The Thrill is Gone, but the Love (of Finance) Remains

When I was born, my birthday gifts included US savings bonds ($50 dollar face value, I believe).  I’ve had a savings account since about age 7, and started reading brokerage account statements at around age 9.  My brokerage college fund started with $1000 and nicely grew to about $4000 by the time I started college at the tender age of 17.

Before the age of 10, I was enthralled by the concept of compound interest.   I was curious about the difference between monthly, weekly, daily, hourly, and by-the-second, even instantaneous compounding.  Little did I know at the time that this concept lead to the mathematical concepts of limits, calculus, and the number e, Euler’s  number.

Needless to say, I love math and finance.  But I first experienced a truly heart-pounding thrill when I started online trading sometime in the late 90’s.  I could see the bid and ask constantly moving, and tried limit orders.  The asks kept rising, and I kept inching up my bid.  Eventually my bid got hit and I was an owner of my first online stock.  This was different than buying mutual funds on the phone from Vanguard, and getting quarterly paper statements.  This was in real time and it was exciting.

I’ve read a lot about Peter Lynch, including his books, and I’ve learned some lessons good and bad.  The bad lesson, as I read his words, was “Don’t buy bonds unless they paying at least 8 or 10 percent.”  The good lessons were “Don’t buy what you don’t understand.” and “boring investments are good… boring names, unsexy, but solid investments are good.”

My next financial thrill revolved around options sales and purchases.  I even recall making a 20-option spread trade that was scary, but ended up netting me about $3000 in a very short time.

I have also has some thrill involving real-estate offers, counter-offers, counter-counter offers, and purchases.   Mostly, tension and anxiety are better descriptors than excitement.  Mild disappointment mostly describes failed attempted real-estate purchases.  Moderate to exuberant happiness describes my successful real-estate bids.

In the last year or two, my trades have not elicited an significant cardiac or endocrine event.   While almost always cerebral and well-considered, my trades have occasionally made my heart go pitter-patter and my endocrine system give me a pleasant rush.  But lately the trill is gone.  My pulse is steady and the motions are vaguely methodical and systematic.

My love of research, introspection, and contemplation remains.  Trading, for me, is just a means to an end.   Increasingly dispassionate.   In the end I hope and believe this makes me a better trader.  As always, time will tell.

Softball, Baseball, Gold and Taxes

I’ve been rather unmotivated to update this financial blog lately.  The reason?  Taxes!  I generally like to keep the tone of this blog upbeat, and when taxes are on my mind my tone tends to be closer to beat up.  Speaking of… my tax payment checks are going in the mail today.  My property tax checks will be going out next month.

However, baseball season is now underway, and that is good.  And my softball league will start up next month… one of the highlights of summer for me.  I wonder how much complicated MLB player’s taxes are and how many states they have to file in?  Also US military personnel.  If I made the rules, US soldiers would not have to pay single cent of tax on their wages while in combat tours.

Whoops, I’ve done it again!  Thinking about taxes and spoiling the prospect of a good mood.  So on to the topic of gold.  I can’t seem to go anywhere with out seeing or hearing either “We buy Gold!” or buy physical gold from us because someone thinks gold will go to $2000 per (troy) ounce.

If I had some gold trinkets or coins sitting a drawer somewhere — gold items that didn’t have any sentimental value to me — I’d get some local cash quotes, pick the highest, and sell.  But as for buying gold… nah… I’d rather buy index funds or black gold, in the form of ETFs XLE and/or VDE.  In fact I currently own XLE, VDE, SPY, VTI, SCHB to name a few.

Well, I’ve got to cut off this financial/baseball/gold/taxes blog post early, as I’ve got to run the dog to advance canine training class.  Best investing wishes, and may taxes not bite too deeply this year.

GE and We: A Tale of Income Tax

By most accounts I paid more federal income tax than GE for 2010.  Personally, I paid more in regular federal income tax than I did for my brand new car.   When you factor in social security tax, medicare tax, state tax, and property tax that is an additional $16,700 or so.  I probably paid about another $4200 in sales tax, gas tax, liquor tax, fees, tariffs,  assessments, regional assessments, urban renewal, licensing, and other government fees.  I’d bet I paid more (federal income) tax than GE, and I’d bet almost everyone reading this blog did too, but I’m even more sure that GE paid it’s accountants more than I did.  I wonder how many millions GE spent on accounting, preparing, and filling its 2010 return?

I don’t blame GE for taking advantage of the system… minimizing tax is one of the key responsibilities to its shareholders.  But I am troubled by the corporate tax system.  Why should GE pay 0.0% and IBM pay 24.8%?  Shouldn’t large U.S. corporations play by the same rules?  Shouldn’t the rules be more even across companies?  Who wrote these crazy rules?  Well, that last question is rhetorical, obviously!

I think a 35% base corporate income tax rate is way too high, but 0% (for GE) is way too low.  My opinion is that a 15-25% corporate tax is much more internationally competitive.  But even at 15%, GE’s 14.2 Billion USD profit should be taxed at a little bit more my than my way-way-way less than a million, barely-6-figure, USD income.

Year-End Portfolio Tax Planning

With only a few weeks remaining in 2010, now is a great time to make any tax-planning adjustments.

Step 1 is determining your general current capital gains and gross income situation.   Do you have carry-forward tax losses?  What are your current 2010 realized net short-term and long-term capital gains?   What are your unrealized capital gains?  What is your 2010 “ordinary income” situation looking like?

Answering these questions gives you a starting point for year-end tax planning.

For example, if you have big long-term capital gains because you sold a bunch of company stock to make a down-payment on a vacation property, you make ask yourself, “is paying 15% tax on these gains a good deal, or do I want to try to offset them with a few capital losses?”

Or, you may ask the inverse question…  “I have a bunch of unrealized long-term capital gains;  Should I sell now and realize them for the ‘bargain price’ of 15% tax?”

Some of these financial questions are tough to answer.  That is why I pay my CPA $80/hour to help me answer them. [This is a bargain price; my previous CPA was $150/hour.  Finding a good one for $80/hour was a godsend!]  If your struggling to answer them, I’d encourage you to set up an appointment with your CPA, or if you don’t have one a local CPA.   Bring your best answers or guesses, and you might be surprised how much they can enlighten you in one short hour.

A little year-end tax planning could save you $500, $1000, possibly several thousand dollars.  If you have to pay $80, $100, or even $250, for this I’d say its money well spent.

Making Personal Finance Personal

Previously I started blogging about the very different approaches my parents took with respect to money and investing.  In this blog post I continue that discussion with a story of how I became even more passionate about investing.

My parents divorced not long after I started attending college.  Because of the way divorce law works, my Mom received the majority (perhaps two-thirds) of the family assets plus a fairly significant monthly alimony payment.  Over the next ten years Dad rebuilt his financial life, benefiting from the remarkable 90’s bull market and intelligent investing.  Over that same period, Mom’s financial fortunes floundered.  I witnessed both financial journeys as a powerless spectator.

The sad irony is that Dad, the savvy investor, was willing to listen to my investing ideas, whereas Mom stubbornly refused almost all of my investing advice.  I saw Mom make one bad investing decision after another.  She put the house on the market but could not sell it because her asking price was about $100K too high.  She loaned money to business partners without a written contract… money that was never paid back.  Most upsetting to me:  She let her investment adviser, Sam W., manage her IRA, losing money with highly under-diversified utilities stocks and funds in the midst of this tremendous bull market.  The contempt and disappointment I feel towards Sam still lingers with me to this day.  That Mom blindly trusted this man, who likely had little interest in her well-being, and shunned her son’s financial advise left me with stunned disbelief.

I was interested in investing from the time I learned about compound interest at around the age of 9.  I was fascinated by the math of computing compound interest monthly, daily, hourly, continuously.  I was intrigued by the concept of companies, shareholders, stock exchanges, and business.  But it was in watching and living the real-world consequences of my parent’s good and bad investing actions, that my lifelong passion for investing was forged.

These experiences are probably why I am so driven to help people avoid making big financial blunders.  I’ve seen and felt the effects of load funds and self-serving financial advisers.  I’ve seen the impact of poor diversification.  I’ve seen the tears of losing a home, losing a business… due to poor financial choices.

I’m often looking for ways and words to become more persuasive.  I’m looking for ways to help people build interest and confidence in shaping their own financial destinies.  I’m working to develop tools to simply and explain the financial world.  I’m working to create this financial education blog which will someday become part of a personal finance book.

Finance is my passion.  This passion is often hard for people to understand.  Perhaps this blog article will help people understand.  Probably some of my readers share a passion for personal finance and investing.  If you have a similar passion, I hope you will consider sharing your financial stories that shaped your financial lifestyle.

8 Questions to Ask your Financial Advisor/Manager (or Self)

1. What is the average weighted expense ratio for all my holdings?
2. How much, if anything, did I pay in commissions in the last 12 months.
3. What was my rate of return in the last 12 months? (post all fees and expenses)
4. How does that compare to the to rate of return in the S&P 500 in the same time period. (inclusive of dividends)
5. What is the 12-month standard deviation of my investment portfolio? (a measure of risk)
6. What is my asset allocation between stocks, bonds, and other?
7. Do any of my holdings have loads?  If so why?
8. How diversified are my holdings?

Bonus: Please update me on my portfolio’s tax efficiency and tax efficiency strategy.

Feel free to take good notes, and, if you like, send the answers to me.  I’d be glad to give you my personal assessment/opinion.

More Hypothetical Proprietary Fund Ideas

While the Σ1 Fund is currently a real 100% privately-held investment vehicle, all language and speculative plans about its future are currently (9/28/2010) STRICTLY THEORETICAL.  There is currently no SOLICITATION or even OPPORTUNITY for anyone other than Balhiser LLC shareholder(s) to invest in the fund.  Further, there is currently no SOLICITATION nor OPPORTUNITY to invest in Balhiser LLC at present. Thus the HYPOTHETICAL and SPECULATIVE language is merely just words at this point and time.  It is entirely possible that outside investors NEVER be given the opportunity to invest.

I’m wondering… should I revise my $10K minimum investment.  Perhaps $5K-$9K with a ~2% up-front load ($5000 yields $4900 of principal, $5000 yields $5100).  Increments above $5K are $1K with an up/down choice.  Increments are also $1K for investments over $10K.  Additional subsequent investments for current investors are $2K minimum with $1K increments.  Withdrawals minimums are $5K or %100 plus optional $1K increments.  Additional fund investments are subject to the same early withdrawal penalties as initial investments.  ALL requested redemptions are FIFO by default.

Distributions (realized capital gains, dividends, etc) are annual.  How they are distributed is TDB.  My initial inclination is that there is an ex-dividend date on the last trading day of each month, and dividend income is distributed in proportion to #months held * #shares.  Distributions are re-invested by default. Non-reinvested distributions are held in a non-interest-bearing manner until $500 is reached, upon which the total distribution will be paid in full by ACH or check.  Non-reinvested dividends may be paid, upon request, before the $500 minimum is reached, but a distribution-collection fee of $50 will be assessed.  For shareholders with >= $100K NAV none of these distribution restrictions or fees apply.

75% of redemption fees will be paid to Balhiser LLC, the remaining 25% will be paid to the Fund.

Requirements for potential investors:

• Minimum of 5 years experience investing in stocks, bonds, ETFs, and/or mutual funds.
• Acknowledgment that this is an investment of at-risk capital that may be subject to forced liquidation without notice during volatile and illiquid market conditions. This could result in severe or even total loss of investment.
• Acknowledgment that options WILL be part of the Fund’s holdings/obligations.  While the primary target use of options is “covered-call” writing the notion of “covered” is not strict.  The fund may consider an RNM (Russel 2000 mini call option contract) to be “covered” by ownership of “an appropriate amount” of SPY (S&P500 ETF) shares.
• Acknowledgment that ETF futures contracts may part of the Fund’s holdings/obligations.
• Signed (and notarized) legal waiver that specifies that in exchange for participating in this fund, fund participant, fund participant beneficiaries and/or heirs, agree to hold legally blameless the fund manager and Balhiser LLC  for losses sustained by the Fund.
• Solid familiarity with E-mail and the Internet and Internet-based “paperless” documents and communication.

In exchange for these concessions, the fund manager agrees to the following “skin-in-the-game” and transparency conditions:

• So long as fund assets (or total net unredeemed funds invested) exceed $50K, the fund manager and/or Balhiser LLC will maintain a minimum of $25K invested in the Fund.
• So long as fund assets exceed $50K, the fund manager and/or Balhiser LLC will reinvest all fund net distributions and net fund management proceeds into the Fund.
• So long as FE>$50K. Fund manager and/or Balhiser LLC will be subject to same fees, terms, and conditions as all other investors PLUS will have to provide an ADDITIONAL 60-day advance notice to all fund shareholders (via email or other means) prior to any sale of holdings in the Fund.
• 100% of Balhiser LLC/fund manager redemption fees (fees incurred for “personal” withdrawals) will be paid to the Fund.
• End-of-month NAV reports will be delivered by email to shareholders. (delivered within 5 business days)
• Subject to NDA: Unaudited Annual Report detailing complete fund holdings (delivered within 20 business days). Disclosure to CPA is permitted.
• Subject to NDA: Upon request unaudited inter-year report (delivered within 30 business days). A $250 fee applies.  Disclosure to CPA is permitted.  Fee is waived once per year for investors with >= $100,000 invested in the Fund.

Base Management Fee Rates (similar, but not identical, to an expense ratio)

• 7.8 basis points per month (0.078%) of previous close-of-month fund NAV.
  [~0.95% in simple interest, or ~0.9772% compounded annually]
• Base management fee reduced by:
  • 10% for investors with >=    $50,000 NAV (or $50K net unredeemed investments).
  • 25% for investors with >=   $100,000 NAV (or $100K net unredeemed investments).
  • 33% for investors with >=   $250,000 NAV (or $250K net unredeemed investments).
  • 50% for investors with >= $1,000,000 NAV (or $1M net unredeemed investments).