@dtconroe : With your last comment it leads me to ask, what % are you receiving for your $15K deposit & I'm taking it to mean saving, MMF, or checking account ?
My bank offered to move MMF at a higher rate if I opened checking account paying .01%
I put $100 in checking & there it sits. With rates falling I need to make a move of some kind as MMF is down to 1.7% as of Dec. !!

Just a little additional information on Credit Unions. Credit Unions are very "similar" but not identical to banks. Credit Unions offer the same wide array of products that Banks do--checking accounts, savings accounts, credit cards, debit cards, bill pay, Share Certificates/CDs, and they offer a wide range of loans such as car, mortgage, and personal loans. They have government insurance protections (NCUA), which is virtually identical to FDIC for Banks. Almost every mid-size city or larger, will have several different credit unions that should be evaluated for customer service, financial health, and slight variances in interest rates and fees that accompanies their products.
Yesterday, I visited the Kelley Community Credit Union in Tyler, Texas, a city of about 100,000 in population, one of the fastest growing cities in Texas, and a very popular city for Retirees. Kelley Credit Union has a very new and attractive brick and mortar facility, much nicer than the Bank I use. It also has more staff and more professional services in its facility, than the bank I use--for example they have a Professional Licensed Financial Advisor, who previously worked for Morgan Stanley, which my Bank does not have. The main reason I went to this Credit Union is because they offer one of the highest one year "non-callable Share Certificate/CDs at 4.5%, higher than what I can get at my Bank or at Schwab Brokerage. They were very professional and informed me of a special incentive program, if I use several of their products (checking accounts, debit cards, Direct Deposits, E-Statements, and at least $15,000 in deposits and loans) which would lead them to add" .3% to the existing 4.5% Share Certificate/CD so that the actual rate would be 4.8%.
This is a quality and low risk option for my investments, and you may find similar options from a Credit Union in your area!

Why look at EXDAX when ICMUX performance for 1-3-5 years is so much better with a lower SD.
ICMUX doubled EXDAX for 1 year and more than doubled for 5 years.

Related to UST volatilities, this is a wee bit concerning (not cyber-related) ... the traditional 'money center' banks are not as active in the UST markets as private trading houses, which are more concerned w/short-term than long-term and/or stability.
https://stkt.co/fuuD5Wxh (archived BBG article)

Another tiny nibble, adding to ET. Now 6.65% of total.

@hank- The wine industry will be happy to learn that I've compensated for you by increasing my 5oz glass to 8oz. Yeah, maybe shorten my life by a week or so. At 85, who cares?
:)

Hi @Old_Joe. That was a 'word test' to help determine cognitive skills. And you, kind SIR , are at the top of the excellence scale. Have a glass of wine with my blessings. :) Be sure your dear spouse knows that "I said so".

+1
But watch that wine OJ. I recently had to downsize from 8 ounce servings to only 5 .

Stable-Value (SV) Rates, 1/1/25
TIAA Traditional Annuity (Accumulation) Rates
Rates down by 25 bps (posted early!)
Restricted RC 5.25%, RA 5.00%
Flexible RCP 4.50%, SRA 4.25%, IRA-101110+ 4.50%
(TIAA Declaration Year 3/1 - 2/28)
TSP G Fund 4.625% pending (previous 4.250%).
Options outside of workplace retirement plans include m-mkt funds, bank m-mkt accounts (FDIC insured), T-Bills, short-term brokered CDs.
#StableValue #401k #403b #TIAA #TSP
https://ybbpersonalfinance.proboards.com/post/1802/thread

Short Article
NOTE: Three other related articles are just below the end of the article text, noting that 9 telecom companies were also hacked. Ironically, the third-party software service provider involving the hack, is named BeyondTrust

https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/1545440/000158064224007850/westglobal_497e.htm
497 1 westglobal_497e.htm 497E
December 30, 2024
WESTWOOD GLOBAL REAL ESTATE FUND
Institutional Shares
KIRYX
A Class Shares
KIRAX
C Class Shares
KIRCX
A Series of Ultimus Managers Trust
Supplement to the Prospectus and Statement of Additional Information, each dated February 28, 2024, as supplemented
Effective immediately, Westwood Global Real Estate Fund (the “Fund”), a series of Ultimus Managers Trust (the “Trust”), has terminated the public offering of its shares and will discontinue its operations effective February 19, 2025. Shares of the Fund are no longer available for purchase and, at the close of business on February 19, 2025, all outstanding shares of the Fund will be redeemed at net asset value (the “Transaction”). Prior to the liquidation date, Shareholders of the Fund may exchange their holdings for another fund in the Trust as outlined in the Fund prospectus.
The Board of Trustees of the Trust (the “Board”), in consultation with the Fund’s investment adviser, Westwood Management Corp. (the “Adviser”), determined and approved at a meeting of the Board held on December 20, 2024 (the “Meeting”) to discontinue the Fund’s operations based on, among other factors, the Adviser’s belief that it would be in the best interests of the Fund and its shareholders to discontinue the Fund’s operations. Through the date of the Transaction, the Adviser will continue to waive investment advisory fees and reimburse expenses of the Fund, if necessary, in order to maintain the Fund at its current expense limit, as specified in the Fund’s current Prospectus.
At the Meeting, the Board directed that: (i) all of the Fund’s portfolio securities be liquidated in an orderly manner not later than February 19, 2025; and (ii) all outstanding shareholder accounts on February 19, 2025 be closed and the proceeds of each account, less any required withholding, be sent to the shareholder’s address of record or to such other address as directed by the shareholder, including special instructions that may be needed for Individual Retirement Accounts (“IRAs”) and qualified pension and profit sharing accounts. As a result of the Transaction, the Fund’s portfolio holdings will be reduced to cash or cash equivalents. Accordingly, going forward, shareholders should not expect the Fund to achieve its stated investment objective.
Shareholders may redeem all or a portion of their shares of the Fund on any business day prior to the Transaction as specified in the Fund’s Prospectus.
The Transaction will be considered for tax purposes a sale of Fund shares by shareholders, and shareholders should consult with their own tax advisors to ensure its proper treatment on their income tax returns. In addition, shareholders invested through an IRA or other tax-deferred account should consult the rules regarding the reinvestment of these assets. In order to avoid a potential tax issue, shareholders generally have 60 days from the date that proceeds are received to re-invest or “rollover” the proceeds into another IRA or qualified retirement account; otherwise, the proceeds may be required to be included in the shareholder’s taxable income for the current tax year.
If you have any questions regarding the Fund or the Transaction, please call the Fund toll free at 1-877-FUND-WHG (1-877-386-3944).
Investors Should Retain this Supplement for Future Reference.

The problem with Marks and many others is in the details.
How do you control risk in real life when markets punch you in the face?
If you know your goals, risk, volatility and are willing to tolerate it, and you are a buy-and-hold investor, you should have less of a problem. That's a lot easier for the accumolator.
In retirement, things get more difficult. When to retire? when to take SS? future taxes, pensions, LTC?. Are you really needing the future risk/SD? If you have enough?
I have been thinking, practicing, tweaking, and testing performance under risk/SD for about 25 years. This is what has worked for me.
1) The best way to avoid losses is to sell to MM. I couldn't find any fund(s) that can minimize the losses for the entire portfolio to under 3%, not even 5%, and still have reasonable performance as 50/50.
2) Investing based on what happened months ago or 1-2 (or more) years is a no-go. The worst years present great opportunities because of item 1 above.
3) There is almost nothing 100% safe. Stocks go down, bonds, even treasuries go down (2022). Not all MM are safe too; some can limit your access when you want to trade, others can break the $1.
4) Diversification doesn't save you either. IMO, investing in just 3-6 funds is all you need to make your life simpler.
5) Valuation and others are another trap.
The solution:
Do almost nothing
or
Know what you are doing, be a good trader, and know the risk/SD, it is different many times; expect the worst and hope for the best. Expect the worst is the key. A 5-10% decline can end in 20-30% and even 50%. If you wait too long, you are too late.
This is the main point: you can't define the risk/SD, it's not predictable.

EXDAX is on my watchlist. Should a couple small spec bets I made today pay off in coming weeks or months I’d move the proceeds into it - and possibly more. It’s hard to find relatively successful funds with a 20/80 (equity / fixed income) mix as this one carries. In the past I’ve invested with Manning & Napier with good results. The criticism of the firm’s management (turnover) has me concerned. It sure sounds like a mass upheaval at the firm. Should I be concerned? Anybody have more knowledge of the issues at M&N or threat they pose to their funds’ performance?
Re Morningstar’s neutral rating & subsequent “analysis” …
- They lead by mentioning “a third wave of departures” within a nine year period.
- Then add, “(More recently) Ebrahim Busheri, then-CIO of Manning & Napier and a veteran manager of these portfolios, left Manning & Napier in early 2023. That move kicked off a series of departures, including two other longtime managers of the series, Christian Andreach and Marc Tommasi, in mid-2023 and January 2024, as well as several senior analysts. And the team has cumulatively seen a lot of turnover for a relatively small group; other waves of turnover occurred in 2015-17 and 2019.”

Some are guessing that 30-yr T-Bond auction scheduled for January 9 will not be disrupted by half-day bond market open. Remember that the debt-ceiling kicks in on 1/1/25.
https://www.forexlive.com/news/sifma-recommends-early-bond-market-close-on-jan-9-for-jimmy-carters-funeral-20241230/

@msf Ah, yes: total stocks, not total portf.
Here's more, and more particularly:
X-Ray shows:
Cash 6
Other 4
US stocks 41
Foreign 1
Bonds 49.
************
North America equities: 82.62
Latam 16.5
UK 0.17
Europe Dev. 0.14
Australiasia 0.56
******************
% of total assets:
PRWCX 39.8
TUHYX 20.4
PRCFX 13.61
PRCPX 7.83
ET 6.55
BLX 5.91
WBALX 4.34
WCPNX 1.93
Appreciate the attention given!

Which percentage table are you looking at? If it's the world exposure table on the X-ray overview page, that's showing percentage of total stock. I ask in part because that would explain the apparent discrepancy, and in part because I'm having trouble finding an X-ray table that shows regional exposure as a percentage of total portfolio.
That would be nice to have (I'd like include foreign bonds in calculating foreign exposure by region).
In contrast, the tracking page shows individual securities as a percentage of the whole portfolio.
Suppose a portfolio is 1/3 stock and 2/3 bond. Then increasing the Latin American stock holdings by 16.5% of your equities would be the same as increasing your Latin American holding by 5.5% of your whole portfolio.
Percentage of total portfolio:
Latin America: 5.5%
Other stock: 27.8%
Bonds: 66.7%
Percentage of total stock:
Latin America = 5.5% / (27.8% + 5.5%) = 16.5%
I'll take a look at your bond funds.

I made one switch on Friday: exited BHB in favor of BLX..... BHB was 5.9% of my total. Now, X-Ray tells me, suddenly, that I'm holding 16.49% of total portfolio in Latin America.
To clarify your numbers: what was your Latin American holding percentage prior to the portfolio switch? If, for example, your portfolio had been 10% in Latin America prior to the switch, the new figure would not be out of line.
Please also confirm that you are reporting, both before and after change, percentages of total portfolio, not percentages of foreign holdings. I know you wrote "total portfolio" but I find it's easy to slip between those figures when looking at World Regions under x-ray interpreter. At least that's something I tend to do, especially since I'm interested in the regional breakdown of my foreign holdings (disregarding US).
the tool recently cannot classify over one-third of my bonds. Even for an automated, unthinking tool, that's just hilarious. Because nothing has changed in the portfolio re: bonds in many months
Again, a question of clarification. If you're talking about individual bonds, I've never seen M* have a problem classifying, so long as I input all the data columns: quantity, current price, credit quality, maturity, and coupon. You can see how each bond is classified (or not) by going to x-ray detail/bond style. If you've got a bond that shows up there as unclassified, that would be interesting. PM me if you'd like.
If you're talking about bond funds, then their holdings change upon each new fund report, even if your own portfolio doesn't change. Here too, the detail/bond style page can help identify the culprit(s). In my portfolio I see one bond fund that is 100% unclassified.
Morningstar relies upon funds themselves for bond data. "Morningstar asks fund companies to send ... information on a monthly or quarterly basis for each of their fixed-income and allocation funds."
https://advisor.morningstar.com/Enterprise/VTC/FI_Survey_Guidelines_cashRevision_FINAL.PDF
Not only raw data, but some calculated figures are provided by the funds in these fixed income surveys. For example, "Morningstar asks fund companies to calculate and send average effective duration (also known as option-adjusted duration) for each of their fixed-income and allocation funds."
I also vaguely recall that M* discards some fixed income data that's over a month old. I not having success in locating a statement to that effect now. But this could be another reason why the "unclassified" percentage increased.

M* has what looks like an absolute risk scale (1-100) for funds. Unlike its category risk scale (low, below average, ..., high), funds are not measured against their peers.
The methodology talks about target allocation benchmarks, but from what I've seen these "portfolio risk scores" are not rescaled according to fund type. Equity funds are inherently more risky and thus always seem to rate mid to high scores. Ultrashort funds seem to always score in the single digits regardless of their risk relative to peers.
RPHIX - 4
CBLDX - 5
DHEAX - 6
This ordering comports with my understanding of their relative risks. The Dave Sherman funds are managed to have very little volatility.
CBLDX has a longer effective maturity (1.01 years) and higher volatility (1.57) than RPHIX (2.7 - 6.8 months and 0.80 respectively).
DHEAX has a higher standard deviation of 2.38, and an effective duration of 1.47 years. Even without considering that a fund's duration is shorter than its maturity, this is already longer (worse) than CBLDX's 1 year effective maturity. It had a worse drawdown in March 2020 and lost money in 2022 while the other funds have never had a losing calendar year.
Portfolio Visualizer confirms the relative rankings, Feb 2018-Nov 2024, the funds' std deviations are 0.92, 2.76, and 4.27 respectively, while max drawdowns are 1.09%, 5.50%, and 9.74% respectively.

I made one switch on Friday: exited BHB in favor of BLX..... BHB was 5.9% of my total. Now, X-Ray tells me, suddenly, that I'm holding 16.49% of total portfolio in Latin America. Ya. I should not be surprised, I suppose. I liked to use that tool, but how useful is it to me, now? ORK!
....This is to say nothing about the fact that the tool recently cannot classify over one-third of my bonds. Even for an automated, unthinking tool, that's just hilarious. Because nothing has changed in the portfolio re: bonds in many months. DOUBLE ORK!

Thank you to @msf for all the research. Very thorough look at investment grade CLOs.
I can understand the “just because it never happened before …” comments if we hue strictly to @dtconroe’s goal here which seems to be to remain in a cash equivalent security with the highest degree of safety and stability and also best the best reward. It’s a tall order. That would appear to limit us to discussing FDIC backed CDs or T-Bills. The Fed took measures after ‘08 to strengthen money market funds. But, as you say, they are not “fool-proof” and would have failed en-masse in late ‘07 had not the government under emergency authority stepped in to back them.
However, if we are allowed to “stray” a bit and compare A+ rated CLOs to equities or lower tier junk bonds there’s really no comparison - so far apart are they on any reasonable risk scale. Equities can halve their value in a year under adverse conditions. The risk of lower tier HY bonds, while not on a par with equities, is still substantial. A 25% or more haircut in a year’s time across those funds is possible under really adverse market conditions (and an investor stampede)..
By nature we here are as a bunch inclined to take some risk beyond cash / CDs to grow wealth or preserve buying power. So on a risk scale with aggressive growth equities on the top, a fund like JAAA would be far below. No - not as safe as cash. No one is claiming that. But certainly less risky than equities or lower tier junk bonds. So each of us assembles a portfolio consisting of many different components that fits our individual needs. We test as best as we can to understand the loss potential under different adverse conditions. The decision by some at an advanced age to invest solely in cash is understandable. I’d never quarrel with them.

Historical precedent imo does not hold much value.
Others beg to differ. They look at how a fund performed in specific economic environments (such as the 2008 GFC you mention) and/or over full economic cycles to get a sense of how the fund might behave going forward. These are not guarantees but data points that help gauge risk.
Prior to the 2008 GFC, real estate prices had NEVER gone down nationally and the "pundit" consensus at the time was it could not happen (real estate pricing is local blah blah...) and yet.
2008 demonstrated that diversification is not a cure-all. Geographic diversification did not prevent losses in the real estate sector. Actually, in 2008 even diversification across sectors would not have improved matters much.

Real estate investment trusts wrapped up 2008 with negative returns, including dividends, of 37.3% on average, according to a report released Wednesday by the National Association of Real Estate Investment Trusts in Washington. The performance was in line with the broader indexes, such as the Standard & Poor’s 500 stock index, which was down 37%, the Russell 2000 Index, which was off 33.8%, and the Nasdaq Composite Index, which declined 40.5%.

https://www.investmentnews.com/alternatives/reit-returns-fell-373-in-2008/19418
A minor point on your datum for completeness. Real estate prices did go down (Y/Y) prior to 2008. It's just a specific slice of real estate - housing transactions involving conforming Fannie May/Freddie Mac loans - that hadn't dropped before then. Case-Schiller's broader housing index dropped in previous years (1991, 2007), as did commercial real estate.
Assessing the Credit Risk of CDOs Backed by Structured Finance Securities: Rating Analysts’ Challenges and Solutions: fn 5 and Figure 1.
AAA CLO can incur a loss regardless of the prior 30Y history
Of course. And MMFs can break a buck - retail funds had a 37 year run, 1971-2008 before incurring a loss. But that didn't make their history useless.
The 30 year run of AAA CLOs without losses doesn't prove they never will lose money. Rather, it serves as evidence that these relatively complex structured vehicles are not brittle. They have not collapsed in a variety of stressful environments. Nevertheless, there may be a latent design defect that will show up when the exactly right conditions arise.
I wouldn't bet my last dollar on that never happening, just as I wouldn't bet my last dollar on MMFs never failing or being frozen. But that possibility doesn't deter me from using MMFs for some of my cash. It's a matter of what risks you perceive (it's never zero) and how sensitive you are to those risks.