Tax season is here again. The tax filing deadline for 2011 is April 18. The IRS is giving taxpayers an extra three days to file their taxes because Washington, D.C., is celebrating a public holiday on the usual filing deadline of April 15. Don’t you feel lucky? In the spirit of tax season, here are five investment tax tips that will save you time and money. 1. Make Investing Your Priority: Taxes should always be a secondary consideration in your investment decisions. Making an investment decision solely for tax purposes is a mistake. If you don’t like the future prospects of a stock or … [Read more...]
Archives for April 2011
Inflation Expectations Surge
This is a scary looking chart. The chart shows the 10 year breakeven inflation rate. This is the inflation rate that investors are anticipating over the coming ten years. Expected inflation has surged over a full percentage point since the Fed started their second money-printing crusade. This is unsettling. The central bank is losing credibility by the day. Over the last ten years, inflation expectations have only reached these heights on three other occasions. All three times, the Fed was either tightening monetary policy or on the verge of doing so. Today, the Fed is still easing … [Read more...]
The Fed Is Killing the Dollar
You can feel rich and poor at the same time. Take the college student living large on Mom and Dad’s tab. He may be enjoying his last semester of college but could also have a knot in the pit of his stomach; come next month, he graduates with no job. The same up-and-down feeling might apply to the purchasing power of your dollar today. For example, you can feel rich by being a vulture investor in Florida and buying a condo at a deeply discounted price. But then you’ll feel poor driving south when your snowbird daydreams are abruptly interrupted by the sticker shock of filling up the … [Read more...]
What we’re Reading 4-06-11
India Graduates Millions, But Too Few Are Fit to Hire – Wall Street Journal Will the Real Phillips Curve Please Stand Up? - John Hussman Monetary Policy’s Effects on Unemployment – Monetary Trends … [Read more...]
An Ominous Sign for Profits
Corporate profits hit another record last quarter. In its final revision of fourth quarter GDP, the Bureau of Economic Analysis reported the after-tax corporate profits increased to a record $1.25 trillion. Year-over-year profit growth was 13.7% in the fourth quarter and 3.3% on an annualized quarter-to-quarter basis. The corporate sector is one of the few bright spots in what has been one of the most lackluster economic recoveries on record. Corporate profits carved out an unmistakable V-shaped recovery—bottoming in the fourth quarter of 2008 and reaching a new high by the first quarter of … [Read more...]
Serious Inflation Ahead
Here is yet another sign that inflation pressures are building. Wal-Mart, America’s largest and lowest cost retailer says U.S. consumers will face serious inflation for clothing, food, and other products in the months ahead. If the nation’s low cost leader is planning price hikes, there isn’t a business in America that isn’t going to raise prices. I know this kind of data point doesn’t fit into the Fed’s abstruse economic models, but if Ben B. wants any chance of salvaging the Fed’s waning inflation-fighting credibility, he’d better start paying attention to this type of anecdotal … [Read more...]