AAII Sentiment Survey, 1/22/25
BULLISH became the top sentiment (43.4%, above average) & neutral became the bottom sentiment (27.1%, below average); bearish became the middle sentiment (29.4%, below average); Bull-Bear Spread was +14.0% (reversal; above average). Investor concerns: Budget, debt, inflation, the Fed, dollar, geopolitical, Russia-Ukraine (152+ weeks), Israel-Hamas (67+ weeks; cease fire). For the Survey week (Th-Wed), stocks up (rally resumed), bonds up, oil down, gold up, dollar down. NYSE %Above 50-dMA 50.24% (positive, barely). FOMC 1/29/25 #AAII #Sentiment #Markets
https://ybbpersonalfinance.proboards.com/post/1854/thread

Priced at $25.00 on 1/22/25, with a guaranteed 0-11% return for one year. Bitcoin option hedging.

Looks like there was a new SEC filing as of 1/17:
https://www.sec.gov/ix?doc=/Archives/edgar/data/1771146/000199937125000464/brookmont-485bpos_011725.htm

In our January issue, we made the case for investing in infrastructure funds and ETFs. The case was based on a (for me) glum premise: we can either spend resources minimizing the severity of climate instability or we can spend them trying to live with the consequences of feeding instability. We have collectively decided that we are uninterested in inconveniencing ourselves in an attempt to halt climate change; if you look out at your driveway as see an SUV or manly pickup, the 21st century version of a codpiece, you've don't get to growl about "d***ed politicians on this one. While politicians can ignore climate change (it's someone else's problem, it's not happening, it's natural, it's long off, my 'base' will throw me out of office if I even mention it), they can't ignore the collapsing drinking water systems, toasted towns and flooded shopping districts attendant to climate change. Davenport is building flood protection. California is building "Los Angeles 2.0." Which will cost trillions.
The case for such investments just became stronger: Mr. Trump declared a "national energy energy" to accelerate fossil fuel extraction and consumption, is withdrawing from climate coalitions and promising $500 billion for "AI infrastructure" (which translates to power plants, pipelines and grid upgrades). His Energy Secretary-nominee, CEO of a fracking company, declares "there is no 'climate crisis.' We have seen no increase in the frequency or intensity of hurricanes, tornadoes, droughts or floods." On whole I'm guessing that instability (hence pressure for adaptive infrastructure) will grow as will devotion of the energy sector.
I took seriously the rec to include water infrastructure on the recommended list, and I've been trying (around teaching five days a week) to make sense of folks' choices there. With luck, we'll share a short essay on water funds in February.

I came across this quote from the Crossing Wall Street blog today:

Not too long ago, Wall Street assumed that the Federal Reserve would be slashing interest rates this year. That may not be the case. The Fed meets again next week, and you can forget about any rate cuts coming. The futures market currently thinks there’s a 0.5% chance of an interest rate cut. I think that’s about 0.49% too high, but that’s only a guess.
For the meeting after that, coming in March, futures traders think there’s only a 26% chance that the Fed will cut interest rates. Traders don’t see a cut coming at the May meeting, either. They think the first cut will come in the middle of June.
Remarkably, that’s the only Fed interest rate cut that traders expect all year. This is a huge change in sentiment from just a few weeks ago. If earnings continue to grow as they are now, what’s the point of cutting rates?

link:
cws-market-review-january-21-2025.html
crossing wall street.

Surely, this has already been mentioned: with fewer, if any, rate cuts to come, ostensibly it makes sense to hold paper that matures further out. My junk carries a rolling maturity of less than 3 years. My "mainstream" I.G. WCPNX holds stuff up to 5.5 years at the moment. Even with the higher quality, the yield is quite decent.
21st January, 2025:
PRCPX 7.02%
TUHYX 7.35%
WCPNX 5.23%
Helluva lot better results than your standard bank savings account. And the expected Orange deregulation ought to be useful. We can make money with share price appreciation, too. (Is it 2028 yet?)

Let me see. In 2023-4, the SP500 made over 50%.
In the last 15 years, about 13.8% annually.
* Valuation are high
* The next 2 years will not be as good as the last 2 years.
* There is a good chance the SP500 will go down 10-15% in the next 2 years.
WOW

hank: @FD1000 - I think you can read other “expert” opinions even if you consider yourself one of them. I don’t think you have to follow any expert’s advice. If they are “big” enough they will acknowledge that they might be wrong.
FD: I never said I'm an expert. My point is that over 95% of the investment 24/7 media press and talk is meaningless. I consider these as entertainment.
I have a hiking retiring buddy who is a professor from a known university. This guy has worked with many of the top economists and business professors. They have been making forecasts for decades and were wrong, and when he asked, why would they do a stupid thing like that? The answer was everyone will remember me after I was on TV (and I will make money from it); nobody will remember what I said....enough said.

I've been with VG for 20ish years. I've locked myself out a few times, mostly when I had the account locked down so only one computer could login. I think they key on mac address. I would clear cookies and that would for some reason lock me out. I turned that off once they went to 2FA. I've probably called VG 5 times over the 20+ years and 4 were for lock out problems I caused. Otherwise , no problems.

VG reps are worse than government customer service and I do not talk to them if I do not have an existing problem I need to solve. I made many suggestions to them to improve their service and when I figured out who they are, I moved my accounts (it takes a lot to push me away). They had a parting gift to me - when I placed the account transfer request, I also placed an exchange order at VG, which VG acted on by selling but not buying the exchange order and sat on the cash and the transfer out for more than a week, putting me out of market for a week.
I still have a taxable account there. Transfer out in 2025 in multiple phases to make sure cost basis transfers correctly.
Not too long ago it was fashionable in this forum to go after posters who posted negatively about VG. How times have changed.
Vanguard was where I first started investing.

Although this didn't happen to me at VG, it has happened at another site.
On a failed login, it said to login after certain date & that worked. But the days or date to re-try logins were specified.
Also, if you have phone screen protected by clunky fingerprint feature, the success rate is 75% at best. It then says to try after a few minutes, but there is also a bypass option to use PIN that I go to.
I don't understand the logic behind these delayed logins - sites think that a fraudster would just move to something else. Maybe or not.

The week in charts (1/20/25)
https://bilello.blog/2025/the-week-in-charts-1-20-25

This episode is very informative on Giroux’s in-depth stock selection for PRWCX. A 5-year investment horizon is certainly more than most active managers. Wish he would talked a bit o the bond sleeve.
Here is what I found through T. Rowe Price site on the newly launched TRP Capital Appreciation & Income. A bit more information on the breakdown of different bond sectors the fund is invested.

Within the Capital Appreciation and Income Fund’s fixed income allocation, we hold a healthy mix of U.S. Treasuries, high-quality BB and BBB bonds,5 and bank loans. Looking at the current environment, we think BB and high‑quality bank loans create a compelling opportunity to generate equity-like returns while taking on less risk than the broader equity market.

https://troweprice.com/personal-investing/resources/insights/bringing-a-tested-investment-process-to-a-new-wider-market.html

Since bond funds surfaced in the discussion, I’ve attempted to utilize a share option in my Barron’s subscription to link an article. I hope it works. This one on bond funds I found interesting.
Barron’s - Actively Managed Bond Funds Outperformed Indexes
@FD1000 - I think you can read other “expert” opinions even if you consider yourself one of them. I don’t think you have to follow any expert’s advice. If they are “big” enough they will acknowledge that they might be wrong.
There’s an old expression - ”Put this in your pipe and smoke it” - meaning to listen to a line of reasoning and then carefully consider it. True of reading expert opinions ISTM.

He is not always right.
http://www.quickmeme.com/img/3f/3fee1b7081bf80d753ce44b0fc47318a57455a1e2bd9a0877d655a894489e39e.jpg

@Sven, specific info on buyers and sellers is hard to get.
But beware of the news and analysis that may be outdated by the time you may read it.
Checking TLT flows via MFOP, there were outflows from 11/11/24 to 1/2/25. Now there are some inflows from 1/2/25. Longer term, there were strong inflows from 2/3/22 to 11/11/24.

@yogibb, really appreciate your comments on bonds. Where can one track bond flow if that is an of bond trader’s buying and selling?
Someone is selling the long bonds heavily so to drive up the 10 year treasury yield since October. Who are these sellers ? I notice the spreads between the 2 yr-, 3 yr- and 5 yr- treasuries to the 10 year treasury have turned positive in December. And that is a significant change from the inverted yield curve since 2022. What are the implications for bonds going forward?
I too like balance and asset allocation funds, especially actively managed funds. Sometime seeing what their bond sleeves hold provide insights on what segments are working.

I tend to regard AI as having gone through three cycles:
1. Late 1950s - 1960s. Think ELIZA
https://www.livescience.com/technology/eliza-the-worlds-1st-chatbot-was-just-resurrected-from-60-year-old-computer-code
2. Mid 1980s-1990s. Expert systems, machine learning/reasoning. Memory intensive for the time. The academic response was that we'll just wheel in another memory bank.
3. Now. Generative AI. Power hungry. We'll just bring another nuclear reactor online.
https://www.technologyreview.com/2024/09/26/1104516/three-mile-island-microsoft/

I just don't want to have to ever again deal with this level of an issue in return for the now negligible benes a VG a/c provides.
Here's a Bogleheads thread on how little is left of benefits for Flagship ($1M+) customers.
https://www.bogleheads.org/forum/viewtopic.php?t=416767
VG still provides Flagship customers some (25/year) free trades on non-Vanguard TF funds. In the thread, someone called out an irony with this: "Funny part is that they are rewarding you only for keeping $ in a competitor's product."
An amusing nautical observation in the thread:"by the time I saved enough money to throw around, Vanguard lost the HMS Vanguard and Flagship branding! Scudder is gone, the State Street clipper is foundering, and I don't have a family office ready for the Northern Trust anchor"
Vanguard has deprecated "Flagship" much as Fidelity has done with "Private Client".
Vanguard appears to still provide free wire transfers for Flagship customers. Fidelity does this for all customers. Schwab waives fees on up to three domestic wires per quarter for households investing at least $100K.
Vanguard may still be the easiest (only?) way to buy Admiral class shares of actively managed funds. You can move these shares to many other brokerages and sell these shares there. But other brokerages generally won't let you buy additional Admiral shares.

Just posted all ratings to MFO Premium site, using Refinitiv data drop from Friday, 17 January 2025, reflecting risk and return metrics thru December. Flows are also posted through Friday, 17 January.