How you just lost money in a stock market that’s up 40% August 5, 2009
Posted by Jeff Nabers in Money, Personal Productivity, Self Directed IRA/401k.Tags: 1913, chart, collapse, crash, currency, depression, dollar, dow jones, fed, fiat, gains, history, inflation, invest, investing, investment, long run, long term, losses, rebound, recession, risk, stock market
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Headlines abound, the stock market is up 40% from its March lows!!! Let’s all celebrate. Those who spoke badly of Obama, Bernanke, and Geithner have their foots in their mouths, right?
Not even close. These types of misleading headlines are the very weaponry of a financial system that tricks you, lures you, spikes your drink, robs you blind while you’re partying, and then nurses you back to sobriety in the morning by giving you another spiked drink.
Imagine you have $100 in the stock market. You experience a 40% loss. You now have $60. And, abracadabra, the economic rescuers have juiced the market back up 40%. You now have $84. Wait a tick, how exactly do I get back to $100? Well to recover from a 40% loss, you would need a 67% gain. You see, 40% of $60 is much less than 40% of $100, so the initial 40% loss was much larger than the 40% gain that followed. For those whose livelihood involves serious math, this is very obvious. For the rest of us, it should be an “ah ha” moment that exposes the red arrow, green arrow game.
Watching and listening to the financial news networks report about the stock market is like watching a sports game. And it entertains just like a sports game. In the midst of entertaining, it lulls us into watching the red and green arrows. Oh, it’s down today a few points. Hey look, it came back up. It feels very much like watching a basketball team surrender and regain the lead in a basketball game. If they are down by 40 points, and then they score 41 uncontested points, they have the lead and they win the game!
But it doesn’t work the same in percentage points. But just wait, over the long term the losses will be recovered and there will be profit, say the “experts” whose payroll checks are signed by Wall Street. If you buy that line of baloney, you will be further tricked. Because over the long term those losses will be recovered and there will be profits… but only as measured in dollars. If you factor in how over the long term those dollars buy less stuff, you will not find a substantial long-term profit.
Today the Dow closed at $9,320. But the dollar has lost over 96% of its purchasing power since 1913. Take 96% out of today’s Dow price and you get $372. In 1913, the Dow was at about $62. So the Dow Jones Industrial Average grew from $62 to $372 (in constant 1913 dollars) over a period of 96 years. That’s an annualized rate of return of 1.88%.
This bears repeating…
The Dow Jones has returned 1.88% per year for the past 96 years
Can you still get excited about a stock market that’s up 40% since its March lows when it is still a stock market that hasn’t even been able to produce an actual 2.00% return over the long run?
Or even more important questions: Is it worth the risk of losing a big chunk of the money you worked for just to “get some action” in a market that produces less than a 2.00% return over the long run? When you are down, can you wait decades without touching your money just to get back to your break-even point?
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Jeff Nabers is author of 5 STEPS TO FREEDOM: How to Cut Your Dependence on Institutions and Escape Financial Slavery
Investment Opportunities July 24, 2009
Posted by Jeff Nabers in Money, Precious Metals, real estate, Self Directed IRA/401k.Tags: appreciation, argentina, asset, brazil, cash flow, cashflow, chile, china, deflation, depression, economy, gains, hedge, hong kong, hyperinflation, income, inflation, invest, investing, investments, mortgage note, opportunities, real estate, recession, russia, singapore, trust deed
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When listening to feedback from Nabers Group clients, one message is loud and clear, “We want to see investment opportunities from you.”
I sent out a survey to all of my clients recently, and I’d love your input too. With my activities in many circles, I have access to mounds of solid investment opportunities. If you complete this survey it can help me understand what types of opportunities you are most interested in.
Think you’re too old to get in on alternative investments? Think again May 22, 2009
Posted by reformedinvestor in Money, Self Directed IRA/401k.Tags: income, invest, investing, investment, real estate, retirement, wealth
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Mature investors close to retirement age are likely kicking themselves wishing they had pulled their money out of the market while they had the chance.
But too often these investors were told to “stay the course” and that “the market will come back.” Truth be told, no one knows for sure what the market will do.
But we do know is that you still have time to recover your losses – as long as you don’t just sit back and “hope” the stock market will recover. You have to do something about it.
Real estate can be a wonderful option for someone nearing retirement. With depressed housing prices, you may be able to find a home that offers positive cash-flow so that it provides a healthy monthly income. When the market recovers, you can consider selling the property only if the numbers add up and you will benefit from appreciation. If not, you can continue to cash-flow the property and create income for yourself for a long time.
So the point is that you’re never too old to consider alternative investments. A diversified investor is a smart investor at any age.
Who will arrest the investment police? May 17, 2009
Posted by Jeff Nabers in real estate, Self Directed IRA/401k.Tags: 401k, attorney, fraud, invest, ira, laws, regulation, regulators, SEC, securities, securities and exchange commission, wall street
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An unsurprising story surfaced a couple of days ago… SEC attorneys are under investigation for insider trading!
If you can’t truly value that exclamation point I just used, let me help you. The Securities & Exchange Commission (SEC) is a government organization that was formed to convince us that investing in the stock market was safe. Part of their role is to make sure people don’t use their non-public knowledge to make profitable investments in the stock market (yeah, right). This is called “insider trading”. In business, this is known as “doing business”. In real estate, non-public knowledge can turn a peon into a mogul overnight. But in the stock market it is a crime and we give the SEC billions of our dollars to make sure it doesn’t happen.
But, whoops, SEC attorneys are doing it themselves. And a lot. One of the two SEC attorneys currently under FBI investigation made 247 stock (more…)
Is my home an investment? March 18, 2009
Posted by Jeff Nabers in real estate, Self Directed IRA/401k.Tags: 401k, bernanke, builder, buyer, clinton, consumer, fannie mae, fed, finances, financial, FNMA, greenspan, home, house, income, invest, investing, investment, ira, ira llc, llc, planner, primary, property, real estate, realtor, recession, residence, self directed, seller, solo, Solo 401k, spending
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Recently I received a question from somebody looking into self-directed IRA/401(k) investment for themselves. They said, “I ran this by my financial planner in New York who said to roll over my IRA to put some of its money into my home is illegal.” This statement is technically correct. Putting IRA money into his primary residence would be a prohibited transaction. The disturbing thing about the situation is that these three people (a person, their realtor, and their financial planner) could all be on the same page about something so fundamentally ridiculous.
The misconception
In the past 10 years, many people think “real estate investing” equals “putting money into my home”. Their home can’t be an investment in the first place because they are paying for it rather than having it paid for by a renter.
When somebody wants to help people rationalize buying the stuff they sell, they often call it an “investment”. Bill Clinton started changing the way people thought about government spending (when he was increasing it) by calling it an investment.
An investment or a consumer product?
Selling a primary residence to a home buyer is selling a consumer product. It’s for their use. They can buy what they really need. Or they could get extravagant and buy the Lexus/Mercedes version of a home and spend more. Either way, it’s a consumer product if they are paying for it and using it themselves.
But realtors followed Clinton’s spin move and started calling home buying an investment. This really caught on once Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac, and the Fed all took actions to artificially inflate home prices in order to defer the recession of 2002. Once you could buy this consumer product (the home) and then have it rapidly increase in value (supposedly) and realize this value by selling it or doing a refinance cash out, then the talk about the home being an investment seemed to make sense.
Today, the bubble is over, and the illusion that your home is an investment should be easy to correct. If it was an investment, then somebody else would be paying the mortgage. If somebody else was paying the mortgage, they’d probably live in it instead of you.
It’s not to say that buying a home is a stupid thing to do. That can only be decided on a case-by-case scenario that depends on the buyer and the home in question. Buying a home can be a financially beneficial thing to do in some cases, but it hardly could be truthfully classified as “real estate investing”.
Back to basics: real estate investing means buying properties that produce income. And, yes, real estate investing can be done inside an IRA or 401(k). :-D
S&P Price-to-Earnings Ratio Says Market is Still 70% Overpriced March 3, 2009
Posted by Jeff Nabers in Money, Self Directed IRA/401k.Tags: 401k, bail, bailout, buy, crash, dow, dow jones, government, invest, investing, investment, ira, market, obama, out, P/E, panic, price-to-earnings, ratio, S&P, s&p 500, self directed, sell, solo, Solo 401k, stimulus, stock market, timing, wall street, when
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If you are choosing to stay in the stock market right now because of any of the following reasons…
- It is poised to bounce back
- You don’t want to close out losing positions
- Stocks are cheap right now
…then the simplicity of the following information may shock you.
Last week (more…)
Could Obama’s Stimulus Really Work? February 20, 2009
Posted by Jeff Nabers in Health, Money, Personal Enjoyment, Personal Productivity.Tags: bail out, bailout, balance sheet, consumer, debt, deficit, economics, economy, financial, financial freedom, financial statement, future, government, income statement, invest, investing, investment, literacy, Money, obama, prosper, spending, stimulus, thrive, unemployment, wealth
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Our economy is 70% consumerism. That means it is mostly based on individuals buying stuff. So the current setup of our economy holds two basic facts:
- Individuals buying more stuff than they can afford to buy (based on their income) has a net effect that is good for the economy.
- When individuals lower their spending and save and invest money, the net effect is bad for the U.S. economy.
That said, should we even care about “the economy” in its current setup? If individuals were really doing what is good for themselves (saving and investing), it would be terrible for the economy.
So could Obama’s stimulus really work? Absolutely not. Not if you consider “it really working” to mean more than just temporarily. We don’t need a stimulus. We don’t need a boosted economy. We need a changed economy. There are only three ways out of (more…)
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