I was at the computer store Saturday and couldn’t help but notice how many people there were purchasing tax preparation software programs. It is usually good to wait until about now (Mid-February) to do you return because you should have gotten all your W-2’s, 1099’s etc… and therefore not have to worry about receiving one after you have already completed the return.
Back in early January, I wrote an article that focused on a bubble forming in the Treasury bond market. Back then I saw money getting ready to jump from one seemingly safe asset to another…gold. (I wrote about this on January 2nd. I’ll include the links to all of these stories at the bottom so you can check it out for yourself.)
This was my first “tip off” that money was about to start flowing elsewhere and gold was the next logical choice since it has held up fairly well in this bear market downdraft.
Tax Season is in full swing! I want it make certain that you get every deduction you are entitled to this tax season. I also want to cover some of the basic deductions to make certain that none of them are slipping between the cracks. I also want to try to connect the dots with the current economy and your tax return! This will make the tax preparing experience a more interesting one, and you better investor to boot!
Geithner reenacts Jim Carrey’s Fun with Dick & Jane!
Traders and investors alike have been waiting for Geithner’s speech. It got delayed once, so investors just knew that when he stepped up to the mic that he’d really have something to say.
However, what he ended up doing was opening up more questions than answers. The market promptly showed him what it thought about it too. It reminded me of the movie “Fun with Dick and Jane” where Jim Carrey gets on T.V. to talk about Globodyne’s stock as he watches the stock chart plummet from $100 a share to a penny while he’s on T.V.
Unfortunately, we all incur medical expenses from time to time and you really need to make certain that you understand this deduction. It’s important that you have a general idea as to how it works and make a mental note of the money saving strategy in case you incur these expenses.
The tide is starting to change and I want to make sure my readers are aware. Last year, the yen literally beat the performance of 177 currencies. Wow!
However, the rise has been so swift and severe, that it’s killing the country. No one in Japan seems to be happy with it. Their exporters are literally campaigning to the central bank to intervene in the currency. The central bank has been quoted as saying that they are not happy with the rise of the yen either.
So what is a Japanese investor to do with such a strong yen that may not be that strong for long? Invest abroad.
If you have never really gotten your head around the whole credit score thing, this is an excellent time to figure it out! There have been some changes, and with credit being as tight as it is, this has never been MORE IMPORTANT!
Could China lead the way out of this mundane sideways range that we’re seeing in stocks? So far it has been perking up and showing signs of life far quicker than most other world indices.
The Shanghai composite Index appears to have broken its downtrend and is close to pushing through the upper end of its sideways range.
Morgan Stanley’s China A Shares Fund (CAF) seems to track this index fairly closely. See the chart below. The upper chart is the Shanghai Composite Index and the Morgan Stanley ETF is below it. It looks like the Chinese New Year is off to a good start so far.
The Alternative Minimum Tax (AMT) is something that baffles a lot of financial planner’s minds, never mind someone that is not a tax professional. It is a parallel tax system that is less favorable than the “regular tax system” and can cause you to owe more in taxes.
The Alternative minimum tax was designed to create a tax liability for wealthy people that were so tax savvy that they were not paying any taxes. There was a special Tax Reform Act created in 1969 to target these 155 high income households that owed no tax at all. The only problem was that they never adjusted this for inflation. Now millions of Americans are being hit with this tax and it has been the cause of much controversy.
Could they default again on billions of dollars in debt like they did in 1998?
If you think things are bad here in the U.S. or in Europe or Asia, then you haven’t taken a look at Russia. When you see how things are going there, you will think we all “got off easy”.
Now I’m not watering down what we are all experiencing in our economies but just pointing out the fact that some have it so much worse than we do.
