The Anarcho Geek Info Center

Did you know that babies get a free voucher from the government to save in a Child Trust Fund. The money may be invested in any one of threetypes of CTF account, Stakeholder - a shares-based account that swaps into cash, a savings account or a shares account.

Scottish Friendly is an authorised provider of the Child Trust Fund. The Government is eager for the general public to have access to Stakeholder accounts and this is the sort of account that we provide. This means that:

• Investments are placed into our Managed Growth Fund, which

intends to provide strong growth potential.

• It invests in part in shares to get the benefit of potentially higher returns over 18 years,compared to a cash deposit account (although the value of shares can decrease as well as increase whereas capital would be protected in a deposit account).

• It comes with a low ‘Stakeholder’ funds charge of just 1.5When reaching 18 per year

• young person the get will totally a lump sum, current law free of Capital Gains and Income Tax under It is.

• extra affordable - placed payments can be only in the account from can £10

Anyone - parents, grandparents, aunts and uncles, friends - contribute a ceiling to the Child Trust Fund to augment of £1,200 per year to help is not allowed to

the child’s Fund (once added, this money All this means be withdrawn).offers our Stakeholder account potentially a good balance between reduced high returns and a There’s level of risk. extra also the complies assurance that our account Nonetheless with the Government’s stakeholder criteria. doesn’t this assured mean that returns are appropriate or that Stakeholder accounts are Bear in mind for everyone. decrease that the value of shares in the Managed Growth Fund (where your Child Trust Fund money is invested) can increase as well as whose birthday is and is not guaranteed.

Only children qualified on or after 1st September 2002 are start up a to children born before the 1st of September 2002 Child Trust Fund. If you have eligible who are not think about you could saving looking for them with a Child Bond - it’s a tax-free savings plan for long-term growth.

Anyone with billions of dollars is likely to be admired by a certain segment of society that measures the worth of a person by the amount of money they possess. At last count, Warren Buffett was estimated to be worth in excess of $40 billion dollars. That’s 40 billion reasons to admire the man. The moment Warren Buffett’s net worth vanishes, this group of admirers will quickly lose interest in him and re-focus their attention on whoever happens to be wealthy at the moment.

Another group of admirers place more of an emphasis on the spectacular returns Warren Buffett has generated through his stock market investments. The billions of dollars he has accumulated are merely a reflection of his success as an investor. In other words, the focus of the admiration isn’t so much on the amount of money Warren Buffett has made, but rather, in his miraculous ability to nearly always make winning investments. Warren Buffett’s reputation as a genius stock picker is so deeply cemented in the minds of most investors that a string of bad investments is unlikely to shake the mythic level of admiration in which he is regarded by this group of people. And really, the admiration is deserved, because Warren Buffett has distinguished himself as a “one of a kind” investor throughout his entire career.

Warren Buffett is renowned for being accessible, friendly, down to earth, charming, intelligent, and thrifty. In fact, his car bares a vanity license plate that has the word “thrifty” on it. Having tremendous wealth yet possessing the aforementioned traits is profoundly admirable. There is undoubtedly a group of admirers who choose to focus on the fact that Warren Buffett could easily be someone waiting in line next to you at a Dairy Queen, even though he owns Dairy Queen!

Finally, there is what might be described as a hybrid group of admirers - a group of people who defy simple categorization. For example, there are likely those who admire Warren Buffett because he is a billionaire, because he is an amazing stock picker, and because he is friendly, down to earth, and thrifty. It’s the whole package.

So… why do you admire Warren Buffett?

The Warren Buffett Center
News for people interested in Warren Buffett, stocks, investing, and personal finance.

The monthly chart below shows SPX managed to close the month above the middle Bollinger Band, maintained the bullish MACD, and held Money Flow steady. So, the cyclical bull market remains intact. Also, intermediate-term technical indicators, e.g. the NYSE’s Summation Index, Bullish Percent Index, and Oscillator MAs, reached low enough levels in June, consistent with other cyclical bull market pullbacks, to indicate an intermediate-term bottom. However, a breakdown of those lows will lead to a larger correction or a bear market. Also, SPX had a classic October to May rally and has entered the seasonally weaker period. Consequently, a volatile trading range will likely take place over the next few months.

The daily chart below may indicate the SPX July trading range. Volume normally decreases over the summer. Major support levels are 1,253 (multi-year Fibonacci level) and 1,246 (previous support & resistance). Major resistance is 1,275 (previous support & resistance) and 1,290 (downtrend high). So, the July trading range may be between 1,246 and 1,290. There are many minor support and resistance levels within the range. A rise above 1,290 is bullish and a fall below 1,246 is bearish. Short-term technical indicators are useful (some shown below and explained in the Option Trading Log next day and next week trading plans), along with influencial market events, which may or may not have been fully discounted.

Free charts available at PeakTrader.com Forum Index Market Forecast category.

“Every day the bull market continues, brings us one day closer to the next bear market.”
Jeff Bryant, HomeTrader Trainer

“Should I be trading the long or short side of the market now?”

“Should I wait a couple of months until the market looks better?”

These are a couple of the questions my students have been asking me lately. Despite Jeff Bryant’s words of wisdom above, we can’t predict the future, and Jeff would certainly be the last person to try to do so.

I can’t say which side of the market to trade or whether to trade until after the event. And we can’t trade the past, only the present. If we wait until we “know” what the market is doing, it will be too late.

My answer is always the same: The best time to start trading is when you have developed your [trading] system, proven that it works by backtesting it over historical data and are confident you can trade it correctly.

And the best direction to trade is to trade both sides of the market. Your long system will trade stocks that are rising and should keep you out of falling stocks if it is designed properly. Your short system will trade falling stocks and keep you out of rising stocks.

That way, it doesn’t matter if the market is bullish or bearish or if different sectors are going in different directions - you will always be trading the right direction.

But that does not mean you have to start with both a long and short system if you feel that is too much to begin with. Develop, test and start trading one system in the direction you
are most comfortable with.

Actually trading the system should only take a few minutes a day, which will leave you enough time to develop a system for the opposite side of the market. So it need not take very long to be in a position to trade both directions and then it won’t matter whether the bull market continues or a bear market starts.

And what is the market doing? During November, the All Ordinaries rose again and recouped the losses of October and
challenged the record high of September 30th, but did not break it.

Does this mean the bull market is over or is it continuing?

The answer remains: We don’t know what is going to happen and we don’t need to know what is going to happen if we have a tested mechanical system that dictates all our trading actions. If you don’t have this yet, or if you are not confident in the system you have, go see your trading trainer and sort it ASAP.

You do have a trading trainer, don’t you…?

Michael Grossbard is a trading Trainer for HomeTrader - Australia’s leading stock market education centres. We focus on teaching you how to create wealth through the share/stock market using a customized trading plan or system that is right for you, your situation and your goals. Visit our website and register for your free introductory DVD “Learn To Make Money On The Stock Market” at http://www.learnshares.com.au

While I tend to favor iShares an investment tool because of the wide menu and country specific options they provide investors, I have to say that I am increasingly impressed with the new and fast-growing Powershares family of ETFs and will be adding two of them to portfolios this month. Powershares also address one weakness of iShares which is that they track indexes that market cap weighted.

In other words, the weighting of a company in a particular ETF is dependent on the value of its outstanding shares. This means that the bigger companies tend to affect the ETF’s performance much more than the smaller companies. Of course, big doesn’t always mean better. Powershares essentially creates its own indexes based on rules-based quantative analysis that they refer to as “intelligent indexes”.

This seems to me to be more useful than blindly following market cap weighted indexes. There are two Powershares that I particularly like at this point. The first is a biotech Powershare (PBE) that contains 30 biotech companies. If its holdings were weighted by market cap, two companies, Amgen and Genentech would account for more than 60% of its holdings.

Instead your exposure is spread among 30 different companies with no company accounting for more than 5% of the total. 30% of your exposure is to large cap companies, 26% is to mid-cap companies and 43% is to small cap companies. The biotech Powershare is an aggressive position so don’t get carried away. I think it is a smart play on the tremendous opportunities for capital appreciation in the biotech industry which is showing some momentum after trading sideways since early 2004. The annual fee is only 0.60%.

The other Powershare that I like is the International Dividend Achievers Powershare which contains 42 ADRs traded on U.S. exchanges. I am usually not a big fan of ADRs since they usually trade at a premium to the underlying security but they do offer some comfort to investors since they meet U.S. reporting requirements and can be easily purchased on U.S. exchanges.

The ADRs in this Powershare have to pass a stiff test: five fiscal years in a row of increased dividends.
Again the top holdings are no more than 5% of the total index and so you get great diversification. One problem with the most widely used international index, the MSCI Europe Asia & Far East Index (EAFE) is its concentration in Japan and the United Kingdom which account for almost 50% of the total index.

Meanwhile exposure to promising countries such as Ireland and Hong Kong are less than 2%. Last year, the Powershares index beat the MSCI EAFE index by 7% and companies in the index averaged a 29% return on equity. The index is re-balanced quarterly and has an annual fee of 0.50%. Right now 67% of the companies in the index are large cap, 20% are mid-cap and 13% are small cap companies.

For an unconventional approach that challeges market cap indexing, tap into the Powershares edge.

Carl T. Delfeld
President& Publisher
Chartwell Partners
http://www.chartwelladvisor.com/

Carl Delfeld has over twenty years of experience in the global investment business with a strong background in Asia.

• Author of global investor primer "The New Global Investor"
 • President of the global investment advisory firm Chartwell Partners
 • Publisher of the Chartwell Advisor ETF Report and Asia-Pacific Growth
 • Columnist on global investing with Forbes Asia: "Global Gambits"
 • Former U.S. Representative to the Executive Board of Asian Development Bank
 • Chairman of the global economic strategy think tank ChartwellAmerica
 • Asian specialist with the U.S. Joint Economic Committee and the U.S. Treasury
 • Former member of the U.S. Asia Pacific Economic Cooperation Committee
 • Former investment executive with Robert Baird & Company and UBS
 • Graduate of the Fletcher School of Law & Diplomacy with economics scholarship from U.S.-Japan Friendship Commission
 • Exchange student at Sophia University, Japanese Ministry of Education Fellow at Keio University