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Sorry to hear. I had trading restrictions big time at Fido right after transferring to them. Sucks. So you make a great point about spreading risk around. To view restrictions click on “Balances” at the top first. Then scroll down to near bottom of page.Fido put trading restrictions on my account for a time for reasons they wouldn’t share with me (although I had an inkling). There was no ETA for when they would be lifted nor was there any information I could provide to allay their concerns. The restrictions were eventually lifted. I was glad I had accounts with Chuck if I needed to make some market moves.
Yes, this is the one I signed my wife up for, as it most resembles our defunct Tufts MCA zero-prem PPO w lots of bennies. (For myself I am waiting for some cancer path lab testing this or next week before I think harder about what would be best.) I get why companies have had to fold the cheapest MCA plans.@sma3. Good info....but.
As usual, you need to know what you are doing.
Original is great in most places.
Advantage choices are great in big cities with many options.
I would never go for HMO.
If I lived in a smaller town and/or not many choices, Original would be my choice.
I'm reviewing Boston-area PPO plans. The Medicare.gov site clearly lists hospital options.
The Mass General Brigham Advantage website is not user friendly. I'm not spending much more time on it. I added two providers from Mass General Hospital, and several PPOs show up as accepting them, including Mass General Brigham Advantage (PPO).
Given that, I’m confident I can use providers and get procedures at Mass General under this plan.
Worst case: if coverage becomes an issue, you can relocate or establish residency in another county to qualify for Original Medicare.

One reason it won't happen is because Apple is not investing in AI the way the other companies are. https://www.techbuzz.ai/articles/apple-s-12-7b-ai-bet-defies-big-tech-s-capex-arms-race.Nonetheless, Amazon, Google, Meta and Microsoft are set to collectively sink around $400 billion on AI this year, mostly for funding data centers. Some of the companies are set to devote about 50% of their current cash flow to data center construction.
Or to put it another way: every iPhone user on earth would have to pay more than $250 to pay for that amount of spending. "That's not going to happen," Kedrosky said.
When I asked Andy Thurai, VP and principal analyst at Constellation Research, what he thought about Apple’s latest announcement to invest all that money in the United States, he said “Apple is known to navigate the political scenes smartly but never follow through with it.” That’s not what you’d expect to hear, especially when you consider the sheer size of this multibillion dollar investment — but Thurai’s answer is steeped in history.
For example, he said, right after former U.S. President Joe Biden’s inauguration in 2021, Apple pledged to spend $430 billion and add 20,000 jobs over five years and that never materialized. “They also pledged during Trump’s first term that they would directly contribute to the U.S. economy in the order of $350 billion over the next five years and create 20,000 jobs, which they didn’t follow through either,” Thurai added.
https://npr.org/2025/11/23/nx-s1-5615410/ai-bubble-nvidia-openai-revenue-bust-data-centersThere is reason to be skeptical. A growing body of research indicates most firms are not seeing chatbots affect their bottom lines, and just 3% of people pay for AI, according to one analysis.
"These models are being hyped up, and we're investing more than we should," said Daron Acemoglu, an economist at MIT, who was awarded the 2024 Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences.
Bubbling questions about the limits of the AI revolution
CONSIDER THIS FROM NPR
Bubbling questions about the limits of the AI revolution
"I have no doubt that there will be AI technologies that will come out in the next ten years that will add real value and add to productivity, but much of what we hear from the industry now is exaggeration," he said.
Nonetheless, Amazon, Google, Meta and Microsoft are set to collectively sink around $400 billion on AI this year, mostly for funding data centers. Some of the companies are set to devote about 50% of their current cash flow to data center construction.
Or to put it another way: every iPhone user on earth would have to pay more than $250 to pay for that amount of spending. "That's not going to happen," Kedrosky said.
To avoid burning up too much of its cash on hand, big Silicon Valley companies, like Meta and Oracle, are tapping private equity and debt to finance the industry's data center building spree.
On its face, 2025 has been a good year for the stock market. The S&P 500 was dragged out of its tariff-induced springtime slump by a small subset of AI-forward power players whose spectacular gains defied an otherwise softening economy. Even now, despite a rocky November, the benchmark index is up more than 12 percent since the start of the year.
A group of trillion-dollar brands known as the “Magnificent Seven” — Alphabet, Amazon, Apple, Meta, Microsoft, Nvidia and Tesla — has been at the forefront of those gains, thanks in large part to corporate spending and intense interest in artificial intelligence. But economists and investors are raising concerns about the companies that aren’t part of the AI investment boom — in other words, most businesses in the United States.
An index that leaves out the seven high-flying tech firms — call it the S&P 493 — reveals a far weaker picture, as smaller and lower-tech companies report lackluster sales and declining investment.
“You have the headwind of de-globalization and tariffs, and the tailwind of AI … those forces are battling to a draw, and in that crosswind you get winners and losers,” said Moody’s Analytics chief economist Mark Zandi. “Anything that is not connected to AI is throttled lower.”
Some experts are worried that the S&P 500, an index of large-company stocks that underpins the fortunes of millions of Americans with 401(k) and other retirement accounts, has become too reliant on the Magnificent Seven; they collectively account for about a third of its value, leaving the broader stock market heavily dependent on the continued success of “the AI trade,” says Torsten Slok, chief economist at the private equity firm Apollo Global Management.
“There is no diversification in the S&P 500 anymore in my view … it is all the AI story now,” Slok said.
Publicly traded small and midsize companies have taken a beating by comparison. The Russell 2000 lost 4.5 percent in the one-month period leading up to Friday, compared with a loss of around 2 percent for the S&P 500. A little more than a third of the companies in the Russell 2000 index either don’t make money or are losing money.
The market’s concentration in Big Tech has also given rise to concerns about what would be left if an AI bubble were to burst. Those fears have been amplified in recent weeks as Big Tech names suffered a modest sell-off, with some analysts raising concerns that the AI industry has overspent on infrastructure at a time when the technology’s actual profit-generating potential is still nascent.
Tech stocks have endured a series of rocky sell-offs since late October, with the tech-heavy Nasdaq index falling around 7 percent from its Oct. 29 peak. Markets rebounded Friday, with the index trimming some of its losses from earlier in the week.
Slok, the Apollo economist, says he is particularly worried about the recent AI losses because so much of the recent economic growth has been shored up by free-spending wealthy households. A deep correction in AI stocks, if it ever arrived, could threaten the “wealth effect” that is doing so much to prop up the economy, Slok warned.
Good information, but the above indicators are not accurate about how markets are likely to react over the next 1, 4, or 16 weeks.SENTIMENT & MARKET INDICATORS, 11/19/25
AAII Bull-Bear Spread -11.0% (below average)
CNN Fear & Greed Index 11 (extreme fear)
NYSE %Above 50-dMA 34.41% (negative)
SP500 %Above 50-dMA 36.40% (negative)
These are contrarian indicators.
Joined a credit union back in the early 80's, everything done by mail back then, internet now.@gman57 "Haven't been to a brick and mortar bank/brokerage in 20, maybe 30,40 years that I can remember."
Are you printing your cash needs?
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