Overload

Feel like everything is moving too fast sometimes? You may be right.




Lots of data, very little wisdom.

Bits from around the Web

Break Up for Hartford Financial? - The Hartford Financial Services Group, currently embroiled in dealing with financial losses and ratings downgrades, reportedly is negotiating a possible sale of its life insurance and annuity operations to Sun Life Financial Inc.

The Conflicts of Interest in Not Being a Fiduciary; Hang Charlie Merrill In Effigy? - The story told at The Big Picture yesterday is about the Merrill reps who do the right thing for their clients at the reps’ own expense; to be more specific, it’s the story of two “stock jockey” partners who turned bearish early last year, moving about 75 percent of their client assets into money market funds (AUMs were, combined, over $300 million, according to the story). As a result, their combined gross production dropped to “under $1 million” from over $3 million. Their branch manager informed them that, as a result, in 2009, their payout on the grid would drop to 30 percent from 43 percent. Ouch!

Dividend Payouts Decline - Last year was the worst ever for dividend reductions among Standard & Poor's 500 stock-index companies. In the final three months of 2008 alone, $15.9 billion worth of S&P 500 dividend payouts were whisked off the table.

Miss the Ten Worst Days - If you miss an equal amount of the best and worst days, you outperform buy and hold regardless of how many days you miss! This has wide-ranging ramifications for us.