I will be adding a new link titled “Sandbox” in the right hand menu.
That link will get you to this page.
I had originally set up the “Reader Initiated Alert” page for ‘alerts’. I was thinking this, for instance, might be when a preferred stock is undergoing a temporary selloff and someone wants to let the population know about it quickly. Of course we all (including me) use the ‘alert’ page for general messaging.
I am requesting that we start using the Sandbox page for all general talk, and try to preserve the ‘alerts’ page for ‘alerts’.
I have had a screen up on one of my monitors all week where I see all comments – no matter where they are posted–it is a great page and I wish everyone had a page like that–believe me we all benefit from all the knowledge being shared. I don’t want to stifle any of the exchange of knowledge, but hope to get things a bit better organized by adding the Sandbox page.
Yesterday BHR preferred B sold off on volume. Newsletter service dropping pick or ETF sale? I appreciate any comments. Thank you!
Hotel REITs are down, economy, L.A. fire in one case. Look at BHR.
Thanks rocks. Canary in the coal mine.
It had to be an ETF rebalance as there were dozens of buy/sell imbalances reported prior to the close and quite a few of the closing auctions resulted in the final trade being well away from the previous print
lt, Since I got stung on hotel reit’s when Covid hit, I have been leery of hotel reits. I know nothing about BHR, but just looking at the price of the preferred doesn’t give me warm fuzzy feelings. That price is because that is what the market is pricing the risk at. That being said, I do think there is a certain truth to Rocks suggestion. Just now CBS news was running a short news story on people getting away for the Easter holiday and they mentioned the cost of airline tickets and cost of gas out here on the West coast was affecting people’s plans with some who they interviewed.
if you had to swap one for the other between nmz and mua which one would you keep any help would be great
This is a follow-up to my post about the debt ceiling.
When Treasury is restricted in its ability to issue new debt, as it is now, it spends from its general account at the Fed (TGA). Here’s a weekly chart.
https://www.tradingview.com/x/uSBFWLki/
The account balance was about $828B in February. Now it’s $360B…going fast! April tax revenue is coming. Then again, there’s this article, which may be taken with any size grain of salt you wish.
“Half a trillion vanished? IRS bombshell as agency warns DOGE may have cost U.S. a shocking $500 billion”
https://economictimes.indiatimes.com/news/international/us/half-a-trillion-vanished-irs-bombshell-as-agency-warns-doge-may-have-cost-u-s-a-shocking-500-billion-heres-the-full-detail/articleshow/119484846.cms
rock,
I am not a fan of posting articles from crap internet news sites. Here is the original article with an actual author’s name attached to it.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/2025/03/22/irs-tax-revenue-loss-federal-budget/
India times or whatever it is pulled their tripe from this link:
https://talkingpointsmemo.com/edblog/irs-predicts-doge-lost-half-a-trillion-dollars-for-the-usa
As for the conclusion it seems to me that IRS tax revenue can differ from previous years for a multitude of reasons. It does not always go up. So for clicks the post wants to state that the amount of personnel the IRS has will be the main factor? Really? What about all the other years where tax revenue went up or down?
The link you posted and the ones I posted are both examples of horrible useless news. It is almost embarrassing to read this stuff.
fc-
The WP article appears to be for subscribers only.
I hope you understand that I posted the article for a laugh.
What are the next X dividend and payment dates for SGOV? Does this now
pay quarterly?
This is a pretty good site for checking such things: https://marketchameleon.com/Overview/SGOV/Dividends/
I usually just edit the URL to the ticker I’m looking for.
Looks like tomorrow April 1 is the next ex-div. Payment is April 4th. Sure looks monthly. The official site confirms: https://www.ishares.com/us/products/314116/ishares-0-3-month-treasury-bond-etf
Thank you, I appreciate it. The reason I asked is it looked like no dividends were paid for January or February.
Both months -paid on the 6th , mine: FEB at Fido, Mar at Etrade.
Sgov. Ex dividend date 04/01, pay on 04/04. Monthly
Quite a few big preferred imbalances on the close. I only participated in shorting BA-A and ARES-B. Shorted 5000 of each mandatory convert.
ABLLL had a large sell imbalance, which is prolly why it has trended down lately.
JPM-k and TBB had sells
I ate a big loss in Newsmax.
> ABLLL had a large sell imbalance, which is prolly why it has trended down lately.
404,000 shares traded at close for 24.43. If I’ve got it right, I think this is about 17% of the total shares outstanding. This seems too large for end-of-the-month rebalancing. What do you think happened here?
More generally, you’ve mentioned sell imbalances a few times, and I’d like to learn more. Are there links or key terms I should search for? Could you give a short intro as to how you learn about these?
Nathan – PFF sold 404,513 shares of ABLLL yesterday. They have 57,787 remaining – I wouldn’t be surprised if they’re completely out of the stock by tomorrow (we’ll see later today whether PHGY, the index that PFF follows, has removed Abacus Life from its list of holdings for April 2025).
Yes, this is the same PFF that paid through the nose for those ABLLL shares on December 31, 2024. Remember this discussion?
_____
Feed: III Comments
Posted on: Wednesday, January 1, 2025 7:09 AM
Author: Tex the 2nd
Subject: Comment on READER INITIATED ALERTS by Tex the 2nd
ABLLL update. We have an answer for the meteoric rise. Yesterday, 12/31/24, the largest preferred ETF (PFF) DID add it’s first position: 363,595 shares @ 33.66. 318K of those were added in a single block @ the regular hour NYSE close @ 4:00 PM Eastern. This is typically how we have seen PFF trade shares in the past. The trade is negotiated off-market, then reported at that time.
I was 100.000000% wrong in my guesses as to what might explain the rise. I said that the PFF traders were exceptionally good and would NOT pay way over the market price like this. Obviously they did. They got the marching order to buy at any price and they did! I do not recall every seeing a PFF trade that moved the market like this one.
The question is whether the index that PFF tracks: “ICE Exchange-Listed Preferred & Hybrid Securities Index” publicly announces the changes in advance. In any event the rise was classic front running. Somebody(s) knew or guessed that PFF was going to add ABLLL and bought up roughly 300K+ shares in advance of them. If the index addition was public, then a great trade. If it was NOT public, then it is a SEC investigation candidate.
Once again, we have never held ABLLL shares either long or short in any account.
Learn something new every day. . .
https://innovativeincomeinvestor.com/reader-initiated-alerts/comment-page-7/#comment-142412 (broken link due to III “scrape” policy).
_____
There were 26 issues where PFF sold more than 6 figures yesterday, including the Boeing convertible preferred – PFF dumped 356,711 of those. From a percentage standpoint, Abacus was by far the leader – PFF sold 87.5% of its ABLLL holdings, compared to only 3.6% of its Boeing preferred shares.
Wow—ESW3. Those are crazy numbers–good legwork!
What I would attempt to try to understand is why ABLLL was included, at what percentage of the index, and why 3 months later that percentage was changed so drastically in such a short amount of time.
But of course ICE is a paid for INDEX service unlike the old days when you could just find it on a website like Wells Fargo or BofA. Nothing shady could possibly be going on with such a situation. Or does someone know where to see the index that PFF follows each month for free?
That is what annoys me about PFF. That their index they follow isn’t sitting as a pdf on a website somewhere that I can view easily. With data being so easy to share now days this seems like a slap in the face.
fc, Nathan (you’re very welcome!), all:
The ICE Index PHGY is available online. Start here:
https://indices.ice.com/
Go to Indices -> Publications -> ETF Benchmarks -> then filter (or scroll down) for PHGY
– The PHGY file will download
It posts late in the day on the first business day of the month. PFF gets one day’s advance notice of the constituent changes from what I can tell after tracking the daily changes in PFF over the last few years.
_____
Here are my notes from comparing the April 1, 2025 PHGY constituent list with the same file from the previous month:
Added:
• KKR-D KKR & Co. Inc 6.25% Series D Mandatory Convertible Preferred Stock
• STRF MicroStrategy Inc. 10.00% Series A Perpetual Strike Preferred Stock (this means both the 8% and the 10% prefs are now held by PFF – that will be fun to follow …)
• MCHPP Microchip Technology Dep Shares 7.50% Ser A Mandatory Convertible Prfd Stock
• BK-K Bank of New York Mellon Corp 6.15% Dep Shares Reset Rate Ser K Non-cuml Pfd Stk
• TRTN-F Triton International Ltd., 7.625% Series F Cumul Red Perp Preference Shares
Removed:
• ABLLL Abacus Life, Inc. 9.875% Fixed Rate Senior Notes
To track the weighting changes of the individual PHGY index components, it is necessary to download the file every month and do a comparison. I haven’t found a way to automate that, but I’ll bet one of you smarty pants whippersnappers out there in III land could figure that out in a trice. I’ve tried the usual AI tools (ChatGPT Pro, Anthropic’s AI product) but last time I checked, both made significant mistakes in parsing the files.
esw3,
Thank you for that. They really do not make that easy to find using google.
I am reading over the “ICE Data Indices – Rules & Methodology” document which can be found on the home page of the site you mentioned. This is for PHGY.
“Preferred stock and notes issued in $25, $50, or $100 par/liquidation preference increments, must have a minimum amount
outstanding of $100 million.”
From the prospectus of ABLLL.
“Abacus Life, Inc., a Delaware corporation (“Abacus” or the “Company”), is offering $31,000,000 aggregate principal amount of Fixed Rate Senior Notes (the “notes”). The notes will bear interest at the rate of 9.875% per annum”
So Abacus decided to “sell” more notes.. get over 100 million… but this SEC submission was done on Jan 16th 2025… but…
https://seekingalpha.com/filing/9447984#hasComeFromMpArticle=false
“Interest on the Offered Notes accrues from and including the issue date of December 2, 2024”
Was that the trigger to cause PFF to buy? No.. it was probably this.
“On December 2, 2024 (the “Acquisition Closing Date”), the Company completed the Carlisle Acquisition pursuant to which it purchased of all outstanding shares of Carlisle, a Luxembourg-based investment manager in the life settlement space with approximately $2.0 billion in assets under management. As consideration for the Carlisle Acquisition, the Company issued to the Selling Securityholders, as applicable, (i) 9,213,735 Shares and (ii) $72,727,075 aggregate principal amount of the Offered Notes.”
That 72 million of notes caused them to get above 100 million. So it was known by Dec 2nd by savvy investors who notice such things.
But the question remains.. why was it now yanked completely off? What reason could it possibly be? I kind of understand why it was suddenly and surprisingly added timing wise.. but not the removal.
The comparison code is probably getting hung up on either the page headers or the repetitive data (e.g. BAC zero coupon expiring 12/31/2200). I would believe they are unique issues but they aren’t sharing the enough details to make a primary key.
Are you trying to download the files programmatically as well?
As I think about it more, I worry that I’m wrong to blame PFF here. The problem would seem to be less with their execution and more to do with the whole concept of a passive index based ETF that holds semi-liquid assets. If ESW3 is right, and they get one day’s notice that they need to buy or sell 15% of all the shares available of a preferred, what are they supposed to do? It’s hard to see how a good outcome is possible.
if they just put in massive market orders, things happen the way it did. But if they don’t act quickly, once the index is published, everyone knows how much they need to be buying or selling and will do their best to wait for a better price. The confusing part might be why the don’t move the market even more than they do.
Who determines what gets added and what gets dropped? Would seem too tempting to rig the game.
https://indices.ice.com/
index snapshot box. upper left. type in PHGY. click “index rules” pdf thing.
i see how ABLLL got added. I described that above. Bonus points who can explain why it was completely removed from the index.
UMBFP – Wow! After close, end of month single trade dump of 28k shares @ 24.74. I would have loved to have been in on the buyside.
2WR, let me check my accounts! Yup I went conservative and only had a GTC for 250 shares at 24.96 so I am at a loss for the day. But should be a good place to park the money for a couple months.
2wr, 24.74 was the closing print against a sell imbalance. I’ll lift it a little here.
I missed STRF gapping up $2 in the last 10 mins before falling back
YOU’LL lift it a little??? Well gee, thanks..lol…. if it’s just a little, I’ll still want in…
Appreciate the comments and thoughts of those who participate on this site…
Just asking a question on what folks view as a “full position”? For my portfolio, I use 2.5% of my total cash & marketable securities that I manage and, of course, this represents ~40 positions. However, in practice I only have two positions that exceed 2.5%, most are ~2.5%, but there are good number of positions that are ~½ positions (maybe I’m chicken or prudent?). So, I end up managing +- 50 positions (tracking earnings, leverage/coverage, credit ratings, analysts’ reports, etc.). So maybe better said my average full position is roughly 2.0% of cash and marketable securities managed. I do ladder the positions over three to five years, using up to roughly three years for lower credit quality positions, and roughly five years for higher credit quality positions. The laddering helps to make the reinvestment pace comfortable. Any follow-on discussion what is a reasonable number of positions to manage is appreciated?
Old, Generally speaking, for me, 1% is a full position. I break it all the time for what I deem to be safer securities or simply if I’m letting the horses run. A few horses have recently stopped to get a drink at the local watering hole though, lol.
Old fart, are there any you have that are multiple holdings for the same company? In my case I have about 100 holdings, but I hold 4 SCE preferred, 3 of the CHS, 7 PCG preferred etc. Individually most are 1/2% to 2% but on these where I hold multiple preferred with the same company I hold a total 4% to 7% for that company.
For some III’s they might feel Calif ute’s are too high a risk to hold this % but then I live here. But the actual total of separate companies I hold is only 48
Charles, thanks for the note. I count the same way you are counting positions. e.g. I have 3 Ares Capital Bonds, 3 Saratoga Inv. BBs, but would only count these six issues as two positions. Likewise Ares is closer to a position and a half, while Saratoga in total is a 2/3 position.
I hold a few preferred stocks in SCE and PCG coz I live in Cali too.
Old fart,
Just curious whether your name implies you are old, or whether it implies you smell like an old fart (which would mean you’re likely single)
or both?
Losing, mostly old, but sometimes as we get older we get a little moldy! LOL
Oldfart
What is the correct max position??
Couple of thoughts.
Max is different for TBills/CD’s than IG short duration prefs is different from perpetual non-cum fixed rate prefs.
i.e. degree of risk is critical.
Second thought is easier:
“How could I have been so stupid?”
If the worst case happens, and you shrug, you had to correct amount allocated.
If, on the other hand, you berate yourself as above, well, then you were over your max.
GOLD is Glittering Again…
Another new daily record at $3,117 /t.oz.
Price is up $32.52 per t.oz. today.
I shorted NMAX this morning at $30. It’s in the $60’s. Now IB cut off shorting in it, which tells me someone got banged out on a short.
I give it a week
lt – They went 90s old school IPO on this one; only 7mm shares, probably less today at the open. No wonder they were able to run it up. You shorted this? Did you say your days of big risk are behind you?
We should go heavy on some future contracts if you are taking on trades like this one. I’m still bullish on gold and looking for an entry on Copper as it has been a little weak here on retracement since Friday. Strong support at $5 even. But every penny is worth allot due to the leverage. With that gold gap this morning +50 whatever points, equates to $5000 per contract.
Theta,
125 shares of risk. After losing 7 figures being short GME options on the SECOND rally (when I thought GME could not possibly have a massive run again, and was holding the short calls I sold near the top to collect premium)
I have limited my gaming. That experience cost me most of the profit for 2021 (or was it 2020) trading SPAC warrant arbitrage. One great year in the last 14 since retirement.
The DMM did a terrible job of making a liquid market here. No more a Specialist firm willing to take on much risk. I recall the Specialist losing $20 mill the first day in UPS and a similar amount in Perot Systems.
I long for the days I could send the specialist a message and get a reply on my DOT machine.
Don’t know about the rest of you out there but I’m getting tired of watching my small position in CIM-D continue to drop. Last I checked they were doing fair. The return on CIM-D was just shy of 11%. What’s going on?
Somebody liquidating a lot of shares in CIM-B and D (maybe a fund rebalancing?). But CIM-A, C and the baby bonds, and common stock are all holding up. So I am not worried. Once the fund/investor is done selling, the shares will gravitate back to a normal range ($24.25-25.25)
I’m hiding out in GAM-B and BCV-A for …the remainder of my life or until they are called.
Let’s hope we don’t ditch both the muni exemption and the qualified div rate.
It SEEMS like the market is fololwing movement in Bitcoin v the other way around..that’s just an observation but I haven’t tested it.
lt – Check out MS-I, trading just under par today. This particular Morgan Stanley perpetual will not be floating and pays out the fixed 6.375% coupon. Also HIG-G @6% now trading under par.
it does show its a floater(ms-i) on this website
is that incorrect?
robert hardy – Here is the PR from Morgan and additionally if you pull it up on QOL and you will see this footnote quote below as well:
https://www.morganstanley.com/press-releases/replacement-rate-for-u-s–law-governed-u-s–dollar-libor-linked-
“Notes: April 28, 2023 — Fixed-to-Floating Rate Non-Cumulative Preferred Stock, Series I (and related depositary shares) (and related depositary shares) is one of the preferred stock (and related depositary shares) and debt securities issued by Morgan Stanley that will not transition to the Replacement Rate by operation of law or otherwise. After the LIBOR Cessation Date, dividends or interest on these instruments will continue to accrue at the Initial fixed rate.”
thanks for clearing that up
looks like a decent buy as it just went ex div and under par
Speaking of going x-div, UMBFP went x-div today but I see where neither ETrade, Fido, or Schwab has picked that up on their quotes as they all show UMBFP being down -1.30% on the day when it’s actually up. I wonder if someone had outstanding GTC bids outstanding at any of these did they have their bids automatically adjusted the bid to take into account the x-div?
2wr, orders should be auto -adjusted on NYSEAMEX and Nasdaq too, I believe
Anyone following the PMT situation regarding their decision to fix their F/F issues in response to the move to SOFR? You might want to keep up with the comments on https://seekingalpha.com/article/4754598-pennymac-mortgage-investment-trust-stock-best-preferred-share-series-c?v=1743430005#comment-99964084
I never would have thought PMT could be in a position to lose this one, but for the moment at least, they seem to certainly be on the defensive…. Most recent comments by an old former III’er, Bob-In-De, provide the most recent updates…… I’m sure there’s a long way to go to the finish, but PMT seems to be doing its best to argue indefensible positions as to why they felt required to make their F/F’s fixed…
I have to wonder if the courts go against PMT whether or not that will impact others such as MS who also believed they were required to fix some of their F/F issues due to the specific language in their respective prospectuses
Interesting.
PMT is not the only one who thought the prospectus would allow them a fixed rate in perpetuity with the end of LIBOR.
The LIBOR act should have applied when there was no fall back language and the act could fill in the details where none existed
With the fallback rates, investors were betting the rate would be there at float time, but if the unthinkable happened, they would get the fixed rate and caveat emptor would apply.
I actually see this possibly being overturned on appeal
Probably the most interesting is one of the big banks, I’m not sure I remember correctly which one but maybe USB, that actually decided their underlying language required them to go to SOFR on some of their F/F and yet fix for others….. I have to believe their decisions were absolutely and soundly made on the basis of their attorney’s interpretation of what each individual prospectus required them to do. No matter, I would think all those who decided they needed to fix what was their F/F issues will be watching the PMT case quite closely.
It was Morgan Stanley MS
2WR….. CHS also did not let one float (CHSCN), but kept it fixed because of the change to SOFR. I’ll need to revisit their reasoning and the prospectus, but I wonder if the resolution to this case will affect them?
Dj, they also did not let CHSCM float, keeping it fixed at 6.75%
from CHS 10-Q, filed 1/10/24, p. 36:
ITEM 5. OTHER INFORMATION
On January 2, 2024, per the terms of our Class B Reset Rate Cumulative Redeemable Preferred Stock, Series 2 and Series 3, and the Adjustable Interest Rate (LIBOR) Act, the stated rates of 7.10% and 6.75%, respectively, were fixed at 7.10% and 6.75% (the “Fixed Rates”), respectively. We will pay dividends on Class B Reset Rate Cumulative Redeemable Preferred Stock, Series 2 after March 31, 2024, and on Class B Reset Rate Cumulative Redeemable Preferred Stock, Series 3 after September 30, 2024, at the Fixed Rates until they are redeemed.
Thanks, I hadn’t seen that one. I just posted a very similar answer that hasn’t appeared yet on the Timberica Yield thread there: https://seekingalpha.com/article/4766869-pennymac-mortgage-investment-trust-strong-potential-for-mediocre-returns
While I think PMT is going to lose, I’m far from certain. Their last request was for an “interlocutory appeal” that would pause the case until an appeals court rules on whether a California venue is reasonable and whether a fixed rate can statutorily be considered a “benchmark fallback”. Their theory (presumably correct) is that if they win either of these, this case stops.
If nothing else, it signals that they are still intending to fight this rather than settle.
The other link I’d like to share is this one: https://www.courtlistener.com/docket/68857557/roberto-verthelyi-v-pennymac-mortgage-investment-trust/
The recent PACER filings for this case are available there for free legal download. If you create a PACER account, you can install the “Recap” plugin that makes the documents available on this page for others. Some were already there, and I did this for a couple of the most recent ones.
Relatedly, I’ve got about $20 of PACER credit that expires today. Usually it’s about $3 per document, but all users get $30 of free usage per quarter. If anyone wants something else, post here and I’ll try to grab it.
Thanks Nathan I can’t think of anything myself but others might.
Whew! Far beyond my comprehension and/or willingness to follow this whole thing thoroughly… But the jist of what I’ve read from the SA commenters, I get the feeling that PMT has been essentially arguing that they did what they did, they did because that’s what would be in the best interest of the common shareholders. If that’s what they’re arguing to be their rationale, then they deserve to lose..
Did someone post the prospectus language?
It might differ between the 3 classes of preferred.
And MD law governs and litigating it in CA because they wanted CA to apply reeks of forum shopping
To add on to what you call indefensible.
This was more standard legal practice of layered defenses because you never know which one the trial judge is going to like.
And yes, they are on the defensive, but that could be because the trial court got it completely wrong.
I am curious how far they will take the LIBOR act.
IMHO, it was not meant to rewrite terms, but to fill in the blanks where the contract terms are silent.
Thank you for posting this one. I only wish I had known sooner.
Although a little over par, MS-E is fixed at 7.125%, pays about 7% currently, and will not float
Theta,
I’d rather have a security with 4-6x asset coverage or more at 6% than a BB+ at 6.375
Bought some BHFAN back at $15.95, had previously sold at $17 before last ex-date. Yield over 8%, BBB-, and 15% tax rate. Don’t care if it gets delisted, will just buy more.
Rocky I sold my BHFAM and am tempted to get back in but given the market uncertainty I am holding off. Retired Investor was a data analyst for a pension fund before he retired and he said while they have improved, their last quarterly report showed mixed results.
Thanks, Charles. I’m sure the market downturn will have a negative effect on BHF’s 1st quarter results. They hedge and their quarterly results have huge swings based upon the market and the hedges. It’s quite complicated but I think (hope) they’ll be okay.
I thought BHFAN would rise in price to match the yields on the other preferred but the opposite has been happening. With that said I owned the other preferred and sold them all to buy BHFAN. It is still quite the outlier for some reason. BHFAN still looks undervalued by a bit.
Totally agree. You never really know what’s going on with some of these preferreds, so it takes some courage to step in.
As long as it doesn’t become a ‘buy only’.
Re: Expert Market broker
Since Jay Clayton was largely responsible for 15(c)2 -11, I’ve emailed him at Sullivan & Cromwell to see if he has a client that will represent retail orders.
I will post any reply.
Maybe I’ll retain him
Howard Marks discusses high-yield credit spreads and how he thinks about them. Excellent.
https://www.oaktreecapital.com/insights/memo/gimme-credit
John Mauldin’s weekly newsletter is a good one.
Do Trade Deficits Matter?
https://www.mauldineconomics.com/frontlinethoughts/do-trade-deficits-matter
rocks2stocks…… Thanks for posting John Mauldin’s letter. I was a very regular reader of his letters for years, but recently have not read them.. His letters I always found quite thoughtful and he is very knowledgeable of economics. I His brief comments about the garment industry and how those are not the jobs we want back sparked my memory of my first 20 years of employment after graduating from a major Engineering University. I did the usual rounds of interviews my last semester. I would up accepting an offer from one of the major US textile companies of all places. Overall it was a good offer and kept me near home, which was an important thing for me at the time. I spent 20 years with this company, first as the facility Process Control Engineer (it was a heavily automated facility) and eventually become the Facility Engineer in charge of a 55 person maintenance department. The facility was a very large dyeing and finishing plant. These facility could be the dirtiest of the textile industry due to the dyeing effluent, the application of finishing chemicals to fabric, and the large drying ovens that the fabric passed through. It required a lot of work on the Division Chemist to select environmentally friendly chemicals and us keeping emission control equipment functioning properly to have a “clean” facility. We were fortunate to be located in a municipality who built and operate a great sewage treatment facility that accepted all the effluent from the plant. We had to operate within our discharge permit and the city maintained monitoring equipment at the plant to ensure we did. Like all of the textile industry pretty much it all moved overseas starting in the late 80s and 90s. I eventually lost my position as the company collapsed. I did just fine, moving eventually to the Pharmaceutical Manufacturing facilities in the area. Not so many of the hourly workers. A lot of the textile plants were located in rural towns and were the payroll for the town. This state lost hundreds of thousands of jobs in the rural towns that really did not get replaced. Those jobs paid decently and came with decent benefits too. The maintenance personnel in my department, typically the best paid, were averaging close to $18 to $20 in the late 80s. Not bad pay for the times. I have mixed emotions on bringing back the textile industry as the smaller companies often were not as progressive in labor practices and following safety and environmental regulations as the large company I worked for. Because I traveled some for the company inspecting used equipment for possible purchase I saw the bad side also. No matter my opinions. We are definitely going to experience some interesting times ahead! Sorry folks for getting off the subject, that article brought back memories from decades ago!
This is a monthly log-scale chart of SPX from the 2009 low. I added a parallel channel with a lower line that connects the two recession lows. The upper line is set to touch the recent high.
https://www.tradingview.com/x/I9sNwY0l/
Observations:
– All of the major corrections since the 2009 low started at, above, or just below the upper line.
– All of the major non-recession corrections reached the midline, took 4-12 months to reach their lows, ranged between drawdowns of 15-27%, and followed different paths from high to low.
– Below the chart are two momentum indicators, MACD and stochastic. MACD peaked and rolled over after each SPX top. Stochastic does something similar. Both are rolling over now. Being a monthly chart, the indicators respond to long trends.
Thoughts:
The chart is suggestive, not predictive. In these times, things can happen fast. I expect a bumpy ride no matter what. Corrections punish. Be safe.
Etrade showing 10 shares volume SLMNP $919 – might be able to sell someday.
1 share only at 919 with prior trade at 850. Still I prefer the EOD valuation at 919 than 810…. lol
Semi index SOX is 28% off the all-time high. My deep projection is down 47%. Not a prediction and I have no idea what will happen. The message to me is don’t rush in early.
The stock indexes are responding to and will respond to gov’t policy, which means the administration and the Fed. These can change at any time. If the Fed governors start to get anxious, they will speak out, esp. if the NFP number next week is low. I can also picture Congress getting anxious. I imagine squirming.
What I wrote to a friend about the markets today. Just my impressions, which could all be just BS.
“This is some flight to safety now. General liquidity withdrawal. Hasn’t hit gold yet.”
“Riskiest high yield stuff goes first.”
“JNK junk bond etf down, LQD investment grade corp bond etf up along with t-bonds.”
“PFFA preferred stock etf down.”
“When LQD turns down, there’s real trouble brewing.”
“ES (SPX futures) is performing the classic correction pattern: 1) big move down, 2) 50% retrace, 3) down to new low. Now engaged in (3) with new low likely to come. My tgt guess is 5300, -14%.”
“The mkt really wanted PCE to fall today, so the Fed would consider a rate cut. Didn’t happen.”
“NFP in a week. Would be a big deal if weak. FOMC not until May 7.”
“Bad day for Mag 7”
“The upper half are the only group with discretionary spending power. The anti-wealth effect of falling stocks will dry that up.”
I’m hoping for the negative wealth effect of crypto . I’m tired of hearing it’s the best performing asset over xx years . IT’s NOT an asset. It’s a limited supply of digital nothingness.
Cryptocurrencies are digital assets that rely on an encrypted network to execute, verify, and record transactions, independent of a centralized authority such as a government or bank.
Digital assets are stored and recorded on the blockchain ledger where they were issued (in most cases). Your ledger entry has a public and private key associated with it, which you can think of like a computer-generated email address and password. Wallets help store your keys securely so that only you can access your digital assets, and they give you a convenient place to view your assets and ledger positions. This is an important distinction: the digital asset is stored on the blockchain ledger, and the keys that give you access to it are stored in a wallet. I use a cold wallet to store the vast majority of my large Bitcoin “assets” with a 14 word password and I buy more Bitcoin every month. I have no intent on selling any of my crypto and my belief is that I hope to live long enough to see Bitcoin reach over $1 Million; thankfully I’m young and in good shape
This article will definitely be of help to you “The History of Money: Bartering to Banknotes to Bitcoin” https://www.investopedia.com/articles/07/roots_of_money.asp
Every time there is a change in what we call “money” the older generation that is set in their ways pushes back, but the new asset class/money gets adopted and eventually welcomed. The Bitcoin Boom: 80 Public Companies Are Betting Big on BTC in 2025
https://beincrypto.com/public-companies-hold-bitcoin-surge-2025/
I’d be glad to answer any questions here about cryptocurrencies or stocks/equities if I am contractually allowed to with my consulting firm agreements. I believe EVERYONE should own some Bitcoin as you don’t want your heirs to look back and ask why you didn’t buy any Bitcoin when it was under $100K and now we are over $1MM… I initially purchased Bitcoin when it was $3500/$4500 and I was as skeptical as many of you reading this are until I did my own deep due diligence.
Maybe you should stick with electrum, I am Azure
Azure, always love your comments. I do have a question regarding the control (or lack thereof) of the wallet. Can gov’t seize them, lock them, tax them? Can the wallet co. go out of business and then what? I think BTC is fine, great and I want some (especially in this political environ – which seems to me to be fuel for any noninflation/non geography “asset”). But the wallets seem key and have me scared. Is it possible to buy BTC and bypass wallets? Any links you have for me on this greatly appreciated. Again, appreciate you on this site! I was thinking of you because of my current fear of the markets, and the last 10 days was in Negril, swimming in Azureblue waters and reflecting on some of your advice!
tizod – Regarding your question on seizure etc., no that is the best part about BTC that most miss or don’t understand, it’s the only self-custody asset. Essentially you are your very own JPMorgan Chase bank that no one can access but you.
Now if this process is not something you are comfortable going with, there are tons of platforms where you can buy spot BTC and it will be held just as a brokerage account holds your stock positions. You don’t necessarily need to go to a specialized crypto broker, you can now buy BTC on Robinhood, Paypal, Venmo, Cash App and many others.
tizod, thank you so much for your questions as I’m always happy to give you my reply on Bitcoin and any other asset I’m legally allowed to comment on because of the NDA’s I am obligated to. When institutional clients hire me to advise them, I ALWAYS tell them assets and investments begin with the human body of ideas, then you have the main asset you need, and there isn’t any limit to what you can do with your business and your life. Ideas are any persons greatest asset. Here is a good explanation and I hope this answers your questions; if not I’m am always open to dialogue with you.
It is not necessarily true that no amount of force or authority can cause or prevent any transfer of Bitcoin. The protocol does not allow arbitrary seizures or blocking, but there are still human factors involved.
Bitcoin is decentralized, so there is no central authority that governments can go to (or coerce) to force or disallow transactions. However Bitcoin is still owned by people, and people can be forced to perform certain actions that they do not necessarily want to do. While a government cannot command the Bitcoin network to make a transaction to happen, they can go to a particular individual who owns Bitcoin and coerce them to make a transaction
Furthermore, governments often have the power to arbitrarily seize assets owned by people. They can do this by force and physically taking things away. This is often how Bitcoin is seized – the hardware that contains the private keys is physically taken by the government. Once they have access to the private keys, the government can perform any transactions that they wish. There is nothing that Bitcoin can do to prevent this; it is up to the individual to ensure the security of their private keys.
For disallowing transactions, this is much harder. However, as before, there is still a human factor involved. In this case, it’s miners who produce blocks. A government could mandate that miners operating in their jurisdiction are not allowed to create blocks containing certain transactions. If all miners were to follow such mandates, then a transaction could remain unconfirmed indefinitely and thus be effectively disallowed.
However this is much harder to do. The decentralized nature of mining means that miners who are in other jurisdictions that do not require censoring certain transactions can mine those transactions. Furthermore, miners who can protect their anonymity and are willing to break some laws can mine those censored transactions too.
Even if no current miner is willing to mine a censored transaction because their governments threaten them, more people could simply begin to mine who do not necessarily follow the same censorship requirements. Mining being decentralized allows anyone to be a miner, albeit at a high initial cost currently. Governments could also try to snuff out the non-censoring miners through force, possibly through seizure or destruction of mining hardware. But even so, people will still be able to mine, and there will inevitably be some miner out there who is willing to make a block that includes a transaction censored by every other miner. So in the end, it really is not possible to disallow a transaction.
Finally, time and health are two precious assets that we don’t recognize and appreciate until they have been depleted.
Be well, Azure
Hi AB!
“Every time there is a change in what we call “money” the older generation that is set in their ways pushes back, but the new asset class/money gets adopted and eventually welcomed”
I’m not pushing back against something that, on it’s own, is a better way to transact. I’m pushing back against forcing others to participate in bitcoin with the idea taxpayers should be funding it as a strategic reserve. I’ll push back against purchasing the World’s financial system lubricant from speculators.
What I see is an effort to foist Bitcoin on others who do not own it with the continual ,” Just put 1 % of your assets in this” because we all know that would be enough to cause BTC to rise to infinity if everyone did that.
There are thousands of cyrpto tokens with insane valuations , yet many crypto bros call those “shi* tokens.”
Is it possible these insane valuations for shi* tokens is also reflected in the price of Bitcoin?
Is it possible everyone is so interested in BTC merely because it has gone up so much?
I’ll continue to call it digital nothingness . You can call it an asset. Right now you have a huge profit and won’t ever sell.
Everything from “hold on for dear life” to “it’s the most pristine asset in the history of man” reeks of a scam. Wall Street has a long history of profiting from scams.
There. I won’t comment on this again, but I’ll never own BTC. If it becomes our currency I still own plenty of other assets I can sell for ….bitcoin
I was crunching numbers today and was astounded to see that over the last 15 years the single best performing asset that absolutely whipped any other security classes on either an annualized basis or aggregate % was bitco……oh wait, sorry lt, wrong forum. Cheers.
Ok , I’m already commenting again because I left something out:
At some point in the future there will be a 1987-style moment where all of the BTC market-makers “ hang up the phones” as happened with stocks , and refuse to buy. Bitcoin has a roughly 5-8 year history of a deep and liquid market. Stocks had a much longer history by 1987.
When the 1987 moment occurs , there are no “ buybacks” by companies as occurred in 87 and no Fed to guarantee a trader against loss — a trader who can go into the futures and bid them up to get the market re-opened. ( the fed reportedly guaranteed one trader to get him to bid up the thinly traded XMI “ major market index” futures containing 20 of 30 DJIA stocks… I’m reliably told this story by the owner of a trading firm who was there at the time though you won’t find it by googling).
As Bitcoin has no identifiable intrinsic value, I wonder if it will just keep going down to near zero and then stay there.
I don’t need to “ understand” Bitcoin.
It’s immutable and limited to 21 million …. Until the next 2010 moment when someone creates billions of bitcoin … again.
I admit I could have made 10000 times my money by owning it the last 14 years , but, then, there are plenty of thinks I could have made a huge profit owning…NVDA stock for example, or a long list of public companies . So what?
Number went up isn’t an investment thesis for the future and if BTC goes to $1 million I won’t be the least disappointed I missed out.
If it becomes the worlds currency for transacting, not so much
My trading account is the single best -performing asset I know of between 1998 and 2010 ,when I largely retired.
Blackrock has offered to put tranches of my trading account into an ETF…….not
I’m living proof past performance doesn’t predict the future.
I was a great trader and I’m a terribly risk-averse investor.
If risk-adjusted returns were the measuring stick, the result would be pretty good . Getting the best CD rates in the country, or an annuity rate higher than the unsecured bond rate of insurers, etc doesn’t register for most investors and would not be a good selling point for an investment.
lt
Reading both your BTC and “investing success” entries……
I look at the different ages, past experiences, the $ each is working with vs living needs, and our resulting risk tolerances on this site.
.
I’ve put my “stormy Westie” risk aversion entries up on the site and enjoyed the absolutely valid resulting comments about opportunity cost.
Too often, in the past, I have fallen victim to fear when markets fell. either precipitously or prolonged. And sold when I should not.
So I ended up with a portfolio allocation to address that fear reaction.
Today, March 30, on the cusp of “Liberation Day”, I have a strongly risk-averse portfolio (70% short duration prefs and bonds, 22% high quality prefs and low P/E, high div common stocks, 8% hedge (gold, silver, &SH short).
Donald, do your thing.
Rock the market with bad news – or good news – or postponement – or nothing
Whatever.
Westie,
Thanks for your comments. I view my recent dive into 18 month 5% CD”s as my best move in a few years.
April 2 could be Liberation From Capital Gains Day!
This hedge fund PM turned his fund into an etf, ORR, so it’s possible these days.
https://www.bogleheads.org/forum/viewtopic.php?t=448713
40% IRR for the last 4 years not up to your standards but not too shabby. Long/short equites.
Since we are all commenting on BTC…
BTC is driven by a 4 year halving cycle during which the # of BTC produced every 10 mins or so is cut in half. During 2024 we had the 4th halving event reducing BTC production from 6.25 BTC/Block to the current 3.125 BTC/Block.
Having cycles have so far been characterized by a boom/bust cycle. The bust cycle is commonly called crypto winter.
In this cycle we have seen…
1)Spot BTC ETFs.
2)Halving event April 19th 2024
3)Corporations such as MSTR (renamed to Strategy) issue 0% coupon debt to buy BTC
4)Gensler (crypto hostile) booted out at SEC
5)Supposedly crypto positive administration
6)ETFs designed to buy debt of corporations that buy BTC
7)Formation of a Senate Sub-Committee on Crypto
8)Issuance of prefs by companies like MSTR to buy MORE BTC
9)Annoucement of both US Federal BTC reserve and similar reserves by some States.
10)A Whitehouse confab on BTC (including Saylor from MSTR) (President focused on FIFA Cup…)
11)SEC suits against COIN dropped
12)Barron’s is now promoting MSTR prefs and comparing them to bank prefs.
What further good news can possibly emerge?
Given all of this news BTC has reached a high of $108K on December 17 2024 and has not been able to rally since. Meanwhile gold is making new highs.
We are now almost 1 year since the last halving and so far crypto winter has been part of every cycle.
MSTR common trades at a 2.03X premium to it’s supposed BTC NAV. https://www.mstr-tracker.com/
IMO MSTR is a short sale at these prices and if you want to hold onto your BTC get ready for what history has shown to be a very rough ride.
I type this as a long time BTC bull and somebody that has participated in the boom phase of each of the 4 halving cycles.
August West – Good summary above of the last 2 years or so timeline. Really the most tangible significant event above was the spot ETFs getting the green light as this created violent forced buying of spot BTC in order to accommodate all of the cash buy-side inflows, hence the price tripled in the front running six months leading up to the approval + post debut first of last year.
Keep in mind, regarding the MSTR hype, when all is said and done in reality Saylor is only buying 20-50K coins at a clip. Everything else above is really just that, “news” and speculation.
Right now there is still allot of skeptical folks in terms of exactly how a government level strategic reserve would logistically work because normally a wealth sovereign type fund is sourced from budget surpluses or import/exports surpluses etc, none of which this country has. We are not going to be able to issue bonds to fund this.
To get bitcoin to smash through $150K and beyond we are going to need a definitive path with actual buying from a strategic reserve, as in the early days of the spot ETFs. By my estimation there needs to be another 1.5mm+ coins to be taken out of circulation by buy-side HODLers. This would take price to $250K range.
Otherwise if this strategic reserve doesn’t pan out, you won’t get others copy catting their way in also. Essentially all it’s going to take is one big move such as this and then the race is on. Currently 9 countries in the world in aggregate only hold 529K bitcoins. Not even close to being enough to catapult this to the next six figure level of price.
I’ve been studying the BTC chart for a long time. The all-time high is about what I projected. The chart pattern for the rally from the 2018 low can be read as complete. A daily MACD divergence is a requirement for me. MACD peaked in Nov 2024. The two following all-time highs were at successively lower levels. A full winter correction could go to 30k or lower. I don’t have a prediction, just a sense that the risk/reward is bad.
Here’s the thing though. If it wasn’t for the spot ETFs, we wouldn’t even be having these discussions right now. BTC never would have taken out the previous highs and I’d be surprised if we are trading above 40 handle right now.
We are at a threshold point where you can throw out and disregard your charts. The cold winter or whatever is moot, the previous cycles etc. The spot ETFs effectively retired 5-7% of the total bitcoin float, somewhere north of 1.2mm bitcoins.
What I’m saying here is we now in order to hurdle and get the next wave of this price discovery evolution, meaning governments and states, big corps etc. if they decided to strategically hold bitcoins and physically take market action on their books, now you are talking another 3-4mm+ bitcoins getting taken out of circulation.
Obviously the duration and pace at which this takes place will dictate price action. But even if you took a 5+ year approach, fact of the matter is, you’d effectively have consistent and systematic buy-side pressure than on price. This is where that $1M++ price target comes in and it’s very reasonable.
theta-
I’m not throwing out my charts, but I will reevaluate if I see a change. Did the introduction of etfs turned BTC into a stonk? Sad if true. You say “fact of the matter,” but you have presented no facts, just speculation.
My favorite use for BTC is to monitor liquidity in financial markets, for me, a leading indicator. BTC has been repeatedly shown to correlate well with measures of liquidity.
The fact of the matter, figuratively speaking, meaning the reality of the situation is as I did state above. If bitcoin moves forward on this next evolution of price discovery, meaning adoption as a strategic wealth store at the government and states level, big corps, then other countries etc. would have to follow. You would be looking at 4mm++ bitcoins being effectively retired out of the marketplace, not to mention a systematic buy-side price support source over whatever years you want to cite.
This price action that would ensue for this next time horizon with respect to clinging to your past bitcoin charting data, would be no different than present day referring back to the technicals of KO stock from the 1980s. It would be kind of a moot point as nothing remotely close to those levels will be in play again.
I get it; allot folks despise bitcoin on this site but you could take the other side of the coin and say what’s so great about gold? I see allot of the same mantra, it’s scarce, very challenging to extract etc. but other than making jewelry with it, transactionally speaking it definitely is not anymore practical than bitcoin is.
And a gold “standard” hasn’t actually backed any currency in nearly 30 years now. The only two market logistical positives gold has in terms of this new age debate is a much longer proven historical performance track record (because of how it’s regarded) and the fact that it doesn’t directly correlate to (sell-offs) performance in the equities market. It is this direct correlation to equity markets though for Bitcoin which is the genesis of what drives the liquidity cycle output you are referring to.
At this point in time let’s just see what happens. If this government/state/corp path doesn’t pan out, there will be a ton of short term selling pressure from previous speculative front runners looking to bail out. At that point, we’ll be running to that chart data for certain. I’d be surprised if we hold 70 handle then.
Theta,
None of my usual street -corner drug dealers brags about his massive Bitcoin chain.
So, there’s that!
Well, it’s off to the Coinstar machine to throw in some change at Kroger.
What you don’t realize is that here in Nevada, the Coinstar machine competes with the slot machines at Kroger. There’s actually an entirely separate room filled with slots at the grocery store.
I would say I think the return on slots is better than Coinstar, but if I walk into the slot room I come out smelling like cigarette smoke. So, I’ve never gone in.
theta-
You’re right. My chart interpretations are only as good as my skill and whether or not the narratives that created the chart can be extended into the future.
I believe the use case for BTC is as a way for the third world to effortlessly transfer funds across borders. There is a network effect, meaning the more people use BTC, the more BTC will be held by more people over time.
There are times when gold is a hold and times when it’s not. Summers and winters. If you can figure out the driving forces, you can do well. Gold is money.
“…..whether or not the narratives that created the chart can be extended into the future…..”
rocks2stocks – The above is 100% succinctly put; exactly what I was driving at in my uber long winded post. Cheers.
lt – You having slot machines at your grocery store is hilarious and epic. That would give me allot of problems of ever getting out of the store. Next time I’m out that way, I will look you up. I have a pretty solid strategy for the roulette table that only gets better with more money and players backing it. You must have some serious self control. I would be at the casinos every weekend.
I’ve been in NV for 26 years.
Interesting stat: 40% of adults in NV gamble every day. That stat is from about 15 years ago, so it’s likely dropped given the influx of wealthy people avoiding Cal taxes.( A neighbor is avoiding $10 mill in calif capital gains taxes as he invents cancer tests)
I used to do a “drive by” $100 BJ bet every time I went into a casino but stopped after a 3 for 20 run mostly occasioned by splitting 6’s playing against a 6 deck shoe—I ended up with 2 more 6’s against the dealer’s 6. In the end I had 8 hands and doubled them all and lost $1600!
I keep an online sports account but no reason to go to casino except movie theater. The got rid of the decent buffet during covid.
Quite a large BTC discussion from this group, I thought we were safe here. I bought at $350 years ago and sold before $10,000 as well as mined small amounts of another. I see it as digital collectible or a commodity at best with very few use cases. The fact that the community preaches holding, HODLing, instead of transacting with it means that it is not in the hands of the every man like the US dollar is. It remains in the hands of the few.
As state pensions consider adding it to their portfolios, it may gain permanence and a greater likelihood of being bailed out by government. It’s inclusion in portfolio construction may end up causing systematic damage. Viewed in the best possible light, as a commodity, it is extremely volatile and extremely volatile and retirement accounts don’t mix. It’s hard to say whether it will be adopted or not but the current administration is making it seem more possible than before. A government would be foolish to empower a value store where it has limited tangential control at the expense of a currency of which it has full control… the world’s reserve currency.
Most of the retail purchasers of crypto buy via exchanges which require Know Your Customer so the anonymity intended in the original white papers is absent as well as the high levels of concentration and minimal use as an instrument of transactions.
Regarding MSTR, M Saylor has specifically said in interviews that the common stock is meant to be more volatile than BTC and to be used for trading options. The interviews are still online The convertible bonds are long term calls and accredited investors sell option premium for gains. Saylor speaks about how options traders gravitated toward MSTR in 2024. His job is to keep implied volatility and therefore premiums high. If we were to follow mNAV and follow Saylor on Twitter(X), we could play the premium game. The previous poster linked the tracker for mNAV and there is very coincidental timing of BTC purchasing announcements and share dilution when mNAV reaches certain highs and certain lows. There is money to be made for the agile and bold and I fear for the slow and judicious but that is not a recommendation either way.
If MSTR is really all about buying as much BTC as possible why would it top tick purchases and celebrate when others copy their strategy or take large positions. If there was a company that wanted to buy all of the gold in circulation, it would be wise for it to buy at the bottom, quietly, and to discourage others from doing the same. Perhaps they are looking for a self fulfilling prophecy of legitimacy through adoption by established institutions. BTC could go to 1M or it could go to 100, time will tell.
I don’t have any related positions at the moment but have shorted other “BTC Treasuries” while hedging with IBIT. When MSTR loses it’s footing, I’ll be shorting it. It seems like a precarious situation is unfolding as MSTR has preferred dividends to pay now as well as some interest and very little net income from its software business (100-150M annually?). The dividends are not necessarily obligatory but what will happen to further debt issuance if they do not pay or force common equity on lenders or preferred equity holders?
None of the above is intended to be statements of fact, only opinions on matters of public concern.
Michigan Consumer Sentiment & 1yr Inflation Expectations 3/28/25.
{Month / CS / 1Yr Inflation Data}
Dec ’24….. 74…..2.8%
Jan ’25……71.1…3.3%
Feb ’25…..64.7….4.3%
Mar ’25…..57……5.0%
Are Pending Tariffs Finally Impacting Consumer Psyche??
Just a little warning for those buying $1000 preferreds at IBKR.
When they reported ET Series A to the company which does the K1s they listed my 15 shares as 15,000 shares because of the convention IBKR uses to show qty. — 15 $1000 bonds/preferreds is shown as 15,000 in the qty field on their site.
This caused my K1 to be 1000 times what it should have been and I was shown to be the proud owner of $15 million in ET preferreds!!!
I called tax package support and they sent me a new K1 but God only knows what was reported to the IRS. My income on the original was of course 1000 times what it should have been as well. So be sure and check your quantities and don’t just drop things off at your accountant or tax preparer office.
BTW, any advice on other steps I should take?
Scott,
Thank you for that. Are they reporting dividends as qualified or as interest?
Did you get IB to correct this?
The K1 lists it as guaranteed payments for capital on the ET series A preferred.
For issues with K1s a company called Tax Package Support generates about all of them. I called them to get the correction done since they are who generated the K1. The problem appears to be in the convention of how IBKR lists quantities. This did not appear to effect the 1099 IBKR issued the best I can tell.
Hopefully, this won’t happen to anyone else.
Scott,
Thx so much for clarification
That happened to me with some $1000 par issue I held at IBKR years ago. I got the corrected K1 but it was too late to send it to the IRS since it was Sept/Oct during my extension. I don’t remember if my CPA filed this form, or maybe some other way, but you can tell the IRS something was wrong with the K1.
https://www.irs.gov/instructions/i8082
This happened to me with vanguard a few years ago, and tax package support fixed it. If you notify them before the deadline on the first page (I think in May sometime) then it’s fine.
Anybody taking a flyer on STRF now trading? high imputed risk, high reward. I bought a small amount forcing me to watch it for educational purposes, yeah that’s my excuse.
Yes I bought STRF at the IPO price. In 8.5 Years I will get all my money back, if all goes well.
I shorted it and bought STRK. I’m out of the trade now.
Payment of dividends depends on MSTR issuing new stock to fund the dividend.
It was a great buy at the IPO price, however.
I’m sort of wondering if issuance of more stock creates a situation like what happened with GME
It’s not for me I don’t think. The company’s capital stack is starting to look ponzi-ish. They’re in a tough spot even if bitcoin just stands still let alone goes down.
SLMNP:
No idea how this happens because I have higher bids, but I just got 3 shares at $810. I’m not complaining.
I assume Fidelity is internalizing , because they aren’t posting my bids.
It should not happen.
I had bids at higher prices also on SLMNP and got no fills on Fidelity. Three shares at 810 is a gift.
Wow. I had one filled at the same price and was offering more than that price to buy one. Better to be lucky than good.
Gray markets have ever been efficient. Orders often filled with minimum work for the brokers rather than bothering to shop arounbd for better prices. And full volume gets precedent over smaller bids at better prices. But there’s still some bargains to be had if you play the game anyway.
But REG SHO?
I’m still bid for 10,000 at $500
I have been “playing the game” as well with low ball bids via Fidelity (all above $810) and nothing hit. Any advice on how to “play the game” better?
I recall a helpful post (from ESGW3..or something like that) who described the various routing process for expert names, how Fidelity uses one venue and other brokers use others.
I’ve also heard how brokers can simply fill EM orders at certain prices without actually sending them to a venue (like OTC markets) to execute. I guess this all makes sense when thinking about these as OTC instruments, they can trade by appointment.. like bonds, or be routed to an OTC trading venue.
OK, another big 4 shares of SLMNP traded today at 875….. Which III’rs were on which side of this trade???????? LOL….. I’m keeping still but sure happy for you 810 buyers….. What a steal…… 875 is no man’s land imho, but that’s because I’m pretty full up on the name..
And now additional 5 shares at 880 and 850
Gold ~ another day, another record!
Gold ~ $3052/t.oz……….y/y up 36.75%
Silver ~ $34.35/t.oz……..y/y up 37.28%
Copper ~ $5.1225/lb…….y/y up 27.99%
I thought I was being clever last week when I bought a little MGRE at 24.94 with the ex-date on March 28 for 42 cents. Well, here it is March 27 and the price is 24.54.
Now I’m wondering if MGRE CY is headed toward 7+%.
credit spreads seem to have widened a bit on what I watch
MGRE CY 7.02%
Do we need a crypto page?
For cryptic comments?
I’ll ask Pattern.
Is that you Shallan?
(I am actually reading the last book on my porch right now in between checking on my portfolio.)
Thanks to III.
Can’t remember who brought Kimbell (KRP), an oil and gas royalty company, to my attention in the beginning of March when it had a sudden drop in price.
March 6th Zacks said Rank #5 (Strong Sell) as price dropped.
Ignoring Zacks, that opportunity worked out well for me. In less than a month received my $0.40 dividend plus a 5% capital gain. At current price dividend is 11%. Dividend varies based on earnings. Last four ranged from $0.49 to $0.40.
Dan, it has ranged up as high as .51 before they started their buyout spree. They paid for some of these with pik and issued preferred shares which have to be redeemed. Gold is up, Oil is up but the markets not so much.
Here is a history.
https://www.dividendchannel.com/history/?symbol=krp
Used to be all I had to do was watch oil prices. Now borrowing against line of credit, issuance of common shares and preferred units, deadline to buy back the preferred shares or pay higher dividends has made it more complicated. The people behind this are very smart, but adding things to the equation that can be affected by things beyond their control makes nervous unless I only own low cost shares by buying in tranches and as the price recovers I sell my higher priced tranches. Similar to what I did with FLG-PU
Charles M,
thanks for the KRP link. Their next conf call is 5/8. I don’t expect the price to drop much from here but of course it’s just a guess. Needs to be followed closely. Dividend is nice.
Hey Charles, that’s a good analysis. The only thing I might disagree with is the “smart people” comment. Issuing 10MM shares knowing you are going to have a terrible quarter is not going to go well on Wall St. I do think there is value there, but patience will definitely be required. I bought some because of the short window between the 1st and 2nd distributions of the year, and I’m just hoping no more acquisitions or surprises with the 1st quarter earnings report. Stay tuned, right?
Yep Rocky. I kept buying as it went down, then I kept my eye on the ex-dividend date and figured out my break even and if I had already covered the dividend then I lightened up by about 1/2.
If we were in normal times and my crystal ball wasn’t seeing any disruptions in world wide supply and we have the spring and peak summer driving season coming up I would have held a full position or overweight. But I don’t have confidence in the economy and the herd mentality.
FIDO put a warning on one account for a short time flip. This is held in multiple accounts.
Charles – What was the warning for?
(All intraday) PFFA made an high at 23.24 on Oct 16 and a low at 21.48 on Jan 13. Today, it made a lower low and a new low close. My projection guesses are 20.52 and 21.02. I’m more confident in saying the trend is down.
Today seemed like the day that more than a few preferreds slipped. Is that opportunity knocking or knives banging on the door?
Rocks, you have noticed the same thing I have noticed. Certain stocks we watch are making lower highs and lower lows. Just visually looking at charts you can see the trend. Most are still not at their 52 week lows, but it’s looking like there is the possibility they can hit those lows again.
Just to pick out one, KRP made a new 52 week low and something just makes me feel it’s not going to hit its 52 week high again.
i view that as a core holding ; PFF is charting similarly;
A few days back Tim had a page with a list of preferreds to hide in for the short term. Can someone please post a link to that list
https://innovativeincomeinvestor.com/hiding-spots/
top of front page under “Other”
It’s on the Main Page – look for the tile / tab “Hiding Spots” under “Other.”
https://innovativeincomeinvestor.com/hiding-spots/
HFRO B:
I’d bought a little when it first came out, but both the A and B look week.
I took the loss in my trading account as I do not want to hold this thing.
That prolly means it’s the bottom
good move.. am also “wearing” HFRO/PRA..relative to VCLT its trading near all time low (underperform) .. I HOPE they continue to pay but as we all know hope is not a strategy
mjtroll –
“am also “wearing” HFRO/PRA..relative to VCLT its trading near all time low (underperform) .. I HOPE they continue to pay but as we all know hope is not a strategy”
You are “hoping” that a closed end fund continues to pay its preferred dividend? Preferred dividend suspensions in the CEF space are extremely rare – almost non-existent.