supplemental retirement plan

Retirement planning can be intimidating at first. Unless you majored in Economics or Business in university, stocks and IRAs are a foreign language. With the majority of Americans relying less on social security and more on their own supplemental retirement plan, a huge market has emerged for financial publications ripe with investment articles aimed at informing the average citizen of his or her options.

Forbes is a fantastic place to discover your inner economist. It may look like a regular news site at first, but if you type “retirement investment” into the website’s search engine, you’ll find a plethora of engaging, easy-to-follow articles with aesthetically-pleasing arrangements. The letters are bold and colorful, with complimentary charts and pictures that make learning and understanding second nature. You might want to stream video presentations or look at the “lists” section where you can find the 100 best mid-cap stocks or an international investment guide. The “personal finance” tab is an invaluable resource for anyone looking for investment articles. From guru insights and investing ideas to taxes and mutual funds — finance has never been so much fun! Forbes.com is simply a “must” for anyone considering saving for their financial future.

If you feel lost in the jargon, try the AARP’s website for guidance. You’ll find investment articles regarding scams, success stories and reviews of retirement planning services. Understand the difference between a 401k and an IRA. This easy-to-read site is essential when you begin your journey into retirement.

Surely you’ve heard of Fortune or Money Magazine. Part of the CNN family, you can find an article about what to do with your 401k and read an interview with the richest man in the world at http://money.cnn.com/magazines/fortune. You probably recall their annual “top 100 companies to work for” list and the “highest paid CEOs” list, making this magazine great for research, more than a dummy’s guide to investment articles. You won’t find so many cut-and-dry explanations, but for the moderately educated and perpetually curious mid-lifer, Fortune and Money covers the hot button issues on Wall Street.

Bloomberg.com is a practical site that features not only investment articles, but also investment tools. Register and use the portfolio tracker and market monitor to easily keep tabs on your stocks, compare your funds with other top-ranked funds or use the personal calculator to keep your spending under control. With a quick click, you’ll get Bloomberg radio and TV reports delivered instantly to your computer. Quickly view an economic calendar or check the top stocks, read current news or refer to the glossary to understand unfamiliar terms. This is not for beginners, but rather intermediates.

Make good use of the search engine while browsing online investment articles. Try searches like “pros and cons of 401k plans,” “retirement investment” or “retirement planning.” Don’t be overwhelmed: take a deep breath and gaze over the different page header tabs to see if anything fits your needs. Once you find a page you like, save time by bookmarking or subscribing. Use this information to formulate questions for financial institutions. The more aware you are, the less susceptible to scams you’ll be!

With more foreclosures now than ever before, America’s weak real estate market seems to set new dismal records each month. But challenge always gives rise to opportunity, and opportunistic http://realestate.BryanEllis.comreal estate investors are rising to the challenge.

This new opportunity - known as ‘Bulk REO Investing‘ - is so huge it’s captured attention from wealthy investors and private investment funds alike.

Take a just a minute to consider the basics of this highly profitable business.

To understand Bulk REO investing is to understand the foreclosure process.

When a home owner begins to miss payments on their mortgage, the lender begins to send late/overdue notices to the home owner. The official foreclosure proceedings begin subsequently, as directed by the lender. From that time through public auction is called ‘preforeclosure’.

The defaulted property is ultimately auctioned, thus completing the foreclosure process. The lender regains ownership of the property if there are no buyers at auction. This property is then considered to be ‘Real Estate Owned’ by the lender, also known as an ‘REO’ property.

Typically, lenders list their REO properties with local real estate agents in hopes of selling the property to a retail buyer who will pay full price. But as a consequence of the weak economy, lenders are frequently selling their REO properties far below their actual value. Lenders are willing to do so in exchange for the buyer’s agreement to purchase a ‘package’ of REO’s rather than a single property.

The recession in the United States has yielded huge profits to real estate investors prepared to take advantage. Bulk REO Investors are most successful when they have a well-established source of funding for their REO packages. Some sources of funding for these transactions are: personal funds, hard money lenders, commercial lenders and non-conventional sources such as private investors and hedge funds. One excellent source of funding for Bulk REO Investment transactions can be found here: Bulk REO Investment Training.  (Note - please pay attention about how to acquire a $2 Million Proof of Funds.)

Most people have heard of the futures market, and it does get mentioned on news shows such as CNBC or MSNBC. However, a lot of people dont understand what the futures market is. Learning how to utilize it properly will help with entry timing when day trading, swing trading, and even investing (after all, who wants to be down immediately after entering a position?)

It’s actually quite simple. The futures market is just a bet on where an index will close at a future date in time. It is no different than saying ” I think GE will be 5 points higher in 3 months”. Think about thousands of people, or even 10s of thousands all betting on the price of GE in 3 months. Not tomorrow, the time is 3 months from now.

This aggregate valuation call would be considered a futures market. It may be higher or lower than where GE is now, but you also have to consider the people have 3 months to be right - that is a lot of time. Time always has a value, because the more time you give yourself to be right, the easier that bet is. So the market puts this time value into the price of the futures, and each day that goes by a bit of it decays (goes away) as it gets closer to the 3 month time. This 3 month time in this example is a fixed time, it does not scroll forward. So if the bet is a close of at least X price by july 31st, 2 weeks from now the date to be right is the same but the time left is less.

If this still seems confusing, think about this example:  Every day an analyst says “The market will fall 300 points today." if that happens in just a day, he gets paid a bonus of $40,000.00.The more time anyone has to be right can happen just by random chance, given enough time until the bet expires.The time increase you might give a person to be right would actually decay the value of the prediction being right.If the guy is given 1 month to be right, that is only worth $10,000.00.It the time to be right is 3 months, that is only worth $1000.00.00 and so forth, this is a type of time decay.

This basic concept is then carried over to the stock indexes. People make bets based on all available information, and bets based on anticipated information and research for where the indexes might be in the future. One thing to remember is at the expiration date, the futures contract AND the cash contract (the index) will be identical. So if the S&P 500 index is at 1400 on expiration, so will the futures contract trade to this price. Because of this fact, there is what is called arbitrage between the 2 (cash vs futures) since they trade separately. I can make a bet on the futures market (buying or selling) without doing anything with the cash index. In just the same way, I can buy a large basket of stocks in the index without touching the futures market. This back and forth action causes the two of them to fluctuate independently.

If the futures get too high (people buying futures but not stocks), there is free money there since at expiration futures and cash are equal. So you can sell the futures, then buy the basket of stocks that make up the index and lock in free money if you hold it until expiration. There are whole other program trades that simply day trade stocks vs futures all day long based on the premium to cash being too high or too low.  By selling the futures, you have agreed in principal to sell the basket of stocks comprising the index at that futures price. If the futures are 1430 and the cash is 1400, and the time value is 20, theoreticaly the futures should be at 1420. At 1430, I can sell the futures, then buy the stocks and lock in 10 points for free. Doing it in real time is not this easy, but the basic underlying concept is.  Anyone who wants to learn to trade needs to understand how the futures market works.

Most traders looking for something to trade generally have 3 choices: stocks (both common and options), futures, or currencies. There are other instuments to trade also, such as bonds and a few other exotic things - most of these are out of reach of the average trader. The most well understood is stocks, and least is probably currency pairs. Most investors and traders have heard about hte futures markets, which are not too hard to understand with a little bit of research.

First off, futures inherently have leverage far beyond stocks. Most stocks you can get 2:1 leverage overnight and 4:1 intra-day for day trading. Futures are leveraged by default because of how they are constructed. This is a double edged sword. For one, you can trade futures and have a reasonable rate of return with as little as a few thousand dollars. Stocks this is not possible (unless you delve into the murky waters of penny stocks). This allows returns to be amplified UP and DOWN. It is not unreasonable to have $5000.00 in your account and on a single trade make or lose $300-$500 depending on which future you trade - a 10% return (or loss!) on your principal investment in the account. If this type of risk and volatility makes you uncomfortable, then futures are not for you.

Second, futures by nature are actively traded and lead the market pushes and selloff's. This creates volatilty which in turn creates many opportunities to trade. With this action comes the forced nature to think quickly. You often times only have a few seconds to get an order in or you will miss the move. It is also a good trait to develop the ability to anticipate an direction and have orders in ahead of time. Again, this requires skill and fast thinking. If this is not your strong suit, or you are very analytical, futures day trading or swing trading is probably not for you.

As a final note, you must be able to figure out risk levels and stops very quickly, making them almost second nature. You cannot enter a position and then think about where your stop should be and where your target should go. A trader should already know this before entering any orders. Since futures are leveraged a lot, you should always assess the stop first (read risk level) and determine the odds of that stop getting hit in the next 10-15 minutes BEFORE actually placing a trade. Why 10-15 minutes?? Most trades people do in the futures market on average only last this long, unless they are swing plays. Most futures traders choose not to hold overnight - there is risk of gaps and additional overnight margin requirements because of this risk. Traders close out positions at the close of each day.

AZ Powerball

As you may be aware, the soaring cost of raw materials and striking workers is driving the cost of automobile manufacturing higher than ever. While stock investors may smugly believe that consumers must pay the price of these increases, they forget that investing in the automobile industry is an extremely risky gamble. Perhaps it can be said that investing in automobile manufacturers is every bit as risky as playing AZ Powerball.

In many areas, playing AZ Powerball is looked upon as gambling that does not take much skill or ability to accomplish. Timing is everything when it comes to investing in today’s markets. Nevertheless, with a little bit of scrutiny, it becomes clear that the stock investor relies on randomness just as much as an AZ Powerball player.

Many years ago, Benjamin Graham advised stock investors to assess the net worth of a company rather than the mood and direction of other investors. Unfortunately, in today’s economy, every business in a specific sector is up against unsolvable problems. As a result, investors really do have to try and guess how their fellow investors will spend their money in order to be able to buy and sell for a profit.

As Warren Buffett so eloquently states: “I never attempt to make money on the stock market. I buy on the assumption that they could close the market the next day and not reopen it for five years”.

As may be expected, when you are trying to predict the trend of thousands of stock investors, it is not much different from trying to guess which Powerball will be selected. Most anti-gambling advocates, as well as government regulators seem to be completely unaware of that. As a result, our economy is certainly bearing testament to the failure of stock investors to observe basic guidelines about how to gamble safely. That said, if you want to play AZ Powerball, you should still keep and maintain a sound financial budget, and not gamble beyond your means.