| June, 2013 "NSA leaker Edward Snowden somehow managed to get out of the U.S. with all their information. Now where is he? He's in Russia now, going to be in Ecuador or wherever. He remains at large. Now what are the odds out of 350 million Americans, the only one the government wasn't watching was him?" ~Jay Leno |
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The Professional Opinion - DJ 14909.6  Buy Recommendations None. Everything is rated as a hold, as is usually the case. However, there is a sell recommendation - Bob doesn't like GNMA's anymore. He prefers something with a shorter duration, the Fidelity Floating Rate High Income Fund for example.  Killdeer with eggs - Powell Gardens, MO  Well isn't this just ducky... |
 Note: Gains or losses shown here with the exception of mutual funds are from the original purchase date, not yearly returns. |
 I was reading the other day that George Orwell's '1984' is getting quite popular on Amazon and small wonder considering the government's unwelcome intrusion into the lives of ordinary people for the betterment of.........what......exactly? Kind of makes one question how a couple islamic murderers got away with the Boston Marathon bombing, considering their prolific use of social media. I mean the NSA should have picked right up on that, shouldn't they have? In retrospect, no surprise there. After all, these are the same clowns that created the TSA - another fine entity that has not managed to do much more than aggravate travelers and fatten the wallets of attorneys.  |
Note: Not much interested me this month in the world of finance. The spying, snooping, social media, NSA, IRS scandals, ObamaCare and so-on, I found much more amusing. Special Dividends - A Way to add to those Retirement Accounts   Special dividends can be a great way to add $$ to hose retirement accounts and it is worth keeping an eye out for companies issuing them. US Cellular offered a payout of $5.75 a share to share holders of record June 11 - the day you have to own the stock. June 12 you can sell the stock and go back to cash or whatever you want to do. You can beef up that return even more if luck is on your side or...you can lose some of that $5.75 a share if circumstances work against you. Example: I chose to sell a portion of two stocks - BX and UTX at a very good price and used the proceeds to buy USM at 40 and change prior to the ex-dividend date. I need to wait several days for the trades to settle. In the Interim:  Ideal: The market tanks BX and UTX, and USM goes up in value. Three days later USM is sold and more shares of BX and UTX are bought back for less. Gains in the share value of USM + the special dividend = a nice return for little work if there is any increase in share value. If you happen to have shares of BX and UTX set to reinvest dividends, you also got more shares of both paying you more dividends. Good Enough: Prices of all three stocks stay roughly the sames. USM is sold on an up tick and BX and UTX are repurchased. The special dividend is locked in and the return on those trades varies, all tax free if in retirement accounts. Not so good: Prices of BX and UTX go up and the value of USM shares go down. The difference at repurchase will eat into that $5.75 by a corresponding amount. As of day three, the BX - USM trade is up about 2% and the UTX - GSM trade is about even. I hope it hangs in there. Looks like I will be holding this a bit longer than I originally planned. It does matter in which account the money is made. The Roth is ideal because money comes out not taxed at all and you keep everything you make. Oh, and ensure the days you don't own BX and UTX are not the days where you need to be share holder or record for the dividends and want the distribution.  And Microsoft does not view this as Intrusive? I would hazard a guess that a significant percentage of the population does not either. Pretty Sad... What's even sadder is this set of slides:     My personal level of concern decreased dramatically when I saw this - crappy powerpoint slides and Times New Roman fonts...... Ineptness run amok or.......your tax dollars hard at work. And last but not least:  Yet one more reason to avoid social media.  Magnolia Blossoms - Powell Gardens, MO |
