My 2022 Form 1099 shows Foreign taxes flowed through from SCHY. It was ~ (<)10% of the dividends. I shall let others delve into IRAs and foreign taxes pass through from ETFs.

Wanna hedge? Take a look at CCOR which is off 11% YTD.

Why take a look at a loser? What's your point?
Instead, check out JHQAX, for example, which has gained 15.3% YTD, and on top of it has a lower standard deviation than CCOR. JHQAX also has an excellent 9-year risk/reward record.
Fred

I'm 15% in healthcare, but it's all through funds. Over the years, I've seen that my ethical filters just don't work, because at every turn, I'm battling the behemoth called (conscience-less) Capitalism. It sickens me, but what's a mother to do?

Wanna hedge? Take a look at CCOR which is off 11% YTD.
“Good hedges make good neighbors” - for your riskier S&P loaded assets.

Just posted ratings update to MFO Premium using Lipper's 28 July data file.
Descent July! If things hold today, I think we're about 1% of getting back above water since beginning of this Great Normalization cycle in January 2022.

You have to sign up for the auto-roll program and it basically locks that money. Any changes (additions/subtractions, etc) to it would cancel auto-roll; also the auto-roll order can be cancelled manually when it shows up around the roll time. I tried it once, but avoid it now.
But if you are up to manual monthly roll of 4-wk Treasuries, go for it.
Also look at 2-yr FRNs that pay floating 13-wk T-Bill rates + a spread, accrued daily, paid quarterly. A poster mentioned that you have to call Fido to place order, i.e. no online orders.

these middlemen / brokers have been buying up the insurance companies that cover prescription drugs. One they bought is Optum RX
The corporate structure is a bit more muddled than that. The major presecription benefit managers (PBMs) are owned by insurance companies or their parents. United Health Group (parent of United Healthcare) owns Optum Inc. (including OptumRx), CVS acquired Caremark (now branded CVS Caremark) a few years ago (and acquited Aetna more recently), and Cigna owns ExpressScripts.
One interesting facet about these PBM subsidiaries alluded to in the PBS piece is that since they're not insurers, they "can have a higher profit margin than the 15 to 20 percent that's regulated. Insurers are mandated [by the ACA] to spend 80 to 85 percent on medical costs."
https://www.healthcarefinancenews.com/news/secret-weapon-unitedhealths-optum-business-laying-waste-old-notions-about-how-payers-make-money
While Optum services hundreds of insurance companies, 2/3 of its revenue comes from United Healthcare - suggesting that PBMs are largely arms of insurance companies rather than independent third party service providers.

If I understand correctly, the latest 1 month Treasuries yield is about 5.4%. I wonder whether it makes sense to buy them and then reinvest them automatically as Fidelity offers. One can invest like that each week. This would be almost as liquid as a money market, with 5.4% yield, free of state and local taxes, which is better than VMFXX and VUSSX. Is there anything wrong with this idea? Maybe @Yogibearbull can comment?

+1

The PBS segment from Friday (I linked earlier in the thread) focused on the advent of pharmaceutical middlemen / brokers - a fairly recent development. These are companies that serve as a “broker” and set the prices drug wholesalers or insurance companies pay to big pharma and, in the end, what retail must pay and than charge customers. ”Gouging” is a better term than brokering.
Anyways … these middlemen / brokers have been buying up the insurance companies that cover prescription drugs. One they bought is Optum RX - which happens to be mine (as part of my retirement benefits). And that helps explain why with insurance I might pay $30, $40 or more for a common drug, while by skipping insurance and printing out a Good RX coupon in advance I might get the same medication for $10. Really nuts.
ISTM David Giroux in the recent Barron’s interview prophesied that big pharma will be a better investment if the R’s win the Presidency in 2024. So politics might enter into the Pud’s question. Healthcare has been the “in” thing for as long as I can remember. Old Ted liked it. Personally, I tend to run the other way when something’s in vogue - often at my own expense. Thus, I’ve never invested in it aside from indirectly through some fund(s).

Still letting this quote sink in....
"CHILDS: Pharma companies spent $6 billion on TV drug ads in 2016, but they spent $20 billion advertising directly to doctors, pushing drugs that we don't see on TV, like the addictive ones."

.... which is why patients with various conditions might pay $25 or $50 at the pharmacy and see their receipt proudly saying "your insurance saved you $1103.95!" (or more) ..... cut out the D2C marketing and I bet 40-70% of drug price will evaporate. But everyone's got their grubby little fingers in the pie, because $$$$.
Relatedly, I have a friend who did some research on carparal tunnel remedies and saw that in India injections of saline were providing proven relief. It's not an FDA-approved treatment in the US, though... her doctor says it's probably because saline is essentially salt water and salt water is practically free, so there's no profit in it for anyone if it gets approved. I don't think their doc was far off....

Still letting this quote sink in....
"CHILDS: Pharma companies spent $6 billion on TV drug ads in 2016, but they spent $20 billion advertising directly to doctors, pushing drugs that we don't see on TV, like the addictive ones."

All you see on TV nowadays are commercials about drugs.
The US and New Zealand are the only two countries that permit prescription drugs to be advertised on TV.
For how this all started, here's a 2021 Planet Money piece, "This Is Your Brain On Drug Ads"
https://www.npr.org/transcripts/1035147636

[Sara] GONZALEZ [host]: Another big question - do ads drive up prices? 'Cause, like, if drug companies are spending billions of dollars on TV ads, are we the ones paying for those ads every time we get a prescription?
...
[Mary] CHILDS [host]: Drug companies don't just blow a ton of money on advertising and then pass the cost to consumers. It's more subtle. It's more us. When we see an ad for some brand-name drug, the ad makes us value that brand name. And when we value something, we will pay more for it - or at least we will ask our insurance company to pay more for it.
...
GONZALEZ: And if you think about it, in the rest of the world, where these prescription drug ads are banned, consumers do not hear drug names every time they turn on the TV. So brands don't have the same power to get consumers to pay more.
...
CHILDS: Pharma companies spent $6 billion on TV drug ads in 2016, but they spent $20 billion advertising directly to doctors, pushing drugs that we don't see on TV, like the addictive ones. This is how those drugs get sold.

Hi guys,
Thanks for the posts. It seems to me these Pharma companies will not win as sma3 said. It will turn everything upside down and cause chaos for years to come. I mean someone has to set prices for drugs.....so why not the biggest user, Medicare? They seem to have the right since they pay the most bills in the country. All you see on TV nowadays are commercials about drugs. So I think everybody is making money. And with elections coming, this should get lots of playtime all over the country. But if I remember.....they were only going to start with the 10 to 12 most widely used drugs first, and add some every year. So this will take time. This story could go on for years.
So, coming back.....I'm not sure what to do. Have owned these funds for years. Maybe hold tight for awhile and see how things go. All the talking heads are recommending it.....lol.
God bless
the Pudd
p.s.,
Crash +1

May have been a problem with Google’s pricing Friday. One of my tracking apps uses Yahoo pricing and one uses Google.
Same CEF’s closing price + change on Friday:
Google pricing $3.83 +1.32%
Yahoo pricing $3.79 +.26%
M*, M/W, & Fido all have the lower price which is obviously correct. The tracker using Google is still incorrect.
Also, something I’ve noticed with funds that pay very large / frequent dividends is the linear charts or graphs may display only the actual price change over time, leading you to interpret that (incorrectly) as total gain or loss. M* gives (or attempts to) the actual gain or loss with dividends factored in. So, on a Google price chart the fund may appear to have lost $$ over several months, while at M* with dividends factored in it may show a substantial gain over that time as the dividends more than offset the decline in share price.
Honestly, I’m amazed at how much is available free at M* (albeit not always accurate). I have better luck (better access) at M* when I login using the DuckGo browser than with some other ones.

Morningstar Legacy Portf. Mngr:
I can still see it. I got it back after trying a couple of steps, a week or so ago. As was mentioned here at MFO, apparently, M* was doing something internally, and I was involuntarily logged out. On a logged-out basis, the default switched to the "Investor" flavor. I much prefer Legacy to the "new and improved" "Investor" version.
But bear in mind, everyone: numbers at M* get updated when they feel like doing it. And it must be asked, whether or not the updates are even accurate.
Example:
In X-Ray, I'm looking at some ridiculous discrepancies, when compared to the chart display:
X-Ray says BHB is down YTD by -25.16%. The chart shows -15.54.
NHYDY X-Ray = down -16.41. Chart shows -15.37.
ET on X-Ray: +13%. But the chart shows +11.63.
PSTL on X-Ray: +4.1. Chart says +3.23.
When M* actually offers ACCURATE info, it is extremely useful. But it's a hit or miss proposition.
And I did not check to compare FUNDS in the same way.

There are many imperfections/flaws that have existed for years and years with M*. Their "evaluations", star ratings, categorization, etc. became virtually useless to me. About the only things I found useful were their data on funds, and their portfolio watchlists, where I could compare selected funds using selected data measures. I focused on TR performance measures, and risk management measures. I was only interested funds that met my "momentum" criteria, with a risk adjusted measure I chose. When M* quits allowing the free access to the watchlists and data components, it appers I will be forced to consider paying them a subscription fee, which I have NOT done in years--I have not decided i I think it is worth paying them a subscription fee with the many warts that exist with M*.

See current Barron's for a feature on pharma (just 1 segment of healthcare), LINK1 LINK2
The PHARMA industry (MRK, JNJ, BMY, ALPMY, etc) is launching legal wars against Medicare/CMS on its new DRUG PRICING negotiation authority. The pharma industry is hoping to delay, slow or reverse the implementation by winning a national injunction in SOME court and then eventually fighting it before the SUPREMES. The US Chamber of Commerce has also asked a federal court for injunction against Medicare/CMS. CONGRESS passed the related law as part of the Inflation Reduction Act, and since then, the pharma index has lagged. (The current system is that private PBMs and healthcare systems negotiate drug prices, and then the Medicare/CMS just goes along. This system was seriously broken by Biogen’s/BIIB greedy pricing of its 1st Alzheimer drug that was approved by the FDA. Eventually, that drug failed in the marketplace due to resistance from Medicare/CMS. Biogen’s 2nd Alzheimer drug has done better.)

Big Pharma pig-farts.

Morningstar Legacy Portf. Mngr:
I can still see it. I got it back after trying a couple of steps, a week or so ago. As was mentioned here at MFO, apparently, M* was doing something internally, and I was involuntarily logged out. On a logged-out basis, the default switched to the "Investor" flavor. I much prefer Legacy to the "new and improved" "Investor" version.
But bear in mind, everyone: numbers at M* get updated when they feel like doing it. And it must be asked, whether or not the updates are even accurate.
Example:
In X-Ray, I'm looking at some ridiculous discrepancies, when compared to the chart display:
X-Ray says BHB is down YTD by -25.16%. The chart shows -15.54.
NHYDY X-Ray = down -16.41. Chart shows -15.37.
ET on X-Ray: +13%. But the chart shows +11.63.
PSTL on X-Ray: +4.1. Chart says +3.23.
When M* actually offers ACCURATE info, it is extremely useful. But it's a hit or miss proposition.
And I did not check to compare FUNDS in the same way.

The article is a brief overview but read the Health Affairs article linked in the article for a better legal analysis. These authors think it is unlikely to succeed, as doctors, and hospitals voluntarily accept Medicare prices.
It would appear to me ( as a retired MD who had to participate in Medicare for my career if I wanted any patients) that no one is forcing Pharma to sell it's drugs, only that Medicare should be able to determine what price it will pay, just like it does for hospitals and physicians and all other services it has covered since 1965.
This is not a "taking" which seems especially true if Pharma is willing to sell these same drugs to veterinarians ( see Baron's article last week on dog vs people allergy med costs) and in Europe for far far cheaper prices.
If in fact this cases are successful, it will mean the end of Medicare, and probably health care in general, as the proposed costs for the Alzheimer's and Obesity drugs alone may bankrupt it.
Every hospital chain and doctor's group (even the "non-profits" like Ascension with it's billion dollar plus hedge fund
https://www.statnews.com/2021/11/16/ascension-running-wall-street-style-private-equity-fund/) will sue Medicare and Medicaid to force them to pay them what they think they are worth.
This will eventually come back to bite Big Pharma, when citizens see the absolutely unaffordable prices for life saving drugs that will result, and health insurance companies go bankrupt, and patients stop all but life saving operations and procedures, even then people die.