Happy Friday. It’s tax season. Unfortunately for mutual fund investors, this can be the time of year you realize your fund was down, but you still owe taxes. Because of its structure, a mutual fund puts you in the same boat as other investors. If some head for the exits, the manager is forced to liquidate positions to raise cash. Some of the positions he sells could be at a long-term gain creating a taxable event. It’s a lot like going out to dinner with ten of your college friends, and then two of them leave before helping with the bill. Not cool. When Vanguard founder Jack Bogle … [Read more...]

Remember, Charles Schwab operates as a bank too. One of the reasons I like doing business with Fidelity Investments is because it’s not a bank and because it is privately owned. It’s not under the gun to meet Wall Street’s quarterly estimates. It’s a family business. Justin Baer and Charley Grant report on Schwab's current predicament in The Wall Street Journal, writing: The downfall of SVB Financial Group, the parent of Silicon Valley Bank, has sent investors rushing to look for other banks that have also lost deposits and are sitting on paper losses on their bondholdings. Schwab’s … [Read more...]

Sometimes preparing for unpredictable events like hurricanes, wildfires, and blizzards is easier to do than preparing for the most predictable event of all, getting older. Right now, there are some people who would have a better chance at fighting off a zombie apocalypse than retiring in comfort. According to a new study by Fidelity Investments, 52% of American households will fall short of having enough money in retirement to cover the everyday essentials. Fox News's Breck Dumas reports: Americans' retirement preparedness has dropped and a majority of U.S. adults are now projected to not be … [Read more...]

In The Wall Street Journal, Judy Shelton explains the problems with the policies implemented by the Federal Reserve and the federal government over the last few years. She concludes: Normalization after the pandemic, however, might have fundamentally changed the landscape for lenders even as it confounded the Fed’s operating model. This may explain why financial conditions began improving in the last two months of 2022 despite the Fed’s tightening. A report from the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis notes: “Looking toward the future, it may be important to track the correlation of the … [Read more...]

Did you catch the Sunday New York Times article on the supper clubs in Palm Beach? Look, Your Survival Guy loves Palm Beach, especially lunch at the Brazilian Court, but a supper club? Sounds expensive. But wait a second. When I started running the numbers, I thought, “Self, it could actually work.” That is, if it’s the right one. You don’t have to be an uber-wealthy billionaire to have a nice life. Look for more supper clubs to show up, especially away from super high tax states. Welcome to Florida. OK, you really can’t make up these headlines. Pension funds rethinking private equity … [Read more...]