Retirement Planning for an Uncertain Future by: James Stefurak, CFA Retirement Planning for an Uncertain Future Most Americans sit on their proverbial “three-legged stool” (pension, Social Security and investments) during retirement. As a financial curmudgeon, I prefer the floor. Despite decades of market experience and over-credentialing, I can’t reconcile traditional retirement planning with my [...]
Five Finance Blogs for Market Bears Five Must-Read Finance Blogs ZeroHedge ZeroHedge is one of the most popular contrarian finance blogs online. Boasting nearly half a million twitter followers, ZH provides content with a bearish spin that acts as a warning to an impending financial meltdown. They disseminate research snippets from a variety of sources [...]
Don't Buy Bitcoin to Hedge With the U.S. and global stock markets going haywire, we would like to refer interested hedgers to a couple of our posts over the last couple months for some ideas. First, we warned investors forget bitcoin and consider inverse ETFs if they are looking for some type of doomsday hedge [...]
Will an Inverse Bitcoin ETF Trade in 2018? With Bitcoin all over the media, it’s no surprise retail interest is skyrocketing. Investors from the U.S. to South Korea are clamoring for all types of crypto-currencies including bitcoin, ethereum, fastcoin and litecoin. But investing in them isn’t easy so many are waiting for a bitcoin ETF [...]
3 Best Inverse ETFs for 2018 (Read Time: About 2 minutes) It’s a bit early for a ‘New Year’ article but the current inflection point is so critical we had to go to press early. Each member of our Best Inverse ETFs for 2018 list targets a different bubble of an asset class- stocks, [...]
Sudden Emergency? Consider a 401k Hardship Withdrawal We all know that life has a way of throwing us curve balls. They come in the form of a sudden medical emergency, a layoff, stock market correction or major home damage not covered by your insurance policy. There are a number of ways you can receive [...]
Looking to Hedge? Forget Bitcoin, Consider Inverse ETFs (2-3 Minute Read) With all there is to worry about in today’s financial (stock, real estate and bond bubble) and geo-political landscape (North Korea, debt ceiling, Harvey) it makes sense to play defense with your portfolio. Adding traditional safe havens such as defensive stocks, Treasury bonds, [...]
Wells Fargo 401k Plan Information: Headquarters: San Francisco, CA Plan Assets: $36.3 Billion Participants enrolled: 350,000+ In the wake of the Wells Fargo scandal, we decided to take a closer look at Wells Fargo. In doing our research, we came across the holdings in the Wells Fargo 401k plan, specifically. What we found was rather [...]
Both individual and institutional investors are scrambling to find higher yielding financial products to meet future liabilities. Many have turned to equity products such as real estate investment trusts (REITs) and master limited partnerships (MLPs) to fill this need. But these are very volatile sectors, especially the energy-dependent MLP sector. (Many MLP owners are now [...]
Liquidity Issues with Real Estate Funds According to data from the Investment Association, U.K. real estate funds hold a hefty 24.5 billion pounds, (the equivalent of almost $32 billion) in assets under management. But last week’s run on U.K. property funds revealed just how dangerous commercial real estate funds may be since 37% (9.1 billion [...]
