Pricing Your Self-Published Masterpiece. Caveat Emptor!

When first asked how much royalty I wanted from my novel, Deadly Portfolio: A Killing in Hedge Funds, my only thought was keeping the costs as low as possible. Outskirts Press, the publisher, recommended a price of $18.95 for the 328-page paperback. I objected. The price was too high for the market. Outskirts replied that…

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Publishing Your Own Book? Proceed Cautiously.

If you glance through this posting, you are a giant step ahead of where I was when I started to consider publishing a book. I plunged into the deep end right off with my novel, Deadly Portfolio: A Killing in Hedge Fund. Now, nearly two years later, I am back to a depth that’s just…

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Don’t Ask Your Portfolio To Do More Than It Is Designed To Do.

Some people want more from their investment portfolios than gains and income. Like other major arenas in life—some load more baggage onto a portfolio than it is designed to carry. Making more money guarantees nothing except it will make a person wealthier. An unhappy person will be an unhappy investor. Assuming grinding poverty is not…

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Stressed Out Over the Market? Get a Measure of Your Tolerance for Risk.

NOTE: Risk tolerance is key to the design of any retirement plan. In earlier postings, readers were asked to complete the Flexible Retirement Planner (FRP) to find out how well their funds would hold up over their life expectancy, especially in supplementing their retirement incomes. Reading previous postings is important to understanding this article. Putting…

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Tolerance and the Ship of State

Matthew and Shirley Wirth throw a hell of a bash for all of the guests on the Fourth of July in Deadly Portfolio: A Killing in Hedge Funds. At an actual dinner party recently, the subject of the proposed Muslim Center for lower Manhattan came up. Our hostess was outspoken. “They are just shoving our…

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How Much Should the Middle-Income Household Risk in the Market?

Middle-income families often do not have the resources to employ financial advisors. Yahoo Finance states that middle-income households have an average of approximately $110,000 set aside for their retired years. Financial advisors and brokers at major firms like Merrill Lynch, Morgan Stanley, and UBS Paine Webber are looking for mega buck accounts—accounts with $250,000 or…

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Financial Advisor or Stockbroker. A Brief History.

In a recent interview, I was asked whether the 30 basis points charged against Mac McAllister’s $18,900,000 account in Deadly Portfolio: A Killing in Hedge Funds was realistic. 30 basis points is three-tenths of a percent, or $56,700 each year for managing the account. An $18,900,000 account is not 18.9 times more work to manage…

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