When US investors save for retirement, there are many important decisions that have to be made including which investments to use as well as which type of accounts to fund. Tax favored retirement accounts such as 401(k)’s and IRA’s should be utilized to the maximum extent possible because of the opportunity for tax advantaged growth.
There are so many excellent sources of investment education available today that I thought a short post about some of my personal favorites could be beneficial. Below are different forms of content that have been particularly impactful to my investment philosophy, and they are not in any specific order.
The price of gold is often in the news—sometimes it's rising, and other times it's dropping but for the most part, it has been on a steady increase for many years. It is certainly worth more now than it did twenty years ago. When its price is on the rise, we may have thought about the benefits of selling our gold for profit and making some passive income from it.
A calendar spread is an income trade where the trader sells a near term option and buys a longer-dated option with the same strike price. Usually this is done with monthly options, but it can also be done with weeklies. They are long volatility trades so can be a nice addition to a portfolio as a way to offset some short vega.
Although not an exhaustive list, what I’ll present in this article are three core principles that overwhelmingly stack the odds of a successful long-term investment experience in your favor. These three principles are asset allocation, diversification, and rebalancing.
Diversifying your portfolio is important for all investors, and currency investments are a great way to do that. However, there are a lot of misconceptions and common mistakes that first time currency investors make, and this leads to big losses.
In my early option trading days, I favored selling iron condors over selling strangles. I thought that selling a strangle was too risky because the potential loss was “undefined”. I thought this made sense because this is what I’d hear from other people that were more experienced than I was.
The good news is that if trading is your passion, then it’s possible to become a successful day trader and work from home. However, it’s not as easy as setting up shop and jumping online. There are specific steps and processes you need to have in place if you’re going to be able to make a living for yourself and have a bright career and future.
These days, everyone claims to be an ‘expert’ on absolutely everything. Apparently, it only takes having a Twitter account to be a seasoned expert on any given subject; all in all, the Internet is full of nonsense. It’s becoming harder and harder to find legitimate answers amongst the quagmire of false information online.
Our first advice to new traders is: "Learn First, Trade Later". The markets will always be there, but if you start trading without proper fundamentals, your capital will be gone very fast. The barrier to enter trading is so low today, commissions are near zero, and the whole trading game looks very promising.
On April 18th I wrote part I of this article, Coming to Peace With Market Volatility. I showed how the US equity market risk premium, defined as the annual average return of the Total Market minus the return of one-month US Treasury Bills, was a large 8.37% per year from 1950-2019. That’s the good news.
The ratio calendar spread is well-known to some, but for others the risk/reward aspects are not well understood. One way to cover a short position is to own 100 shares of the underlying stock. Another, more creative way is to sell a shorter-term expiration position and buy a longer-term position.
