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 Personal Money Planning'se-Newsletter for October 2, 2010 (to look at past issues, click here) |
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A lawyer boarded an airplane in New Orleans with a box of frozen crabs and asked a blonde stewardess to take care of them for him. She took the box and promised to put it in the crew's refrigerator.
He advised her that he was holding her personally responsible for them staying frozen, mentioning in a very haughty manner that he was a lawyer, and proceeded to rant at her about what would happen if she let them thaw out. Needless to say, she was annoyed by his behavior.
Shortly before landing in New York , she used the intercom
to announce to the entire cabin,"Would the lawyer who gave me crabs, in New Orleans , please raise your hand?"
Not one hand went up... so she took them home and ate
them.
Two lessons here:
1. Lawyers aren't as smart as they think they are.
2. Blondes aren't as dumb as most folks think.
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Disclosure | |
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This newsletter is produced by Gary Silverman, dba Personal Money Planning, a registered investment advisor located in Wichita Falls, Texas.
Information in this newsletter is believed to provide accurate and authoritative information in regards to the subject matter covered. However, the accuracy, timeliness, or applicability of the information is not guaranteed and is provided with the understanding that we are not rendering legal, accounting, tax, or other professional advice or services.
This publication should not be construed by any consumer and/or prospective client as Personal Money Planning's solicitation to effect, or attempt to effect transactions in securities, or the rendering of personalized investment advice for compensation, over the Internet. Nor should links provided to other sites be construed as the recommendation of the services or products mentioned on those sites. If such services are required, the help of a competent professional should be sought.
Remember that past performance may not be indicative of future results. Therefore, you should not assume that the future performance of any specific investment, investment strategy, or product made reference to (directly or indirectly) on this Website will be profitable or equal to indicated performance levels. Different types of investment involve varying degrees of risk, and there can be no assurance that any specific investment will either be suitable or profitable for your investment portfolio.
Historical performance results for investment indexes and categories generally do not reflect the deduction of transaction or custodial charges or the deduction of an investment management fee, the incurrence of which would have the effect of decreasing historical performance results.
A copy of Personal Money Planning's current written disclosure statement discussing Personal Money Planning's business operations, services, and fees (known as an ADV Part II) is available from Personal Money Planning upon written request (and can be downloaded from our web site).
Personal Money Planning does not make any representations or warranties as to the accuracy, timeliness, suitability, completeness, or relevance of any information prepared by any unaffiliated third party, whether linked to Personal Money Planning's web site or incorporated herein, and takes no responsibility therefore. All such information is provided solely for convenience purposes only and all users thereof should be guided accordingly.
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Investors entered the month of September fearful of past downturns, still haunted by the catastrophic decline in 2008. But as seems to be usual, the markets did the opposite of what people were expecting, posting the highest returns for the month since 1939, and the third best single monthly return in 10 years.
The good news could be seen in all sectors of the U.S. stock market. After dipping to its yearly low on the first day of the third quarter-1,011-the large cap S&P 500 eventually rose 11.29% for the three months ending September 30, putting it in positive territory for the year, with a gain of 3.89%.
Some of the stock market gains appear to reflect good news in the economy. The Bureau of Economic Analysis reported on September 30 that it was revising its estimate of second-quarter growth in the economy: up 1.7%, after an increase of 3.7% in the first three months of the year.
International investors are beginning to recover some of the losses from earlier in the year. The MSCI EAFE index, which measures the composite returns of the developed nations (although it excludes Canada, for some reason) was up 15.79% for the quarter, but the index is still down a little overall for the year.
Meanwhile, the emerging markets are still booming. The MSCI Emerging plus Frontier Markets index was up 21.53% for the quarter, putting it up 15.07% for the first three-quarters of the year.
Those of you who guessed well probably bet your entire portfolio on the Sri Lanka ASPI Index (up 50.3% for the quarter).
Ah, but you less fortunate ones put all your money on Iceland's OMX FO Price Index (down 22.8% for the quarter).
Gary
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| Save The Date |
Financial Planning Week Celebration
Tuesday, October 5 | |
If you are in the Wichita Falls area, come celebrate Financial Planning Week with us! On October 5, Gary Silverman will be available to answer your financial or investment questions, for free. This is part of an initiative developed by the Financial Planning Association, the Certified Financial Planner Board of Standards, and the U.S. Conference of Mayors to provide free financial education and programming to all members of a community.
No need to RSVP, just stop by the Chase Tower conference room any time between 9:30 a.m. and 5:30 p.m. The address: 4245 Kemp Blvd. The conference room is in suite 514.
This is a free event and open to the public, so feel free to share with your friends! |
| gary's Sunday newspaper column | Sunday Newspaper Articles You May Have Missed |
From the Wichita Falls Times Record News
Use your Career as an Investing Tool
In the Bank of You, your career is like a mortgage: put its assets to work for you.
Your career is an asset; are you protecting it properly?
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| gary's other newspaper column | Biz to Biz Article You May Have Missed |
From the Wichita Falls Times Record News Biz to Biz
October is Customer Service Month
Gary shares a story of how a hotel stay went from ordinary to extraordinary.
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| articles links from | The Economist |
Here's an interesting trend: car clubs, where members pay an annual fee and then rent their cars, when they need them, by the hour on a pay-as-you-go basis. The market leader, Zipcar in Cambridge, MA, has 400,000 members, mostly in America. It is in the process of purchasing Streetcar, the market leader in London.
So-called "zipsters" book their car by phone or online, pick it up from a nearby parking bay and unlock it with their Zipcard. When they finish, they leave the car in a neighborhood parking bay. The consulting firm Frost & Sullivan calculates that car owners who drive 12,000 miles a year would save $1,834, on average, by shifting to a car-sharing service. The article notes that these rental fleets have become reliable markets for electric vehicles, which could be good news for the auto industry looking to introduce more of these cars in the future. http://www.economist.com/node/16945232?story_id=16945232&fsrc=rss
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| Better Business Bureau | Information from the Better Business Bureau |
The Better Business Bureau warns those interested in getting their children or themselves on magazine covers to research the talent or modeling agencies carefully.
Halloween's Coming, Beware of Zombie Debt This article touches on the reasons you could be contacted about a debt you do not owe, including mistaken identity, fraud and zombie debt (when the original debt was paid, but not recorded as such). It concludes with five steps to take when you've been asked to pay for a debt you don't believe you owe.
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| from gary's facebook pages |
Facebook Stuff You May Have Missed: from Personal Money Planning
and Gary Silverman |
For information about Personal Money Planning, continued sharing of links about money, small business, finance, and the economy, be sure to link to the Personal Money Planning Page by Clicking Here: 
You may have already "friended" Gary on his personal Facebook page, if not, Friend Away by Clicking Here:  Here are a few links from recent posts:
Blame it on The Brain
Wonder why people make such dumb financial decisions...seemingly irrational? Part of the reason is that we are wired that way. This article looks at how our highly evolved cognitive abilities are not well adapted to good financial decision making.
Down the Drain If you don't have enough to worry about, we're depleting our groundwater. Not too important...unless you want to eat.
Gary's Strange Theory on Climate Change
Global Warming: Myth? Fraud? Gary says: CONSPIRACY! Proof: Millions of years of these critters in hiding, waiting for things to heat up. He says they've infiltrated the highest regions of industry, then conspired to create the great pools of underground oil for us to burn and make the world hot again. And then--THEY WILL STRIKE! http://news.discovery.com/earth/arctic-microbes-sleep-for-100-million-years.html#mkcpgn |
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parting thoughts
Learning from the past, Looking to the future
It's helpful to remember that at the start of the quarter, people were questioning the viability of U.S. and global markets after the near-meltdown of Greece, Portugal, Spain and other Southern European economies. Each quarter, each year, seems to bring a new thing to worry about. But looking longer term, the U.S. equities markets have managed to post long-term gains despite some fairly serious disruptions, including World War II, the Cold War, the conflict in Vietnam, stagflation and the oil shocks of the 1970s, the market crash of 1987, the bursting of the tech stock bubble, and the subprime mortgage meltdown and collapse of Bear Stearns, Lehman Brothers and AIG in 2008.
Indeed, if you look at the long-term movements in the stock market since the Great Depression, all of those events, which seemed pretty dire at the time, look like blips on the screen, small dips in the long-term growth of value in American and global publicly-traded enterprises.
There is no doubt that there will be other events in the future which will seem to endanger-or at least derail-the long-term growth of capitalism. But based on the history of the past two centuries, one might feel confident that whatever challenges await us, people in all sectors of the U.S. economy will find ways to build additional value.
The final three months of the year may bring the market indices back up to pre-meltdown levels, or they may disappoint. We simply cannot predict the short-term movements in stock prices. Despite all of our attention on protecting client portfolios, and the complex work of identifying risks and opportunities, the primary focus is still on a long-term bet that risk assets will be up more often than they are down, regardless of what dire thing you will read in the paper between now and the end of the year. |
That's all, for now.
Gary
Gary Silverman, CFP
Personal Money Planning
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©2010 Personal Money Planning. All rights are reserved by Personal Money Planning and content may not be reproduced, disseminated, or transferred in any form or by any means, except with the prior written permission of Personal Money Planning unless specifically noted. (Permission is not difficult to obtain.) The one exception is for downloading and printing information this newsletter for general education by the original recipient. |
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