10 Thursday AM Reads

Now that the mystery of the 5-year old Flash Crash has been solved, onto our morning train reads:

• Should you “sell in May and go away?” The answer: probably not if you take the long view. But expect lower volume. (Fidelity)
• Terrible Advice I Hope Young People Ignore (Housel)
• Even as Home Values Rise, Negative Equity Rate Flattens (Zillow)
• A Dozen Things I’ve Learned from Ben Carlson about Investing (25iq)
• Buzz Over Bee Health: New Pesticide Studies Rev Up Controversy (NPR)

Continues here

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  1. rd commented on Apr 23

    A new book came out last year by Richard Darke and Douglas Tallamy with specific advice and information about how to improve the typical suburban or urban garden to improve the ecosystem. I strongly recommend it. An accumulation of improved suburban gardens could partially offset the ecological disaster of industrialized agriculture.

    http://www.amazon.com/The-Living-Landscape-Designing-Biodiversity/dp/1604694084

  2. george lomost commented on Apr 23

    As usual, Altucher overstates his argument about avoiding 401ks. However, I would argue that Housel overstates even more.

    As we have learned over the last few years, regulators (who tend to come from industries they now regulate) tend to be “free-market” idealists who believe that government regulations are ‘overreach’ and need to be avoided at all costs.

    Secondly, a quarterly report issued weeks after the end of a quarter does not tell me what is in the portfolio now, and it certainly doesn’t tell me whether a stock that had a big runup during that quarter was bought before or during the runup or if it was acquired on the last day of the quarter as “window dressing.”

    ‘According to a study of 401(k) investors by Vanguard, “Five-year [2008-2013] participant total returns averaged 12.7% per year.” ‘ Five years of 12.7% per year amounts to less than half of what the major averages did during the same time period.

  3. RW commented on Apr 23

    Raising the SS retirement age to help “reduce the deficit,” etc is intellectually lazy, fundamentally unjust and wrong on every single point it pretends to address beginning with gross mischaracterization of the relationship between the SS trusts and the federal budget.

    It’s also an additional burden on those least able to afford it which means WaPo editorial leaders think the idea probably has some merit.

    Robert Samuelson Says a 12 Percentage Point Increase In Income Taxes Would Impose No Hardship

    Samuelson told readers that increasing the normal retirement age for Social Security by an additional two years between now and 2027 …”wouldn’t impose major hardship.” Raising the normal retirement age by two years is effectively a 12 percent cut in benefits. (For orientation, the average Social Security benefit is less than $1,300 a month.)

    Since Social Security is more than 90 percent of the income for one third of retirees this would be equivalent to almost a 12 percentage increase in the income tax for this group. …

    • willid3 commented on Apr 23

      and here i thought conservatives were anti taxes. appears to only be for the 1%. the rest of us? no problem

  4. farmera1 commented on Apr 23

    Think a lack of water is only a California problem, not so. Most of the US is facing water shortages in the near future.

    In my part of the world, irrigation is growing very fast. Growing into areas and land that should never have been farmed (too hilly, sandy and very subject to erosion). Just a small part of a much bigger picture.

    http://www.businessinsider.com/americas-about-to-hit-a-water-crisis-2015-4

    • WickedGreen commented on Apr 23

      Environmentalists and natural resource scientists have been warning for oh, decades about the perils inherent in perpetual ‘growth’.

      It’s nice to see that financial blogs and brokerage houses are finally getting it, after having spent oh, decades deriding commies, libs, and tree-huggers.

      Welcome to the world of your making, ‘free’-market types.

      Now what are you gonna do about it?

    • Molesworth commented on Apr 23

      Banning landscape irrigation may be in our future.
      If your grass needs to be watered, you’re not in Britain. No pop up sprinklers in the UK. Rain keeps the grass green.
      Find native plants that can thrive on the amount of precipitation that nature gives them.

      Water rights and farmers are complicated, but if you’re growing for profit and the water costs blow out that profit, then you would think farmers will change their crop or move back to the city.

      Surprised water infrastructure stocks are not doing better.

    • willid3 commented on Apr 23

      or just paint your yard. which is what is done in some desert communities today

  5. rd commented on Apr 23

    This is the type of financial advice that millenials need

    http://awealthofcommonsense.com/an-open-letter-to-vice-news-about-their-new-personal-finance-show-for-millennials/

    This is pretty much exactly the advice that we have been giving our kids. None are over 30 yet but the oldest two already have about 1x gross income saved for retirement, an emergency fund set aside, paid off half their student debt, and carry no other debt. It took discipline on their part coupled with some of my advice on savings vehicles and goals. Both of them have learned to ignore the advice of commission-based financial advisors and to ignore the typical scare-mongering media stories about finance.Both are on track to be financially independent by their early 50s. The other two are just emerging from school and hopefully will get on a similar track.

  6. farmera1 commented on Apr 23

    More on water shortages.

    “Bank of America Merrill Lynch recently put out a giant report on the future of agriculture and water”

    Read more: http://www.businessinsider.com/climate-change-will-lead-to-global-water-scarcity-2015-4#ixzz3Y9CILuDS

    There will be huge impacts on Agriculture from changing moisture patterns. It is just beginning. Also the predicted increasing temps will impact evaporation and water loss Unless you work with the soil and water and crops you probably don’t have a good understanding of how temps impact water loss/usage. Wonder how those billions of people will get fed without the reliance on all of the water we are use for agriculture. The answer is they won’t.

    http://www.businessinsider.com/climate-change-will-lead-to-global-water-scarcity-2015-4

  7. ilsm commented on Apr 23

    Deficits are from investing $27T in war and tax cuts.

    If the Trillions lent from the SSTF were not spent blowing up the sand for the Sunnis……….

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