According to popular tradition, one particularly harmful affect of a depreciating dollar is the prospect of an uptick in consumer price inflation.  Denial of this self-evident truth is usually met with a vitriolic tirade of ad hominem attacks, straw men arguments, and comments about the sobriety of your mother during pregnancy.  Yet, just how much [...]

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Last week, Morningstar writer Christine Benz wrote a piece entitled Four Investment Rules To Ignore in which she details investment “rules” that may seem logical at first glance but are actually counterproductive.  It’s all pretty standard advice except for the third point.  According to Christine,
“…an individual’s assessment of his or her risk tolerance should play second [...]

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Carnival Of Personal Finance
Thanks to Money Under 30 for including my post about the attributes of a good dividend stock in last week’s Carnival of Personal Finance #152.
Here are my two favorite posts of the carnival.
Kevin from No Debt Plan shares 10 Steps To Avoid Becoming A Millionaire.  I know I’ve been guilty of at least half of these pitfalls [...]

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Legendary Sequoia fund reopened May 1st, 2008 after more than 25 years.  Since closing on December 21, 1982 Sequoia managers Ruane, Cunniff, and Goldfarb claim assets under management have declined from $5 billion to $3.8 billion, prompting the fund to reopen to new investors.  Buffett followers will recognize the Sequoia Fund as being the fund [...]

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Former and current employees of Wal-Mart (WMT) last month filed a lawsuit (currently seeking class-action status) seeking $60 million in damages from the world’s largest retailer alleging excessive fees in the company’s retirement plan. As the country’s largest employer with nearly 1.4 million employees and $9.5 billion in 401k assets, the suit alleges Wal-Mart [...]

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Nobody questions Warren Buffett’s investment ability.  He is a singularly talented investor, business man, and one of the most respected men in the world.  When Buffett talks, people listen.  There are plenty of Buffet-mimickers out there.  When he buys Bank of America, they buy Bank of America.  When he buys railroads, they buy railroads.  That doesn’t [...]

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Free Cash Flow is a firm’s net income plus depreciation/amortization and all other non-cash charges - minus changes in working capital and capital expenditures.  It may sound complicated at first glance, but all that really means is that free cash flow is the amount of cash left over after paying the bills and making new investments [...]

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Often when speaking of relations with the Soviet Union, Ronald Reagan would toss out the phrase “trust, but verify“.  Reagan reportedly repeated this old Russian proverb (Russian:  Доверяй, но проверяй) at the signing of the INF treaty to which his counterpart Mikhail Gorbachev responded “you repeat this phrase every time we meet”.  Not to be outdone, Reagan replied, “I [...]

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Carnival of Personal Finance
This week’s Carnival of Personal Finance #151 was hosted by Kimberly Palmer over at the Alpha Consumer, one of the bloggers at US News & World Report (classy!).  My article on how the CPI is not manipulated was included in this week’s edition.  Here are some of my favorite posts from other bloggers in [...]

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Welcome to part III of my series examining the attributes of good dividend stocks.   When buying a stock for income, the safety of the dividend is of utmost importance.  Dividend cuts are frowned upon because they amount to an admission of defeat by management and show a lack of confidence in the executive suite about [...]

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