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- A Capitalist's Social Security, 401(k), and Retirement Plan Reform Program
The SSRIA is a personal retirement program, funded by a much smaller, yet flexible, payroll deduction, and it is designed to be the foundation of a retiree's total retirement package... a benefit floor. It is a new and improved version of the ancient Deferred Fixed Annuity Contract... a boring but guaranteed retirement benefit vehicle. - A Quick Jolt For the Auto Economy, Plus Ten
Every new American-made car buyer would receive a debit card along with his ownership papers. The card could be used for anything other than the car purchase itself. Card amounts would vary from $6,000 for "smart" cars, through $3,000 for fuel-efficient sub-compacts, $1,000 for other borderline greenies. - Amazon's Best Investment Book Reviews: Have You Been Brainwashed?
Big publishers want to sell already big names; discovering new ones is not in their wheelhouse. Are they responsible for the problems in the financial markets? Of course not, but they do have a perverse, if indirect, impact--- they contribute to the brainwashing. - An Investor's Eye View of the Corporate Income Tax
Politicians are much more interested in talking about change than they are in actually legislating it; they prefer to champion just one specific issue at a time so as not to appear too independent; and they can't keep themselves from back sliding into the now archaic distinction between investors and poor people. - Calculating Your Investment IQ
Investing is as fascinating as it is frantic, as scary as it is exciting, and as intimidating as it is satisfying. But perhaps the most interesting thing about it is how educationally unprepared most individual investors are for the adventure! - Compound Stock Earnings Programs - Caveat Investor
Options are bets about the future price movement of exchange-traded securities--- it's just that simple. The prospect of unusually high returns always signals unusually high risk. Caveat emptor, in spades. Here are some things to consider before you think about attending that free seminar--- - Corporate Income Tax Reform--- Seriously
Politicians have never been shy about dictating proper behavior to individuals or hesitant in shamelessly picking the pockets of businesses to fund their projects. Self-employed business owners, for example, pay a minimum 35% Federal Income Tax, State and Local taxes of various kinds, and the usual Workers Compensation, Medicare, and double Social Security Taxes. - Dealing With Stock Market Corrections: Ten Do's and Don'ts
Stock Market realities need to be dealt with quickly, decisively, and with zero hindsight. Because amid all of the uncertainty, there is one indisputable fact that reads equally well in either market direction: there has never been a correction/rally that has not succumbed to the next rally/correction... - Good News For Income Investors
Admittedly, even if your asset allocation has been fine tuned for years, lower portfolio market values in this area make stock market valuation shrinkage feel even worse. But the value of stable cash flow becomes painfully clear for investors who misguidedly depend on capital gains for their spending money. - Guaranteed Social Security Benefits: Make It So
What if, instead of donating 7.6% of your salary (15.3% if you are self employed) to support the war de jour: (a) you could choose to deposit from 3% to 5% of your salary in a guaranteed retirement program maturing anytime after age 60, (b) the lifetime benefit is totally income tax free, and (c) your employer uses his savings to either create jobs, raise non-executive salaries, reduce prices, or increase shareholder dividends. - How Do You Spell Correction?
The problems, and the solutions, boil down to focus, understanding, and retraining. But for now, relax and enjoy this correction. It's your invitation to the fun and games of the next rally, when you will see that correction is spelled o-p-p-o-r-t-u-n-i-t-y. - In Value Stock Investing, Quality is Job One
How do we create a confidence building Stock Selection Universe? Simply operating on blind faith with one of the common definitions may be too simplistic, particularly since many of the numbers originate from the subject companies. - Income Investing: Go Ask Alice
Don't let such uniformed thinking sabotage your retirement program; don't let the selfish advice of a product sharpshooter send you chasing rabbits when IRE (interest rate expectations) or other temporary market conditions shrink the market value of your income portfolio. Feed your head; feed---your---head. Income pays the bills, - Investment Management - Put More Smart Cash In Your Future
It's smart cash because it is created by the operation of the portfolio and ready for reinvestment. If it remains uninvested while new investment opportunities exist, it loses IQ points rapidly. If you've ever turned an unrealized gain into a realized loss, if you've ever sold mutual fund shares to deal with monthly expenses, if you've ever been unable to take advantage of low prices for lack of income, this is an approach you need to consider. - Investment Politics 2008: What's (left) In Your Wallet?
In addition to being Democrats, Republicans, Libertarians, Independents, etc, why not pledge our allegiance to the multi-partisan "MT~BSW" Supra-Party. This (hypothetical) political party could well become the first choice of most investors, regardless of their portfolio size. - Investment Scandals & Scams: What's Next!
Plain vanilla fraud and theft are less worrisome to me than situations where the general acceptance of misinformation or "business as usual" practices allows inherently bad product ideas and blatant mismanagement to become accepted by regulatory authorities, financial professionals, and myopically gullible consumers. - Ishares and ETFs: Indexed Investment Illusions
Let's not dwell upon the three or more levels of speculation that are the very foundation of all index funds… these things are designed for manipulation! Isn't "Passive Management" as much of an oxymoron as "Variable Annuity"? The Investment Gods are not happy. - Ishares and ETFs: Pushing the DJIA Toward the Cliff
... ETFs, a combination of the two, don't even address the question properly... AND their rising popularity has raised the risk level throughout the Stock Market. How's that, you ask? The demand for DJIA stocks included in ETFs is raising their prices to levels that have nothing to do with company fundamentals. - Last Bank Standing - The Wall Street Mega-Crash
Today's Congress is ignoring its role as the primary creative force in today's problems. This transfusion is needed because: bad laws have obscured the values on financial institution balance sheets, and have created a clot in the credit arteries that keep the economy alive. - March Investment Madness: The Financial Final Four
Revered Blue Chips (and Blue Devils) fall from grace on the financial hardwood and unknown Cinderellas gain fame and financial fortune with upset victories in both venues. In basketball and in finance, the road to the final four is paved with four principles. If you recognize the importance of the Financial Final Four, you can insure that your investing experience will get you to The Big Dance in style. - Predicting Stock Market Movements
Wall Street spins reality in whatever manner it can to make most investors unhappy, thus increasing new product sales. Your confusion, fear, greed, impatience, and need for a quick panacea fuels their profit engines, not yours. Learn how to deal unemotionally with Wall Street events and shun the herd mentality. - Preventing Investment Mistakes: Ten Risk Minimizers
Losing money on an investment may not be the result of a mistake, and not all mistakes result in monetary losses. Your own misconceptions about how securities react to varying economic, political, and hysterical circumstances are your most vicious enemy. Step away from calendar year, market value thinking. Avoid these ten common errors to improve your performance: - Quarterly Window Dressing - A Recurrent Wall Street Scam
Why aren't the wizards of Wall Street assuaging our nerves by explaining the cyclical nature of the markets and pointing out that similar crises have always preceded the attainment of new all time highs? Right, because the unhappy investor is Wall Street's best friend. Why can't politicians address economic problems with capitalist-economic solutions? - Real Estate Investing: No Lawyers, No Debt, No Plungers
Real Estate investing is not nearly as legally complicated, financially burdensome, or time consuming as you might think. In fact, it is easy to add raw land, shopping centers, apartment complexes, and private homes to your portfolio without Brokers, Bankers, Attorneys, and a Rolodex full of maintenance professionals' phone numbers. - Relax, A Volatile Stock Market Is Your Dearest Friend
Call it foresight, or hindsight if you want to be argumentative, but a long-term view of the Investment Process eliminates the guesswork and points pretty clearly toward a trading mentality that keys on the very natural volatility of the hundreds of Investment Grade Equities out there for your portfolio building attention. - Retirement Income Investing and Your Portfolio
Brokerage firm monthly statements are designed to promote either fear or greed, depending on the current market environment. Nowhere on your statement can you find numbers that report your net investment, your total working capital, or your true asset allocation. Current and projected income numbers are given little attention - Retirement Income Investment Planning - Step One
Employer provided pension plans, Social Security, and (always much too expensive) fixed annuity contracts, are retirement income providers. They are monthly income machines that you have paid dearly for but which may not be adequate to cover your retirement expenses--- most of us will need more income than our guaranteed benefits will provide. - Seven Principles of Investment Management
Investing is not a competitive event, ever. You don't need to beat the market. You need to accomplish a set of personalized goals. Avoid what the crowd is doing and shun investment products. Consumers buy products; Investors buy securities. Avoid hindsightful analysis, and uninformed (or salesperson) criticism. - Solving Social Security: Fire the Politicians!
There is no "Social Security Trust Fund"... no investments and no Investment Managers. There was always a tax plan for funding the benefits, but never an Investment Plan. This is a gigantic Government designed and controlled Ponzi scheme that has worked incredibly well in spite of congressional tinkering and prohibitively high cost. - Stock and Bond Trading as a Conservative Investment Strategy
Trading is the world's oldest form of commercial activity, and it is unfortunate that it is treated with such disrespect by our dysfunctional tax code. It is even more unfortunate that it is looked at askance by client attorneys and brokerage firm compliance officers. Trading does not have to be done quickly to be productive, and it doesn't have to focus on higher risk securities to be profitable. - Stock Market Investing - The November Syndrome
The November Syndrome is a short-lived annual investment opportunity that most people are too confused to notice, much less appreciate. Simply put, get out there and buy the November lows and wait for the periodic and mysterious January Effect to happen. - Stock Market Meltdown - Watching Rome Burn
Both presidential candidates want to crucify SEC Chairman Cox for failing to control our creative financial institutions. But rumor has it that Congress specifically excluded the devilish derivatives from SEC purview. Let's fire the right bunch of "poips" for a change! - Strategic Investment Mixology - In Search Of The Holy Grail Cocktail
Investment portfolio mixology doesn't take place in the smiley faced environment that brought us the Cosmo and the Kamikaze, but putting an investment cocktail together without the risk of addictive speculations, or bad after tastes, is a valuable talent worth finding or developing for yourself. - Ten Common Investment Errors: Stocks, Bonds, & Management
Losing money on an investment may not be the result of a mistake, and not all mistakes result in monetary losses. Compounding the problems that investors have managing their investment portfolios is the sideshowesque sensationalism that the media brings to the process. Avoid these ten common errors to improve your performance: - The Dow Jones Industrial Average: Failing the Average Investor
To most investors, the DJIA provides all of the information they think they need, and they worship it mindlessly, thinking that this time tattered average has mystical predictive and analytic powers far beyond the scope of any other market numbers. It's Wall Street's rendition of "The Emperor's New Clothes". - The Obama Tax Reform Plan For Long Term Economic Growth?
As Investors, we represent the single biggest voter block in the country. We must respond in one voice to the endless political drivel with a resounding "Money Talks, BS Walks". We want decision makers who design laws that aid economic freedoms, not lawmakers who make decisions that restrict them. - The Securities Investors' Bill Of Rights (SIBORAP): Part Four
Investors have a right to be emotional, irrational, fickle, stubborn, confused, fearful, inexperienced, hindsightful, and greedy. Nothing the most thoughtful and caring professional can say or do will prevent the errors that many of us look back on with a frown and a headshake. - The Securities Investors' Bill Of Rights (SIBORAP): Part One
We the securities investors of the United States, in order to form more transparent financial markets, establish effective regulations, defend against destructive speculation and manipulation, promote financial well-being, preserve working capital, and protect retirement income... - The Securities Investors' Bill Of Rights (SIBORAP): Part Three
Corporate executive compensation needs to be brought down to a significantly lower "competitive level", and more of the corporate profit needs to be "spread around" to owners and employees, applied to debt reduction, and placed in reserves for contingencies. It is unlikely that there would be a shortage of qualified CEO applicants at a mere four or five million per year in salary. - The Securities Investors' Bill Of Rights (SIBORAP): Part Two
The "hierarchy-of-risk" tool compares the risk vs. reward characteristics of a laundry list of investment securities from lowest-risk, investment grade, through highest-risk, speculation. A risk level "tier" system has been created. If it looks and feels like a bond, it better not be a currency futures speculation. - Value Stock Crash Reaches 50 Per Cent
The definitions mention dividends, various financial statement ratios, and market sentiment. The problem is that there are no real benchmarks or specifics to cuddle up to for selection decision-making purposes. What Wall Street labels as a Value Stock is, in reality, a stock that, at a certain point in time, is selling at a bargain price... a very temporary thing. - Value Stock Investing - The November Syndrome On Drugs
Always keep in mind that (a) Wall Street has no respect for your intelligence and (b) the media "talking heads" are entertainers, not investors. Institutions must paint a picture of brilliance in their annual glossies. This year, a panic-stricken Main Street is helping them with their annual "sell low" hypocrisy. - Value Stock Market CRASH Report
A cocktail of credit market laxatives is working its way into a constipated world economy. Relief is on the way. Today's prices may well be looked at as the lowest of the next ten years! Here's a list of things to think about or to do while Investment Grade Value Stock prices are at ten-year lows: - Volatility Rocks The Investment Markets
Similarly, taxing gasoline production and delivery organizations is not going to bring down the price per barrel of crude oil. But "taxing" the cartel that fixes the prices instead of bribing them with protection from their enemies could work almost as well as tapping into our own abundant supply and adding some long-needed refining capacity. - Wall Street Bailout, Congressional Cover-up, or Sarbanes-Oxley?
More than 95% of Americans are making their mortgage payments right on schedule, yet there is no market for the financial products that contain these mortgages. Consequently, balance sheets reflect trillions of dollars less than the maturity value of the securities held by the financial institutions. - Wall Street Garage Sale Produces Closed End Fund Bargains
Buffet, Bogle, Gross, Schwab, and Deep Pockets offer sound advice--- don't run and hide, it's time to hit the Wall Street Mall and go shopping! They've seen the indicators; they've been there before. So have many of you. Clearly, it's time for action. - Welcome to the BIG Buy Low
The reality of corrections is one of the few certainties of the financial markets, a reality that separates the men from the boys, if you will. If you fixate on your portfolio Market Value during a correction, you will just give yourself a headache, or worse. - When All Stocks Are Value Stocks - Think QDI
How do we create a confidence building Stock Selection Universe? Simply operating on blind faith with one of the common definitions may be too simplistic, particularly since many of the numbers originate from the subject companies. Here are five filters you can use to come up with a listing of higher quality companies: - Who's Confiscating Your 401(k) And IRA?
McMahan writes: "Dr. Ghilarducci, professor of economic policy analysis at the New School for Social Research, drew the most attention and criticism. She proposed that the government eliminate tax breaks for 401(k) and similar retirement accounts, such as IRAs, and confiscate workers' retirement plan accounts and convert them to universal Guaranteed Retirement Accounts (GRAs) managed by the Social Security Administration." - Why 401(k) Retirement Plans Really Don't Work
Still, the 401(k) plan deserves to be every bit as popular as it has become. It, and the vast array of complicated IRAs, could help save Social Security, improve the economy, and create jobs--- all those good things that neither of the presidential candidates have a chance of achieving. Just two simple strokes of an Oval Office ballpoint get it done: - Window Dressing: Wall Street's Investment
As if all of these institutional forces weren't enough, you need also consider the impact of tax code motivated transactions during the always-entertaining final quarter of the year. One would never suspect that the purpose of investing is to make money! - Working Capital Model Investing - The Process
Most people enter the investment process tip first. They hear something, grab an idea from a popular blog, accept a Cramerism or some motley foolishness, and think that they are making investment decisions. Rarely, will the right-now, instant-gratification, Internet-generation speculator think in terms that go beyond tomorrow's breaking news. - Working Capital Model Investing – The QDI
Crash! The 2007 thru 2008 financial crisis halved 401(k), IRA, and Mutual Fund values in a matter of months. For many, retirement dates had to be pushed back; for others, new jobs had to be found. The tragic flaw? No income allocation in the investment program. Market value builds egos; income pays the bills. - Year End Investment Ideas and Tax Strategies
First thing Monday morning I'm going to march into my boss's office and demand a pay cut so that I'll be in a lower tax bracket next year. Your Financial Professional's perspective may produce smart tax advice but only professional investors (not accountants, attorneys, stockbrokers, financial planners, advisors in general) should be called upon for acceptable investment advice. - Your 401(k) Investments and the IGVSI
Typically, 401(k) participants buy the higher priced, last-year-best-performing, and hot sector offerings while they sell or avoid the various products they feel have "under performed" the market. Nowhere else in their lives do they adopt such a perverse strategy. And nowhere else in their thinking would they blindly accept the premise that any one number represents what is, or should be, going on in their personal investment portfolios. - Zero Overhead Real Estate Investing---Right Now
Real Estate investing is not nearly as legally complicated, financially burdensome, or time consuming as you might think. In fact, it is easy to add raw land, shopping centers, apartment complexes, and private homes to your portfolio without Brokers, Bankers, Attorneys, and a Rolodex full of maintenance professionals' phone numbers.
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