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Steve Selengut - EzineArticles.com Expert Author
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Steve Selengut Email Alerts
- How to Create a Fairer Tax Environment
[News-and-Society:Pure-Opinion] Both parties are mired in a type of class warfare that stifles all forms of productive debate. Tax cuts don't just benefit the rich. In fact, they provide the opportunity for everyone to attain greater wealth. Demand directs resources far better than punitive taxation. Money in consumer hands will fuel social and environment friendly change.
- This Stock Market Correction is Dead
[Finance:Personal-Finance] Actually, hindsight and the Investment Grade Value Stock Index (IGVSI) Bargain Level Monitor tell us that it died early in March 2009. More realistically, however, corrections don't really die quite so abruptly. They are supplanted by rallies--- and vice versa.
- How to Stimulate Consumer Spending and Jumpstart the Economy
[News-and-Society:Economics] The current methodology is simple: it takes money out of our pockets (and our employers) puts it though governmental blenders, and spits out a meager benefit at retirement. Why not let the private sector provide pension benefits to all employees under the direction of a trimmed down Social Security bureaucracy?
- How to Create More Jobs America
[News-and-Society:Economics] My recent survey produced a variety of ideas, but most of them had these common elements: replace the Internal Revenue Code with a simpler model, encourage businesses to increase employment, and insist upon tort reform everywhere. It also brought two disturbing realities into focus: We are painfully apathetic (less than 1% of the people I contacted took the time to respond) and, although we have great problem-solving ideas, few to none of them are included in any of the reforms being considered by Congress.
- Investment Performance Expectations and Broker Account Statements
[Investing] Whether you go the discount route through Schwab, Ameritrade, Fidelity, etc., or enjoy a higher level of service through an independent like LMK Wealth Management, you should never be surprised by the market values reflected on your monthly account statement. You should know what to expect, and understand why.
- Health Care Reform Or Welfare Program - Who Pays the Bill?
[News-and-Society:Politics] Insurance is neither a cost of obtaining healthcare services nor an expense associated with those services. Insurance is an agreement in which a private company agrees to pay part of someone else's medical expenses in exchange for premiums it collects in advance from all of its insureds.
- Golf and Investing Lessons - Fundamentals
[Investing] Favorite foursome conversations provide clues to the particular fundamental that just failed you, as your duck-hooked tee shot comes to rest at the base of the dead pine tree, and possibly, just beyond the white stake. "Have you weakened your grip?" comments Larry. "Nah, he was lined up that way; went right where he aimed it," Curley offers.
- The President's $10,000,000,000,000 Economic Stimulus Package
[News-and-Society:Pure-Opinion] Cut the interest rate on all mortgage loans by 50 basis points and extend the payment schedule by three to five years. Convert all variable rate loans to fixed, at prevailing rates, and extend the payment schedule by six to ten years. No fees, points or charges tolerated.
- IGVSI Performance Expectations - WCM Portfolios
[Investing] All investors need to become intimate with both the content of their portfolios and the workings of the various cycles that impact on security market values. They need to expect, even anticipate cyclical changes in the market values of their securities by taking reasonable profits in either classification willingly, gleefully, and without hindsight.
- "Jim Dandy to the Rescue" - Of the Economy
[Finance:Taxes] Get rid of SFAS 157, which works something like this: While my bank owns my mortgage, it's worth full value. As part of a Ginny Mae--- still full value. But once it crosses over into the ether of CDOs and other multi-level Frankensteinesque monstrosities, my paid in advance mortgage becomes indistinguishable.
- Crisis Investing - Three-Pronged WCM Strategy
[Investing] One of the great things about being a professional investor is the opportunity one has to apply his or her long-term experience to the investment environment that is unfolding (or coming unglued) in the present. If nothing else, most successful investors develop a consistent strategy that allows them to take advantage of short-term changes and the opportunities that they create in a somewhat unemotional manner.
- A Quick Jolt For the Auto Economy, Plus Ten
[News-and-Society:Economics] 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.
- Investment Management - Put More Smart Cash in Your Future
[Investing] 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, this is an approach you need to consider.
- A Capitalist's Social Security, 401(k), and Retirement Plan Reform Program
[Investing:Retirement-Planning] What if the new plan actually reduced payroll taxes, cut prices, created jobs, increased salaries, raised shareholder dividends, partially funded decreased healthcare costs, and was available to everyone? Would the politicians be interested? Let's find out.
- Making 401(k)s and IRAs More Like Pension Plans
[Investing:IRA-401k] I'm not sure that the good doctor grasps the distinction between a self-directed, defined-contribution, investment plan and a guaranteed, defined-benefit, pension plan. Most plan participants are led to believe that the former is just as secure as the latter. Sorry, Charlie.
- The Securities Investors' Bill of Rights (SIBORAP) - Part Four
[Finance:Taxes] Every dollar paid to corporate executives, directors, and employees (in any form whatsoever) in excess of two million dollars would be matched by a ten-cent per share extra dividend to all shareholders and a 10%-of-annual-pay bonus to all employees. All golden parachutes, separate "non-qualified" retirement plans, stock option and deferred compensation programs, and others that do not benefit all employees and shareholders will be unwound over a three to five year period.
- Last Bank Standing - The Wall Street Mega-Crash
[News-and-Society] How many more businesses, jobs, and hopes will be killed by this irresponsible Congress? When will the average blogger realize that when a corporation fails, we all suffer? One would think that the informed and enlightened could take time out from their texting for a little research and education.
- Why 401(k) Retirement Plans Really Don't Work
[Finance:Personal-Finance] The good news about the Internet is the information we can get our cursors on instantly; the bad news is the information we can get our heads around instantly, but without any way of gauging accuracy, relevance, or completeness. This is particularly evident in the financial-investment-retirement world, where thousands of websites tell us how to do things and why, and why things work the way they do and how. Few gurus explain why and how certain concepts and plans of action just may not work the way they are supposed to.
- The McCain Tax Reform Plan For Long Term Economic Growth?
[Finance:Taxes] The plan outlined here is investor and economy friendly. Where jobs are lost, new entities will be needed, based of the premise that regulated capitalism can work well. As shoppers and homeowners, as retirees and employees, as business owners and investors, this is the reform plan we need.
- Guaranteed Social Security Benefits - Make it So
[Investing:Retirement-Planning] This is a conceptual outline, a starting point for developing the nitty-gritty details, rules, regulations, laws, and agencies. All that is required is the will to change. Politicians like to debate changes to determine why new ideas can't be implemented. Here's a plan that must be implemented. Have a listen, throw out an incumbent.
- Your 401(k) Investments And The IGVSI
[Investing:IRA-401k] Risk minimization begins with quality, is enhanced through diversification, and is compounded with realized income. The first two steps require research, greed control, and discipline. The income part just requires discipline, so it should be much easier to manage.
- Investment Politics - Jobs, The Economy and Social Security
[Investing] Social Security benefits are grossly inadequate yet we continue to tax all forms of retirement benefits. Politicians ignore the simple solutions to these problems and no one seems to care about Social Security reform. It's just too big an issue to be so shockingly ignored, but the last politician with any courage--- well, I can't remember who that was either.
- The Real Scoop On Annuities - Part One
[Investing] Today, it's difficult to distinguish one financial institution from another as they compete for the ever-growing pool of investment dollars. Insurance companies, now publicly owned, have become am integral part of an industry that seems uninterested in protecting anything other than their obscenely paid leaders.
- Investor Political Priorities - A Survey
[Finance:Taxes] 90% of all Americans are investors and, as such, there are issues that we need to hear about from the man who would be king. None of our could-be leaders are addressing the issues that would allow us to achieve our financial goals.
- Just Another Credit Crunch?
[Investing] Many investors are beginning to think that income investing is every bit as risky as equity investing, but nothing has really changed in the relationship between these two basic building blocks of corporate finance. What has changed in recent years is the nature of the derivative products created by the wizards of Wall Street to deliver both forms of securities to investors.
- Calculating Your Investment IQ
[Investing:Stocks] Just how much do you know about investing, or perhaps a better question: is there any "know" in the investment vocabulary? So many terms, ideas, and strategies; so little time and money! Here's a list of thirty mostly-true or mostly-false comments for you to kick around with your friends and fellow investment bloggers:
- Income Investing - Why Isn't This Easy?
[Investing] Most people (including myself) would insist that Equity Investing is the most difficult to master. After all, that is the venue for: erratic price fluctuations caused by an endless supply of social, economic, and political variables; the standard Wall Street misinformation, corporate malfeasance, self- serving financial gurus, and product sales persons; a myriad of popular and market moving speculations from IPOs to Option and Margin strategies; thousands of media talk shows and their financial markets' experts. When you think you understand the stock market brother, you are in serious trouble.
- Market Cycle Investment Management
[Investing:Stocks] If the change in a portfolio's Market Value is really so important (the Working Capital Model would argue that it is not), why not do it over a period of time that recognizes where we happen to be, cyclically? Interest Rates have cycled seven or eight times over the past twenty-five years; the stock market has been nearly twice as volatile.
- Value Stock Crash Reaches 50 Percent
[Investing] In other words, what I am looking for is a selection universe of fundamentally valuable companies that can be expected to remain that way for a significant period of time, not just a bunch of random symbols that someone believes are at garage sale prices.
- Book Review - The Brainwashing of the American Investor
[Book-Reviews:Non-Fiction] The Brainwashing of the American Investor is a book I wish I had been able to read 30 years ago. Those of you who still have years of investing ahead of you would do well to buy this book and read it thoroughly two or three times. It will save you a lifetime of mistakes that come from following conventional wisdom.
- Stock Market Investing - The November Syndrome
[Investing] November is particularly exciting because it hosts the convergence of four Katrina-level forces, all of which are part of Wall Street's conventional wisdom while none of them lead to intelligent investment decision making. And this year we have a special treat in the form of a Category Three market correction in the Value Stock sector.
- Wall Street Conventional Wisdom and Stock Market Corrections
[Investing:Stocks] Corrections are as much a part of the normal Market Cycle as rallies, and they can be brought about by either bad news or good news. (Yes, that's what I meant to say.) Investors always over-analyze when prices become weak and lose their common sense when prices are high, thus perpetuating the "buy high, sell low" Wall Street lunacy.
- The Investor's Creed and Your Investment Portfolio
[Investing] The "shock" market is the adult version of childhood thrill rides, but with no predictable beginning or end, and no way of gaging the size or duration of the peaks and valleys. This is one of the very few things that can actually be known about The Market, security groups, and sectors.
- The Dow, Your Portfolio, and Aliens
[Investing:Stocks] When investors start to question why their Municipal Bond portfolios are trailing the gain in the Dow, or when retirees start to buy gold bullion instead of groceries, something is wrong. And it's the same ole stuff that produces the greed and fear that lead to investment-program-destroying mistakes every time! So lets look at the performance of the Dow, to gain some perspective.
- How Do You Spell Correction?
[Investing] In recent years, Wall Street and the media have turned the process of investing into a competitive event of Olympic proportions and stature. What was once a long term (a year is not long term), goal directed activity, has become a series of monthly and quarterly sprints. The direction of the market isn't nearly as important as the actions we take in anticipation of the next change in direction.
- Stock and Bond Trading as a Conservative Investment Strategy
[Investing:Stocks] Trading does not have to avoid the income securities that are so important to the long-term success of an investment portfolio. No more worries about liquidity and hidden markups. No more cash flow positioning or laddering of maturities. And best of all, no more calls of your highest yielding paper when interest rates fall. Instead, you are taking capital gains and compounding your yield.
- An Investor's Eye View of the Corporate Income Tax
[Investing] Just as Congress picks corporate pockets, Corporations pick those of their shareholders. The compensation of corporate officers is a clear example of how this has gone totally out of control, even if it is understandable under existing tax codes… both corporate and individual.
- Investment Politics 200 - What's (left) In Your Wallet?
[News-and-Society:Politics] 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. Here's the MT-BSW "Financial Plan" for the 2008 Election. Dot Connectors Wanted!
- March Investment Madness - The Financial Final Four
[Investing:Stocks] 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...
- Year End Investment Ideas and Tax Strategies
[Finance:Taxes] 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.
- Investment Scandals & Scams: What's Next!
[Finance:Personal-Finance] 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.
- Principles of Investment Management
[Investing] Establish a profit-taking target for every security you purchase. Avoid Unrealized Gains, Embrace Volatility, Increase Annual Income, and remember that all key investment moments are only visible in rear view mirrors. Keep in mind that you need Income to pay the bills, and examine Market Value numbers at intelligent intervals.
- Solving Social Security: Fire the Politicians!
[Finance:Taxes] The SSRIA is a supplemental 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. The SSRIA is a new and improved version of the ancient Deferred Fixed Annuity Contract... a boring but guaranteed retirement benefit vehicle.
- Real Estate Investing: No Lawyers, No Debt, No Plungers
[Real-Estate] 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.
- Stock Market Window Dressing: The Art of Looking Smart
[Investing:Stocks] At least four times per year, security prices are more a function of institutional marketing practices than they are a reflection of the economic forces that we would like to think are their primary determining factors. Do you remember the "Circle of Gold" chain letter from the seventies?
- Relax, A Volatile Stock Market Is Your Dearest Friend
[Investing:Stocks] 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.
- In Value Stock Investing, Quality is Job One
[Investing:Stocks] In the late 90's, a well-known Value Fund Manager was asked why he wasn't buying dot-coms, IPOs, etc. When he said that they didn't qualify as Value Stocks, he was told to change his definition... or else. Here are five filters you can use to come up with a selection universe of higher quality companies.
- The Dow Jones Industrial Average: Failing the Average Investor
[Investing:Stocks] 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 number. It's Wall Street's rendition of "The Emperor's New Clothes".
- Ten Common Investment Errors: Stocks, Bonds, & Management
[Investing] 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:
- Ishares and ETFs: Indexed Investment Illusions
[Investing] 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.
- An Investor's View of The Fair Tax: A Resolution
[Finance:Taxes] A Government that bemoans the population's low savings and investment rates has only itself to blame, and Wall Street Institutions are happy to exacerbate the problem with their own financial pandemic of products, strategies, and tax deferral/avoidance schemes. It's time to reinvent this wheel!
- Investment Strategy: The Investor's Creed
[Investing:Stocks] The Stock Market is a dynamic place where investors can consistently make reasonable returns on their capital if they comply with the basic principles of the endeavor AND if they don't measure their progress too frequently with irrelevant measuring devices. Five simple concepts of Asset Allocation, Investment Strategy, and Psychology are summed up quite nicely in the "The Investor's Creed".
- The Case for Value Stock Investing-What If?
[Investing:Stocks] Predicting the performance of individual issues is a totally different ball game that requires an even more powerful crystal ball and a whole array of completely illegal relationships. No one can predict individual issue price movements legally, consistently, or in a timely manner.
- Investment Advisors 101-Ask These Questions
[Investing] Why do people become Investment Advisors? Call me skeptical, but I don’t think it’s the ethereal glow they feel after implementing your new Financial Plan. Actually (once you appreciate that IAs are the primary delivery system for Wall Street’s huge collection of one-size-fits-all products), you’ll realize that it’s the money.
- A New Wall Street Line Dance: Performance
[Investing] Every December, with visions of sugarplums dancing in their heads, investors begin to scrutinize their performance, formulate coulda’s and shoulda’s, and determine what to try next year. It’s an annual, masochistic, rite of passage.
- Managing the Income Portfolio
[Investing] Steve Selengut
http://www.sancoservices.com
Professional Portfolio Management since 1979
Author of: "The Brainwashing of the American Investor: The Book that Wall Street Does Not Want YOU to Read", and "A Millionaire's Secret Investment Strategy"
- Income Investing: Selecting the Right Stuff
[Investing] When is 3 percent better than 6 percent? Higher Interest Rates are good for investors, even better than lower rates. Selecting the right securities to take advantage of the interest rate cycle is not particularly difficult, but it does require a change in focus.
- Understanding Fixed Income Securities: Expectations
[Finance:Personal-Finance] Wall Street pumps out products and Investment Experts rationalize strategies that cloud the simple rules governing the behavior of what should be an investor’s retirement blankie. The investment gods have spoken: “The market price of Fixed Income Securities shall vary inversely with Interest Rates, both actual and anticipated… and it is good.”
- Deja Vu, All Over Again (and Again...)
[Investing] Market Corrections can be good for the wallet! Corrections are part of the normal “shock market” menu, and can be brought about by either bad news or good news. If you don’t love corrections (and deal with them like visiting relatives) you really don’t understand the financial markets. Don’t be insulted, it seems as though very few financial professionals want you to see it this way.
- Dealing With Market Corrections: Ten Dos and Don'ts
[Investing] A correction is a beautiful thing, simply the flip side of a rally, big or small. As long your cash flow continues unabated, the change in market value is merely a perceptual issue.
- Ten New Investment Concepts, the Time Has Come
[Investing] There’s a rumor going around that the Mutual Funds are broken and just can’t work anymore, for a multitude of reasons. Here are some new and/or forgotten ideas that can get your investment program back on track:
- Asset Allocation Lessons: The 70% Inflation Solution
[Investing] No Virginia, you don't have to be in the Stock Market to beat Inflation.
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