How Often Can I Change the Allocation in My 401(k)?
By law, your plan administrator (employer) must allow you to change your allocation at least quarterly, but most plans allow for more frequent changes. Generally speaking, you can change your allocations as often as you need to with no commissions or fees; that is, up to a point. Many plans start to impose fees after about the 10th reallocation, and partially this is meant to discourage over-trading. Continue reading...
What are the Contribution Deadlines for My Money Purchase/Profit Plan?
Contributions for Money Purchase and Profit Sharing plans come entirely from the employer, and must be made before the deadline. In order for an employer to deduct contributions to a money purchase or profit sharing plan, the first thing that needs to happen is that the plan has to be set up by the last day of that year, which is generally December 31. SEP IRAs, which are different than money purchase or profit sharing plans, do not have to be set up until contributions are made, which can be up until the tax deadline (with extensions). Continue reading...
What is Earnings Momentum?
Earnings momentum is an indicator that is computed by not just looking at the earnings performance and estimations of a company, but looking at the positive or negative direction of earnings and the acceleration in that direction. Momentum in securities is much like momentum in physics. Where there is momentum, it is hard to slow things down and charge direction. Instead of looking only at the growth of earnings, which could be the slope of the inclining line, momentum also looks for increases in change to the growth rate, making earnings growth more parabolic or exponential. Continue reading...
What is Form 706 GS (D): Generation Skipping Transfer Tax Return for Distributions?
IRS Link to Form — Found Here Form 706 is the Estate Tax return, and it has a section concerning Generation-Skipping Transfers. 706 GS (D), specifically, is the form which 706: GS (D-1) is the corresponding form if the transfer is associated with a trust, which is filed by the trustee. The Generation-Skipping Tax attempts to prevent an estate from transferring too many assets directly to grandchildren instead of children for the purpose of shielding heirs from estate taxes. The form for reporting Generation Skipping Transfers is 706 GS (D), where 706 is the Estate Tax Return filing. Continue reading...
What is an Accountant’s Opinion?
An Accountant’s Opinion, also called an Auditor’s Opinion, is a formal document signed by a certified accountant after a review of a company’s books. Companies may be required to have an audit from an independent and unbiased third-party accountant, perhaps annually before a report to shareholders or the submission of financial documents to regulatory bodies or lending institutions. At the conclusion of a review or audit, the auditor issues an Accountant’s Opinion (or Auditor’s Opinion) letter. The two outcomes that are most common: Qualified or Unqualified. Continue reading...
What is market disruption?
Market disruption is a term that describes the state of affairs when the status quo of the stock market or a particular industry’s market is destabilized. This could include the entry of what’s called a disruptive technology or new competitive company, or a natural disaster, or technical difficulties with the computer network that the exchanges use. It is also commonly used to refer to a panic or mania that makes the market disorderly and is stemmed through the use of circuit breakers. Continue reading...
What is a Long Squeeze?
A long squeeze is when shareholders feel the pressure of falling prices and themselves sell, causing the price to fall even further. Investors encounter long squeezes fairly rarely, and it usually occurs in more illiquid stocks where a panicked investor will fear riding a stock all the way down, and not finding a buyer at a desired price. On the contrary, long squeezes are more rare in high volume, larger cap names because opportunistic investors will tend to enter names when prices are falling, as a form of bargain hunting. Continue reading...
What is a short squeeze?
A short squeeze occurs when many short-sellers attempt to cover their positions at the same time, and it drives prices up rapidly. A short squeeze is a bottleneck situation where many investors who have sold a security short, suddenly become very interested in covering their positions - usually, because the stock starts on a strong uptrend. The squeeze will actually cause the price of the security to rapidly increase, more than it would otherwise, because so much demand has hit the security at once. Continue reading...
What is a Credit Spread?
Credit Spread is an indication of the default risk perceived in corporate bonds at the current time. The credit spread is the difference between the yield on the safest bonds and the riskiest bonds. How much does it cost corporations to issue bonds, in terms of the yield expected by investors in the current market? Typically, a higher spread indicates a more unstable economy. Buyers of large quantities of bonds tend to insure their purchases, and the cost of the insurance is usually reflected in so-called CDS's (Credit Default Swaps). The more expensive the CDS's are, the more risky it is to purchase the bond. Continue reading...
What are Fibonacci Channels?
Price movement often occurs in a range-bound way, even when an uptrend or downtrend is in effect. Fibonacci channels estimate support and resistance numbers using Fibonacci numbers, which are found throughout the natural world, in order to define possible places where reversals will occur. Fibonacci numbers are related to the study of chaos theory, which seeks to find order in complex systems. Since the markets have so many variables, but no lack of data, they are an excellent place to search for Fibonacci patterns. Continue reading...