Financial News

Bloomberg reporter Meghan Morris recently brought to light a new asset trend for investment firms. Rather than going after the spectacular success that can come with playing the stock game, many are turning to alternative assets such as real estate and private equity. And they’re doing so for what seems to be a counterintuitive [...]

It’s one thing to break the law. It’s quite another to do it under IRS guidance. In a recent WSJ article by ace Laura Sanders, we find out all the details about how the IRS actually paved the way for an infraction of U.S. tax law. Here’s how it went down. It started with [...]

Quick! Your money and your retirement rely on giving the correct answer to the following question. Which of the following is just a passing fad: Social Media Search Engines Smart Phones Streaming Video There are a number of major blue chip companies that are betting on each of these products continuing their hot ubiquity. [...]

3 Truths for the Proactive Investor from the World of Weather Forecasting A recent article in the Wall Street Journal by Ben Eisen highlighted ten things that a person may not know about weather forecasting. This article was obviously easy pickings for the writer. The average joe around town knows more about the now [...]

Government intervention has always resided in the nether world of Sisyphean dilemmas. On one hand the intervention itself is almost certainly going to do more harm than good. The problems addressed by government are too large, systemic, and chaotic to allow some policy wonk’s solution any reasonable chance of success. On the other hand, [...]

A while ago, 401(k) fees were all the rage in the media. Big articles were written, big legislation was produced, and the big fees themselves were supposed to become a little more transparent. Apparently the companies providing the 401(k) plans were making BOATLOADS of money off of the fees, and (surprise!) they weren’t exactly [...]

Recently, the 2013 Nobel Prize in Economics was given to three professors for “their empirical analysis of asset prices”. Eugene Fama, Lars Peter Hansen, and Robert Shiller were awarded the prize for their groundwork in determining that stock prices are hard to predict in the short time, easier in the long term, and have [...]

The Millenial Shuffle? Forbes is reporting that Millenials (those of us who are really 30 and under) are seriously deficient in their retirement saving. The reasons proffered include disinterest in standard retirement plans due to recent market volatility, huge student loan debt, and general youthfulness (i.e. “Retirement? Isn’t that something that you worry about [...]

A recent survey from State Street Global Advisors draws a conclusion that seems inevitable in the contemporary market. Investors want a monthly retirement income, in addition to whatever they may get from Social Security. That seems like an obvious desire as that is indeed the whole point of retirement saving: having money to live [...]

Local Government Cuts Pension Plans Trying to avoid possible bankruptcy, the city of Detroit continues to outline major budgetary cuts and cost saving maneuvers. Amongst the more noticeable of these cuts is a massive reduction in pension benefits. These would include reducing existing pension checks, as well as eliminating pensions completely for those who [...]