It may be hard to imagine, but dividend yields were not always this low [1]. Investopedia has it usually something healthy over 4% up until 1990s it seems. Over that 1926- time frame, dividends are said to have contributed 32% of the total return of S&P 500 [2].
Another tip I would give: try to be timely. Especially for college grads/early career, for some companies even when companies are hiring, they might not be hiring all year long (for college grads). The prime college hiring season (summer and fall) is coming up. Waiting until or starting in the winter and spring tends to be tougher.
One more resource that may be helpful, there are a whole bunch of tech interview meetups in various cities. Those meetups are a tremendous resource in terms of sharpening interview skills and finding supportive peers and people further along in their careers. They are also a resource for getting an idea of who is hiring for what.
Disclosure: I founded one of these meetups in one city a long while ago.
Does your college offer career fairs or college-specific job boards? Chin up. Breaking in is definitely challenging, but there are resources out there. Hopefully as the pandemic effects subside, there will be more in-person networking events. Some companies also like to recruit from hackathons and other contests. There are also some medium size companies that tend to keep significant entry level hiring pipelines.
One gotcha I would mention, though, is don’t go in with the expectation that submitting resumes down some company corporate HR website is sufficient. It is definitely worth it to get in front of companies in person when possible.
Yeah, it is unfortunate but being at a target school sometimes does give an unfair advantage. But the bright side is different companies have may a different set of target schools.
This (more yield with longer duration) is true most of the time, but sometimes the yield curve inverts. Especially in recent months, the yield curve has flattened quite a bit.
Sorry to be a bit pedantic, but you got me curious, looks like from TreasuryDirect that one doesn’t have to be a citizen to buy and hold, just a resident with a SSN is fine [1]. Everything else right on!
> The final approach I've encountered is where research problems come from an external body.
For a good helping of the government research organizations, they hire academics and practitioners as Program Managers (PMs) who gather the experts in the field to come up with research programs, agendas, and seedling programs. Of course, the PMs have to sell areas to their higher ups too, but it does have some degree of dynamism and alignment with academia. The amount of resources that could be brought to bear on a problem is impressive.
I do wonder about this whole notion of “success” of research. Hundreds of years ago, wealth patrons sponsor the “researchers” of their times. Creative people found problems that interested them which sometimes led to unexpected results and new areas. I don’t think serendipity should be discounted.
One interesting thing is that even nominal Treasuries are yielding above CDs at the moment but the difference is more like 20 bps or so.
Can you imagine the people who bought i bonds in the 2000s when the fixed yield part of the return was 3.6%? Though they obviously had their ups and downs, but right now if they held on they are sitting on a year of 10%+ yields.
I do wonder if differences in language governance models impact uptake. Being completely biased (having worked on the SML/NJ compiler a long while ago), I very badly want to see more adoption. There is definitely continuing activity with new (IFL award winning) LLVM backend work [1] and Manticore.
Unfortunately, for this particular type of bond, a Series I US Savings Bond, they can only be purchased through TreasuryDirect or by way of a tax refund. Since 2012, they are no longer sold through banks [1]. For regular Treasury Bills, Notes, and Bonds, buying through a broker is an option.
But separately, it is a miracle that the author didn't hit the physical identity verification path [2] when signing up for the TreasuryDirect account.
Where are you seeing real yield on TIPS? There is certainly that 0.125% positive fixed coupon rate subject to that principal inflation adjustment. Looking at https://www.treasurydirect.gov/instit/annceresult/annceresul... TIPS tab, all the recent auctions had a high yield of < 0% with the exception of the 30-year TIPS on 02/28/2022 at a high yield of 0.195%. Secondary market does seem to show some deals on 20+ years with some getting close to 0.50%. TIPSWatch [1] runs the numbers on I Series and TIPS. TIPS yields are improving but I'm not sure it has quite changed the balance yet. Of course, especially in tax deferred/exempt accounts, TIPS have that great attractiveness of principal adjustment (depending on one's inflation view versus nominals) and no annual limits so the time will probably arrive soon enough.