The Idea of Business

By Jeff Astor One of the most common questions I get is: If Self-Directed IRAs or Solo 401(k)s are such powerful retirement vehicles, how come I’ve never heard of them until recently? And why don’t more people know about it?The answer is straight-forward: The brokerages and investment houses that hold your retirement money are not happy [...]

Why do things always get crazy when corporate investors get involved? Take a look at alternative investing. As it’s commonly understood, alternative assets are those investment products which don’t commonly fall under the Wall Street banner. On the individual level these can be great retirement products. With a self-directed IRA, an investor can place [...]

Profit is good. Unless, of course, it’s not. Here’s the deal. Everybody responds to incentives, and one of the top incentives is the ability to put a few bucks in your pocket. That’s why you go to work, that’s why people produce products for you to buy, and that’s why mothers still qvell over [...]

Obviously the Stock Market is the eventual end point for most workers’ investments, retirement or otherwise. Your financial advisor is going to tell you that, historically speaking, it’s the most stable thing out there. Consequently, it’s where s/he’s going to place your bets. If you’re investing via a company 401(k) then you’re limited to [...]

The positive implications of technology are so ubiquitous that the general public has become inured to the constant proclamations of breakthroughs, game changers, and world shifting inventions. In the realm of medicine, it’s taken for granted that new treatments will be discovered, life spans will be extended, and diseases will slowly but surely fall [...]

What’s better? To live an opiated existence and see the world through rose colored glasses, or to actually get a glimpse of reality with all of its cringe inducing flaws? If we’re talking about Twinkies (R.I.P.), then please leave me alone while I devour the yellow goodness. I don’t want to know what’s in [...]

One of the scarier trends in Wall Street money-making maneuvers is the emergence of fully automated trading. Fully automated doesn’t mean that a computer allows a human trader to push a button and – voila! – the trade is executed. Rather, it means that the computer itself is making the trading decisions. A programmer [...]

The New York Times published a story yesterday entitled The BlackBerry as Black Sheep in which it profiled people who are growing increasingly embarrassed to use their Blackberries in public. The Blackberry doesn’t provide the same functionality as the current breed of smart phones, and users come off looking like communications cavemen who are [...]

It wasn’t supposed to happen that way. The Jets were spectacularly bad in their preseason. The first team combined for a total of ZERO touchdowns, and the rumor mill had plenty of grist for the demise of the once mighty. Misery possessed a firm grip on the headlines. (Which, for some reason, is a [...]

The Clinton-Bush-Obama- errr… Paul Ryan Retirement Dilemma Surprise! The pundits have jumped on the opposing party to denounce its fiendish economic plans and the Armageddon inducing consequences that will occur as a result. A similar thing used to happen in my house when it came time to decide on a summer outing. The scenic [...]