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  • High Frequency Trading

    High frequency trading is rightly criticized. It isn’t bad because rich people are getting richer. It is bad because of the manipulation of markets. Those being

    • Front running – having orders executed milliseconds in advance to gain an edge (there is no market benefit to millisecond variation). In the grossest for it is clearly criminal: putting in orders prior to known orders from a customer to make money at the expense of your customer and others in the market. My understanding is the criminal type is not what they are normally accused of, of course, who knows but… Instead they front run largely by getting information very quickly and putting in orders to front run based on silly price difference (under 1/10 of a cent).
    • Putting in false orders to fake out the market – you are not allowed to put in false orders. It is clear from the amount of orders placed and immediately withdrawn they are constantly doing this. Very simply any firm doing this should be banned from trading. It wouldn’t take long to stop. Of course the SEC should prosecute people doing this, but don’t hold your breath.

    Several things should be done.

    • Institute a small new financial transaction tax – adding a bit of friction to the system will reduce the ludicrous stuff going on now. Use this tax to fund investigation and prosecution of bad behavior.
    • Redo the way matching of orders is done to promote real market activity not minute market arbitrage and manipulation – I don’t know exactly what to do but something like putting in a timing factor along with price. An order that is within 1/10 of cent for less than 1,000 shares are executed in order of length of time they have been active (or something like that).
    • Institute rules that if you cancel more than 20% of your order (over 10 in a day) in less than 15 minutes you can’t enter an order for 24 hours. Repeated failures to leave orders in place create longer bans.
    • Don’t let those using these strategies get their money back when they do idiotic things like sell bull chip companies down to 20% of their price at the beginning of the day. You don’t get to say, oh I didn’t really mean to buy this stock that lost me 50% the day I bought it, give me money back. There is no reason high frequency traders should be allowed to take their profits and then renege on trades they don’t like later.

    Speculation is fine, within set rules for a fair market. Traders making money by manipulating the system instead of through beneficial activities such as making a market shouldn’t be supported.

    To the extent high frequency trading creates fundamental buying opportunities take advantage of the market opportunity. Just realize the high frequency traders may be able to reverse you gains (and if you lose you are not going to be granted the same favors).

    Related: Naked Short Selling – Misuse of Statistics, Mania in Financial Markets – Failure to Regulate Financial Markets Leads to Predictable Consequences – Fed Continues Wall Street Welfare

    The truth is the billions of dollars high frequency traders steal from others market returns matters much less to true investors. For long terms holdings the less than a cent they steal from other market participants is small. It is still bad. Just people really get more excited about it than they need to. I would love to just get 1/1000 of cent on every trade made in the markets, I could retire. But they are mainly stealing very small amounts from tons of different people. Now the fake orders and trades that go against them that they then get reversed are a different story.

  • Disability Insurance is Very Important

    I believe long term disability insurance is a must for a safe personal financial plan. The risk of not being covered isn’t worth it. An office worker should have a very low risk of something happening that qualifies you for receiving benefits (even with fairly serious injuries for a hunter-gatherer or farmer they can earn a living).

    That is actually the perfect situation for insurance. Insurance should be cheap when the risk is small. You want insurance for unlikely but very costly events. You don’t want insurance for likely and inexpensive events (paying the middle man just adds to the cost).

    I believe, other than health insurance it is the most important insurance. For someone with dependents life insurance can be important too. And auto and homeowners insurance are also important. Insurance if an important part of a smart personal finance. It is wise to chose high deductibles (to reduce cost).

    In many things I believe you can chose what you want to do and just deal with the results. Forgoing health or disability insurance I think don’t fall into that category. Just always have those coverages. I think doing without is just a bad idea.

    When I would have had gaps in coverage from work, I have purchased disability insurance myself.

    I am all in favor of saving money. About the only 2 things I don’t believe in saving money being very important are health and disability insurance. Get high deductible insurance in general (you should insure against small loses). And with disability insurance you can reduce the cost by having the insurance only start after 6 or 12 months (I chose 12). As you get close to retirement (say 5 years) the risk is much less, you only have so many earning years left. If you wanted to save some money at that point it might be ok if you have saved well for retirement and have a cushion (in case you have to retire 3 year early). Long term care insurance may well be wise to get (if you didn’t when it was cheaper and you were younger. Long term care insurance is really tricky and very tied to whatever our politicians decide not to do (or do) about the broken health care system we have in the USA. The cost also becomes higher as it is moving toward a likely event, instead of a unlikely event (as you age you are more frail).

    Related: How to Protect Your Financial Health – Personal Finance Basics: Avoid Debt

  • Anti-Market Policies from Our Talking Head and Political Class

    It is very simple. Adam Smith understood it and commented on it. If you allow businesses to have control of the market they will take benefits they don’t deserve at the expense of society. And many business will seek every opportunity to collude with other businesses to stop the free market from reducing their profits and instead instituting anti-competitive practices. Unless you stop this you don’t get the benefits of free market capitalism. Free markets (where perfect competition exists, meaning no player can control the market) distribute the gains to society by allowing those that provide services in an open market efficiently and effectively to profit.

    Those that conflate freedom in every form and free markets don’t understand that free markets are a tool to and end (economic well being for a society) not a good in and of themselves. Politically many of these people just believe in everyone having freedom to do whatever they want. Promoting that political viewpoint is fine.

    When we allow them to discredit free market capitalism by equating anti-market policies as being free market capitalism we risk losing a great benefit to society. People, see the policies that encourage allowing a few to collude and take “monopoly rents” and to disrupt markets, and to have politicians create strong special interest policies at the expense of society are bad (pretty much anyone, conservative liberal, anything other than those not interested in economics see this).

    When people get the message that collusion, anti-competitive markets, political special interest driven policies… are what free market capitalism is we risk losing even more of the benefits free markets provide (than we are losing now). That so few seem to care about the benefit capitalism can provide that they willingly (I suppose some are so foolish they don’t understand, but that can’t be the majority) sacrifice capitalism to pay off political backers by supporting anti-market policies.

    Allowing businesses to buy off politicians (and large swaths of the “news media” talking heads that spout illogical nonsense) to give them the right to tap monopoly profits based on un-free markets (where they use market power to extract monopoly rents) is extremely foolish. Yet the USA has allowed this to go on for decades (well really a lot longer – it is basically just a modification of the trust busting that Teddy Roosevelt tried). It is becoming more of an issue because we are allowing more of the gains to be driven by anti-competitive forces (than at least since the boom trust times) and we just don’t have nearly as much loot to allow so much pilfering and still have plenty left over to please most people.

    I am amazed and disgusted that we have, for at least a decade or two, allowed talking head to claim capitalist and market support for their special interest anti-market policies. It is an indictment of our educational system that such foolish commentary is popular.

    Free Texts Pose Threat to Carriers

    At 20 cents and 160 characters per message, wireless customers are paying roughly $1,500 to send a megabyte of text traffic over the cell network. By comparison, the cost to send that same amount of data using a $25-a-month, two-gigabyte data plan works out to 1.25 cents.

    This is exactly the type of behavior supported by the actions of the politicians you elect (if you live in the USA).

    It is ludicrous that we provide extremely anti-market policies to help huge companies extract monopoly profits on public resources such as the spectrum of the airwaves. It is an obvious natural monopoly. It obviously should be managed as one. Several bandwidth providers provide bandwidth and charge a regulated rate. And let those using it do as they wish. Don’t allowing ludicrous fees extracted by anti-free-market forces such as those supporting such companies behavior at Verizon, AT&T…

    Related: Financial Transactions Tax to Pay Off Wall Street Welfare Debt – Extremely Poor Broadband for the USA (brought to us by the same bought and paid for political and commentary class) – Ignorance of Capitalism – Monopolies and Oligopolies do not a Free Market Make

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  • Curious Cat Investing, Economics and Personal Finance Carnival #17

    We collect useful recent personal finance, investing and economics blog posts to help you find useful information.

    • How to Create a Million-Dollar Business This Weekend (Examples: AppSumo, Mint, Chihuahuas) by Tim Ferriss – “Don’t get me wrong–I’m not opposed to you trying to build a world-changing product that requires months of fine-tuning. All I’m going to suggest is that you start with a much simpler essence of your product over the course of a weekend, rather than wasting time building something for weeks… only to discover no one wants it.”
      • photo of Penang, Malaysia
      Penang, Malyasia by John Hunter
    • The True Cost of Commuting – “In other words, a logical person should be willing to pay about $15,900 more for a house that is one mile closer to work, and $477,000 more for a house that is 30 miles closer to work. For a double-commuting couple, these numbers are $31,800 and $954,000.”
    • Looking for Dividend Stocks in the Current Extremely Low Interest Rate Environment by John Hunter – “A huge advantage of dividends stocks is they often increase the dividend over time. And this is one of the keys to evaluate when selected these stock investments. So you can buy a stock that pays a 4% yield today and 5 years down the road you might be getting 5.5% yield (based on increased dividend payouts and your original purchase price).”
    • I Stand With the Protesters by Lee Adler – “Stop the fraud, return to the rule of law, prosecute the bankers, punish the guilty, figure out what our assets are really worth and pay us a fair return, and most importantly, return basic standards of fairness and ethical behavior, something that many in society must relearn.”
    • The Depression: If Only Things Were That Good by David Leonhardt – “In the short term, finance, health care and housing provide jobs, as their lobbyists are quick to point out. But it is hard to see how the jobs of the future will spring from unnecessary back surgery and garden-variety arbitrage. They differ from the growth engines of the past, which delivered fundamental value — faster transportation or new knowledge — and let other industries then build off those advances.”
    • Banks Have a Right to Make a Profit; Customers Have the Right of Choice by Ryan Guina – “I encourage you to explore your options and find the bank which meets your needs, and won’t nickel or dime you with fees. I use USAA, which is an incredible bank. And there are a variety of fee free online savings accounts, free checking accounts, and hundreds of credit unions which don’t charge as many fees as some of the larger banks.”
    • Remember when rare earth stocks were hotter than magma? Well, they’re 50% cheaper now by Jim Jubak – “The growing demand for rare earths from new technologies plus China’s moves had two immediate effects. First, prices for rare earth minerals, especially the rarer heavy rare earth elements soared with prices for some rare earth elements climbing ten times from 2009 into 2011. Second, the scramble was on for alternative sources of supply. Suddenly there was plenty of capital available to restart mines that had closed because of low prices and stricter environmental regulation outside of China.”
    • Fighting Civil Forfeiture Abuse – “The net effect of these three factors [profit motive, standard of proof, innocent owner burden] is to increase the use of forfeiture by law enforcement agencies by incentivizing forfeiture through making it profitable for the agencies that engage in it, by making it easier to keep seized property (by lowering the standard of proof) and by making it more expensive and difficult for owners to challenge the action (by shifting the burden of proof to the innocent owner).”

  • Investing Return Guesses While Planning for Retirement

    In my opinion is has never been more difficult to plan for retirement. It is extremely difficult to guess what rates of return should be expected in the next 10-30 years. It might have actually been as difficult 10 years ago, but it seemed that it wasn’t. Estimating a 7-8% return for your portfolio seemed a pretty reasonable thing to do, and evening considering 10% wasn’t unthinkable, if you wanted to be optimistic and took more risk.

    Today it is very hard to guess, going forward, what is reasonable. It is also hard to find any very safe decent yields. Is 4% a good estimate for your portfolio? 6%? 8%? What about inflation? I know inflation isn’t a huge concern of people right now, but I still think it is a very real risk. I think trying to project is helpful (even with all the uncertainty). But it is more important than ever to look at various scenarios and consider the risks if things don’t go as well as you hope. The best way to deal with that is to save more.

    In the USA save at least 10% of your income for retirement in your own savings (in addition to social security) and it would be better to save 12% and you might even need to be saving 15%. And if you waited beyond 30 to start doing this you have to save substantially more, to have a comfortable retirement plan (obviously if you are willing to live at a much lower standard of living in retirement than before, you can save less).

    Other factors matter too. If you don’t own your house with no more mortgage payments you will need to save more. Ideally you will have not debts at retirement, if you do, again you need to save more.

    That Retirement Calculator May Be Lying to You

    According to Ibbotson data, the long-term annualized gain for the Standard & Poor’s 500-stock index dating back to 1926 is 9.9 percent. For bonds, it’s 5.4 percent. (From 1970 to 2010, the Barclays Capital Aggregate Bond index average was 8.3 percent.) Plug those numbers into a portfolio of 60 percent stocks and 40 percent bonds and the return is about 8 percent, which is precisely the number most financial planners — and retirement calculators — were using up until recently.
    …
    Vanguard founder Jack Bogle has a slightly more upbeat assessment. He expects stock returns of 7 percent to 7.5 percent over the next decade. He assumes no expansion in the market’s price-earnings ratio, dividend yields of 2.2 percent, and earnings growth of at least 5 percent. Bogle expects bond returns to be about 3 percent. For a balanced portfolio, that produces a net nominal return of slightly more than 6 percent. A higher forecast is T. Rowe Price’s estimate of 7 percent; until this year it had used 8 percent.

    I also suggest using high quality high yield dividend stocks for more of the bond portfolio. I wouldn’t hold bonds with maturities over 5 years at these yields (or if I did, they would be an extremely small portion of the portfolio). I would also have a fair amount of the bond portfolio in inflation protected bonds.

    I also invest in emerging economies like China, Brazil, India, Malaysia, Indonesia, Thailand, the continent of Africa… To some extent you get that with large companies like Google, Intel, Tesco, Toyota, Apple… that are making lots of money in emerging economies and continuing to invest more in emerging markets. VWO (.22% expense ratio) is a good exchange traded fund (ETF) for emerging markets. I also believe investing in real estate is wise as part of a retirement portfolio.

    Related: 401(k) Options, Select Low Expenses – How Much Will I Need to Save for Retirement? – Investment Risk Matters Most as Part of a Portfolio, Rather than in Isolation

  • Mortgage Rates Fall Under 4%

    For the first time ever average 30 year fixed mortgage rates have fallen under 4%. My guess about interests rates have not been very good the last decade or so. I can’t believe people actually want to lend at these rates but obviously I have been wrong. The risks of lending at these rates over the long term just seem way too high to take a paltry 4%. But obviously I have been wrong.

    So if you didn’t refinance when I suggested it (and refinance, myself), previously, you may want to look at doing so now. Or you may believe that listen to me about interest rates doesn’t seem very wise.

    I have even read that banks are reducing fees in order to encourage refinancing. Seems crazy to me, but what do I know.

    You do need to have a decent loan to value ratio (certainly no more than 90%, and probably 80% would be better). That can be difficult for those that have had large decreases in their homes value. Also you need a great credit rating and a stable job situation. But if you qualify refinancing at these rates should be a great financial move for many. I’m perfectly happen to have done so earlier, I didn’t quite pick the bottom but I still think over 30 years these rates (the current rates and earlier rates of 4 1/4% or 4 3/8%) will seem like a dream.

    Related: Fixed Mortgage Rates Reach New Low (August 2010) – Lowest 30 Year Fixed Mortgage Rates in 37 Years (Dec 2008) – The Impact of Credit Scores and Jumbo Size on Mortgage Rates (Jan 2009)

  • Don’t Pay Debit Card Fees

    In the first place debit cards are a bad idea. They don’t have the same protection as credit cards. Banks pushed them in the USA because of the huge fees they charged (hidden from users). Now those banks are not allowed to charge the hugely excessive fees (compared to any other country) they had been charging retailers. And the banks are now trying to push huge fees onto those using the cards. Just dump any debit card you have.

    Secondly, you should have long ago severed any ties with the large banks (that not surprisingly are the ones announcing the huge fees, so far). They provide lousy service and extract exorbitant fees whenever they can sneak them by you. Choosing to do business with companies that you must remain hyper vigilante to abuse from is just not sensible. Small banks unfortunately get bought out by the large banks to prevent competition. So while using small banks is ok, you keep having to go to a new one as the large ones buy out your bank to prevent the competition.

    So it is more sensible to just pick a credit union. Credit unions are decent overall. Some can still be bad choices but it is almost impossible to do worse than any of the large banks. If you use ATMs a good deal make sure you minimize ATM fees when selecting a credit union (their policies in that area – waived fees, network ATM access… are significantly different between your options).

    The free checking we have grown accustom to may well be on the way out. That seems fine to me. Essentially the government’s subsidy to the large banks and financial institutions in repressing short term interest rates (at the expense of course of savers and retirees) has greatly reduced the value of checking and savings balances at banks. I am sure the large banks will be the most customer unfriendly as fees are added to accounts, based on their track record.

    Obviously you should not carry credit card balances, with high interest rates.

    There really is almost no excuse for dealing with the large banks (other than a mortgage that was sold to them without your permission where you have no option but to put up with their behavior as their customer). Many of the other extremely bad customer service industries (cable TV, internet access providers, airlines) have monopolistic powers than often make it extremely difficult to avoid dealing with them. Of course the large banks make huge anti-competitive moves that shouldn’t allowed in any capitalistic system. But then our system is more about what you can buy with your cash payments to congress than capitalism. And you can’t accept the proponents claims of capitalism as a reason to do what they ask; more often then not those playing the capitalism over government argument are asking for anti-capitalist measures (allowing anti-competitive practices etc.) in support of special interest at the expense of society (markets require regulation to have the benefits of competition provide a dividend to society).

    Related: Credit Card Regulation Has Reduced Abuse By Banks – Credit Card Issuers Still Seeking to Take Your Money – More Outrageous Credit Card Fees

  • Looking for Dividend Stocks in the Current Extremely Low Interest Rate Environment

    My preference is for a lower use of bonds than the normal portfolio balancing strategies use. I just find the risks greater than the benefits. This preference increases as yields decline. Given the historically low interest rates we have been experiencing the last few years (and low yields even for close to a decade) I really believe bonds are not a good investment. Now for someone approaching or in retirement I do think some bonds are probably wise to balance the portfolio (or CDs). But I would limit maturities/duration to 2 or 3 years. And really I would pursue high yielding stocks much more than normal.

    In general I like high yielding stocks for retirement portfolios. Many are very good long term investments overall and I prefer to put a portion of the portfolio others would place in bonds in high yielding stocks. Unfortunately 401(k) [and 403(b)] retirement accounts often don’t offer an option to do this. Luckily IRAs give you the options to invest as you chose and by placing your IRA in a brokerage account you can use this strategy. In a limited investing option retirement account [such as a 401(k)] look for short term bond funds, inflation protected bonds and real estate funds – but you have to evaluate if those funds are good – high expenses will destroy the reasons to invest in bond funds.

    There are actually quite a few attractive high yield stocks now. I would strive for a very large amount of diversity in high yield stocks that are meant to take a portion of the bonds place in a balanced portfolio. In the portion of the portfolio aimed at capital appreciation I think too much emphasis is placed on “risk” (more concentration is fine in my opinion – if you believe you have a good risk reward potential). But truthfully most people are better off being more diversified but those that really spend the time (it takes a lot of time and experience to invest well) can take on more risk.

    A huge advantage of dividends stocks is they often increase the dividend over time. And this is one of the keys to evaluate when selected these stock investments. So you can buy a stock that pays a 4% yield today and 5 years down the road you might be getting 5.5% yield (based on increased dividend payouts and your original purchase price). Look for a track record of increasing dividends historically. And the likelihood of continuing to do so (this is obviously the tricky part). One good value to look at is the dividend payout rate (dividend/earnings). A relatively low payout (for the industry – using an industry benchmark is helpful given the different requirement for investing in the business by industry) gives you protection against downturns (as does the past history of increasing payouts). It also provides the potential for outsized increases in the future.

    There are a number of stocks that look good in this category to me now. ONEOK Partners LP pays a dividend of 5.5% an extremely high rate. They historically have increased the dividend. They are a limited partnership which are a strange beast not quite a corporation and you really need to read up and understand the risks with such investments. ONEOK is involved in the transportation and storage of natural gas. I would limit the exposure of the portfolio to limited partnerships (master limited partnerships). They announced today that the are forecasting a 20% increase in 2012 earnings so the stock will likely go up (and the yield go down – it is up 3.4% in after hours trading).

    Another stock I like in this are is Abbott, a very diversified company in the health care field. This stock yields 3.8% and has good potential to grow. That along with a 3.8% yield (much higher than bond yields, is very attractive).

    My 12 stocks for 10 year portfolio holds a couple investments in this category: Intel, Pfizer and PetroChina. Intel yields 3.9% and has good growth prospects though it also has the risk of deteriorating margins. There margins have remains extremely high for a long time. Maybe it can continue but maybe not. Pfizer yeilds 4.6% today which is a very nice yield. At this time, I think I prefer Abbott but given the desire for more diversification in this portion of the portfolio both would be good holdings. Petro China yields 4% today.

    When invested in a retirement portfolio prior to retirement I would probably just set up automatic reinvesting of the dividends. Once in retirement as income is needed then you can start talking the dividends as cash, to provide income to pay living expenses. I would certainly suggest more than 10 stocks for this portion of a portfolio and an investor needs to to educate themselves evaluate the risks and value of their investments or hire someone who they trust to do so.

    Related: Retirement Savings Allocation for 2010 – S&P 500 Dividend Yield Tops Bond Yield: First Time Since 1958 – 10 Stocks for Income Investors

  • Curious Cat Investing, Economics and Personal Finance Carnival #16

    Welcome to the Curious Cat Investing and Economics Carnival: find useful recent personal finance, investing and economics blog posts.

    • A 401k With Employer Matching is More Liquid Than You Think by Kevin McKee – “If your employer offers 401k matching, it’s simple: max it out. The one thing you’ll want to check is when the money is vested. All 401k money is immediately vested at my company, so once the match is in the account, it’s yours.”
    • Potential Euro Collapse & Rapid Redistribution Of Personal Wealth – “When we look at these two situations, what we can plainly see is that there is a massive redistribution of wealth that goes on when we have monetary crises. Millions of innocent people who’ve been playing by the rules and responsibly saving and investing are financially devastated. Other millions of people are enjoying lucrative profits and tax-advantaged surges in their personal net worth.”
    • 3 Dividend Growth Stocks selected by Gordon Model by Norman Tweed – “What this tells you is that constant future dividend growth is additional yield. Gordon speaks about earnings growth also in the paper. However, this is a highly conservative usage, leaving out pure growth stocks and concentrating on yield only. It is most applicable for utilities and slow growth rate stocks.”
    • 6 Online Retirement Planning Tools You Need to Know by Ryan Guina – “if your situation is more complicated, then it may be worth looking into a tool such as Maximize My Social Security, which costs $40 annually. This tool can help you determine the best strategy for maximizing your social security benefit. This tool can be especially helpful when you may need to decide when to collect retiree, spousal, survivor, divorcee, parent, or child benefits.”

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  • Protect Yourself from Credit Card Fraud

    I have written about the importance of protecting yourself against the companies that provide you financial services. There are few (if any) industries that as systemically try to trick and deceive customers out of large amounts of money as the financial services sector does. In addition to watching them, you it also makes sense to watch your credit card charges. For some reason attorneys general let large scale financial fraud go with much less policing than petty theft by juveniles (if some kids come in and take your TV they will be in trouble, if some large bank does the same thing to all of the household goods of many people that never even were their customers criminal charges are ignored for everyone involved – one of many such examples of bad decisions by attorneys general).

    Because financial fraudsters are allowed to continue without much fear of prosecution: thousands, or tens or thousands, or hundreds of thousands and then maybe something will be done, of course that is a lot of people to suffer before action is taken. For that reason we are subject to long standing schemes to take money fraudulently go on for a long time. I wouldn’t even be surprised if most companies found to have taken money that isn’t theirs are left off when they refund money to those people that caught them and that is seen as ok.

    Given this state of affairs, many have discovered just sending bills to people and companies and billing your credit card for things you didn’t order is a good way to steal money. Since law enforcement is extremely lax about stopping this. It is in your interest to protect yourself.

    Bill Guard is one new service to watch your credit card charges and alert you to potentially fraudulent charges. It seems like a pretty good idea. Like Google flagging spam email for you. I really would think credit card companies should do this (they do but I guess not nearly well enough – no surprise there). I don’t so much love the idea of sharing credit card info with these people. And I don’t charge much so I can review my bill easily, myself. I can imagine lots of others though have difficulty remember every charge. If so, this may well be wise.
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