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| Shoreline Wealth & Investment Management |
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Newsletter
January 2005 |
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The Stock & Bond Markets - and the Record Low Dollar
The first 5 days of 2005 are the worst first 5 days since 1991. What that portends I can't say but I wouldn't call it encouraging. I would normally use a January newsletter to offer my outlook for the year. However, a better writer (Pulitzer Prize winner Thomas Friedman from the New York Times) wrote an editorial on December 26th which has more far reaching implications than one more market projection so, in case you missed it, I've excerpted some of it below for your consideration.
" We face two gigantic national challenges today: One is the challenge to protect America in the wake of the new terrorist threats, which has involved us in three huge military commitments - Afghanistan, Iraq and missile defense. And the other is the challenge to strengthen American competitiveness in the wake of an expanding global economy, where more and more good jobs require higher levels of education, and those good jobs will increasingly migrate to those countries with the brainpower to do them. Asian countries once again surpassed U.S. 4th & 8th graders in math and science, U.S. 15-year olds scored below other countries in both math and real-life tasks and the U.S. just cut Pell Grant benefits for 1.3 million poor and working class students.
" In the face of these two national challenges, we [remain] committed to radical tax cuts, which, one can already see, are starting to affect everything from the number of troops we can deploy in Iraq to the number of students we can properly educate at our universities.
" And if we stay on this course, the trade-offs are only going to get worse. Something has to give. We can't protect America with the [current strategy] and strengthen our students with the skills they need and cut taxes, as if we didn't have a care in the world."
Real Estate Bubble Burst - Part 5
Sales of new homes droped 12% nationwide between November and October 2004. In percentage terms, this is the biggest drop since 1994. This isn't necessarily the beginning of the end but it should be a wake up call to investors and speculators in the most overpriced areas (a recent publication listed 12 of the 15 most overvalued communities as being in California).
| 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... » |
| European Hits the BIG Time |
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 With a bigger economy ($11 trillion) and a larger population (455 million), a newly united Europe will provide more meaningful competition than the U.S. has had to contend with in years ...
Full Story » |
| Wills: Disinheriting Uncle Sam - Part 10 |
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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.
Learn More » |
| 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
Click here for more details » | |
| 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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