Tuesday, October 21, 2008

You are paying those inflated bank bonuses

In this environment where the federal governments are bailing out the big Wall St banks, did you think that the logical thing is to cut any bonuses to be paid this year. The bankers should be thankful that they even have a monthly pay check.

They are still in their job as the government decided to spend the taxpayers' money in bailing out the big banks. In theory, this is a sound decision as it creates stability in the banking world and the world financial markets are relatively stable. On the other hand, there should have been caveats to how this money is applied once injected to the these sickly institutions.

Last week, Morgan Stanley was saved by the taxpayers with help from the Mitsubishi UFJ financial group Inc when $10bn was pumped into the bank. Morgan's bonus owed to employees for this year is $10.7bn which works out at twice its pretax earnings. You can read more about this story on Bloomberg.

At the end of the day, is this bailout hurting or helping the taxpayers? Are the governments working for the good of the little people? Where are their priorities?

Monday, October 20, 2008

Small changes at home to save you money

I just read a very useful post with some tips on how to save money. This might be of some use. Read about saving money tips here.

Sunday, March 02, 2008

Are you holding a lemon?

It seems there is about £20bn invested in popular funds that have been seriously underperforming. These funds have produced below average returns against it peers in the smae fund sectors for the last consecutive 3 years.

Please check the list to see if you are one of the investors in these funds and look around for a better performing fund to switch to. Keeping your investments in these funds is tantamount to throwing your money down the drain. In the long run, it will not appreciate and you might even find your capital eroded by the low returns and the effects of inflation.

Chelsea Financial Services has identified more than 100 unit trusts and open ended investment companies that are serial failures of the which the largest 5 with over £9bn invested in them are:

• Halifax UK Growth
• Scottish Widows Corporate Bond
• Liontrust First Income
• Axa Equity Income
• Jupiter Distribution

A full list of these underperforming funds can be found at www.chelseafs.co.uk/relegationdivert

If you are holding any of these, you might like to switch to a better performing fund within and ISA supermarket so that you don't pay the expensive transactions costs. If you hold these funds outside of an ISA and don't want to invest in funds for a while, a really good alternative is to select one or a few ETF. These all have very low entry costs and are normally based on an index. This way you will get market performance and won't have to pay any management fees.

Read more on these topics on the www.Investment-Training.com website.

Wednesday, February 13, 2008

No charge blogging course

I'm evaluating a multi-media course on blogging from the folks at Simpleology. For a while, they're letting you snag it for free if you post about it on your blog.

It covers:

  • The best blogging techniques.
  • How to get traffic to your blog.
  • How to turn your blog into money.

I'll let you know what I think once I've had a chance to check it out. Meanwhile, go grab yours while it's still free.