Useful Tips On Avoiding Credit and Charge Card FraudWritten by John Mussi
Credit and charge card fraud costs cardholders and issuers hundreds of millions of dollars each year. While theft is most obvious form of fraud, it can occur in other ways. For example, someone may use your card number without your knowledge. It's not always possible to prevent credit or charge card fraud from happening. But there are a few steps you can take to make it more difficult for a crook to capture your card or card numbers and minimize possibility. Do: Sign your cards as soon as they arrive. Carry your cards separately from your wallet, in a zippered compartment, a business card holder, or another small pouch. Keep a record of your account numbers, their expiration dates, and phone number and address of each company in a secure place. Keep an eye on your card during transaction, and get it back as quickly as possible. Void incorrect receipts. Destroy carbons. Save receipts to compare with billing statements.
| | Risk and Reward InvestingWritten by John McKeon
If you are doing your own investing in stock market, what would be first question you would ask yourself before you make any trade or investment? If your answer is how fundamentally sound stock is, or whether stock just broke out of a trading range on a chart, or fact that stock has gone down 50% in last 6 months, or whether volatility is low now so it is a good time to buy or sell, then you are probably on road to ruin. These strategies have nothing in common with each other and there are all kinds of different criteria that I did not mention that have nothing in common with each other. However no matter what type of strategy you use to make your investment decisions, there is only one crucial question that must be asked before you pull trigger and make trade. That is, what is my risk and what is my reward on this trade. Even if you are going to buy a stock and hold it for a long time, you still have to be aware of your risk and your reward. Why? Because entire stock market may be here for rest of your life, any one stock might not be. You think, that is okay I diversified a lot so I don’t need to know risk and reward. Wrong. Diversification is great, but you should still be aware of risk and reward because even indexes of entire market have a risk and a reward, depending on length of time invested. Point of entrance, exit, stops, and diversification, are all important things, but they by themselves are not risk and reward. You have to ask yourself how much am I risking, and what my potential reward is. "How much" are important words. Okay how do I do that? Well first you must define your investment strategy. If you want to buy and hold what exactly does that mean. Hold for 5 years, 10 years, or forever? What is forever? If you are 20 years old forever is different than if you are 55. Also if you are buy and holding, is forever when you stop investing or is it when you start withdrawing money? These are important questions that must be answered specifically. You might say it doesn’t matter because I will be diversified with index funds for next 15 years. Okay let me ask these questions. Are you 100% invested at all times? Do you know maximum drawdown (the largest loss from index high and low in any 15 year period) for index you invested in? Are you able to financially withstand that kind of drawdown? Alright, I know these are a lot of questions and all you want to do is invest in an index mutual fund for next 15 years and forget about it. Well I am going to say right now that if you think you are taking very little risk on 15 years you are wrong. If you bought S&P 500 in a 100% position in 1965 and needed money in 1980 you would have made no return on investment and had a 40% drawdown from 1969 to 1975. If you look at period of 1930 to 1955, a 25 year period it is even worse. I know it’s great depression and things are different today. Don’t assume anything. I am not saying that you should not invest. I am just saying that there is a risk and a reward. Every time you trade whether it is once a week or once every 15 years, that trade has a chance of winning and a chance of losing. Also, when you buy a managed mutual fund for 15 years you are not buying and holding. You are buying and selling but you are paying a professional to do it for you. He or she will have draw downs in fund and hopefully he or she will be looking at risk and reward for you. Even an index fund held for 15 years is not truly buy and hold because indexes change on a yearly basis. Some stocks come in index and some stocks go out of index. The longer time span, say 40-55 years, bigger risk but bigger reward. Also longer time span, longer you can withstand a large drawdown if it comes.
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