Several clients of mine have been involved with 529 college savings plans. The love affair with these instruments came to an end last year when many realized the severe limitations of getting out of invested positions within the plan guide lines. Reader Chris summed it up this way: What would you do about funds in a 529? I feel helpless …
The Naked Truth
A few days ago, Mish at Global Economics wrote a nice piece called “Long Term Buy and Hold Is Still Bad Advice.” I want to hone in on a few paragraphs outlining well known pitfalls when investing that are very important; however, most investors are either not aware of them or don’t pay attention: Why Is Bad Advice So Common? …
No Load Fund/ETF Tracker updated through 6/25/2009
My latest No Load Fund/ETF Tracker has been posted at:http://www.successful-investment.com/newsletter-archive.phpIn a repeat of last week, the major indexes closed slightly lower. Our Trend Tracking Index (TTI) for domestic funds/ETFs has now crossed its trend line (red) to the upside by +2.46% keeping the current buy signal intact. The effective date was June 3, 2009. The international index has now broken …
Staying The Course
The Fed left key short-term interest rates alone as expected and hinted that the economy, while stabilizing, does not require any rate hikes in the near futures. While that should have been good news, Wall Street reacted somewhat negative, and the major indexes surrendered their early gains, as the above chart shows. Meeting anticipation apparently wasn’t a good thing. Right …
Nothing Doing
As the Trend Tracking Indexes (TTIs) are hovering tightly above or below their long-term trend lines, I tend to spend a little bit more time updating the important numbers you need to know on a day-to-day basis. These are critical times in terms of making decisions and, once a clear trend (either up or down) has been established again, I …
A Dubious Anniversary
The markets started the week out on a sour note yesterday as they have for the past two Monday’s. Some of our sell stops in the international arena were triggered and, barring a major rally today, the affected positions will be liquidated. It was a bit of good news/bad news scenario. The good news was that the sell off happened …