For those who might be interested ADRE (Invesco BLDRS Emerging Markets 50 ADR) holds a 20.9% position in TSM.

Related thread I started back Nov 2020 when I sold my home. Yes, an agent is probably a necessity, but that doesn't mean you can't shop for the best value. It is a seller market and inventory is scarce...that should help you set the terms.
My agent split a 4 % commission with the buyer's agent. They list and manage all of the offers and there will be multiple offers.
I will say my 36 year old house was move in ready. I spent 3 months preparing the house for sale. It sold in one week...over asking. A good realtor will guide you through the process and maximize your profit.
https://mutualfundobserver.com/discuss/discussion/57098/your-home-is-not-an-investment#latest

Greetings,
Curious as to the class' life experience in selling a home. Wife and I are getting ready to sell our wonderful home after 25 years...
Have found out that real estate agents are generally not worth their comission fees. None of them will help you find a home unless your budget is over a 1.5M. Then they will chauffeur you house to house to look at them. Otherwise you surf the net or they take your email and put you on an auto email with all the beat up overpriced crap homes on them, waste your time and then they unlock the door for you and walk thru the home like they are experts. Sheet.
They have this game they play, called comps. Called the shall we say Orange Fish agent, showed me chart how he gets 99% of ask price then tells me based on comps your house is worth xyz. I say really. You can't find another home for sale in my neighborhood of over 300 homes. The one's that have sold have sold in a day and sold for $10k over ask. What do I care what a home sold for 10 months ago. Can you sell me SPY ETF at the price it was 10 months ago? No, then why the freak should I go to market with an old price? I told him no wonder you gave me the 99% figure. You are selling me on my selling my home under it's current value so you can sell my house in a weekend and move onto another sucker. Then he starts telling me what I should fix up on my home as with an FHA loan you will get a high degree of inspection, don't want to fail that. Told him go freak himself, I'm not going to add onto this housing charade by selling my home to someone who can only put 3.5% down and leverage himself to the hilt. Told him this conversation is over, you can leave now, don't let the door hit you on the arse on the way out, bye bye.
What has been your experience and apologies if this should be in off topic etc
Baseball Fan

Thanks @Mark, very informative article.
Here's the accompanying articles to the chart:
https://epi.org/productivity-pay-gap/
This chart says it all...the end of the American middle class wage.

"The soon-to-be-announced tax hike will treat those investment gains as wages for top earners and applies only to about 500,000 households, according to Brian Deese, who runs Biden's policy-writing National Economic Council."
***************************
And when will the SS cap be removed??????????? Shit.......

Retired @53 and took it @63. I didn't need it but took it because tomorrow is not guaranteed. A bird in the hand yada yada yada... Unfortunately I know someone who only benefited 2 years. I'm glad they took it asap.

I sometimes imagine the Cayman Islands as just one big UPS Store with shiny walls of P.O. boxes for the tax shelters and a few palm trees in the background. This is fascinating reading: https://taxjustice.net/cms/upload/pdf/Tax_Notes_0707_Lessons_from_the_war_on_tax_havens.pdf
If the U.S. truly turned against these havens--and it had in the past briefly--I doubt there would be anything they could do to stop us. The Cayman Islands has a population of 66,350 and anywhere between $1.5 trillion and $1.9 trillion custodied there, depending on which estimate you believe. But the U.S. never will, especially with Biden who represented America's biggest haven for other countries--Delaware--for many years.

Consider reading Daniel Amerman's commentary on taking SS early. It's pretty compelling. I know that my personal rate of inflation is about 5% annually which is just one reason why waiting makes less sense.

Gotta link?
A couple I found:
danielamerman.com/va/BenefitAge.html
danielamerman.com/va/rfe/PerMath.html

Consider reading Daniel Amerman's commentary on taking SS early. It's pretty compelling. I know that my personal rate of inflation is about 5% annually which is just one reason why waiting makes less sense.

Just posted today:
"By Andrea Shalal and Trevor Hunnicutt, WASHINGTON (Reuters) -
President Joe Biden's forthcoming capital gains tax hike proposal would affect only a 0.3% slice of U.S. taxpayers, a top economic aide said on Monday.
Biden is set this week to propose nearly doubling taxes on capital gains to 39.6% for people earning more than $1 million, Reuters has reported, in what would be the highest tax rate on investment gains since the 1920s.
The soon-to-be-announced tax hike will treat those investment gains as wages for top earners and applies only to about 500,000 households, according to Brian Deese, who runs Biden's policy-writing National Economic Council."

@davidmoran,
There are reasons why American above age 62 may not be able to work.

A lot of people can't afford to wait to sign up for Social Security. Consider that most Americans have not saved enough for retirement.
"The biggest challenge for most people is they under-save for retirement," Houston says. Many people can improve their financial situation by working in retirement, but you could also end up retiring earlier than you planned to. "They can work in retirement, but unfortunately 50% of Americans end up retiring before they had planned for three reasons: The first reason is their health, the second reason is their spouse's health and the third reason is that their services are no longer necessary – they were terminated," Houston says. So, planning to continue to work during retirement is not always an option.

The reality for many older Americans... they have to work to make ends meet...that means collecting SS @ age 62 and working a job.
The fastest labor growth rate comes from those 65 and older:

@Sven et al
The initial reports began about one month ago, but this BBC story is a recent update.
Having lived in Taiwan (Taipei area) for 2 years, I continue to follow a variety of news about the country, over the years.
ADD: Phoenix plant Taiwan Semi
Not a fix for the current circumstance, but........

Taiwan semiconductor manufacturing company, TMC leads the world in contract manufacturing for these chipsets. And there are several more including one Chinese one (5th ?). Lot to catch up as the capacity has max out. TMC is building a plant in US but this will not solve the immediate shortage.
As investors it is important to check the top 10 holdings in your international funds or ETFs. TMC is held in many funds.

@FD1000 Krugman won his Nobel in 2008 for his contributions to New Trade Theory https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_trade_theory, so I'm not sure why his political beliefs in 2016 have anything to do with the prize and that you should be amazed by it. Now can you explain why Kissinger deserved the Nobel for en-miring us in Vietnam and for inciting actions in places like Argentina many have described as those of a war criminal?
https://newyorker.com/news/news-desk/does-henry-kissinger-have-a-conscience
https://vox.com/2016/5/9/11640562/kissinger-pentagon-award

Here is the peer reviewed article from MIT researchers and published in PNAS, a scientific journal with high impact factor. The article was reviewed three times before it was accepted to be published by the reviewers.
https://pnas.org/content/pnas/118/17/e2018995118.full.pdf
The initial assumptions was that the virus transmitted principially through, (1) contaminated surfaces, (2) large droplets and (3) aerosol form. The initial CDC guidance focus on points 1 and 2, and aerosol form transmission is unlikely. 6' social distancing came from an earlier guidance with other infectious diseases.
Interview with Dr. Bazant (the author in the article above) in cnbc focused on COVID transmission in an indoor environment where particles exist as aerosol form. The MIT data suggested Thus it is time factor spent in this environment is the dominant factor while filtration (face mask) and distance (6' social distance) are less important. Air flow and circulation will reduce transmission.
Will review the article more thoroughly and post more later.

@MikeM.
I couldn't agree more. Everything is uniquely situational, but a person who is waiting until age 70 (to collect SS) will more than likely continue working (through their 60's). That is why running your own numbers is so important.
Thanks @msf for your data sets.. your links and use of PV for this exercise is very helpful.
Some additional considerations:
If, at 62, this "worker" takes early SS, continues to work and they earmark that portion of their SS income (what SS pays each month) into a workplace or individual retirement account it would eliminate the tax implications (so long as these retirement vehicles were tax deferred) right up through age 70 and beyond. At age 70, the early SS recipient they will have a smaller SS benefit plus a "tax deferred SS nest egg".
In the spreadsheet above, the cash strategy pays out the same number of dollars as a person who waits to start collecting their SS at age 70 right out through age 86. What I feel is important to remember is that the early SS payouts (which I'll call the differential) sits in the pocket of the individual as early as age 62. The individual has the choice of using it as income at anytime. If it was previously invested into a tax sheltered account it remains their until it's withdrawn for income. A person waiting until age 70 has no choice but to count every SS dollar as income.
@davidmoran @kings53man,
These SS dollars are not guaranteed to you while you wait to reach FRA or age 70. A person who sits around waiting to turn 70 to collect SS collects nothing (SS benefit) if they predecease their 70th birthday and collects less (total accumulated SS benefit) if they die before age 86.
I haven't explored QLACs but they might be just the thing missing to address longevity risk:
what-is-qualified-longevity-annuity-contract-qlac/

Why Choose a QLAC?
A QLAC has several advantages for retirees:
- Long-term income security. If you’re worried that your retirement savings might not last for the long haul, a QLAC can offer some peace of mind. QLACs provide guaranteed income later in retirement and can act as hedges against long-term care costs later in life.
- RMD deferral. If you’re looking to minimize how much money you’re required to draw from your retirement accounts, a QLAC allows you to delay distributions on a portion of your savings up until you turn 85.
- Principal protection. A QLAC locks in future payments, protecting your retirement money from market dips later in life. But unless you purchase an inflation rider, which will lower the initial amounts you receive from an annuity, your monthly payment may lose value over time.
- Income for your spouse. If you set up a QLAC as a joint annuity, it will continue paying income as long as you or your spouse is still living. That said, joint annuities tend to offer lower payments due to this benefit.

Not sure what the motivation is in this article? Many investors hold broad based index funds and ETFs. They are commonly available to their retirement accounts, 529 college saving plans, and many other.

FRA - Full Retirement age.
I foresee that 85% of my SS Income will be taxable.

Thanks Catch. What I’m wondering is whether the numbers displayed have been adjusted for changes to the method of computing CPI over that time?
https://www.investopedia.com/articles/07/consumerpriceindex.asp
As the linked article points out, some think recent changes to the CPI computation tend to understate actual inflation when compared with earlier standards.
Numbers can lie and can also be made to represent whatever you want. IF we factor in the improvements to overall standard of living since the 30s, we might end up with negative inflation numbers. Does anyone want to go back to the time when homes were heated with coal that you shoveled into your furnace by hand? Cars got 10-15 mpg and lacked automatic trannies or AC? AM radio was the latest form of home entertainment?
Above points to how hard it is to measure actual inflation when the things we take as “normal” or “necessary” keep changing. I do remember paying $2500 for an Apple 2e + green screen in the 80s. And $600 for a clunky dot matrix printer to go with it. 1980s technology can be had for much less today - if you can find it. So - is that how we should compute inflation?

...seeing that guestimates for IBonds re rating on May 1st estimates for inflation variable rate going up to 3.54%?
That's higher than it's been in ~ 10 years? I guess it makes sense...
FWIW, I pay no attn to the propoganda and the esteemed columnists in the NYTimes. Right or wrong, I'll think for myself and not what others signal to me how I should think.
Not for me, no thanks.
Best,
Baseball Fan