Risk minimization requires the identification of what’s inside a portfolio. Risk control requires decision-making by the owner of the investment assets. Risk management requires a selection process from a universe of securities that meet a known set of qualitative standards.

Why do we jump through all of these “prevent-defense” hoops? Because we just don’t know how or have the patience to design and manage a classic, safer, plain vanilla, stocks and bonds portfolio. The market cycle is the favorite son of the investment gods. You either make it your friend or fail as an investor!

Over the past 30 years Federal Tax receipts (Corporate, Personal, Estate, Excise, Gift, Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, et al) have averaged less than 20% of Gross Domestic Product (GDP). Read that again, and don’t think for a minute that it’s not a large number. Why isn’t that enough?

Unlike conventional mutual funds, CEFs do not issue and redeem shares directly with investors at net asset value. CEFs are listed on national securities exchanges, where shares of the Investment Company are purchased and sold in transactions with other investors, just like individual company stocks, and most often not at net asset value.

Big publishers want to sell already big names; discovering new ones is not in their wheelhouse. Are they responsible for the problems in the financial markets? Of course not, but they do have a perverse, if indirect, impact. By constantly publishing the same Wall Street friendly message, they contribute to the brainwashing.

The Stock Market is a dynamic place where investors can consistently make reasonable returns on their capital if they comply with the basic principles of the endeavor AND if they don’t measure their progress too frequently with irrelevant measuring devices

A correction is a beautiful thing, simply the flip side of a rally, big or small. Theoretically, even technically I’m told, corrections adjust equity prices to their actual value or support levels. In reality, it’s much easier than that. Here’s a list of ten things to think about doing, or to avoid doing, during corrections of any magnitude:

MOUNT DORA — A doctor who considers the national health-care overhaul to be bad medicine for the country posted a sign on his office door telling patients who voted for President Barack Obama to seek care “elsewhere.”
“I’m not turning anybody away — that would be unethical,” Dr. Jack Cassell, 56, a [...]

March 16 (Bloomberg) — U.S. employers won’t hire enough workers this year to lower the jobless rate much below the level of 9.7 percent reached in February, three Obama administration economic officials said today.
The proportion of Americans who can’t find work is likely to “remain elevated for an extended period,” Treasury Secretary Timothy F. [...]

By: Dave Eberhart
Backtracking on a firm and fast campaign promise, President Barack Obama now says he is “agnostic” about raising taxes on households making under $250,000 a year, including the idea in the general tool bag needed to lower the nation’s crippling deficit.
In an interview with Bloomberg Business Week that hit newsstands Friday, Obama declared [...]