Stock World Weekly 4/21/13
by SWW - April 21st, 2013 3:42 pm
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Fed Governor Stein Warns When A TBTF Bank Fails, Depositors Will Be Cyprus’ed
by ilene - April 19th, 2013 3:50 pm
Courtesy of ZeroHedge. View original post here.
Submitted by Tyler Durden.
Two months ago, Fed governor Jeremy Stein caused a major stir among the very serious excel-using economists and other wannabe "scientists"-cum-voodoo witchdoctors, when he hinted that it was the Fed's actions that were leading to "overheating" in the markets. It took quite a bit of rhetoric by other very serious people to talk down his comments and give the impression that the S&P is not about 50% overvalued. Today, Stein has managed to stick his foot in his mouth for the second time in a row, and do what virtually nobody in the status quo is capable of: tell the truth.
In a speech titled "Regulating Large Financial Institutions" Stein made something very clear: if and when a TBTF fails, and since this time is not different, and a failure is only a matter of time, depositors will lose everything, which now that Cyprus is the template, is to be expected. Not only that but Stein makes it all too clear that part of the Dodd-Frank resolution authority guidelines, a bailout is no longer an option.
Perhaps more to the point for TBTF, if a SIFI does fail I have little doubt that private investors will in fact bear the losses--even if this leads to an outcome that is messier and more costly to society than we would ideally like. Dodd-Frank is very clear in saying that the Federal Reserve and other regulators cannot use their emergency authorities to bail out an individual failing institution. And as a member of the Board, I am committed to following both the letter and the spirit of the law.
At least he can't say Americans weren't warned when the Cypressing(sic) hammer finally falls.
Oh, and as a reminder…
Investor vs. Trader and the Tax Code
by ilene - April 14th, 2013 12:16 pm
Source: imbibemagazine.com via Carol on Pinterest
Investor vs. Trader and the Section 475(f) Tax Election
The information provided in the article below is true and factual to the best of our knowledge as of April 9, 2013. However, it is not intended to be comprehensive or complete. Always discuss your choices and options with a tax professional. Appropriate IRS publications and/or IRC section citations are provided. State tax laws are not discussed.
Disclaimer: Phil’s Stock World website and its affiliates, owners and representatives do not have direct or indirect knowledge of the validity of the statements contained herein, and, therefore cannot express opinions or confirm the correctness of any statement. Moreover, tax laws change frequently, and up-to-date information from a tax professional is always recommended. The author of this article has no expressed or inferred liability for the accuracy of the statements in the article below.
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Investor vs. Trader and the Section 475(f) Tax Election
By Dawn Rinaldi (Dawnr)
As you begin your trading activities, you probably don’t want to think about taxes! However, a little bit of time reviewing tax details with a tax adviser can help you keep more of your hard earned trading profits or allow you more effective write-offs for losses.
Let’s start exploring the issues…
Are you a ‘Trader’ or an ‘Investor’ as defined by the IRS?
Special, more favorable tax rules apply if you are a trader in securities – i.e., if you are in the business of buying and selling securities for your own account. To be engaged in business as a trader in securities, you must meet ALL the following conditions:
- Only trading in TAXABLE accounts (not retirement accounts) counts toward trader tax status.
- You are not a licensed broker or dealer (outside of the scope of this document)
- You must seek to profit from daily market movements in the prices of securities and not from dividends, interest, or capital appreciation.
- Your activity must be substantial, and
- You must carry on the activity with continuity and regularity.
The following factors are considered in determining whether your activity qualifies as a securities trading business:
- Typical holding periods for securities bought and sold.
- The frequency and dollar amount of your trades
Stock World Weekly
by SWW - April 14th, 2013 2:38 am
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20 Stocks You Should Own In Q2
by Sabrient - April 10th, 2013 5:04 pm
Reminder: Sabrient is available to chat with Members, comments are found below each post.
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The Champ:IBaker's Dozen 2013Weighing in with sustained earnings stamina, the BAKER’S DOZEN, the 12-month buy-and-hold champ, has NEVER lost to the market! In 2012 the BAKER’S DOZEN gained +43%, KO-ing the S&P 500 and the Nasdaq 100 and leaving some of the biggest names on Wall Street—Morgan Stanley, Goldman Sachs, Merrill Lynch, J.P. Morgan—clinging to the ropes. Its compounded annual return over the past four years is+190%. And this year? Baker's Dozen 2013 has a Q1 performance of+14.38%! |
The Challenger: Earnings Busters Q2Weighing in with powerful quarterly knockouts, EARNINGS BUSTERS Q2 is the only real challenger on the market. In 2012 Earnings Busters* gained +35.6%—also beating those same Wall Street wizards—and boasts a total compounded return of +167.6% over the last four years. Earnings Busters even beat the Baker’s Dozen in 2009 by 45 percentage points! And this year? Earnings Busters is in the lead, with a gain of+18.65% for Q1! |
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Chart 1, at the bottom of this page, shows the dramatic 2012 performance of
these two Sabrient portfolios against their peers. |
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Do you want this kind of market-beating performance?If you missed out on the 2013 Baker’s Dozen or if you don’t like the idea of waiting 12 months for a fresh list of "earnings busting" stocks . . . OR if you just want excellent returns on your investments—
Earnings Busters Q2 is a simpler-to-manage version of the 13-stock, 13-rolling-week version. It is quarterly buy-and-hold 20-stock portfolio: Simply buy the stocks at the beginning of the quarter and |
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Stock World Weekly: Apr. 7, 2013
by SWW - April 7th, 2013 7:54 pm
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Brett Arends on Why Your Mom & Pop Can’t Invest for Sh*t
by ilene - April 5th, 2013 5:04 pm
Brett Arends on Why Your Mom & Pop Can’t Invest for Sh*t
Courtesy of Joshua M Brown, The Reformed Broker
Loved this rant from Brett at MarketWatch yesterday, he's more right than he knows judging by the stuff I've seen…
First, their minds have been playing tricks on them all along. The crash of 2008 did not wipe out half their savings, unless they invested all their money right at the peak and sold right at the bottom. The reality is that it wiped out a lot of illusory gains and replaced them with a lot of illusory losses. Stock prices were wrong in 2007 because they were too high, and they were wrong in late 2008 and early 2009 because they were too low.
Second, as they now know, they sold out somewhere near the lows. They were not alone. According to the Investment Company Institute, the trade body of the mutual fund industry, U.S. investors flooded the market with stocks in the fall of 2008 and the winter of 2009. From September, 2008 through March, 2009, ordinary U.S. investors dumped $114 billion worth of stock funds. They sold at absolutely the worst time.
This is not a coincidence. The stock market is “us.”
To be clear, I don't see the renewed interest in stocks from the Mom & Pop investor class as a negative or a sign of a massive top – it's when they start quitting their jobs to daytrade or offering me tips at dinner parties that I get more circumspect about the meeting of Main Street and Wall Street.
But, we're not there yet, these people are buying index funds at this point and they are anything but giddy and care-free at the moment.
I nicked the below chart from Barry, it's hard to say the folks are truly "running with the bulls" just now. My best guess is we're somewhere hovering between Media Attention – "new highs!" – and Enthusiasm. Could be wrong, just a hunch.
Source:
Mom and pop: The world’s worst investors (MarketWatch)
Stock World Weekly – March 31, 13
by SWW - April 1st, 2013 12:44 am
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Stock World Weekly (3/24/13)
by SWW - March 24th, 2013 3:34 pm
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Is The Government Lying To Us About Inflation? Yes!
by ilene - March 22nd, 2013 9:51 pm
Is The Government Lying To Us About Inflation? Yes!
Courtesy of JOHN MAULDIN
In today’s Outside the Box, Gary D. Halbert (my old and very dear friend and former business partner of many years) reminds us about a few significant facts concerning the Consumer Price Index (CPI) that mainstream economists and the media tend to ignore. The central question is whether the CPI is really indicative of the actual inflation rate. Not likely, says Gary, since the US Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS), which compiles the CPI, has engaged in methodological shenanigans over the past couple decades (as has been well documented by John Williams of ShadowStats, among others). The upshot of all their monkeying with the numbers is that the official rate of inflation may be two to four times lower than the actual rate (which is rather convenient if you’re a government bureaucrat trying to hold down interest costs and Social Security payments).
These changes are hotly debated in academic circles. There are many economists who agree with the changes and can show with their models that inflation is low. That is the currently accepted wisdom, or what passes for it. The problem is that inflation only shows up, as one person put it, in the things we actually buy. If your main costs are food, energy, education, and healthcare (ring any bells?), then inflation is a great deal higher than 2%. Other items are actually falling in price. It comes down to the mix of items in the calculations and whether you buy into the concepts of substitution (if beef gets too expensive we buy hamburger rather than steak) and “hedonics,” which says that prices of products drop over time as quality and manufacturing efficiency improve, so the calculation of inflation should take this into account.
Which means you can have official inflation at a low level (or even falling for certain items), while the amount you actually spend out of your very real pocket is rising! And thus the debate.
Having refreshed us on the basic techniques of CPI massage, Gary turns to food and energy, which the BLS includes in “headline CPI” but omits from “core CPI.” He points out that while headline CPI jumped an unexpected 0.7% in February, core CPI rose only 0.2%. That is, food and energy price increases accounted for more than 70% of the rise. “Not good for the


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Philip R. Davis is a founder Phil's Stock World, a stock and options trading site that teaches the art of options trading to newcomers and devises advanced strategies for expert traders...









Ilene is editor and affiliate program
coordinator for PSW. She manages the Favorites backup site
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