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Archives for October 2016

RAGE Gauge: October Not Surprising to Me

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Non-farm employers added 156,000 jobs in September as the unemployment rate edged up 0.1% to 5%. The participation rate rose slightly to 62.9%, while 94,184,000 Americans were not in the labor force, 207,000 fewer than in August. Interest rates plunged in September after the Fed, as we expected, did nothing with rates, and are back up now. Not much good to report on “dissatisfaction with the country.” Gold is well below $1,300 at $1,254. If it was a good value last month, it’s a better one today. Background checks broke another monthly record in September as concerns mount about the future of … [Read more...]

A Proposal to Soak the Rich

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Despite the United States having the most progressive income tax system in the developed world, the Wall Street Journal reports that Mrs. Clinton’s tax proposals call for doubling down on a soak the rich strategy. Regardless of your politics, this is just bad policy. When you tax something you get less of it. What are you going to get less of in this instance? Taxable income. High-income earners are the most capable of hiring high-priced lawyers and accountants to help them avoid, dodge, and reduce taxes. You might think that would dawn on the folk making these proposals since these … [Read more...]

A Flash Crash in one of the World’s Reserve Currencies

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When we wrote on Wednesday that it was probably too early to take an aggressive position in the British Pound we apparently weren’t kidding. Overnight, the British pound crashed, falling as much as ten percent in the early Asian session. This is one of the world’s largest and most liquid currency markets. The pound-dollar pair is the third most traded currency pair in the world, with $470 billion exchanged on a daily basis. For some perspective on that number, Apple, the world’s largest publicly traded company, only trades about $4 billion per day. What caused the crash in the pound? The … [Read more...]

Your Retirement Life: Will Your Family Survive the Money Crisis?

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“So where have we retired? The local airport is our retirement home and will be for the next 10-years,” wrote my new friend Nancy in response to my “Your Retirement Life” series. “My husband just retired at 70 from pastoring a local small church for 35 years. For many years it was full time work, on a part time salary. I still work part time as a nurse locally and we homeschooled 6 of the 7 children K-12. We now have 23 grandchildren in 4 far away states. Ideally we’d ALL like to live closer…but those jobs!!!!” I emailed Nancy, to thank her for sharing her story, and asked if she would have … [Read more...]

Want to Pay Low Taxes and Enjoy a Glamorous Lifestyle?

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The place to be, as Mansion Global tells readers, is Monaco. Debbie and I were in Monaco a few years ago and can report that the principality is undoubtedly the wealthiest spot on earth as well as the safest! House prices in Monaco jumped by more than a quarter over the past five years as the tiny principality continues to attract wealthy buyers from around the world with its low taxes and glamorous lifestyle. “Prices are among the highest in the world, with its super-prime now touching €100,000 ($112,050) per square meter,” said Edward de Mallet Morgan, head of Knight Frank’s Monaco … [Read more...]

Does Your Wealth Management Plan Need an Easy Simplification?

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Vanguard founder Jack Bogle recently told Money that investors need to protect themselves against their “own weaknesses.” In that short statement, Bogle cuts to the bone. Individual investors can’t know everything they need to about the market. Like all “Do-it-yourself” activities, individual investors managing their own portfolios are prone to getting in over their heads. Complicated strategies lead to complicated outcomes. Bogle stresses making simplicity the pillar of any strategy. Money quotes Bogle as saying: “One thing you have to do is protect yourself against your own weaknesses,” … [Read more...]

One of the Hottest Niche Investments of the Past Decade

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I still have my original baseball card collection, some of the cards from as far back as the 1948 Bowmans. Here, The Wall Street Journal gives readers a glimpse of one of the ultimate rarities in the history of baseball card collecting. In 1960, Topps Co. cleared space in its cramped Brooklyn warehouse by renting a barge, loading it with boxes of baseball cards that had sold poorly and dumping them in the Atlantic Ocean. Nearly 60 years later, that renegade housecleaning maneuver has inadvertently created one of the hottest niche investments of the past decade: the 1952 Topps Mickey Mantle … [Read more...]

Is Your Zip Code Sabotaging Your Portfolio?

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You may have heard of home bias in investing. If you haven’t, home bias is the tendency of investors to own a large amount of domestic securities, despite the vastly greater number of opportunities available in foreign markets. The U.S. stock and bond markets only account for about two-thirds of the global total, but U.S. investors allocate almost 75% of their portfolios to the U.S. Favoring domestic versus foreign markets isn’t the only bias among investors though. According to J.P. Morgan, there is also a regional bias in investing. A regional bias? Indeed, the chart below from J.P. … [Read more...]

Warren Buffet’s Dishonest “My Secretary’s Tax Rate Higher than Mine”

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The problem with “the problem” many pundits are having with Donald Trump’s taxes, or non-taxes, is that they are talking about a tax on “income.” And living off “income” does not fit with those who do not live off “income,” but rather live off assets, explains Francis Menton in Manhattan Contrarian. What is considered “income” is relatively easy to figure out. You work for a year; you get paid in cash for a year. That’s your income for that year, of which you are required to pay the stated proportion of it in taxes. But many people who are neither rich nor wealthy do not live off income. … [Read more...]