@Charles, some FLOW charts are showing different end dates:
VOO 20240830
VYM 20240830
SPY 20240906 (was updated 2 weeks ago)
NFTY 20140906 (was updated 2 weeks ago)
None of the above show 20240920.

+1.
D. Jean-Jacques has a point. We are in a new Cold War: China and Russia. And there are hot wars in various regions, too. A lot of Africa is an eternal hot mess. Look at Central and South America, too. Even our own gov't is extremely partisan, divided. No less than before the Civil War. Positions and offices are being weaponized to help Party ideology, rather than serving the public. I watched a biography on tv last night about John McCain. He is sorely missed. I betcha he and Bernie could get stuff accomplished together, if the others would just LISTEN and be reasonable. But reasonableness got thrown out with the trash quite a while ago.

+1.

https://variety.com/2024/tv/news/wall-street-week-weekly-tv-newsmagazine-bloomberg-overhaul-1236151353/
Feature driven starting this week, rather than info. driven. And I could only find an audio version. Harumph.
...Ah, OK. Here's a video version.

Always enjoy reading Jack Hough’s regular Barron’s column.
”Brace for stimulation. The Federal Reserve just slashed interest rates for the first time in four years to goose the economy. Already, young families shopping among seven-figure teardowns near city centers can finance them at 6.1%, down from 6.5% a month ago. Housing crisis solved.
“Next is supposed to be a rip-roaring stock market rally, as falling rates spur company profits and reduce the relative allure of bonds. I'm thinking about celebrating with something only rich people can afford, like dinner and a movie.”
Article - ”The Stock Market Is Priced for Middling Returns From Here On”
Barron’s September 23, 2024
Author: Jack Hough
-
A more sober note from Dennis Jean-Jacques, founder and chief investment officer of Ocean Park Investments:
”We are in a more fragile state than when interest rates were near zero and the world was largely at peace. Today, while the market is at its highs, there is significantly more uncertainty—given war in the Middle East, China’s property troubles, and the coming U.S. election. Household allocations to equities are at record levels, which makes us uneasy. Credit spreads are historically low, reflecting a perception of reduced risk.”
Article - ”This Money Manager Likes Durable Businesses. 4 Industrial Stocks He’s Got His Eye On.”
Barron’s September 23, 2024
Author: Reshma Kapadia

+1 @Old_Joe
That’s reassuring. Therefore, no one’s portfolio should ever fall all the way to 0. :)

@hank 's question is a variation on the ancient mathematical question: if you stand a certain distance (say 10 feet) away from a wall and you keep decreasing your distance to the wall by half, how long will it take you to get to the wall?
A: You will never get to the wall, because there will always be some space between you and the wall, no matter how small.

"But it seems idiotic to expect every Tom, Dick & Harry to possess the foresight and financial discipline to save for something that may well be 30+ years away and to have enough stashed at that point to make it last another 30 years if necessary. Maybe the guy’s a great construction worker, or reliable mechanic or metal worker or whatever. That doesn’t endow him with the financial know how or discipline to make the 401K viable."
+1

There are two primary problems with self-directed retirement plans. First, the old grasshopper and the ant fable. Some people save for the future, others live for today. The other big problem is how to live off your savings. It seems to me that many people would be better off buying an annuity with at least some of their savings, providing guaranteed income for the rest of their lives. My wife and I both have pensions, but in reality they are just annuities. We treat our IRAs (formerly 401Ks) as the inflation adjustment for our pensions, which lack that feature.
Finally, there is always Social Security. I am a big fan because it provides a base of income that isn’t affected by the stock and bond markets. It is also inflation adjusted.

I don’t have the answer. But it seems idiotic to expect every Tom, Dick & Harry to possess the foresight and financial discipline to save for something that may well be 30+ years away and to have enough stashed at that point to make it last another 30 years if necessary. Maybe the guy’s a great construction worker, or reliable mechanic or metal worker or whatever. That doesn’t endow him with the financial know how or discipline to make the 401K viable. Many don’t save enough, raid the money when younger or in their first few years of retirement or make bad investment decisions. Now, if they did all of the preceding correctly, they still wouldn’t know when they would die and how to make their assets last precisely the right length of time. Albeit - buying an annuity would partially solve the latter issue,

+1.
I recall applying for SS and being told I'd be receiving reduced benefits. Because I had "non-covered" jobs for a lotta years. But I'd ALWAYS paid in. I had to go to the local office in person. Then they fixed their mistake. Stupid system, when they can say that to a guy like me.

I do not get why the SS office employees are trying to not give people their legitimate earned benefits. Who are they serving with their behavior? I do not understand their motives.

Ya, I was pissed. What they could not see (or misidentified?) was all of my payments into "self-employment tax" due to the fact that I worked for a church as a clergyman for many years. I could have chosen to opt out of SS, but that would have been extremely stupid. And the opt-out choice = declaring that I have a religious or ethical problem with SS. That's just not true for me. So, I did NOT opt-out. Glad I didn't. The Superv. at the local SS office looked at my previous 2 tax returns, and then my listed benefit jumped up by $500/month. But they treated me with contempt along the way. I was dealt with as if I were a liar. Liars exist on the bottom of the ocean, with the whale shit. He said he was sorry for that, "but we have to deal with lots of people trying to cheat."
For SS purposes, clergy are self-employed. For federal tax purposes, clergy are employees. Ridiculous, silly, crazy, stupid and nuts.

@hank Not sure but couldn't it fall to zero if all shares were up for sale and the highest bid was zero (or no bids)? Also, if the stock closed in penniless?

+1 @Anna / You are correct. I kinda sensed that after I posted but let it stay up. Actually, I’m wondering if this thing (DJT) could possibly ever have a negative value? (More debt than assets)? But I’ve never ever heard of shareholders having to cover the debt in such a situation. ISTM Trump is an expert at bankruptcy and so would figure it all out.

Square wheels, indeed.
Gore Vidal:
"Politics" comes from:
1) the Greek, poly, meaning many; and
2) tics, which are blood-sucking insects.

+1.
I recall applying for SS and being told I'd be receiving reduced benefits. Because I had "non-covered" jobs for a lotta years. But I'd ALWAYS paid in. I had to go to the local office in person. Then they fixed their mistake. Stupid system, when they can say that to a guy like me.

I do not get why the SS office employees are trying to not give people their legitimate earned benefits. Who are they serving with their behavior? I do not understand their motives.

Oh no, not another piece on Teresa Ghilarducci's prpopsals for a national retirement plan. One of her proposals may require discontinuing existing 401k/403b and folding them into the grand national plan. Good luck with that. We and the Government have enough problems with Social Security.
401k/403b have issues that need fixing. The DB plans it replaced were also too burdensome for employers.
403b have existed for a long time. But tremendous growth came after an accidental discovery in 1978 by Ted Benna, often called the father of 401k (but the section existed already). He noted a short 869-word section (subtitled 401k) in the 1978 Revenue Act) that allowed pretax employer and employee contributions for retirements (unclear who slipped that in). Companies caught on to this quickly, and by 1983, there were already 7.1 million 401k accounts, and by 2023, 60 million accounts.

NY Times shareable ARTICLE

@Crash - not sure what you want translated. What are you looking for from a discussion of GPO/WEP? GPO is the most controversial, in my opinion, of the two since the entitlement of a widow who was a stay-at-home spouse is straight forward and not adjusted down. Not so for a working but not paying-in spouse who gets adjusted down based on an amount of other funding derived or partially derived from the money denied the SS system. But this question will probably never be addressed since a non-working widow still needs money. So, anything I say past "the winner is the non-working widow" will ignore this. Besides, it is becoming mute as most women must work today. Also, I am sure SS experts would take issue with any attempt a novice like me made to explain the calculations. I think, whatever the explanation, you must remember that this was instituted when the Greenspan Commission was trying to get SS through the Boomer years so anything saving money that also seemed equitable (like GPO/WEP) was a winner. My GPO conclusion I shared with an Actuary friend of mine (cut paste from my email) in 2007 was "I cannot see that widows that held government jobs that didn't pay into social security are treated any differently as widows who paid into social security. They both end up with the higher of their own or their spouse's social security benefit whether their own is earned from social security or non-social security plans." And the pay-in person would be offended by my conclusion since it feels like a penalty for working based on need.
That said, when Bush was pushing privatization schemes, I downloaded the AnyPIA program from SSA. It calculates entitled benefits. I only calculated benefits for a rather rudimentary design of varying pay-in patterns. Looking at dates on my emails to an actuary friend the time frame of these calculations was between 2003 and 2008. Most my GPO/WEP calculations were done, not from a point of view of the after-reduction amounts but were a what-if there was no reduction point of view. So it was, bottom-line, sufficient for my purposes but not exhaustive. That is why I recommend reading experts on the subject. I thought the two publications I selected were a good broad brush of the "why" story.
What I found was the salaries and salary patterns played a huge impact. For example, imagine the difference in pay-in of A and B, both working early in life at minimum wage paying SS taxes for the same 10 years, then, engineering degree in hand, B working for a utility company for 35 years and A working for a non-SS state government for 35 at the same identical salary each year as B. In the SS calculation A becomes a low wage worker with a return on investment based on minimum wage for 10 years. B becomes a high wage worker with a return on investment based on a high wage for 35 years. A is in the highest return on investment bend point for the SS calculation and B's position on the bend points would put him at a lower return on investment. This appeared to be the major source of the windfall that is spoken of. So, you end up with a Greenspan Commitee recommendation to bring "fairness" to the paid-in worker, which, when handed to the math geeks, ended up with WEP which, I think, has more built-in protection for the low wage worker.
Whereas I am clueless about fixing GPO inequity, it seems to me that, in today's information age that, if an equitable result was sought for WEP, it would be easy to generate an algorithm that took actual wage and wage pattern and combined it with a record of years paid in and years not paid in and come up with equal return on investment numbers for A and B.
Edit: I had to edit this because, after defining A and B, I proceeded to profile them backwards, so I just edited to make B the pay-in and A the non-pay-in.

20 Sept, 2024:
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/videos/2024-09-20/bloomberg-real-yield-09-20-2024
Sonal Desai. I always stop to pay attention to her. She says 50 basis points was overkill. Her idea of a neutral rate, looking forward, is 3.75% to 4.00%. ... Enormous fiscal deficits are frightening. She also agrees with the IMF which lately asserted that our latest adventure with inflation had less to do with supply shocks, and more to do with profligate fiscal policy. ... It's a mistake to think we'll get back to pre-covid interest rates. Some see that period of time as the "mark" to measure against. But, no way.
Oksana Aranov. She thinks 0.5% rate cut is too much, too soon, too....$7T of bonds still sitting on the Fed's balance sheet. (Holy ORK!!!!!). We are still in an era of higher for longer. Agreeing with Desai: these past 10-12 years are the ANOMALY, not the STANDARD by which to compare. And the Fed has never admitted the connection between fiscal policy and the inflation which is now shrinking, but it's not going to 2%--- which is the Fed's goal. The "high 4s" are more normal, which is what she sees in the days ahead, with an eye on the future.
Steven Oh: Circumstances remain supportive of HY bonds. Junk valuations are at best, fair to somewhat overvalued. (Chart: current junk yields are lowest in 28 months.) Junk is completing a 7-week run of gains. Junk default rates have peaked already and are on their way down.
There's an HYG chart you might take a look at. It got past me.

DJT: $13.5236 -8.00%

Now ya got me wondering. Can any stock ever fall to 0? This Trump turkey could fall 8% per day on to eternity. No? Even from 10 cents an 8% drop would leave it worth 9.2 cents. A curious mathematical puzzle. Perhaps with stocks a regulator or court needs to step in and declare a value of 0?
Sorry to digress … :)

Space & Defense Chief leaves.
https://finance.yahoo.com/news/boeing-defense-head-ted-colbert-205610533.html