warning to those like myself :
a. reside in the overlap of macro and history hobbyists.
b. due to training in science, or being human, are susceptible to pattern matching, and know it.
i ran across this post by a former history professor now in Investor Relations, and had to read immediately :
https://www.kopernikglobal.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/09/Hindsight-is-1920.pdf

Not that I own bond funds, but whenever I see 'securitized' in a fund's holdings, my radar goes into high gear, because who knows what dodgy debt they've stuffed in there?
As 'The Big Short' concluded:
“In 2015 several large banks began selling billions in something called a “bespoke tranche opportunity.” [beat] Which according to the Wall Street Journal is just another name for a CDO.”

@WABC. The standard issue , generic bond ETF is 25.42 % “securitized “. You gotta go outta your way to avoid that stuff. Have you paid attention to an auto loan failure of last week called Tricolor? Wonder how many bonds funds were holding some of that? I paid particular attention to that story because as a young man I was an auto dealer manager. I was aware of one of Tricolor’s locations near me and it was very low end and the bottom of the barrel operation.

Here's a link from The Telegraph riffing on the issues raised by @yogibearbull.

The International Monetary Fund (IMF) warned this week that banks now have about $4.5tn of exposure to the “shadow banking” sector, a sum exceeding the size of the entire British economy.
Throw in a bout of geopolitical turmoil – which, with Donald Trump in the White House, is never far off – and the IMF says up to a fifth of banks could be in some kind of strife.
/snip
“If the problems in the illiquid markets persist and grow, they may start to become a systemic risk, forcing the Fed and other central banks to intervene,” analysts at Panmure Liberum wrote in a note to clients.
That scenario still felt quite distant until two regional American banks, Zions Bancorporation and Western Alliance Bancorp, revealed that they had found bad loans on their books. There has also been increased activity in the repo market, where banks go for cheap emergency cash.
/snip
“The Fed and other central banks can in theory provide liquidity by accepting these private loans as collateral for liquidity injections in affected funds,” Panmure Liberum’s analysts said.
But they finished with a warning: “We are old enough to have been around in the run-up to the financial crisis of 2007 and 2008 and we are fully aware that we could have written similarly comforting lines ... back then.”

Read all about it.

Auto delinquencies are up more than 50% since 2010 and have transitioned from the safest to riskiest consumer commercial credit product in that time frame, according to a Friday report from VantageScore.

I hope your bond funds are only in the "safest" tranches of asset-backed car loans.
But wait, there's more . . .

“The bigger picture: the auto market is a bellwether for household financial health,” the report says. “A sustained climb in auto delinquencies signals deeper affordability challenges across the consumer economy.”
The country is seeing “the most precarious consumer credit health situation since the last financial crisis,” said VantageScore Chief Economist Rikard Bandebo.

OTOH, the same source report goes on to say:

Delinquencies among other loan categories, like credit cards and first mortgages, have declined since the first quarter of 2010, making autos a bit of an outlier, VantageScore said.

That's reassuring for now; but I still don't look at any bond fund that is more than 25% securitized. YMMV.
More grisly vehicle loan numbers at the link.

If I could find an inverse 1X etf I’d have a small short on gold, precious metals ot miners, But the few available appear only to be 2X and 3X.
Attempted to buy DGZ at open yesterday, but it’s a weird animal. Didn’t go through. I should have saved the pop-up note from Fido. Something about only being able to purchase this one after day’s trading close. Obviously, it’s something other than an ETF. Morningstar shows it having only a few $Mil AUM.
Gold may run a lot higher still. At some point (next few years) I believe it will retrace to $3500, if not lower. I remember buying a bit at $800-$850 when I was very young and selling it 3 or 4 years later at around $400. Folks should be very carful playing the mining funds. There have been periods when some shed more than 50-60% over very short 2-3 year periods. That was sometime before 2015 which is about as far back as some trackers show. At Yahoo, you should be able to pull up OPGSX a long way back and see what could happen.
Some issues I have with gold at these prices: (1) The rapid recent rate of appreciation. Does anyone really think we’re headed for 30, 40 or 50% annual inflation? That would seem to be what this “inflation hedge” is implying. (2) If worried about the dollar, there are funds that invest in foreign currencies & local debt. Yes, you might lose money, but the risk isn’t as high as for gold. Broad base commodities are also an option. (3) Where will you spend your gold (if you’re hoarding the physical stuff)? To carry an ounce down the street at $4000+ an ounce you’d better be well armed and wearing a bullet proof vest. Do I need $4,000 in my pocket to shop? You can still buy a perfectly fine bottle of single malt for under $100.

Below is the link to the CrossingBridge 3Q25 invesotr letter:
https://blog.crossingbridgefunds.com/blog/q3-2025-commentary-asleep-at-the-wheel-the-real-risks-of-chasing-yield
We discuss First Brands, Compass Diversified and a extremely brief outlook.
Feel free to reach out.
DKS

17 Oct, '25: Scarlet Fu hosts again. After all these years, still delicious. Not much that's terribly news-y, to my mind.
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/videos/2025-10-17/real-yield-10-17-2025-video

My Irish grandmother used to say: "There's favors (even) in hell." Criminal scum look out for other criminal scum. They do favors for one another. No conscience. No morals. No worries.
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025/oct/17/trump-commuted-sentence-george-santos

@Mark,@hank. Side sleeper here,,, bad left shoulder and bad right hip. Nowhere to turn to…plus my cat has something to say about how I sleep as well … seriously this all started since I turned 76.

I see in hindsight that I did not fully believe or at least understand the stepdown or shelving points at mid- / later 60s, and then @ 70plus or minus, but I sure as hell understand and believe them at the mid-70s point (quite aside from getting hit by a car).
I'm 78.5 and things are markedly worse than just a year or two ago, including the working systems (heart, gut), the tk repairs (shoulders), and the nominal repaired (knee). So I can hardly wait for the next bloody stepdowns, ffs.
I'm sure those older (like OJ et alia) can speak to it all.
And of course one counts blessings when considering all those worse off, or dead.
OT, I know.

We have a Super bull which just eats super grains (Crypto) & breath's black smoke (fossil fuel), Just wait and see. Biden's bull were on fake feed (spending/stimulus which I started by the way and Biden copied and took credit for good time), we are cutting them ASAP. Budget deficient - smoke and mirror - I started the tariff on selected few and Biden's continued. We are now collecting so much tariff that the deficit will run with the tail between the legs.

fuckin' awesome high ... will you puhleeze sell all of us some? please??

Are we cornered now? It's not just rare earth but all other critical stuff we get from them where the capacity can't be replaced by the stroke of pen/tweets. I read about some semiconductors (they have 40% of world's manufacturing capacity in those categories) which can be restricted for export from China.
I think China knows now the tariff game - it is paid by American consumers. I don't think many of our folks know that. My neighbor is from India. All the Indian groceries he buys have gone up in prices by 25-50% due to tariff. We can't produce all those stuff they eat/consume so grudgingly they pay more. They are cutting in other categories, like only buying 5 dolls for their grand children instead of 20 earlier for Christmas gift this year.
No pun intended> May be we should close 700 bases overseas and bring the soldiers and put them to work in rare earth supply chain - current version of Manhattan Project.

@FD100 - Why hasn’t some big mutual fund company snatched you up yet to run some of their funds? I’d imagine you could make David Giroux look like a rank amateur. Quite amazing TRP hasn’t lured you in with a big singing bonus …

I retired with enough money to cover our expenses for 25 years, not including SS.
Then I doubled our portfolio.
I don't need a job. We have enough for all the good stuff.
Retirement is the best job I have ever had.
Many investors still haven't learned the lesson, stop investing based on politics and complaining about it.

one or the other
https://www.nytimes.com/2025/10/17/business/bull-market-trump-biden.html

Why China is kicking our ass now... 750 military bases!
(short read) https://www.takimag.com/article/on-the-road-to-ruin/
ADD: poked around on the above site. Interesting articles which seems to lean right.

The common thinking is that those in higher tax rates would benefit from holding munis, of course.
I'm in one of the higher brackets and only have a small position in a muni fund that my parents got for me back in the early '80s. Otherwise, I generally prefer the straight 15% tax on qualified dividends from common and preferred stocks .. less to think about, too.
If I had a gazillion dollars, I'd certainly throw a large chunk into individual munis, though.....

YTD: GLD=62.7%...SPY=13.8%
1 Month: GLD=16.5%...SPY=0.3%
So, you can doubt the future of GLD, but in 2025 it's so much better, and that's why I have based my investments on current markets. I don't care about the past either.
I don't own risky stuff anymore since retirement in 2018.
It doesn't mean you must own a high %. A 10-15% is all you need.

Lots of good examples. I agree he could have listed a few, but with ETFs it is very easy yo buy energy, industrial firms etc.
Look at INFL it is 25% gold and basic materials but also lots of energy and financial firms

I can't remember all of them but during previous shutdowns, I am sure our practice was not paid for some of them.
Medicare was almost as bad a payor to work with as Trump. They would always delay the late September check to push it into the next fiscal year. They were more prompt than the commercial insurances, but had the right to audit a small fraction of your chart visits ( say 10) and if they found 2 miscoded, would demand a check for 205 of those revenues paid over the last three years on the spot.
They spent a lot of money torturing small practices over junk like this but for some reason could never catch huge practices that were billing millions fraudulently. An ophthalmologist in Florida would use 1/2 of a vial to treat one eye, and open another vial to treat the other eye, and bill Medicare for both vials. Why they couldn't catch that one I will never understand.

This is more updated ( But we are still stoopidest "advanced" planet on face of the earth, run by a political party whose ONLY policy objective is maximal cruelty to the most number of citizens possible)
https://www.beckershospitalreview.com/finance/cms-walks-back-medicare-payment-pause/
CMS has clarified that only select Medicare claims will be held amid the ongoing federal government shutdown, walking back an earlier notice that suggested a broader payment pause.
“In light of the continuing government shutdown, CMS will continue to process and pay held claims in a timely manner with the exception of select claims for services impacted by the expired provisions,” the agency said in an Oct. 15 notice. “To date, no payments have been delayed as statute already requires all claims to be held for a minimum of fourteen days, and this recent hold is consistent with that statutory requirement. Providers may continue to submit claims accordingly.”
An earlier version of the notice stated that all payments under the Medicare Physician Fee Schedule, ground ambulance transport claims and all federally qualified health center claims would be temporarily held.
The updated notice specifies that only claims tied to lapsed legislative provisions — such as those for non-behavioral telehealth visits, hospital-at-home care and hospice face-to-face recertifications — will be affected by the hold.
Provisions for those programs expired Oct. 1 after Congress failed to pass a funding bill. The lapse has already led to service disruptions at hospitals and health systems across the country.
About 30% of hospitals have halted Medicare telehealth services amid the shutdown, according to estimates from the American Telemedicine Association. Many systems have also discharged or transferred hospital-at-home patients back to capacity-strained brick-and-mortar facilities as CMS reimbursement for the model lapsed.