Investor Year-End Tips from Schwab

To assist in helping everyone be financially fit, Charles Schwab is offering a series of tips to help investors be better positioned to begin the New Year.
Year-end Financial Checklist

Financial Tips: 1. Manage your investments for potential tax savings
It’s smart to think ahead — especially if your investments have fallen
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Rebuilding your retirement

If the carnage in the markets has left your retirement planning dead in the water, you’re not alone. Most workers haven’t made any changes in their retirement-savings plan. A recent report by Vanguard found that 84 percent of its more than 3 million retirement-plan participants made no trades in their accounts in 2008. That inertia [...]

Investing in oil

Twelve months ago, oil was trading at around US$140 a barrel, and those investors that had invested in the commodity for the previous six months would have seen returns of around 35 per cent.
However, since oil hit these record levels the price has fluctuated wildly, settling at around $70 per barrel today. This has left [...]

Top Solar Investing Hedge Fund List

The top solar hedge fund investor is Lee Ainslie’s Maverick Capital. Mr. Ainslie is a “Tiger Cub,” or a former protégé of Julian Robertson of Tiger Management. As of Q1 ’09, the fund had $180.33mm of its $5,529mm, or 3.26% of its portfolio, invested in solar. However, Maverick Capital is not necessarily a believer in [...]

Make a retirement plan your first interest

It’s easy to put off your savings plan for retirement or anything else for that matter. If you have any interest in becoming more financially secure for the future, it will take time and good savings habits. Put off saving too long and you may have to work longer before you can afford to retire, [...]

Rethinking Retirement in a Recession

In the last year the word retirement has started to be accompanied by a snigger, or seem like a sick joke. As in, “What retirement? My 401k has blown up, my job gone, and along with that my retirement dreams.”
True enough, millions upon millions of baby boomers are asking hard questions about their retirements.  Sadly [...]

IRA Retirement Plan Investing in Bear Stock Markets

IRA & retirement plan investing: Retirees and their Shrinking Nest Egg
You did all the “right” things – you maintained a diversified portfolio, was in the correct risk profile based on your age, and maxed out all contributions for as long as you can remember and yet you are wondering what is going on! Many people [...]

Taxes and Your Investments

Ordinary income taxes on short-term capital gains and interest income can go as high as 35%, while long-term capital gains and qualified dividend income are taxed at rates not exceeding 15% (0% if you are in the 10% or 15% tax bracket). One way to help maintain your portfolio’s growth potential is to invest in [...]

Has Our Retirement System Failed or is it a Problem With Expectations?

There has been a lot of talk about retirement lately on the heals of a devastating market drop. Most investors saving for retirement are heavily invested in stocks so the market downturn took their account value with it. Those who are near retirement are often put in a position where they can no longer retire [...]

A fund that hedges against inflation

Fans of tax-free muni bonds know that inflation can gnaw at their returns. And as government spending stokes fears of rising inflation, investors might be looking for protection.
One possible solution: J.P. Morgan’s three-year-old Tax Aware Real Return Fund – one of the only mutual funds to combine municipal bonds with a shield against inflation.
The fund [...]

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