If you make sure to always work with a fiduciary, then you don’t have to worry about rules requiring you to do so. Now, Labor Department regulators want to force brokers and insurance agents to run your IRA like a fiduciary, something they've never had to do before. Anne Tergesen reports in The Wall Street Journal: Americans rolling over their money into an individual retirement account from a 401(k) will have more protections on the advice they get as part of a Labor Department proposal released Tuesday. Under a 1974 federal law that governs retirement accounts, employers have a duty to … [Read more...]
The Magical Word We’re Taught in School
Not to bore you with math, but investing is math. Hoping for a stock to get to some price is just that, a hope. It’s qualitative, not quantitative. Collecting income from all areas of your portfolio—even that money your nephew owes you—is quantitative. You can actually see it hit your portfolio, your bank account, or your wallet. When I think about the magic of compounding money, I think about math. It’s simple. You get paid like you did from your nephew. You got back what you lent out (though maybe you didn’t expect it) and usually some interest. But because he’s your sister’s son, you … [Read more...]
Some ESG Chickens Come Home to Roost
After years of hammering the mining industry with negative press and exclusion from ESG funds (meaning more difficulty in raising capital for the miners), BlackRock is backpedaling because it has finally realized how many minerals go into electric vehicles and other green technologies. The ESG chickens are coming home to roost as the scarce minerals become more expensive. ESG was always really just a way for the big dog mutual fund companies to charge higher fees and to put CEOs' politics in your portfolio. Now, firms like BlackRock must reconcile with the world they've created. Harry Dempsey … [Read more...]
If You’re Overexposed to Stocks, Then Look Here
If you’re overexposed to the stock market, it’s been a long time since risk-free Treasury bills offered yields like these. Yields you can sink your teeth into and do it again in a few months. Your Survival Guy isn’t in the prediction business. Predictability is not something you can say about tech-heavy Nasdaq, for example. Because we’ve seen how long it can stay down when problems arise. But that’s not my concern today. My concern is making sure you have multiple streams of income, so to speak. And I like doing it without you being exposed to leverage, which basically eliminates … [Read more...]
Investing Habits of the Fairly Wealthy: #6 Armadillo
When I was a kid, we took a lot of trips to Disney World, and when we were there, we stayed at Fort Wilderness. One day, a day off from the parks, my dad and I rented a canoe. Floating near the shore, we noticed these little animals digging in the dirt with what looked like a shell as hard as armor. “Those are armadillos,” my dad said. “They're harmless.” They didn’t look harmless to me, and I was sure I didn’t need to see them up close, but he thought we should. As we got closer, I said, “Dad, that’s close enough.” “OK,” he said, “I’ll turn us around.” Easier said than done, as … [Read more...]
Don’t Forget How Long Markets Can Take to Recover
Don’t forget that markets can stay down for a long time after they’ve crashed. Remember how long it took the Nasdaq to recover from the tech crash? Jonathan Weil writes in The Wall Street Journal: “Five percent is more or less the average of investment-grade rates since the time of Alexander Hamilton,” said James Grant, founder and editor of Grant’s Interest Rate Observer. “The problem is the structures that 10 years of ultra-easy money brought about. People blame it on the normalization of rates. The previous bout of abnormal rates is the problem.” And the Nasdaq isn’t known for … [Read more...]
Put Your Lazy Cash to Work
Is your lazy cash still eating all your food and making a mess of the place? Stick with Your Survival Guy. You can sink your teeth into today’s money market yields. Take, for example, the Fidelity Treasury Money Market. It’s yielding 4.99%. Action Line: Don’t miss the boat. When you’re ready to talk, let’s. … [Read more...]
Storming the Magic Kingdom: Wall Street and the Raiders…
When you look at the long-term advance of stocks over the past four decades, an observation worth noting: It was good to be 24 in 84. Meaning if you were young and hungry and happened to work on Wall Street, the world was your oyster. Until it wasn’t. Risk was rewarded, and a fair amount of luck was involved, disguised as skill. Not that these weren’t wicked smart people like Mike Milken, for example, the father of junk bonds. Because it was Milken who showed corporate raider Saul Steinberg how to storm Walt Disney’s castle with high-yield debt. Steinberg, like Captain Hook, had a boatload … [Read more...]
The End of Easy Money for Borrowers, Not Savers
You can see on the chart below of ten-year and three-month treasury rates that the era of easy money for borrowers is over. But savers finally have some rates they can sink their teeth into. Read more about the end of easy money in Storming the Magic Kingdom: Wall Street and the Raiders…. Action Line: When you want to talk about saving your money, I'm here. In the meantime, try to avoid making mistakes with your money. Click here to download my latest free special report on the Top 10 Investing Mistakes to Avoid. … [Read more...]
“There’s No Way He Deserves It,” They Say
When you look at today’s yields, you can finally say, “Self, this is your grandfather’s treasury bill rate.” Because it’s been a long time since we had rates that you can sink your teeth into. Yet, that doesn’t stop the howls and jeers for lower rates from the talking heads. “Houses are too expensive,” they complain. But you remember a time when your first mortgage rate was in the teens. You got through it. You figured it out. And here you are. In a world of instant gratification, where every asset was going up, and everyone was a stock market trader, now we’re seeing a taste of reality. … [Read more...]
- « Previous Page
- 1
- …
- 18
- 19
- 20
- 21
- 22
- …
- 99
- Next Page »