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.
Here's some edited excerpts from a current report in the San Francisco Chronicle:
Home buyers are likely to encounter rising insurance premiums, with coverage more difficult to find, in the wake of news that State Farm and Allstate have stopped writ…
@Sven- I have no idea, since we haven't had a mortgage for many years. I can tell you that with respect to our weekend place at Guerneville, by the Russian River, a number of major carriers have declined or cancelled coverage, for a number of reason…
A bit more on using "Mail" on a Mac- I believe that you can safely inspect suspicious email by using the main menubar "File" dropdown menu and then choosing "Save As".
This will save the email as a TextEdit "rich text" document, which will allow yo…
"Schwab Brokerage CDs are paying 5.3%"
@dtconroe- Did you mean various bank CDs available through Schwab Brokerage, or Schwab Bank CDs, which are also available at Schwab Brokerage? As far as I know, brokerages themselves cannot offer CDs, at least…
"One can verify the email address by hovering over the sender's icon."
Using "Mail" on my Macs, you would have to open the email to see the sender's icon. I don't ever even open a suspect email.
I get at least a couple of these things every week. The last two were from "Oxota tkahcenko", re "BILL NO.#16 PR1095", and "Бахтияр го Апостолов " re "Invoice payment confirmation."
You've got to admit that the names are pretty interesting.
Maybe the Fed all looked at each other and said something like "let's not do anything right now that could remotely blame us for affecting the debt ceiling vote".
Let's be careful not to assume that "absolutes" are in play here. While it's true that many Republicans vote against their own economic interests and vote for the likes of Trump "because of hot button culture war issues", it's also very true that th…
Yogi said: "A true permanent solution would be future balanced budgets, or making the debt-ceiling an integral part of the deficit budgets, i.e. , no pork-barrel/Christmas-tree deficit budgets without an appropriate increase in the debt-ceiling to k…
@yogibearbull, @dtconroe, @larryB
Just to confirm your discussion above, Schwab Bank of Texas does in fact issue CDs from time to time, although not all that often, it seems to me. I'm holding one at the moment, purchased back in March, and have se…
I don’t know. Bloomberg’s Chris Anstey and Liz McCormick report:
Investment bank clients are peppering Wall Street with questions about what happens if the US Treasury in coming weeks runs out of cash and does the unthinkable — failing to make payme…
Not really- there are two separate entries there:
• The first shows "Cash and Cash Investments Total $54,014.50"
And down in the extreme lower right of the "Balance Details" section:
• "Funds in linked Bank Account $10,046.00"
And that is agreem…
@sfnative-
It's entirely possible that I'm ignorant of some things here. I have no idea what a "Program Bank" is, nor have I ever seen anything on Schwab referring to that. If I visit our "Account Summary" there are two separate entries for cash ac…
"Actually, for the vast majority of customers, uninvested cash held in a Schwab brokerage account is deposited at an affiliated Schwab bank"
@sfnative- not sure about that. We've used Schwab for many years, and when cash is generated from dividends…
I believe that Schwab has claimed that the low miniscule rates on their cash accounts are used to partially subsidize their "free" services in buying and selling various funds and other investments on the brokerage side. FW that's worth.
@Derf- Hey there- no sir, the brokerage maintains a cash account, separate from their bank, and that's where your unallocated cash resides. However that account isn't a MM account, isn't protected by the FDIC, and pays next to nothing. You're correc…
Yes, that's what I was trying to say- SCHW owns/controls both the brokerage and the bank. It seems to me that the bank could get into trouble without much spillover to the brokerage. I'm thinking that if the bank went away completely the brokerage w…
Hey Guys- Schwab Brokerage isn't going anywhere. It's "too big to fail", for sure.
Now Schwab Bank, that's another story- but if the bank goes it isn't going to take down the brokerage with it.
Hey @MikeM- I'm guessing that most of us are pretty sure that there is no such animal as an "only option for all investors" at ANY point.
Thanks for inspiring msf to do one of his remarkably helpful commentaries.
Take care- OJ
@msf- I read your comments very s-l-o-w-l-y. I really appreciate the wealth of information, and perhaps more importantly, the excellent examples and explanations of the variable and pitfalls of all of this.
With respect to CD ladders, I've just ha…
