Jan 13th Episode:

In this interview, Sebastien Page shares his insights on how this new regime differs from previous periods and how it requires us to rethink traditional approaches to asset allocation. Join us as we explore the strategies and considerations for building and protecting your wealth in this changing financial landscape.

"Diversification may not be a free lunch, but maybe more like a 'tasty' lunch."

Interesting guys.
I’ve felt rightly or wrongly that Dow 37,000 (reached 2 years ago) is a decent marker of sentiment and valuation. That’s about where it still is today (I’m guessing that’s about neutral today). So, FWIW, I’m pretty much stuck in neutral - where I’ve been all year long. I recognize the Dow doesn’t represent the greater market or have any special significance. But over the years it’s been a half-decent guide for me (of euphoria vs bust). At least as good as 75% of the market prognosticators.
Did unload BINC a few days ago and move into an IG short term (1-3 years) bond ETF. Not a market call. I expect the former will continue to perform well. Just trying to reduce overall risk profile as a decent year ends and with potential distributions in mind. It seemed as good a place as any to take a little risk off the table. (Equity exposure fell slightly from 48% down to 46% as a consequence of the move.)
I’m structured into 10 equally weighted static segments (all but one represented by a single holding), so selling / replacing any one position is a pretty significant move, Also limits my ability to add or reduce risk incrementally. So far so good. But it’s a relatively new methodology for me.
There are so many cross-currents regarding the financial landscape now it’s hard for me to form an opinion on the future course of the economy or stock valuations. Wars, Sino-tensions, disfunction in DC, consumer attitudes re prices, and the approaching elections. All of this has to weigh heavily on investor sentiment.

Giroux = contrarian as ever. Back to seeing yoots as an interesting moneymaker these days, again. He describes how the fundamental landscape has changed over the course of several years for the yoots.
(" What is a yoot?" ---- Fred Gwynn.)

Another excerpted comment from the thread I previously referenced, this one straight to the point(s) by the venerable "dickoncapecod":
Well, you shouldn't be surprised that the financial relationship is between you and the bank that YOU deposited money at. If it is FDIC insured (or even not) institution, you'll surely receive what you are due eventually. However, the smaller the bank and higher the rate, the more likely the bank has antiquated systems and annoyances like this occur. Sometimes it's worth actually computing the dollars and cents gained by chasing "opportunities" in the risk-free rate world versus a good old (floating rate) money market funds.
====================
I responded to Dick's post:
To dick's very worthy point about "chasing 'opportunities'":
Per Fido (bold added):
Fidelity offers a wide range of issues, rates, and maturities to help you find the certificate of deposit (CD) that fits your needs. If a fixed income security is sold or redeemed before maturity, it may be subject to substantial gains or losses. Your ability to sell a CD on the secondary market is subject to market conditions. Fidelity doesn’t decide the creditworthiness of the issuing institution.
Read: If the bank defaults on the interest or principal, it's the account holder's ultimate responsibility to do the FDIC filing.
==============================
Dick's first comment should answer the question being kicked around here.
If it's me in the OP's position, I would ask Schwab if they have a policy like Fido does related to issuing a brokerage "service request" at the 10-day mark if the interest still has not been received.
I would also obtain the best phone number possible and speak directly to a person at the bank who is directly involved/has direct knowledge of the interest payment in question.
I would NOT blow this out of proportion and would NOT start to doubt CDs.
As Dick noted, you WILL get your principal repaid timely.
As my scenario played out, I learned that this is a possible issue at the BOY and the EOY, every year.
And if there is an issue, it is usually the normal, possibly slow payment cycling related to the BOY or EOY, or there is a specific reason why the interest payment was missed.
In my case, the bank manager I spoke directly to was very helpful, NOT aware of the issue yet and thanked me for calling it to the bank's attention. She also immediately remedied the issue. She even gave me her direct phone number in the event it was not resolved.

Checking the stock investor's landscape:
Small Caps Rockin' the Casbah again today!
Equal weighted S&P outperformed yesterday.
The arguably best T/A poster on investment forums recently stated we could see S&P 5,500 by Turkey Day 2024.
All systems appear to be GO for US stock investors heading into the New Year!
"The crowd caught a whiff
Of that crazy Casbah jive"

Is it too early for a long term (10-15 yrs) investor to reallocate to small caps? The SCG landscape has been beaten down and some of the most reputable MF/ETFs have fallen to the middle of the pack (performance-wise). I've owned BCSIX for over 10 years and looking back, glad I took profits when I rebalanced (several times). Also, own PRNHX and the recent 3 yrs has been tough due to the Fund's aggressive nature.
Any MF/ETF's that you are considering or own?

According to M*, "Vanguard and Fidelity Go stood out as the best options, although [it] also assigned above-average scores to Schwab Intelligent Portfolios, Betterment, and Wealthfront." Vanguard scored 4.8 out of 5, Fidelity Go 4.0, Schwab 3.6, Betterment and Wealthfront 3.5, with a couple of others at 3.4. Then there's a big drop off.
As M* points out, one must take care when comparing "all in" costs. Fidelity Go costs 35 basis points, though that is the "all in" cost since it uses 0.00% bp ER Fidelity Flex funds in its portfolios.
Vanguard Digital Advisor costs 20 basis points including underlying fund fees (i.e. this is an "all in" figure), but its hybrid PAS service costs 30 basis points plus underlying fee expenses. (It has recently shifted from Admiral shares to ETF shares, shaving perhaps one basis point from its "all in" cost.)
Schwab doesn't charge a wrap fee (i.e. you pay just the cost of the underlying funds), though as Yogi notes there's a cash drag (opportunity) cost.
Services vary significantly between offerings. Some are pure robo, others are hybrid. A few, including Vanguard, build in a glidepath rather than sticking with a fixed allocation based on risk tolerance.
The full report is worth reading, if for nothing else, its dozen+ exhibits comparing in tabular form the availability of different features, services and investment options, as well as costs, of all the different offerings.
There's a link to the full report in the M* piece referenced in the OP. (You do have to inform M* that you're an individual investor and provide email address to gain access.)
Full report

Andrew Foster and his team have posted extensive views on emerging market investing and it is not trivial matter in order to get meaningful gain. The investment landscape is changing fast and some countries are rapidly becoming “uninvestable”.

The problem with VALUATION is the fact that:
1) It can't predict the next 3-6-12 months
2) It can't predict market correction and which index/category will go down more.
3) Once upon a time PE10(CAPE) looked like a decent indicator until it failed miserably.
Prof Shiller created PE10 which is supposed to predict performance based on valuation better than PE
On 05/2012 (https://money.cnn.com/2012/04/10/pf/investing-Shiller.moneymag/index.htm)
Question: You have become famous for your cyclically adjusted 10-year price/earnings ratio. What do the latest numbers say about future stock market returns?
Shiller: we found a correlation between that ratio and the next 10 years' return.
If you plug in today's P/E of about 22, it would be predicting something like an annualized 4% return after inflation.
FD: In reality, the SP500 made 13.6% in the next 10 years (04/31/2012-04/31/2022). Let's deduct the inflation and make it 11%. It is much better than countries with lower PE10 such as Emerging markets.
4) If valuation or another indicator has been how you make more money, we would have a lot more investors such as Buffett and Lynch. Times have changed too...article quote:"It’s harder to find overlooked stocks than it was in Lynch’s day because more people are looking for them — anyone with a smartphone has free access to extensive markets and financial information. The result of greater competition is evident in the numbers: Fast-growing or highly profitable companies are almost always the most expensive while the cheapest ones come with lackluster growth or thin profits."

@Anna
Hook 'em Horns!!!
I graduated UT in 73, then left Texas after being born and raised there
I don't recognize the place now! Austin is a nightmare

Pretty much the same story here; graduated 1971, took off for the West afterwards. I look back on Austin then as an idyllic place to have lived as an undergrad.
A friend, burned out of her home between L.A. and S.B. in one of the CA wildfires, escaped with only the cat and a small pack, moved to Austin ~ 2019 to be close to relatives. When I've told her what Austintatious was like when I lived there, she hardly believes me. (Onward through the fog!)

I didn't mention CDs in this thread. They're not for trading. Either you were responding to someone else or brought them up yourself.
If Schwab mentioned CD early withdrawal penalties, I'm a little surprised. Generally (though not always) brokered CDs cannot be redeemed early except upon death. They can (maybe) be sold through a brokerage, but with a large spread. To be used as an escape clause (emergencies) and not as part of a routine strategy.
If you're going to buy $1M in CDs, you might use several institutions. That would depend, first, on how sanguine you were about an institution's solvency. FDIC insurance might not be of major concern. While I don't recommend that approach, I have gone over FDIC limits on rare occasions, though either for very short periods of time or with only slight excesses.
Second, you and your spouse (referencing your tax return above) can get $1M of FDIC insurance via two individual $250K accounts and a joint $500K account at a single institution.
https://edie.fdic.gov/calculator.html
Third, many banks participate in IntraFi's CDARS program, giving you access to millions of dollars of FDIC insurance for CDs via a single institution.
Finally, with short term T-bills currently yielding more than CDs of similar maturity, with their state tax exemption, and with their ease of selling (whether of necessity or by a trader), I agree that for savers and traders alike this is an easy call.

Interesting. Afraid I use icloud storage for a lot of stuff. But for really critical passwords, they’re not recorded anywhere except in my head. I’ll jot down written “clues” to help me remember. If the PWs / clues reference a theatrical performance or favorite landscape photo in some manner, they are easy for me to decipher.
As I’ve noted before, my ipad’s DejaOffice files appeared to have been broken into couple years ago. A subsequent purchase of Norton Anti-virus helped stop that type of occurrence. I don’t store those in the Deja provided DropBox cloud. But they are uploaded to Apple’s icloud along with everything else.
Good stuff. Thanks for all the suggestions. Some very thorough thoughtful folks here.

We bought a retirement home on Cape Cod in a spur of the moment decision, but we were smart enough to buy one less than 20 years old, built by a guy who over engineered everything ( It was his fifth personal build). BR on first floor, etc. IF we took more time we might have gotten something with a view etc, but we love the quiet neighborhood and new friends.
We passed on new dog, because my daughter moved here too and has two lovely dogs we use to get dog fix every several days. As we helped her buy her house, she frequently acknowledges that she will help us when we can't drive etc. Not including travel expenses, our income needs so far have been met with SS and dividends, even in high tax Massachusetts ( realestate taxes up 30% since 2018)
I became convinced that going into retirement is not the best time to have large equity exposure, given risk of serious bear market, so in 2015 to 2018 I cut stocks back and now am around 30%. The fact that rates shot up has made that decision easier obviously.
I think there is more downside ahead than upside, at least for US market and I don't mind making 5 to 6% rather than 20% if it means avoiding a 40 % loss in capital.
This sorta makes up for the fact that in CT for the last 30 years our house lost us lots of money, my salary was stagnant and we were taxed to the max.
But you can't focus on the past, and we are grateful we are both healthy, our kids are generally happy and educated and employed, although one is 1200 miles away.

Loving both Firefox & Brave which are knocking down attempts by Google & Facebook to track me. Dumb question … But how do these ”good guys” make money? I’ll assume there must be a business model - or are they supported fully by donation?

Firefox gets hundreds of millions from Google to be defaulted as their search engine, plus they have some other funding sources/subscription services. Firefox is also part of the nonprofit Mozilla Foundation which attracts $$$$ from big players in the internet/software space. (But Firefox isn't w/o fault in sometimes going too far in deploying for-profit items like Pocket by default for users trying to eek a few more bucks ... but thankfully it's easy to turn that stuff off.) Firefox has been my default browser since Netscape in the mid-90s. (and my first-ever internet stock which I got at IPO and did quite nicely on, I might add)
Brave does some crypto/ad-viewing stuff to help offset costs, but I haven't looked into their funding model much.

Unfortunately M* has been off for years about PIMIX. I downloaded the last PIMCO+Bond+Stats+2023+06.xlsx from Pimco.
M* uses all the SEC filing information to present exposure by asset class. PIMCO mechanically sums market value figures, disregarding the effect of derivatives. Of course these figures don't match. One set informs investors about how the fund behaves (which is the theme running through this thead), the other is a pro forma summation.
The significance of this distinction can be seen easily using DSENX as a model. This fund uses nearly all its cash to purchase bonds (100% fixed income exposure), and then for next to nothing buys derivative exposure to the CAPE index (100% equity exposure). Cash exposure is thus -100%. The prospectus explains this and M* shows the fund to have approximately these exposures.
DSENX filings show that about 97% of the fund consists of fixed income, and 0% is equity. Those market value (MV) figures are accurate, just as the MV figures for PIMIX given in a post above are accurate. And they're all misleading.
No one thinks of DSENX as a bond fund. Rather it is presented (rightly) as a CAPE index fund with a bond kicker (100% added fixed income exposure). While PIMCO funds are more inscrutable, they similarly use derivatives to achieve behaviors that are belied by simple market value summaries.

@Derf: welcome aboard ARDBX. GP is history for me. I escaped before the banking stocks bit them in the #&@.

wow and huh
Seems typical, yes, and yes about the platform. Prohibiting divo, ccor, cape, and now tcaf?? Seriously?
the ML guy who helped me was better than enthusiastic, and when I called a few days ago about something else the notes to the xfer guy were right there in front of the second guy.
Anent Fido, I was frankly more than surprised, possibly shocked, that they were as cavalier as they were, and cavalier may not be the right word. I foolishly did not consult them beforehand (xfer of perhaps $400k) and, when I did, promptly after, was told, Sorry etc. I harrumphed that I had been w Fido for 55y, they could check (true, more including adolescence) and some millions of dollars (meaning >1) over time, and the response was Sorry.
I did get an invite to an in-person consult about planning and allocation and whatnot.
There really seems an opp here for a rival to do it all, for boomers down to </=millennials, concierge-style or at least the appearance and vibe of same. Moderate promos and incentives, maybe 2-3% credit cards, prompt person pickup and service, competitive rates including margin, low or no fees on outside funds, etc.

>> Merrill has fixed that problem this morning.
That 'trading of this security ...' etc. prohibition nonsense has been ML boilerplate for some time (recently), and has appeared for DIVO, CAPE, and CCOR as well as TCAF. DSENX is okay, though. I am thinking I have never seen trading prohibitions at Fido for anything.

...
Dear stillers:
1) Let me ask you an easy question. Why did you use 3 different names(stillers,Arriba, Albie) on different sites? Did you try to hide something?
2) Why don't you try to register on BB as stillers? You have no chance with the moderator who knows you for years.
BTW, the subject of this thread is bond, why not make comments on it?

Ah, the classic FD/Red Party way: Deny Delay, Deflect.***
(1) Ah, C'mom man! You've asked that questions several times and I've 'splained the answer to you, well, several times. Memory problems? Or just another example of the above***?
Or, as Dan Rather once infamously stated, "No Mr (xxx), are you?"
(2) The Moderator of that forum is a fellow Trumper of yours who has cut you unbelievable slack there since that forum started. Apparently you finally overstepped your bounds netting a 90-day ban, and now need to incessantly push your wares elsewhere for that stretch . (See just about every other forum you've ever participated on.)
Aside, and "For kicks" as capecod used to say: Given my use of other names in the past, maybe I AM registered there and you just don't know it!
(3) Well dummy, if you had read the whole thread, you'd have seen that I DID make comments about the OP topic long before you entered the thread post-BB ban.

Anyone know if the concentration of holdings in a relative few companies is historically significant? I know the index is cap weighted but is todays concentration out of the ordinary? Thanks for your replies.

Not responsive to your specific question, but I have spent a few hours the last few weeks comparing RSP vs IVV and IVE, also VONE vs VONV, also the gaming value outliers SCHD and DIVO and CAPE.
While looking hard at UI.
Even VONE all by itself has a breadth that (as you might think) counters the top-heavy IVV. Counters meaning underperforms.
5-3-1y and 8mos. I use M* and Fido to do longer comparisons, as they exist.
Anyway, if I were really smart I would be able to convey what the lessons are which I have learned. IVV or VONE in combo w low-UI DIVO looks like a winner. He said.
(How's this for unhelpful?)