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I'd be curious to know what your return is after accounting for slippage. With TBT, it's considerable.

A variation on this theme, with a for-profit twist, is the scam by which one "disabled" spouse (or live-in) is paid by the government to care for the other. I am personally aware of one case in which two roommates, both of whom were drawing disability, were each getting a check from the public...

I have had some success trading the volatility around some badly beaten core positions. I can usually grab at least a few percentage points of profit each day regardless of the trend. With respect to several seriously negative holdings, I've managed to decrease my average cost per share by...

Hello, all. I am hoping that there might be some tax wonks in the room that could answer a question I have along those lines. A week or two ago, I submitted my completed tax return. It was a complicated return because this year, for the first time, I had a lot of brokerage activity. I did...

Thanks, guys. This is the first year that I ventured beyond Vanguard's own funds, and I wasn't aware of how unusual it is that Vanguard provides a "cost summary" for its funds that can be plugged right into the Schedule D. In the last few hours, I've come across something called...

I've been at this all day, and I'm ready to cry. Seriously. Everything went just great with Vanguard's 1099-B; they even had a nifty little illustrated pamphlet that showed you exactly where to plug the numbers in on your tax forms. But now it's time to deal with the 1099-B for my Vanguard...

Thanks, guys. That makes perfect sense now that you point it out.

I apologize in advance for this very basic question. I'm pretty new to investing and want to make sure that I'm understanding Vanguard's performance data correctly. Here's what's showing on the Vanguard website for Wellesley for 2008: 1 year returns before taxes: -9.84% 1 year returns...

The only way is to trade this sucker. Kind of pisses me off when I'd rather be gardening.

Here's an extreme opinion, but an honest one nonetheless: I think that within the next few years we will see in this country a significant move toward a socialistic economy. In my view, such a trend is inevitable because the vast majority of individuals approaching retirement have done...

What I understand Bernake to be suggesting is that the banks buy these loans back from the investors and then enter into whatever restructuring makes sense to preserve the value of their assets. This, for the first time, would be a true market solution--quite the opposite of the taxpayer...

Hi, Mathjak-- I've had the permanent portfolio as one of my core holdings for quite some time now. It's a good fund based upon a model that makes sense to me, especially in today's economic environment. Considering that great minds think alike, I'd be interested in knowing what other funds are...

With that said, you'd have to be a complete nimbus NOT to recognize the extent to which the US government benefits by having us believe that the CPI provides a good estimate of the rate at which your and my cost of living is rising.

IMHO, the CPI cannot be "fudged" because it is self-defining. The problem comes in when we attempt to attribute to the CPI the ability to measure something outside of itself. If, tomorrow, I decide to institute a novel economic index dubbed the "Maslow Quotient," based upon the number of...

In a recent article, Antal Fekete discussed the thesis that we may be on the verge of experienceing inflation and deflation at the same time. Antal Fekete: Can We Have Inflation And Deflation All At The Same Time « Oikonomika Blog

I am not an accountant, but I would question the premise that a company is entitled to 1099 you in a given year for income that was not paid to you that year--regardless of when they "book" the expense for purposes of their own accounting.

I'm not sure I understand the question, but if the company with which you are doing business is 1099-ing you in 2007 for work that was not billed or paid until 2008, I'd have a little "issue" with them. Undoubtedly it is to their advantage to have the deduction in 2007, but that doesn't make it...

As I've said before, bonds totally elude me. So I took it pretty much on faith when I was advised to keep a stash of 13-week T-bills in an account with Treasury Direct. Well, for the entire time I've had these things, they've been rolling over at somewhere between 3 and 4 percent--basically a...

I confess that I "reallocate" nearly every day. So far, I've stayed well ahead of the market, so it can't be that bad of character flaw.

This statistic seems more or less consistent with what I've read elsewhere. The thing that perplexes me is the total disconnect between the net worth of the average "affluent" 59-year-old and the $1-4 million that most estimate will be needed for a safe and comfortable retirement. Just how...

I think that some enterprising spirit could do very well by introducing a line of products dubbed the "G series." "G" would stand for "geriatric." Thus, you would have the VCR model X562-G, which has three buttons: play, stop, and record now. The cell phone model SR-G would have a readably large...

I wish that I could believe that consumer demand will turn the tide. My own theory is that the pace of modern living has become so fast, and our days so packed full of stuff to do, that businesses have come to count on that fact and have developed marketing models aimed at taking advantage of...

Great discussion. Mathjak, the 25/25/25/25 allocation sounds a lot like the Harry Browne formula. That's interesting to me, because his little treatise is probably the one thing that has guided my investment philosophy more than anything else. It's the long bond part of the formula with which...

It's funny, I do law for a living, and therefore am always involved in one battle or another. And yet it's the personal business in my life that takes the real toll. Today on two different phone calls I got the hamster wheel (you know, "Press one for English. . . Please choose from the...

Is it just me? I realize that for a good part of the year 2007 I've felt quite "down" about a number of things--the economic outlook, the fact that I seem to be pedaling harder only to have the carrot keep getting further out, and the extent to which values and decency seem to have disappeared...