Is Ark Innovation a Scam?

by
ark innovation

Sometimes, a fast rise comes with expectations that are difficult to live up to. Sometimes the person rising fast doesn’t really help matters. Cathie Wood came into the “mainstream” of financial news with a prediction of a huge rise for Tesla. She was “right,” at least over that sample period, and then some guy anointed her best stock picker of 2020. That will attract some eyeballs. But, just like Abby Joseph Cohen rose to fame by always being more optimistic than the next stock market analyst who said, “Are we really sure all of these no-earnings, no-profit, internet stocks should be pulling everything this high?” while the market rose and rose during the internet bubble, being right isn’t always so much being right, as being the last one to ignore the iceberg. Cohen told investors to “buy the dip” as the internet bubble popped, and the market crashed. I hope everyone who thought she was amazing just didn’t listen to her that time… Wood’s problem is that when you become famous for catching unicorn, people only think you’re amazing while you still have one. Since finding another one is almost impossible, there is a tendency to hold on too long, …

Read More

How To File Colorado Income Tax

by
colorado income tax forms

Colorado Income Tax Is Easy These days, the major tax preparation software companies, like Turbo Tax and Tax Cut offer people with easier federal income taxes a way to file for free. They do this for two reasons. First, and foremost, despite the millions of dollars they spend lobbying to keep the IRS itself from providing a free, easy way to file basic income taxes, people are starting to expect such things in the internet age. By getting ahead of the IRS and offering free(ish) tax filing, they can keep a damper on any move to making tax filing without them easier. The other reason is that most people with very easy taxes probably won’t bother with their software anyway. Filing income taxes isn’t hard when you work a single job and just deduct a couple of kids and a mortgage. But there are ways to upsell, or otherwise encourage people to buy, or pay for other services like audit defense. The most common upsell is filing your state income taxes. Colorado State Income Tax Is it worth paying TurboTax to file state returns in Colorado? Probably, not. Colorado State Tax is not that complicated for most Colorado taxpayers. While …

Read More

Is Patreon Taxable Income?

by
taxes 2020 personal deduction

Patreon is a website that allows people to contribute funds to support the work of artists and creators. When you get money, do you have to pay taxes on Patreon? If so, what are the Patreon taxes for creators? Is Patreon tax deductible? Let’s start from the beginning. Is Patreon taxable? What Is Patreon Income? Patreon is deliberately misspelled, likely because patron.com was already taken and whoever owned it wanted too much money for it. A patron, as in patron of the arts, is (or was) a person who supports artists or art causes. The most famous patrons of all time were the Medici family, who supported numerous artists, including Leonardo da Vinci. The idea behind the website is arguably similar. The Patreon website allows people to support “creators” by pledging a certain payment per month. In exchange, the creator may (but is not obligated to) offer various “rewards” for said contributions. The question is are Patreon payments considered taxable income for income tax filing purposes. Is Patreon Tax Deductible? Most Patreon Contributions Not Tax Deductible Let’s start with the easier question. No matter how much you like artists, and no matter how much supporting them feels like a charitable donation, …

Read More

How To Qualify for the Earned Income Credit – The Easy Version

by
claim eic

OK. Let me start by saying that if your adjusted gross income is going to end up in the six figures, you’re out. Go read this article about investing with Acorns, or this one about Credit Karma reviews, or this one about maximizing cash back with Rakuten. Also, there are some “special situations” that we won’t be covering here. This is the easy version. You have kids, you might qualify for the earned income credit. Then, here is how to qualify for the earned income credit, or EIC. Qualifications for EIC So how, do you qualify for the EIC? Basically, have a low enough income, and have some kids, while working. Your Income Has to Be Low Enough You need kids that are your dependents You have to have earned income (most earned income come from a job or home business) You have to have a valid Social Security Number, and so does the child or children you are using to claim the credit Or certain special situations. Since this is short version we are covering it here. Check out the IRS page. Your income needs to be under $57,414. Your investment income has to be below $10,000. Earned income …

Read More

How To Improve Your Credit Score

by
how to improve your credit score experian boost

There is a lot of phony information out there about improving your credit score. There is also a lot of information that once worked, but doesn’t anymore, things like disputing everything on your credit report. So, what is the real way on how to improve your credit score? What Is In Your Credit Score? Let’s start from the beginning. What is in your credit score? Your credit score comes from the information in your credit report. If you are wondering how information gets on your credit report, your creditors are snitches. Each money, they report data to the credit bureaus about what accounts you have with them, how long you have had the account, how much money you owe, how much credit you have available, and if your payment was on-time, late, or never paid. How are they allowed to do that? Easy. When you signed up, it was buried in that agreement you never read. Besides, if it’s true, then there is nothing you can do about it. People are allowed to say true things about you. Your credit score is made up of four main things (check here for how your credit score is calculated) Your Payment History …

Read More

AT&T Slashes Dividend

by
AT&T Slashes Dividend 1

AT&T is making big moves, are they good for AT&T, or bad for AT&T. As everyone knows, I’m a dividend guy. I believe in buying the stocks of good companies and then treating them like bonds, collecting interest payments while ignoring price movements. Usually, when you buy a solid, US company stock with a dividend, that dividend is yours more or less forever. If you buy Apple today (2/4/22) you’ll get about a 0.50% dividend yield. If you like, you can choose to think of it as buying an Apple CD that pays 0.50% with a five-year (or 10, or 3, or whatever) maturity date. When you do that, the daily price movements of Apple stock are irrelevant to your financial plans which count on nothing more than receiving 0.50% interest, and some day getting your principal back (with some risk). AT&T Dividend Cut But, sometimes, a company can cut its dividend. Usually that isn’t a huge surprise. In the case of AT&T, there has been talk of changing (cutting) the dividend for some time now. That being said, a 50% cut is a big deal. As of yesterday, the annual dividend yield for AT&T stock was over 8%. As …

Read More

Crypto Collapse?

by
ethereum technical analysis chart

If you’re way into crypto, you probably don’t care what crypto is trading at today because you know it will be way up tomorrow. This is the Cult of Crypto. For everyone else, what is going on with crypto? Warning I’m just spit balling here folks. Do NOT try and follow me when it comes to cryptocurrency. I’m new. I know nothing. Proceed at your own risk. Analyzing Crypto I’m not going to lie, I’m pretty new to crypto and I while I have some money invested in some different cryptocurrencies, it’s nothing compared to my overall investments. That being said, I’ve been researching, and I’ve seen some things. Let’s do this. First off, crypto moves very much like other assets, including stocks. I don’t mean to say it moves the same as stocks, or even in relation to stocks, but if you looked a crypto price chart, the movements are very similar to what you would see for a chart of a stock like Apple, or the S&P 500, or other securities. Since it moves like a stock, I wonder if it can be analyzed like one. For many years there have been various theories that you can predict …

Read More

Blaming the Fed

by
Blaming the Fed 2

Selective amnesia and analysts dying to be “right” is contributing to a flood of inaccurate articles seeking to blame the Fed. I saw this in my Twitter feed this morning and I just couldn’t let it go by. It’s filled with the kind of half-truths and misinformation that builds an analyst’s career, unfortunately, but that doesn’t make it true. Here we go. According to this tweet, The Fed spent 12 years creating an “everything bubble,” a term so bizarre that it requires quotes. Oh, and the Fed didn’t spend 12 years creating this so-called everything bubble. Oh, and before we start pointing fingers, until THIS YEAR neither this analyst, nor almost any other was asking for the Fed to tighten monetary policy because the economy was teetering on a cliff and every bit of the stimulus was required to prevent the Great Recession II, or worse. Yep. For exactly, ONE MONTH, inflation has been a bit crazy. Too bad the graph they posted as “evidence” is so far zoomed out that you can’t see what really happened. Maybe they couldn’t find one that showed more recent events. Oh, wait! Here’s one. The crazy, reckless Fed that has been pumping up …

Read More

Market Monday 1-24-2022

by
negative interest rates

Hey, Boys and Girls, here comes an interesting week for investors. The following article is for informational purposes only and is not investment advice. This is not a recommendation to buy or sell securities. As always, the best investment strategy for long-term investing is building a well-diversified portfolio based upon your time frame and risk tolerance and then leaving it alone except for annual or semi-annual rebalancing. But… Short-Term Investing January 2022 The week of January 24, 2022 looks fun. And by fun, I mean interesting. The Fed meets on Wednesday. Everyone expects it to raise interest rates to help tame inflation, while also reducing its bond buying to do the same thing. If that weren’t enough, a bunch of big companies are set to report their earnings this week including Apple, Microsoft, and McDonalds. At least we don’t have to worry about options expiring, that was last week. As I write this, the S&P 500 hit the 10% down mark necessary to call the move from January 3 to now a correction. Remember a correction is a 10% reduction, although most people will require the market to close beneath that level to call it a recession. A 20% reduction …

Read More

Jeremy Grantham Calls Stock Market Crash…

by
Jeremy Grantham Calls Stock Market Crash... 3

Jeremy Grantham crash call I don’t mean to pick on Jeremy Grantham, I just seem to see his stuff come across more than others. Maybe that is because he is so influential, or maybe he just generates headlines that financial journalists love like calling crashes and calling things super bubbles. What is he saying this time? Jeremy Grantham Calls Bubble Popping and Stock Market Crash Again… So, Grantham is back with another stock market crash call, or he is still calling a stock market crash that already started, or he is really super serious about it this time, depending upon how you want to spin it. Grantham spins it like this: “I wasn’t quite as certain about this bubble a year ago as I had been about the tech bubble of 2000, or as I had been in Japan, or as I had been in the housing bubble of 2007.” Bloomberg That’s weird. I don’t remember any “I’m not as sure,” talk the last time Grantham called a bubble popping stock market crash. I wrote about Grantham accuracy right here in March of 2019 when he was already calling a crash (oops). I wrote about him again in January of …

Read More