Investing
Just a quick update today: The stock markets ticked up today on a little bit more good economic news. Following recent good labor market news and the Fed holding interest rates at zero, comes statistics showing last weeks jobless claims were at a 3 1/2 year low. Also, several large companies reported good results. Furthermore, [...]
IBM must really hate the idea of paying a big dividend. Every year, it seems, IBM authorizes billions of more dollars for share buybacks while increasing its dividend by the smallest amount possible. Then, the company goes on to crow about how it has returned "… over $109 billion since 2008 to our shareholders through [...]
Sometimes it seems like the stock market is just messing with people. After seemingly running off of a cliff to end the third quarter of 2011, the market has recently staged a rally. Take a look at a chart for the Dow Jones Industrial Average and you’ll see a low point on October 3, 2011. [...]
The third quarter just closed on September 30th and it was not a pretty sight for short-term investors. The S&P 500 closed at 1,131.42 which is down 14 percent for the third-quarter. It started the year by opening on January 3rd (the 1st and 2nd were Saturday and Sunday, respectively) at 1,257.62. That is a [...]
Reporting most investment income is pretty straightforward. Calculate the gain or loss and enter it on Schedule D. The only trick is whether to report as a long-term or short-term capital gains or capital losses. With short sales, however, there are a couple of tax tricks to know about how they get reported. Long-Term or [...]
Continue reading about Reporting Short Sales for Income Taxes
Several major banks, including most of those deemed “too big to fail,” are set to raise their dividends and announce large stock repurchases after passing the latest Federal Reserve “stress test.” Banks and financial institutions that have repaid their government bailout TARP funds and passed the stress test have been given the go-ahead by the [...]
Continue reading about Banks to Buy Back Shares, Raise Dividends After Passing Fed’s "Stress Test"
The SEC released an interesting item today. It’s a two and a half page "bulletin" entitled Investor Bulletin: Trading Basics. Ironically, anyone who knows enough about the stock market to know about the investor education materials offered by the SEC probably already knows everything included in the PDF file. Be that as it may, if [...]