Blue Chip Stamps started years ago as a loyalty program. Consumer’s would make a purchase at a grocery store or pharmacy and they would receive Blue Chip Stamps back from the cashier along with their purchase as an incentive program. Once the consumer acquired enough Blue Chip Stamps they could redeem the stamps for merchandise. … Read more
Mechanical portfolio management can make your investing work easier. In upward or downward markets knowing when to take a profit or when to buy can be difficult. Using a simple mechanical portfolio management allocation balancing method can mitigate challenging market decisions. This is a rule based tactic which can help to keep you on track. … Read more
Using an age based formula to determine what percentage of funds to allocate to equities versus fixed income is crazy. This formula suggests choosing your investment allocations where a person deducts their age from a number such as 110 to get your equity allocation and fixed income allocations. As an example, if you were 50 … Read more
Investment styles are categorized into passive or active investing rather than categorized by an investor’s 2 sensible emotional investing choices. These two styles reference the amount of work commitment involved for an investor. A passive style doesn’t require much time commitment whereas an active style does. This isn’t always accurate, and there is a bigger … Read more
Years ago I read an article on golf magazine where the writer maintained described two main types of professional golfers Steady Eddy and the Gunslinger. Both types were very capable of winning tourneys, but both types played with different mindsets. Steady Eddy was the type of golfer that would consistently shoot good rounds with minimal … Read more
An Investor’s smart allocations and rebalancing of their portfolio not only determines a large portion of the risk that a portfolio will have, but it also can greatly influence any potential market edge an investor may have. How often and when the portfolio is rebalanced plays another role with performance. Both over time if handled … Read more
Qualcomm (qcom) was the darling of the 2000 tech bubble. The story of QCOM’s stock rocketing to all time highs in an incredible short time frame in the late nineties and 2000s. Then in about a year it lost half its value and then within two years almost three quarters of its rapid increase was … Read more
On March 13, 1997 Microsoft stock went public for $21 a share. Today, thirty-four years later the stock has made many investors wealthy. Below is a sample list of similar stories. You can find and use an online total return calculator to see what $1000 invested at the IPO would be worth today. Try and … Read more
There are only two elements of risk that anyone can truly define. We know risk is something that could happen in the future, and we can’t see it or touch it. So risk is a projection of possible unknowns events or occurrences. The insurance industry has built a huge industry around the concept of spreading … Read more
Below is a story posted on Twitter and the article from MarketWatch. It’s a sad story, but often true. I’ve been in the market for over thirty years, and I’ve seen it ruin friendships, wipe out people’s accounts, destroy people’s lives, and result in suicide. Never trade on margin, or get into products you don’t … Read more