Financial+literacy

Financial topics of general interest. Information and insight collected and recorded since 2004.
 * overview - asset classes, portfolio management concepts, terminology
 * planning - needs, current situation, goals, money management style, experience / expertise / confidence
 * strategy - portfolio / framework, objectives, allocation, forecast, indicators
 * reference - trusted advisers, resources, research, newsletters, regular reading, terminology - real / nominal returns, growth, income, volatility, hedging
 * management - buy, sell, monitor, review, how-to, tools
 * evaluation - summarize, assess, refine, balance, adjust
 * living - death, taxes, financial literacy, home, travel, health, medical coverage, quality of life, goals, values

My Do-it-yourself personal wealth management. Cheap and cheerful without taking any more time than back-to-back episodes of the Iron Chef. Save tons of money - 1-2% financial management fees, 1-1.5% mutual fund fees. Minimal expenses - couple of $150 per year newsletters, free email newsletters, free online news. Earn big bucks - consider the fees I am saving as earnings from a part-time job, better hourly rate than selling boat bits at the marine store. Confidence and personal satisfaction - priceless.


 * fundamentals - saving assets investments stocks bonds mutual funds interest rates currency exchange rates money supply global economy historical data treasuries
 * personal - goals values lifestyle personality color
 * financial planning - current assets goals expected returns
 * retirement - planning goals spending income taxes calculator IRAs Traditional Roth compare contributions catch-up withdrawal conversion recharacterization reconversion
 * investing - online brokers accounts services margins options short-selling hedge funds derivatives market timing stock picking drawdowns volatility
 * strategies - Modern Portfolio Theory (MPT) asset allocation core-and-explore lifecycle rolldown Hussman Beating the Dow Ben Stein Coffeehouse diversification re balancing
 * bonds - treasuries corporate utilities tax-free municipal junk ladder taxable
 * taxes - federal state return preparation optimization surprises
 * miscellaneous - TIPS LEAPs spreads covered calls butterflies
 * big picture - recession yield curve depression stagflation hyperinflation Japanese recovery
 * advisers - screening trust relationship cost
 * crossroads - housing bubble
 * blogs & commentary - contrarian important interesting
 * news & information - sources cost audio publications newsletters
 * tutorials
 * personal wealth management - tasks frequency time interest rewards
 * glossaries - Motley Fool Vanguard WFN
 * continuing education sophisticated investors global perspective
 * rock stars - analysts successful investors - James Grant Steve Roach Bill Fleckenstein Michael O’Higgins Warren Buffett Paul Kasriel Sir John Templeton Jeremy Grantham Ben Stein Marc Faber Richard Russell

I should know this…A running list of items that need future investigation.


 * “convert remaining IRA to Roth and put one-half of Roth into TR2015″ - what are the rules, benefits, downside of an IRA to Roth conversion? what is TR2015? why would you switch from a traditional IRA to a Roth IRA? what are the tax implications? Vanguard Diehard forum .. 3/25
 * need to understand more about bonds - when to buy ..3/25
 * The Coffeehouse portfolio allocates 60 percent to stocks and 40 percent to bonds. The stock allocation is divided equally into six asset classes - large-cap, value, small-cap, small-cap value, international and REITs. The bond allocation consists of an intermediate-term bond-index fund. Using the appropriate Vanguard index funds to meet those goals, the portfolio generated a return of 14.2 percent in 2004. - select Vanguard funds to match, create tracking portfolio
 * short-term volatility - tolerance, management
 * ongoing management of your assets: a schedule for rebalancing your portfolio to its target allocation, the funds used to implement your allocation, criteria for adding or eliminating investments, and the role of taxes and costs in your decisions. - need to get better information for plan guidelines statement Vanguard
 * Treasury inflation-protected securities (TIPS) - learn more
 * Investment Committees: Vanguard’s View of Best Practices from Vanguard Investment Counseling & Research.
 * lifecycle, rolldown - do other institutions offer rebalancing retirement funds similar to Fidelity Freedom funds? is approximate model asset mix appropriate? low-cost assets to provide similar diversification? shortcomings? issues with model? .. 3/27
 * saving like madmen is still open. Only it is not an option: it's mandatory. In index funds, annuities, mutual funds, real estate, bonds but best, in all of these things at once. by Ben Stein - would this work? .. 3/27
 * The Intelligent Investor - Benjamin Graham, Warren Buffett’s mentor ..6/21

=Financial stories= < [|User:Vtaylor] [show] || == [[|edit]] ==
 * big ideas - world markets are a mess, broken, potential damage credibility of financial, legal, government, widespread moral bankruptcy
 * [|follow up]
 * ==Contents==

In the beginning
in no particular order yet This is financial reality - the true stories of distorting financial markets, rewarding reckless lenders, punishing savers, and misallocating capital from August 2004 to the present. These are stories selected from the 2000+ blog posts by an independent investor who makes his living from the returns on the family's investments. An engineer by education, he spent most of his career as an executive in high-tech, although he also spent time in banking. == [[|edit]] ==
 * [|Financial reality basics, common misinformation] - inflation, deflation, broken window
 * [|Saving, speculation and investment]
 * [|Taxes and taxation] - government spending
 * [|Unintended consequences]
 * [|Healthcare] ? entitlements
 * [|Program trading, market manipulation] - SEC, fraud, corruption
 * [|Indicators - leading, trailing and misleading]
 * [|Commodities, crude and gold]
 * [|Real estate, property]
 * [|War, peace and the military]
 * [|Money, monetary and fiscal phenomenon] - currency, Federal Reserve
 * [|Democracy, liberty and government] - political, constitution
 * [|Workers, jobs and education]
 * first post August 17, 2004 - quoting George Soros, the well-known hedge fund operator: “Economic history is a never-ending series of episodes based on falsehoods and lies, not truths. It represents the path to big money. The object is to recognize the trend whose premise is false, ride that trend, and step off before it is discredited.” Words to heed. This blog will contain my thoughts on what’s fact and what’s fiction along with editorial asides and rants that will no doubt have a decidedly libertarian and Austrian (economics) bent. Nothing in this blog should be taken as investment advice of any kind.[|[1]]
 * selection of "stories" from financial reality - I learned from that...
 * decline of American - degenerates to the US - sociopathic leaders in government, business, education
 * public optimism
 * Dan Arly - connection to real money
 * Robert Prechter - social climate, movies

Historical notes
== [[|edit]] ==
 * August 18, 2004 Google reduced the size and price range for its IPO today. [|[2]]

Editor notes
Information from other sources that help understand the big picture and the context for Financial Reality remarks > * every P/E multiple is simply a shorthand for proper discounted cash-flow methods, because there are countless assumptions about growth, margins, return on invested capital and other factors quietly baked inside. Like price-to-forward operating earnings multiples, even our old price-to-peak earnings metric has been rendered misleading due to historically high profit margins. Of course, we knew that was happening even before the credit crisis began, and believe that numerous widely-followed valuation measures remain distorted by record profit margins here. > * broad economic drivers and aggregate output (real personal income, real personal consumption, real final sales, global output, real GDP, and even employment growth) > * overvalued, overbought, overbullish conditions, and other variants that capture a general syndrome of "overextended market coupled with a loss of supporting factors" == [[|edit]] ==
 * Hussman [|[3]]
 * Socionomics - as sign of the times - books like A Game of Thrones - It portrays a chaotic and unpredictable political struggle peopled with complex characters whose morals come in all shades of gray. It visits and revisits the grisly details of such themes as betrayal, immolation, hanging, beheading, amputation, poisoning, cannibalism, incest, disinherited bastard children, deformities and prostitution, to name just a few. Thrones garnered widespread acclaim during a Primary-degree advance in the stock market. But critically, the advance has been a bear-market rally that has occurred eleven years into a historic Supercycle-degree bear market. [|[4]]

Learn more...
Additional references and sources of information about concepts and financial mechanisms that are beyond the scope of this summary (and the editor's brain capacity).
 * All hyperinflations are built on this dynamic. ... So significant inflation is ultimately not a monetary phenomenon as much as it is a fiscal one. -- Hussman [|[5]]