It’s that time of year again. Time to put on the accountant’s hat, tally up the wins and losses for the year and see if my 2011 goals were met. In this post I’ll take a look at the performance of my portfolio in 2011 as well as some of […]
2011 was definitely a wild and wacky year for investments. Volatility and uncertainty returned to the markets with a vengeance. In my mind, 2011 was the year of the contrarian in spades. Usually being contrarian pays off handsomely but 2011 delivered in that regard more than usual. Can you remember […]
The 4% rule of thumb for retirement savings is under threat. After 10 years of retirement, through the end of 2009, individuals who retired at the beginning of the year 2000 are potentially on a path to run out of money before the end of their 30 year retirement period. […]
In my 2011 outlook post earlier this month I mentioned that I had raised the cash portion of my portfolio to 40%. I did this by selling out of my commodity positions. A recent post I read at Pragmatic Capitalism reminded of me of this and that I should explicitly […]
I’ve covered one of my alternative investment strategies for retirement portfolios already, in my post on structured products. Today, I’ll introduce the primary strategy I use to generate income from my cash balance – option selling. Cash is an important part of any asset allocation. It allows an investor to […]
I’ve been thinking a lot about risk management lately. A retiree faces a lot of risks but not the ones that are usually talked about. The biggest two, in my opinion, are suffering a very large portfolio decline and retirement income not keeping up with inflation and taxes. This is […]