Retirement Watch Weekly
Year-End Tax Planning for 2013-2014
We can do real year-end tax planning this year. In the last few years, year-end planning has been difficult because so many provisions of the law were set to expire at the end of each year, and Congress worked on the law through the holiday seasons. But with most provisions of the tax law settled […]
Snagging Tax Credits for Home Improvements
Don’t forget that the tax credits for energy efficiency home improvements still are available for purchases through the end of 2013. These credits were part of the stimulus in the financial crisis and have been extended, but they’ll expire for purchases after Dec. 31, 2013. A wide range of home improvements or replacements qualifies for […]
Explaining the Bubble in Commodity Prices
Commodity prices soared for several years until collapsing over the last couple of years. The puzzle has been why prices soared. Was it manipulation? Cartels? Insiders and speculators? There’s an interesting paper digested in FTAlphaville blog that makes a good case. It says the price signals of the commodity markets were distorted. Investors in other […]
Estimating Retirement Spending
The estimate of retirement spending is the linchpin of most retirement plans. You have to determine the cost of the lifestyle you want and use that to assess how much money you need from then nest egg each year. If your nest egg can’t sustain that level of spending, you need to modify the expected […]
Tarnishing the Efficient Market Theory
You’ll find lots of entertaining and enlightening things in the latest quarterly shareholder letter from GMO, the large institutional investment manager. Co-Founder of the firm, Jeremy Grantham, enjoys criticizing this year’s co-winner of the Nobel Prize for Economics, Eugene Fama, for the efficient market theory and all that follows from it. Grantham says the theory […]
The Tax-Exempt Bond Opportunity
Tax-exempt bonds crashed earlier in 2013. First there was all the talk of the Fed reducing its bond buying, known as tapering. Then, there was the bankruptcy of Detroit. I said in Retirement Watch that the crash created opportunities and recommended a portfolio position to capture them. Now, James Tisch, CEO of Loewe’s, said he […]
The Best Stock Index Valuation Indicator
After the stock surge of 2013, stocks suddenly aren’t cheap and a lot of people are wondering if they are overvalued or in bubble territory. There are a number of indicators of stock market valuation, but they aren’t infallible. Stock markets can stay undervalued or overvalued for a long time after the indicators trigger an […]
Is Your Investment Portfolio Really Diversified?
In recent years a number of investors realized they weren’t really diversified with a traditional stock and bond portfolio. So, they started to add other assets and strategies. But once the Fed started manipulating markets with quantitative easing, the diversification of many of these investments disappeared. Morningstar recently revisited some of the more popular diversifiers […]
