Tired of amended and late-arriving 1099s delaying your tax returns? Help is on the way. The House of Representatives passed on Wednesday the Regulated Investment Company Modernization Act (H.R. 4337) marking the first regulatory update of mutual fund taxation in over 20 years. The most notable provisions permit mutual funds to earn income from commodities [...]
What's more American than baseball, July 4th or apple pie? . . . . . it's the prenuptial agreement! You know what we're talking about. The "prenup" as it's come to be affectionately known is that device used by many a terrible movie, TV show and book to manufacture conflict. Well, maybe. More accurately the [...]
In our Sept 15th post we referenced an article highlighting the public's confusion over fiduciary standards. A new survey supports the idea that a single standard is warranted. Consider these findings from a recent Infogroup/Opinion Research Corp survey: 91% believe brokers should follow the same fiduciary standards as investment advisers 96% believe insurance agents should [...]
So who is and isn't looking out for the best interests of clients? Think it's your stockbroker? Three out of four Americans think so. Three out of four Americans are wrong. Find out more here.
Proposed legislation from our friends in the House and Senate: HR 5318 (The Small Business Investment Penalty Relief Act of 2010) would waive the 10% penalty on early distributions from retirement plans if the funds were used for small-business investments. The bill is similar to HR 3612 and HR 3390. S 3720 and HR 6099 [...]
Insider buying and selling. Stock purchases and dispositions by people "in the know" as an indicator of where prices are headed. Good info? Maybe - maybe not. Far too many factors influence the validity of this indicator. Is an insider selling stock because s/he thinks it's overvalued or is s/he disposing of shares because an [...]
Poking fun at politicians is, well, fun. And why shouldn't it be? Many elected officials cling to their ideological biases - shamefully blinding themselves to the real-world and anything that may disprove their theories or derail their agendas. It seems it's been a long time - far too long - since we've heard "I'm wrong" [...]