Investing

Alistair Berg | Digitalvision | Getty Images

Company: Pitney Bowes (PBI)

Business: Pitney Bowes is a global shipping and mailing company that provides technology, logistics, and financial services to businesses, including more than 90% of the Fortune 500, retailers and government clients around the world. It operates through three business segments: (i) Global Ecommerce, (ii) Presort Services and (iii) SendTech Solutions.
Stock Market Value: $666M ($3.83 per share)

related investing news

Activist: Hestia Capital Partners

Percentage Ownership:  6.90%
Average Cost: $3.59
Activist Commentary: Hestia is not an activist investor. Rather, the firm is a deep value investor that will use activism as a last resort. Kurtis Wolf, managing member and chief investment officer of Hestia is a former strategy consultant and notably worked at Relational Investors from 2002 through 2004. The firm is experienced in business strategy and applies its business acumen to deep value and distressed companies to determine which ones have a good path forward. As a result, Hestia often invests in companies that might be misunderstood or not favored by the market, like GameStop, Best Buy and Pitney Bowes. The firm eschews biotech and commodity-driven companies. Hestia’s only prior activist engagement was in 2020, when it formed a group with Permit Capital and ran a successful proxy fight at GameStop.

What’s Happening?

Hestia has engaged with Pitney Bowes about enhancing the company’s capital allocation, improving operational performance and making changes to the board’s composition.

Behind the Scenes

Pitney Bowes’ SendTech solutions business is the core enterprise that the company is generally known for: postage meters. This is a secularly declining, but not disappearing, business that generates significant cash flow. PBI expanded the SendTech division to include shipping labels, which is a growth business. The shipping labels business has historically competed with, and often lost to, stamps.com, which was built into a huge business ultimately acquired by Thoma Bravo for $6.6 billion. The SendTech Solutions segment accounts for 38% of Pitney Bowes’ revenue and generated $429 million in earnings before interest and taxes in 2021. The postage meter business comprises 89% of the division’s revenue and the shipping label business comprises the other 11%.

The Global Ecommerce segment is comprised of primarily three components: (i) a digital tech business that sells the technology behind Pitney Bowes’ postage and shipping businesses, giving clients the ability to reduce transportation and logistics costs, select the best carrier based on need and cost, improve delivery times and track packages in real time; (ii) a global cross-border solutions business that handles all of the shipping and customs procedures of international shipping for customers like eBay; and (iii) a domestic parcel business, which is a niche e-commerce business handling returns of items and a competitor against companies like FedEx and UPS. Global Ecommerce comprises 46% of Pitney Bowes’ revenue but lost $99 million of EBIT in 2021.
The Presort Services segment accounts for only 16% of revenue but generated $79 million of EBIT in 2021. This business makes its money from post offices and simplifies the sorting process for them. Pitney Bowes will pick up mail from businesses in specific zip codes, sort the mail by zip code and get it to post offices.
Bottom line, the company has too many businesses and needs to simplify. The digital technology and Presort businesses are synergistic with Pitney Bowes’ core business as one provides it with the technology to operate and the other shares many of the same customers and gives them the ability to cross-sell. This means divesting the cross-border solutions business and the domestic parcel business. Neither is showing adequate levels of growth or profit. The former has single customer concentration risk as eBay is by far its largest customer, and the latter is competing with much larger companies like FedEx and UPS. Just closing those two businesses would be accretive to shareholders, and they should be able to get some money for them from a strategic acquirer. But the bigger benefit would be management focus on its core business and the ability to more appropriately incentivize management. Management can focus on using the cash from the secularly declining postage meter business to invest in the growing shipping label business. The SendTech and Presort segments alone could be worth $6 to $9 per share without the distractions and dilution of the other businesses.
Ideally, Hestia would advocate for this plan from a board level. The company has a nine-person, unstaggered board with a nomination deadline opening on Jan. 2, 2023. Hestia will likely need more than just one board seat to drive change at Pitney Bowes. The company has been around for over a century, and a majority of the directors have a 10+ year board tenure. Marc Lautenbach is not necessarily the wrong CEO for this company. He just has lost focus with his attention being pulled in so many different directions. A more streamlined core business with him as CEO could work very well. The company could benefit from a shareholder representative with a strong business strategy acumen, and we would expect Hestia to include Kurtis Wolf in its slate of nominees along with some experienced industry executives. With the universal proxy now in play, we would expect Hestia to nominate up to four directors to give shareholders a larger pool from which to select.
Ken Squire is the founder and president of 13D Monitor, an institutional research service on shareholder activism, and he is the founder and portfolio manager of the 13D Activist Fund, a mutual fund that invests in a portfolio of activist 13D investments. Squire is also the creator of the AESG™ investment category, an activist investment style focused on improving ESG practices of portfolio companies. 

WATCH LIVEWATCH IN THE APP More

As Congress races to get as much done as possible this month before a new session begins, it may consider reupping the expanded child tax credit.
The more generous 2021 credit was instrumental in helping more children out of poverty.
Yet a newly expanded credit would take compromise and may not be as generous.

House and Senate champions and impacted families appear at a Dec. 7 Washington, D.C., event for expanding the child tax credit during the lame duck session.
Tasos Katopodis | Getty Images Entertainment | Getty Images

Millions of children were lifted out of poverty in 2021, thanks to a more generous child tax credit that included monthly checks sent out to more families.
Now, the lame duck session of Congress offers a last chance this year to renew the expanded child tax credit that lapsed in December 2021.

As the end of year approaches, many Democrats on Capitol Hill have raised their voices in support of reinstating the more generous child tax credit.
“This is a moment where we must make a lasting commitment, not just in Congress, but as a nation, to saying that not one child growing up in the richest country on the planet should be growing up in poverty,” Sen. Cory Booker, D-N.J., said at a Capitol Hill event urging urgent action on the child tax credit.
More from Personal Finance:Why more workers need access to retirement savingsHow seniors influenced key congressional districts in midterm electionsWhy long Covid may be ‘the next public health disaster’
The child tax credit was a key policy that helped usher a record-breaking decline in poverty in 2021, a new report from the U.S. Joint Economic Committee Democrats found.
The number of children living in poverty fell to historic lows as the full child tax credit was made available to an additional 19 million low-income children.

This was largely driven by the enhanced credit’s full refundability, which made all families eligible for the full credit, with the exception of the highest-income families, according to the Joint Economic Committee.  
The child tax credit was increased in 2021 from $2,000 per child to up to $3,600 per child under 6 and up to $3,000 for children ages 6 through 17. Half of those sums were made available through monthly payments of up to $300 per child under 6 and $250 per child ages 6 through 17. Eligible parents received the rest of the credit when they filed their tax returns.

‘No corporate tax cuts without tax cuts for working families’

Senator Sherrod Brown, D-Ohio, Senator Cory Booker, D-N.J., and Rep. Suzan DelBene, D-Wash., with supporters during press briefing on expanding the child tax credit during the lame duck session on Dec. 7 in Washington, D.C.
Tasos Katopodis | Getty Images Entertainment | Getty Images

For 2022, the child tax credit has reverted back to $2,000 per child under 17. Now, Democrats are hoping to pass an enhanced version with a corporate tax extenders Congress is poised to consider.
Certain Democratic leaders such as Sen. Sherrod Brown, D-Ohio, have vowed to oppose any corporate tax breaks unless the child tax credit is also expanded.
“These tax cuts have made such a difference in families’ lives,” Brown said this week. “They must continue.
“It’s pretty simple — no corporate tax cuts without tax cuts for working families.”
However, any deal for a newly expanded child tax credit may not provide for terms as generous as they were under the terms of the American Rescue Plan Act in 2021, according to Rachel Snyderman, senior associate director at the Bipartisan Policy Center.

While both parties are interested in revisiting the child tax credit, there could be compromise around the income phase-ins and maintaining an incentive for labor force participation, she said. Lawmakers may also look to index the credit to inflation in the short term.
With only so many legislative days on the calendar left, it remains to be seen whether Congress will find time to address the issue before the end of the month. But there is “certainly” room to address it next year, Snyderman said.
“The child tax credit is going to remain high on the priority list for the next Congress,” Snyderman said.
“Even if a short-term deal isn’t made this year, I’m confident that it will remain top of the priority list early next year and throughout the next Congress,” she said.
One key reason for that is terms of the credit currently in effect, with $2,000 per child, was implemented with the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act and set to expire in 2025.

Still, advocates are pushing for Congress not to wait and to act on the child tax credit before year end.
On Tuesday, national parent advocacy organization MomsRising plans to meet Congressional members at the doors of Capitol Hill with small duck toys and people in duck costumes to urge leaders to “make it a super duck session” and not “duck their responsibilities” to families, according to CEO Kristin Rowe-Finkbeiner.
They also have digital ads targeted at Congress stating, “More tax cuts for corporations? Moms are watching.”
“We’re really keeping the pressure on,” Rowe-Finkbeiner said. “Right now, parents across America are in a continued state of emergency with a pandemic that’s turned endemic and rising costs.”

WATCH LIVEWATCH IN THE APP More

Studies show a disconnect between how much millennials expect to inherit and how much aging baby boomers plan on leaving them.
Growing financial insecurity and changing views about inheritance are partly responsible.
Communicating a clear plan and the reasoning behind it can help families get on the same page, experts say.

On the cusp of the greatest generational wealth transfer in history, baby boomers are set to pass more than $68 trillion on to their children.
“It’s a generation that has accumulated a greater percentage of wealth than any other generation ever has,” said Mark Mirsberger, a certified public accountant and CEO of Dana Investment Advisors, referring to boomers.

But they may not be handing down as much as their children think.
Studies show a growing disconnect between how much millennials expect to inherit in the “great wealth transfer” and how much aging boomers plan on leaving them.
More from Personal Finance:35% of millionaires say they won’t have enough to retireJust 12% of adults, and 29% of millionaires, feel ‘wealthy’Strategies to navigate the ‘great wealth transfer’
More than half, or 52%, of millennials who are expecting to receive an inheritance from their parents or another family member said they expect to receive at least $350,000, according to a recent survey of more than 2,000 adults by Alliant Credit Union. But 55% of baby boomers who plan to leave behind an inheritance said they will pass on less than $250,000.
Part of the discrepancy is “wanting to make sure people have enough money to live on before they start gifting,” taking into account their own life expectancy, long-term care and other considerations, said Susan Hirshman, director of wealth management at Schwab Wealth Advisory in Phoenix.

“There are a lot of what ifs,” she added.
Tack on inflation, geopolitical uncertainty and fears of a recession, and boomers suddenly may be feeling less secure about their financial standing — and less generous when it comes to giving money away.

Less than one-quarter, or 23%, of adults said they felt “very comfortable” about their finances right now, according to a separate report by Edelman Financial Engines. Fewer — just 12% — consider themselves wealthy.
Another growing issue is financial independence, the Edelman report found: 85% of parents said they value autonomy, but 4 in 10 are still supporting their adult children financially.
“As parents, we are struggling with how to support our kids,” said Jason Van de Loo, head of wealth planning and marketing at Edelman Financial Engines.
At the same time, views of inherited wealth are changing, Hirshman noted. Parents may feel less inclined to pass on large sums of money, she said. The mentality is “I earned this and so should you.”

As parents, we are struggling with how to support our kids.

Jason Van de Loo
head of wealth planning and marketing at Edelman Financial Engines

And even though most parents plan to leave at least something to their children, only 37% said they currently have a plan in place for transferring their wealth, the Edelman report found.
It’s a source of conflict for many families, according to Van de Loo. “It’s not just fighting about how the money is split,” he said. “Fights over who is put in charge are just as common.”
“You have to have an open and honest dialogue,” Van de Loo advised.

How to have the dreaded money talk

Many families dread talking about money, especially financial plans, a recent Wells Fargo report found. Roughly 26% of adult children would rather deal with their parents’ estate after they die than talk about it while they are living. Further, 19% said they don’t mind receiving nothing at all as long as they don’t have that talk with their parents. 

“It’s how you frame the conversation,” Hirshman said. “It’s not about death but really about putting your family in the best possible emotional, financial and structural position they can be.” 
Without communicating a clear plan and the reasoning behind it, “you are taking something that’s sad and making it tragic,” she said.
Subscribe to CNBC on YouTube.

WATCH LIVEWATCH IN THE APP More

The Biden administration’s fix to the Public Service Loan Forgiveness program has benefited hundreds of thousands of borrowers.
More relief is on the way.

Smiling female professor reading an e-mail on a computer in the classroom. Copy space.
Skynesher | E+ | Getty Images

In October 2021, the Biden administration announced a one-year opportunity for student loan borrowers pursuing the Public Service Loan Forgiveness to get closer to being debt-free.
Signed into law by then-President George W. Bush in 2007, the Public Service Loan Forgiveness program allows certain nonprofit and government employees to have their federal student loans canceled after 10 years, or 120 payments. However, the program has been plagued by problems, making people who actually get the relief a rarity.

Thanks to the policy fix known as the Limited PSLF waiver, close to 360,000 borrowers have now qualified for $24 billion in loan forgiveness, according to U.S. Department of Education data analyzed by higher-education expert Mark Kantrowitz.
More from Personal Finance:Biden’s student loan forgiveness plan is on holdInflation-adjusted college costs declineThese colleges promise no student debt
The average borrower got more than $67,000 in student debt cleared.
“These borrowers previously faced obstacles based on frustrating technicalities despite having worked in a qualifying public service job,” Kantrowitz said.
The reforms under the Biden administration included reassessing borrowers’ timelines and counting some payments that were previously ineligible because of a borrower’s loan type or repayment plan.

Although the opportunity ended this October, borrowers still have options if they didn’t benefit from the one-year fix.

Some borrowers may get a payment count adjustment

The Education Department has said that some borrowers in the public service sector will be eligible for a one-time adjustment of their payment count, even if they missed out on the Limited PSLF waiver. The adjustment will occur next July.
This could result in borrowers getting credit for certain payments that were previously disqualified toward their needed 120 payments, including partial and late payments, and those not counted because of a borrowers’ loan type or repayment plan.
Months during which a borrower was enrolled in a deferment of their payments or a forbearance may also count toward their timeline.

To qualify for the one-time relief, though, you need to have Direct loans. If you have either a Federal Family Education Loan (FFEL) or a Federal Perkins Loan, you should consolidate those into Direct loans with your servicer by May 1, 2023.
There are also some permanent changes coming to the Public Service Loan Forgiveness program, starting next July 1, which also include allowing borrowers to get credit for late payments or months in certain types of deferments.

How to tell if you qualify for PSLF

There are typically three primary requirements for public service loan forgiveness, although the recent changes provide some more wiggle room in certain cases:

Your employer must be a government organization at any level, a 501(c)(3) not-for-profit organization or some other type of not-for-profit organization that provides public service.
Your loans must be federal Direct loans
To reach forgiveness, you need to have made 120 qualifying, on-time payments in an income-driven repayment plan or the standard repayment plan. (There are some 14 plan options to repay your student loans, but to qualify for public service loan forgiveness, you need to be enrolled in one of these four income-based repayment plans: income-contingent repayment, income-based repayment, pay-as-you-earn repayment or revised pay-as-you-earn repayment.

The best way to find out if your job qualifies as public service is to fill out the so-called employer certification form.
Many people think they need to fill out this form; in reality, it’s optional, Kantrowitz said. (In theory, you could wait until you’ve made the 120 payments, then apply, “but, it may be easier if you’ve been filing the employer certification forms all along, especially if one of your previous employers no longer exists,” he said.)
Try to fill out this form at least once a year, he added, and keep records of your confirmed qualifying payments.

Borrowers pursuing PSLF should also know that their servicer has recently changed from FedLoan to MOHELA.
In addition, all months during the pandemic-era payment pause that’s been in effect since March 2020 count toward your 120 needed payments, whether or not you’ve been making payments on your loans.
Student loan bills are scheduled to resume some 60 days after the litigation involving the Biden administration’s broad student loan forgiveness plan resolves. If the lawsuits are still pending by the end of June, the payments will pick back up 60 days after that, at the end of August.

WATCH LIVEWATCH IN THE APP More

Blackstone has taken heat over the past week for limiting withdrawals from its $69 billion private REIT.
President and Chief Operating Officer Jon Gray defended the positioning and structure, noting that investors knew BREIT had limits on redemptions.

Investors nervous about Blackstone’s real estate investment trust should view it as a long-term vehicle that’s well positioned for the future, the firm’s president said Thursday.
Blackstone has taken heat over the past week for limiting withdrawals from the $69 billion private REIT, the Blackstone Real Estate Income Trust, or BREIT. That move followed redemption requests that exceeded previously set limits. The company’s stock has fallen 8% over the past five days amid a controversy that included a Barclays downgrade of the alternative investment firm.

Blackstone President and Chief Operating Officer Jon Gray defended the positioning and structure, noting that investors knew BREIT had limits on redemptions.
“We set up the product with limitations on liquidity,” Gray told CNBC’s David Faber during a live “Squawk on the Street” interview. “We described it as semi-liquid because we knew at some point there would be a period of volatility, and we didn’t want to sell assets at the wrong time under pressure.”
In exchange for their patience, investors have benefited from a fund that Gray said has delivered 13% compounded returns for six years in a challenging environment.
Publicly traded REITs have gotten slammed this year amid a rising interest rate environment that has hit the real estate market especially hard, raising questions about the actual values of holdings in private funds such as Blackstone’s BREIT. The $35 billion Vanguard Real Estate ETF, for example, has tumbled 26% year to date.
“The key theme here is that performance has delivered and the structure we put in place is operating exactly as we intended six years ago, and we are incredibly proud of the performance and the structure,” Gray said.

Investors should “look at Blackstone and say, ‘You guys have done an incredible job at deploying our capital in exactly the right geography, in exactly the right sectors with the right balance sheet,'” he added. “I think they have confidence in us.”
Yet the fund was hit by a doubling in redemption requests for November while subscriptions saw a substantial drop-off, to less than half a billion dollars from $880 million in September, according to Barclays.
Gray said the firm can sell assets to meet redemptions but can do so over a time horizon that will be beneficial.
“We can sell if needed,” he said. “That’s what gives us a lot of confidence.”
Blackstone shares rose about 2% in early trading Thursday following the interview.

WATCH LIVEWATCH IN THE APP More

About 0.5% of workers participating in a 401(k) plan took a “hardship distribution” in October, according to Vanguard Group, which tracks 5 million savers.
While a relatively small percentage, it’s the largest share on record dating to 2004, Vanguard said.
Inflation has led prices for food, rent and a host of other consumer items to rise at a historically fast pace. But withdrawing retirement savings should be among the measures of last resort for cash-strapped households, financial advisors said.

Thomas Barwick | Stone | Getty Images

The share of retirement savers who withdrew money from a 401(k) plan to cover a financial hardship hit a record high in October, according to data from Vanguard Group.
That dynamic — when coupled with other factors like fast-rising credit card balances and a declining personal savings rate — suggests households are having a tougher time making ends meet amid persistently high inflation and need ready cash, according to financial experts.

Nearly 0.5% of workers participating in a 401(k) plan took a new “hardship distribution” in October, according to Vanguard, which tracks 5 million savers. That’s the largest share since Vanguard began tracking the data in 2004.

Put another way, roughly 25,000 workers took one of these distributions, which allow workers to tap their 401(k) plans before retirement for an “immediate and heavy” financial need.
Meanwhile, savers have been dipping into their nest eggs via other means — loans and “nonhardship” distributions — in higher numbers throughout 2022, according to Vanguard data.
“We are starting to see signs of financial distress at the household level,” said Fiona Greig, global head of investor research and policy at Vanguard.
That said, the overall monthly share of people taking a hardship withdrawal is relatively small and not indicative of the “typical” 401(k) saver, she added.

Americans are ‘feeling the pinch from inflation’

Nearly all 401(k) plans allow workers to take hardship withdrawals, but employers may vary in their rationale for allowing them.
More than half of plans let workers tap funds to “alleviate major financial pressures,” according to the Plan Sponsor Council of America, a trade group. But they more frequently allow withdrawals to cover medical expenses, housing (to buy a primary residence, or prevent eviction or foreclosure), funeral costs or loss due to natural disasters, for example.
Participants can also access 401(k) savings via loans or nonhardship withdrawals. The latter are for workers over age 59½, and sometimes for workers in other circumstances not related to financial hardship (for instance, rolling over assets to an individual retirement account while working).
More from Personal Finance:Robinhood brings 401(k)-style ‘match’ model to retail IRAsHow to reduce the sting of RMDs in a down market50% of women say they are behind on retirement savings
Nonhardship distributions also hit an all-time high in October — almost 0.9% of participants took one that month, according to Vanguard. And the share of workers taking 401(k) loans rose to 0.9% in October from 0.8% at the beginning of 2022.
Overall, it’s a sign that more households need liquidity.
“People are feeling the pinch from inflation,” said Philip Chao, principal and chief investment officer at Experiential Wealth in Cabin John, Maryland.
Savers aren’t always prudent in their financial decision-making, and many times think of a 401(k) “more like a piggy bank,” he said.

The inflation rate has declined in recent months from its pandemic-era peak this summer but is still hovering near its highest level since the early 1980s. The prices consumers pay for a broad swath of goods and services — like groceries and rent — are still rising quickly. Wage growth hasn’t kept pace for the average person.
Meanwhile, federal pandemic-era financial supports have dwindled. A student loan payment pause — among the last vestiges of support — could end sometime next year. Many households have spent down at least some savings amassed from stimulus checks and enhanced unemployment benefits. The 2.3% personal savings rate in October was a pandemic-era low. Household debt soared at its fastest rate in 15 years in the third quarter. Debt delinquency in Q3 increased for nearly all types of household debt, though remains low by historical standards, according to the Federal Reserve Bank of New York.
In 2020, Congress authorized Covid-related withdrawals of up to $100,000 from 401(k) plans as part of the CARES Act. About 1% of participants took such withdrawals each month in 2020, and other types of withdrawals slightly declined during that time.

Why raiding retirement savings is a ‘terrible idea’

“It’s a terrible idea to take money out of your 401(k),” said Ted Jenkin, a certified financial planner and co-founder of oXYGen Financial, based in Atlanta.
The recent uptick in hardship distributions is especially concerning, financial advisors said. Beyond the apparent acute financial need among households, hardship withdrawals carry negative repercussions.
For instance, workers under age 59½ typically owe a 10% tax penalty on their withdrawal, in addition to income tax on pre-tax savings. This is true for loans and nonhardship withdrawals, too.
But, unlike a 401(k) loan, savers can’t pay themselves back when they take a hardship distribution — meaning the savings and its future investment earnings is permanently lost, unless workers can somehow make up for it later with higher savings rates. And many employers disallow workers from contributing to their 401(k) for six months after taking a hardship distribution.

There was an uptick in hardship distributions after Congress passed the Bipartisan Budget Act of 2018, which eased access, Greig said. The law erased the requirement that participants first take a 401(k) loan before being able to make a hardship withdrawal.
Households should weigh all their options for cash before resorting to tapping a 401(k) plan, said Jenkin, a member of CNBC’s Advisor Council.
For example, households without an emergency fund might be able to free up money for a relatively small short-term cash need by canceling or reducing membership plans, or by selling little-used or unneeded items on Facebook Marketplace or a garage sale, he said. A short-term loan or home-equity line of credit would generally also be better than tapping a 401(k).

We are starting to see signs of financial distress at the household level.

Fiona Greig
global head of investor research and policy at Vanguard Group

Selling investments in a taxable investment account may also be a better option than raiding retirement account or taking on debt, Greig said. While the stock market is down this year, investors may still be in the black when looking over the past two to three years, she said. They’d owe capital gains tax if they sell winning investments, though; even if they sell those investments for a loss, they can use those losses to derive a tax benefit via tax-loss harvesting.
Consumers should also examine the root cause of their financial need, especially if it isn’t due to a one-time, unexpected need, Jenkin said.
“Taking a hardship withdrawal is an effect,” said Jenkin. “It’s the end product of needing money today.
“Like a business, you have to ask yourself, do I have an income problem, an expense problem, or both?”

WATCH LIVEWATCH IN THE APP More

Withdrawing money from your retirement portfolio in a down market may negatively affect your nest egg over time, known as the “sequence of returns risk.”
If your required minimum distribution is approaching and you don’t need the funds, you may reduce this risk by keeping the money invested.

Thomas Barwick

The deadline is fast approaching for mandatory retirement plan withdrawals, which may force some retirees to sell assets in a down market. But experts say there may be ways to reduce the negative effects.
Required minimum distributions, known as RMDs, are yearly amounts that must be taken from certain retirement accounts, such as 401(k) plans and most individual retirement accounts.

related investing news

DoubleLine’s Gundlach says it’s time to buy emerging market stocks as the dollar peaks

RMDs start when you turn 72, with a deadline of April 1 of the following year for your first withdrawal, and a Dec. 31 due date for future years.
Although it’s been a rough year for the stock market, there’s a steep IRS penalty for missing RMD deadlines — 50% of the amount that should have been withdrawn.  
More from Personal Finance:’Risky behaviors’ are causing credit scores to level off4 key year-end moves to ‘control your tax reporting destiny’Despite uncertainty, experts say it’s a ‘great moment’ for dollar-cost averaging
“This is obviously not the opportune time to sell those assets, because they’re at a loss,” said certified financial planner John Loyd, owner at The Wealth Planner in Fort Worth, Texas.  
As of mid-day Dec. 7, the S&P 500 Index is down more than 17% for 2022, and the Bloomberg U.S. Aggregate bond index has dropped nearly 12% for the year. 

Why you need to manage the ‘sequence of returns’ risk

Research shows the timing of selling assets and withdrawing funds from your portfolio can be “enormously powerful,” said Anthony Watson, a CFP and founder and president of Thrive Retirement Specialists in Dearborn, Michigan. 
The value of assets when you make withdrawals may significantly shift the size of your nest egg over time, known as the “sequence of returns” risk, and managing that risk is “the crux of retirement planning,” Watson said.

Consider ‘journaling’ to keep your RMD invested

If you don’t need your RMD for immediate living expenses, there are a couple of ways to keep the funds invested, experts say.
One option, known as “journaling,” moves the assets from your retirement account to a brokerage account without selling. “Not a lot of people are aware of it,” Loyd said. 
Like an RMD, journaling still counts as a withdrawal for tax purposes, meaning you’ll receive Form 1099-R to report the transfer as income on your return, he said.

While journaling avoids time out of the market, it’s tricky to gauge the exact dollar amount since market values fluctuate, and you may need a second withdrawal to fully satisfy your RMD, he said.
Plus, most retirees withhold taxes through their RMDs, which isn’t possible when journaling assets, Loyd said. Typically, he uses the second withdrawal for tax withholdings.
Either way, you’ll want to build in enough time to complete both transactions by the deadline because “the IRS is not very lenient when it comes to mistakes,” Loyd said.

Avoid ‘execution risk’ by selling and reinvesting

While journaling keeps assets in the market longer, some advisors prefer to avoid “execution risk” by selling assets, withdrawing the proceeds and then reinvesting in a brokerage account.
It takes a couple of days for RMD funds to settle, but Watson sees journaling as “overly complicated” and prefers to reinvest the funds immediately after the withdrawal clears.

WATCH LIVEWATCH IN THE APP More

All-America Economic Survey

Eight percent of the American public have a positive view of cryptocurrencies, down from 19% in March, according to the latest CNBC All-America Economic Survey.
Americans with a negative view of cryptocurrencies jumped to 43%, up from 25% in March, the survey showed.
The All-America Economic survey was conducted Nov. 26-30 of 800 Americans and has a margin of error of +/- 3.5%.

Sam Bankman-Fried, founder and chief executive officer of FTX Cryptocurrency Derivatives Exchange, speaks during the Institute of International Finance (IIF) annual membership meeting in Washington, DC, on Thursday, Oct. 13, 2022.
Ting Shen | Bloomberg | Getty Images

After a series of crypto-collapses, scandals and bankruptcies, Americans’ views on cryptocurrency have soured sharply, with the CNBC All-America Economic Survey finding a majority favoring strong regulation.
The survey shows 43% of the public with a negative view of cryptocurrencies, up from 25% in March. The percentage with a positive view plummeted to just 8% from 19%, and those who are neutral fell almost in half to 18% from 31%.

Arrows pointing outwards

CNBC All-America Economic survey

It’s a dramatic fall for an investment that was touted as its own asset class and had a celebrated coming-out party on the global stage with multiple Super Bowl ads and celebrity endorsements. That popularity attracted many ordinary Americans to crypto and the survey shows 24% of the public invested in, traded or used cryptocurrency in the past, up from 16% in March.
The survey of 800 Americans nationwide was conducted Nov. 26-30 and has a margin of error of +/- 3.5%. (March results for crypto are from an NBC News survey.)
According to the survey, 42% of crypto investors now have a somewhat or very negative view of the asset, in line with the 43% result for all adults in the survey. The main difference: 17% of crypto investors are “very negative” compared with 47% for non-crypto investors.
But it could still be a problem for crypto recovering its credibility since reputation looks to be central to its valuation.
“It’s a 90% retail market, which means the sentiment of mom-and-pop investors really matters,” Brian Brook, the CEO of Bitfury, and the former comptroller of the currency, said at this week’s CNBC Financial Advisor Summit. “And so when you read FTX stories on the front page of the Wall Street Journal, literally every day for the last 30 days…what it does is for relative new entrants, they get scared. And so as a result, liquidity is thinner than it would have been and people’s willingness to invest is lower.”

Whether a respondent is invested in crypto or not, they are likely to favor regulating it as stringently as stocks or bonds. The survey found 53% of the public saying crypto should have the same or greater regulation and oversight as stocks and bonds, that includes 21% of all adults and 16% of crypto investors who want more regulation.
Negative views on crypto come at the same time as the public has soured on stocks. Just 26% say now is a good time to invest in equities, down two points from last quarter’s survey and the most pessimistic level registered in the 15-year history of the survey. 51% say it’s a bad time to invest, the third highest in the survey’s history, bested only by the downbeat results of the prior two surveys.
(You can view the full survey here.) More