My regular roundup of the week’s blog and financial site links.
I think you can divide the world up into people who have a spiritual epiphany when they learn about compound interest, and those who just shrug and buy more tat on their credit card.
When I first learned about compound interest, my life changed forever. I won’t say it changed for the better – saving half your income and writing a blog about it isn’t a surefire way to win over the ladies – but after 20 minutes playing around with a compound interest calculator I was an investor for life.
- Rebalancing asset allocations
- How to rebalance your portfolio
- When should you rebalance your portfolio?
- Factors that may influence how and when you rebalance
- Getting older? Admit it when you rebalance your portfolio
- Rebalance your portfolio for your benefit, not the tax man’s
- The simplest way to rebalance your portfolio
- Use threshold rebalancing to lower your portfolio’s risk
- Rebalance with new contributions to save on grief and cost
Whatever strategy you employ when you rebalance your portfolio, you need to think about tax.
For instance, it might not make sense to sell your shares to reduce a theoretical risk if it triggers an all-too-real capital gains tax bill.
Anyone who wants to make money developing apps for the Apple iPad had better be prepared to move fast.
Like the iPhone, the iPad will enable start-ups large and small to ride on the back of a brand new platform where no rival is yet all-powerful.
I saw the evolution of the iPhone apps market close-up, due to my day job, yet by the time I actually considered making iPhone apps to generate a side income for myself, the risk versus reward balance had shifted:
- There were tens of thousands of competing apps
- The charts were saturated
- It was almost impossible to get new content noticed
- Average price points had collapsed
The same will happen even quicker with the iPad, since iPhone apps work on the device and also many people around the world are aware of the potential market thanks to the iPhone’s success.
Below are five thoughts on getting ahead of this crowd.
Most Brits have at least one relation in Australia, South Africa or Canada who loves to spout on about how much better life is in the colonies.
And as Auntie Brenda bungs another shrimp onto the barbie while we struggle through rain, cold and misery – and that’s just June – it’s easy to believe them.
Well, it’s easy to believe the Aussies and the South Africans. I’m not sure what the advantage of Canada is… Trees?
Anyway, perhaps you’ve thought of backing the good life with your investing cash, even if you don’t fancy relocating?
Australia has better demographics than the UK, after all, and like Canada and South Africa it also has a lot of those resources the man on the Beijing Omnibus can’t get enough of.
The good news is investing in these countries from the comfort of our over-priced rabbit hutches in the UK just got much easier.
Most Monevator readers will be aware by now of US president Obama’s plans to clamp down on banking, which he revealed on Thursday.
I’m pleased, even though I’ve lost a bit of money (temporarily, I reckon) on my individual bank holdings (HSBC and Standard Chartered).
After blaming bankers from day one of the credit crisis, I wasn’t surprised to see them quickly return to their old game – making out-sized profits from taking little personal risk with other people’s money, and paying their traders a huge bonus to do so. Something had to be done.
Today’s blog of the week succinctly explains how the falling price of bank shares, particularly in the US, demonstrates investors are well aware that some banks proprietary trading desks are making more profit than they should.
