Dec 21st Episode:

First Eagle Global Fund’s Matthew McLennan is finding value in unexpected places and holding gold for stability in an uncertain world.

https://wealthtrack.com/investing-in-a-high-risk-world/

I’d disagree that gold provides “stability.” 50% can lob-off the price of the metal in a matter of months. There have been 3-year stretches in our lifetimes during which miners have tanked 70% or more. And they call that ”stability”?
True - if man manages to annihilate himself gold would soar in value. But who would want spend it - and whatfor?

Thanks @AndyJ for finding a current (less than 1 day old) write about this legislation. This article clears the confusion about the bill going back to the House for another vote. I wasn't able to finish viewing C-SPAN as to what took place.
We watched Gabriella Miller speak (on MSNBC) about her legislation, which I recall had 5 separate pieces. She had a large face slap for awhile, when this was removed. She doesn't operate a 'power house' organization for this; but more of a low profile, grass roots type of operation doing battle against the LARGE, opposition money.

ADD: A reported gauge monitored by the FED, the PCE (Personal Consumption Expenditures) slowed somewhat, may have helped support positive pricing on Friday for bond NAVs, via lower yields.
ADD #2: MANY BOND funds had distributions this week, which should be reflected in this weeks numbers, as provided by their sources.
ADD #3: This is directed towards possibilities into the new government period arriving January 20, and monetary/fiscal actions.
--- Bond vigilantes are investors who sell government bonds or threaten to do so to force policy changes and discipline excessive government spending:
--- Explanation
Bond vigilantes use their market power to drive up borrowing costs for the government. This can happen when they protest against expansionary monetary or fiscal policy.
--- Origin
The term was coined by economist Ed Yardeni in the 1980s to describe traders who sold Treasury bonds to protest Federal Reserve policies that were considered too inflationary.
--- Example
In the "Great Bond Massacre" from 1993 to 1994, US 10-year yields increased from 5.2% to over 8% due to concerns about federal spending. The Clinton administration and Congress responded by reducing the deficit, and 10-year yields dropped to around 4% by 1998.
NOTE:

My intention, at this time; is to present the data for the selected bond sectors, as listed; through the end of the year (2024). This 'end date' will take us through the U.S. elections period, pending actions/legislation dependent upon the election results, pending Federal Reserve actions and market movers trying to 'guess' future directions of the U.S. economy. As important during this period, are any number of global circumstances that may take a path that is not expected; and/or 'new' circumstances. In the 'cooking pot' we currently have the big ingredients of the middle east and also, how much damage Ukraine may inflict upon Russia and the response.

FIRST: NOTHING TO ADD/ALTER regarding 'Never-Never Land'. The pre-DC world shift of January, 2025 remains 'interesting' at this time! We're in a 'Never-Never Land' (events you never imagined) of potential large impacts upon various economic functions emanating from a central government in the coming months and years. What comes next for the investing world of bonds is not yet known or fully understood, except for those have a better guessing system than I. I can only watch and listen a little bit and let the numbers try to bring forth meaningful directions.
W/E December 20 , 2024. Bond NAV's Another HEAD SLAP for most + distributions
--- 'Course, all the bond sectors in the list find their reasons for price movements, and we find most bond sectors HAD ANOTHER HEAD SLAP for this week's pricing. The majority of bond sectors were down all day, with FRIDAY being the exception day. All durations pricing were down every day of the week. So, depending on where you're 'hanging' your bond market monies, the pricing this week, was mostly DOWN. The MINT etf, to the best of my recall, has maintained a positive price for the year, each and every week; and this remains for this week.
A few numbers for your viewing pleasure.
NEXT:
*** UST yields chart, 6 month - 30 year. This chart is active and will display a 6 month time frame going forward to a future date. Place/hover the mouse pointer anywhere on a line to display the date and yield for that date. The percent to the right side is the percentage change in the yield from the chart beginning date for a particular item. You may also 'right click' on the 126 days at the chart bottom to change a 'time frame' from a drop down menu. Hopefully, the line graph also lets you view the 'yield curve' in a different fashion, for the longer duration issues, at this time. Save the page to your own device for future reference. NOTE: take a peek at the right side of this graph to find the yield swings of the past week, and for the current yields for the last business day.
For the WEEK/YTD, NAV price changes, December 16 - December 20, 2024
***** This week (Friday), FZDXX, MM yield continues to move with Fed funds/repo/SOFR rates; and ended the week at 4.37% yield (Unchanged for the week). Fidelity's MM's continue to maintain decent yields, as is presumed with other vendors similar MM's. Theoretically, a new yield bottom is in place, until the next FED action. SO, one is still obtaining a decent MM yield. MOST MM's found a negative .05 - .07% basis change in yield for the week.
--- AGG = -.66% / +1.37% (I-Shares Core bond), a benchmark, (AAA-BBB holdings)
--- MINT = +.08% / +5.77% (PIMCO Enhanced short maturity, AAA-BBB rated)
--- SHY = -.04% / +3.66 % (UST 1-3 yr bills)
--- IEI = -.45% / +1.63% (UST 3-7 yr notes/bonds)
--- IEF = -.82% / -.46% (UST 7-10 yr bonds)
--- TIP = -1.00% / +1.64% (UST Tips, 3-10 yrs duration, some 20+ yr duration)
--- VTIP = -.37% / +4.50% (Vanguard Short-Term Infl-Prot Secs ETF)
--- STPZ = -.45% / +4.07% (UST, short duration TIPs bonds, PIMCO)
--- LTPZ = -2.24% / -4.31% (UST, long duration TIPs bonds, PIMCO)
--- TLT = -1.66% / -7.03% (I Shares 20+ Yr UST Bond
--- EDV = -2.31% / -11.54% (UST Vanguard extended duration bonds)
--- ZROZ = -2.69% / -14.46% (UST., AAA, long duration zero coupon bonds, PIMCO
--- TBT = +3.69% / +24.74% (ProShares UltraShort 20+ Year Treasury (about 23 holdings)
--- TMF = -5.66% / -33.51% (Direxion Daily 20+ Yr Trsy Bull 3X ETF (about a 2x version of EDV etf)
*** Additional important bond sectors, for reference:
--- BAGIX = -.72% / +1.95% Baird Aggregate Bond Fund (active managed, plain vanilla, high quality bond fund)
--- USFR = +.12% / +5.31% (WisdomTree Floating Rate Treasury)
--- LQD = -1.25% / +.99% (I Shares IG, corp. bonds)
--- MBB = -.59% / +1.29% (I-Shares Mortgage Backed Bonds)
--- BKLN = -.24% / +7.84% (Invesco Senior Loan, Corp. rated BB & lower)
--- HYG = -.53% / +7.87 % (I Shares High Yield bonds, proxy ETF)
--- HYD = -1.40%/+3.49% (VanEck HY Muni)
--- MUB = -.73% /+.93% (I Shares, National Muni Bond)
--- EMB = -1.21%/+5.85% (I Shares, USD, Emerging Markets Bond)
--- CWB = -2.16% / +11.59% (SPDR Bloomberg Convertible Securities)
--- PFF = -.88% / +7.96% (I Shares, Preferred & Income Securities)
--- FZDXX = 4.37% yield (7 day), Fidelity Premium MM fund
*** FZDXX yield was .11%, April,2022. (For reference to current date)
Comments and corrections, please.
Remain curious,
Catch

Rep Mike Levine from California has a copy of a leaked slide from House GOP planning $2.5 Trillion cuts in " mandatory spending" in Medicare, Veteran's benefits, food stamps, school lunches etc to fund Trumps Tax cuts. BTW did you know the 2017 changes in tax code benefiting real estate do not expire, like most of the rest of the law ?
I wonder how parents of children with cancer felt about the GOP trying to remove additional funding for childhood cancer research?
Hope none of you have a pre-existing condition if GOP cancels prohibition of pre-existing condition coverage
Unfortunately a lot, a lot, of people are going to suffer badly

Thei would be good for all Americans. The market was tracking closely as the stopgap bill went through its ups and downs.
https://npr.org/2024/12/20/nx-s1-5235273/government-shutdown-disaster-aid-trump-debt-ceiling

Well …the current issue (12/23/24) doesn’t have much to offer.
Cover Story ”Shopping Addiction” Really?
Slim pickings inside this week.
- The O’Brien piece on preparing your portfolio for 2025 is downright insulting:
“Rather than plotting big moves based on tea leaves, make sure your mix of stocks and bonds is still aligned with your goals. Stocks’ big run-up means you could have a higher equity allocation than you bargained for, especially if you didn’t make any tweaks after the S&P 500’s 24% gain in 2023.”
Gosh - You’d think that would be covered somewhere in a college freshman econ class, if not a high school investment club.
- One worthwhile story touts (undervalued / under appreciated) value stocks which are poised to outperform next year. Where have I heard that before?
- NVIDA’s on hard times (their phrase - ”dead in the water”) being down 15% from its high. My heart goes out to those who bought two years ago.
- And Forsyth expects one of 3 possible interest rate scenarios for 2025: Good, Bad or Ugly. Take that to the bank folks.

Call Protected CDs of 1-5-yr maturities of just under effective yields of 4.3% are currently available on Fido's Secondary Issues market. To discerning CD buyers, the CP CD buying scale was recently tipped to Secondary Issues being preferable many times to New Issues.
FWIW, both of our recent CP CD BUYs and all 3 of same in accounts we manage were BOT on the Fido Secondary Issues market, and all 5 were slightly better BUYs than those available as New Issues. Smallish discounts, but still, discounts, are back. In markets where every interest penny counts, we always take the free ones. Well, OK, not totally free. Scoping Secondary Issues takes a few minutes!

@Sven, for FRN funds (USFR, TFLO), approx yield = 4.296% + spread - ER.
I am sticking with USFR too.

One can get better yields with Treasury only MMFs, but only through a limited number of brokerages (those offering access to institutional class shares). It's a tradeoff - more work to access but easier bookkeeping (no cap gains, wash sales, etc. with MMFs).
Merrill Edge offers FSIXX (4.40% 7 day yield, 4.49% APY, in 2023 94.89% state tax exempt) and UTIXX (4.39% 7 day yield, 4.49% APY, in 2023 99.25% state tax exempt) with $1 mins.
WellsTrade has similar offerings (including a slightly better share class of the Fidelity fund, FRSXX) with no mins.

Short term yields seem to have anticipated the Fed move. The 1 month yield dropped significantly between Dec 2 (4.75%) and Dec 12 (4.43%), but has been relatively flat since (now 4.43%).
OTOH, the 2 and 10 year rates started their most recent rise on Dec 6 (4.10% and 4.15% respectively) and have continued to rise to and through the Fed rate increase (now yielding 4.30% and 4.52%). Perhaps anticipating higher inflation?
Daily yield table, Dec 2024
One approach is not to be too greedy. If one is satisfied with 4.3% for three years, one can go with that and not look back.
Another approach is to go short term (giving up almost no yield at the moment), with the hope that longer term rates won't reverse course and drop. If that plays out and short term rates resume falling, one can switch horses (to multi-year bonds/CDs) and pick up the same (or better) rates as now.
This requires keeping a closer eye on rates and the economy so as not to get caught flat footed if rates drop across all maturities.
2- and 10-year treasury yields (since July)

2- and 10-year treasury yields compared with 1-month treasury yield (since July)

Junk still looks good. Also leveraged loans, bank loans. Stay very short on duration.

Ironically these higher risk bonds did much better than the safer investment grade bonds. As long as labor market stays healthy one can expect this trend continues in 2025, until inflation ticks upward. What would Powell do when fewer cuts are anticipated in 2025 ? Or will he kicks the can down the road for the next FED ?

Speaking of Schwab, I just purchased a Treasury (91282CAY7) paying 4.338 out to 11/30/27. There's also a fair number of similar offerings there on Schwab.
The purchase was financed by selling an equivalent amount of SUTXX, which was 4.92% on 9/30/24, but is now down to 4.39% and seems to be heading lower. Trying to maximize income is a fine balance between SUTXX which is presently paying a bit more (but is not guaranteed to continue that), and Treasury/CD, which is presently paying a bit less (but is guaranteed to maturity.)
Notes:
• The SUTXX percentages are 7-day yields at the times noted.
• Our Fixed Income ladder is now 52% Treasury and 48% CDs, extending out to January 2028.
• Fixed Income is now 42% of total income; MMKT Income is 58%.

4.3% nonCallable Cds have virtually disappeared for now. Doubtful they will reappear anytime soon. I had a Bank CD mature, and I decided to reinvest it back into a 12month CD at the same bank, at 4%. Schwab brokerage CDs do not look very attractive at all, so I am inclined to just place any maturing brokerage CDs into MM funds for now. You can get callable CDs at Schwab for about 4.5%, with the first call date being in about 6 months

Exited SOBO (spinoff from TRP) as part of EOY portfolio rejiggering.
Bought 250 NVO on the massive plunge today. Will be a candidate to add on lower prices over time.

Nice posts by @Anna. As her citations show, (a) without some adjustment, workers with some income from non-covered jobs will receive an unfair windfall, and (b) the formula used to make this adjustment (the best that could be done at the time it was enacted) has its own inequities built in.
The solution, as seen in proposals across the political spectrum, is to fix the formula.
(1) Add up all the earnings (not just covered earnings),
(2) calculate the percentage to be paid in SS benefits, and
(3) apply that percentage to the amount of covered earnings.
This is the same way states with progressive income taxes calculate how much a part time resident owes in taxes. H.R. 6489, the Social Security Reform Act of 2016 included this. Here's what the Chief Actuary of Social Security wrote to the House about this calculation:

Another way to describe the new approach is that beneficiaries will receive a benefit that reflects the replacement rate applicable for a worker with the same career earnings, where all earnings had been covered.
...
We estimate that enactment of this provision alone would reduce the long-range OASDI actuarial deficit by 0.03 percent of taxable payroll and would reduce the annual deficit for the 75th projection year (2090) by 0.05 percent of payroll.

https://www.ssa.gov/oact/solvency/SJohnson_20161208.pdf
Two workers with the same lifetime incomes should receive the same percentage of the amount they paid into SS. Get rid of WEP, and one worker gets a higher percentage than the other. That's not fair. Here's a three line table illustrating this.
Yes, the source is the Heritage Foundation, the same people who brought you Project 2025. Sometimes they get the numbers right, even if their policies are, um, questionable.

Sold AOK (after 1 day) and reduced amount in LVHI. Created an ”Equity & Income” sleeve (18% of portfolio) with equal parts: LVHI, INCM, WEA, GGN. The last one focuses on natural resources and precious metals, but states its primary mission as generating income. Having vacated PRPFX recently, wanted to gain back a bit of P/M exposure. I’ve been stalking GGN for months. It has fallen back in recent weeks.
Couldn’t find a single fund I was comfortable with to occupy the one final sleeve among the 5 majors after selling TRTY yesterday - the reason I created my own fund-of-funds of sorts.
5 sleeves X 18% each = 90%, and 10% cash is where I sit (or sink).

And he avoids jail time.
As president to be,
He doth go free.
Remember OJ (If it doesn't fit, you must acquit.) He still lost money ($33.5M) in civil court.
Le Grande Orange (with apologies to Rusty Staub) is not absolutely immune to civil procedure (thank you Paula Jones). There are plenty of civil suits in progress, and he has more assets at risk than Giuliani.
The 2017 tax law included provisions especially favorable to the real estate business (including provisions that won't expire). The Trump Organization is real estate. Wih Speaker (?) Musk in charge, we might see a different set of priorities in the next tax bill - invest accordingly. Or perhaps sell investments if expecting an extended government shutdown.
As Yogi (the other one :-)) is often credited with saying, it's difficult to make predictions, especially about the future.

Just in case you had any doubt as to what Orangina's priorities are here....this morning he's totally down with shuting the government down "on Biden's watch" to get his way.
Orangina has no concern for the country whatsoever.

His loyalists (40% of the population) don't care about this. They allow themselves to be brain-washed - Biden is the sole reason for inflation issues, or so they now believe.
Orange is going to FIX EVERYTHING!!! LOL. Yeah. Tariffs, govt shutdowns and Project 2025. Then he just blames Dems for all the world's woes in the next 4 years.
And he avoids jail time.

IMO 2016-20 was a preview of 2025-2029 and had various guardrails around this town to help mitigate things a bit .... but if you thought it was crazy bad before, you probably ain't seen nothin' yet.

Like old times- Trump sends Congress scrambling to avoid a shutdown
From a current NPR report:

President-elect Donald Trump hasn't been sworn in yet but he's already running Washington again in his familiar style of upheaval and intraparty drama, starting with the decision to kill a bipartisan spending bill without a strategy to avoid a government shutdown.
House Republicans spent much of the day on Thursday working to salvage a plan to prevent a government shutdown that would would take effect days before Christmas. Members emerged from talks with House Speaker Mike Johnson, R-La., with an agreement amongst themselves on a stop-gap spending bill and a plan to rush the bill to the House floor for a vote.
Members wouldn't disclose many details of the agreement and staff admitted that Democrats have not signed off. Democrats still control the Senate and the White House and their buy-in will be necessary for any spending bill to become law.
Trump and his newest top lieutenant, Elon Musk, upended the bipartisan agreement on Wednesday designed to keep the government running into next year largely by mounting an opposition campaign on X, Musk's social media platform.

From a current report in The Guardian:

Donald Trump suffered a humiliating setback on Thursday when Republicans in Congress failed to pass a pared-down spending bill – just one day before a potential government shutdown that could disrupt Christmas travel.
By a vote of 174-235, the House of Representatives rejected the Trump-backed package, hastily assembled by Republican leaders after the president-elect and his billionaire ally Elon Musk scuttled a prior bipartisan deal.
Critics described the breakdown as an early glimpse of the chaos to come when Trump returns to the White House on 20 January. Musk’s intervention via a volley of tweets on his social media platform X was mocked by Democrats as the work of “President Musk”.
“The Musk-Johnson proposal is not serious,” Hakeem Jeffries, the House Democratic leader, told reporters. “It’s laughable. Extreme Maga Republicans are driving us to a government shutdown.”
Despite Trump’s support, 38 Republicans voted against the new package along with nearly every Democrat, ensuring that it failed to reach the two-thirds threshold needed for passage and leaving the next steps uncertain.
The defiance from within Trump’s own party caught many by surprise.