Avoid Facebook if You’re Going Through a Divorce!

personal finance

I just read a very interesting article about social media that got me thinking. If you are going through a divorce avoid social media contact at all costs or it will end up biting you in the wallet! Social media websites such as Facebook, Myspace and Twitter are the gold at the end … [Read more...]

JMCVX & FMILX Mutual Funds Evaluations: Broad Market Investment and Diversification

personal finance

Having taken a moment to review the comparative numbers of JMCVX & FMILX in the previous post, it’s time to jump in and make some decisions. By the end of this article we’ll have evaluated the fundamentals of the Janus Investment Fund Perkins Mid Cap Value Fund (JMCVX), and the … [Read more...]

JMCVX & FMILX Mutual Funds Overview: Broad Market Investment and Diversification

personal finance

Having looked at a number of different mutual funds that focus in on generating returns based on the performance of specific market aspects, I’ve decided to spend this week comparing a set of broad market funds. By including funds such as the Janus Investment Fund Mid-Cap Value … [Read more...]

Long Call Market Neutral Positioning

personal finance

In the last article, I discussed a simple strategy for hedging out macroeconomic risks in a particularly turbulent market. However, the market neutral equity strategy described has a very serious risk implication on its own. Specifically, a market neutral equity strategy requires a … [Read more...]

Applying Technical Indicators to Value Investment

personal finance

In the last article, I described what momentum investing is, and how it can be broadly applied to a personal investment portfolio. By acting as an indicator of when to buy into an opportunity that has already been established as having a strong value proposition, a momentum indicator … [Read more...]

Understanding Stock Market Momentum Investing

personal finance

Momentum investing is a strategy that revolves around buying high, and selling even higher. While not necessarily as mathematically grounded a strategy as others, it has demonstrated itself time and again as being an extremely effective method of money management. Specifically, … [Read more...]

Mitigating Equity Dilution as a Value Investor

personal finance

In the last article, I went through a couple of scenarios that could result in an investor’s position being diluted out by further equity issuances by the company itself. While these situations don’t really have a major impact on the value of the investment itself (increasing … [Read more...]

Keeping Track of Selling Structured Settlement Payments

personal finance

"I have no idea what structured settlement payments I have left."  "There’s no way I have already sold those payments." Those of us that have been in the cash flow business for any length of time have heard these comments all too many times.  A potential client will call … [Read more...]

Applying Value Analysis to Liabilities and Solvency

personal finance

Up to this point, we’ve now examined how to evaluate aspects of the revenues, expenses, and assets of a company using value analysis. Having looked at the asset evaluations we’ve already completed, it is equally important to evaluate the liabilities that a company incurs. … [Read more...]

Applying Value Analysis to Assets

personal finance

Ben Graham defines the costs of investing in being what you pay, and the value of an investment as being what you receive in return for your cost. Despite haven written an entire book on the topic of value investing, his entire philosophy can be summed up in that one phrase. Value … [Read more...]

Applying Value Analysis to Expenses

personal finance

Having looked at incomes in the last post, I’d like to take this opportunity to dig into the profitability ratios we discussed. Specifically, it’s important to understand how these ratios are impacted by operations, and how it is that an apparent weakness in a given ratio, can … [Read more...]

Applying Value Analysis to Income and Cash Flow

personal finance

The first things you should ever look at when analyzing a company is its top and bottom lines. How much money is this company making, and how much is it keeping? From there, you can work your way throughout the gritty details about where it is all the money is going, and whether or … [Read more...]

Stop Payments, Stop ETF, and Trace Check

personal finance

Working for a financial institution, I’ve been able to see the benefits of online banking from a first-hand perspective. By cutting the costs associated with retail transactions in more than half, online banking provides some amazing opportunities for expanding the kinds of services … [Read more...]

Evaluation of Vanguard World Funds & Consumer Staples Mutual Funds

personal finance

If you haven’t been following along regularly, this is going to be a post that evaluates a series of Mutual Funds based on a selection of information that is compiled in the previous post. You don’t need to open a window to keep up with everything that’s going on, but you can if … [Read more...]

How To Avoid DRIP Dilution

personal finance

In the last article, I discussed how it is that a DRIP program can create a capital flight scenario that can be extremely destructive to your overall position. Through exposure to dilution and unrealistic growth expectations, DRIP programs can sometimes be hard to justify, even with … [Read more...]

Accessing Safer Foreign Bond Yields

personal finance

In the age of modern volatility, you need yield. Be it dividends, coupon payments, or GIC returns, it is extremely difficult for a small-time investor to build a personal portfolio centering on capital gains. However, unless you’ve stocked up on a year’s worth of anti-acids and … [Read more...]

Ditch the Stocks, Keep the Dividends

personal finance

The most frustrating thing about holding a stock is that it isn’t a bond. This may sound obvious, but any income-focused equity investors out there will understand my nuance. When you buy a high-yielding equity, you’re still greatly exposed to the capital fluctuations of the price … [Read more...]

The Basics of Dynamic Hedging

personal finance

Over the course of the week I’ve been describing all the nuance of a specific options strategy known as a strangle position. While the position is extremely cash intensive, it does provide an interesting thought experiment that might provide some additional insights into how it is … [Read more...]

Analysis of The Vanguard Fund and FBR’s GASFX Fund

personal finance

In the last post, we reviewed the contexts of two high-performing Utilities mutual funds. While FBR’s GASFX fund provides a greater return, it does not have the same breadth of diversification as Vanguard’s VUIAX. However, for the incremental increase in technical volatility, … [Read more...]

Averaging Down Without the Risk

personal finance

Volatility went through the roof again this week, and to be honest, I can’t even keep track of it any more. Between the political deck-shuffling in Italy and Greece delaying any semblance of sanity in the debt markets, and a sudden re-emergence of conflict in the middle-east … [Read more...]