Retirement Watch Weekly
Coping with Lower Long-Term Stock Market Returns
Much of Bill Gross’s latest monthly essay is devoted to a eulogy for his recently-deceased pet cat. After this touching section is the meat of the essay. Gross states that returns from assets (all assets, not only stocks) are likely to be lower in the relevant future than they have been over the course of […]
Beat the Flash Traders
Let’s revisit high-frequency trading and the stir caused by Michael Lewis’s new book, “Flash Boys.” Lewis says high frequency trading means the market is “rigged” against the little guy. This post says that’s always been the case. For a host of reasons, independent individual investors never have had a chance to trade better than the […]
Diving into High Frequency Trading
You’ve probably seen a fair amount of publicity about Michael Lewis’s new book about high frequency trading, Flash Boys. Lewis is an excellent writer, but his previous books often were criticized for focusing more on story telling and being attractive to readers instead of presenting the full picture. It’s the same with this book. Lewis […]
Medicare Cuts Delayed
In what has become an annual charade, Congress voted to defer until next year the reductions in reimbursements to doctors and hospitals under Medicare. The cuts, slated to be 24%, are used to seem to reduce Medicare spending. But each year they are deferred or changed because doctors and hospitals point out that they would […]
Estate Planning with Roth IRAs
An IRA, especially a Roth IRA, is valuable for more than your retirement planning. Your estate plan can be much better when a Roth IRA is shrewdly used. Instead of looking at the front-end tax benefits and costs, take the long-term view. While converting a traditional IRA to a Roth can save estate taxes, Roth […]
Finding Safe, Guaranteed Income
Money is pouring into index annuities at a rapid rate. They’re the annuities with the highest sales for most recent years. It’s not surprising. An index annuity is a good place for some investment dollars. You have the potential to earn a higher return than traditional safe investments but are guaranteed both a minimum return […]
April 2014
April 25, 2014 04:10 p.m. Your Retirement Finance Week in Review There were two major data releases this week. One was Caterpillar’s earnings report and accompanying commentary. The other was related to housing. We’ll discuss housing in the data section below. Caterpillar’s report was a good news/bad news event. The good news was several fold. […]
Surprising Facts About Social Security
Over the years, from time to time I wrote about maximizing Social Security retirement benefits. Those pieces didn’t receive much of a reaction. More recently, Social Security strategies draw a lot of attention, presumably because of the large number of people now at or approaching traditional retirement age. There are recurring questions and issues that […]
