In addition, home prices and property taxes don’t move in a precise ratio, given the long lag time for property tax changes based on appraisal data and local policies may mitigate or delay the impact to municipal revenues.

“The completion of the property tax revenue cycle lags home price trends by 18–24 months,” in most cases, the report points out.

Related: The way local governments raise their money needs to change

“Many states have tax regimes that temper the impact of the volatility of home prices on property tax receipts,” the report notes. “This moderates the tax burden on homeowners in times of robust home price growth, while protecting the government’s financial flexibility when home prices decline.”

The report captures the historical relationship between a lagged home price index and property tax collections for all municipalities by state.

Florida has the strongest correlation between prices and taxes, followed by Hawaii, while South Dakota and Nebraska show the weakest.

Over 95% of state and local property taxes accrue to local governments, Fitch analysts write, according to the Bureau of Economic Analysis. And for most local governments, residential property taxes are “by far the dominant revenue source” within all forms of tax revenues, “often more than 60%,” the report notes.

Again, the national aggregate conceals some big local differences: 70% of revenues for municipalities in New Hampshire, Vermont and Maine came from property taxes, compared to less than 20% of revenues in Missouri and Kentucky.

Fitch developed a proprietary “tax boost” index which takes into account home price trends, property taxes as a percent of total revenues, and the historical correlation between home prices and property taxes.

Hawaii, Connecticut, and Florida are likely to see the biggest boost to tax collections, while Alaska, Maryland, and Nebraska are at the bottom of the list.

Read next: 3 outside-the-box alternatives for home buyers in a tough housing market

ThinkSmart put out a statement on Tuesday saying it didn’t understand the reason for the stock-price move. It said it was “positive” that the Bank of Spain will have to approve the Square buyout of Afterpay. “The acceptance by the Supreme Court of New South Wales of the Bank of Spain approval becoming a condition subsequent is seen as a positive step,” the company said.

After the statement, ThinkSmart losses were cut to just 0.5% on the day.

In its own statement on Tuesday, Afterpay said it expects the buyout to be completed in the first quarter of 2022 and said it still recommends Square’s all-stock offer.

The broader U.K. stock market enjoyed a second day of gains, with the FTSE 100
UKX,
+1.18%
rising 1.2% to 7,316.89, buoyed by favorable sentiment toward the omicron variant. Conference organizer Informa
INF,
+7.03%
shot up 6%, and metals producers including Anglo American
AAL,
+5.12%
rallied.

GlaxoSmithKline
GSK,
+0.73%
shares edged higher as the drugmaker said its antiviral worked, in a lab setting, against the omicron variant, as it separately said a plant-based vaccine it’s making with a Canadian developer was effective.

Ferguson
FERG,
+4.93%

FERG,
-0.31%
shares climbed 4% as the plumbing and heating products distributor lifted its full-year outlook, after sales jumped 27% in its U.S. operation in the fiscal first quarter.

February Brent crude
BRNG22,
+2.60%
 
BRN00,
+2.60%,
the global benchmark, was trading $1.83, or 2.5%, higher at $74.96 a barrel on ICE Futures Europe, and heading for a fourth straight gain, after climbing 4.6% a day ago, with the contract also headed for the highest finish since Nov. 24, if values hold through settlement.

Gains for crude have been aided by a confluence of factors, including stalled nuclear disarmament talks between Iran and other Western countries, reducing the chance of Iranian crude returning to the market, while fears about the omicron variant also subsided.

In addition, China’s imports increased 31.7% on year in November, while its exports gained 22%. Data showed that imports of oil from the world’s largest crude importer rose 14.3% to 10.17 million barrels per day in November, up from 8.9 million bpd in the month before, although still below the 11.04 million bpd from the same period last year.

The Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries and its allies, a group known as OPEC+, last Thursday, have displayed some confidence in the prospects for crude demand, agreeing to rollover a current production policy and raise monthly overall output by 400,000 barrels per day in January, while deciding not to adjourn a meeting to allow for further shifts in policy if needed.

Commodity strategists also pointed to Saudi Arabia’s decision over the weekend to increase prices of Arab Light oil for January delivery that it sells to Asia and U.S. as another bullish factor for oil’s gains.

 I followed up for a deeper dive to tease out some future thoughts from these women in this column for Next Avenue. I encourage you to read it.

WISER was celebrating its 25th anniversary and the occasion provided some thoughtful perspectives and crystal balling.

Catherine Collinson, CEO and president of the Transamerica Institute and the Transamerica Center for Retirement Studies was one of the presenters and discussed data pulled from her organizations most recent report Life in the COVID-19 Pandemic: Women’s Health, Finances, and Retirement.

It piqued my curiosity, so I took some time to review the report’s findings. I was surprised by the mostly positive results it revealed.

I’ve been highlighting women and money for some time as you can see from these two recent columns, Women are less likely to ‘freak out’ over their investments than men and You may have always known women are good with money — now research confirms it.

So, this was more fodder for my feeling better attitude. Not all is rosy. So, I will start with one not so great finding from the report that is noteworthy.

Socking away funds for emergencies is not a priority

Generation Z women workers have set aside $800 (median) in emergency savings, with 49% having less than $5,000. Millennial women have saved $2,000, Generation X women have saved $5,000, and baby boomer women have saved $7,000 in emergency savings (median).

In comparison: Generation Z men workers have set aside $5,000 (median) in emergency savings, with 36% reporting having less than $5,000. Millennial men have saved $5,000, Generation X men have saved $10,000, and baby boomer men have saved $25,000 in emergency savings (median).

There’s room for improvement. Try to be methodical about automatically having a small amount from every paycheck zapped into a savings account. All it takes is for one big expense like a car accident or major dental work to shock your financial world, if you don’t have a cushion to cover it.

Working longer is top of mind

More than half of women workers surveyed expect to work beyond age 65 or do not plan to retire —and the majority plan to continue working at least part-time in retirement. Most plan to do so for both financial and healthy aging-related reasons.

While on first blush that might sound a little depressing, the reality is that given all those things we know about the challenges women face with future financial security such as the wage gap, time out of work for caregiving, longer lifespans, divorce, widowhood, and so on, the reality is working longer needs to be a plan.

Work for pay in some form–part time, seasonal, full time– is the fourth pillar of a retirement plan along with Social Security, retirement savings and personal savings. Even if you have saved appropriately, it’s a financial safety net.

For the women who plan to work past age 65 and/or in retirement, their reasons for doing so are more often financial. Women’s top three financial reasons are wanting the income (56%), concerned that Social Security will be less than expected (35%), and not being able to afford to retire (34%).

Herein lies a potential roadblock for these women who realize the value of continuing to stay in the workforce as long as they can: While eight in 10 women workers have taken one or more proactive steps to continue working (80%), only 61% are staying healthy, 48% are keeping their job skills up-to-date, 25% are networking and meeting new people, and 22% are taking classes to learn new skills.

Actions speak louder than words and get results.

Fewer than one in five are scoping out the employment market (17%), obtaining a new degree, certification, or professional designation (16%), or attending virtual conferences and webinars (12%). And 21% of women have not taken any steps.

As women wisely plan to prolong their time in the workforce on their terms, taking steps that can help stay on the job is nonnegotiable

The report ends with a wake-up call when it comes to money matters: Only 17% of women frequently discuss saving, investing, and planning for retirement with family and close friends.

Why we don’t talk about money

I think one reason we don’t those heart-to-hearts about money with our girlfriends is that we find the topic awkward. It’s a taboo, or crass, or an anxiety-inducing subject we’ve delicately been taught to keep under wraps. In my family, when I was a kid in the ’60s and ’70s, we had regular dinner table conversations about my dad’s wonderful business and the companies he consulted for as an efficiency expert and more. Family’s finances and investments, however, not on the table. Truthfully, that was fine with me. I would rather discuss my latest trail ride on Topsy, my pinto pony.

Make a resolution (even if it isn’t Jan. 1 yet) to begin to discuss financial topics girlfriend to girlfriend or sister to sister or mother to daughter or aunt to niece.

Here are some ways to break the ice

Weave money talk into your regular conversations. You don’t need to nosedive right into what you’re investing in, but you might ask advice about refinancing a mortgage or applying for a home-equity loan or get a gripping on caregiving costs for your folks, finding a low-interest credit card, or how to get your credit score or credit report.

Slowly, you can head over to talk about what’s happening with the stock market and how you approach sudden volatility, working with a financial adviser and more nitty-gritty investing. I often send friends who are shy about talking about money articles I’ve written about personal finance topics, or ones I read that resonate with me that I have read. Just an FYI kind of thing. Thought you might find this interesting. I also send them smart financial writers to follow on Twitter. 

Put together a money book club. This is hands down one of my favorite pieces of advice, and it’s so easy to do. It’s fun, and it pushes you to read money-themed books you might never have on your own. Invite a personal finance author or journalist to be your guest from time to time for a session and lead a discussion.

Form a money-circle group. I’m a big believer in small group dynamics to keep you accountable to all kinds of things from launching a business and running it to finding a new job. A money-circle group lets you and the five or six other members set a regular monthly meeting, perhaps over a meal or coffee, where you set financial education goals and even real-life goals that require socking away funds for, then report back in to one another. You can also share your own money woes and wonders and lessons learned along the way that everyone can relate to, or laugh about, or grimace, as the case may be. And mix it up the membership makeup with different ages of members, ethnicity, and stages of life if you can.

You want these to be positive get-togethers where you all feel safe to share your anxiety or personal financial journeys with one another and gain the support and wisdom from others. No whining, only action.

It’s not about who’s savviest about money, or, frankly, has a bigger investment portfolio. It’s about how each of you can support and help each other reach your financial goals–together.                                 

The reason the SEC’s threat could be counterproductive: Chinese companies may not need the U.S. financial markets. Given China’s goal of making its stock exchanges the center of global financial markets, the SEC’s threat in fact could be playing into China’s hands. Beijing might like nothing more than to deprive U.S. exchanges of the listings of premier global brands such as Tencent Holdings
TCEHY,
+2.98%
and Alibaba Group Holding
BABA,
+10.40%.

DiDi Global
DIDI,
+9.88%,
the Chinese ride-hailing company, appears to be a good illustration of this possibility. The company has been under pressure from the Chinese government to delist its shares from the New York Stock Exchange, and last week it announced it would do so. The resulting headline in The New York Times read: “With Its Exit, DiDi Sends a Signal: China No Longer Needs Wall Street.”

DiDi’s delisting announcement came on Dec. 2. At one point in pre-open trading the following morning, the stock was up more than 10%. Though the stock subsequently closed down in Dec. 3 trading, it’s noteworthy that the stock’s immediate reaction to the delisting announcement was to rally.

DiDi Global is just one example. But consider the 10-largest U.S.-listed Chinese companies with American Depositary Receipts (ADRs). The table below lists their returns on Dec. 2, the day the SEC announced its new rules. As you can see, four of the 10 rose that day, and the average among all 10 was a loss of just 0.7%. These data hardly tell a story of investors particularly worried about the implications of the SEC’s latest move.

To be sure, the smallest Chinese companies with ADRs performed more poorly than the largest ones. That makes sense, Andrew Karolyi, told me in an interview. Karolyi is a finance professor at Cornell University and Dean of Cornell’s Johnson School of Business. His reasoning: The smallest Chinese companies presumably will have a harder time than the biggest firms in accessing markets outside the U.S., at least for now.

Consistent with this hypothesis is the poorer performance on Dec. 2 of Chinese electric-vehicle companies. Though their market values are sizeable, they aren’t as big as the 10-largest that appear in the table above. As you can see below, their average return that day was a loss of 3.1%.

The price of politics

The politics of subjecting these companies to PCOAB oversight are separate from the merits of the SEC’s demand. It’s hard to argue with SEC chairman Gary Gensler’s assertion, in an SEC press release last week, that “If you want to issue public securities in the U.S., the firms that audit your books have to be subject to inspection by the Public Company Accounting Oversight Board (PCAOB)… The auditors of foreign companies accessing U.S. financial markets [must] play by our rules.”

The SEC’s frustration is understandable. The PCOAB was created in 2002 with the passage of the Sarbanes-Oxley Act, so efforts to convince China to allow inspections have been in motion for almost 20 years now. If China never wanted to reach an agreement in the first place, the SEC has been negotiating in vain for two decades. Who wouldn’t be frustrated?

Nevertheless, Karolyi told me that he believes an agreement with China over the inspections is more likely to be achieved through “quiet and agile diplomacy” between the two countries’ securities regulators. He lamented that the situation has devolved into public threats, since investors will end up paying the price.

That price will be paid in at least two ways. First, it will be harder for U.S.-based investors to gain exposure to individual Chinese stocks. Without an ADR, you will be able to invest in a Chinese company only by buying ordinary shares on a Chinese exchange. That entails the additional transaction costs of exchanging dollars into Chinese currency.

You could characterize this as a mere inconvenience. The bigger price, according to Karolyi, is the greater uncertainty surrounding a company’s governance and its financials that buyers on local exchanges face. In contrast, when a firm is listed on a U.S. exchange, Karolyi said, it’s sending “an important signal that it’s able to withstand scrutiny.”

Mark Hulbert is a regular contributor to MarketWatch. His Hulbert Ratings tracks investment newsletters that pay a flat fee to be audited. He can be reached at mark@hulbertratings.com

Also read: List of concerns over China’s stocks grows longer

Plus: Ray Dalio says his China human-rights comments were misunderstood