Anyone can open a conventional taxable brokerage account at TIAA.
https://shared.tiaa.org/private/mytcbrokerageaccountopening/aobrokerageapp/secure/required
It gives you access to what you'd find at most brokerages - stocks, ETFs, mutual funds. Like those other brokerages, it does not give you access to mutual funds sold through annuities.
Most brokerages offer retail IRA accounts that, aside from being wrapped up in an IRA, are virtually identical to their retail taxable accounts. TIAA does not. It used to but stopped offering such an IRA account a few years ago.
What TIAA does do is sell retirement annuities. To colleges, that's a 403(b) annuity. Like most variable annuities, TIAA's have a limited set of funds that are sold only through annuities. Notably the CREF funds, like CREF stock. And like some variable annuities, the TIAA annuities offer a fixed annuity option. Here, that's TIAA Traditional Annuity.
For individual investors, TIAA offers two variable annuities. One is your typical VA, called TIAA Intelligent Variable Annuity. It offers "funds" (typically VA clones) shown here. The other VA is effectively the equivalent of the 403(b) annuity (plus brokerage window). It's that one that gives you get access to TIAA Traditional, CREF, and TIAA Real Estate.
That annuity is only offered to "eligible" investors, and only as an Individual Retirement Annuity. Unlike typical VAs, you can't buy it for a taxable account.
https://www.tiaa.org/public/retire/financial-products/annuities/annuity-ira-benefits
As Yogi mentioned, the TIAA Traditional Annuity (fixed annuity investment option) that you can get though this limited access IRA annuity comes with a lower rate than paid to 403(b) participants. It is paying 2.50%, and has a guaranteed floor of 1.0%. I believe the IRA annuity contract restricts Traditional withdrawals to one per quarter.
An IRA investor is at the bottom of the totem pole when it comes to the CREF funds. Several years ago, TIAA split these into three share classes, with large institutions getting cheaper shares and small institutions getting the most expensive shares. As an IRA investor, you're thrown in with the small institutions. It could be worse; TIAA could have created a fourth share class for IRA investors.
IMHO the only significant benefit to this IRA annuity is access to TIAA Real Estate Account (TREA).
You can find the VA options (including those for this IRA annuity) here. The IRA doesn't give you access to the non-TIAA VA subaccounts listed (except for Nuveen, which is owned by TIAA).
https://www.tiaa.org/public/investment-performance
Since it is structured as an annuity, this IRA can be difficult to deal with. You can't do transfers in kind (e.g. for RMDs, or IRA-to-IRA). When transferring money out of this annuity, you have to initiate the transfer from the TIAA side; typically one initiates transfers from the receiving side. These are attributes normally associated with employer-sponsored plans (401(k)s, 403(b)s), not with IRAs.
The website is atrocious. I'm won't go into details. Suffice to say that people who complain about Vanguard's website likely haven't yet had the "pleasure" of dealing with TIAA's. And you won't know what funds you can buy through the IRA brokerage window until you actually open an account.

Could be closer to bottom
Nobody knows
Hope rally upswings soon
Ust10, commodities, usdollars have retrieved last few wks
Whether trend continues we will see
Dipping small amount slowly

In addition to what I had written in my previous post, on my way to the airport, I called Schwab to wire the money to Fidelity, to which Schwab said they are happy to send the money immediately but all wires are subject to a wire fees. I did not want to pay a wire fees and so ended up writing a check to Fidelity. (I do not pay any wire transfer fees at other brokerages.) I expect members to call Schwab -1-800-435-4000 or make a test transaction before relying on my experience.
"FZDXX is subject to liquidity gates."
I think you meant redemption gates, as specified in the current SEC regulations. Not relevant for me but SWVXX is also subject to redemption gates.

I don't base my investing on outlooks or prediction, it's based on big picture + several indicators (link). Both signaled high risk months ago and why I'm in MM since then with only short term trades if the charts support it. It's not the first time. I sold before 03/2020(this post is from 2/29/2020(link) and Q4/2018 and bought back much lower after risk was lower.

TIAA Real Estate VA is available in eligible TIAA IRAs. TIAA uses Pershing/BK for its brokerage operations/window, so the experience isn't as good as at Fido or Schwab, but it should be tolerable for stuff you want at TIAA. The TIAA Traditional (SV) with lower rates is also available in these special TIAA IRAs. There is lot of related info at M* TIAA forum, and I have also put some related info at links below:
TIAA Real Estate VA Reports https://ybbpersonalfinance.proboards.com/thread/143/tiaa-real-estate-account-quarterly?page=1&scrollTo=621
TIAA Traditional Rates https://ybbpersonalfinance.proboards.com/thread/142/tiaa-traditional-rates-monthly?page=2&scrollTo=690

I put in an order to sell entire SWVXX at Schwab yesterday [Wed June 29]. I had to wake up today at 6 AM PST to pick a family member at the airport. So, I checked my Schwab account pre-market and the SWVXX sale cash was already in the account.
Cash actually in the account? Or is Schwab just making it look that way without being very precise?
Financial institutions have a propensity to offer ersatz services - carefully hiding details letting customers' imaginations fill in the gaps. NOW accounts are a good example. Savings banks offered these accounts that looked like checking accounts, felt like checking accounts, but were not the same as demand deposit accounts.
https://www.creditkarma.com/money/i/what-are-now-accounts
Schwab may have posted a pending credit prior to market open, making it look and feel like a cash deposit, knowing that any withdrawal would not be reconciled until end of day, i.e. T+1.
I transferred money from one Fidelity account to another this weekend. The money shows as available for withdrawal in the target account. But my MMF position in the "from" account is unchanged. And the number of shares in the target core MMF hasn't increased. The cash has not moved. Yet.
On the "Positions" page, Fidelity says that what's in the target account is a "Cash Credit from Unsettled Activity."
FZDXX at Fidelity, unlike SWVXX at Schwab, is counted towards my cash buying power, and Fidelity will automatically liquidate FZDXX as necessary to satisfy any buy trade.
True, and a nice feature, though it isn't a sweep account and Fidelity hasn't quite figured out all the mechanics. I know because I asked a fairly long time ago.
FZDXX is subject to liquidity gates (at least until the regs are changed; see SEC proposal thread here). There is at least a theoretical possibility that Fidelity would impose a hold on FZDXX redemptions if the fund came under stress. What would happen with cash withdrawals made "immediately" on the assumption that cash could get pulled out of FZDXX? The honest answer I got from Fidelity was that they didn't know.
(FWIW, it does not seem that Fidelity MMF needed bailouts in 2008; Chuck's did.)

Ya, everyone's darling: PRWCX.
down ytd. -13.64%. ....Even so, just out of the top one-third in category.

I think a lot of TRP’s funds have suffered more than one might expect this year. Like to look at PRSIX and TRRIX because they are roughly 40/60 and have long appealed to older more conservative investors. Of course it’s the bond component that has really hurt them. Have been slowly scaling out of behemoth PRWCX. Down to a “foot in the door” hold. Likely to exit if the markets remain down and I decide to risk-up.

Ya, everyone's darling: PRWCX.
down ytd. -13.64%. ....Even so, just out of the top one-third in category.

Surely. +1. Indeed. Surely. Yes. PERSPECTIVE is essential.

+1.

With M* Portfolio (free/Basic and Premium) going away soon (2022), and its replacement M* Investor having very poor portfolio analytics, I have collected several TIPs based on my use of FREE Portfolio Visualizer (PV) over the years. It may serve as a primer for new PV users and refresher for experienced users.
https://ybbpersonalfinance.proboards.com/thread/311/portfolio-visualizer-pv

What I tried to do was look for a similar historical period and see how different stock allocations would perform under those conditions. The cash buffer was a conceptual attempt to mitigate most, but not all impact of market swoons.
In essence, I started with a traditional 60/40 portfolio and swapped some or all of the bonds for more equity and cash, figuring (hoping?) that the cash would add stability allowing for a higher equity allocation.
Intuition says that if one has too many market corrections/bear markets in a span of a few years, preserving one would be better off with cash. I tend to agree with this intuition. However, it turns out that this risk sometimes vanishes if there is a full recovery between the periods of market decline.
Looking at the 1968-1980 period (assuming withdrawals and reallocations are done on calendar year boundaries), at the end of 1972 (right before the 1973-74 bear market) the allocation methods (including withdrawals) all are in the black. The portfolio values (nominal dollars) range from $101,402 (all stock) to $102,728 (90/10 with a cash buffer). A 28% cash buffer (7 years @4%/year) ended in the middle of the pack with $101,964.
Since all methods ended 1972 above their high water marks, they would rebalance to their "normal" allocations. It would be as if 1969-1972 hadn't happened, except that some portfolios would have a few hundred dollars more or less than others.
The reason why starting with 1969 instead of 1973 seems to make a difference is that this moves the ten year mark. If one ends after 1978, one ends just before the market has a big run up: 18.52%, 31,74%, -4.70%, and 20.42% from 1979 through 1982. It's the arbitrariness of the time periods and not the method that's the problem here.
Finally, a mea culpa. In looking more closely at the two sets of results, I realized that I erred in building the results for 40/60 in 1973-1982. That method (stocks/bonds, annual rebalancing) came out pretty well. The 30% bond return in 1982 (vs. 20% for stocks) and 8% return in 1981 (vs. -5% for stocks) surely helped.

  Year	December 31 Balance							
100% stock	90/10		90/10		75/9/16		75/9/16		60/40		55%-40%		40/60
single asset	annual rebal	cash buffer	annual rebal	cash buffer	annual rebal	glide path	annual rebal
1972	$96,000.00 	$96,000.00 	$96,000.00 	$96,000.00 	$96,000.00 	$96,000.00 	$96,000.00 	$96,000.00 
1973	$77,916.04 	$79,964.65 	$79,964.65 	$82,774.63 	$82,774.63 	$84,941.86 	$85,820.08 	$88,454.77 
1974	$52,849.69 	$57,065.02 	$56,366.89 	$62,757.74 	$62,779.42 	$66,449.90 	$68,565.60 	$73,770.73 
1975	$67,177.97 	$71,171.20 	$71,526.14 	$75,940.95 	$75,586.94 	$77,923.98 	$78,943.98 	$82,707.22 
1976	$77,709.51 	$81,312.30 	$83,093.89 	$85,862.08 	$86,793.31 	$89,157.97 	$89,949.56 	$93,980.77 
1977	$66,440.91 	$70,788.22 	$71,449.48 	$76,681.03 	$76,733.21 	$81,584.58 	$83,607.73 	$88,682.57 
1978	$64,393.97 	$69,072.33 	$69,728.56 	$75,016.17 	$74,903.38 	$78,784.24 	$80,338.99 	$85,247.72 
1979	$69,100.59 	$74,061.67 	$75,423.11 	$79,380.19 	$80,871.40 	$80,108.79 	$79,673.90 	$84,001.59 
1980	$82,907.47 	$87,939.43 	$91,236.47 	$91,378.46 	$95,352.49 	$86,229.83 	$81,409.15 	$84,953.48 
1981	$70,161.78 	$76,604.00 	$79,004.86 	$82,044.34 	$85,902.92 	$77,823.31 	$74,781.73 	$78,754.87 
1982	$75,302.27 	$82,308.84 	$85,951.03 	$89,100.42 	$94,318.06 	$87,801.30 	$85,465.37 	$90,618.38 

Appreciate the post ... Where to Invest Now? That is the question. If you're not in retirement and you have some cash on the sidelines, where do you invest? You definitely want to avoid any companies that are not generating profits. It's impossible to call a bottom. Yes. Ok, so will the recession (we are in one) last 18-24 months? If so, should you wait for another 12 months before deploying cash? DCA into index funds? Which ones? S&P 500 or Small Cap or both?
Kiplinger article "The good news is that stocks tend to do well in the first year of Fed rate hikes. Looking back some 65 years, Deutsche Bank found that 12 months following the first hike, the stock market was up 91% of the time, by an average of 7%." <-- that's some positive data.
I'm keeping an eye on the labor market. It's a strong point at the moment but we're seeing a lot of hiring freezes and offer letters being rescinded. It appears the Tech companies are gearing up for a slowdown. Interesting times.

I am in total agreement with Howard Marks. Although our Funds have held significant “dry powder”, we started cautiously putting some to work to buy “money good” credit at 8%-12% opportunities with low duration. I will be discussing in my 2Q letter entitled “Flander’s Field” which I expect to come out in mid month. Bought 29MM of a called/put bond on Friday coming out in 30 days at over 10%. Feel free to reach out to me directly if you want to chat

One of my favorite YT channels is "Wealthion". That channel provides regular, "long format" interviews on all issues macroeconomic. The format allows a fuller expression of theories/hypothesis of the interviewee.
The link below is one of a 2-parter on our current inflation mess, with a Johns Hopkins academic who had previously predicted we would hit 9% inflation in GDP.

Highlights:
- 40% increase in M2 since 2019.
-continued elevated inflation through 2022 & 2023 (albeit declining slowly during this time)
-Milton Freedman - victim of political "cancel culture"
-Why the Fed chronically under-estimates inflation.
-Why some major economies (China, Japan, Switzerland) are NOT experiencing an inflation problem.
-High probability of recession.

The author analyzed all rolling six month returns for the S&P 500
and 5 Yr. Treasuries for the period ending June 30, 2022.
Link
S&P 500: worst 3% of all 6 month returns since 1926.
5 Yr. Treasuries: second-worst 6 month returns ever ¹.
60/40: worst 2% of all 6 month returns since 1926.
¹ period ending 05/31/2022

M* had more details citing MarketWatch (owned by News Corp/NWS, parent of Barron's, WSJ, DJ & Co, etc), https://www.morningstar.com/news/marketwatch/20220628116/oaktrees-howard-marks-is-finding-bargains-i-am-starting-to-behave-aggressively-he-says
Original/MarketWatch https://www.marketwatch.com/story/oaktrees-howard-marks-is-finding-bargains-i-am-starting-to-behave-aggressively-he-says-11656414153
"That brings us to our call of the day from a well known voice on Wall Street, Oaktree Capital's founder Howard Marks, who says now's the time for "bargain" hunting follow the market's selloff.
Marks is best known for his lengthy investment letters, and warnings. In early May he cautioned over bull-market excess, which seems as prescient as his similar year-earlier warning.
"Today I am starting to behave aggressively," he told the Financial Times in an interview. "Everything we deal in is significantly cheaper than it was six or 12 months ago."
The manager said now seems like a "reasonable time to start buying," noting lower prices for such assets as high-yield bonds, mortgage-backed securities and leveraged loans. Oaktree specializes in alternative investment strategies.
"Things may well go lower. In that case, I hope we'll have the will to buy more. It makes no sense to say: "I'm not going to buy until we reach bottom." We never know when we're at the bottom, and certainly I'm not saying we are today," Marks said."

(Revised caption) :)
The caption above is taken directly from this week’s Barron’s (print). I couldn’t fit it all in, so here’s the exact / full quote from Barron’s: “Today I am starting to behave aggressively. Everything we deal with is significantly cheaper than it was six to 12 months ago.”
Barron’s provides no additional detail, so I linked a reference to Marks’ comment from The Business Insider.
Title: Legendary investor Howard Marks says to snap up cheap assets now, as "waiting for the bottom is a terrible idea" - Story by George Glover
(This post has been substantially revised to clear up any possible confusion)

https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.kiplinger.com/investing/stocks/stocks-to-buy/602844/midyear-investing-outlook-where-to-invest-now?amp
See recent ecently year-end target for the S&P 500 from 5200 to 4900, though he remains bullish. “Calibrating an exact return is less important than framing the question: Is now a good time to be in the stock market? The answer is ‘yes.’ Returns are going to be robust over the next 12 months even in light of risks.”
Do incognito search article title
Midyear Investing Outlook: Where to Invest Now
Could be soft landings vs mild recessions w Feds Ukraine economic questions/
Lots opportunities there
Sp500 may finish upper 4000s range end 2022

+1. I used to read Gillian Tett in the FT paper edition. So, are we ALREADY in the Recession? Larry Summers needs to join the Slow Talkers of America.