With the stock market volatility and uncertainty, and the possibility of future tax increases, many investors are turning to tax free bonds, also known as municipal bonds and munis, or they are choosing the alternative tax free income closed end funds, of which there are over 250 available according to WallStreetNewsNetwork.com. When deciding which is [...]

Type ‘hedge fund’ into Yahoo News Search and you will find out that hedge funds are bullish on silver, cocoa, aluminum, and independent power producers. If you are considering investing in one of these funds, you need to do your research. The follwing are some of the top hedge fund selling books. More Money Than [...]

The time bomb of retiring teachers has gone off. Few admit it yet, but a pension reform group in California understands the problem, and taxpayers are on the hook. Please consider California teachers’ pension system headed toward insolvency As California school districts anticipate possibly the worst budget crisis in a generation, many will try to [...]

By Hedge Fund Live The spreadsheet below gives you the up-to-date internals for the top take out names identified by Morningstar. Before getting to the spreadsheet let me tell you what these companies do and what the rumor mill has been saying over the last few months. ACTELION (ALIOF.PK): In mid-November, Bloomberg reported that Amgen (AMGN) [...]

(Orin Kerr) This one is Mead v. Holder, from Judge Kessler of the United States District Court for the District of Columbia, who concludes the mandate is constitutional. From the opinion: [T]he individual mandate provision is an appropriate means which is rationally related to the achievement of Congress’s larger goal of reforming the national health [...]

The Dow dropped a huge 178 points as higher expected oil price due to the Libyan crisis hit the world. FundamentalsNegativity swept over global markets today due to the Libyan crisis, moving along with the sun starting from Asian markets to European markets and then finally the US market. The stronger than expected consumer confidence [...]

Beyond Buy-and-Hold #27 By Rob Bennett Most people acknowledge that valuations affect long-term returns and therefore that the idea of adjusting your stock allocation in response to big price swings (Valuation-Informed Indexing) makes a good bit of sense. An objection that I often hear, however, is that Buy-and-Hold is more simple. Most middle-class investors lead [...]

(Ilya Somin) Robert Heinlein is best known for being one of the founding fathers of modern science fiction and for his libertarian political views. William Patterson’s fascinating new biography of Heinlein shows that an encounter with political ignorance played a key role in Heinlein’s life, setting him on the path to becoming a writer rather [...]

The Whole World is Going Crazy With Money Printing! If the U.S. dollar is being devalued so rapidly, then why does it sometimes increase in value against other global currencies?  It is because  there are times when one particular global currency will fall faster than the others but the reality is that they are all being [...]

After seeing today’s bloodbath in the grains - I have to believe a lot of hot money sprinted to the exits, with the big down day in equities. Yikes! (Source: Barchart.com) Though grains certainly have enticing longer term fundamentals, today it was limit-down across the board! Perhaps astute contrarian-minded investors were tipped off to a [...]