Monday, January 30, 2012

Finance Clippings: Weaning off alternative investments

He's on a roll - two more great posts by Professor Warr at NC State.

Finance Clippings: Weaning off alternative investments: Apparently South Carolina is trying to reduce the amount of alternative investments it holds . The State Treasurer cites concerns over fee...

Finance Clippings: Hedge Fund Returns since 1998: 2.1% per year.

Finance Clippings: Hedge Fund Returns since 1998: 2.1% per year.: A recent study shows that Hedge Fund Investors earned about 2.1% since 1998 . That would be after the 2/20 fees, and probably doesn't incl...

Wednesday, January 25, 2012

Finance Clippings: Private Equity Fees

Another great post from Dr. Richard Warr at NC State.

Finance Clippings: Private Equity Fees: There's been much talk about Private Equity recently. Yesterday, an article in the FT (behind paywall) talked about the fee structure u...

Monday, January 23, 2012

Finance Clippings: Stocks for the long run?

Below is excellent advice for everyone from my favorite professor of finance - click the link below.
(My best guess is stocks could return 6-8% over the long run based on current dividend yields of 2-3% combined with estimated corporate earnings growth of 4-5%.)

Finance Clippings: Stocks for the long run?: A recent post on the Fama French Forum asks " over what time period can you be reasonably assured of earning a positive premium for investin...

Monday, January 16, 2012

Women are Smarter than Men

Many of us have suspected women are smarter than men - here's proof:

According to a survey by the Employee Benefits Research Institute more women employees participate in their firm's 401(k) plan than men.

Women 401(k) participation rate = 55.5%
Men 401(k) participation rate = 53.8%

Perhaps more important is that those stats suggest almost half of all employees aren't saving for retirement.

The stats above are for full-time workers. The gap is even wider for part-timers:

Women: 25.3%
Men: 13.6%

Saturday, January 14, 2012

How ya doin'?

AARP suggests this is how much you should have saved for your retirement:

by age 30 you should have saved 40% of your annual income
by age 40 you should have saved 2 years of income

Tuesday, January 10, 2012

How to Minimize Your Taxes: 1040 Good Buddy!

If I made enough money writing my books and this blog to afford a lawyer, she'd likely advise me to issue a disclaimer of some sort.

So here we go!

WARNING: This is not meant to be specific tax advice. Please consult a tax professional (CPA if you're lazy or TurboTax if you're not!) for your specific situation. Certain side affects that have been observed when reading this blog are similar to Viagra and include head ache, blurred vision,  and delayed back pain (likely due to sitting on a fatter wallet). 

With 2011 now in the books, it's time to start thinking about income taxes (and how to minimize them!).  Here's an article about a few tax changes for 2011

One of the most important changes relates to capital gain reporting on the sale of investments. In the past, your broker or mutual fund company only reported sales amounts to the IRS.  It was up to you to determine and report your cost basis and thus your capital gain (or loss).  Starting with 2011 brokers and mutual funds will report the cost basis to the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) on new Form 8949.  This should make our lives easier when filling out Schedule D (Capital Gains and Losses) for our Form 1040.  I don't know how many times I had to dig through years of old files to figure out my cost basis of a stock or fund I sold.  The IRS even had the foresight to add a place where you can adjust the broker reported cost basis just in case your broker made a mistake. Click here for IRS instructions for reporting Capital Gains and Losses and click here for IRS instructions for Form 1040.

One vitally important item NOT mentioned in the article above was: