101–110 of 172 posts
Two words: permanent portfolio. http://crawlingroad.com/blog/2008/12/22/permanent-portfolio-... http://crawlingroad.com/blog/tag/permanent-portfolio/
Any wealthy people out there using this who can comment?
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No, I think "top money manager at a major Wall Street firm" and otherwise unattributed actually is random people.
Do you mean to imply that the post's author was lying, the person he was talking to was lying, or that a top money manager at a major Wall Street firm's opinion is just as good as that of a random person? If the last one, I'm inclined to think that someone who thinks about something full-time is statistically more likely to guess correctly about it than someone who doesn't.
If you ask me, the best way to invest the $2 million mentioned in the article in order to retire comfortably would be rental property. Take your $2 million and buy four $500K houses (or eight $250K houses, or whatever's appropriate). Pay an agent to take care of them, or do it yourself, depending on how much involvement you want. That should yield maybe $8,000 a month in rent, which after you've taken care of all the…
You can get a quality property with minimal leverage for your $2million. You will get a blue chip tenant like a national retailer or even a government department, and they'll sign a 10 year lease with mandated, upwards only, CPI-indexed increases each year. You won't even have to fork over 8-10% on a property manager because the tenant will maintain the property. And at the end of it, you'll have a property worth much, much more than what you paid for it.
Compare to a portfolio of houses, this strategy is higher return, lower risk and much lower management. The problem with family housing is that they are full of families, with all the associated problems that brings. Families split up, move out, get into trouble, have parties - blue chip businesses just keep their place tidy, make money and get on with life.
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If what you say is true, why is all this free money still lying around? Is there some systematic reason for why hedge funds don't do it, or why too few people bid on courthouse auctions?
It's not free at all. Buying a rental property off the MLS means you have to manage it, and is like starting a small business. This is fairly safe to do even for beginners, and is a good way to leverage a few tens of thousands and a good credit rating. Buying at courthouse auctions is a completely different ball game, and requires you to 1. pay all cash(this eliminates 99% of competitors) 2. research title and liens…
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Do you mean to imply that the post's author was lying, the person he was talking to was lying, or that a top money manager at a major Wall Street firm's opinion is just as good as that of a random person? If the last one, I'm inclined to think that someone who thinks about something full-time is statistically more likely to guess correctly about it than someone who doesn't.
Most of my friends on Wall Street say you shouldn't trust random top money managers at major Wall Street firms - that's not over the interesting competence threshold. I am, obviously, paraphrasing, but it's the impression I get.
Does the rule that you should get out of the stock market when random people tell you stocks are sure to go up apply in reverse? If so, this is a pretty encouraging sign.
Probably better to wait until people consider you weird for your investment thesis.
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No, I think "top money manager at a major Wall Street firm" and otherwise unattributed actually is random people.
Bernard Lietaer (former central banker, successful currency speculator, one of the architects of what today is the Euro, and nowadays complementary currency advocate) starts most of his post-crisis conferences by asking the public to raise their hands if they believe that the worst of the crisis is past/ahead of us. Generally, most people will raise their hand to state their belief that the worst is still to come. He…
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It's not as if the normal conditions are 0% unemployment. Also, society as a whole is so much richer now than it was in the last 'great depression' that even those that are down on their luck have it comparatively easy compared with 80 years ago. It's a world of a difference. That doesn't mean there aren't individuals that are on really hard times, but there are only more of them, it's not like the phenomenon is uniq…
No, it's not, but the current situation smacks of systemic job loss rather than cyclical job loss. It's a problem. What happens when people absolutely can't find new jobs? Self-feeding demand destruction?
Sounds like we're back in the 80's - 'the Japanese are taking our jobs! The robots did it!' and then we went into the 20 most prosperous years humankind has ever known. I hear people cry left and right that today's job loss is systemic, but I hardly see any factual arguments to support that position. Jobs were cut over the last two years, this quarter profits are back up, and if those improved profits repeat themselves for a few quarters the confidence will come back and more people will be hired. A regular business cycle, even if the nature of the drivers is changing.
Now I'm not saying it doesn't suck for those without a job, and I'm sure some people have it really rough, but come on like Jacques says - today's poor (in the West) live lives 10 times better than the kings of 500 years ago. I'm sure that's no consolation for a welfare mom who has to put her children to bed some nights crying because they're hungry, but overall, these are still great times to live in. Let's keep some perspective, put problems in the right context and fix the comparatively small deficiencies rather than cry wolf, pack cans of beans and ammo and head for the mountains.
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In theory, shouldn't all stocks be dividend paying? If your stock doesn't pay dividends, what makes it any different from baseball cards as an investment?
In theory yes, that's essentially the dividend discount model of stock value.