Archive for November, 2008

Mozy Online Backup  

It has been a few years since I talked about online backup and a break from economic news is probably not a bad thing. An online backup service should have the following features. Require minimal care and feeding. If you have to pay attention to it, it wont happen. Keep previous versions of files that [...]

Determining Expected Return from Stocks  

Whenever fear levels are high, I find it comforting to go over the fundamentals of investing.  Today I am revisiting how you should set your exptations for long term returns from equities. Equity returns come from the following sources Dividends Earnings growth Price/Earnings ratio expansion or contraction Inflation I’m going to focus on expected real [...]

Equity Indexed Annuity Scam  

First, to put it on the table, I have a strong bias against EIAs because I think there are more effective ways to achieve the same result.  They often have many moving parts that can make them less valuable than they originally appear and which help hide the expenses built into the product – commissions (often around 8%) and [...]