Comments on: Cash is king, or cash is trash?

By: ISA Accounts | ISA Accounts

ISA Accounts | ISA Accounts — Tue, 08 Jun 2010 15:08:24 +0000

[...] Cash is king or cash is trash [...]

By: Personal Finance Roundup

Personal Finance Roundup — Mon, 15 Mar 2010 02:54:26 +0000

[...] Cash is king, or cash is trash? from @Monevator I’m just not a fan of excess cash doing nothing for you. [...]

By: Budgeting in the Fun Stuff

Budgeting in the Fun Stuff — Wed, 10 Mar 2010 18:30:46 +0000

@Investor Junkie: Very true…I’ll keep a lookout for rate changes, but it’s still better than a CD right now…
.-= Budgeting in the Fun Stuff on: Determining Our "Allowances" =-.

By: Tom @ Canadian Finance Blog

Tom @ Canadian Finance Blog — Wed, 10 Mar 2010 18:13:07 +0000

I agree that now would be a great time to be taking any cash and investing for the future. Unfortunately I don’t have any to invest since in the past year I bought a house and had a child!
.-= Tom @ Canadian Finance Blog on: How I Got $8 Glasses =-.

By: Investor Junkie

Investor Junkie — Wed, 10 Mar 2010 14:05:26 +0000

@Budgeting in the Fun Stuff: True, but those rates are not fixed… Could be changed at any time and many banks recently have. So while I’m not saying it’s completely a bad idea, be prepared to move to another bank/investment.

@The Investor: If we didn’t have the reserve currency we more than likely would be in the same boat your county is in… Membership has it’s privileges. But for how long?
.-= Investor Junkie on: Ginnie Mae Investing =-.

By: Evolution Of Wealth

Evolution Of Wealth — Wed, 10 Mar 2010 13:00:04 +0000

Judging by investors behaviors in the past, the biggest outflows from the S&P 500 are at it’s bottom while the biggest inflows are at the top. The average person fails miserably at rule #1 of investing. The best advice in the post, for the average person, is to continue to invest through ups and downs.
For people that aren’t average you could probably follow people’s emotions by following the flow of cash. Definitely interesting.
Then what @Financial Samurai isn’t telling you is that he really doesn’t get $160,000. What tax bracket are you in? Maybe he ends up with $120,000? Then the all might question of compounding versus netting? Is it getting better or worse?
.-= Evolution Of Wealth on: 7 Disability Insurance Add-on Features =-.

By: The Investor

The Investor — Wed, 10 Mar 2010 12:31:02 +0000

Thanks for your thoughts Faustus – I think I read somewhere that 10% of readers read the comments and 1% actually comment, so your thoughts chime with that.

As a long-time reader you may remember when I didn’t enable comments. I sometimes think of turning them back off, particularly when I see dangerous comments about volatility being optional or whatever being voiced after a carefully crafted post, but some readers feel blogs are blogs without the ability to comment, so on they stay!

By: Faustus

Faustus — Wed, 10 Mar 2010 01:10:29 +0000

I don’t think you should focus too heavily on the number of comments. I read regularly, and often the comments too, but whether or not I contribute is based on time, and also what has already been said.

I find that frequently a good and insightful blog post generates less in the way of comment than a bad one, because there is little within that people feel they need to contradict.

I agree that this isn’t a particularly bad time for investing in equities; it’s just that it doesn’t seem a good time either, with stocks seemingly priced for a strong recovery, leaving little room on the upside.

By: The Investor

The Investor — Wed, 10 Mar 2010 00:37:23 +0000

@Niklas – Thanks for that, think I may have linked to it at the weekend but possibly forgot. There’s no doubt valuation plays a huge role – and this Economist article proves yet again what certain commentators on the Internet say about valuation being ignored is simply not true – but the trouble is overvaluation only looks obvious in retrospect.

Regarding demographics, I’m part persuaded. It would certainly help explain why Government bonds are now trading at silly lows despite massive issuance and the expectation of more – pension funds buying them up to fund boomer annuities?

By: The Investor

The Investor — Wed, 10 Mar 2010 00:30:32 +0000

@FinEngr – Thanks for deciding to comment, and I quite agree the lack of discussion surprises me at times. Perhaps people are simply too exhausted after wading through a Monevator article! More seriously, a friend told me that on a blog like this where I write long posts, it may be better to comment less to let the readers have their say, so I’m trying to hold off a bit before jumping in.

Regarding the cash king/trash argument, I honestly think it comes down to psychology and emotion. It’s only 10 years ago we saw the dotcom boom – something everyone has been able to see was absolute madness for… 9.5 years! When you’re in the thick of it, it’s easy to get carried away by whatever the market thinks…

By: The Investor

The Investor — Wed, 10 Mar 2010 00:27:39 +0000

@IJ – I love that phrase, and it’s proven true again in the past 18 months, no!

Our Central Bank is partly trying to get the exchange rate to do some of its heavy lifting at the moment, by benignly devaluing the currency enough to import a little inflation to stave off deflation/recession, while holding rates low to provoke an upturn. It’s an interesting example of what the dollar can’t do, due to it still being the world’s reserve currency – the dollar is weak, but still plenty of buyers unlike for our pound right now!

Agree @Sam’s 4% seemed high. But then again so did his $4 million! Given @Sam has previously vowed to remain anonymous and financially discreet, I wonder if it was a hypothetical…

By: Budgeting in the Fun Stuff

Budgeting in the Fun Stuff — Tue, 09 Mar 2010 20:04:07 +0000

@roym and Investor Junkie,
Credit unions seem to be offering 4% rate checking accounts up to limits. For example, First Community Credit Union is offering a 4% rate up to $25,000 if you use their debit card 12 times a month and have either a direct deposit or ACH credit to them each month. My husband and I are looking at that right now…the only reason we didn’t immediately jump over to them is that we hate debit cards, but we’ll probably at least try it out. There are other credit unions doing the same thing (I’ve seen a couple mentioned online…I remember Cross Keys Bank)…just look for reward checking in your areas.

To the article, thanks for explaining bear and bull markets…I hear the terms and never bothered to actually figure out what they meant. We are young enough to happily invest in stocks and mutual funds for a while…we’ll rebalance as we get older. Our main cash is making 2% at Smarty Pig right now and may soon be making 4% at a credit union…I think we’ll have our bases covered.
.-= Budgeting in the Fun Stuff on: Determining Our "Allowances" =-.