Financial Options

With no economic indicators out today, it's a good opportunity to do a little reading from the Carnival of Investing and Carnival of the Capitalists.

Steve Selengut at GuruFocus brings us Ten Common Investment Errors: Stocks, Bonds and Management. Number 10 is especially important (emphasis added):

10. The «cheaper is better» mentality weakens decision making capabilities and leads investors to dangerous assumptions and short cuts that only appear to be effective. Do discount brokers seek «best execution»? Can new issue preferred stocks be purchased without cost? Is a no load fund a freebie? Is a WRAP Account individually managed? When cheap is an investor's primary concern, what he gets will generally be worth the price.

Journey to Financial Freedom has Real Estate - 5 Risks in Real Estate Investment, from vacancies to tax policy changes.

The Dividend Blog pushes dividend paying stocks as The Way to Beat the Market Consistently.

Seeking Alpha is tracking the Japanese stock market and comments with Japanese Stocks Nose Dive, Japan ADRs & ETFs Next? (EWJ, ITF, VPL)

Daily Dose of Optimism takes a less than optimistic look at commodities prices. «The consensus does tend to be wrong at the turning points, being invariably bullish at the top and bearish at the bottom.»

Insure Blog brings us Because Things Happen the story of Rachel Williams, a 24 year old woman who was fortunate to have insurance she'd been advised against when she got breast cancer. Williams lived in a country with «universal» health care and was waitlisted for removal of the lump because she was at «low risk» of breast cancer. Fortunately she had private insurance.

Aridni suggests that we Learn to make money by emulating people who make money. Guess I should start by moving to Omaha or Redmond.

Financial Reference writes about The Role of Financial Advisors and doesn't really have much use for them.