Archive for the ‘Investing’ category

401k debit cards?

January 15th, 2008

Wow – I was just blown away reading this story @ Yahoo this morning.  Debit cards you can use against your 401k.  Borrowing against your 401k has traditionally been a ‘last resort’, because if you didn’t repay it within 60 days of leaving a company, you had to count it as regular income, pay tax, plus a penalty.  This new scheme described gives you up to 5 years to pay the loan back, regardless of where you work, which is a good thing.  But they’re also charging you for the privilege of borrowing your own money – 2.9% above prime, I believe.

I dunno – in general I think this is a bad idea.  People will get themselves in trouble with this scheme, and *I* – and you – and many other people – will end up bailing them out in the next 20-40 years.  Not something I’m looking forward to.

What do you think?

No comments »

Posted in Finance, Investing, Money, Personal

Investing strategy

February 25th, 2007

I just finished the audio book version of “The Little Book That Beats The Market” from Joel Greenblatt.  It certainly sounds compelling, and I’m interested in trying it out.  As opposed to ‘trading’ strategies, which you can usually verify within a few days or weeks at most, this is a moderately long term approach, taking 3-5 years before necessarily seeing any results.  That’s not to say that you won’t see positive results in the first few months or years, but Greenblatt goes to great lengths to warn that the ‘magic formula’ in the book can have stretches of ‘not working’, which is also held up as a main reason why it doesn’t matter if everyone ‘knows’ the formula – not everyone will have the patience to put it in to practice.

If you’ve used the ‘magic formula’ in the book for any length of time, and have anything to share, please comment here or just email mgkimsal@gmail.com.  You can check out the barebones magicformulainvesting.com site to get a list of stock picks based on the given formula, or buy the book to learn a bit more.

No comments »

Posted in Book, Business, Finance, Ideas, Investing