One More Risk for Your Portfolio: Financial Fraud

MIKE TOWNSEND: It feels like not a day goes by where I don't get a few text messages and e-mails that seem like they might be legitimate but are always just a bit off. I got one this week that insists I have an unpaid speeding ticket and that my license is going to be suspended if I don't click on this link to pay what I owe.

Every few days, I get a text message that says I did not pay a toll on one of the many express lanes around Washington, D.C., but if I just click here, I can take care of that. I can't tell you how many packages I must have piled up in some mysterious warehouse, just waiting for a payment so that they can be released to me. Or how many messages I get telling me about a new investment opportunity that's only being sent to me because I am such a sophisticated investor. That's definitely the point when I know it's a scam—anyone calling me a sophisticated investor clearly doesn't know who they are dealing with.

All of these are examples of the ubiquitous efforts by scammers to get access to my money. I'm sure these and other scams are familiar to everyone listening. And while it can be easy to dismiss this as something you would never fall for, the reality is that hundreds of thousands of people are victims of these kinds of schemes every year.

And each year the fraudsters get more sophisticated. It's not surprising that artificial intelligence  (AI) is increasingly being used in these scams. And that can make it even harder to recognize that something is a scam. While you may feel like this is never going to happen to you, it makes sense to spend a little time hearing about the latest developments in the never-ending effort to combat financial fraud and be reminded of what all of us should do to help ensure that we don't become a victim of the latest financial fraud techniques.

Welcome to WashingtonWise, a podcast for investors from Charles Schwab. I'm your host, Mike Townsend, and on this show, our goal is to cut through the noise and confusion of the nation's capital and help investors figure out what's really worth paying attention to.   

Coming up in just a few minutes, I am going to chat with DJ Johnson, the managing director of financial crimes risk management here at Charles Schwab. We have a great discussion about how financial fraud is continuing to evolve, how AI is becoming a big driver of fraud schemes, and how all of us can better protect ourselves with some common-sense strategies. 

But first, here is what I'm watching in Washington right now. Congress is back in session this week after the annual Memorial Day recess, and all eyes are now on the Senate as it moves toward considering the massive tax and spending bill that encompasses much of President Trump's domestic agenda. 

The House of Representatives passed the One Big Beautiful Bill Act—yes, that really is its actual name—on May 22, by the slimmest of margins, a vote of 215-214, with one member voting "present." Now it goes to the Senate, which is expected to spend the next couple of weeks working behind the scenes to make changes to accommodate the concerns of individual senators. The Senate is likely to begin formal consideration of the bill toward the end of the month, perhaps the week of June 23. Senate Majority Leader John Thune has said he wants to get the bill passed through the upper chamber before the July Fourth recess. Here are a couple of thoughts about what to expect. 

First, a quick reminder about what's in the bill that passed the House. On the tax side, it makes permanent all of the 2017 tax cuts that are set to expire at the end of 2025, most notably the lower individual income tax rates. It temporarily raises the standard deduction and the child tax credit. It increases the amount of assets that can be inherited without triggering the estate tax to $15 million beginning in 2026. It contains three of the president's campaign promises—no tax on tip income, no taxes on overtime hours, and it makes interest on car loans tax deductible. Those three provisions will apply to tax years 2025 through 2028, and each has various restrictions about who it applies to. The bill also includes a special $4,000 deduction for seniors over the age of 65 for the next four years. And it raises the cap on the state and local tax deduction from $10,000 to $40,000.

It also increases taxes on many college and university endowments, as well as private foundations. It repeals many of the green-energy tax credits passed in 2022 as part of the Inflation Reduction Act. And it contains major spending cuts to Medicaid and SNAP, better known as food stamps, and other programs. At the same time, it increases spending for defense and border security. And finally, the bill includes a $4 trillion increase in the debt ceiling, which should be enough to ensure the United States is not in danger of defaulting until sometime in 2027—when a new Congress will be in office.

The key thing to watch over the next few weeks is how much the Senate changes the bill. They will change the bill—there's no question about that. But how they change it and how much they change it matters a great deal. Because whenever the Senate passes this bill, it will have to go back to the House for another vote, since both chambers must pass exactly the same bill before it can be sent to the president for his signature. Since the House passed it by exactly one vote last month, it's a pretty fragile coalition holding it together in that chamber, and big changes by the Senate could fracture that coalition.

But that's an issue for another day—first the Senate has to pass their version. Senator Rand Paul, Republican of Kentucky, has already said he won't support the bill because of the massive hike in the debt ceiling. And Senator Ron Johnson, Republican of Wisconsin, says he won't support it because it doesn't cut spending enough. Republicans have a 53-47 majority in the Senate, so they can afford to lose as many as three of their members and still pass the bill. But there are internal struggles over the Medicaid cuts, aid to farmers, the green-energy tax provisions, the state and local tax deduction and more that will have to be sorted out in the next couple of weeks before the bill hits the Senate floor. It's a tricky task.

In the end, I think the Senate figures out a way forward and passes the bill before the self-imposed July 4 deadline. And maybe the House will take it up immediately and force a final vote before it breaks for the July Fourth holiday. But I would not be surprised if this took until the middle of July to get resolved.

Finally, just a brief mention of the latest back-and-forth on tariffs. Last week, a three-judge panel at the U.S. Court of International Trade ruled that the majority of the president's tariffs were unlawful and said that the across-the-board 10% tariff on all imports, the currently paused "reciprocal" tariffs, and some of the tariffs imposed on Canada, China, and Mexico would have to be terminated within 10 days. The administration appealed, and the next day the appeals court issued a temporary stop to that order while it hears more details about the appeal in the coming weeks. It's widely assumed that no matter what happens in the appeals court, the whole issue will ultimately end up before the Supreme Court later this summer. 

What all this means is that we aren't likely to have a definitive answer on which tariffs are on and which are off for many more weeks. This could be a bit of a setback for the White House in its trade talks with other countries because it might cool the interest from those countries in negotiating trade deals right now. They may want to wait to see how the appeals process plays out before cutting a deal. The 90-day pause on the reciprocal tariffs expires in early July, and it will be interesting to see how the White House handles that if there is no resolution from the courts by then. The bottom line is that it likely means more uncertainty for companies and for the U.S. economy as the courts hear the arguments and make their decisions. Clarity on tariffs isn't coming any time soon.

On my deeper dive today, I want to return to a topic that, unfortunately, never seems to go out of style. That's financial fraud. Scams targeting investors continue to proliferate, and they morph over time. It feels like the fraudsters are always a couple of steps ahead. By the time we've figured out how to combat one particular scam, three or four more new approaches have popped up. To get the latest intelligence on what scam artists are up to, how a company like Schwab is fighting to protect your finances, and what you can do to aid in that effort, I'm really pleased to welcome back to the podcast DJ Johnson, managing director of financial crimes risk management here at Charles Schwab. DJ oversees Schwab's fraud prevention efforts, as well as the firm's anti-money laundering, anti-bribery, and cybercrime teams. DJ has been with Schwab for eight years, and prior to that was with the FBI for 25 years. So he has incredible experience in how cybercrimes and financial crimes have evolved. DJ, welcome back to WashingtonWise. 

DJ JOHNSON: Great to be here, Mike. Thank you for having me back again. 

MIKE: Well, DJ, fraud has been with us forever, from insurance fraud to Ponzi schemes to selling property in the middle of a swamp. But once we hit the digital age, it seems that not only did the number of schemes proliferate, they also became quite sophisticated. Fraud is so pervasive that you can't pick up a magazine or check the news on your phone without seeing an article on fraud. The Social Security Administration and the IRS both put fraud warnings on their sites and on their correspondence. In April, the FBI's Internet Crimes Complaint Center, known as IC3, released its annual report on cybercrimes and cyber fraud, and found that investment fraud was the number one crime type, resulting in more than $6.5 billion in losses, and that number is likely a lot higher because of chronic under-reporting by victims of scams. In fact, a 2023 report by AARP about financial fraud exploiting seniors put the losses at more than $28 billion, and that was nearly two years ago. You were on the podcast back in 2023, and you shared a lot about what was at the forefront of financial fraud then. I'm guessing that many of those schemes are still out there, just bigger and badder.

DJ: And they are, Mike. Same likely threats. Some new trends that we'll talk about as we work our way through the conversation today. I like to go back to quote Stephen King when I think about fraud, right? And he said, "Sooner or later, everything old is new again." And what I mean when I say that is there are certain tactics and techniques that fraudsters have used for years, and continue to use, and will continue to use just because they're successful. 

For example, just to highlight a few, check fraud continues to be an issue for the financial services industry. Phishing schemes in that IC3 report that you alluded to, a little less than 200,000 complaints, $70 million in fraud losses. Compromised credentials or personal data breaches, 65,000 complaints, a little less than $1.5 billion in losses. Of course, the dark web continues to be a challenge for us. It is a playground for the bad guys. Nobody here is likely to be able to get there, but we know it's a space where the fraudsters go. They developed a business model. They're offering stolen data on the dark web. They've got discount pricing. They've got customer service. They've got product lists and sales events on the dark web. Visa fraud continues to be very profitable for the bad guys. And of course we continue to see many of the same scams that you alluded to, right? We see a lot of romance or relationship scams, government imposter scams, investment scams, technology scams, and cryptocurrency-related scams. So what is old is new again. 

MIKE: But fraudsters, of course, are really clever and seem to be constantly innovating new ways to separate us from our money. So what's new on the fraud landscape? 

DJ: Fraud is a nonstop enterprise, and despite what I just said about old is new again, fraudsters are continually innovating and utilizing more sophisticated tools and technologies to put a new spin on existing forms of fraud. 

I'll start with AI, artificial intelligence. We see the use of AI in a variety of different ways by the fraudsters. I'll highlight just a few here. Investment club scams, we see them using artificial intelligence to create text, as well as deep-fake audio and video to impersonate well-known finance personalities and fraudulent social media advertisements for purported investment clubs, right, and those are generally found on messaging applications. With regard to new account fraud and account takeovers, they're creating synthetic IDs, deepfake media, and malware to establish new accounts, fraudulent accounts, or take over customers' accounts to conduct financial crimes. I'll highlight imposter scams, creating websites that impersonate firms and associated persons to lure victims into investing funds with fraudulent entities. And we see this quite often with people pretending to be someone that they are not. And I'll highlight market manipulation as a final one here. Using AI-created images or deep-fake videos to spread false information on social media to move a company's stock price in a direction from which the bad actors can benefit as well. 

And we also see a lot of activity around voice impersonation. It's not that hard for the bad guys to record individuals' voices. In bank fraud, we see AI-generated voice clones impersonate bank representatives. Social media impersonations, which I just talked about, they're using AI to clone voices and impersonate loved ones or celebrities. With regard to business email compromise, voice cloning is used to impersonate someone in a professional setting, like a video recorded meeting. Tech support scams, we see the scammers using cloned voices to impersonate tech support representatives as well. So a variety of different ways that the bad guys are being able to capture voices and then leverage those to commit crimes. 

MIKE: Yeah, DJ, that's one that has really concerned me personally. Obviously, as the host of a podcast, I have more than a hundred episodes of my voice out there everywhere. I speak at conferences and groups all the time, and so I feel like my voice is just out there and easy to capture. But fraudsters can really use the smallest sample of someone's voice to then project that out into a whole dialogue, right? 

DJ: Absolutely. Any way that they can get access to somebody's voice and record that, whether it's online or on a telephone, they absolutely will. And it's not that difficult. Really the sky's the limit. 

MIKE: Well, what else are you seeing in terms of new types of fraud? 

DJ: In terms of new types of fraud, I'll highlight two or three here.

Synthetic identity fraud certainly is a challenge for us. And for those of you that don't know what synthetic identity fraud is, it's a type of fraud in which a criminal combines both real and fake information to create a new identity. So the fraudsters could open accounts using that information and use them responsibly for a certain period of time in order to build up a credit score and history. In some cases, we see that criminals will rack up fraudulent charges, and then use real information to create their fake identity and pose as a fraud victim and get their credit line restored, or on occasion they'll also try and get reimbursed for their alleged fraud losses. 

A second area that is top of mind for us and new is around options fraud. And so the fraudsters have targeted option contracts with wide spreads. And what I mean by a wide spread is, that's when there's a significant difference between the bid and ask price on either a call or put option contract. And so we will see a fraudster use an account held outside of Schwab to place orders that move the bid and ask price of a wide-spread options contract inside the quote, and then the fraudster will use a Schwab client account that has been compromised to purchase and sell the option at quotes established inside the original options quote. Options fraud is a particularly tricky one for us because we're dealing with accounts at different financial institutions, as well as accounts here at Schwab. But we are working extremely closely with those other financial institutions and law enforcements to try and address this fraud in an effective and efficient manner. 

And then the third one that I'll highlight is we're seeing a lot of activity around the deposit of foreign securities, and in particular with regard to pump-and-dump or ramp-and-dump market manipulation schemes. And so what this is, is it involves artificially inflating the price of an owned stock through false and misleading positive statements in order to sell the cheaply purchased stock at a higher price. And so what we're seeing here at Schwab is that the bad guys will go ahead and deposit those foreign securities, they'll engage in some social media conversations to likely increase the price of that stock, and then they'll sell the stock quickly to try and realize those gains. And we've been very fortunate here at Schwab. We've been working closely with our law enforcement partners at the FBI and the United States Attorney's Office to not only detect but to prevent these schemes from occurring, and we've had some recent successes securing or seizing a large amount of the fraudsters ill-gotten gain. So a good news story there from a Schwab and a law enforcement perspective.

MIKE: When I think about some of these scams that you're talking about, I think a lot of people listening feel like, "I'm not going to be a target of this because I'm not the target audience." Whether it's "I'm not looking for love online, so I'm not going to be a victim of romance fraud," or maybe it's just that fraud only happens to people who are less savvy than we are. But I'm here to say that that's just not true. I was a recently a victim of a kind of unusual fraud, very minor in the scheme of things. I had someone call me out of the blue and tell me that my son, who is a high school junior, had requested prep materials for his upcoming SAT exam. The caller knew my son's name and knew the date of the exam, and it just didn't seem that crazy to me that my son might have checked a box on some form and said that he wanted these study guides. So I quickly handed over my credit card number, paid a couple hundred dollars to have these materials sent to me. Of course, when I asked my son about it, he had absolutely no idea what I was talking about. I did a quick search online, and there were tons of stories about this SAT prep scam. In fact, the College Board itself that runs the SAT has a big notice about it on their site. So I ended up quickly canceling my credit card. No major harm came of it other than the hassle of having to update my credit card number in all sorts of places. But I also felt just really embarrassed about it, like I should have known better. And I think that's a really common feeling for a lot of people who are victims of big or little kinds of scams like that. 

DJ: You are not alone, Mike, and what you experienced is not uncommon. Everyone is a target. So it's you. It's me. It's my parents. It's executives. It's sophisticated traders. It's educated individuals. These fraudsters are smart, their methods are purposefully deceptive, and they're really good tricksters. And it's more than just the money that they're after, right? That's certainly a starting point for them or an entry point, but they're also looking to steal your identity, your personal information, your Social Security number, your credit card numbers, your bank account information, and the list goes on and on. They can use that information to conduct additional fraud. They can monetize that information by selling it on the dark web, or they can save it for a rainy day and use it later. 

MIKE: Well, it can really be anyone, as you said, but it does seem that older people are a clear target. People who maybe aren't as aware of all the ways that fraudsters can come at them, people who are a bit more isolated. As a group, they seem to be victimized pretty heavily. In the FBI's IC3 report that we were talking about earlier, there were two particular types of fraud that were overwhelmingly focused on people over 60. Cryptocurrency fraud was number one, and investment fraud was number two. 

DJ: Elder fraud continues to be a challenge for us. When I was on the podcast the last time, I threw out the Willie Sutton quote around when asked why he robbed banks, he said, "That's where the money is." And at the end of the day, the fraudsters know this is an area where there is a lot of money. So going back to the IC3 report that we've been talking about, about 150,000 complaints in 2024, about $5 billion in losses. Average loss was around $83,000. And so it is a target-rich environment for the fraudsters. We know that here at Schwab, we have dedicated teams that are focused on elder fraud. That's what they do all day every day. We've developed some best practices that we think are extremely helpful to our clients and to the organization. For example, a lot of times our financial consultants will ask to meet family members, meet the trusted contacts. One of the good tools that we have in place is our trusted contacts, and those are folks that are designated as someone that the firm can reach out to if necessary to check on a particular client and to determine whether or not they're showing any signs of diminished financial capacity. We also like to have folks educate themselves about what the tried-and-true common scams are that we're seeing. We mentioned a few of them earlier. And we ask everyone to verify before they act, to the extent that they can. We ask folks to monitor their accounts for unusual activity and to be mindful of the information they share, whether it's on the telephone or online. 

MIKE: Well, and I'd just add that this is an area, in particular, where Congress and the regulators in Washington have really been focused in recent years. There are efforts underway at the SEC and the Department of Justice to combat elder financial fraud and exploitation, and there's bipartisan legislation pending in Congress right now to beef up the resources available to regulators for combating senior financial fraud. But at the same time, we're also watching in Washington broad cuts to all kinds of federal funding and services. Republicans are moving to shrink the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, known as the CFPB. That's the agency that was created by the Dodd-Frank Act in the wake of the financial crisis, to focus on protecting consumers from fraud in everyday products like credit cards and car loans. The CFBB has been controversial almost from the start because of its structure and what it has chosen to focus on under different leaders in different administrations. But I think you'd find little argument that the work it has done to educate older Americans about the risks of financial fraud has been really important. Given that the agency is likely to be much smaller in the future, I don't think it's clear right now which agencies will pick up the slack. And that really means that the responsibility is increasingly falling to companies and to internet security experts like you, DJ. I read recently that 88% of organizations report increasing the headcount in their fraud and risk teams. Does that ring true for you? What are you seeing across the industry? 

DJ: It absolutely rings true for us here at Schwab, and I would say it generally rings true across the industry. So here at Schwab, we have significantly increased our staffing on our fraud teams by about 20%. We're also investing in new technology and automation to make our fraud detection and prevention efforts more effective. The focus of some of the regulatory agencies has shifted towards a more focused and higher priority on cybercrime, cryptocurrency, and fraud. For example, recently the SEC announced their Cyber and Emerging Technologies Unit, which they're rolling out even as we speak. In terms of the use of artificial intelligence, we've talked about the fraudsters using artificial intelligence, but guess what? We use artificial intelligence, too, here at Schwab. So the good guys are using artificial intelligence to be more effective and efficient. And some of the areas where we use that is around predictive analytics. And what I mean when I say predictive analytics is we monitor your accounts, and so we know generally what types of behaviors that you're going to engage in. And when we see something that is outside of that normal behavior, we flag that, and we may reach out and ask you whether or not you are engaged in a particular transaction. We also use behavior biometrics. So really, the easiest way for me to explain this is when you are logging on to schwab.com, we have tools in place to make sure that you are a human that is logging on and not some automated bot. And it allows us to authenticate who is trying to access an account or schwab.com. And then of course, we engage in real-time transaction monitoring. Like I said, we want to know who is moving money in and out of the firm, and we want to make sure that it's the right person that is moving that money inside or outside of the firm. And so we leverage real-time transaction monitoring every day. 

And then the last thing I'll highlight, Mike, is private-public partnerships. We think that's important with the ever-changing landscape in Washington, but we also, in general, think it's important, right? And so a couple of organizations to highlight is the Aspen Institute. They have a national task force on fraud and scam prevention, which we are a member of, and we are also a member of the National Cyber Forensic Training Alliance, NCFTA, a public-private partnership in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. We're a partner there. And really what these organizations do is facilitate information sharing and intelligence around fraud trends so that we can protect our clients.

MIKE: Well, it's great to hear about all the effort that's going on within the industry, and obviously working together I think is really important. When competitors can sort of put aside the competition and work together on something like this, that's great to hear. But let's focus on how Schwab is putting all of this into play. 

DJ: Yeah, we have a variety of prevention efforts in order to help protect our clients. There are a lot of things changing in our world today that you referenced, Mike. Schwab's strategy and our dedication to our clients is not something that's going to change, however. So real-time alerting, you mentioned 62% of organizations are utilizing that. We are too. We know that we must move at the pace of fraud, which is lightning fast. Speed is important to fraud detection and prevention. The fraudsters leverage speed, and we know that we need to be sharp, as well, in that space. So we have tools in place to conduct our work in real-time to include numerous machine learning models. I'd be remiss if I didn't call out our extremely talented fraud team that cuts across our operations, risk management and technology team. It's really best in class, in my opinion. They do a great job protecting our clients. We also have the Schwab Security Guarantee in place, which will reimburse clients for any unauthorized transactions that are made in their accounts. And then we engage with law enforcement and other financial institutions every day to stay abreast of trends and to gather intelligence around criminal organizations so that we can do our work more effectively and efficiently. 

MIKE: Well, of course, DJ, all of that is really important, but we, the individuals, are the frontline defense here. We're all trying to be smart and take precautions, but with so much advancement on the part of fraudsters, what are the important things that we should be doing for ourselves to protect our own information? 

DJ: So there are some pretty simple, fundamental tools that folks can leverage to protect themselves in the cyber space. We refer to it generally as good cyber hygiene. Stick to the fundamentals, and you will minimize most of the risk in this space. 

So first, whenever possible, utilize two-factor authentication. The first factor is some information that you know, password/username, for example. And the second factor is something that you have, like a cell phone, through which Schwab can send you a code, which you should not share with anybody, but you should enter it so that we can authenticate you as the person who is trying to access that Schwab account. It's hugely helpful. Fraudsters don't like it, but we do.

A second thing that folks can do, again, extremely fundamental, is use strong and unique passwords across different websites. I'd like to recommend using a password manager. I think they're simple. They're not very expensive. It's an easy way to organize your passwords, and they will generate good, strong, unique passwords for you, and ensure that you get to the right website, as opposed to a fake or a spoofed website. 

Third, do not use public Wi-Fi to the extent that you can. If you must, please don't access your Schwab accounts or schwab.com using a public Wi-Fi or any other sensitive site where you've got some sensitive information.

A few others: Update your computer's operating system, use and update antivirus software, and check your accounts regularly. We've mentioned that a couple of times. I check my operational accounts pretty much every day, and I also sign up to receive Schwab alerts. It lets me know if money is going into my account or out of my account. I think all of those will set you apart from the vast majority of folks that are not engaging in really good cyber hygiene. 

MIKE: DJ, of course, those are simple ideas, but that doesn't mean that they aren't incredibly important. I've been trying, personally, to be better about using a variety of different passwords, a bit of a hassle to keep track of them, no question, but I do feel like the level of annoyance is very small compared to the hassle that would result from a serious fraud problem. And of course, I was grumbling earlier about having to change my credit card number recently at all sorts of sites, but, you know, in the end of the day, it was probably an hour of my time, not that big a deal. I feel the same way about using different passwords. It's just one tiny way to mitigate risk. 

So DJ, let's end here. If we think someone is trying to scam us, or if they actually do, where can we turn for help, or even just to shine a light on these scammers so that others could benefit from that?

DJ: Yeah, thanks, Mike. Let me start with the reporting and the importance of reporting. And we mentioned the FBI's IC3 on multiple occasions throughout our conversation today, and that is the best place for folks to report when they think they're a victim of fraud. The IC3 is a repository for information that is really coming from around the world, and it provides law enforcement with a lot of good intelligence and information that will allow them to connect the dots, put investigations and prosecutions together, and really help additional victims. So certainly report it to IC3. 

If you think that you are the victim of fraud, you should absolutely reach out to Schwab and let us know that immediately. We talked about how important speed is, and these fraudsters are moving extremely quickly. And delay does not help anyone other than the fraudster. So if anyone thinks that they're the victim of fraud, and they're a Schwab client, absolutely they should reach out to Schwab and let us know. 

There is a ton of really good information that can be found on schwab.com, to include telephone numbers that you can call to report if you think you're the victim of fraud. There's a section that is known as Schwab Safe, and there's a variety of really, really good information on there for clients, which will reiterate many of the things that we talked about today to be able to better protect yourself from a cybercrime or a fraud perspective. And I would encourage everyone, look on schwab.com and Schwab Safe to see what resources are out there. 

MIKE: Well, that's great, DJ. We'll put a link to Schwab Safe in the show notes, along with those numbers that you can call if you think you are a victim of a fraud or a scam. 

As always, great advice. Thanks so much for sharing your perspective today and for all that you and your great collective team does every day in the never-ending effort to protect the finances of millions of clients. Really appreciate the conversation. I think there's a lot of good takeaways from this today, DJ. Thanks.

DJ: You bet. Thanks, Mike. Appreciate you having me and looking forward to the next time. 

MIKE: Well, that's DJ Johnson, managing director of financial crimes risk management here at Charles Schwab. 

MIKE: That's all for this week's episode of WashingtonWise. We'll be back with a new episode in two weeks, when I'm going to focus in more depth on the One Big Beautiful Bill and its implications for investors. 

Take a moment now to follow the show in your listening app so you get an alert when that episode drops and you don't miss any future episodes. And I'd really appreciate it if you would leave us a rating or a review. Those really help new listeners discover the show.  

For important disclosures, see the show notes or schwab.com/WashingtonWise, where you can also find a transcript. I'm Mike Townsend, and this has been WashingtonWise, a podcast for investors. Wherever you are, stay safe, stay healthy, and keep investing wisely.