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| Shoreline Wealth & Investment Management |
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Newsletter
February 2004 |
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Consumer confidence hit the highest level in 18 months. I'm always curious about how consumers can be so confident when 2003 saw record bankruptcies, record mortgage foreclosures and record credit card delinquencies. The optimism of the American public is a wonderful thing. The stock market has continued its resurgence since the lows in 2003 but prices are no longer at bargain basement levels. The P/E ratio (price relative to actual earnings) for the S&P 500 is at 24 while the forward P/E ratio (price relative to expected earnings) is at 19. The P/E ratio for the NASDAQ is at 54 while the forward P/E ratio is at 35.This seems a bit rich since the consensus earnings increase expectation for 2004 is only 10%. Diversification seems to be the watch word for investors. This means selecting stocks from a variety of industries as well as those from both U.S. and international companies. It also means including some bonds (the shorter-term, higher-rated, inflation-protected variety) in your portfolio.
Residential real estate sales hit record levels in 2003 reaching sales of over 6.1 million homes. Commercial real estate, on the other hand, has been singing the blues. While prices have been rising, vacancy rates for commercial real estate in the San Francisco Bay Area are over 20%. In Boston, the vacancy rates are almost 25% while rental rates have fallen 40% in the past 3 years. Rising prices, increasing vacancy rates and decreasing rental income seem like the good old days of internet math. In other words, buyer beware.
CELEBRATING 24 YEARS
Since 1980, I have been providing financial advice to investors and I'm proud to say that our service and performance (see "Bottom Line" section on the right) continue to be superior to the market and our peers. Thanks for your support.
| Selecting an Advisor |
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 Warren Buffet, the most successful investor of the 20th century learned his craft from Benjamin Graham, author of several books including the legendary "Intelligent Investor." This has been recently updated by Jason Zweig who includes 16 key questions to ask your advisor and 11 an advisor might ask...
Read on... » |
| Understanding 529 College Savings Plans |
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 Learn the basics about these state-sponsored plans and how they can help finance increasing college tuitions ...
Full Story » |
| Wills: Disinheriting Uncle Sam |
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 Writing or bringing up to date a will is the first (and least expensive) way to protect your assets in the event of death. More sophisticated strategies (trusts ...) can also be useful.
Full Story » |
| Looking for a Speaker for Your Event? |
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 Shoreline Wealth & Investment Management has given presentations to Fortune 500 companies as well as many local groups and organizations. If you are looking for a professional presentation on topics ranging from investments to estate taxes to business or tax law, please contact us
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| The Bottom Line |
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| This is where we provide the performance of our conservative, moderate and aggressive portfolios and compare these to the S&P 500 and NASDAQ Indexes. While they are an important consideration, performance is only a portion of the evaluation investors should consider when evaluating investment management. Other considerations include the risk taken to generate the returns, the quality of the service, the reasonableness of the fees and, more important now than ever, the integrity of the investment manager.
Find out more.... |
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email: cbloom@cfiemail.com
voice: 805.886.3624
web: http://www.swimllc.com/
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