Antoine Walker had the world by the tail in 1996. He was coming off a NCAA championship season with the Kentucky Wildcats and was chosen by the Boston Celtics as the sixth pick overall in the 1996 draft. Fourteen years later, he declared bankruptcy with assets of $4.28 million and $12.74 million in liabilities. Walker
Investing & Retiring
A QTIP in the financial field refers to Qualified Terminable Interest Property, a definition used in forming a special type of trust. QTIPs are properties such as lifetime income interests that qualify for the marital deductions on estate taxes.
There are three primary purposes to a QTIP trust:
Direction of Assets After Surviving Spouse’s Death
You may have saved diligently for retirement and managed your money well, but in the end, long-term care costs can derail your plans and quickly exhaust your savings and other assets. According to LongTermCare.gov, average costs for 2010 were $6,235 and $6,965 per month for semi-private and private rooms in nursing homes, respectively. For how
Eike Batista has been on the most extreme financial roller coaster you could ever imagine. Actually, it is doubtful that anyone but Batista could truly understand the financial highs and lows he has experienced over the past few years.
Eike, a Brazilian entrepreneur, built an empire of companies that resulted in a net worth of
What do Silicon Valley and agriculture have in common? Not much, you may think… but agriculture and technology are becoming increasingly intertwined. Tech companies see financial opportunities in agricultural pursuits, farmers see potential cost savings and higher yields through technological improvements, and perhaps world hunger may be reduced as a result.
The tech industry is
Investing in the stock market is an inherently risky endeavor. Throughout history, the major stock indices have risen and fallen sharply over both short and long periods of time, leading some investors to avoid stocks due to their volatility.
However, what if you could buy “stock insurance” that would effectively limit your portfolio losses should
There have been rough times in the commodity markets, but copper has been hit especially hard. From an early-2011 peak that approached $10,000 per metric ton, copper lost nearly 30% of its value in mid-2011, and after a brief recovery, has slowly dropped to its current price ($2.534 per pound or $5,575 per metric ton
The term “market correction” is unsettling to most investors, but it really should not be. If you take the longer view of investing and resist overreacting, you may be able to capitalize on the correction and make long-term lemonade out of short-term lemons.
A correction is generally defined as a relatively short-term loss of 10%
Alternative energy sources such as solar and wind power are considered crucial by many people and their respective governments to combat global warming and climate change. Cost factors and reliability are the primary reasons that solar and wind power have not made larger inroads into our infrastructure.
A study by Charles Frank, an economist and
Exchange-Traded Funds (ETFs) can be tricky to value, because they have the pricing characteristics of both mutual funds and stocks.
ETF’s, like mutual funds, contain a market basket of shares of different companies, and so their valuation is calculated as a Net Asset Value (NAV) which gives you the collective valuation of the underlying holdings
CDARS may sound like trees you might find in the FREST – but it actually stands for Certificate of Deposit Accounts Registry Service, a method of insurance for very large deposits that is backed by the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC).
CDARS exists primarily because of the limits on FDIC-insured accounts. FDIC limits for CDs
“Buy low, sell high.” This simple piece of advice sums up the goal of every investor — to sell securities at a higher price than what was originally paid.
Of course, this is easier said than done. Buying and selling the right stocks at the right time is tricky business, even for investment pros who
If you have spent any time speaking to a recent college grad, you’ve likely heard the grumbles. Spiraling college costs have wreaked havoc in their financial lives, with debt piled high before beginning their first job. The thought of grad school is often an unreachable dream, because there isn’t any money put aside for this,
Treasury Inflation-Protected Securities (TIPS) are securities issued by the government that adjust for inflation based on the value of the Consumer Price Index (CPI). Unlike other fixed-income investments, the face value (and therefore the interest income) varies over time based on the amount of inflation adjustment. This makes TIPS a good choice for a laddering
A new type of investment has recently emerged that has piqued the curiosity of options investors. Commonly referred to as binary options, this investment is an options contract in which the payout is based on the correct or incorrect answer of a simple yes/no proposition. Binary options are also sometimes called all-or-nothing options or Fixed
Pairs trading, developed by analysts at Morgan Stanley in the 1980s, uses correlation between two similar investment vehicles to create a market-neutral trading strategy – where profits are not related to whether the overall market goes up or down.
Correlation of two investment vehicles refers to how their prices change relative to each other. If
The Foreign Currency Market, often called the FOREX or FX market, is a marketplace for the buying and selling of currencies, which are considered a form of commodity. Investors make or lose money based on changes in the value of relative currencies.
Trades on the FOREX market are made in currency pairs – you are
An investment is considered “triple-tax-free” if it is exempt from taxes at all three levels of government – federal, state and municipal. What kind of investment gives you that sort of a sweet deal? The answer is municipal bonds.
Generally, a state or a municipality offers the bonds with tax-free interest payments to promote investments
“The Witching Hour” sounds like a bad public access television show, but it really refers to a particular time of day where odd and unexplainable things happen. When referring to stocks, it means pretty much the same thing, except that the reasons behind the activities are somewhat explainable.
Triple-witching days occur four times a year
Natural gas has been touted by some as a greener alternative to other fossil fuels, and thanks to technological improvements to increase supply, the current price also makes natural gas an attractive option.
The relatively sudden increased availability of natural gas was a boon for energy consumers. Unfortunately for investors, natural gas price plummeted through
There are two avenues of government assistance to disabled Americans – Supplemental Security Income (SSI) or Medicaid. To qualify for these programs, generally a person must meet the definition of disabled as defined by the Social Security Administration, must have resources of less than $2,000 and the disability must prevent them from holding a job.
Not surprisingly, choosing a trustee is one of the most important aspects of setting up a trust. It is not uncommon for trustees to be unprepared, overwhelmed, disinterested, or otherwise unsuited for the job they have been given.
The job of a trustee, and therefore the best choice of trustee, varies depending on the type
Regardless of the amount of money you have, it’s important to keep a portion of it in liquid assets that are readily accessible to pay bills and other debts. The simplest and most common way to maintain liquidity is through cash kept in a savings or checking account through a bank or credit union. However,
Tax-loss selling is a means of lowering your tax burden by selling off underperforming stocks or securities at a loss. The resulting loss may be used to offset capital gains (if you’ve held the stock for more than a year) or ordinary income (if you’ve held it for less than a year). In either case,
Futures are investments that allow you to buy commodities by locking in a certain price at a specific time without actually buying the shares. These are speculative bets you are placing on the future price of a commodity, sometimes far in advance. In addition to commodities such as crude oil and corn, stocks, foreign currencies
As a company owner, CFO or Controller, one of your most important tasks is to select the right business bank. It is easy to think that all banks are the same, but there are important differences in services, fees and culture. So it’s worth taking some of your valuable time to insure that the bank
The sad fact is that many retirees today are living on very small fixed incomes – money from IRAs they may have started late in their careers, and the small monthly amounts they receive from Social Security. To help supplement their finances, some retired investors are being drawn to purchase secondary market annuities, which promise
Options are similar to futures, where two parties agree to a transaction at a future date for a set price. The difference is that futures are obligations to follow through on the transaction, whereas options are the right to participate in the transaction. In both cases, the goal is to generate short-term income.
Option contract
Commodities are commercial goods that are considered interchangeable with other goods of the same kind and quality, and traded in that fashion. When most people think of commodities, they may think of traditional commodities such as wheat, cattle, heating oil or gold. Today, this definition can also include financial instruments such as currencies or indices,
Futures are a type of financial contract where two parties agree to a future transaction at an agreed-upon price. That transaction could be in commodities, currencies, stock indexes or other goods.
Futures contracts contain all the pertinent transaction details — quantity, specifications, price per unit and intended delivery method. However, many futures contracts do not