"Oh, I don't invest in stocks. They're too risky" said a young (urban) professional friend of mine. Five minutes later he was reconsidering that statement, and you'll be happy to know he's now the proud owner of some stock (well, at least some stock mutual funds).
Well, The Olympics are almost over and it's looking likely that the United States will take the overall medal count, and possibly the gold medal count too. There's nothing like a medal count victory on the world stage to get those patriotic fires burning...
I've made the warning before... and I'll make it again: be wary of false precision. This time, in particular, I'm talking about political odds - yes, of the very sort I now display prominently on the right sidebar of this very site!
One important thing to have an idea of - for personal and business reasons - is the amount of inflation expected in the future. Think about it - by having a reasonable number to plan for the erosion of the value of your money, you will better be able to make decisions on what loans to take out, what purchases to make, and how to invest.
Luckily for you, there are a few ways to gauge these predictions, which don't resort to guessing, praying, or going to a fortune teller. The methods are also more sophisticated than taking the last few years worth of data, drawing a trend line, and attempting to extrapolate future results.
Who's having as much fun watching the Olympics as me? I, for one, am definitely getting into random events that I probably won't care about for another 4 years.
Well, sports is a proxy for war, and it's better I cheer for athletic prowess than battle, right?
"Ask yourself, 'Are you better off now than you were four years ago?'” implored Ronald Reagan in his debate against President Jimmy Carter on October 28, 1980. Maybe it seems like the United States is on the cusp of a second recession, but in one key measure the US is finally starting to outpace inflation and population growth.
That measure? Real Personal Income - personal income deflated by the Personal Consumption Expenditures Price Index - is on a definite upswing. The personal income component is defined as all income earned from production and from transfer payments from both business and government.
You all know what time it is! It's time to parse the option trader tea leaves and guess where the options market thinks we are headed in the near to somewhat not near future. As always, we are taking options data from Yahoo, and using contracts which trade more than .5% of the daily volume to make our targets. We're also using the ticker SPY (a S&P 500 ETF) as our proxy for the S&P - all numbers you see are multiplied by 10 to get the conversion to actual closing prices.
About a month ago, my colleague Cameron penned an article about the Mortgage Interest Deduction - namely, whether it is a good idea or not. For an itemizing taxpayer in the 25% bracket, he pointed out, "The bank receives 4.0% interest, the homeowner pays 3.0% and the taxpayer is left footing the 1.0% difference." Right - and the bank ends up pocketing the subsidy.
Thoughts and prayers go out to all of the victims (and their families and friends) of the shooting in Aurora, […]