly.
For example, I received a 1099 for one brokerage account at Fidelity on Jan 25th. I didn't receive a 1099 for another Fidelity brokerage account until Feb 8th. Fidelity said that it was waiting on info from a money market fund in that account. A Fidelity money market fund!

The Week in Charts (02/12/25)
The State of the Markets, including...
00:00 Intro
00:16 Topics
00:29 Stocks
09:41 Free Wealth Path Analysis
10:28 Bonds/Fed
16:37 Real Estate/Housing
20:50 Commodities
24:19 Currencies
26:50 Crypto
31:08 Intermarket
33:56 Economy
Video
Blog

relatedly:
Springtime for Scammers
Financial predation now has friends in high places
Paul Krugman
Feb 11
Just over two years ago Wells Fargo agreed to pay $3.7 billion — $1.7 billion in penalties and $2 billion in damages — to the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau. As the New York Times report put it, the payments were
to settle claims that it engaged in an array of banking violations over the last decade that harmed millions of consumers
The Times went on to explain:
The consumer protection bureau said Wells Fargo did not record customer payments on home and auto loans properly, wrongfully repossessed some borrowers’ cars and homes and charged overdraft fees even when customers had enough money to cover purchases they made with their bank cards.
This settlement followed earlier scandals at Wells Fargo, notably the “cross-selling scandal” in which, among other things, bank employees opened as many as 2 million accounts in customers’ names without their authorization. Altogether the bank has paid $6.2 billion in penalties since 2016.
Overall, according to Sen. Elizabeth Warren, who conceived of CFPB, the bureau “has returned over $21 billion to families cheated by Wall Street.”
But now the agency that won those settlements has been effectively abolished. On Monday Russell Vought, the architect of Project 2025, the new director of the Office of Management and Budget and now CFPB’s acting head, sent the email above to all of the agency’s staff telling them to stay away from the office and do no work.
What’s this about? Let’s start by asking why CFPB was created.
The truth is that defending oneself against financial fraud is hard work. Do you carefully go through your bank statement every month, looking for possible unjustified fees? I know a few people who do, but most of us have too much else going on in our lives. When you take out a car loan, or invest for your retirement, do you go over the fine print with a magnifying glass, making sure you understand everything? Probably not. People have children to raise, jobs to do, lives to live. Cognitive overload is a real thing, and it’s worse the further down the income scale you go — the cognitive burden of poverty has been extensively documented.
So what we do, most of the time, is trust financial institutions to be relatively honest, if only to protect their reputations. And we expect government regulators to step in when financial players abuse that trust.
What we learned in the aftermath of the 2008 financial crisis was that much of this trust had been misplaced. Corporate cultures in the financial industry came to prioritize short-run profits over long-term reputation. Deregulation and lax regulation permitted widespread abuses. Most notably, the boom in subprime lending led to many families being sold financial products they didn’t understand, with lower-income borrowers receiving the worst treatment. As the late Edward Gramlich, a Federal Reserve official who tried in vain to warn his colleagues about the dangers, wrote:
Why are the most risky loan products sold to the least sophisticated borrowers? The question answers itself — the least sophisticated borrowers are probably duped into taking these products.
But why create a new agency to limit these abuses? Don’t we already have bank regulators? Yes, but these regulators are primarily focused on securing the stability of the financial system. Protecting consumers from fraud is at best an afterthought.
Warren’s insight was that protecting consumers required creating a separate agency with its own institutional imperatives. And she was right: By any reasonable standard, CFPB has been an outstanding success story.
Why, then, rush to shutter the agency? By the way, this action, like much of what the Trump administration is doing, is almost surely illegal. It probably also won’t surprise you to learn that DOGE appears to have illegally been given access to much of the agency’s data.
Well, it’s illuminating to read the section on abolishing CFPB in Project 2025’s Mandate for Leadership. According to the Mandate,
the agency has been assailed by critics as a shakedown mechanism to provide unaccountable funding to leftist nonprofits
Notice the careful wording: The document doesn’t assert that CFPB actually is a “shakedown mechanism” (which might have led to a lawsuit) but merely that “critics” have made that accusation. And if you follow the footnotes, the assault by critics appears to consist solely of three opinion pieces, one in the New York Post, one in the Wall Street Journal and one in Investors’ Business Daily.
Incidentally, that Investors’ Business Daily article accuses CFPB of funneling money to “radical Acorn-style pressure groups.” Does anyone not deeply mired in the fever swamps of right-wing conspiracy theory even remember what Acorn — a political association that was disbanded in 2010 — was?
Overall, Project 2025’s attack on the CFPB bears a family resemblance to Elon Musk’s claim that USAID is a “viper’s nest of radical-left Marxists who hate America.” It’s a bit milder, but equally absurd, and is clearly not the real reason for killing the agency.
So what is the real reason? It seems fairly obvious. CFPB was created to protect Americans from financial predation, and has done a very good job of doing so. But now we have government of, by and for financial predators. Trump has famously left behind a trail of bankruptcies and unpaid contractors, and is furiously grifting even now. Musk has faced multiple lawsuits from vendors and former employees over unpaid debts.
And let’s not forget that crypto, which has gained a lot of influence with this administration, has yet to find a real-world use case other than money laundering.
So the best way to explain the sudden closure of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, as I see it, is as part of an effort to make predatory finance great again.