which corporates have same rating as the U.S. from any agency?
is this # @ all-time high?

S&P
AAA JNJ, MSFT
AA+ (same as US) GOOGL, AAPL, Fannie Mae
Fitch
AAA Fannie Mae (go figure that!)
AA+ (same as US) MSFT
Moody's
Aaa JNJ, MSFT, Fannie Mae (!)
Aa1 (same as US) AAPL, XOM, TD, JPM
(If Moody's has changed other ratings, I haven't seen the news)
Wiki (list column sortable) https://www.wikirating.com/list-of-corporations-by-credit-rating/

Fitch kept TIAA at AAA in 09/2024 even though it downgraded US to AA+ in 08/2023. So, not all agencies follow this max-sovereign-rating-limit policy.
Moody's also didn't issue a general downgrade for US financials following its downgrade of US to Aa1, nor did Fitch in 2023, as S&P did in 2011.
Among nonfinancials, the only US companies with AAA ratings now are JNJ & MSFT. I have been warning people about structured AAA, AAA, A, etc - literally in hundreds, if not thousands.

Treasury yields rise as expected from Moody's downgrade on Monday, May 19, 2025. 30 years yield rose over 5.0%, all time high for the year.
https://cnbc.com/2025/05/19/us-treasury-yields-moodys-downgrades-us-credit-rating.html

The sovereign ceiling rule (that corporate lenders should not have a higher credit rating than the sovereign debt) is applied by many credit rating agencies. This is a rule of thumb, not an ironclad rule, though agencies tend to apply it strictly especially to financial institution lenders.

Credit rating agencies are inclined to apply a de-facto sovereign ceiling rule, wherein the domestic bank ratings are bounded by their sovereign credit rating (Adelino and Ferreira, 2016), even when they maintain higher creditworthiness. ... The rationale for applying the rule is based on economic reasoning, particularly in relation to the need to account for capital controls and the economic stress caused by a sovereign downgrade.

https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S1544612320316287

Moody's and Standard & Poor's historically have applied the sovereign ceiling concept in practice fairly strictly

https://www.financeasia.com/article/the-sovereign-ceiling-now-a-broad-consensus-on-its-permeability/32286 (2001)

Well, peak shale at current prices.

Oil prices have fallen to $62.49 a barrel, down about 13% since Trump’s early April tariff blitz. That price is roughly equivalent to about $45 in 2015 dollars—below the average price that sent the oil industry into a painful downturn that year.
“On an inflation-adjusted basis, current prices are at amongst the lowest they’ve ever been,” Paul McKinney, CEO of Permian driller Ring Energy, said in an interview. Prices should be around $85 a barrel to encourage companies to drill, he said.

Keep in mind another rule that only S&P applies - US financials cannot have better credit rating than the US government. So, when US was downgraded to AA+ in 2011, top US financials were also downgraded to AA+ regardless of their own financial situation.

Yikes! I did *not* know that ... wow.

Perhaps a sign of things to come......
Axios Article:
How AI could end the ETF boom
Generated Assets AI Tool:

Turn any idea into an investable index

Keep in mind another rule that only S&P applies - US financials cannot have better credit rating than the US government. So, when US was downgraded to AA+ in 2011, top US financials were also downgraded to AA+ regardless of their own financial situation.

Ever since the GFC I've found the ratings 'agencies' rather farcical. IMO they're really only useful as a high-level 'sanity check' OPINION on something but their 'ratings' are sliced so narrowly it's pretty hard to fail them.
To wit: Imagine if us in higher-ed used a grading system like they did ... AAA AA+ A BB1 Bbb BB+ etc etc etc. We'd be graduating students with a 40% GPA and considering that a 'pass'.

Jason Zweig believes alternative assets do not belong in 401(k)s.
"Whether we’re talking about a smaller firm like Redwood or the giants of alternative investing,
the same rule applies: Assets that don’t trade every day aren’t low risk just because they don’t trade every day.
And, until costs come down and conflicts of interest are ironed out, stuffing private assets inside a fund
that does trade every day is a rotten idea for retirement savers."
https://www.msn.com/en-us/money/savingandinvesting/this-new-investing-idea-isn-t-right-for-your-retirement-plan/ar-AA1EUSqV

Other than TIAA RE, which has proven itself over the years, I think Jason is spot-on correct, as I mentioned earlier. The average person is not in a position to research (or understand) the nuances and intracasies of illiquid investments ... heck, most people have no idea about things like 'fundamentals' or 'moats' or whatnot when it comes to just buying *stocks*.

Jason Zweig believes alternative assets do not belong in 401(k)s.
"Whether we’re talking about a smaller firm like Redwood or the giants of alternative investing,
the same rule applies: Assets that don’t trade every day aren’t low risk just because they don’t trade every day.
And, until costs come down and conflicts of interest are ironed out, stuffing private assets inside a fund
that does trade every day is a rotten idea for retirement savers."
https://www.msn.com/en-us/money/savingandinvesting/this-new-investing-idea-isn-t-right-for-your-retirement-plan/ar-AA1EUSqV

Large cryptocurrency asset holders and/or their families are increasingly becoming victims of violent attacks.
Several data hacks may have provided criminals access to their physical addresses and personal information.
The criminals' main intention is a sizable ransom in cryptocurrency.
https://www.msn.com/en-us/money/technology/severed-fingers-and-wrench-attacks-rattle-the-crypto-elite/ar-AA1EYvYC

Surely something must be wrong there... only Democratic administrations increase the deficit. Maybe @FD1000 can help us out on that.

I wonder how bad off we would be now had Clinton's tax regime stayed in place. We were actually reducing the deficit at the time. Would Warren Buffet be on welfare?

Surely something must be wrong there... only Democratic administrations increase the deficit. Maybe @FD1000 can help us out on that.

There are several different reasons why the asset-weighted fees have dropped. I wonder how much is due to funds reducing fees and how much is due to changes in investor behavior.
Investors have been moving to index funds which cost less to run. Investors have been moving to cheaper funds generally, even active funds. Advisors of wrap accounts (including robo-advisors) may be pushing clients into lower cost funds to make their "all in" prices (including wrap fees) look more reasonable (my speculation). Each of these has the effect of reducing asset-weighted fees even if no fund fees change.
Funds whose fees are keyed to AUM may be seeing their fees drop "passively" because of growing assets. This is related to but different from investors moving to lower cost funds (thus increasing those funds' AUMs).
Lots of moving parts.
Give Bogle credit for holding down fees on actively managed funds. Something other funds families have not followed, or at best followed just to a small extent. For example, VAIGX is managed by exclusively by Baillie Gifford with an ER of 0.40%, while Baillie Gifford charges double, 0.81%, for its own version BTLSX. And then there are the Primecap-run funds, which cost less under Vanguard than under Odyssey.

Big Bang is the place I go for investing chat.
Big Bang has been directing the political dumpings here:
"I may or may not moderate political posts (which most of these are) unless they are rabid, but I do encourage people to keep to the topic "Economic Impact of Tariffs". If you want to discuss the politics of tariffs, please go here:
www.mutualfundobserver.com/discuss/discussion/63635/tariffs/p7"
"No, you don't have to offer your solution to trade problems. This forum is for investing. Take it off-line with Raq. BB is not going to follow MFO into the mud-wrestling pit."

What does any of that have to do with the ytd return on money market funds versus the S&P 500? But thanks for contributing to the mud you draw attention to.
I don't need to spend my life in regulated space. If this forum is the only one that doesn't ban FD1000 for expressing his opinions I won't lose sleep. Might even get me to donate.
I look at Big Bang from time to time. It reminds me of the early days of the 21st century. I think it's nice y'all have a safe place to chat.
I drop in here because I subscribe to the data feed from Refinitiv. I should add that what Charles has done to make the data accessible is first rate work.

(If you ask me, Queens, New York comes a lot closer to being who we are now.)
I hope Krugman's economics are more thorough than his demographics. While Queens is often cited as the most diverse county in the country, that diversity is only, pardon the pun, skin deep.
By one measure, Queens is the most segregated county in NYS, itself one of the most segregated states in the country.
Yes, the impact of redlining is still felt.

[Researchers] estimate that the [redlining maps] maps account for 15 to 30 percent of the overall gaps in segregation and homeownership that they find between “D” and “C” neighborhoods from 1950 to 2010 (the gaps between “D” and “A” neighborhoods are clearly even wider).

https://www.nytimes.com/2017/08/24/upshot/how-redlinings-racist-effects-lasted-for-decades.html
Agriculture doesn't dominate employment for a variety of reasons including consolidation and mechanization. Likewise, even with "reindustrialization" manufacturing wouldn't dominate employment due to automation and increasingly "intelligent" factory floors.

"There is, however, a lot of nostalgia for the 1950s and 1960s, when more than a quarter of U.S. workers were employed in manufacturing. Income inequality was much lower in that era; many blue-collar workers considered themselves middle-class. And there’s a widespread narrative that
(a) attributes those good times for workers to the availability of well-paid jobs in manufacturing, and
(b) attributes the relative decline of manufacturing to outsourcing and trade deficits."
That was only true for white males. For the most part all women, Hispanics, Asians and of course African Americans were denied such opportunity. In addition, redlining of mortgage applications, "equal but separate" educations, and other vestiges of Jim Crow laws impaired income equality for a large part of the workforce. The Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Voting Rights Act of 1965 were slow to come; currently both are under assault in (SCOTUS?) cases. As a 63 year old straight white male with a life-long physical handicap I, for one, am far from nostalgic for those days.

Just waiting for tweet storm from DT, DEFUND Moody.

I LOL'd at this, but then thought "Hmmm, he actually would".
Today, Scott Bessent called Moody’s a ‘lagging indicator’ after U.S. credit downgrade.
https://www.cnbc.com/2025/05/18/scott-bessent-calls-moodys-a-lagging-indicator-after-us-credit-downgrade.html