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Episode-440- Expanding Your Financial IQ – Part 2

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I decided we should extend from yesterday’s show about investing.  The harsh reality is we are bombarded by financial terms in news and media every day.  Often this is done as a type of class warfare that is totally lost on most of the population.  Such as blaming the woes of the stock market on “naked short selling”.  At times such statements are at least partially true at others they are totally false.  Yet one thing is clear, 90% of the sheep that are all pissed off at the “naked short sellers” have no idea what short selling is, how it works, what it does, the risks involved, etc.  They also have zero idea what it means to be “naked” on a short sale, the reason shot selling exists or how they can go short sell if they want to as well.

This is just one more component of the dumbing down of America.  The media uses terms in a positive or a negative light but makes no attempt to explain them to a population they know very well doesn’t understand them.  Hence people take a positive view of terms like “reform” and negative views of terms like “shorting” but they don’t really know what the terms mean at all.  My view is form your own opinion, control your own money, etc. but don’t form opinions based on another person’s view of a word you don’t even truly understand.

Join me today as we discuss…

  • What is a put (aka a short)
  • What is a call
  • What does it mean when you are “naked” in an option
  • What is a derivative
  • What is a P/E Ratio
  • What is a dividend
  • What is a DRIP
  • What are Class A, B and C shares in your mutual funds
  • What is an annuity

My goal in today’s show is simply to improve your financial understanding and vocabulary.  I know some may not see this as a true “survival topic”.  Yet given the current state of the U.S. and Global economies and the risk posed by any level of economic collapse understanding money may be one of the most important components of your future survival.

Additional Resources for Today’s Show

Remember to comment, chime in and tell us your thoughts, this podcast is one man’s opinion, not a lecture or sermon. Also please enter our listener appreciation contest and help spread the word about our show. Also remember you can call in your questions and comments to 866-65-THINK and you might hear yourself on the air.

Comments

Episode-440- Expanding Your Financial IQ – Part 2 — 6 Comments

  1. A very tough subject to make sensible in an hour show. Here are some of my suggestions for follow up research and educational tools that I listen or read.

    Mutual Funds… The best podcast that I know of belongs to Adam Bold called the “mutual fund show” which takes calls from listeners and breaks down their fund choices. By listening to several weeks and several archived shows you can put togeather a nice group of reccomended fund choices. He has a product to sell, but differs from many in that he is a fee based advisor which is different than Dave Ramsey type ELP’s or your local bank investment representative that sells you loaded funds.

    Investment shows and/or podcasts…

    Bob Brinker has a nationally syndicated radio talk show on Saturday and Sunday. If he is not playing on your local radio station, you can listen to this show via KGOAM radio website, iphone app or via directly via Brinkers listen on demand subscription. Lots of politics, rants against Washington, with sensible investment and personal finance advice.

    Disciplined Investor Podcast… An hour weekly podcast that focuses on alot of short term trading but is very educational even if you are not a trader. Can be somewhat technical but gives you great insight from a different point of view. He has many guests and isn’t abnoxious pushing the products he offers investors. It’s put on by Andrew Horowitz.

    Value Line observer podcast… This is a weekly podcast by a guy called “Val Hughes” with nothing to sell! He’s a money manager that reviews each weekly edition of Value Line and chooses three stocks of interest.

    Books on buying individual stocks…

    Contrarian Investor by David Dreman is an easy read with simple formulas.

    Intelligent Investor by Ben Graham… dated but worthwhile.

    Guru Investor by John Reese… Compilation of biographies of the legends of Value Investing. Includes Buffett, Graham, Dreman, Peter Lynch among others and gives a simple breakdown of how they choose stocks.

    Subscriptions…

    Value Line… is likely the best source for researching stocks. They offer model portfolio’s for growth, value, income as well as opinions on thousands of stocks. Just the large cap subscription costs $300 annually. Small and mid-cap edition is extra. Beauty of it is that your local library often carries it and you can view them for free.

    Investment Quality Trends… I had a subscription to this in the past and it is a worthy choice. Invests mainly in value oriented stocks that pay dividends.

    I hope these help…

  2. Hey Jack, A great show and definitely a “keeper” for me as it is a great resource to explain the more complexities of our casino economy.

    I wanted to get your take on s/thing if you have a moment. I don’t have silver in my portfolio yet as it seem to be getting overvalued ($18.02 as of this writing, $2.55 off historic high).

    Since the bankstas at JP Morgan have been manipulating silver prices, what do you think the likelihood of them inflating the prices further to lure more investors into the market and when the economic SHTF silver, gold and pretty much everything else will tank, JPM the cronies will come a long and vacuum up the silver, gold and everything else of real, intrinsic value?

    Your thoughts (and thoughts of listeners) are greatly appreciated! Thanks for all you do.

  3. A note about DRIP plans.

    Some offer IRA options. Exxon, Verizon, Walmart, Phiilip Morris/Altria (I think), and a few others.

    The one draw back are the fees are pretty oppressive for somebody buying each month. I calculated about 5% of your total contribution unless you can do a single lump sum.

    If you do a non retirement account then each monthly contribution becomes a taxable event in it’s own right and a real PITA to keep track of. Then there is the the reinvestment of shares which could mean partial shares and such…

    Also, gettig your money quickly or selling the shares are a bit ponderous.

    I think these would be great for Roth and Traditional IRA investment.

  4. I’ve tried DRIPs. This was direct from each company or through their favorite intermediary, usually computershare. As Bob in SC suggested, it was a royal pain.

    I put about $100/month into each stock. Lost $1 of that to a transaction fee. (About half of the stocks were no-fee.) Several years later I cashed it all out to pay down on the mortgage. Discovered that I had basically broken even while the whole market had gone up. A cookie jar would have done about the same.

    Selling the stock caused an avalanche of paperwork. I had to feed all purchase and dividend reinvestment activity data into a big spreadsheet to calculate the cost basis for taxes. It a big waste of my valuable time. There were a few incoming dividends left that ended up as fractional shares, which are still floating around somewhere years later.

    Maybe with etrade it’d be easier. It seems to do a better job of calculating cost basis for my IRAs. I wouldn’t recommend doing non-IRA DRIPs through computershare though.

  5. Another great show Jack! You really know how to break information up and present it in a way that is easy to understand. Just as Political Atheist mentioned above, this show is a “keeper” for sure!

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