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Interest rates in the U.S. are at all-time lows, and investors are likely on borrowed time if they are positioned in bonds or bond funds. Market volatility has pushed investors, in many cases, too far into fixed income vehicles. As bond prices move inversely to the direction of interest rates, the...

There is no more common thing in any market: for every share of stock, for every bond, every option, for everything that someone sells, someone else buys. It is the ultimate difference of opinion: one person wants something enough to buy it while another thinks they're better off without that same t...

"Value" is one of those chameleon-like words when it comes to investing. To one person, it may be a stock that has grown in value over time. To another, "value" is the monthly dividend that provides income during retirement. Both are true instances of "value" and things that, as a firm located in th...

So please let me think out loud here, I need to try and get this Eastman Kodak situation straight. Mr. Antonio Perez was named as President and CEO in 2005 (he was named President in 2003) at which time the company had revenue of about $14.5 billion. Currently the revenue is about $5.6 billion. So r...

LIBOR is the London Interbank Offered Rate. It is the average interest rate estimated by leading banks in London that they would be charged if borrowing from other banks. It also effects many adjustable rate mortgages and very importantly it is used to price trillions of dollars in notional value of...

Things have certainly calmed down since May 18th when I spent almost two straight hours on the phone talking with folks about Facebook. It was THE thing in the week leading up to its IPO and it seemed like everybody wanted a piece of the action. At the time, our advice was to be "cautious, not eu...

Here is an interesting article in Forbes magazine on Joe Paterno's estate. The moral of this story is that a will is not a private document; in probate it becomes public record. If you want the value of your assets and your beneficiary designations to remain private you should use a living trust....

As I powered up my computer yesterday to look at the morning news, I came across another prime example of our lawmakers hard at work spending our tax payer dollars addressing some of the most important issues of the day. No, I'm not referring to the ridiculous waste of our money and their time diggi...

I heard an interesting story on NPR the other day, about investors who are so frightened of financial markets that they are willing to pay - and get no return - just to keep their money safe. Even with rates so low on US Treasury bonds (about 1.5% for 10 years!) investors from around the world conti...

Last year the Social Security Administration (SSA) stopped mailing statements to taxpayers to reduce their costs (by about $70 million). Earlier this year they resumed mailing to people 60 or older who have not yet started drawing social security. Now they have launched a new online version of you...