Think you can do better. Large brokerages such as Fidelity offers one-yr non-callable brokered CDs yielding 4.85%. Just avoid callable CDs from JP Morgan. Bank CDs are not competitive for my $.

Lots of MBS in those. Pimco and DoubleLine noted them several weeks back as high yielding investments with a margin of safety, given how oversold they thought those securities were. The port yield and credit quality of Pimco Income looks to be benefitting, close to 6% depending on share class, for a low-ish IG fund overall (A- per M* metrics).
I've never owned any of those securities directly, so not sure about safety vs. Treasuries. I'd guess pretty safe outside a major disaster like 2008, but not up to what you get with T's.
Edit: Fidelity is showing a new-issue Fed Home Loan Bank 1y offering at 5.47%, not call protected.

Can anyone explain what a "Government Agencies" bond is. I haven't paid attention to them on Schwab's site because treasuries have been the sweet spot, but now I see a 1 year GA at 5.37%. Does this have the same safety as a treasury?

This weeks one can build a nice 3 mo, 6 mo and 12 month T bill ladder with yield ranging from 4.85 - 5.0%. Since today is a holiday, Fidelity still have the auction open.
Also don’t forget to check out the CDs too.

@Sven: "This week we are buying T bills instead as they yield close to 5%."
Ditto. With earlier bills rolling off over the next few months, the higher yields on bills here will give a nice boost to portfolio yield.

I do hope bonds do make a turnaround this year after 2022. However, current inflation data, high service cost and strong consumer spending argue for longer rate hike than market may expected. Now they are expecting three 25 bps rate hike for the year, and that brings the terminal rate to 5.0 - 5.25%.

When I was looking to buy my first house, mortgage rates were 16%.
Folks who had 6% mortgages were in clover. Banks were offering them CASH to refinance at higher rates. A guy in my department said his bank told him he HAD to refinance.
I bought using a land contract at 11%, not realizing the risks.
(I can also remember when gas was 25.9, and a Lotus Europa was $7,000.)

It’s odd because I often hear from the usual pundits that any attempts to tax people or regulate industry are socialist and anti-American, but I can’t think of anything quite so anti-American on the right wing as crypto. Its existence is an attempt to undermine and circumvent the U.S. dollar, and what could be more American than our sawbucks? Our currency is arguably the most powerful representation of America worldwide, and if the dollar fails as the world reserve currency it doesn’t bode well for us as a superpower.
Perhaps that is the actual value of crypto as an investment— it represents a belief and perhaps even a hope that America will fail. I don’t think it’s an accident by the way that Russia has become intensely interested in crypto. It is a nation state and currency weapon of mass destruction, like investing in a missile pointed at the dollar. The problem with even that thesis is America has ample financial and legal means to defend itself against crypto. One of them is interest rates. A lot of investors want dollars now so they can buy T-bills, CDs and money markets yielding almost 5%. You get 0% on your crypto investment, and any entity issuing yield-paying debt on crypto would be of dubious credit quality versus the government which has taxing authority to pay its bills, the financial terrorists in Congress notwithstanding.
Then there are the legal defenses. As Yogibearbull rightly pointed out, it wouldn’t be too hard for regulators to clamp down on crypto for attempting to muscle in on the dollar. Moreover, if blockchain technology is the most interesting and valuable aspect of crypto—and I believe it is—it wouldn’t be too hard to use that technology for our existing all-American much beloved dollar.

*** Bonds of most flavors received a face slap again this week, although many bond sectors were positive on FRIDAY, easing some of the losses. I'm still inclined towards IG bonds for the longer term, being year(s) not months; when the FED rates increases begin to stop and move downward. Duration right now is important for we investors, as the yield's for the short end are 'high'; as noted in the yield curve notations at MFO. At some point, when the economy finds a defined direction; longer duration will find a path. I keep watching for rotations with yields/pricing, as I lean more towards attempting to find the profit from pricing; but right now I'm happy with the +4% yields of a MMKT. This was not the case in April, 2022.

Inflation still persists while consumer spending is healthy. The street now is expecting 3 more 25 bps rate hikes this year. All my core bond funds took a sizable hit last week. Noted that the 2 yr and 10 yr T notes are moving in recent weeks that contributed to lower bond prices. This week we are buying T bills instead as they yield close to 5%.
Rotation from larger caps to smaller ones, especially value funds net good gain this year. Not so sure with oversea markets as the conflicts in Ukraine and China continue.

Anything is dangerous in the wrong (or uninformed) hands.
In crypto's case, IMO it's just another vehicle to invest in. I would trust Bitcoin or Etherium versus any number of 's--tcoins' out there as something that might be fun to invest/trade/speculate in. (Heck, I toyed with the idea of rolling my own coin as a lark once.) That said, don't get me started on 'NFTs' -- which truly are horsesh--t ideas that if you buy them, you deserve to lose all your shirts on.
Crypto's past year reminds me of the housing crisis - bubble, mania, things only go up, you can't lose, tons of hideous corporate sponsorships, even worse counterparty risks, black-box systems, etc, etc. But of course, retail investors during the pandemic with extra cash in a ZIRP climate wanted yield, 'needed' something to do, and they speculated hard w/o thinking things through.
And then there's the 'tech-bro' arrogance factor. I mean, how the heck do you run a billion-dollar crypto exchange/brokerage using QuickBooks as your accounting software? smh....
I went into crypto viewing it akin to L3 debt - it was money that if I lost it all, I could still sleep that night. I made some nice profits yield farming, but punched out in April last year when my investing gizzard got an often-accurate queasy feeling. So thankfully, I didn't lose anything. But then again, I did my homework and knew what I was getting into ... how many people throw money into the markets (stocks, bonds, futs, options, crypto, etc) not knowing anyhting except that it MIGHT make them richer?
In terms of crypto, I'm reminded of this early part of the 'The Big Short' when Steve Carrell's team is researching if there's a housing bubble -- and especially the stripper conversation he has, which starts ~3:50: (yes, the scene in this video link is safe-for-viewing.)

While there are several ways to achieve absolute-return strategies, NOPE uses long-short strategies as noted in the Yahoo Finance Profile before, and in its prospectus below. Noble-Impact is a subadvisor under Toroso, so the next news may be that the subadvisor is fired, and after a few weeks, the ETF is shut - my guesses without any inside knowledge.
https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/1742912/000138713122009588/nope-497k_090722.htm
"Principal Investment Strategies
The Fund is an actively-managed exchange-traded fund (“ETF”) that seeks to achieve its investment objective by purchasing long positions in securities expected to increase in price and/or taking short positions in securities expected to decline in price. The Fund will generally have net exposure ranging from 100% short to 150% long. When the value of the Fund’s outstanding short positions is equal to the Fund’s net assets, the Fund is 100% short. The Fund’s net exposure at any time is the total of the Fund’s percentage long holdings (including leverage) less the percentage of its short holdings. For example, if the Fund’s long holdings totaled 60% and its short holdings totaled 40%, the Fund’s net exposure would be 20% (60%-40%)."
Among the risks mentioned,
"Principal Investment Risks
...
New Sub-Adviser Risk. The Sub-Adviser is a newly formed entity and has no experience with managing an exchange-traded fund, which may limit the Sub-Adviser’s effectiveness...."
A search on "benchmark" showed no mention at all in the prospectus. Conservative absolute-return strategies mention risk-free rate + some spread as the goal/benchmark although those may be missed too.

I have maintained that strategies such as absolute-return, long-short (with tilt) and market-neutral (50-50 L-S) sound appealing, but the manager(s) can make mistakes twice, on the long side AND on the short side. Then, it is like candle burning from the both ends.
Looking at the chart of this new ETF (9/28/22- ), it had a spectacular rise in December (when SP500 fell) and a terrible crash YTD when SP500 rose. So, I would say that it bet net short and lost big by overstaying with that bet.
https://stockcharts.com/h-sc/ui?s=NOPE&p=D&yr=1&mn=0&dy=0&id=p24793772873
https://finance.yahoo.com/quote/NOPE/profile?p=NOPE

Related Twitter exchange (it should be open),
https://twitter.com/syouth1/status/1627288210148655105

The article singles VEDTX out for having a large cap gains distribution. Modest cap gains distributions are not all that unusual. Here's a piece on Vanguard's 2012 ETF distributions, reporting that all but one of Vanguard's bond ETFs distributed cap gains that year.
https://www.etf.com/sections/features/15419-vanguard-sets-cap-gains-on-12-bond-etfs-.html
It goes on to describe conditions in 2012 that led to bond ETF distributions, viz. "a post-crisis environment that has seen investors pile into fixed income in one-way traffic that has limited many managers’ ability to offset cap gains through sales of available low-cost-basis securities at the portfolio level." A storm perhaps, but apparently not, according to the M* piece you linked to, a perfect storm ("Such events have not occurred since [2009].")
The 2012 "imperfect" storm affected pure bond ETFs as well as Vanguard's hybrids.
Most recently, even Vanguard's broadest based bond fund, BND, had cap gains distributions in 2021 (Q2 and Q4) and 2022 (Q2).
https://digital.fidelity.com/prgw/digital/research/quote/dashboard/distributions-expenses?symbol=BND
Or take BNDX. In 2021, it had not only long term gains but short term gains.
https://infomemo.theocc.com/infomemos?number=49817
https://digital.fidelity.com/prgw/digital/research/quote/dashboard/distributions-expenses?symbol=BNDX

@Old_Joe … I was ”living large” in those days. Paisley vinyl top and all. Always thought you to be the more practical type. :)
Image / Funny - that $2,800 car brand new now sells for $19,900 used. Damn. Should have held on to it.

" In 1970 I walked away with a new Plymouth Fury for $2800."
@hank- last of the big spenders! In 1970 we bought our very first new car- a Plymouth Valiant, for an even $2000. It was blue.

So disgust by Parker in today’s age. The $1.5 million fine is way too small for labor violations. Is that considered human trafficking?

I also agree that if the Fed were to make a straight dash for 2% the economy would really tank. I'm hoping that they will talk 2% but actually settle for maybe 3 or 3.5% and declare victory. The bright side of that for the Fed is that it stores up more gunpowder to use in the next cycle of recession. They aren't stupid... not by a long shot.

Gibson Smith is bullish on the overall bond market:
"Thanks to the significant repricing of yields and risk assets in 2022, the bond market has returned to yield levels of 5%, 6%, 7%. The market is set up for potentially good returns over the next 12 to 24 months. We could see high-single digit, if not low-double digit-type returns across the board in fixed income if things play out as we anticipate in 2023."

One year rankings¹ are of little value.
Out of 49 fund families, Vanguard was ranked 21st (43rd in 2021)
while T. Rowe Price was ranked 36th (13th in 2021) in 2022.
The methodology used for Barron's annual Fund Families feature should be questioned
due to large annual rating changes and eligibility requirements².
¹ 5-Yr and 10-Yr rankings are also included.
² Only 49 asset managers out of the 854 in Lipper’s database met the criteria for 2022.