yes, I won't touch China with my money until there is a sea change.

What I have in mind is civil rights, human rights. Free speech without Thought Police. Freedom of movement. (Occupied Palestine is also a place without Freedom of movement.) Freedom to assemble. Voting without pre-cooked elections. (But, as Churchill said: "the best argument against democracy is a 5-minute conversation with the average voter." My experience bears that out. But at least the system cannot be blamed for lazy, uninformed minds, here in the West.)

mmm...I started a thread https://big-bang-investors.proboards.com/thread/1959/bond-future-musings
Keep reading until you get to a post saying "As promised, my posts about what I do would be late by weeks instead of days (you know why). Let's start from the end. My first "nibble" wasn't 1-2-5%, it was 20+% and within days I was in at 99+% first time after I sold early in 2022."
There are no longer posts within days of what I do, as I have done before. See this example
https://www.mutualfundobserver.com/discuss/discussion/55299/bond-mutual-funds-analysis-act-2/p2

@LewisBraham: true about risk of clash between India and Pakistan. Comparing what I’ve read about the shenanigans that go on daily on the Kashmir border, these guys outdo what the two Koreas have done at their border since 1953. I have visited the DMZ in Korea, a truly bizarre and frightening place for a peace lover. How they have avoided another outright war is a puzzle.

Gates/restricted-redemptions are spreading. After Blackstone BREIT, Starwood SREIT, now is KKR KREST.
@hank, recent posts on this thread have been on gates for nontraded-REITs that started a few months ago. Media posts have been alarmist on this, but these gates are allowed if requests exceed periodic & optional offers.
​https://ca.finance.yahoo.com/news/kkr-caps-withdrawals-real-estate-165237465.html

Thanks for your thoughts Lewis.
Each of those concepts you mentioned were new discoveries (not inventions). IOW's new to man but not new to Earth's physics and capabilities under our sun since day one. But 'nothing new under the sun' refers to human nature (fear and greed and selfishness) which will never change and has us in the boat we are in today. $245,000 in debt per remaining US taxpayer. The last inflationary cycle in the 70's had Federal debt at <$1B and today's possible higher interest rate cycle (and along with it the upcoming problem of interest expense) with today's debt of $31T. I hope we emerge.... but the math is not encouraging. Dalio's work focused on 500 years of the history of capitalism and how debt always is the culprit in falling empires. Thus, history repeats itself. Reserve currency has enormous power.

@shipwreckedandalone I wonder if the T-Rexes and other dinosaurs, when they spied the Chicxulub asteroid descending towards them during the Cretaceous period, thought, "There is nothing new under the sun." Or if the Neandertals thought that when they saw the homo sapien tribes approaching? Or when a Sumerian King first saw a wheel rolling towards him in Mesopotamia? Or what the royals in Europe thought of American and French democracy? Or what the Newtonian physicists thought when they first heard of Einstein's quantum mechanics? Or what the editors of NewsWeek were thinking in 1995 when they published an article titled "The Internet? Bah!", which reacted against the idea that this silly digital blip was going to infiltrate and replace elements of our everyday lives? This screen we're all staring at right now is something very new under the sun historically speaking and it has radically altered life as we know it. Why is it guys like Dalio think only entrepreneurs can be innovative and change history--hint, too much Ayn Rand--but governments or ordinary humans can't? Yes, history is cyclical, but it also progresses, for better and for worse. Today, for instance, individual rights are better worldwide than they were 1,000 years ago, but our environment is so much worse. Both of those facts require new ways of thinking, about government and commerce especially.

@FD1000 - Here’s what I wrote in this same thread on 1/1/23 …
”The talking heads and market gurus I monitor mostly speak optimistically of a splendid 2023 for longer dated bonds. In particular, Rick Rieder of Blackrock appears to have trouble ‘containing’ himself during interviews on this point.”
So I and Rieder might have gotten out in front of your freaking genius prediction. Can’t tell here what date you made your call. Your reference to date currently reads: “I posted in early 11/2022”. The number “11” would indicate late in 2022 (not early). No longer share my own market views, so can’t give my take on the present investment environment. But Rick Rieder, referenced above, is a pretty sharp bond dude.
Should add:
- The issue of whether someone investing for retirement wants to allocate 100% of their long-term money into government bonds (or any other type of bond) remains an open question - and something I’m not going to comment on.
- A mere mere 2.5 weeks into a new year is a very short time to assess that year’s total performance of any asset class.

I couldn’t remember posting this topic. Check the date. A year old (January 2022). So my
comment in the OP “I’m leary of real estate as an investment at this time due to bubble-like valuations.” may no longer apply.
Real Estate funds, as a category, fell 25.67% in 2022 according to Morningstar.
-
EDIT - Wouldn’t you know? The morning after I posted the above, I came across possibly relevant article in MarketWatch so am sharing it here.
Blackstone CEO Says Two Big Bets Will Keep Paying Off for Its Real Estate
Excerpt: - Blackstone CEO Stephen Schwarzman said exposure to warehouses and apartments buoyed its mega real estate fund in a punishing environment where some rivals lost up to a quarter of their value. In a Wednesday interview with Barron’s editor in chief David Cho at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Schwarzman said the Blackstone Real Estate Income Trust, known as BREIT, weathered an environment of higher interest rates by avoiding areas of “real stress” in the real estate market, such as offices and shopping malls. BREIT, which is up about 8% through November, is concentrated in warehouses and apartments, two bets the chief executive said will continue to pay off. The online shopping boom and trend of bringing manufacturing capabilities back to the U.S. have benefited warehouses, while apartments have done well as people struggle to enter the housing market, Schwarzman noted.
This is a for-pay site, but may be possible to pull up article for free one time.

Blackstone/BX CEO Stephen Schwarzman said at WEF, Davos that nontraded-REIT BREIT was overweight in apartments and warehouses, and underweight in malls and offices. Most of its debt had maturity/duration (?) of 6.5 years, so it was less impacted by rising short-term rates. That is why it did better than some of its competitors.
As the article may be behind paywall, I have summarized his comments about BREIT; his other comments related to economy, Fed, etc. The 2nd link from FN-London has the same article and seems open.
https://www.barrons.com/articles/blackstone-ceo-breit-real-estate-fund-51674076115?mod=bol-social-tw
https://www.fnlondon.com/articles/blackstone-ceo-backs-real-estate-fund-to-thrive-in-tough-market-20230118?mod=author_panel

I took the same EM ride as you @PRESSmUP. Mine was with ARTYX which trends identical to PDEZX. Very "growthy" with strangely was 45% in US... 25% in China. I made a mistake and towards the fall of 2022 to the loss moved that money to RNWOX. More value and I liked the managers focus on India instead of China.
Bottom line, you can have a very different experience with an EM fund depending on what you own. I don't need the nosebleed ups and downs of funds like PDEZX and ARTYX anymore. Give me EM funds like SFGIX or RNWOX anytime.

Appears to me that SILVX is available at Schwab and TDA with a $25K minimum, but that the Investor shares (SFVLX) require $1M minimum, which may mean not available. Truly bizarre. I rather like the notion of EM value, but those minima are beyond what I want to spend.

@BenWP I think you meant SIVLX and not SILVX. The former is Institutional Class with a $25,000 minimum. SFVLX is Investor Class and it is not available for purchase at Schwab.

Appears to me that SILVX is available at Schwab and TDA with a $25K minimum, but that the Investor shares (SFVLX) require $1M minimum, which may mean not available. Truly bizarre. I rather like the notion of EM value, but those minima are beyond what I want to spend.

Text LINK1 LINK2

Charlie Bilello comments on 2022 market behavior utilizing many informative charts in this one hour video.
Video

https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/890540/000139834423000681/fp0081811-1_497.htm
497 1 fp0081811-1_497.htm
THE ADVISORS’ INNER CIRCLE FUND II
Champlain Mid Cap Fund
(the “Fund”)
Supplement dated January 17, 2023
to the Summary Prospectus and Prospectus,
each dated May 1, 2022
This supplement provides new and additional information beyond that contained in the
Summary Prospectus and Prospectus and should be read in conjunction with the Summary
Prospectus and Prospectus.
Effective January 17, 2023, Advisor Class Shares and Institutional Class Shares of the Fund are available for purchase by new investors. Accordingly, all references to the contrary are hereby deleted from the Summary Prospectus and Prospectus.
Please retain this supplement for future reference.
CSC-SK-023-0100

CDS payouts are never quick.
A CDS Special Committee has to determine and declare the default first and then anyone gets paid on CDS.
The idea that some T-Bills CDS may be paid quickly while other T-Notes/Bonds may take a while isn't really correct.
Just look at how the Russian default mess progressed.
Russia missed bond payments in April 2022, then a grace period kicked in and that went by May 2022. But in June 2022, the US-OFAC issued clarification on what was meant by the Presidential Executive Order prohibiting dealings with Russian stocks and bonds, and the CDS Committee deferred its determination in June 2022, then in July 2022. In August 2022, some members of the CDS Committee quit and it no longer had a quorum for meeting. Finally, in September, some CDS contracts settled for 44c on $1.
https://www.jdsupra.com/legalnews/settlement-of-credit-default-swaps-4470588/
https://www.ifre.com/story/3493591/shrinking-cds-committee-raises-questions-over-markets-future-brtlddgldd
https://www.ifre.com/story/3512897/russia-cds-finally-settles-following-auction-y6tvhqv2yh
https://www.cdsdeterminationscommittees.org/

You've identified a key reason why people can come out ahead by doing conversions.
I showed the arithmetic in my Jan 14 post. Basically by pre-paying taxes (via conversion), you're moving tax money from outside into your Roth. So you never again pay taxes on that money's growth. More money sheltered means more money after taxes in the end.
2010 was actually the second time the government allowed the taxes on conversions to be spread over multiple years. You were allowed to declare half of the 2010 conversion amount as part of your 2011 (not 2010) income, and the other half as part of your 2012 income.
https://www.kiplinger.com/article/retirement/t046-c001-s001-faqs-on-the-new-roth-conversion-rules.html
2010 Pub 590 (see p. 2 - What's new for 2010)
The first time the government allowed people to spread taxes on conversions over multiple years was in 1998. Then you were allowed to split the amount converted equally among four years: 1998-2001.
1998 Pub 590 (see p. 39).

@sven, I-Bond rate on 5/1/23 will be determined by the CPI index change from 09/2022-03/2023. The 3 month change from Sep-Dec so far is near 0% and changes over the next 3 months aren't expected to add much. What you see reported are CPI yoy change and that was +6.5% in Dec, but that isn't how the I-Bond rate is determined. That is what my alert is about - you could very well have +4% to +5% reported CPI (yoy change) around May 2023, but still have 0-1% rate for I-Bonds. You will then read media articles explaining why that is.

@PRESSmUP - I remember the $25k minimum - It was just as I wanted to invest the previous minimum ($3,000?) and was told it had just gone up. Didn’t have the 25k at the time, so bought the S&P 500 fund instead.