Thursday, January 3, 2008
Nuveen Investments Announces Updated Estimates of Realized Long-Term Capital Gains Retained by Certain Closed-End Funds
Retaining realized long-term gains enables a fund to better preserve and grow its capital base for long-term investors. This increases earnings potential over time, providing the opportunity for more stable, growing distributions and a higher share price.
Per share estimates of the funds' retained long-term capital gains and corresponding Federal corporate income taxes accrued are as follows:
Per Share JRS JDD JTA JGV JGT
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Long-Term Capital Gain Retained
(est.) $3.34 $0.79 $0.64 $0.81 $0.41
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Federal Income Taxes Accrued by
Fund (1.17) (0.28) (0.22) (0.28) (0.14)
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Net Long-Term Capital Gain Retained $2.17 $0.51 $0.42 $0.53 $0.27
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The estimates of the long-term gains to be retained are updated from those announced in a press release dated December 15, 2007.
Final amounts for the retained gains and taxes paid will be reported to shareholders on IRS Form 2439, which investors who hold shares in "street name" should receive from their brokerage firm by March 31, 2008. Investors who own shares directly through the funds' transfer agent will receive Form 2439 in mid-February. These gains will not be reported on Form 1099-DIV, which will only reflect realized capital gains actually distributed to shareholders and taxable in 2007. Shareholders who hold the affected funds in a taxable account should wait to file their tax returns until both Forms 2439 and 1099-DIV are received, and should not base their tax filing on the estimated amounts set forth in this announcement. Shareholders of the funds held in a qualified non-taxable account (for example, an IRA or 401(k) account) are entitled to a refund of the taxes paid by each fund; the account's custodian is responsible for facilitating this refund. More details about these funds, as well as additional information on retained capital gains and related tax information are available on www.nuveen.com/taxinfo.
Nuveen Investments provides high-quality investment services designed to help secure the long-term goals of institutions and high-net-worth investors as well as the consultants and financial advisors who serve them. Nuveen Investments markets its growing range of specialized investment solutions under the high-quality brands of NWQ, Santa Barbara, Tradewinds, Rittenhouse, Symphony and Nuveen, including the Nuveen HydePark Group. In total, the Company managed $170 billion in assets as of September 30, 2007. For more information, please visit the Nuveen Investments website at www.nuveen.com.
http://www.foxbusiness.com/markets/industries/finance/article/nuveen-investments-announces-updated-estimates-realized-longterm-capital-gains_423572_9.html
Saturday, December 29, 2007
Investments help insurers offset underwriting losses
As equity markets have had a good run, some insurance companies have sought to offset underwriting losses with capital gains, where accounting standards allow profits to be booked in the year of sale and there is no mark-to-market accounting.
“Insurance companies do offset risks by investment incomes. In any detariffed market, losses on account of underwriting is natural. It will take some time before the market settles down. The board of every insurance company sets a mandate spelling out the quality of growth,” said IRDA chairman CS Rao.
What happens to insurance companies when the Sensex may not generate as much returns? “In the event of an equity market correction, those companies, which have excessive reliance on capital gains — say more than 25% of the Profit Before Tax (PBT) — will have to increase prices to maintain profitability as a significant source of profits dries up. However, this correction cannot be immediately done as it would affect the stability in premium rates and cannot be linked to the swings in the equity market. By the time the insurer realises this mismatch, it would be too long to make any correction,” an industry expert said.
In January 2007, general insurers were given the freedom to price policies within prescribed limits. Premiums fell as high as 60% of the original tariffs as companies rushed to sell the cheapest policies to expand the market share. Further, the industry will be ushered into complete free-pricing in January 2008. In the new year customers will need to differentiate policies not on prices alone but on various product features as well.
Bajaj Allianz General Insurance CFO S Sreenivasan said: “The question is do insurers try to offset their underwriting losses by investment income? But what needs to be considered is the sustainability of this investment income. We feel that ultimately sustainable investment income will come from a growing stream of interest and dividend income, which is driven by cash-flow generation. Bajaj Allianz General Insurance, which focuses on retaining rather than reinsuring risk with a strong underwriting basis, will be able to generate sustainable cash flows and hence, growing stream of investment income. In the ultimate analysis, shareholder value will be driven more by free cash flows than book value.” In the financial year 2006-07, Bajaj Allianz was the only company to make underwriting profits, he added.
The underwriting performance of an insurance company is measured in its combined ratio. The combined ratio is the loss ratio and the expense ratio taken together. The loss ratio is calculated by dividing the amount of losses by the amount of earned premium. The expense ratio is calculated by dividing the amount of operational expenses by the amount of earned premium.
A combined ratio of less than 100% indicates underwriting profitability, while above 100 indicates an underwriting loss. A lower number indicates a better return on the amount of capital placed at risk by an insurer. “The combined ratio reflects the health of the general insurance business and captures the impact of claims ratio, expense ratio and commission ratio. ICICI Lombard’s combined ratio for fiscal 2007 was less than 100%,” Ritesh Kumar, head of retail, rural and reinsurance at ICICI Lombard.
“The board mandate fosters quality growth. Maintaining a healthy market share as well as the bottomline are key to ICICI Lombard’s growth strategy and for leveraging the opportunities thrown up by India’s robust economic expansion. Going forward, the industry will witness a re-pricing of risks in line with the risk profile of the category,” Mr Kumar said.
http://economictimes.indiatimes.com/Personal_Finance/Insurance/Analysis/Investments_help_insurers_offset_underwriting_losses/articleshow/2659860.cms
The Case for Insurance-Based Investments
The unfortunate thing, however, is that insurance-based investments have a lot of untapped potential. Tax laws favor them, and if you need life insurance anyway, attaching investments to a policy can have some real benefits. But just as it took discount brokers like Charles Schwab (Nasdaq: SCHW) and TD Ameritrade (Nasdaq: AMTD) to take advantage of deregulation in the financial industry and challenge the expensive commission structures of big-ticket brokers like Morgan Stanley (NYSE: MS) and Citigroup's (NYSE: C) Smith Barney, it will take a new generation of "discount" insurance companies to wrest control of the profitable insurance market away from the big players, such as Prudential (NYSE: PRU) and MetLife (NYSE: MET).
The perfect insurance investment
Insurance policies enjoy benefits that many standard investments lack. Earnings within a policy grow tax-deferred, and death benefits paid to beneficiaries aren't subject to income tax at all. Some states provide limited protection from creditors' claims for insurance policies, meaning that they can be used for asset protection strategies. In addition, the federal student aid form excludes the value of life insurance policies from your assets when determining financial aid eligibility.
With these benefits in mind, we can create the perfect insurance investment. It would have the following characteristics:
* Life insurance coverage at the same cost as equivalent term policies;
* Access to low-cost investment options across the full range of asset classes and subclasses, with depth of choices similar to those offered by mutual funds;
* Loan options that give policyholders access to their money at no cost, since it's the policyholder's own money that's being used for the loan;
* Minimal administrative fees and associated costs; and
* Cash values that rise in proportion to the premiums you put in, without holdbacks for sales commissions or surrender charges.
In theory, there's nothing difficult about creating a life insurance investment vehicle like this. In reality, though, nothing currently available comes close to this ideal.
Falling short
Unfortunately, you just can't find insurance-based investments at a reasonable cost. The closest you'll get is in the variable annuity realm, where traditional discounters like Vanguard and Fidelity have offerings that cost around 0.25% more than comparable mutual funds. That's well below the average charge for mortality and expenses of about 1.2%.
Variable life insurance carries even more costs. One variable policy I looked at carried monthly administrative charges of $35 and mortality and expense charges of 0.9% for the first 10 years the policy is in force, and it charged an extra 2% for policy loans during those first 10 years. Another firm, in its 412-page prospectus, reveals monthly fees of $30 and up, 1% extra for policy loans, and 0.45% in mortality and expense charges. And in neither case do those numbers include the expenses charged by the respective investment subaccounts, which in one case ranged from 0.37% to 1.29% more.
Wait for the new model
Just as brokerage firms had to adapt to new conditions in the financial services industry, so too will life insurance companies eventually have to offer more competitive products. Although a patchwork of state regulations makes it difficult for insurance companies to evolve quickly, once customers realize how much of their money goes toward unnecessary sales and support costs, the ensuing revolt will leave insurers no choice but to create more beneficial products.
Of course, there's no guarantee that existing insurance companies will be the innovators in this arena. After all, you can still pay big commissions at some brokerage houses, so there will always be a place for high-commission life insurance. Until permanent insurance comes with a reasonable price tag, however, most people will be better served by sticking with term.
http://www.fool.com/personal-finance/insurance/2007/12/28/the-case-for-insurance-based-investments.aspx
Friday, November 16, 2007
Trading For A Living - Part 2
In part 1 of this article I started to look at the financial implications of giving up the day job to instead start trading full time for a living. There are more than just monetary considerations as we will see later, but for now, there are some more costs to ponder.
More Costs!
Let’s move on to equipment. Presumably you already have a PC and internet connection by virtue of the fact you are reading this on the internet. But are these both up to the job of trading full time? Again the specifications for both hardware and ISP will depend largely on your trading style, but if you’re relying on a 100Mhz Pentium II and a dial up service, you’re setting yourself up for failure. So budget for quality equipment, budget to keep it up to spec, and budget for some repairs too – expect the unexpected.
Many traders make the mistake of saying “This will do me whilst I start out, and I’ll get something better when I make some real money”. This is quite simply false economy, you are unlikely to ever make real money with a substandard setup (and this applies equally to substandard software and data feeds). This is a cut-throat business and 95% fail, you must give yourself every advantage you can. You wouldn’t enter the Indy 500 in a go-kart with the intention of buying a better car when you’ve won a few races, and the same thing applies here.
Earnings
When you’ve added this all together, you have a pretty good picture of how much money you need to generate from your trading in order to live. Does your past performance suggest you will be able to meet this target? It’s tempting to say “When I go full time I’ll make much more”, but how do you know this is the case? Perhaps you can take a couple of weeks holiday and try it out – if you don’t make enough in that two weeks then you’re not ready. A few weeks really isn’t enough time to know if you’re going to succeed though. An ideal next step then is to cut your day job hours to part time and trade maybe two or three days a week. This way you know you have some money coming in, you get to trade for real, and if it all goes horribly wrong you are probably better placed to get back into full time employment than someone who quit the working world completely.
The option of part time work is a luxury many of us don’t have however. So does it have to be all or nothing – trade or work? Why not keep the day job and trade outside your working hours as well. If you are trading and end of day strategy, then this is easily achieved by doing your research in the evening and placing the appropriate combinations of Stop and Limit orders with your broker. For day traders, certainly practising is easier if your intended market is not your home market, for example if you want to trade the US and you live in the UK where you can come home and paper trade in the evening.
There are other try before you buy options open to the day traders who want to practise trading their home market outside of normal hours though. eSignal allows you to download tick data for any symbol and play it back in real time or speeded up so you could trade the whole day in an hour. Other vendors have similar offerings, and if you have an IB account you can use AutoTrader to record tick data during the day for playback into a demo version of SierraCharts or QuoteTracker for free.
The bottom line here is that before you take the plunge, you need to have done everything in your power to prepare yourself for what lies ahead. It will still be harder than you ever thought, but it will be nigh on impossible with no preparation whatsoever.
Other Considerations
There are a few non-financial aspects to consider before going full time with your trading. If you have a family, how will the change impact them? Do you have the space to work uninterrupted during the day? It’s important that the family don’t assume that because you are at home you are automatically available to take the kids to school, or walk the dog. Make sure from the start that everybody knows the ground rules and that you can separate your working time from your free time effectively.
Consider also the social impact of leaving your full time employer. Again, if you have a partner or family are you going to drive each other nuts being in the same house all day? Relationships can be tested to the limit! Or if you live alone, are you going to drive yourself nuts being on your own all day? Trading full time can give you enormous amounts of free time, but if you have nothing to fill that time with you can quickly lose the plot – I’ve seen it happen and it’s not pretty.
Is It Worth It?
Nobody can tell you if trading for a living is for you, it’s something you have to find out for yourself. I’ve seen traders go through highs and lows to challenge those of any stock chart, but for most it has proved to be a good move. The long list of benefits are all there for the taking, as with any change of career or indeed any major life change, as long as you go into it with your eyes open, and above all prepare, then there is no reason why it cannot work for you.
About The Author
Geoff Turnbull is a full time day trader, and a contributor to http://www.stock-trading-world.com
The Realities Of Market Timing
Market timing systems are based on patterns of activity in the past. Every system that you are likely to hear about works well when it is applied to historical data. If it didn’t work historically, you would never hear about it. But patterns change, and the future is always the great unknown.
A system developed for the market patterns of the 1970s, which included a major bear market that lasted two years, would have saved investors from a big decline. But that wasn’t what you needed in the 1980s, which were characterized by a long bull market. And a system developed to be ideal in the 1980s would not have done well if it was back-tested in the 1970s. So far in the 1990s, any defensive strategy at all has been more likely to hurt investors than help them.
If your emotional security depends on understanding what’s happening with your investments at any given time, market timing will be tough. The performance and direction of market timing will often defy your best efforts to understand them. And they’ll defy common sense. Without timing, the movements of the market may seem possible to understand. Every day, innumerable explanations of every blip are published and broadcast on television, radio, in magazines and newspapers and on the Internet. Economic and market trends often persist, and thus they seem at least slightly rational. But all that changes when you begin timing your investments.
Unless you developed your timing models yourself and you understand them intimately, or unless you are the one crunching the numbers every day, you won’t know how those systems actually work. You’ll be asking yourself to buy and sell on faith. And the cause of your short-term results may remain a mystery, because timing performance depends on how your models interact with the patterns of the market. Your results from year to year, quarter to quarter and month to month may seem random.
Most of us are in the habit of thinking that whatever has just happened will continue happening. But with market timing, that just isn’t so. Performance in the immediate future will not be influenced a bit by that of the immediate past. That means you will never know what to expect next. To put yourself through a *timing simulator* on this point, imagine you know all the monthly returns of a particular strategy over a 20-year period in which the strategy was successful.
Many of those monthly returns, of course, will be positive, and a significant number will represent losses. Now imagine that you write each return on a card, put all the cards in a hat and start drawing the cards at random. And imagine that you start with a pile of poker chips. Whenever you draw a positive return, you receive more chips. But when your return is negative, you have to give up some of your chips to *the bank* in this game. If the first half-dozen cards you draw are all positive, you’ll feel pretty confident. And you’ll expect the good times to continue. But if you suddenly draw a card representing a loss, your euphoria could vanish quickly.
And if the very first card you draw is a significant loss and you have to give up some of your chips, you’ll probably start wondering how much you really want to play this game. And even though your brain knows that the drawing is all random, if you draw two negative cards in a row and see your pile of chips disappearing, you may start to feel as if you’re on *a negative roll* and you may start to believe that the next quarter will be like the last one. Yet the next card you draw won’t be predictable at all. It’s easy to see all this when you’re just playing a game with poker chips. But it’s harder in real life.
For example, in the fourth quarter of 2002, our Nasdaq portfolio strategy, with an objective to outperform the Nasdaq 100 Index, produced a return of 5.9 percent, very satisfactory for a portfolio invested in technology funds only. But that was followed by a loss of 7.8 percent in the first quarter of 2003. Most investors in this strategy, at least those we know of, stuck with it. But they experienced significant anxiety at the loss and the shock of a sharp reversal in what they had thought was a positive trend. The same phenomenon happened, with more dramatic numbers, in our more aggressive strategies.
Some investors entered those portfolios in the winter of 2002, and then were shocked to experience big first-quarter losses so quickly after they had invested. Some, believing the losses were more likely to continue than to reverse, bailed out. Had they been willing to endure a little longer, they would have experienced double-digit gains during the remainder of 2003 that would have restored and exceeded all of their losses. But of course there was no way to know that in advance.
Most timers won’t tell you this, but all market timing systems are *optimized* to fit the past. That means they are based on data that is carefully selected to *work* at getting in and out of the market at the right times. Think of it through this analogy. Imagine we were trying to put together an enhanced version of the Standard & Poor’s 500 Index, based on the past 30 years. Based on hindsight, we could probably significantly improve the performance of the index with only a few simple changes.
For instance, we could conveniently *remove* the worst-performing industry of stocks from the index along with any companies that went bankrupt in the past 30 years. That would remove a good chunk of the *garbage* that dragged down performance in the past. And to add a dose of positive return, we could triple the weightings in the new index of a few selected stocks; say Microsoft, Intel and Dell. We’d get a new *index* that in the past would have produced significantly better returns than the real S&P 500. We might believe we have discovered something valuable. But it doesn’t take a rocket scientist to figure out that this strategy has little chance of producing superior performance over the next 30 years.
This simple example makes it easy to see how you can tinker with past data to produce a *system* that looks good on paper. This practice, called *data-mining,* involves using the benefit of hindsight to study historical data and extract bits and pieces of information that conveniently fit into some philosophy or some notion of reality. Academic researchers would be quick to tell you that any conclusions you draw from data-mining are invalid and unreliable guides to the future. But every market timing system is based on some form of data-mining, or to use another term, some level of *optimization.* The only way you can devise a timing model is to figure out what would have worked in some past period, then apply your findings to other periods.
Necessarily, every market timing model is based on optimization. The problem is that some systems, like the enhanced S&P 500 example, are over-optimized to the point that they toss out the *garbage of the past* in a way that is unlikely to be reliable in the future. For instance, we recently looked at a system that had a few *rules* for when to issue a buy signal, and then added a filter saying such a buy could be issued only during four specific months each year. That system looks wonderful on paper because it throws out the unproductive buys in the past from the other eight calendar months. There’s no ironclad rule for determining which systems are robust, or appropriately optimized, and which are over-optimized. But in general terms, look for simpler systems instead of more complex ones.
A simpler system is less likely than a very complex one to produce extraordinary hypothetical returns. But the simpler system is more likely to behave as you would expect.
To be a successful investor, you need a long-term perspective and the ability to ignore short-term movements as essentially *noise.* This may be relatively easy for buy-and-hold investors. But market timing will draw you into the process and require you to focus on the short term. You’ll not only have to track short-term movements, you’ll have to act on them. And then you’ll have to immediately ignore them. Sometimes that’s not easy, believe me. In real life, smart people often take a final *gut check* of their feelings before they make any major move. But when you’re following a mechanical strategy, you have to eliminate this common-sense step and simply take action. This can be tough to do.
You will have long periods when you will underperform the market or outperform it. You’ll need to widen your concept of normal, expected activity to include being in the market when it’s going down and out of the market when it’s going up. Sometimes you’ll earn less than money-market-fund rates. And if you use timing to take short positions, sometimes you will lose money when other people are making it. Can you accept that as part of the normal course of events in your investing life? If not, don’t invest in such a strategy.
Even a great timing system may give you bad results. This should be obvious, but market timing adds a layer of complication to investing, another opportunity to be right or wrong. Your timing model may make all the proper calls about the market, but if you apply that timing to a fund that does something other than the market, your results will be better or worse than what you might expect. This is a reason to use funds that correlate well you’re your system.
The bottom line for me is that timing is very challenging. I believe that for most investors, the best route to success is to have somebody else make the actual timing moves for you. You can have it done by a professional. Or you can have a colleague, friend or family member actually make the trades for you. That way your emotions won’t stop you from following the discipline. You’ll be able to go on vacation knowing your system will be followed. Most important, you’ll be one step removed from the emotional hurdles of getting in and out of the market.
About The Author
Robert van Delden has been managing the FundSpectrum Group since 1998, whose objective it is to help individual investors to increase their investment returns using low risk Market Timing strategies.. More details can be found on our membership web site: http://www.fundspectrum.com
Is Starting A Business For Me? What To Consider Before Starting A Business
Do you have the right temperament?
Starting a small business is one of the most serious decisions that a person can take in life. Positively, it often results in higher income levels than one could achieve as an employee together with the unique buzz of being your own boss but conversely it also can be stressful, will demand longer working hours and will probably reduce your ability to take long holidays.
Do you have a definite business idea?
The desire to be your own boss is not enough to succeed. Empirical evidence clearly shows that those who do best normally have previous work experience in their chosen business field or have conducted thorough research.
Research, Research, Research!
Before committing to setting up a new business carry out as much research as possible, perhaps contacting any representative and professional bodies for their input and advice. In addition, it is important to note local market conditions as, unless you have a unique selling point, it is very difficult to succeed where a local market is saturated with established competitors. In addition, it is always wise buy a few pertinent general business books as most will encapsulate the basics of creating a successful business - The formula being remarkably consistent from sector to sector.
Hope for the best but expect the worst!
By definition most entrepreneurs are positive but ironically such optimism can often be their worst enemy, so always leave a sufficient financial safety blanket.
Keep non-essential costs to a minimum.
Many new business people overspend on hardware, expensive computers, printing etc. If your business does not require people physically coming to a shop or office do not waste money on office rental or even employing a secretary. In many cases, a serviced or virtual office will create the right impression at a fraction of the cost of having your own office.
Get Expert Advice
Today many government bodies and banks offer free business start up advice. In general such advice may not be all encompassing and may have certain vested interests but by seeking such advice from a number of different suppliers you should end up with a fair understanding of how to develop your new business.
Consider a Franchise.
The risks of establishing your own business are considerably reduced by buying a well known and established franchise. In many cases, the franchisor can often help with finance, computer software and business methodology. The downside is that if you really are aiming for the heavens then becoming a franchisee is unlikely to result in untold riches!
About The Author
Austen Osborne
www.startingmybusiness.biz is dedicated to helping small businesses that are starting up or are looking to grow. They offer everything from company formation to accountancy, via business books and virtual offices.
Call now on 0845 1300 060 to get started.
Overbought/Oversold
Has your broker ever told you that a stock is “overbought” or “oversold”? He probably went on the explain that the stock you own (I hope you didn’t) had gone down so far that it now was oversold and due for a rally. He might also have encouraged you to buy an equal amount to “dollar cost average” your position so that when (“if”- he didn’t say that, I did)) it did go back up you could “get out even”. He might even say you “could make a fortune”.
Waiting to get out even is the great trap that is preached by all the big Maul Street brokerage houses. What is even worse is most brokers and financial planners believe it. What happened to all those beautiful company reports sent to you telling how wonderful this stock was before you bought it. Maybe you better read those back to him. Brokerage companies do not want you to sell.
When any stock is going either up or down for any extended period of time it does seem logical that it can become overbought or oversold, but let’s examine what that means to your ownership.
The reason a stock started up is because the underlying profit projection is going to produce substantial profits that will make the stock more valuable. At some point it is going to reach a true valuation and should stop advancing. What usually happens is it goes beyond true valuation to what could be called overbought (over valued) and then starts down. You may be encouraged to buy when a particular stock becomes “hot” and everyone is buying it. When all the sheep are buying you want to be a seller or you will also be sheared.
Suppose all this was in anticipation of future profits that did not materialize? Then the rise would turn over and head down. This would be more likely for a smaller company than one of the giants, but giants have been toppled. If any fraud was involved the company might even go bankrupt.
Think back to WorldCom that went to the moon and was finally flushed down the sewer. Did it EVER while it was tanking become oversold for a rally? Not hardly because there was no value. Unless you truly understand how to trade overbought and oversold situations the best thing to do is keep your hands in your pockets.
Beauty is in the eye of the beholder. Overbought and oversold is in the mind of the buyer/seller.
About The Author
Copyright 2004 All rights reserved.
Albert W. Thomas Former 17 year exchange member, floor trader and brokerage company owner. F*R*E*E investment letter www.mutualfundmagic.com. Author of best seller "IF IT DOESN'T GO UP, DON'T BUY IT!"