So an unknown number of Californian tax filers are going to have a big tax bill coming due on Oct. 16, 2023, as they have to file their 2022 returns plus put together what would have been all of their quarterly estimated payments that they have not had to make thus far during 2023. That is going to be one giant windfall in October 2023 for the Treasury Department.
But here is why this event matters to the rest of us. Those California late payers are going to have to raise the money to make sure that their big October 2023 checks to the IRS clear. That is going to mean selling some stock, cashing out of money market funds, shifting money from savings to checking, and otherwise generally sending waves through the banking system to get their money organized so that they can cover those deferred payments. Writing a check to the IRS means that a bank then has to cover that check, and move money all around the system as the IRS cashes those checks.
The entire financial system has grown accustomed to that type of turbulence taking place in April every year. But this anomalous Oct. 16 for rich taxpayers in the most populous state is a non-standard type of ripple in the liquidity stream.
There is no way to quantify how much of an effect this will have, as we cannot see into the hearts and the bank accounts of all of those delayed filers in California. But it is going to have some meaningful effect that is an irregular feature of the normal calendar for banking and liquidity. By late October, all of the dust should have settled, and all of that moving around of money to cover tax payments will have simmered down, so stocks can get back to their normal seasonal strength starting by late October.

Background to this upcoming event (October):
california_is_going_to_drop

Where I am we had a 1950s era phone “landline”. After a few days of heavy rain it would sometimes go out for several days. Not sure where the problem was. Possibly in a buried cable to home. Cellular reception is poor here. For home service I use a cellphone connected to outside cellular antenna / cell phone booster for regular home service. The booster runs on electric, so it would be hard (but not impossible) to get a call out in event of power failure. (Than, there’s the portable gas powered generator to fall back on.) But most days the $25 / month cellular from Visible (Verizon) performs very reliably.
I don’t think it takes a rocket scientist to see the advantages to a “utility” in providing tower service rather than in ground cable. Many technologies become outdated in 5-10 years. “Hard” lines (pole or buried) would be a lot more expensive, ISTM, for them to upgrade than upgrading their towers - especially if burring cable to home.
I suspect in another 10-20 years a whole lot of this stuff (maybe all) will be space based, as satellites are becoming more advanced, lighter and less expensive to launch by the day. I never thought I’d see wireless charging. But it’s here - for some devices anyways. One of the networks featured an in-production solar powered car on its Thursday newscast. Three wheeled. A slight problem is having to run a zig-zag pattern to get up any hills. And they didn’t comment on how well it works at night.

Stuff happens.
Cellphone towers can get overwhelmed during disasters, whether natural or manmade. Landline service is designed to prioritize emergency calls, drop inbound calls if they can't be completed, and queue dial tone so that one can still call out. And it works.
https://www.forbes.com/sites/timbajarin/2019/10/17/1989-loma-prieta-earthquake-highlighted-critical-flaws-in-telecommunications/?sh=5d4761d1f329
Unfortunately, my local phone company (these days, that's an oxymoron) refuses to provide copper wire service.
Regarding power and other Plain Old Telephone Service (POTS) features, see BORSCHT.
Your description of VWINX sounds similar to what was originally Fidelity Utilities Income Fund (now FIUIX). A bond-ish fund, Adjustable-Rate Preferred Portfolio, was even merged into this fund in 1991.

The best suggestion of a specific fund I’ve received (for my needs) from this board came from @BenWP a couple + years ago. That’s GLFOX. It’s the first new fund I purchased after moving to Fido’s brokerage. Thanks Ben. It is technically an infrastructure fund. M* lists it as slightly over 50% utilities. Most of the holdings are X-USA (primarily Europe), which partially explains an ER north of 1%. The fund isn’t for everyone. And, as noted, isn’t a “utilities” fund. You can probably find better infrastructure or utility funds depending on your needs for a portfolio fit - especially how much foreign exposure you need or want.
Lazzard, itself is a giant in the global investment banking business. There’s been upheaval at the top with a new CEO in recent months. Like most of the big houses, there’s cost-cutting going on. I read somewhere there’s a soft close on institutional ownership of GLFOX, but that it is still open to individual investors. Strikes me as opposite what T. Rowe is doing by closing PRWCX but allowing those with hefty initial investments in.
Of course, Fido’s “Select Utilities” (FSUTX) with a lower .74% ER is a star performer in utilities.

The P/E on the ones I saw (traditional style, highly regulated) were way too rich.
Hawaiian Electric here is not an independent company; it's owned by American Savings Bank. That's just weird
You may have the hierarchy upside down. HE owns American Savings Bank. From BofA Global Research:

Reiterate Underperform on shares of Hawaiian Electric (HE) which is expensive relative to our view of the fundamentals and deserves to trade at a discount to utility peers due to its banking exposure. HE owns American Savings Bank (ASB),

https://rsch.baml.com/access?q=KIjGPJuiY!I
It's difficult if not impossible to find a pure play in traditional, regulated utilities. The BofA excerpt implies that the utility subsidiary is doing just fine thank you, but HE is getting dragged down by its non-utility subsidiary.
M* gets the company structure wrong or at least misleading in writing that HE is 3/4 electric utility company and 1/4 bank. That suggests that it's 3/4 regulated. It's not. Apparently what M* is calling an electric company consists of two HE subsidiaries, Hawaii Electric (a traditional, regulated utility) and Pacific Current.

Pacific Current President Scott Valentino, described the subsidiary as a “Hawaii-centric non-regulated entity that invests and develops in a broad range of infrastructure.”
...
“Everything we own today is related to electricity, but we are looking for opportunities in transportation, water, agriculture and other sectors,” Valentino said.
According to Valentino, a sustainable future for Hawaii does not just lie in one sector alone.
“We are focused on the betterment of Hawaii overall, but we are really focused on accelerating the 100 percent renewable portfolio standard, and carbon neutrality across the sectors,” he said.
...
Valentino said that Pacific Current is considered a “real growth vehicle for HEI moving forward”

https://www.bizjournals.com/pacific/news/2019/05/10/pacific-current-plans-to-invest-in-sustainability.html
That seems more along the lines that Giroux was talking about, and it's unregulated.
Side note: M*'s economic moat analysis of HE is, to quote you, "just weird". It talks about how the utility portion is a monopoly and yet describes this as a "narrow moat". Apparently to M* "moat" doesn't mean so much a competitive advantage (such as being a monopoly) as it means being able to sustain excess ROI (which regulation tamps down).
https://www.morningstar.com/investing-definitions/economic-moat

See Vanguard exceptions to foreign tax reporting here:
https://big-bang-investors.proboards.com/post/38655/thread
Excerpt:
Vanguard's 1099s do not include foreign taxes paid for many funds, such as VT (Vanguard Total World Stock ETF), VGWAX (Global Wellington), or VGYAX (Global Wellesley Income), which have significant foreign stock exposure (including foreign dividend-paying stock exposure). This is nuts -- these funds are 40-50% foreign.
And yet, VG does provide foreign tax information on funds like STAR and the Life Strategy and Target Retirement funds, which have a minimal amount of foreign exposure.
See here which funds VG does provide foreign tax information for:
https://www.vanguard.com/pdf/FTC_2023.pdf

@Derf "I believe IRA's are not eligible for credit or deductions for foreign taxes paid on Fed taxes. That's why I'm moving to taxable account. Correct me if I'm wrong."
You are correct. Brokerage 1099s usually show foreign taxes paid (there are some peculiar exceptions at Vanguard), so in a taxable account you can claim a credit. Not in IRAs. Hence, I always keep foreign dividend payers in taxable.
Note however that Canada is an exception. There is a US-Canada agreement in place so that Canadian assets held in US IRAs are exempt from tax withholding:
https://www.suredividend.com/canadian-taxes-us-investors/#retirementaccounts
"… the 15% withholding tax that is normally imposed by the Canada Revenue Agency is waived when Canadian securities are held within U.S. retirement accounts. This is an important component of the U.S.-Canada tax treaty ..."
See discussion here:
https://big-bang-investors.proboards.com/post/39582/thread

Hank is right in drawing a distinction between the years up to the mid 90s and the time since then. Though I would say that the key difference between then and now is regulation.
Utilities were heavily regulated, vertically integrated companies. Electric utility companies combined power generation with transmission and distribution. Ma Bell designed its own equipment (Bell Labs) and manufactured it (Western Electric) under the 1956 consent decree.
Under regulation, utility companies were granted monopolies and guaranteed a fair rate of return. They were cash cows, very much like bonds with steady payments.

[Through the early 1990s] most public utilities were regulated monopolies. They were guaranteed a fair rate of return, based on their capital investment and costs. ...
in the old days of regulation, a utility like Con Ed would be required to regularly submit a resource plan to a state's public service commission. The two organizations would forecast demand and decide how much money should be invested in power plants and transmission lines. Rates would be adjusted to cover costs. Under deregulation, however, nobody plays that crucial planning role.

https://www.nytimes.com/2003/08/16/opinion/the-day-the-lights-went-out-an-industry-trapped-by-a-theory.html

Point taken @FD1000. You have said that your timing method isn't for everyone. That is true. And you have said that most should be diversified. But that begs the question, why do you keep posting about your system and trumpeting the great results you have achieved if the majority will lose money with timing. Are you trying to sway them to try when most will lose. Or, are you self-promoting? I have no doubt it works for a small minority. But the majority will never get it right.
Some of your advice is cookie-cutter good. Some, I'm not so sure.

MikeM, please reread my post, I didn't mention or promoted my system.
This site is about all kind of investors. From cookie cutter to advance. From very conservative to all stocks with different goals.
What you or I think is good, others don't agree so much.
2 Easy examples:
1) If you ask Buffet what stocks you should hold, he will say you just the SP500. Ask 100 financial advisers and none will tell you it's correct. Ask posters on this site and none will say, only the SP500.
2) Tell 100 financial advisers that you hold over 40% of your equities in Apple and they will tell you, it's unacceptable. This is what Buffet holds.

I don't know. If there is a bond fund that returned 7.84 over the last 15 years, and 10% over the last three years, like FSUTX has, I'ld like to know the name of it.

Some really good discussion here. A couple comments:
@FD1000,

So, just my opinion, good timing/trading is the only choice IF you can do it.

You are always self promoting this option. Fact is, 90% of every-day investors that try timing methods actually end up with less return over time. That is pretty well documented. Lots of people "think" they can do it, at least initially, but I contend there is a very small minority that actually benefit. I'd be the first to say it hasn't worked for me.
@fred495, @Observant1

...This fund (JHQAX) seems to offer appealing risk/reward characteristics and it's less expensive than many "alt" funds.

JHQAX has successfully proven its mettle over the past 9 years by "providing smoother returns by tempering downside and upside returns via a systematically implemented options strategy".

I'm definitely on the same page as you guys. I don't expect it to make the same return over 10 years as say the S&P 500, but you can say the same for most balanced, allocation or bond funds too. At my age, a smoother contributor in a portfolio with good upside/downside risk stats is valued.

Well, if you read my posts, I said the following hundred of times. Most should own a limited number of funds (mostly in indexes and low ER) based on their risk and goals and hardy trade. Trading is for a small % who can do it with reasonable success. But, the following MAY work for retirees who have enough and don't want to lose much. They don't care about performance, they care a lot more about NOT losing money.
BTW, I never said that JHQAX isn't a good idea. As always the whole portfolio matters more than one fund. Example: suppose someone has 5 funds, each at 20%, he/she can own 20% in JHQAX per their EXPLORE portion.
Basically, there are all kinds of investors, there is no one size fits all. Someone can use one of the following lazy portfolios(link), do nothing for decades and stop reading everything about investing.
This site and other investment sites, in contradiction to the Boglehead, are about thinking about other choices.

Some really good discussion here. A couple comments:
@FD1000,

So, just my opinion, good timing/trading is the only choice IF you can do it.

You are always self promoting this option. Fact is, 90% of every-day investors that try timing methods actually end up with less return over time. That is pretty well documented. Lots of people "think" they can do it, at least initially, but I contend there is a very small minority that actually benefit. I'd be the first to say it hasn't worked for me.
@fred495, @Observant1

...This fund (JHQAX) seems to offer appealing risk/reward characteristics and it's less expensive than many "alt" funds.

JHQAX has successfully proven its mettle over the past 9 years by "providing smoother returns by tempering downside and upside returns via a systematically implemented options strategy".

I'm definitely on the same page as you guys. I don't expect it to make the same return over 10 years as say the S&P 500, but you can say the same for most balanced, allocation or bond funds too. At my age, a smoother contributor in a portfolio with good upside/downside risk stats is valued.

As posted nearby, the AAII Sentiment Bull-Bear spread is at 2.25-yr high.
I am starting to scale my tactical-asset-allocation (TAA) back to normal - for me, 40-60% effective-equity. My TAA had become too high from purchases during 2020-2022.
The idea is hold/buy when Sentiment is VERY negative, sell some when Sentiment is TOO positive.
Personally, no hedging or shorting. Been there, tried that in my working years, but I don't do that now. I do have margin accounts but I don't use margin now.
BTW, low VIX and high SKEW indicate lots of institutional hedging. It's like many institutional bulls are just dancing near the exits. Now, retail investors seem to be joining the party.

AAII Sentiment Survey, 7/19/23
Bullish remained the top sentiment (51.4%; high) & bearish remained the bottom sentiment (21.5%; low); neutral remained the middle sentiment (27.1%; below average); Bull-Bear Spread was +29.9% (high; the highest since 4-8-21). Investor concerns: Inflation (moderating but high); economy; the Fed; dollar; crypto regulations; market volatility (VIX, VXN, MOVE); Russia-Ukraine war (73+ weeks, 2/24/22-now); geopolitical. For the Survey week (Th-Wed), stocks were up, bonds up, oil down, gold up, dollar down. This stock rally continues towards new highs. The Fed will hike rates by +25 bps on Wednesday next week. #AAII #Sentiment #Markets
LINK

"It’s about being able to stay near fully invested - even at an advanced age - and doing better than you would if parked 100% in cash (or cash-like investments)"
You are now going to the other extreme of only cash. There is a lot going on between 0% to 100% stocks. Your goal is to stay invested, my goal is different.
Let's explore several questions
1) How comfortable are you with JHQAX? The following question is the most revealing, what % are you going to invest in JHQAX for the next 20 years? I have more confidence investing in 50/50 PRWCX/VWIAX for many retirees that it meets their goals. In fact, I don't even trust PRWCX, because I don't know how long Giroux will be in charge. This is why my wife has instructions to invest in 3 funds if I'm gone, 2 indexes and VWIAX because I can trust them for decades.
2) You made a good observation, DODBX lost 33% in 2008. But why stop there, stocks+bonds lost over 15% at the bottom of 2022, and many lost over 10% by year-end. In 03/2020, many bond funds lost 10% and stocks over 30% at the bottom. Are you going to get rid of all of them?
3) You made another good point "the various approaches attempted by funds are unpredictable "
Bingo. and why I research it for many years. I talked to many people, especially investors who have enough, and most told me they don't want to ever lose more than 10% from any last top, but they still want their portfolio to make a decent return. They must give up either performance or lower risk.
So, just my opinion, good timing/trading is the only choice IF you can do it. Timing doesn't have to be all or none, you can trade 20-30-50%. BTW, I'm almost sure that Fred was probably in high % in MM for months, just like I did in 2022. When markets don't make sense, I'm out. I don't trust any funds/managers and I don't believe in relative performance, only absolute. If 50/50 PRWCX/VWIAX lost about 10-11% in 2022, it doesn't comfort me compared to -18% for SPY. I don't tolerate this decline.
Another subject we must discuss is how much you have in retirement and let's assume no pension. Smaller portfolios must be at a higher % in stocks to survive. WTF portfolio can be in 20/80 to 80/20. The biggest problem is in the middle.

If there was a “sure” way to make even a penny profit on a trade with 0 risk of loss, people would scale in. (So there isn’t.)
Closest to this I’ve ever achieved was an apparently defective slot machine years ago while visiting a casino with relatives. It actually was consistently paying out a quarter for every 15 or 20 cents cents put in. Played maybe 30 minutes and probably walked away with $3-$4 gain. I’d have stayed longer, but the rest of the group couldn’t see the merit of this exercise and so we moved on.
However, the schemes outlined by Old Joe and msf certainly sound like hedging taken to the extreme.

These may be the first ETFs to wrap this sort of strategy, but vehicles using it have been around "forever". See, e.g. principal protected notes, market linked CDs, indexed annuities, etc.
The particular strategy you described (provide protection via Treasuries, purchase at-the-money call options) is one way of structuring investments. This ETF uses a slightly different strategy (see pp. 19 et seq. in the prospectus).
It purchases at-the-money call and put options and sells an out-of-the-money put option to raise some cash. The put option provides protection against the market declining. The call option purchased provides market exposure for a 100% participation rate. The call option sold creates a cap - if the market goes up higher than the strike price, the buyer of the call will exercise, thus limiting the fund's upside potential.
This variant is independent of interest rates. It should work in ZIRP.
As the Bloomberg piece intimates, a "buffer"ed vehicle does not get 100% protection. (See the principal protected note link above for more on buffers.) So calling this first ETF a "buffer" ETF is somewhat of a misnomer. It does suggest that subsequent ETFs will not have 100% principal protection.

Well said @fred495 -
To me it’s all about doing better than cash over the short-intermediate term (approximately 3 years) with a risk profile you can tolerate. It’s not about beating the market or beating @FD1000 - or beating anyone else. It’s not a game. It’s about being able to stay near fully invested - even at an advanced age - and doing better than you would if parked 100% in cash (or cash-like investments). Why bother? Because inflation is unpredictable. Investing in something beyond “0 risk” cash is one way of hedging against an unknown rate of inflation.
All the criticisms of hedging are true. It does cost more and it does detract from your total return. And the various approaches attempted by funds are unpredictable … You think a balanced fund is more predictable? DODBX fell over 33% in 2008.
My purpose in posting wasn’t to find out whether you can make more money by hedging (You can’t). I just wanted to pick people’s brains about whether they ever engage in the practice and, if so, how they go about it. Thanks to all who offered an opinion.

I've noticed JHQAX (several others mentioned it) a while ago.
This fund seems to offer appealing risk/reward characteristics and it's less expensive than many "alt" funds.

And, JHQAX has successfully proven its mettle over the past 9 years by "providing smoother returns by tempering downside and upside returns via a systematically implemented options strategy".
Of course, it obviously all depends on your personal goals. At this stage of my life, I prefer to err on the side of caution since I don't need a lot more money.
Hence, I prefer to invest in a fund like JHQAX which had a total return of 8.2%, and a modest standard deviation of 8.6%, over the past 5 years. Whereas SPY, for example, gained 12.2%, but had a significantly higher standard deviation of 18.7%.
I find that sleeping well at night is more important to my wellbeing than making a lot of money.
Fred

Buffer Fund
A well-known bit of derivatives magic — a great, simple party trick that derivatives structurers can use to impress their friends — is that if you give me $100 today, I can invest $91 of it in two-year Treasury notes paying 4.75% interest, and in two years I will have $100. And I can invest the other $9 in two-year at-the-money call options on the S&P 500 stock index, options that gain value if the S&P goes up over those two years. Those options cost, let’s say, 13% of the price of the S&P today, so spending $9 on options will get me an option on about $70 worth of the index. And so I can offer you the following trade:
• You give me $100 today.
• In two years, I give you back (1) $100, no matter what, plus (2) 70% of the return on the S&P 500 index, if it’s up.
If stocks go up, you get the gains (well, 70% of them). If stocks go down, you don’t get the losses. What a great trade!
And because I can do this efficiently in size, and because I thought of it and you didn’t, and because I advertised it to you with a cool brochure, I can charge you like 1% of your money for putting this trade together. It is a very good trade, honestly. If you are a sophisticated investor you can quibble with it, but at a simple intuitive level it is just nice. “You get [much of] the upside of stocks, but no downside” is a clean and satisfying pitch. The shape of the payoff graph is pleasing.
Bloomberg’s Vildana Hajric and Emily Graffeo report:

The pioneer of the world’s first “buffer ETFs” — exchange-traded funds that are supposed to limit losses during market selloffs — has launched a new product which it says offers investors complete downside protection.
Investors in the $7.5 trillion ETF universe can now put money behind the Innovator Equity Defined Protection ETF, which began trading under the ticker TJUL on Tuesday. The offering comes from Innovator Capital Management, which launched the first so-called buffer ETFs, also sometimes referred to as defined-outcome funds, in 2018.
Buffer funds, as the name suggests, offer buffered exposure to stocks by limiting investors’ downside risk while also capping upside potential. …
Yet, Innovator says that its TJUL fund — which will track S&P 500 returns up to a capped percentage over a two-year period — will be the first of its kind to protect against 100% of stock losses. TJUL’s cap on potential gains is estimated at about 15% after fees.
Specifically, the fund will invest at least 80% of its net assets in options on the $423 billion SPDR S&P 500 ETF Trust (ticker SPY), according to the fund’s prospectus. TJUL can purchase and sell a combination of call and put options in an effort to cushion against market volatility.
The outcomes set by the fund may only be realized by investors who continuously hold shares of TJUL from the first day of the “outcome period” — July 18 — to the end of the two-year period, which is June 30, 2025, reads the prospectus.

They give you 100% of the gains up to the cap, rather than 70% of uncapped gains, but same basic idea.
There is a reason that this product is the first of its kind: If interest rates are zero, I can’t invest $91 in Treasuries to get back $100, so I don’t have $9 to spend on options to get S&P 500 upside. (I have to put, like, $99 in Treasuries, and the only way to get you any meaningful upside is by giving you some downside risk too.) But as interest rates have gone up, products like this look better, and so people are offering them.
Of course as interest rates have gone up, products like this are in some sense less attractive: Putting up $100 and getting back $100 in two years is worse if I missed out on 4.75% interest than it would be if interest rates were zero. But that’s not the point! The point is that a trade like “I will give you some stock upside and take 75% of the downside between down 5% and down 20% blah blah blah” is annoying and complicated, while “I will give you the upside of stocks and you can’t lose any money” is nice and simple and intuitively attractive. “Buffer fund” is complicated, “stock fund but you can’t lose money” has an obvious appeal.