Tag: difficult

Categories
Health

Tough to mandate Covid vaccines to fly in U.S.

Difficult to mandate Covid vaccines to fly in U.S.

Ed Bastian, Delta Air Lines CEO, told CNBC on Tuesday the airline did not plan to require Covid vaccines for domestic travel.

“It’s very difficult for us to get a vaccine that isn’t even federally approved. The approval is not yet final, so stay tuned, “said Bastian on” Squawk Box “.

“We continue to encourage our own people and our customers to get vaccinated as much as possible. The number of vaccinations is increasing, ”he said.

More and more employees and customers have recently received their Covid vaccinations as the Delta variant, first discovered in India, became the dominant variety in the US, Bastian said.

He added that 73% of the airline’s staff are fully vaccinated.

Many companies are discussing whether they should implement vaccination regulations or just motivate more employees and customers to vaccinate. The discussion has intensified as the more contagious Delta variant continues to infect largely unvaccinated areas of the United States, causing the seven-day average daily case number to recently surpass the peak of last summer.

However, Bastian said that Delta’s flights were more than 90% booked over the weekend as people “learn to deal and live with the coronavirus pandemic”. He said the airline carries millions of people every week, the vast majority of whom are vaccinated and fully masked.

The Transportation Security Administration extended a state mask mandate for air, rail and bus travel to mid-September in the spring, a measure that is expected to be extended unless infection rates drop sharply.

The travel industry was particularly hard hit by the pandemic, with travel restrictions to curb the spread of the virus having a strong impact on demand and bookings. Domestic airlines lost more than $ 35 billion last year.

Since January, the US government has required travelers, including citizens, to provide evidence of a recent negative Covid test before entering the US. Some nations require proof of vaccination to enter the country or avoid quarantine.

“I assume that with the further opening of these borders you will see more and more of these requirements. Here in the USA I do not consider that to be necessary,” said Bastian.

Delta and United Airlines also require proof of vaccination for new hires. Delta, United, and American Airlines have offered vaccinated employees additional time off or pay, and are joining large employers like Walmart who have taken similar steps.

Ted Christie, CEO of Spirit Airlines, told CNBC that the airline is urging all passengers and employees to get Covid vaccinations and use face covers, even though the budget airline has no plans to implement vaccine requirements.

Back in January, United CEO Scott Kirby said the airline was considering a Covid vaccine mandate for the company’s entire workforce. The airline has not yet made the vaccine mandatory for all employees.

Two of the three Covid vaccines currently on sale in the US, two shots from Pfizer and Moderna, were cleared for emergency use by the US Food and Drug Administration in late December. These two companies have applied for full approval. Johnson & Johnson’s one-off Covid vaccine received emergency approval in February, but J&J has not yet applied for full approval.

– CNBC’s Leslie Josephs contributed to this report.

Categories
Health

Testing Britney Spears: Restoring Rights Can Be Uncommon and Tough

Testing Britney Spears: Restoring Rights Can Be Rare and Difficult

Her voice quaking with anger and despair, the pop star Britney Spears has asked repeatedly in court to be freed from the conservatorship that has controlled her money and personal life for 13 years. What’s more, she asked the judge to sever the arrangement without making her undergo a psychological evaluation.

It’s a demand that legal experts say is unlikely to be granted. The mental health assessment is usually the pole star in a constellation of evidence that a judge considers in deciding whether to restore independence.

Its underlying purpose is to determine whether the conditions that led to the imposition of the conservatorship have stabilized or been resolved.

The evaluation process, which uneasily melds mental health criteria with legal standards, illustrates why the exit from strict oversight is difficult and rare. State laws are often ambiguous. And their application can vary from county to county, judge to judge, case to case.

Yes and no. A judge looks for what, in law, is called “capacity.” The term generally refers to benchmarks in a person’s functional and cognitive ability as well as their vulnerability to harm or coercion.

Under California law, which governs Ms. Spears’s case, a person deemed to have capacity can articulate risks and benefits in making decisions about medical care, wills, marriage and contracts (such as hiring a lawyer), and can feed, clothe and shelter themselves.

Annette Swain, a Los Angeles psychologist who does neuropsychological assessments, said that because someone doesn’t always show good judgment, it doesn’t mean they lack capacity. “We all can make bad decisions at many points in our lives,” she said. “But that doesn’t mean that we should have our rights taken away.”

Even so, Ms. Spears’s professional and financial successes do not directly speak to whether she has regained “legal mental capacity,” which she was found to lack in 2008, after a series of public breakdowns, breathlessly captured by the media. At that time, a judge ruled that Ms. Spears, who did not appear in court, was so fragile that a conservatorship was warranted.

Judges authorize conservatorships usually for one of three broad categories: a severe psychiatric breakdown; a chronic, worsening condition like dementia; or an intellectual or physical disability that critically impairs function.

Markers indicating a person has regained capacity appear to set a low bar. But in practice, the bar can be quite high.

“‘Restored to capacity’ before the psychotic break? Or the age the person is now? That expression is fraught with importing value judgment,” said Robert Dinerstein, a disability rights law professor at American University.

Records detailing grounds for the petition from Ms. Spears’s father, Jamie Spears, to become his daughter’s conservator are sealed. A few factors suggest the judge at the outset regarded the situation as serious. She appointed conservators to oversee Ms. Spears’s personal life as well as finances. She also ruled that Ms. Spears could not hire her own lawyer, though a lawyer the singer consulted at the time said he thought she was capable of that.

Earlier this month, Los Angeles Superior Court Judge Brenda Penny said Ms. Spears could retain her own counsel.

Yes. Some states, like California, detail basic functional abilities. Others do not. Colorado acknowledges modern advances like “appropriate and reasonably available technological assistance.” Illinois looks for “mental deterioration, physical incapacity, mental illness, developmental disability, gambling, idleness, debauchery, excessive use of intoxicants or drugs.”

Sally Hurme of the National Guardianship Association noted: “You could be found to be incapacitated in one state but not in another.”

Ideally, a forensic psychiatrist or a psychologist with expertise in neuropsychological assessments. But some states just specify “physician.” Psychiatrists tend to place greater weight on diagnoses; psychologists emphasize tests that measure cognitive abilities. Each reviews medical records and interviews family, friends and others.

Assessments can extend over several days. They range widely in depth and duration.

Eric Freitag, who conducts neuropsychological assessments in the Bay Area, said he prefers interviewing people at home where they are often more at ease, and where he can evaluate the environment. He asks about financial literacy: bill-paying, health insurance, even counting out change.

Assessing safety is key. Dr. Freitag will ask what the person would do if a fire broke out. “I’d call my daughter,” one of his subjects replied.

Ms. Spears has not been able to choose her evaluators in the past because the conservator has the power to make those decisions. However, if she moves to dissolve the conservatorship, she can select the evaluator, to help build her case. If the conservator, her father, opposes her petition and objects to her selection, he could nominate a candidate to perform an additional assessment. Ms. Spears would likely pick up both tabs as costs of the conservatorship.

To avoid a bitter battle of experts and the appearance that an assessor hired by either camp would be inherently biased — plus the strain of two evaluations on Ms. Spears — the judge could try to get both sides to agree to an independent, court-appointed doctor.

Many states explicitly say that a diagnosis of a severe mental health disorder is not, on its own, evidence that a person should remain in conservatorship.

Stuart Zimring, an attorney in Los Angeles County who specializes in elderlaw and special needs trusts, noted that he once represented a physician with schizophrenia and bipolar disorder who was under a conservatorship. The doctor’s rights were eventually restored after he proved he was attending counseling sessions and taking medication.

“It was a joyous day when the conservatorship was terminated,” said Mr. Zimring. “He got to practice medicine again, under supervision.”

The association between the diagnosis of a severe mental disorder and a determination of incapacity troubles Dr. Swain, the Los Angeles psychologist.

“Whatever they ended up diagnosing Britney Spears with, was it of such severity that she did not understand the decisions that she had to make, that she could not provide adequate self-care?” she asked. “Where do you draw that line? It’s a moving target.”

No, but judges usually do.

In most states, when a judge approves a conservatorship, which constrains a person’s autonomy, the evidence has to be “clear and convincing,” a rigorous standard just below the standard of “beyond a reasonable doubt.”

But when a conservatee wants those rights restored, many experts believe the standard should be more lenient.

Some states indeed apply a lower standard to end a conservatorship. In California, a judge can do so by finding it is more likely than not (“preponderance of evidence”) that the conservatee has capacity. But some states say that the evidence to earn a ticket out still has to be “clear and convincing.”

Most states do not even set a standard.

“There’s an underlying assumption that if you can get the process right, everything would be fine and we wouldn’t be depriving people of rights,” said Jennifer Mathis, deputy legal director of the Bazelon Center for Mental Health Law. “Our take is that the process is fundamentally broken and that we shouldn’t be using guardianship in so many cases.”

Yes and no. “Judges are haunted by people they have had in front of them who have been released and disaster happens,” said Victoria Haneman, a trusts and estates law professor at Creighton University. “So they take a conservative approach to freedom.”

Describing the Kafkaesque conundrum of conservatorship, Zoe Brennan-Krohn, a disabilities rights lawyer with the American Civil Liberties Union, said: “If she’s doing great, the system is working and should continue. If she is making choices others disagree with, then she’s unreliable and she needs the system.”

Or, as Kristin Booth Glen, a former New York State judge who oversaw such cases and now works to reform the system, put it, “Conservatorship and guardianship are like roach motels: you can check in but you can’t check out.”

At times. Judge Glen once approved the termination of a guardianship of a young woman originally deemed to have the mental acuity of a 7-year-old. After three years of thoughtful interventions, the woman, since married and raising two children, had become able to participate fully in her life. She relied on a team for “supported decision making,” which Judge Glen called “a less restrictive alternate to the Draconian loss of liberty” of guardianship.

A supported decision-making approach has been hailed by the Uniform Law Commission, which drafts model statutes. It has said judges should seek “the least restrictive alternative” to conservatorship.

To date, only Washington and Maine have fully adopted the commission’s recommended model.

Samantha Stark contributed reporting.

Categories
Business

Pandemic booms and busts will make outcomes troublesome to gauge

Pandemic booms and busts will make results difficult to gauge

A shopper walks past shelves in a paper product aisle of a store in Burbank, California on November 19, 2020.

Robyn Beck | AFP | Getty Images

In a typical profitable season, the rules of the game for investors can be relatively simple: rising profits and strong year-on-year sales growth signal success.

This formula won’t work in the quarters to come.

Some companies, including Walmart and Dollar General, have started making challenging year-over-year comparisons. That means sales growth and ecommerce gains can look disappointing compared to the rising numbers during the height of the pandemic. Others, like clothing retailers like Macy’s and Kohl’s, major airlines like Delta Air Lines, and hotel chains like Wyndham, are facing growth that will look stunning compared to a time when malls were closed and nearing the bottom.

Due to the pandemic, investors will again be navigating in uncharted waters. You need to work out the importance of companies’ quarterly performance, as the way people lived, worked and spent a year ago skewed the numbers. And they need to filter out factors that reflect unusual times rather than sustained demand, such as shopping sprees fueled by stimulus checks and a reopening economy.

“Welcome to the upside-down world,” said Jharonne Martis, director of consumer research at Refinitiv. “We’ve never had a comparable time. What’s good doesn’t mean it’s good. And what’s negative could actually mean they are.” [the companies] well done.”

Customers shop in the meat department of the Kroger Marketplace in Versailles, Kentucky, USA on Tuesday, November 24th, 2020.

Scotty Perry | Bloomberg | Getty Images

Different approaches

Investors are excited to see how companies do on the rebound. The question is: compared to what?

Some pandemic beneficiaries like Dollar General and Kroger share a new metric: a two-year stack that ties comparable sales for the past year and this year. Comparable sales, also known as sales in the same store, are an industry term that measures year-on-year growth, with the exception of locations that are newly opened or renovated.

Dollar General, for example, saw above-average sales growth in the same store during the pandemic, but expects some of that to fade as consumers become more free to spend their dollars. For example, some shoppers went into stores and refilled larger baskets because they were stopping for safety reasons or because the competitors were temporarily closed.

CFO John Garratt said during a profit call that the discounter expects sales in the same store to decline 4% to 6% year over year. In two years, however, the same performance looks better: Dollar General expects sales in the same store to grow by around 10% to 12% over two years.

The airlines took a different approach and, depending on the data point, provided a mix of 2019 and 2020 comparisons in the results reports. Delta Air Lines attributed its approach to “the drastic and unprecedented impact of the pandemic”.

“Comparing our results from 2021 to 2019 will provide an understanding of the full impact of the COVID-19 pandemic and the progress of our recovery,” the airline said.

The pandemic ravaged the travel industry perhaps more than any other, and US airlines combined lost more than $ 35 billion in 2020. The number of passengers dropped more than 60% to about 370 million people, the lowest number since 1984, and the airlines reduced flight operations In Response.

Demand for air travel has rebounded from the depths of the pandemic as more people are vaccinated, governments lift travel restrictions and open more tourist attractions, but it is still far from pre-pandemic levels as people continue to be largely on business and long haul forego international travel.

The Transportation Security Administration examined an average of 1.4 million people from April through Wednesday. That’s more than 13 times the 103,000 people screened a year ago when the US first closed, but it’s a 35% decrease over the same period in 2019.

Savanthi Syth, an airline analyst at Raymond James, said she’s comparing results and projections with 2019 but will use year-on-year comparisons next year. In a research report, she said comparing this year to 2019 “gives you an idea of ​​how 2021 compares to” normal “”.

Coca-Cola and CarMax have also compared their numbers with pre-pandemic numbers. Coke, in its call for a profit this week, stressed that global case volume fell back to 2019 levels in March, although aggregate demand in the first quarter was still below pre-health crisis levels as Europe and North America rebounded.

Bill Nash‌‍, CEO of CarMax, said the used car dealer’s “very volatile year” reflected government restrictions, not consumer demand. Because of this, on a earnings call earlier this month, he said 2019 was a better reference point.

For example, he said, CarMax’s California locations lagged significantly behind the rest of the company as the state’s demand for lower occupancy restricted customer pedestrian traffic – and ultimately revenue.

“Smooth”

When companies excavated from the global financial crisis in 2010, there were unusually high growth rates, said John Butters, senior earnings analyst at FactSet. Just like then, investors need to “keep the growth rate in context”.

“The result is improving, but you are comparing it to a very weak base and so some of those numbers are much larger than we normally see,” he said.

After the pandemic, however, there will be different groups: companies that are booming from extremely weak sales and companies that have slowed or worsened sales growth as the pandemic tailwind wears off, and possibly a third group: companies that have the Maintain momentum.

Martis from Refinitiv pointed out two examples that capture this “wrong” dynamic. Delta’s revenue growth rate is expected to more than quadruple year over year in the second quarter of fiscal year, according to Refinitiv. However, estimated revenue for the quarter is $ 6.22 billion – less than half of the $ 12.54 billion reported in the same quarter of 2019 before the pandemic.

On the other hand, Walmart’s revenue growth rate is expected to decline 2.2% year over year in the first quarter of fiscal year – a decline that usually indicates weakness and is cause for concern. However, the estimated revenue of $ 131.66 billion is likely to be higher than the pre-pandemic revenue of $ 123.93 billion in the same quarter of 2019.

Even so, Refinitiv doesn’t plan to use two-year stacks, Martis said.

“It masks the dramatic changes we see in percentage changes. It smooths them out,” she said. “But it really doesn’t compare to the old days.”

Martis and Butters both said their financial data firms would instead try to explain what the numbers mean – and how to jump or drop off sharply with a grain of salt.

She said she saw 2021 as a year of transition. She anticipates consumption patterns to evolve rather than snap back as people gradually start receiving vaccines, becoming comfortable in changing rooms again, or realizing the need to buy new pairs of shoes or work clothes. It could be early next year for companies and investors to see more predictable patterns, she said.

“2021 is almost like pressing a reset button,” she said.

“Your worst enemy”

For many, the worst pandemic comparisons won’t begin until the second quarter, said Matt Miskin, co-chief investment strategist at John Hancock Investment Management. Only a week or two of home behavior were recorded in the first calendar quarter.

First, he said, the comparisons will make some companies that have seen a sharp downtrend during the pandemic look good – only to potentially bite them when spending patterns turn into some sort of normal. For home based businesses, this will come first. It could kick in again for those experiencing a shopping spree in 2021 that will cool off in 2022.

“The comps will go from your best friend to your worst enemy,” he said.

Other data points will also be meaningful, said Martis of Refinitiv. Among them, she said, is e-commerce growth. She will see retailers cling to recent profits. She said she’ll also watch companies’ margins to see how much money everyone can make. This will show whether discounts were needed to move goods and whether retailers learned to juggle brick and mortar and online stores efficiently.

Forecasts are back

Butters of FactSet said it would help if many companies returned to forecasting – something that was largely discontinued last year. The analysts’ guidelines and estimates provide helpful benchmarks, and it remains a positive sign if companies can outperform these benchmarks.

Even more than in the past, assessing a company’s strengths or weaknesses will be “a very company-specific task,” said Zack Fadem, senior equity analyst at Wells Fargo. The background for the industry is different, he said. Some companies are in hot sectors – like home improvement retailers – who will continue to benefit from the real estate market even as the pandemic-induced “nesting” subsides. For these, he said, the “wall of concern” could be postponed until next year for comparable numbers.

Also, consumer spending could rise across the board if Americans put money they put in savings or received from the government. He said if the overall pie is growing, it’s important to compare a company to its competitors and see if its market share grows or shrinks.

“With the benefits of incentives and heavy consumers, you have to comb through other sounds to see if business has gotten better or worse,” he said.

– CNBC’s Leslie Josephs contributed to this story. Nate Rattner contributed to the data visualization.

Categories
Health

Tiger Woods’ accidents are ‘harder to heal,’ says surgeon

Tiger Woods' injuries are ‘more difficult to heal,’ says surgeon

The orthopedist Dr. Scott Boden has broken down the extent of Tiger Woods’ injuries and his recovery in CNBC’s “The News with Shepard Smith” after the golfer’s devastating crash on Tuesday morning.

“We know it’s an open fracture, which means that the bone has at least temporarily entered the skin and broken in multiple places. This was a very high-energy fracture that makes it a little more difficult.” to heal, “said the professor of orthopedic surgery at Emory University School of Medicine.

Los Angeles County Sheriff Alex Villanueva said Woods was fortunate to be alive after crashing his sport utility vehicle on a steep, winding road in Palos Verdes, south of Los Angeles.

Tiger Woods is “awake, responsive, and recovering” from lengthy surgery to repair what a doctor calls a “major injury” to his right leg. This emerges from a statement posted on his official Twitter account on Wednesday at 12:30 p.m. (CET). It is the 10th operation for the 45 year old golfer.

Dr. Anish Mahajan, chief medical officer at Harbor-UCLA Medical Center, said Woods suffered “comminuted open fractures” in the upper and lower portions of his right leg. To stabilize Wood’s leg, doctors had to insert a rod, screws, and pins into his foot and ankle.

Boden told host Shepard Smith that the additional information about the golfer’s ankle and foot injuries says a lot about recovery time.

“If these injuries affect the smooth articular surface of the bones on which they move in the ankle or foot, it could be a problem in long-term recovery and arthritis and restore full range of motion,” Boden said in a Wednesday evening interview.

Boden also noted that “there is a risk of infection” but that we do not know the size of the skin opening so “we cannot be sure about it”. He added that while the rebound will be tenacious, “it is never advisable to count tigers when it comes to making a comeback.”

Categories
Health

Will Tiger Woods Play Golf Once more? Medical doctors Predict a Troublesome Restoration

Will Tiger Woods Play Golf Again? Doctors Predict a Difficult Recovery

The severe lower leg injuries Tiger Woods sustained in a car accident on Tuesday usually lead to a long and dangerous recovery that, according to medical experts who have treated similar injuries, calls into question his ability to return to professional golf.

Athletes with severe leg injuries believed to ruin their careers have returned – quarterback Alex Smith returned to play football after a cruel broken leg last season, and golfer Ben Hogan returned after a car accident decades ago .

But Woods’ injuries are more extensive and his path to recovery is littered with serious obstacles. Infection, inadequate bone healing, and in Woods’ case, previous injuries and chronic back problems can make months or even years of recovery even more difficult and reduce the chances of him playing again.

In the accident near Los Angeles, Woods’ right lower leg was bruised, his right foot was badly injured, and his leg muscles became so swollen that surgeons had to cut open the tissue covering them to relieve the pressure, Dr. Anish Mahajan, the chief physician at Harbor-UCLA Medical Center where Woods, 45, was treated, wrote in a Twitter message on Wood’s account.

Doctors also inserted a bar into Wood’s shin and screws and pins into his foot and ankle. Doctors familiar with these types of injuries described the complications that they typically pose.

The injuries are common among drivers involved in car accidents, said Dr. R. Malcolm Smith, chief of orthopedic trauma at Massachusetts General Hospital in Boston. Usually they happen when the driver desperately hits the brakes while a car is spiraling out of control.

When the front end of the car is smashed, immense force is transferred to the driver’s right leg and right foot. “This happens every day with car accidents in this country,” said Dr. Smith.

Such lower leg fractures occasionally bring “massive disabilities” and other serious consequences, said Dr. Smith. “A very rough estimate is that there is a 70 percent chance that it will heal completely,” he added.

The crash caused a cascade of injuries. It shattered Woods’ tibia with primary fractures in the upper and lower portions of the bones and a scattering of bone fragments. When the bones in Wood’s shin burst, they damaged muscles and tendons; Pieces protruded from his skin.

The trauma caused bleeding and swelling in his leg and threatened his muscles. Surgeons had to quickly cut into the thick layer of tissue covering his leg muscles to relieve the swelling. If it hadn’t been for them, the tissue covering the swelling muscle would have acted like a tourniquet, restricting blood flow. The muscle can die within four to six hours.

It is possible that a muscle may have died between the accident and the operation anyway. Dr. Smith said, “Once you’ve lost it, you can’t get it back.”

Patients who are used this procedure must be hospitalized until the muscle swelling subsides. This can take a week or more. Sometimes, even after a few weeks, the swelling has not gone down enough to close the wound, requiring surgeons to transplant skin over the opening.

Dr. Kyle Eberlin, a reconstructive surgeon at Massachusetts General Hospital, said doctors often need to transplant skin from the thigh or back to plug the holes where bones protrude from the skin. This is known as a free flap. They cut pieces of skin the size of a football and carefully use a microscope to connect tiny blood vessels about a millimeter in diameter from the skin graft to the blood vessels near the wounds.

Infection is a risk with fractures that break through the skin and insert chopsticks and pens into the bones after surgery, with an amputation in the worst case, said Dr. Smith. The likelihood of infection depends on the level of contamination and the size of the wound.

In car accidents, gravel and sometimes dirt can get into wounds and increase the chances of infection, said Dr. Eberlin.

Opening the muscle shell can increase the risk of infection, said Dr. Reza Firoozabadi, an orthopedic trauma surgeon at Harborview Medical Center in Seattle.

In large trauma centers like Massachusetts General or UCLA, the free flap procedures are performed within 48 hours. However, it is more typical to operate within a week of the injury, said Dr. Eberlin.

Rehabilitation will be long and arduous. If Woods needed a free valve – which trauma surgeons say is likely – “it will be months and months before he can put weight back on his leg,” said Dr. Eberlin.

Woods also risks fractures that do not heal or grow together very slowly, said Dr. Firoozabadi. “To heal things, you need good blood circulation,” he said. “With such an injury, the blood flow is disturbed.”

As a result, Wood’s lower leg bones could take five to 14 months to grow together, provided they do so at all.

The biggest hurdle will be his foot and ankle injuries, said Dr. Firoozabadi and others. Restoring mobility and strength can take three months to a year. Depending on the extent of these injuries, Woods can barely walk even after rehabilitation.

His rehabilitation can be made more difficult by a back operation in December. Woods also went to rehab for an addiction to pain medication; Managing pain while he is recovering can now be difficult.

Still, some athletes have returned from serious injuries. Smith, the Washington Football Team quarterback, had a similar leg injury and returned to play in October. But it took two years and 17 operations, and along the way he developed infection of the wounds and sepsis, a life-threatening condition. And Smith had no injuries to his foot or ankle.

Golfer Ben Hogan broke his collarbone, pelvis, left ankle, and a rib. The injuries were severe but not comparable to Woods’ injuries.

With his foot and ankle injuries and severe injuries to his leg, “Woods may never play golf again,” said Dr. Smith.

Categories
Business

Equities prone to develop, however discovering yield stays troublesome

Equities likely to grow, but finding yield remains difficult

krisanapong detraphiphat | Moment | Getty Images

The 2020 lows were a big contributor to a stock market that had a banner year after the March pandemic hit.

Low interest rates also annoyed investors seeking returns on bond purchases to diversify portfolios and reduce risk. While bond yields are likely to remain meager in 2021, much higher yields are available on alternative fixed income investments that individual investors typically overlook.

Many sectors of the market are poised to resume the growth fueled by the Fed’s rate cut last spring – a move whose effectiveness should not have been surprising given its track record. Conditions pointing to stock growth in 2021 include low interest rates, continuation of the Fed’s bond-buying program at current levels and the expected economic recovery related to coronavirus vaccinations. The introduction of vaccines appears to have been a factor in a partial rotation that showed signs of a start last summer, from some growth technology companies to value stocks, including industrials.

Among those industrials are infrastructure stocks that can benefit if Congress passes an infrastructure bill.

More from Advisor Insight:
As financial advisors say to use your $ 600 stimulus check
Here’s who is likely to be eligible for a second stimulus check
Covid Relief Bill adds PPP tax relief that Treasury has spoken out against

Infrastructure legislation has been discussed for years, but could actually happen in 2021.

President-elect Joe Biden’s campaign included a $ 2 trillion infrastructure agenda, and some congressmen are now using the “i-word” because the deteriorating condition of the country’s roads and bridges is now critical. According to the American Road & Transportation Builders Association, Americans crossed structurally defective bridges 174 million times a day in 2018 alone – and little has been done to improve them since then.

Even if Congress fails to act, infrastructure inventories are already being boosted by rising spending on private infrastructure – ports, renewables, and communications equipment – which set a North American record of $ 226.5 billion in 2019, up from an all-time high in 2020.

Infrastructure companies are already benefiting. In the seven weeks between November 4 (the day after the election) and December 22, the Indxx US Infrastructure Development Index rose 8.04% – about 1 percentage point more than the S&P 500.

A new freeway under construction in Birmingham, Alabama.

Dan Reynolds Photography | Moment | Getty Images

Today, infrastructure also refers to IT / tech infrastructure, which also includes semiconductors. While growth in big tech stocks has recently flattened, the MVIS US Listed Semiconductor 25 Index rose 20.5% over the same seven-week period. Semiconductor companies, whose merchandise ranges from internet-connected fridges to electric cars, are deployed in data centers to handle the growing internet traffic caused by the 5G data tsunami.

Investors, who are likely to get good stock returns in 2021, will continue to be dismayed by the scarce returns on corporate and government bonds as they attempt to diversify their portfolios with uncorrelated investments to reduce risk.

However, they may be able to solve this problem with alternative forms of bonds and bond-like investments which, while currently advantageous, are likely to be under your radar. These include:

• Taxable municipal bond funds. Due to the Tax Cut and Employment Act of 2017, state and local governments and agencies are refinancing tax-free Muni bonds with taxable bonds – a scratch for some as Muni bonds are synonymous with “tax-free”.

To attract investors, some issuers pay substantial returns, resulting in fund returns of 5% to 6%. For many investors, this translates into an after-tax return of around 3.5%, compared to 2% on many tax-free Muni bonds or the taxable returns of 2% to 3% on high-quality corporate bonds. The interest rate risk of taxable munis is roughly the same as that of tax-free issues.

Some investors may be concerned about the solvency of issuers due to financial problems related to pandemics, but the federal government has a long history of bailing out local governments in dire straits.

• floating rate preference equity funds (also known as floating rate funds). As a kind of bond-stock hybrid, preferred stocks can serve as a viable, higher-paying alternative to bonds, but with less volatility than common stocks. With floating rate preferred stock funds, investors can get some protection against rising interest rates – an effective selling point, as interest rates can only go up. The current dividend yields of the funds range between 4% and 5%.

More recently, some companies have begun offering fixed to floating rate preferred stocks that offer a fixed rate of return for a specific term and then are floating at the applicable interest rates. Some newer issues have fixed rates of up to 4% which are later converted into floating rates tied to the London Interbank Offered Rate or 10 year government bonds. However, a different benchmark can be used for future issues.

As always, the devil is in the details: the length of the fixed term, the range of variability and the behavior of the reference interest rate. Active management is important in all preferred stock investments as managers can avoid the negative return problems inherent in the indices.

• Bank loans or senior loan funds. Investors with a little more risk tolerance might be interested in these fixed income funds that buy commercial loans. While borrowers may have sub-investment grade loans, this risk is offset by the loans’ senior debt status, which means that the fund holdings pay out ahead of other forms of debt and shareholders.

Some of these mutual funds pay more than 6% annually but may have redemption restrictions. Exchange traded funds in this category are less complicated, of course, but they pay less – around 4%. Again, active management helps as managers can avoid bad loans in indices.

Using these unconventional solutions may require some study, but individual investors learning their dynamics can achieve significantly higher returns than traditional fixed income vehicles while still having sufficient levels of comfort.