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Here's a statement of the obvious: The opinions expressed here are those of the participants, not those of the Mutual Fund Observer. We cannot vouch for the accuracy or appropriateness of any of it, though we do encourage civility and good humor.
  • Sentiment & Market Indicators, 10/15/25
    SENTIMENT & MARKET INDICATORS, 10/15/25
    AAII Bull-Bear Spread -12.4% (low; large decline)
    CNN Fear & Greed Index 30 (fear)
    NYSE %Above 50-dMA 47.73% (negative)
    SP500 %Above 50-dMA 49.80% (negative)
    These are contrarian indicators.
    INVESTOR CONCERNS: Budget, debt, tariffs, inflation, jobs, Fed, dollar, recession, geopolitical, Russia-Ukraine (190+ weeks), Israel-Hamas (67+27 weeks).
    For the Survey week (Th-Wed), stocks down, bonds up, oil down, gold up, dollar down.
    Israel-Hamas fragile peace deal, phase 1 has begun. Delayed CPI on 10/24/25 – it’ll affect SSA COLA (2026), & I-Bond & TIPS variable rates. Other updates delayed by DC shutdown – Medicare info during OEP; Fed TSP G Fund rate.
    #AAII #CNN #Sentiment
    https://ybbpersonalfinance.proboards.com/post/2257/thread
  • CMS freezes Medicare pay to doctors amid shutdown, October 15, 2025 9PM, EST
    The news appears credible. Further, private insurers (Medicare Advantage) may be stuck paying covered medical expenses even if they don't receive payments from the government.
    MA plans directly reimburse providers for care in accordance with contractual agreements between the plan and provider. Those contractual agreements must include a prompt pay provision; the specifics of the provision are up to the plan and provider. MA also has concrete rules for how non-contracted providers who provide care outside of the plan network are reimbursed for services, and those have not changed. Under existing regulations, MA plans have 30 days from receipt to pay 95% of “clean claims” for services furnished by non-contracted providers or submitted by, or on behalf of, an enrollee of an MA private fee-for-service plan.
    The government shutdown’s impact on Medicare Advantage: As clear as mud?
    That headline pretty much sums things up. Hard to tell quite what is happening. With providers and with insurers.
    The dateline on this piece is Oct 16th. No wonder it's clear as mud. As Yogi Berra said, it's tough to make predictions, especially about the future.
    https://www.goodreads.com/quotes/261863-it-s-tough-to-make-predictions-especially-about-the-future
  • CMS freezes Medicare pay to doctors amid shutdown, October 15, 2025 9PM, EST
    Please clarify any findings (you may discover) about this post or the information below, as to the fully credible nature and/or any modification of the terms or wording. I/we need this to be accurate reporting and not contrary to the below. Thank you.
    --- This evening, October 15, 2025, 9pm, EST

    Medicare has temporarily paused payments to doctors, community health centers, and ground ambulance providers due to the federal government shutdown.
    This hold applies to services provided since October 1, 2025, and payments will not be released until Congress acts to fund the government and reauthorize expired programs. This situation is separate from the annual Medicare physician payment cuts and the 2025 reduction that is still in effect.
    Why payments are paused
    Federal government shutdown: The shutdown that began on October 1, 2025, has triggered the pause in payments because certain Medicare payment programs, such as those for telehealth, have not been reauthorized by Congress.
    Expired provisions: The expiration of legislative provisions passed under the Full-Year Continuing Appropriations and Extensions Act, 2025 has put a hold on payments for services delivered on or after October 1, 2025.
    Claims are still being submitted: Providers can continue to submit claims, but the payments will remain on hold until the situation is resolved.
    What this means for patients
    Potential delays in care: The pause in payments could create delays in accessing care, as doctors and clinics face financial strain.
    Impact on specific services: The hold specifically affects services paid under the Medicare Physician Fee Schedule, ground ambulance transport claims, and claims from Federally Qualified Health Centers.
    Resumption of services: Once Congress acts to fund the government and reauthorize the programs, the hold will be lifted, and claims will be processed.
    What this means for doctors
    Payment delays: Doctors are experiencing a delay in receiving Medicare payments for services rendered since October 1, 2025.
    Impact on clinics: This could create significant financial challenges for physician practices, especially those that rely heavily on Medicare reimbursements.
    Need for congressional action: Physicians are waiting for Congress to pass legislation to reopen the government and reauthorize the programs to get paid for their services.
    Ongoing payment cuts: This is separate from the 2.8% Medicare physician payment cut that took effect on January 1, 2025, and remains in effect.
    What to do if you have questions
    Contact your doctor: If you have questions or concerns, contact your doctor's office for information about how this may affect your care or billing.
    Contact CMS: For specific questions about your Medicare benefits or claims, you can contact the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) for the most up-to-date information.
  • OK, this must be the signal that "the top is near"
    Pre-ordered audio version of Sorkin’s 1929 several weeks ago after first hearing about it. Started listening last night. Excellent. Very well written and narrated by Sorkin himself. About more than just the market mania / crash. A good historical account of the period. Highly recommend.
  • Buy Sell Why: ad infinitum.
    Side sleeper also. That pain in the bones shoots right through you late at night or upon waking. Not any one area. Legs. Arms. Whatever. Enough to make you scream. Nearing 80. Guess that older smaller bed will have to do until figure this one out. Both shoulders been really sore for months. Arthritis I think. Had a cortisone injection in one a couple months ago. Some relief. I bought a tube of Diclofenac Gel from Amazon recently. Slopped it on both shoulders the other night and most of the pain has gone away. Seems to last a while. Quite amazing.
    @Old_Joe. No, the bed didn’t come from the pillow guy! :) Funny - the (real) wood frame of that smaller bed I’m using now was purchased about 45 years ago at a Montgomery Ward store downstate where I worked back then. Who woulda thunk it would last all those years? Outlasted “Monkey Ward” by a mile. Newer isn’t always better.
  • The Week in Charts | Charlie Bilello
    The Week in Charts (10/15/25)
    The State of the Markets, including...
    00:00 Intro
    00:27 Stocks
    13:09 Bonds/Fed
    21:34 Real Estate/Housing
    27:53 Commodities
    33:56 Currencies
    35:36 Crypto
    36:51 Intermarket
    41:54 Economy
    Video
    Blog
  • OK, this must be the signal that "the top is near"
    They are just testing this SEC.
    SEC has restricted ETFs to +/- 2x, but didn't restrict ETNs that can still be +/- 3x.
    Existing +/- 3x ETFs weren't affected - may be that is giving the filers hope.
    Some have already filed for +/- 3x ETFs to test, but +/- 5x may prompt SEC to act quickly on this.
    Sure ... but even that *someone* is offering such a product after the past few years is kind of telling/worrysome, at least to me.
  • OK, this must be the signal that "the top is near"
    They are just testing this SEC.
    SEC has restricted ETFs to +/- 2x, but didn't restrict ETNs that can still be +/- 3x.
    Existing +/- 3x ETFs weren't affected - may be that is giving the filers hope.
    Some have already filed for +/- 3x ETFs to test, but +/- 5x may prompt SEC to act quickly on this.
  • OK, this must be the signal that "the top is near"

    Irrational idiotic exuberance -- markets can only go up, right?
    (Reuters) -Volatility Shares, an issuer of exchange-traded funds, filed on Wednesday to launch a total of 27 highly leveraged ETFs, including the first-ever proposed 5x ETF for the U.S. market, at a time of rising caution over inflated asset prices as markets continue their upward swing....
    https://finance.yahoo.com/news/volatility-shares-files-first-ever-182608186.html
  • Buy Sell Why: ad infinitum.
    @hank - maybe consider stuffing some of your cash into the new mattress and see if that helps.
    I didn't have to deal with that achey bone and muscle business the first 75 years of my life but it's acting up to me now. Sucks, and I feel your pain.
  • Buy Sell Why: ad infinitum.
    Today I moved everything I had in NEAR (14-15% of portfolio) into AGZD. That’s the closest I come to holding any cash, except for a few bucks left in SPAAX for trading. AGZD is hedged against rate volatility. Should yield roughly whatever intermediate to long high grade bonds do without all the excitement. Suspect a bit higher than short-term bonds going forward. AGZD zigs and zags a bit. Not necessarily bad if it helps offset volatility in other parts of the portfolio.
    Enjoyed the discussion of aging. Right now I’m trying to figure out why every bone in my body aches in the morning after sleeping in a newer more upscale more expensive queen bed in the master bedroom, but don’t hurt after a night in an older smaller & softer bed in different room. Nuts.
  • Biggest bitcoin scam ever
    Wonderful, 15 Billion worth of Bitcoins in US Bitcoin Sovereign fund.
  • Buying Precious Metals
    Howdy folks,
    Some of you are riding this bull and some are tempted. At this moment, for most investors, if I wanted to establish a position, I'd Dollar Cost Average. I'm a momentum investor and have been scaling in until I reach my target allocation. What your target allocation should be varies enormously from investor to investor. For years I suggested 3-7% for most, preferably in physical bullion. Yeah, that can get sticky but cripes, a roll of American Gold Eagles is slightly larger than a quarter in diameter and stands 2-3" tall. At todays prices it's worth about $90K. You can hide it in your box of oatmeal. As for silver, a 100 oz bar is worth about $5K and you can paint it black and use it as a door stop. Buy some bling for you and your spouse.
    Note: I don't trust bullion ETF funds generally as they are based upon an enormous amount of paper. I do trust Sprout. For paper investing, it's them, PRPFX and junior silver and gold miners with SILJ and SGDJ.
    Spot price is determined in the commodities market and is paper and manipulated enormously. The price you pay is spot plus the premium. The premium varies by the type of bullion you're buying. I've attached the quote sheet from my local coin dealer. It lists the premium for every type of bullion. Note that better types are more than others and that volume buying lowers the premium. Top shelf costs more than rot gut.
    https://libertycoinservice.com/daily-price-quotes/
    Right now the LBMA has come up against a shortage of physical bullion and more and more contract holders are requesting physical delivery of their contractual bullion. This has increased the demand for pure bullion ingots .999%. Couple this with the increased demand from individual investors and more particularly from various central banks around the world and you see a perfect example of artificial pricing. The spot price was around $3.00 below the 'street' price. Premiums are soaring. When the paper price is lower than the street price, one of two things occurs. The street price goes up [increased premiums] or supply dries up. "Sorry, we're all out."
    One last thing. Because London is so desperate for physical bullion, the refiners in this country are refusing to except 90% silver (old U.S. coinage pre-1964), not because it's not valuable, but because they don't have time to refine it to .999% pure. Ah, but this has resulted in the premium on 90% silver going to around zero. Best buy in town. Having a couple of rolls of quarters and dimes in the safe, doesn't sound like a horrible idea.
    and so it goes,
    peace,
    rono
  • the debasement trade
    “ Why soaring gold prices could be a warning sign for the economy”
    The flight toward gold has coincided with a depreciation in the value of the U.S. dollar. Its value against other currencies plunged about 11% over the first half of 2025, the biggest decline in more than 50 years, a Morgan Stanley report in August found.
    The decline in the U.S. dollar's value reflects a shift away from global dependence on the dollar as a global reserve currency, as investors take note of changes in U.S. economic policy and Trump's pressure campaign against the Fed, analysts said.
    "Investors are getting nervous about all the traditionally safe U.S. assets like treasury securities," Pasquariello said. "Where else will they put money? Gold."
    https://abcnews.go.com/Business/soaring-gold-prices-warning-sign-economy/story?id=126414464
  • the debasement trade

    This Gold Rush Is Ominous
    Following are edited excerpts from a current report in The Atlantic.   (This should be a free link.)
    When prices are high and global conflicts destabilize the world, some investors start looking backwards—and what’s older and more dependable than gold?
    Last week, amid widespread geopolitical turmoil and a weakening U.S. dollar, the price of gold hit a historic high of $4,000 an ounce. This year has so far been gold’s best since 1979, a moment of instability so profound that it led to recession.
    Over the past 50 years, spikes in the price of gold have typically been correlated with widespread inflation and geopolitical dysfunction. The precious metal has long been considered a safe-haven asset, because, unlike the U.S. dollar, its inherent value isn’t determined by any state government.
    Some investors see gold as a standard way to diversify their portfolio. Others, stereotypically known as goldbugs, tend to be broadly skeptical about contemporary monetary policy. Just as investors in bitcoin, so-called digital gold, have historically skewed libertarian and anti-institutional, the most extreme goldbugs are betting against the system, doubtful that the Federal Reserve is capable of keeping the U.S. dollar strong.
    Gold prices have already risen more than 50 percent this year and are showing no signs of stopping. The story of today’s gold boom began in 2022, when Russia invaded Ukraine and Western governments decided to sanction the Russian central bank by freezing its foreign-exchange reserves. The scale of these sanctions was a reminder of why countries might want to own assets that can’t be easily frozen. Especially in emerging markets, central banks around the world “realized that the truly only safe asset” is gold.
    The other main driver of this price spike is less abstract. Some Wall Streeters are concerned that the value of the U.S. dollar will continue to erode as the national debt climbs and the Federal Reserve loses its grip on the currency. They’re making what’s become known as the “Debasement Trade,” shifting money away from the weakening U.S. dollar and into harder, more independent assets such as gold and bitcoin. Shrinkflation, stagflation, good-old-fashioned inflation—all of it means that your paycheck doesn’t go as far as it once did, and all of it is good for gold.
    The mystery of the current gold rally is that the S&P 500 is also up. The stock-market index reached an all-time high earlier this month, which would seem to suggest that the American economy isn’t quite as close to the brink as the price of gold might indicate.
    But the reality probably has to do with a bifurcated market. Vanguard’s global chief economist told The New York Times on Saturday that this rare case of gold and stocks moving in a parallel upward trend has to do with “dramatically different” investor perspectives: The optimists are going with equities, and the pessimists are going with gold. In today’s economy, there’s room enough for both.
  • Trump officials cancel major solar project in latest hit to renewable energy
    From LA Times that would add content and number behind China’s effort on solar energy, and the wattage power they can provide.
    Chinese government officials last month showed off what they say will be the world’s largest solar farm when completed high on a Tibetan plateau. It will cover 235 square miles, which is the size of Chicago
    https://latimes.com/environment/story/2025-08-21/china-races-to-build-worlds-largest-solar-farm-to-meet-emissions-targets
    In order to feed their manufacturing capacity, China has becoming more advanced in power generation than solely on coal. Large dams have been built to feed their power grids across many miles. Large scale solar farms is another example.
  • the debasement trade
    Howdy folks,
    The debasing of the fiat currencies around the world, ever since we went off the gold standard, and particularly here at home, has bothered me for much of my adult life. I wrote a paper on it in Econ 318 Money, Credit and Banking back in '78 tracing it back to Aristophanes in Frogs,
    "This city, it often seems to me
    treats our best and worthiest citizens
    the way it does our old silver coins,
    our new gold ones, as well.(40) This money
    was never counterfeit—no, these coins
    appeared to be the finest coins of all,
    the only ones which bore the proper stamp.
    Everywhere among barbarians and Greeks
    they stood the test. But these we do not use.
    Instead we have our debased coins of bronze,
    poorly struck some days ago or yesterday."
    The US dollar has been the bedrock of international banking for quite a while, but those days are coming to an end. Lots of reasons such as Trump and his trade war, but Russia invading Ukraine and having us freeze a lot of their assets tied to the greenback was huge. The rest of the world, went WTF!?!, what are our alternatives. They've been switching to them ever since. On the margin, I grant you, as no one wants to spook the market they're selling into, but they have been selling dollars and buying lots of stuff. You see it in gold, crypto, corporate stocks, etc. With the debt levels and politization of the banking systems . . . geez, we have $39T in official debt and well over $100T in unfunded liabilities. Gov't takes in about $5T a year. Duh. They have two choices - break promises such as Social Security and Medicare and gov't pensions or debase the currency and pay off the debts with cheaper money. Either way, I'm really riding the PMs, particularly silver. Hell, I've been a Stacker since 3rd grade. Right now, the silver market is experiencing a major short squeeze as London is running short of physical silver. They mostly only deal with paper silver, but many contract holders as asking for Delivery of physical instead of a rollover and payout. Much silver was shipped to the US to avoid potential tariffs. Now folks around the world are asking for their real silver and the LBMA doesn't have it. Their risk of default is greater than zero. They're so desperate for bullion, the refiners here in the US are no longer taking 90% silver because they don't have time to purify it to 999%. It still has value, but 'not right now'. [note to any Stackers, the premium on 90% is the lowest it will ever be.]
    So, if fiat currencies are not the place to invest our hard earned money, where should we invest? I am really interested in your thoughts. This group has the best set of minds available for free. Always has had.
    https://finance.yahoo.com/news/great-debasement-debate-rippling-across-233000819.html
    and so it goes,
    peace,
    rono