Bogleheads.org

Agree with livesoft about starting in the backyard, if you've never done it before. Get the kids used to the tent, the sleeping bags, etc. If you haven't done it recently you might be surprised at how outdoorsy sleeping in a backyard can be, you will hear night sounds you don't hear from inside the house. Just a single data point, and not a recent stay: we loved Letchworth State Park in New York State. The campground was sort of typical/average, but easy walks and hikes to look at the (three) waterfalls, and a quirky little museum but something to do, and I visited the dam, where you can get a guided tour that takes you... down into the center of the dam. The campground is your just-a-campground, sites that have a decent area to pitch a ten...

20% in the top 5 is historically high (see graph below). And they are all in tech-related industries. A Google search found this article . According to the data they present, In 2022, the largest sector is information technology, containing 25% of the S&P. In 2012, it was telecommunications, containing 33%. In 2002, financials, containing 20%. It's all a shrug. It's not unusual for a single sector to account for 20% of the S&P 500, and which sector it is constantly changes. I have no doubt that if you play around with different definitions--whoever heard of using "the largest seven," the way the Twitter poster does?--you can find a measure that's at an extreme. But in this chart, the weight in one sector isn't an extreme....

I believe there was a famous academic refutation of Efficient Markets... Well, try to find and cite that famous academic refutation, please, so we'll know where we're at. Market Volatility by Robert Shiller https://books.google.hn/books?id=Rv-DULmRx2YC&printsec=copyright#v=onepage&q&f=false https://www.jstor.org/page-scan-delivery/get-page-scan/2006543/0 Thanks, working on looking at it. The book is surprisingly hard to find other than buying a used copy. The paper appears to be available here . But I don't understand how excess variability, or the phenomenon "that prices change for no good reason" refutes the efficient market hypothesis, as long as the price changes follow a random walk around a rational center. Just...

Yes, to me tilting is a logical enhancement and extension of the EMH rather than opposing it. Tilts diversify to more sources or potential return and risk than MCW. And yes, to be clear, size itself doesn't seem as significant as other factors, but it does seem to enhance those other factors. I think it goes underappreciated that MCW has it's own inherent tilts, for better or worse. There's many risk-based and behavioral-based explanations for why this, and an investor who has the capacity and willingness to take on additional risk, or the temperament to overcome some of the common behavioral biases that investors fall victim to, can create a more diversified and balanced portfolio than the MCW portfolio Tilted, with respect to what? Balan...

Last quotation from Absolute Zero and the Conquest of Cold , by Tom Schachtman, I promise. Note the last sentence in particular, which I've underline. As for the United States, there was a flurry of excitement in June 1897 when a New York Times Magazine article opened with this memorable sentence: "Mama wants two quarts of your best liquid air, and she says that the last you sent had too much carbonic acid gas." The article referred to American engineer Charles E. Tripler and his recently announced steam-driven machine for the liquefaction of air.... Tripler's promise of producing large quantities of liquid air for such engines in carriages, ships, and other modes of transportation attracted Wall Street investors. In short order, ...

I am not worried. Why are you worried? The tweet was not convincing. That tweet is a part of the 7-part thread. You might want to read the whole thing: https://twitter.com/RJRCapital/status/1638995522710130703. Why would one be worried? The first post that I quoted above mentions the reason quite clearly: "concentration risk". Hence my question. I read the whole thing. Nothing new in the 7-part series of tweets that hasn't been discussed numerous times before. Concentration at the top has been a characteristic of the S&P 500 for most of its existence. I will amend my statement to say that the TWEETS (plural) are not convincing. I don't believe that "concentration" is an appropriate word to use here. A Broadway theat...

Me, I'm already sorry I locked in a 3.44% rate on a 17 month CD. Seriously, I don't know how you'd know if interest rates are "high" and worth locking in, especially for a long period of time. Individual long-term TIPS would be reasonably safe, I think, but I decided long ago to quit buying individual bonds because of the inconvenience factor. I'm curious, but what's the inconvenience factor to buying individual bonds? The Vanguard online bond trading desk is pretty similar to buying stocks/ETFs. In the event that my wife ever needs to take over management of the account, I am very sure she would be stymied, particularly since Vanguard only lists two TIPS per page on a printed statement. I believe that she can manage a portfolio ...

Me, I'm already sorry I locked in a 3.44% rate on a 17 month CD.

Seriously, I don't know how you'd know if interest rates are "high" and worth locking in, especially for a long period of time. Individual long-term TIPS would be reasonably safe, I think, but I decided long ago to quit buying individual bonds because of the inconvenience factor.

The Twitter poster, of course, does not bother to explain why he thinks 24% in the biggest seven stocks is "unstable." Or even why it is a "concentration." Words like "concentration" and "top-heavy" and "unbalanced" get bandied around a lot, with the unspoken assumption that there is surely something unnatural or out of the ordinary about companies being different sizes. What exactly is wrong with the biggest seven stocks accounting for 24% of the market? Is it wrong because it is surprising (if you never looked at market composition before?) Is it wrong because " everybody knows it's wrong?" Distributions of this kind are common in nature. 30% of all of the named species of animal...

For a long time now, opinion in the forum has included the ideas of Total Bond (nearly 2/3rds government), no, no, bonds are for safety so why take any credit risk at all, how is Total Bond any better than 100% Treasury? (e.g. Swensen), and no, no, Total Bond has too much government, everyone ought to have more in corporates than Total Bond includes (e.g. John C. Bogle himself). Meanwhile, Vanguard itself has been heavily pushing the idea of putting about 30%-40% of the bond allocation into international, US-dollar-currency-hedged bonds. None of them are crazy ideas. I think it's a fantasy to suppose that a few effortless mouse clicks in your brokerage website will give you an inexpensive and really effective shield against global financial...

There are a ton of problems surrounding the phrase "risk parity," the first being that nobody's really sure what it means. And I think they are problematical as investments for ordinary investors, and should be approached with caution. I am going to separate two very different things that seem to be part of strategies that people call "risk parity." 1) Using specific alts to add portfolio diversification. 2) Reallocating heavily to bonds to equalize risk, then leveraging back to a "normal" risk and return. 1) Specific alts. The phrase is closely associated with Ray Dalio and Bridgewater's "All-Weather Portfolio," and coined by Edward Qian of PanAgora. In both cases, it refers not merely to equalizing ...

All of these programs, in which you have an account with a third party, who manages and serves as a conduit to a bank account, have the same characteristics. I will call that third party the "conduit manager." 1) You have a little more than "FDIC-insured account risk" because you have on top of that some conduit manager risk. You need to evaluate that risk. You are assuming that the manager will stay in business, keep the computers that implement the conduit running properly, and provide customer service if there are any glitches. One reasonably assumes that Fidelity can do that, but it still involves trust in Fidelity as well as trust in the FDIC. SoFi is a real FDIC-insured bank themselves so you assume they know how t...

A lot of discussions of Medigap versus Medicare Advantage smuggle in an assumption that you have a good handle on your personal future health costs. E.g. if you don't expect to be using much medical care because you're young, healthy, and work out, blah blah blah. This is an illusion. You don't really know what your medical costs will be, and to the extent that you do know, the insurance company has better information than you do. I don't really understand whether disclosure of the "medical loss ratio" is mandated at the state or federal level, but one rational way to compare the value of the plans is to compare the "medical loss ratio," the percentage of the premium that is actually spent on providing medical care. If t...

You would have to analyze the agreement and structure carefully, but on the face of it this sounds like "yet another fintech arrangement," with the difference that SoFi is a bank and some of your money is held directly in your own bank account at SoFi. But if e.g. you have deposited the full $2 million, ⅛ is in a "real" bank account that clearly belongs directly to you, while ⅞ of it is in a "fintech deal." By "fintech deal," I mean an arrangement in which the fintech provides the front end, the website, the account, your login, your statement, your balance, and so forth, and you give your money to them, and they put it in an FDIC-insured bank. When want to withdraw money, you ask them and they withdr...

Clarky wrote: ↑Thu Mar 23, 2023 11:17 am

RadAudit wrote: ↑Thu Mar 23, 2023 9:11 am I checked the sector analysis report this morning in the Portfolio Analysis and it appears it has been fixed, at least for my account. YMMV. Best of luck.

All good here as well. Just finished reading something about indexes being reconstituted. Don’t know if that had anything to do with it - or just enough people made just enough noise?

I don't see how it could have anything to do with indexes being reconstituted. Whether or not reporting the bug did some good, I don't know. But I did just add a reply to my original message noting that as of today the bug seems to have been fixed.

Logan Roy wrote: ↑Thu Mar 23, 2023 10:07 am I believe there was a famous academic refutation of Efficient Markets, that showed the level of volatility in markets seemed much larger than would be predicted based on the amount and impact of information being priced in..

Well, try to find and cite that famous academic refutation, please, so we'll know where we're at.

The efficient market hypothesis does not say that the price is always right. It only says that pricing is a random walk around the right price, and therefore you cannot use analysis of price movements to beat the market. I don't think anything about the efficient market hypothesis predicts the degree of volatility.

Mine, too. I'm down to the usual two alerts, both accurate statements of fact as to how my holdings compare with their recommendations. They now show microscopic numerical differences for sector allocations compared to the market, and don't show an alert about it. Not too bad. It's interesting that they apparently did pick up on the minuscule foreign bond holdings in Total Bond, as they say 2% of my bond holdings are international. Portfolio alerts (2) International Exposure Information: To further diversify your stock portfolio, consider allocating 30% to 50% to foreign stocks. Bond Information: Holding more foreign bonds can potentially increase the level of diversification in your portfolio. Allocating up to 20% to 50% of your bond portf...

Yes, not because of Vanguard, but because banks hold fractional reserves, and mutual funds don't. Banks are intrinsically risky because of the way they are supposed to work. When you deposit $10,000 at a bank, your account statement shows $10,000, but the bank doesn't actually have all of that $10,000. They invest most of it. Maybe only $1,000 of your deposit is kept by the bank. So the statement doesn't mean "you have $10,000," it means "you are entitled to request a $10,000 withdrawal, which under ordinary circumstances the bank will always be able to fulfill." Taking this risk is the bank's job. It's what banks are for. There's nothing improper or illegal about it. The risk is there. Regulations and bank examiners try...

I'm mulling over a new computer and possibly a new external SSD to go with it, and in my quick first-cut searches I found I was getting confused by SanDisk having acquired G-Technology, a provider of external rotating drives. So you can now have the SanDisk brand name on a rotating drive. Google, Amazon, etc. not at all clever about identifying SSD versus rotating drives correctly, and my searches for "SSD drives" often included rotating drives.

(My motivation for the external drive is that Time Machine and BackBlaze don't offer a path to quick recovery if the internal drive on a computer goes bad. So I like to make periodic bootable clones of my internal drive to sufficiently fast external drive.)

The S&P 500 is a "Total Stock Market" fund. It was designed specifically to represent the returns of the entire U.S. stock market. They determined 500 was enough stocks to capture the entire markets returns. And looking at the historical returns of S&P500 vs newer indexes holding 2-10x as many stocks, they were not wrong. They didn't "determine that 500 stocks was enough," it was just the most they could do with the computers they had in 1957. Do you have a source for that claim? I cannot find any reference to that with web searches. S&P 500 included 94.81% of the market at inception contains quotations from a March 5th, 1957 New York Times story, "New Market Yardstick: An Explanation of the 500-Stock I...

I think the quotation, at least as usually attributed, is "Be fearful when others are greedy, and greedy when others are fearful." "The time to buy is when there's blood in the streets." - Baron Rothschild There's no evidence he said it. The earliest mention of the story is from 1894, almost twenty years after he supposedly said it, and begins feebly "It is related..." Most important, the reference was to literal blood in literal streets during the Paris Commune. Full background including 1894 and later versions of the story. More important, there are at least a dozen handy-dandy maxims around that you can use to provide confirmation bias of whatever thing you've already decided to do. Just select the one that...

Florida Orange, thank you for phrasing it as "volatility is not the same thing as risk" rather than simply saying "volatility is not risk."

But volatility is one important kind of risk. Furthermore, it generally goes along with other kinds. You can find exceptions, but generally risk is risk.

In 2018, I picked a listed of mutual funds representing a wide range different kinds of assets, investments, and strategies. I simply plotted their volatility, as measured by standard deviation, against their maximum drawdown. These are the results, and you can find the actual list of funds in the original posting here.

Now that ChatGPT-4 is out as of March 14 and is reportedly MUCH improved over ChatGPT, I suppose we need to note whether we’re talking about GPT or GPT-4, or just focus on 4? https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2023/03/14/gpt-4-has-arrived-it-will-blow-chatgpt-out-water/ "Microsoft announced Tuesday that the Bing AI chatbot, released last month, had been using GPT-4 all along." And it's horrible. See above . Not only did it present factual misinformation about the Jack London story, "Moon-Face," it supported those incorrect statements with alleged sources that did not link to information about that story. And this is the same chatbot that tried to gaslight someone by insisting that it was 2022 when it was really 2...

Interesting piece in the "The Indicator from Planet Money" podcast: What Banks Do when Nobody's Watching . The importance of bank examiners, what they do, and why there is a looming shortage of them. Among other details: WOODS: ...the remote working revolution hasn't hit the bank examining workforce as much as it could in other industries. There's still this protocol of in-person visits, which can be really valuable. WONG: Yeah. Kiah points to what happened at a small bank in Chicago a few years ago when an examiner was doing an on-site visit. HASLETT: An employee pulled the bank examiner over and basically said, this bank is a giant fraud, and you need to come back and do a big, thorough examination of this bank. WOODS: I mean, t...

What about my point of view: suppose a total international equity fund IS marginally riskier than a developed markets equity index fund... is it riskier enough to care about?

the_wiki wrote: ↑Wed Mar 22, 2023 5:13 pm The S&P 500 is a "Total Stock Market" fund.

It was designed specifically to represent the returns of the entire U.S. stock market. They determined 500 was enough stocks to capture the entire markets returns. And looking at the historical returns of S&P500 vs newer indexes holding 2-10x as many stocks, they were not wrong.

They didn't "determine that 500 stocks was enough," it was just the most they could do with the computers they had in 1957.

I think the quotation, at least as usually attributed, is "Be fearful when others are greedy, and greedy when others are fearful." The reason why not is that it is not actionable, because it does not give you any objective or quantifiable way to tell how greedy or fearful "others" are, and thus does not tell you when to buy or sell. It is no more useful than "Buy low, sell high." It's just a Rorschach inkblot that gives you an opportunity to project your own unreliable feelings into the situation. By staying the course in a total market fund, however, it can be said (in the same vague way) that guarantees that I will be less fearful when others are fearful, and less greedy when others are greedy. Another Buffet...

Wow, Google Bard is, if possible, even worse. Q; Compare and contrast Edgar Allan Poe's "The Telltale Heart" with Jack London's "Moon-Face." Edgar Allan Poe's "The Telltale Heart" and Jack London's "Moon-Face" are both short stories that explore the dark side of human nature. However, they do so in very different ways. "The Telltale Heart" is a first-person narrative in which the narrator confesses to the murder of an old man. He is haunted by the sound of the old man's heart beating under the floorboards, and eventually he confesses to the murder to the police. The story is a psychological thriller that explores the narrator's guilt and paranoia. OK, not bad. "Moon-Face" is a thir...

DJN wrote: ↑Tue Mar 14, 2023 4:51 am...the lack if attribution is a definite drawback of ChatGPT, perhaps they will develop a version with footnotes...

They did. As noted above, Microsoft's Bing Chat has footnotes. And when I asked it a question and got a completely wrong answer, it turned out that it had made up fake footnotes. Specifically, footnotes supporting completely wrong things it said about one short story turned out to link to descriptions of a completely different short story.

It also, to give it credit and blame at the same time, consulted bad sources: shmoop, and some other place where students go to get crib notes about books they haven't read.

For what it's worth, some banks in Massachusetts insure all deposits in full, period. Up to $250,000 is insured by the FDIC, the amount over that is insured by the Despositors Insurance Fund.



I have no idea whether DIF insurance is any good, nor what the real-world statistics of deposit sizes are, but "all deposits insured in full" isn't crazy on the face of it, because they do it.

Whenever two things are different, people like to argue over which is better, and there's always a case to be made for either one. The fact is that the two are very similar. In fact they have had an 0.99 correlation (99%). I like to go back to fundamentals on this one. The S&P 500 index was launched in 1957. It wasn't intended to be a superior selection of stocks, it was intended to be a total stock market index--as nearly as practical at the time. They wanted an index that could be calculated hourly, and with the computer they used that was the limit. (The computer was a Datatron computer located in Boston; I haven't found out why. The computers in New York weren't fast enough?) At the time, those 500 stocks covered over 94% of the mar...

If there's a tip jar, I tip.

I haven't paid much attention but I think there is, or usually is one at Starbucks.

I have an idea I haven't seen them at Dunkin' Donuts. Might depend on the franchise.

According to Bloomberg, the company is still Dunkin' Donuts LLC and merely styles itself as Dunkin. And why yes, I do think it has been going downhill ever since they quit baking them in-store. I'm trying to remember how long it's been since they had the little handle on them that justified the name "Dunkin'".

I know several CFOs of mid sized companies. What you are preaching is unrealistic and absurd. Maybe at large companies it is somewhat realistic. But CFOs at small and mid-size companies are never going to properly analyze the risk of their deposits. If a CFo can't understand that uninsured deposits aren't insured I don't know why they are a CFO. If it's not the CFO's job then it's the treasurer's. Or the accountant or bookkeeper or whoever is putting the money into the account but understanding that money that is uninsured is not insured is not a difficult concept. Maybe trying to figure out what to do with the money is a little bit more difficult but not that much. Just get a good financial advisor. There are many options The least and ea...

Hmmm... $89 seems a bit lowball to me? I don't have any good answer. The places where I've had my wheels aligned, including two different local tire shops--one a small independent, one a big chain--and the car dealer, several times--just took my money and gave me a computer printout of the results. I've had a lot of upsell, but, so far, not on wheel alignment... for some reason. In our state, the annual inspection includes some kind of crude safety check of the front end. If my car has passed inspection, and the steering doesn't feel loose or shake the wheel or make once-per-revolution noises, I would have the courage to decline front-end repair work. If I went in for an $89 wheel alignment and they wanted to upsell me thirty or forty dolla...

I've seen many posts recently seeming to prefer VEA over VXUS. People are nervous about emerging markets. Anything to this? In my opinion, emerging markets used to be wildly overhyped, due to a burst of outperformance from 2003 through 2007. They have underperformed from 2010 on. Chinese stocks currently account for about ⅓ of emerging markets. I think we're seeing 1) progressive disillusionment, and 2) antipathy to China by US investors for geopolitical and reasons. As well as actual economics in China, where the real estate situation looks odd, and shenanigans of the sort that prospectuses says are typical of "emerging markets risk." There have been steady postings by people wanting a fund that gives them "total internatio...

I don't believe people can distinguish psychologically between the risk of total international including emerging markets, and developed markets only. It would be nice if someone could apply psychophysical methods and tell us the "just noticeable difference" in risk. Many of us (including me if I don't do the math) have difficulty keeping things in proportion when they look at a portfolio that has something in it that they don't like. We weight it by the strength of our dislike. Human psychology seems to feel that any amount of contamination, no matter how small, is thought to ruin the whole. (Think of the California town that drained a 674-million-gallon reservoir because a security camera caught a man urinating in it). I think V...

This is just a statement of what I personally have actually done. It's definitely not a recommendation, and it might also be some kind of behavioral error. But I find it hard to stomach the idea of gaining or losing as much as 1% on the breaks of what might happen in a single day. When I've been in situations like this, I've done it as several partial moves--e.g. four transfers, spaced a week apart, each of about ¼ of the total.

Not surprisingly, Bing Chat is just as bad, and has the really terrible problem of mixing in very good material with completely wrong, made-up BS. Worse yet, it supports the BS with phony "sources." Compare and contrast Edgar Allan Poe's "The Telltale Heart" and Jack London's "Moon-Face." The material on "The Telltale Heart" is fine, but: “Moon-Face” is a short story by Jack London, first published in 1902. It is about an unnamed narrator who has an irrational hatred of John Claverhouse, a man with a “moon-face”. The narrator plots to kill Claverhouse by poisoning his dog and then blowing up his cabin with dynamite. However, he fails to kill him and instead gets caught in his own trap. He dies while l...

...I left a note as well, and was told IT is aware of the issue and the responder claimed that management was made aware as well... Bravo! Well done. ...Went through the phone in process again. Got Jack. Said he would put in a repair ticket... Well done. I am sorry to say that I got an unsatisfactory reply to my note this morning. I had submitted a high quality bug report, including an attachment of the same screenshot I posted here in the forum. A day later I had a need to call Vanguard about a completely different issue, involving a change in bank account information. This morning I got a reply saying We understand that you have already been in contact with a Vanguard representative. If you still have questions or concerns, please do not...

Is there a simple way to calculate weighted expense ratios of a portfolio? For example, if one wanted to compare a target retirement fund with an expense ratio of 0.46% and a portfolio with: 25% fund A (0.06%) 51% fund B(0.02%) 15% fund C(0.03%) 9% fund D (0.04%) Yes. To add to what others have mentioned. The key is to convert the costs to dollars, then add them up and convert them back to a percentage. This is just a way of computing a weighted average, but it makes it easier to see why it is correct. And since the size of the portfolio doesn't actually matter, you can use a round number like $100,000 if you like. In your example, you have $25,000, $51,000, $15,000 and $9,000 in the four funds respectively. So the dollar expenses for each...

I certainly think so. Subject to the proviso that if you have a need for something done immediately, and the person says they "take cash, check, or Venmo," or a teller's check from a bank, you can probably get the money available faster if it's in a bank checking account. (Not sure exactly what the current story is on checkwriting features on Vanguard accounts, there was a recent change).

There's another dimension. Remember please that I personally happen to invest in Total Stock, with no special dividend focus. There are broadly two mental models of how to make money by investing in stocks. 1) You become a participant in a profitable business. They do something useful, customers pay them, they make a profit, and they share some of it with their stockholders in the form of dividends, or possibly buybacks. If the business is in a young and fast-growing stage and you believe in them and are willing to wait, you believe they will eventually pay dividends and share them with you. Either way, you expect to participate in the profits of a going concern, sooner or later. 2) You watch and analyze the same stock fluctuations that oth...

Tidbit from Absolute Zero: Growth of the American railroads and of refrigeration went hand in hand; moreover, the ability conveyed by refrigeration to store food and to transport slaughtered meat in a relatively fresh state led to huge, socially significant increases in the food supply, and to changes in the American social and geographical landscape... Refrigeration in combination with railroads helped cause the wealth of the United States to begin to flow west, raising the per capita income of workers in the food-packing and transshipment centers of Chicago and Kansas City.... The enormous jump in demand for meat, accelerated by refrigerated storage and transport, spurred ranchers and the federal government to take over millions of acres ...

...1) it is kind of ironic that you want to force the depositors to buy Treasuries- and yet Treasuries (albeit notes, not bills) are a main culprit in the SVB downfall... How were Treasurys "culprits" in any way? It was the bank's bad risk management and excessive use of Treasurys. And that wasn't because of "economic conditions and prevailing rates," it's because they cultivated a monoculture of one particular idiosyncratic kind of depositor. At the Financial Times, Robert Armstrong writes: "Few other banks have as much of their assets locked up in fixed-rate securities as SVB, rather than in floating-rate loans. Securities are 56 per cent of SVB’s assets. At Fifth Third, the figure is 25 per cent; at Bank of Amer...

Think carefully about what will cause you the least mental wear and tear. At least you have a clean answer from them--it's not your problem, it's their problem, and they didn't say there would be a fix.

In your mental estimate, take into account IRS being overworked and slugish, the value to you of $200, and your guesses as to which procedures are most likely to go smoothly and without glitches: filing on paper promptly; waiting until the last minute to file hoping for an update; file an extension now and file the return later hoping for an update; file an incorrect return now and amend later. I know which option I would take. Single-sided on quality paper mailed flat.

rockstar wrote: ↑Mon Mar 20, 2023 7:34 pm Looks like the US want to insure all accounts. What could possibly go wrong?

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles ... #xj4y7vzkg

Of course, I'm a bit worried about due diligence. I don't want to get stones out of the atm.

https://www.businessinsider.com/jpmorga ... nes-2023-3

One wishes so much that they were bags of wooden nickels.

No reply yet from Vanguard, and error not fixed, but I don't expect that. I'll be thrilled if they fix it within a month.

In one sense, if you assume that nobody actually acts on the information presented by Portfolio Watch--then this is just a cosmetic error. A very ugly cosmetic error.

On the other hand, a company reporting spurious numbers about one's personal account is a legitimate concern.

It is now almost two years since Livesoft started a thread:Vanguard Portfolio Watch has a new look [Calculations may be incorrect]

The supposed benefits of cloud native agile development ought to be put into the service of something more serious than bling.

I am probably exposing my ignorance, but why should I feel more secure in a non-insured MM fund at a brokerage than non-insured deposits at a bank? Because banks, by design, only hold reserves equal to a tiny fraction of deposits, and are therefore subject to runs. A solvent bank has enough assets to match liabilities, but those assets may not be liquid and in a bank run may not be available to meet withdrawals. So bank runs are possible, and insurance is needed to protect depositors. While money market mutual funds, by design, holds 100% in liquid assets sufficient to back its shares at $1/share. Runs are much less likely and insurance is much less important. Nothing's absolute. What took the Reserve Primary money market down was a kind o...

student wrote: ↑Mon Mar 20, 2023 4:48 pm

nisiprius wrote: ↑Mon Mar 20, 2023 4:33 pm [Added: they might have discontinued the graded payment plan. If so, then another problem is the absence of any inflation compensation at all in the annuity payments).

Yes. It was discontinued. viewtopic.php?t=389568

How embarrassing. I posted a lot in that thread. Since the graded option is being continued for those who started it, I must have decided not to worry and blanked it from my mind.

student wrote: ↑Mon Mar 20, 2023 4:48 pm

nisiprius wrote: ↑Mon Mar 20, 2023 4:33 pm I believe most Bogleheads who have TIAA-CREF (oops, sorry, it's just styled "TIAA" now) think of it as a good option.

I am also in old geezer territory and I still refer it to TIAA-CREF. lol

rkhusky wrote: ↑Mon Mar 20, 2023 6:55 pm

nisiprius wrote: ↑Mon Mar 20, 2023 1:56 pm Under Glass-Steagall, until 1999, it was illegal for a bank to have branches in more than one state.

I don’t think that’s completely accurate. I banked with First Interstate Bank in the 80’s and 90’s and they had branches in different states, specifically near my hometown and in the state where I went to college.

I guess it's complicated. Some very cursory searching suggests that the prohibition might have only applied to federally-chartered banks, and that some states allowed state-chartered banks to branch across state lines.