Comments on: Neat & Straight

By: Bryan

Bryan — Wed, 14 Jul 2010 04:04:34 +0000

My Mother got out of the market [at a very good time] because for two years her broker made more than she did, and on the third year was going to charge a fee because my Mother hadn’t altered anything in her portfolio.

That’s the game, but if people are making some money they tend not to notice.

By: Steve Bates

Steve Bates — Tue, 13 Jul 2010 16:25:35 +0000

‘“Managing a portfolio” tends to make more money for the managers than the clients.’

Yep…

Market Gambling

When I was a lad of 30, just beginning to invest,
My advisor sat me down and said, “You mustn’t be obsessed…
I don’t have a crystal ball or magic future-viewing stone,
But the market generates new wealth, like nothing ever known.”

So I put my hard-earned money in a recommended stock,
And I watched as prices fell… I feared investment was a crock.
When the broker said the wealth would grow, just watch the bottom line,
He was right. There was some gain. He never said that gain was mine…

– SB the YSS

By: Bryan

Bryan — Mon, 12 Jul 2010 21:58:14 +0000

You pay a “tax” every time you make a stock trade, but you pay it to a broker, not the government. That’s why brokers want churn and hate the short term capital gains tax, if people buy stock and hold it, brokers don’t make any money.

Instead of raising the cap, just get rid of it. It costs a lot of money to modify payroll software to deal with that cap every year. The tax system needs to be simplified.

“Managing a portfolio” tends to make more money for the managers than the clients.

By: cookie jill

cookie jill — Mon, 12 Jul 2010 20:49:58 +0000

Raise the social security cap.
Pay a tax everytime you buy/trade/sell stock to discourage the gamblers.
(I play the ponies…I know from gambling…and the stock market is gambling.)

But, really, anything but privitize it.

By: Bryan

Bryan — Mon, 12 Jul 2010 19:16:38 +0000

Most of the sapient beings in the country knew this was a con when Dubya tried it, and everyone should be aware of what would have resulted if we had gone along with “privatizing” Social Security then.

As for raising the age, if you are in any technical field and you are 45 or older, you are in your last job. If you lose it, statistics say you won’t get one to replace it. Raising the retirement age makes no sense at all, and there is no reason to do it.

Badtux, we need to go back to short term/long term rates on capital gains to stop the gambling. If you have to hold the stock for more than a few seconds or pay significantly higher taxes, people might start acting like investors again, and that includes CEOs and boards.

Of course, you’re right that after the IPO, unless a company puts out more stock, the company makes nothing in the stock market. A Sam Walton noted after a big drop in the market caused his WalMart stock to lose a billion dollars of its perceived value, that wasn’t real money, it just existed as a number on paper.

There are people willing to pay more for certain baseball cards than a share of Berkshire-Hathaway, so there’s not much difference.

By: Badtux

Badtux — Mon, 12 Jul 2010 15:51:50 +0000

The majority of “investors” invest in nothing. They simply buy and sell shares of a company that someone *else* invested in, typically investment bankers who bought the shares for cheap at IPO time then flipped it to the “investors”. When you buy a share of IBM stock, IBM receives not a dime of investment money from that transaction.

It’s nothing but legalized gambling with no real social worth, in other words. If people who bought shares in companies did so knowing that they had to hold on to those shares or sell them at the same price they bought them, they would have a stake in the long-term survival of companies and insist on good corporate governance and dividends. But they don’t. Because they aren’t investors, they’re gamblers, who are gambling that the shares will go up in price at some point in the future. Which is nice and all, but has absolutely nothing to do with investing.

– Badtux the Startup-survivin’ Penguin

By: Suzan

Suzan — Mon, 12 Jul 2010 14:19:38 +0000

Thank you, sister!

Been saying the same thing over at my place for what seems like aeons now – and finally, finally – people are starting to catch on.

The rich always have walked away from bad deals. Walking away from mortgages given on stoopid terms? Not surprising at all. After all, they don’t worry about their “credit scores.” They invented that concept to take advantage of the poor.

And having a fraudulent (multimillionaire) “progressive” from N.C. head the commission to get rid of Social Security? A brilliant stroke from our truly “black” President.

Thanks for staying on top of this!

they know it’s coming and things are going to get a lot cheaper for people with money and a lot more expensive for people with loans.