David

David

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Posts by David

Growing Jobs and Income disparity

14 years ago
in
Today, I want to look at some of the structural changes that have occurred and what that might mean for the US. I don’t have any answers, but I think its important to notice that the culture in the US may undergo a substantial shift in the next decade or two. Or to prevent that shift we would [...]

Calculating Safe Withdrawal Rates

14 years ago
in
Much has been written about determining safe withdrawal rates. From Bengen’s early studies to later ones from Evansky, Guyton(pdf) to Kitces. Unfortunately, each one has a number of glaring weaknesses. What if you are significantly older or younger than these studies used?  In other words what if [...]

Flash Crash Explanation

14 years ago
in
Last weeks 1000 point dive in the Dow was pretty scary and people are still trying to figure out what happened.  Here is my best guess. First a quick review on how markets work. In the good old days of the stock “specialist”, he (and it was almost always a he) would be responsible for making a [...]

Laptop Reliability

14 years ago
in
Something to consider the next time you are in the market for a laptop. Looking at the first 3 years of ownership, 31% of laptop owners reported a failure to SquareTrade. Two-thirds of this failure (20.4%) came from hardware malfunctions, and one-third (10.6%) was reported as accidental damage.

Commodities Still Bubbling

14 years ago
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The following graph showing the relative size of the actual commodity and futures/derivatives about the commodity.  As you can see, the futures market exploded over that last few years.  This is why I say that the historical returns and lack of correlation of the commodity market is a thing of the [...]

Average Retirement Ages Around the World

14 years ago
in
It is pretty amazing the spread is so large among developed nations.  As countries get into more debt I wonder whether the countries at the bottom of the list will be forced to migrate their average retirement ages significantly upward.

Home Gain Exclusion

14 years ago
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People are starting to be affected by the changes so I thought a review might be helpful. The Housing Assistance Tax Act of 2008 changed the rules around capital gain exclusions for homeowners. The qualification for the exclusion remains untouched. You must meet the ownership test (2 of last 5 [...]

Unemployment Graphs 4/5/10

14 years ago
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Another month has passed, so I thought I would share some unemployment graphs that look at things a bit differently. Employment-to-Population Ratio: Men (25-54 Years) Clearly there is a long term structural trend of men participating in the workforce less and less (for women it has been the [...]

Household Equity Holdings

14 years ago
in
I’m not sure how accurate the numbers are for actual percentage holdings, but the relative changes that have occurred over time should be fairly accurate.  If you were to plot PE10 on this graph you would find a VERY high correlation.  Unsurprisingly, as people become more fearful of stocks, they [...]

Bank Fees

14 years ago
in
One of the arguments for big banks is that their size allows them to scale and be more efficient.  Unfortunately, it looks like what they become more efficient at is extracting money from their customers. Here is the most disturbing quote for me. But rather than allow the evidence in favor of [...]
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