@MikwW - from MT Newswire
05:19 PM EDT, 05/02/2024 (MT Newswires) -- Apple ( AAPL ) late Thursday reported a surprise increase in fiscal second-quarter earnings despite a slowdown in iPhone sales while the technology giant announced additional stock repurchase authorization of up to $110 billion.
Per-share earnings rose to $1.53 for the quarter ended March 30 from $1.52 a year earlier, compared with the GAAP consensus on Capital IQ for the metric to fall to $1.51. Net sales fell 4% to $90.75 billion, but came in ahead of Wall Street's $90.45 billion view.
Shares were up 7.5% in after-hours trading Thursday.
The company's additional $110 billion buyback plan reflects "confidence in Apple's ( AAPL ) future and the value we see in our stock," Maestri said.
Apple ( AAPL ) raised its quarterly cash dividend by 4% to $0.25 per share, payable May 16 to shareholders of record on May 13.
Price: 185.57, Change: +12.54, Percent Change: +7.25

From davidrmoran's post:
"This order has potential for volatile performance and/or significant tracking error and may have higher expense ratios, lower liquidity or higher risk of fund closure than other similar funds in the same peer group."
It's interesting that Merrill does not permit trading QLTY on its platform.
1) GQETX (similar to QLTY but includes foreign equities) had lower volatility and max. drawdowns
than the S&P 500 since its inception on 02/06/2004.
2) The QLTY expense ratio is 0.50% - not the cheapest but not egregious either.
3) The Top 10 holdings of QLTY as of 03/31/2024 are listed below.
These are mostly large, well-known companies with high liquidity.
Microsoft Corp Information Technology
Oracle Corp Information Technology
Meta Platforms Inc Communication Services
Alphabet Inc Communication Services
UnitedHealth Group Inc Health Care
Johnson & Johnson Health Care
Lam Research Corp Information Technology
General Electric Co Industrials
KLA Corp Information Technology
Texas Instruments Inc
4) Total assets for QLTY were $440 million as of 03/31/2024.
I don't think there is a high risk of fund closure due to low asset levels.

OK by me. Up 5.2% since purchase.

I'm sorry some of you have had poor experiences with Vanguard. Our experiences have been exactly the opposite. We have had accounts with Vanguard for 30+ years and have received excellent support. I don't want newbies reading this thread to think Vanguard is uniformly bad. They deliver excellent products for extremely competitive prices. Their fee structure may be designed to discourage millions of tiny little accounts, but those are the bane of any mutual fund / etf company.

Agree, we do not want any newbies reading this thread to be misdirected.
I stayed away from participating on this and other threads discussing about Vanguard's negative virtues but your post prompted me to share my experience. I have a 7 figure account with Vanguard, which is my first investment account opened 30 years ago. While all brokerages' service quality has dropped since beginning of Covid, many are slowly recovering. Vanguard service quality stunk for more than 5 years and does not show any promise of abating. Rich folk do not care about costs of their investments but they care about total returns and quality of service is why they put their money in venture capital, private equity, and other structured products. Costs are important to the tiny investors that presumably (according to you) Vanguard is trying to restrict / kick out. I do not mind paying to encourage the tiny investor. Over the years, I sent many written suggestions to Vanguard to improve their service quality and then decided to keep my silence. Vanguard has a culture problem and has become the Boeing of investment firms.
Please see my previous post for what I am doing now.

@yogibb and @msf, thanks for your comments.
I am not buying I bond either. The $10K limit per year is too small for us, including the $2.5K from tax refund. The other challenge is navigating through TreasuryDirect that requires lots of patience. Will hold what we have until they reach 5 years.
Since the yield curve remains inverted, we continue to buy T bill every month as part of a ladder in our taxable account. USFR is a good vehicle I learned from this board. The yields are very competitive to I bond. Moreover, they can be bought and sold readily at many brokerages.

Robert Berger at X/Twitter.
https://youtu.be/QLBZoqTtQZ4

Good analysis by Robert Berger.
Paraphrasing here:
Flagship client used to mean something. Today it doesn't mean as much.
And now you add fees and all of this is happening and I ask you what new services or features or great website user experience or mobile app user experience have they added? Not much at all.
Every announcement coming out of Vanguard is either removing features or services making them less desirable or adding fees.
I don't know. Someone in PR at Vanguard needs to tell manangement hey how about some good news please.
Why don't we talk about what we're going to do for our customers rather than what we're going to charge them and what we're going to take away?
Having your accounts at Vanguard is becoming less and less appealing by the day.

It's not 'Admiral' status that restricts transfer, but some rule regarding certain active managed funds such as some by Primecap.
Odds are that if purchases of those have restrictions other than a min amt floor, transfers are prohibited. These are the golden handcuffs.
Speaking of guessing their rules, Vanguard has never published rules for ADR fees by their custodial bank, but looks like they themselves now want an explicit cut. I remember once getting a fixed fee of $25 on a $40 special dividend.
(tax with-held is separate)
I wonder if any vanguard employees ever lurk on MFO, as they have on bogleheads.

Robert Berger at X/Twitter.
https://youtu.be/QLBZoqTtQZ4

Comparison should be with 5-yr T-Note (4.64%) and 5-yr TIPS (2.25% + inflation).
I suppose that's as good a reference as any. I can infer the rationale for five years - that after five years one can cash out an I bond w/o penalty. But an argument can be made for comparing with 30 year T-bonds. They, like I-bonds, have a rate locked for 30 years.
I view I-bonds as cash, much as one might view a 5 year CD with a 90 day early withdrawal penalty as cash. No interest rate risk. And that may be the biggest flaw in comparing I-bonds with 30 year T-bonds. The latter is extremely sensitive to interest rates.
At current rates, one will do better with a five year TIPS (2.25% + inflation) vs an I-bond cashed out after five years (1.3% + inflation). That's true (though a closer call) after accounting for the fact that you'll pay taxes annually on the TIPS, bleeding returns. I-bonds are tax deferred until you cash out.
(To do an apples-to-apples comparison, I'm looking at taxable accounts, since I-bonds can't be held in tax-sheltered accounts.)
It's the classic trade-off. Certainty vs. expected return. In normal environments, yield goes up as the length of the debt instrument increases. I bonds are like cash, while Treasuries, especially multi-year or multi-decade ones, have uncertain mark-to-market (cash out) value.
And I-bonds have no reinvestment risk (risk of reinvesting divs after rates drop). With I-bond's greater certainty (ability to cash out w/o loss, no reinvestment risk) and more favorable tax treatment (deferred), they should normally yield less than Treasuries.
As I noted in the OP, one can hold and still improve one's position by swapping older, lower fixed-rate I-bonds for new, 1.3% fixed-rate issues. Though there is a tax cost in cashing out those old I-bonds.

Most incoming brokerages if you ask, will refund a transfer fee. Still Vanguard imho has become unfriendly to the small investor (under 5 million) in many ways. Their funds are available at other brokerages (Firstrade, Allyy invest, Etrade for example) NTF so no one has to be beholden to them.

@Sven, I am not buying more I-Bonds, but am holding the ones I have.
Comparison should be with 5-yr T-Note (4.64%) and 5-yr TIPS (2.25% + inflation).
For maturing T-Bills, also consider Treasury FRN USFR; FRNs reset (variable) rates weekly to 3-mo T-Bill auctions (typically, Mondays).

AAII Sentiment Survey, 5/1/24
FLIP-FLOP: Bullish became the top sentiment (38.5%, above average) & neutral became the bottom sentiment (29.0%, below average); bearish became the middle sentiment (32.5%, above average); Bull-Bear Spread was +6.0% (average). Investor concerns: Elections, budget, inflation, economy, the Fed, dollar, Russia-Ukraine (114+ weeks), Israel-Hamas (29+ weeks), geopolitical. For the Survey week (Th-Wed), stocks down, bonds up, oil down, gold down, dollar flat. FOMC held rates; hikes unlikely. QT reduced from Jun 1 to -$60 b/mo (vs -$95 b/mo now). #AAII #Sentiment #Markets
https://ybbpersonalfinance.proboards.com/post/1458/thread

ADR? Yes, In my experience. TRP took 25% of a dividend, but the explanation was that it was withheld "at the source." Meaning the Norway Tax Authority. b>NHYDY. Yes, a partial or full refund was available. But you'll have to register with the Tax Authority in order to do it. TRP did not charge a fee. But they do not manage their own trades. They "clear" through Pershing.
Schwab tells me a different ADR (HQ in Luxembourg) will have 15% of dividends withheld by the foreign entity. As long as the stock makes me money, I'm willing to eat that much. TS....And I've been advised that the bank which oversees that ADR might charge a fee. We'll see about that, and whether or not it's a deal-breaker.

@BaluBalu, bought at Schwab, yesterday in the A.M. It is not on the list this morning. .

Thanks. Last year I bought a few agencies and all those got called after rates bottomed in Dec / Jan. Fidelity is currently showing 6.1% for a first settlement on 5/15 and maturing in 2029.
Did you always get the new agencies at par or they charged a premium? At Fidelity there is no bid or ask price. So, you only know coupon when you submit an order for a settlement that is 2 weeks away and the order money is tied up until then, at least in MM at Fidelity- not sure if you have to move the order money to cash at Schwab.

Thanks.
I get that the principal policy tool is FF funds rates and not the balance sheet but could you please remind the forum why the Fed chose to reduce QT, rather than drop an equivalent FF rate (may be 0.25%)? They may have discussed this in the last minutes, presser or in some other avenue.
(IMO, the repeated verbal expression of concern for lower economic segment (least afford to weather inflation and economic effects of tighter monetary policy) is a lip service when easing balance sheet and not the FF rate.)

I had VWIAX at VG, but moved it to my existing Schwab account around 2015. I sold it last fall and have no VG holdings. From all the negative comments I hear online, I'll probably never have any again.

Post-Conference Notes by YBB
Rates are maintained - fed funds 5.25-5.50%, bank reserves rate 5.4%, discount rate 5.5%. Rate hike(s) unlikely, but may hold rates as long as necessary. Need more confidence in inflation data before rate cuts. Inflation target remains +2% average.
Treasury QT will be reduced from 6/1/24 to -$25 billion/mo (vs -$60 billion/mo now), but MBS QT will remain at -$35 billion/mo; total QT from 6/1/24 will be -$60 billion/mo (vs -$95 billion/mo now).
The Fed policy is restrictive (despite real rates < inflation rate or GDP growth). Stagflation fears are unreasonable.
Economy is strong. Weak Q1 GDP growth may be a fluke. Some differences between the government and private data are normal as there are leads and lags. For example, the market-rents lead the rolling-rents.
Labor market remains strong, but wage growth has moderated. The labor pool has increased due to higher labor-participation rates and immigration. This has contributed to both supply and demand side.
Consumers see high prices, loan rates and mortgage rates. But significant pain or dislocations aren't expected.
Divergent central bank policies aren't a concern because the economic conditions are different. Also, no turmoil is seen in the EMs. Discussions on Basel III are ongoing.
The FOMC achieves consensus through discussions despite the impression created by many open-mouths of the FOMC.
A customary denial - the Fed doesn't account for politics or elections.
https://ybbpersonalfinance.proboards.com/post/1456/thread

FOMC Statement, 5/1/24
https://www.federalreserve.gov/newsevents/pressreleases/monetary20240501a.htm

MINT sure has done nicely the last year (~6.5%) and ytd. For simplicity, speaking of which, if with slightly lower returns, I use only FZDXX at Fido and FIGXX at ML, the latter of which outperforms there for some reason (with highish ER, no less), ~5-1/4% the last year.

@chang Would they really have no yearly fee for this plan of yours?. If not how long will it last? I closed my 40 plus year Vanguard account to E-trade last year because of all the nardly issues previously noted on the board. So that move was timely and saved me the $100. What really got my gourd was the $25/ yearly fee I paid for mailed statements even with a multi 6 figure account. I have no regrets at all and the customer service is now much ,much better