TreasuryDirect is My Favorite Way to Buy Bonds

A color plate image of Christie's Auction House in London, from 1808.

I love TreasuryDirect! It’s a free site run by the US Government to allow all citizens to buy US Government debt securities. You can buy several types of savings bonds, and more importantly, you can directly participate in treasury bill, note, and bond auctions. This means that individual investors with as little as $100 can invest on perfectly equal footing with huge institutional investors. They all get exactly the same pricing. It’s amazing! I don’t think there’s any other situation in which an individual can buy a security for such a small amount and get exactly the same terms as CALPERS buying hundreds of millions of securities at the same time. It’s a true egalitarian marvel.

It’s actually slightly dumb for me to even write this article because the service is directly competitive with my core service offering as a fee based financial adviser. The more that my clients or potential clients invest with TreasuryDirect, the less they invest with me, and the less money I make. But I don’t care, it’s such a cool system that I want lots of people to know about it anyway. But before we dive into TreasuryDirect, let’s take a look at how US Treasury auctions work…

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Five Reasons to not Panic in a Bear Market

2022 has been an extremely bad year for almost every asset class! Stocks and bonds have suffered large losses. And inflation has been high, further eroding the value of investors’ savings. In a bear market, it is absolutely critical for long term investors to avoid panic selling at all costs.

I generated this text in part with OpenAI’s large-scale language-generation models. Upon generating draft language, I reviewed, edited, and revised the language to my own liking and I take ultimate responsibility for the content of this publication.

raccoon businessmen panicking in dusty city experiencing a bear market
A painting of raccoon stockbrokers panicking during a market crash – StableDiffusion v1-4
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The Hidden Economic Miracle of Driverless Cars – Way Fewer Dead People

Driverless cars are coming! And along with robot drivers, a lot will change in American culture. One aspect that will change, that I think is underappreciated, is that there will be many more people alive. And it turns out people being alive is enormously beneficial to the overall economy!

Driverless Car - Image by Falco at Pixabay
This little guy drives way safer than you do.
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Stock Buybacks Aren’t Evil

I have read several articles over the past year that include some harsh criticism of corporate stock buybacks. Most include a version of the argument: “President Trump’s tax cuts went primarily to wealthy Americans and corporations. Corporations squandered this windfall with stock buybacks to pump up their own stock price.” This sentiment is a little off-the-mark, but I understand the impulse. So I wanted to take a minute to work out the details on why stock buybacks are not so bad.

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