Gregory Stefflre

https://lnkd.in/eNMQk-Y9 Will the Fed reduce rates in September? We don't think so. Shelter costs are still running at 5% increase per year and contribute more than 1% to the overall CPI. The Federal Reserve is hoping for inflation to fall below 2% before dropping rates. Until last month, when energy costs plummeted and brought month over month CPI increase to 0%, inflation had been increasing at an annualized rate of 3% to 4%. There are no Fed meetings in August or October. Even though many experts believe there is a 75% chance for a rate cut in September, we believe it may come after the election.

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KEY POINTS: (1) The net neutrality issue revolves around how heavily federal regulators should protect the public and control the companies that build and operate the internet; (2) Democrats favor heavier oversight along the lines of how traditional telephone networks are regulated, while Republicans have argued for a lighter touch; (3) Net neutrality was adopted by the Federal Communications Commission #fcc under the Obama #obama administration, reversed under #trump Trump, then reinstated under President Joe Biden.

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Things like unique pricing deals benefiting big stores have been happening for decades. They often win through end-of-month and end-of-year rebates, which are built into shelf prices to offer consumers lower prices. This practice is common across the USA. It's time to level the playing field for small stores and independent brands that have long been victims of this disparity. #Retail #SmallBusiness #LevelingThePlayingField InvestBev

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Who sets interest rates? My old good friend, Dan Thornton, who unfortunately recently passed away, argued for years that interest rates are not set by the Federal Reserve but rather are set by the marketplace, (Ms. Market, so to speak). I think the last few months shows much truth to his argument. While the Fed has not changed its target for the federal funds rate over the last year, the 10-year Treasury note interest rate has fallen about 90 basis points since April of this year. Ms. Market is easing ahead of the Fed. Scott E. Hein, August 2, 2024 Emeritus Professor of Finance #fedpolicy #interestrates #treasuries

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As noted in this commentary, it's always best to stick to a long-term investment framework, especially given inherent policy uncertainties, but it's important and interesting to think about near-term environment for tactical implementation.

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A second Trump administration will promote a pro-growth and deregulatory agenda even as some policies deviate from a traditional Republican approach – it is a mix of populism and free market economics. Parts of this ambitious agenda can be implemented administratively while other parts, like tax cuts, must be passed by Congress. Investors have already seen how complicated that can be. To read more, click here: https://lnkd.in/gcBbmUp8 ​

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The IRS and Inherited IRAs After 5 years, the IRS has finally come to a decision with inherited IRA withdrawals. The Secure Act in 2019 removed the ability for most retirement account beneficiaries to stretch distributions over their life expectancy and now requires them to fully deplete the account after 10 years. With tax-deferred accounts, this severely limits compounding growth and increases the income tax burden on these beneficiaries. The component that has been up for debate is whether those beneficiaries also have to take required distributions during each of those 10 years. So far, no distributions have been required and a few days ago the IRS confirmed that a distribution will not be required in 2024. However beginning in 2025, beneficiaries who inherited a tax-deferred retirement account in 2020 or later from someone who was subject to RMDs (which will be most cases) must begin taking small required distributions of their own each year as well. This does not apply to beneficiaries who are spouses, minors, or disabled, and while inherited Roth IRAs are subject to the 10-year rule, they will not have annual required distributions. Keep in mind, if you inherited an IRA in 2020 and wait until 2025 to start distributions, you now only have 6 years left to deplete it because you are still bound by the 10-year rule. This means larger annual distributions and maybe higher tax brackets. So even though you don’t have to start, that doesn’t mean you should continue to wait or that you should only take the minimum amount required. Every beneficiary should have their own plan on how best to distribute the funds at the lowest tax rate which will be dependent on their own income level, retirement date, level of their own retirement assets, and the fact that tax rates could increase in 2026. This could mean accelerating or deferring inherited withdrawals so they occur when your own income is lower. #irs #taxes #iras #retirement #economy #useconomy #stocks #stockmarket #investing #investors #retire #finances #financialplanning

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KEY POINTS: (1) Under Biden, the U.S. economy recovered from Covid, contained inflation, and reinvigorated consumer spending; (2) GOP policies hurt the economy by expanding the deficit and isolationism. KEY EXCERPT: The United States achieved that enviable position because an independent Federal Reserve held the line on inflation; President Joe Biden pushed through major legislation that made huge investments in infrastructure and new technology (and induced the private sector to do the same); and other policies freed up consumer spending (by, among other things, saving consumers $1 billion in drug costs and providing a substantial stimulus).

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📈🏢 Aby Rosen's RFR Holding is facing a staggering $2.5B debt bill as defaults pile up! 💥 🔎 According to a recent Bisnow article, RFR Holding, a prominent NYC real estate firm, is grappling with mounting debt and defaults. The company, led by billionaire Aby Rosen, has a portfolio of high-profile properties, including the iconic Seagram Building and Lever House. 🏢🏦 📊 The firm's debt load has surged to a whopping $2.5B, with $1.1B in loans maturing this year alone. 💸 The pandemic has hit the commercial real estate market hard, causing defaults to skyrocket. RFR Holding is no exception, with defaults on several properties, including the $200M mortgage on the Seagram Building. 📉 🗣️ "The pandemic has created a perfect storm for commercial real estate," said one industry expert. "Companies like RFR Holding are facing unprecedented challenges as they navigate this difficult time." 🌪️ 🔜 So, what's next for RFR Holding? The company is reportedly exploring options to refinance its debt and avoid further defaults. 💡 With the commercial real estate market showing signs of recovery, there's hope that RFR Holding can weather this storm. 🌞 Stay tuned for more updates on this developing story! 📰🔔 #RFRHolding #CommercialRealEstate #Debt #Defaults #NYCRealEstate

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5 weeks ago today Joe Biden and Donald Trump were preparing to debate each other in Atlanta. In the 35 days since then the following things happened: June 27: Biden looked and sounded approximately 110 years old at the debate and deflated Democratic hopes of defeating Trump in November. June 28: Calls from Democrats for Biden to drop out of the race started the day after the debate and got progressively louder over the next 3 weeks. July 13: Trump survived an assassination attempt where he was shot in the ear. July 15: Trump selected JD Vance as his Vice-Presidential pick at the Republican National Convention. July 21: After initially rejecting calls to drop out of the race, Joe Biden stepped down as the Democratic nominee. July 22: Kamala Harris secured the support of enough Democratic delegates to become the Democratic nominee for President. In prediction markets (PredictIt), Trump’s odds of winning the election peaked in the wake of the assassination attempt at 69% on July 15th. Yesterday, Trump’s odds of winning fell below 50%. Easily the craziest month of U.S. political news in my lifetime.

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This podcast is a good explanation of the Fed's 2% inflation target. The argument made in this podcast is that having a target like this keeps inflationary spikes from getting embedded in long-term inflationary expectations and long-term bond rates. The public, or at least the bond market, understands there is a 2% target and that the Fed will take steps to bring inflation down to that. That is what the Fed started doing in the Spring of '22. It started raising interest rates and did so 11 times, until the Fed Funds target rate reached its present level of 5.25-5.50% last July. There was an expectation earlier this year that inflation would drop fast enough to allow the Fed to start cutting interest rates. That hasn't happened. Tomorrow, we will get the latest monthly core PCE, the Fed's inflation gauge of choice, and it is expected to show inflation ex: food and energy to be 2.8%, year-over-year, for April. 2.8% is not 2%, and this isn't a matter of quibbling over 0.8%. If the long-run inflation expectations have stayed subdued because everyone believes the Fed is firm on 2%, but then the Fed says, well, 2.8% is close enough, let's start cutting interest rates, then that risks undermining the Fed's credibility. Once that happens, we could be back in the 1970s, when the Fed didn't have much credibility on inflation and so high inflation was baked into everyone's long-run expectations. That meant that the late Fed Chairman Paul Volcker had to come in and yank up interest rates a lot and put the country into two recessions - in 1980 and 1981-82 - to bring inflation down. A lot of people were thrown out of work. What the Fed wants to do is bring inflation down without a repeat of the Volcker recessions. So far, it has done that. Inflation has come down slowly from 2022 levels and U.S. unemployment is 3.9% vs. 10.8% in November 1982. GDP in Q1 was 1.3% annualized, which is slower than the 3.4% in Q4 '23, and so maybe a soft landing. When historians write about the Fed's role during the pandemic, some will argue that the Fed kept interest rates too low and monetary policy too accommodative for too long, and that fueled the inflation that it has been trying to snuff out. The Fed responded with 11 interest rate hikes of 25 to 75 basis points over 15 months. It didn't go up 525 basis points in one meeting, because it didn't have to. Long-term inflationary expectations were a little up, but not way up. The Fed had the room to attack inflation for two years without bringing down the economy, because it had credibility on its 2% target. Folks are impatient with the Fed and want lower interest rates, but they should consider the history of the Fed from the 1970s, and how miserable the early '80s were when Volcker had to quickly work to restore the central bank's credibility and prove he was serious about inflation. 30-year mortgage rates at 7% are no fun but 18.5% was what we were borrowing at in the fall of 1981.

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Paul Katzeff just published “6 Dos and 6 Don’ts for Your Portfolio Ahead of #Trump's Proposed Tariffs” for Investopedia and cited us. Also quoted were Paul Schatz, president of Heritage Capital and treasurer of the National Association of Active Investment Managers (NAAIM) and Said Israilov, CFP® at Israilov Financial. QUOTED EXCERPT Chartered financial analyst Michael Ashley Schulman, CFA, partner and chief investment officer of Running Point Capital Advisors, did not tell us his outright recommendations, but he said certain securities “could be affected” by #tariffs, and #investors should decide for themselves how to proceed. He pointed out the following #ETFs linked to countries facing tariffs. ~~ Running Point, “we are your family office”™️ #taxplanning #estateplanning #assetmanagement #future #investing #taxes #wealthmanagement #economy ~~ Disclosure: The opinions expressed are those of Running Point Capital Advisors, LLC (Running Point) and are subject to change without notice. This is not investment advice and this is not a recommendation to buy or sell a security. The opinions referenced are as of the date of publication, may be modified due to changes in the market or economic conditions, and may not necessarily come to pass. Past performance is not indicative of future results. Forward-looking statements cannot be guaranteed. Running Point is an investment adviser registered with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission. Registration does not imply a certain level of skill or training. More information about Running Point’s investment advisory services and fees can be found in its Form ADV Part 2, which is available upon request. RP-24-209

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Good article out today from the WSJ on some challenges facing Pension Funds stuck in Zombie PE Funds (see link below). It reminded me of a presentation from GS I recently saw where the allocation breakdown for Pension Fund assets was depicted. The move toward Alternatives has been aggressive over the last many years, now close to matching allocations to public Equities. However, as the article points out, complexity + illiquidity don't always translate into superior outcomes. For Pension Funds, it's been public equities that have served as a great source of liquidity recently, as they've been big sellers every month end this year and sanitizing gains into FI in the process. As retail investors become the latest targets for PE funds, they should take note and ask hard questions. WSJ: Pensions Piled Into Private Equity. Now They Can’t Get Out. "Now the honeymoon is over. The payouts have dried up, creating an expensive problem for investment managers overseeing the savings of workers retired from big corporations and state and city governments. To keep benefit checks coming on time, those managers are unloading investments on the cheap or turning to borrowing—costly measures that eat into returns. California’s worker pension, the nation’s largest, will be paying more money into its private-equity portfolio than it receives from those investments for eight years in a row. The engine maker Cummins took a 4.4% loss in its U.K. pension last year, in large part because it sold private assets at a discount. It is the latest cash crunch to befall retirement funds that have piled into hard-to-sell investments in search of high returns, and spotlights the risks as Wall Street is trying to sell those investments to wealthy households." https://lnkd.in/ePr8ZH-f #privateequity #macro #investing #trading #equities

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