By: Dr K C Gupta, YBB Personal Finance

CONTRARIAN INDICATORS

AAII Bull-Bear Spread -2.4% (below average)
CNN Fear & Greed Index 43 (fear-low)
NYSE %Above 50-dMA 68.22% (positive)
SP500 %Above 50-dMA 66.00% (positive)

ICI Fund Allocations (Cumulative), 12/31/25
OEFs & ETFs: Stocks 61.36%, Hybrids 4.01%, Bonds 17.32%, M-Mkt 17.31%

INTEREST RATES

CME FedWatch
Cycle peak 5.25-5.50%
Current 3.50-3.75%
FOMC 3/18/26+ hold
FOMC 4/29/26+ hold

Treasury

T-Bills 3-mo yield 3.69%, 1-yr 3.51%; T-Notes 2-yr 3.48%, 5-yr 3.65%, 10-yr 4.08%; T-Bonds 30-yr 4.72%;
TIPS/Real yields 5-yr 1.22%, 10-yr 1.80%, 30-yr 2.48%
FRNs Index 3.633%

Bank Rates
www.depositaccounts.com/


Stable-Value (SV) Rates, 2/1/26
TIAA Traditional Annuity (Accumulation) Rates
Restricted RC 5.00%, RA 4.75%
Flexible RCP 4.25%, SRA 4.00%, IRA-101110+ 3.50%
TSP G Fund 4.25% (previous 4.250%)

India Fear & Greed MMI 43.04 (fear)
Weekly ETFs: INDA +1.00%, INDY +1.11%, EPI +1.56%, INDH +1.41%, SPY +1.13%

The data above are as of Sunday preceding the publication date.

ECONOMY. US Supreme Court rejected tariffs imposed under emergency powers.

IT/TECH

India AI Impact Summit, February 16-20, 2026, was attended by several global leaders (Abu Dhabi, Brazil, Finland, France, Spain, etc), company executives (US: Accenture, Adobe, Amazon, Anthropic, Cloudfare, Google, IBM, Meta, Micron, Microsoft, Nvidia, OpenAI, Palo Alto Networks, Qualcomm, Salesforce, ServiceNow, Synopsys, etc) & academics (US: Arizona State, Carnegie Mellon, Cornell, MIT, Rutgers, Stanford, UC-Berkeley, UW-Madison, etc). Previous AI Summits were in UK (11/2023), S Korea (05/2024), France (02/2025).

Several heads of states also multitasked & finalized other deals. Adani-Embraer deal for aerospace & defense collaborations was finalized during Brazilian President Lula’s visit, February 18-22, 2026. French Rafale fighter jets deal was finalized during French President Macron’ visit, February 17-19, 2026. French Safran will start a jet engine assembly plant in India.

Indian global AI datacenter initiatives include 20-yr tax holiday & flat 15% transfer-pricing for internal services between foreign parents & their Indian subsidiaries.

US private-equity/credit firm Blackstone (with majority stake) & others are backing back Indian AI infrastructure company Neysa (cofounder Sharad Sanghi). Other equity investors include Teachers’ Venture Growth, TVS Capital, 360 One Asset, & Nexus Venture Partners.

SPECIAL TOPIC

WHAT TO DO IF YOU HAVE BAD 401K/403B PLAN?

Typically, large 401k/403b plans are good. The employers may have special committees that monitor plan options & performances & can request plan changes. If you notice problems with your plans, or have suggestions for plan menus, contact your HR.

401k are offered by corporations & have stricter rules. 403b are offered by universities, school districts & nonprofits, are older & have less strict rules. There may also be 457 & some plans may allow doubling up those with 401k/403b.

Plans can be dedicated/ closed-architecture, single-firm plans with firms’ in-house funds, or flexible/ open-architecture plans that include funds from multiple firms. In the latter case, the plan firm may only be a recordkeeper & total plan fees may include (i) overall plan fees, (ii) administration & recordkeeping fees, & (iii) fees from underlying funds. Some plans may offer regular listed funds with retirement classes, or customized plan funds that may be just the listed funds or their clones with different fee structures. If multi-employer plan aggregators are used, that introduces another layer of fees.

All these fees add up for smaller plans. Unfortunately, there are bad or conflicted 401k/403b players & plans. Their menu options may be limited to high expense (ER) funds. These plans tend to be offered by smaller companies & nonprofits, or school districts that don’t want to get involved or act as plan fiduciaries. One problem is that some bad players may make secret deals with employers to kickback/ share some fees, but all employees suffer.

Many 401k plans have employer matches that may be up to some % of salary contributions, 403b rarely do so.

401k/403b allow much higher annual contributions than IRAs & those have further restrictions for Traditional IRAs (TIRAs) & Roth IRAs (RIRAs). Lost/ foregone 401k/403b contributions are gone forever, although there are limited catchups later.

But when faced with bad 401k/403b, you can follow the following strategy: (i) contribute to 401k/403b up to employers’ match, (ii) contribute to TIRA or RIRA, (iii) make additional contributions to 401k/403b, & (iv) use low-cost annuities. You hope that the plan will get better, or you will find another job with better 401k/403b. On job changes, you can rollover 401k/403b into IRAs, or into your new plan. Some think that they can just have taxable investment accounts instead, but then don’t have the discipline of regular monthly retirement contributions that cannot be tapped without penalty until 59.5.

For more information, see https://ybbpersonalfinance.proboards.com/