What good are Wall Street Analysts anyways?

Turn on the TV or pick up the newspaper/magazine and you will hear Wall Street Analysts touting Strong Buy/Strong Sell recommendations on a particular investment.

11/27/11
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Does Dollar Cost Averaging Work

Dollar Cost Averaging or Lump-Sum Investing: Which is better?

In its simplest form, Dollar Cost Averaging or DCA is investing a set amount of money at regular intervals. It has been considered a “safer” way to invest in markets because it takes the guess work out of the equation. Instead of trying to time the highs and lows (a daunting task, even for professionals), you're investing the same amount of money at regular intervals.

11/08/11
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Dividend Investing Tips

Whenever the stock market enters a period of heightened volatility & uncertainty, it seems everybody starts talking about investing in dividend stocks. As if the dividend stocks are immune from the corrections of the stock market. The logic behind such recommendations is that the dividend payments will buffer your losses to a certain extent.

10/31/11
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Recovering From Large Investment Losses

If the old adage “Time is Money” is true, then investors have lost a lot over the last 11 years. At the depth of the recent meltdown (2008-2009), the S&P 500 was down in excess of 50% from its high set in 2007.

08/09/11
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FBAR Filing Deadline Extended for Certain Financial Professionals

Vienna, VA — The Financial Crimes Enforcement Network (FinCEN) and the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) announced on June 6 that a small subset of individuals with only signature authority over certain foreign financial accounts who are required to file a Report of Foreign Bank and Financial Accounts (FBAR) with respect to those accounts will receive a one-year extension beyond the upcoming filing date of June 30, 2011.

06/14/11
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Inflation: What it means & how to protect our investments

"Inflation is when you pay fifteen dollars for the ten dollar haircut you used to get for five dollars when you had hair.” — Sam Ewing

Inflation can be defined as a sustained increase in general level of prices for goods and services. It can be viewed as a broad measure of the overall increase in prices or the cost of living in a country. This definition would imply that every dollar you have in your pocket today is going to buy you a smaller percentage of goods or service in the future.

06/06/11
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Emotional Investing: How Fear & Greed can impact your bottom line

The wild swings in the financial markets over the past 15 years have caused investors mindset to shift from extreme optimism (at the beginning of 2000) to extreme pessimism (around March 2009). What is the reason behind this extreme display of emotions? One answer could be volatility, which is an inherent feature of the stock market.

04/04/11
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Early Distributions From Retirement Plans

Qualified retirement plans and individual retirement accounts (IRAs) are great vehicles to take advantage of tax-deferred growth potential and save for retirement.  When an individual eventually decides to tap into his or her retirement fund, withdrawals from these plans are subject to regular income taxes.  There's one catch, however, for people who are under 59 1/2 years old.  They will pay an additional 10 percent tax for premature distributions, in addition to the regular income tax, unless they can fit within one of the exceptions to this penalty tax.

01/01/11
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Trick yourself into saving more

12/30/10
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The Most-Overlooked Tax Deductions

Continued on Kiplinger ...

12/09/10
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