@sma3- Well, a main issue here is very similar to what's happening in Ukraine. Cheap and dirty attack hardware costs $4.95 (on sale from North Korea and Iran) and the sophisticated intercept weaponry from the US and Israel works pretty well, but costs $4.95 million dollars per each.
Exaggeration obviously, for sake of contrast, but you can see the problem. Our tax dollars at work.

Here's edited excerpts from a current report from the Washington Post on the Red Sea/Suez Canal shipping situation:
In just a few months, Yemen’s Houthis have taken an outsize bite out of global shipping — and have begun to threaten the economy of their stated target, Israel.
While Israel, which relies on the Mediterranean more heavily than the Red Sea, has proved resilient, experts warn that the attacks already pose a threat to Israel’s economy and could come to take a greater toll if they persist in the face of U.S.-led airstrikes.
The Port of Eilat, Israel’s toehold on the Red Sea, has seen an 85 percent drop in shipping activity, its chief executive told Reuters last month. Without a reversal, “unfortunately we will likely have to furlough workers,” he told the Jeruslaem Post.
Launching missiles at commercial ships in the Red Sea, a choke point on one of the world’s key maritime routes, turns out to be a sure way to draw the ire of the United States and its allies: Nearly a fifth of freight bound for the U.S. east coast usually passes through the Red Sea, en route to the Suez Canal, and global shipping giants have begun to send ships the long way around Africa.
The Houthis have maintained that since they began launching strikes, in solidarity with Palestinians under Israeli bombardment in the Gaza Strip, that their primary goal was not to upend world commerce, but to apply pressure on Israel for a cease-fire in Gaza.
While most of Israel’s maritime trade passes through Haifa and others ports on the Mediterranean — subject to broader delays in global shipping caused by the Red Sea crisis but not necessarily more so than ports elsewhere — Eilat is a key entry point for some imports from East Asia.
The shipping industry has responded to the Houthis’ focus on shipping to Israel. Evergreen, the Taiwanese shipping giant, said last month it would “stop accepting Israeli cargo” immediately “for the safety of cargo, ships and crew.” Maersk last month introduced a surcharge on shipments to Israel to help cover rising insurance costs.
The global economic impacts of the Red Sea strikes, rather than specific effects on Israel, could come to be the larger source of pressure, contributing to a sense among Israel’s allies that the entire region could spiral into violence.
As long as the war in Gaza continues, the risks that the situation in the Red Sea degrades further and that regional skirmishes such as on the Lebanese border develop into war “increase exponentially,” said Dan Arenson, a geopolitical risk adviser at J.S. Held, a global risk consultancy. “I think the Biden administration gets that.”

I believe that a few days ago I read a report suggesting that the route around the horn of Africa would add 3 days to the shipping run, for a fairly modest cost of approximately $5400 per shipping container on container ships. Not expected to have a major influence on inflation. At the moment energy shipping to/from the US and Europe (LNG & various oil products) is coming from a number of sources other than Saudi Arabia, so that route is less critical, at least for now.
Egypt is really taking it in the shorts, though... their national income will be down to almost nothing until this is sorted out, and that certainly isn't going to help Mideast stability... not at all. You think that maybe Egypt might take a very dim view of Israel on this? And where is Israel trying to drive the Gaza Palestinians?? Oh, that's right... the Egyptian Sinai. This should end well...

TFLO invests in floating rate treasury similar to that of USFR, WisdomTree treasury floating rate ETF.

Here's a comparison of TFLO and USFR:
https://portfolioslab.com/tools/stock-comparison/TFLO/USFR
Similar with at least a couple of curious quirks. One is that there is virtually no correlation (R² of 1%) between the two. That's likely due to the fact that these are extremely steady funds and so correlation measures primarily small random zigs vs. zags that are meaningless.
The other is that on Dec 19, 2014, TFLO dropped 4½%, opening at 50.06 and closing at 47.83. It fully recovered at the next open, but what happened? Data glitch?

In term of cash flow, the cash bucket is secured based on your annual living expense minus social security and pension $ for say 3-5 years. Emergency house/car repair can be factored into that cash bucket and back fill that over several years.
Some people have a second bucket in between consisting of bonds and balanced funds to dampen the market volatility and the possibility of prolong drawdown. Dividend growth funds can be part of this strategy. You can decide the % that you feel comfortable to fill the cash bucket every year. Personally, I use both balanced funds and dividend growth funds.
The third bucket is consisting of stocks/stock funds for capital growth.

@fed495, I apologize and stand correct as @JD_co and BaluBalu noted above too. For a moment, I confuse muni bonds with US treasuries. I correct the above comment.

@Crash - Maybe bring me up to speed … What are your primary uses of M*? Is that your main portfolio tracker?
Gosh - there’s lots of alternatives, including dedicated apps - but I realize it’s hard to “change horses” midstream. Long ago I went to 2 separate trackers (both paid apps) for when the inevitable “hiccup” occurs. I do look at M*’s breakdown of fund holdings. But sometimes they aren’t accurate if you compare them to what the fund publishes. The ability to X-Ray holdings is nice. I see above now where you use that.
For the price (0) I have no beef with M*. I read a lot of their fund ratings and reviews and suspect they lean too much on recent (3-5 year) performance in drawing conclusions. But don’t we all? :)

For accounts at Fidelity,
FSIXX has a minimum of $1M. FRSXX is the Institutional class of the Treasury Only MM fund and pays slightly higher than FSIXX.

To be clear, both share classes are institutional classes; one is labeled "I", while the other is labeled "Institutional". Sort of like Vanguard offering multiple institutional share classes with labels "Institutional" and "Institutional Plus", such as VINIX and VIIIX. 

FRSXX does not seem to say what the minimum required is but I presume it is not accessible to retail clients. Is that right?

The top of the page for FRSXX, right below the fund name and NTF, reads:
"This fund has a minimum initial individual, IRA, and Group Investment of $10,000,000."
https://fundresearch.fidelity.com/mutual-funds/summary/31607A802
As far as being open to retail investors, Fidelity generally seems amenable to retail investors so long as you meet the requirements for investing. (For example, JLPSX is open to retail customers at Fidelity, but while Schwab lowers the min to $100K it limits access to only institutional customers.) I suspect that VHNW individuals would be allowed open a position in FRSXX.

Why does Fidelity make it less advantageous to keep money at Fidelity, rather than move to Merrill Edge? Is it record keeping costs and convenience that Merrill offers to Fidelity?

Does the reason matter? Many fund families let third party brokerages sell their institutional shares with much lower minimums than when the shares are sold directly. For example, Schwab offers PIMIX with a $2.5K min rather than the $1M stated in the prospectus. It seems that Merrill likewise offers easier access to institutional share classes of funds. But at Merrill that improved access is largely limited to MMFs.
If it bothers you enough, let Fidelity know. If enough people clamor for something, it might have an effect. Three days ago when speaking with a Fidelity rep (on a three way call as a favor to a friend), I was asked what Fidelity could do to make it more attractive. Making some of their cheaper share class funds available at a more reasonable min was one of my suggestions.

dividends are 99.9% tax exempt in my state

@Fred495, if I am correct, treasury bonds/ ETFs are federal tax-exempt, not state exempt. TFLO invests in floating rate treasury similar to that of USFR, WisdomTree treasury floating rate ETF.

Sven, as far as I know, interest on US Treasury bonds is taxable at the federal level, but exempt from state and local income taxes.
TFLO currently invests 99.98% in Treasuries, hence only 99.98% of the fund's interest is tax exempt at the state and local level.

@sma3 & @Sven I agree that having a cash bucket makes sense. Mine is held outside the investment accounts described above. It currently equals about 13% of the total held in those accounts. It is intended to temporarily provide funds to mitigate the effects of a prolonged downturn in investment portfolio returns and to temporarily help fund significant required expenditures like replacing a leaking roof. It is also intended to provide transition funds to cover the waiting period before long term care benefits become available if my wife or I suffer from a rapid decline in health status. The buffering benefits of exclusively using dividends to fund investment account releases potentially helps limit the necessary size of that bucket. But, perhaps it would be prudent for me to increase it to at least 15%. Thanks for your comments.
@bee Yes. And a link to Portfolio Visualizer's Monte Carlo portfolio simulator may be useful too.
https://www.portfoliovisualizer.com/monte-carlo-simulation

dividends are 99.9% tax exempt in my state

@Fred495, if I am correct, treasury bonds/ ETFs are federal tax-exempt, not state exempt. TFLO invests in floating rate treasury similar to that of USFR, WisdomTree treasury floating rate ETF.

Not Federal tax exempt.

dividends are 99.9% tax exempt in my state

@Fred495, if I am correct, treasury bonds/ ETFs are federal tax-exempt, not state exempt. TFLO invests in floating rate treasury similar to that of USFR, WisdomTree treasury floating rate ETF.
Edits: @fred495 is correct that TFLO is exempt from state and local income taxes, not federal tax.

For accounts at Fidelity,
FSIXX has a minimum of $1M. FRSXX is the Institutional class of the Treasury Only MM fund and pays slightly higher than FSIXX. FRSXX does not seem to say what the minimum required is but I presume it is not accessible to retail clients. Is that right? I invest in FDLXX, another Treasury Only, has a 4.97% (vs 5.25% for FRSXX) (7 day) yield as of 1/19 and does not have a minimum. Why does Fidelity make it less advantageous to keep money at Fidelity, rather than move to Merrill Edge? Is it record keeping costs and convenience that Merrill offers to Fidelity?

Thanks @Fred495 Easy pease 100% tax exempt.

From NPR,

shipping industry experts hope lessons learned during the COVID-19 pandemic, the Suez Canal disruption in 2021 and Somali pirate attacks more than a decade ago will help mitigate widespread problems this time, should the conflict widen in the Red Sea.

https://npr.org/2024/01/20/1225716149/houthis-yemen-redsea-ships-israel-hamas
A figure in the article indicates an alternative shipping route ( a long way around); almost 3X the distance. How will this impact the global inflation ?

Besides CDs at major national banks, I still keep most of my cash in TFLO (iShares Treasury Floating rate Bond ETF) which currently has a 30 Day SEC Yield of 5.40%. The dividends are 99.9% tax exempt in my state. So far, so good.

SNOXX will likely be fully state-taxable to you, because (at least at as of Sept 30th) only 10% of its portfolio is in Treasuries. The rest consists of repurchase agreements which makes the entire fund state-taxable for a few states (and mostly state-taxable for everyone else). It is currently yielding 5.03%.
https://www.schwabassetmanagement.com/resource/snoxx-scoxx-fact-sheet
A couple of imperfect alternatives are:
VUSXX - current SEC yield 5.30%. Vanguard used to keep this fund 100% in Treasuries. Last year it changed its practice and seemed to hover for a time around the magic 50% mark (below which all dividends would be taxable to you). Since then it seems to be holding around 98% Treasuries.
The final "score" for 2023 was 80.06% state tax-exempt, well above 50%, though that still means 1/5 of the divs are state taxable for everyone.
https://investor.vanguard.com/investment-products/mutual-funds/profile/vusxx
https://investor.vanguard.com/content/dam/retail/publicsite/en/documents/taxes/usgoin-2024.pdf
FSIXX - current SEC yield 5.21%. Pure Treasury. The imperfection here is that access to this share class is via Merrill Edge ($1K min), and Merrill is abysmal when it comes to handling pennies. Its system thinks in terms of whole shares, which for MMFs is whole dollars. Otherwise, Merrill seems easy to work with - definitely easy to move money in and out of.
https://olui2.fs.ml.com/Publish/Content/application/pdf/GWMOL/ICCRateSheet.pdf
https://fundresearch.fidelity.com/mutual-funds/summary/233809300

The graphic is set for the 5 days ending January 19, Friday; for the best to worst % returns in select etf categories. One may then also select the one month column to align the one month return best to worst; or for the other listed time frame columns.
ADD an etf performance of your choosing, if you desire.
*** Requested ADD: For the week and YTD
--- EWW = -1.9% / -4.0% (I Shares, Mexico)
MMKT note: Fidelity mmkt's remained steady this week,with core acct's yields at 4.98 and 5.01%.
NOTE: Growth area quite happy right now. Especially tech. and chips in particular have picked up 2023 out-performance. Sample, SMH, VanEck semi = +8.2% for the week.
***** Hell, Michigan air temperature, 8:30 am, Saturday = 1 degree, while Paradise, Michigan is 13 degrees.
Remain curious,
Catch

I have a financial link between my Schwab Taxable Account and my Capital One Bank Account. I will transfer money back and forth, between these two financial institutions, depending on where the best CD rates are available--very fast and simple. For liquidity purposes, I do maintain a significant investment in SWVXX Money Market Account, which continues to pay well over 5%.