If "DIVERSIFY" had seven letters instead of nine, I would ask Pudge to write a little ditty to the tune of that Aretha Franklin song.
I find it astounding that someone of apparently above-average intelligence and education lost 30 years of retirement savings by investing in Madoff. The part that's astounding is not that she invested with Madoff but that she invested her entire 30 years of retirement savings with Madoff, and this after she lost a quarter of her funds to a crooked financial advisor a decade ago. It's also hard to believe that her accountant encouraged her to put all of her money in one place - but even if true, why did she take this bad advice? Even those with the most basic financial literacy should be aware of the need to diversify (and that writer admits to being well aware of the rule). Another basic rule is that risk is inversely proportionate to return -- in other words, a "safe" fund would not be one that had consistently high returns. The "safe" fund is the FDIC-insured account earning you a measly 1/2 of one percent interest annually.
I admit that I have the benefit of being married to someone who's read dozens of books and articles on finance and investing. When people ask, he tells them that all the knowledge, data and experience of the authors boils down to this: "buy and hold a diversified portfolio, and minimize your costs and taxes". If you can't wrap your head around that, just remember the age-old axiom: Never put all your eggs in one basket!
Posted by Mrs. Shark at January 07, 2009 10:15 PM | Email ThisWhat I resent is how people will not accept responsibility for NOT diversifying. It's always somebody else's fault that they lost money but putting all their eggs in one basket.
If you make a bad investment choice, realize the mistake, admit it and move on.
Posted by: Politically Incorrect on January 8, 2009 03:56 AMAnd then WROTE AN ARTICLE to TELL THE WORLD the extent of her IDIOCY.
For what? The *money* she got paid by Salon, to write an article...?!
Posted by: Cryptometaphor on January 8, 2009 05:57 AMNEVER say never! :) ...but I agree, our's are with Mass Mutual and Janus.
Posted by: Duffman on January 8, 2009 09:26 AMWith the current major low in the market, if you have any money in "traditional" IRA's (that are in stock funds), now is a GREAT time to convert them to Roth IRA's, if you qualify. Why? You will need to pay taxes on the money that comes out of the traditional IRA, but any future growth in the Roth will be tax-free. Since the market has dropped about 40% over the last 1+ years, your tax bill on the conversion will be 40% less than it would have been in late 2007 (assuming you were invested in stock funds).
Posted by: Bill H on January 8, 2009 10:08 AMThere is a BIG difference between being in Mutual Funds versus what Madoff was doing. Mutual Funds are completely transparent and regularly audited by well known national auditors. Madoff was neither transparent--no one knew how he was getting the returns he was supposedly getting and those who looked into it thought he could not get the returns he showed by doing what he was supposedly doing--nor was he regularly audited by well-known national auditors...
Posted by: Bill H on January 8, 2009 10:16 AMMassMutual, Fairfield in Madoff suits
Posted by: Bill H on January 8, 2009 10:26 AMAs far as the "investors," - they were warned. I can cite chapter and verse wherein serious questions regarding Madoff were raised in both the IBD and the WSJ.
Greed simply fed the monster that raised it's ugly head and bit those who were not taking heed of the warnings. That is all.
Posted by: JDH on January 8, 2009 11:58 AMJanuary 5, 2009
Dozens of public interest legal organizations have been hit financially by the collapse of Bernie Madoff's alleged $50 billion Ponzi scheme and are scrambling to make up the shortfalls.
Organizations from the Center for Constitutional Rights to the Harvard Law School International Human Rights Clinic to the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) found out before Christmas that they will have their budgets slashed by up to one-third, due to the fallout from the Madoff case.
The JEHT Foundation, which gave away $24 million last year, mostly to criminal justice advocacy and reform organizations, announced on Dec. 15 that it would be closing its doors in early 2009.....
Posted by: JDH on January 8, 2009 12:20 PMI agree it is a silver lining--at least until the Dems in Congress decide that these "charities" need to be bailed out!
Posted by: Bill H on January 8, 2009 12:39 PMThe big key to anybody wanting to invest with Madoff should have been his claimed R.O.I. If he's the only "reputable" guy offering consistent 9 to 12 percent returns, year after year, something is seriously goofy somewhere. I heard of more than a few fund managers who looked at Madoff's claims and "ran the other way." They were smart, they knew.
What I have come to find out over the years is that the greedy are the ones who make scams work. Rich, poor, white collar or blue or brown, if they are greedy they will be taken advantage of by somebody.
Posted by: G Jiggy on January 8, 2009 12:46 PMOff topic, but Mr Shark's Sound Events -- Community Calendar section of the website is broken
Posted by: KCGOP on January 8, 2009 01:30 PMIt's also wise for "dumb" money to reduce its exposure to stocks as it ages.
Posted by: Luigi Giovanni on January 8, 2009 01:31 PMDOW down 50 percent
NASDAQ down 50 percent
Real Estate down 50 percent.
Look, I know Madoff's a crook, but he's just the tip of the iceberg. His 50 billion rip pales in comparison to the 100s of billions that the "legitimate" financial markets took down. Some local stocks, based on people who are treated like Gods around here, are 1/3rd the value they were 8 YEARS AGO!!
Before you go around poo-poo'ing people, take a look at your 401k and tell me if you like what you see. Yeah...I thought so.
"Stocks" can be broken down into Foreign or Global and U.S. Stocks. You can also break down between Large Cap, Mid-Cap and Small Cap Stocks and between Growth and Value Stocks. "Cap" stands for Capitalization and just refers to the size of the companies being invested in.
Bonds should be another component and can be split between Short-Term, Intermediate Term and Long Term, as well as by quality--Treasuries (a terrible place to be right now if you actually want to earn any interest--people think of treasuries as having no risk, but I would say long-term treasuries are very risky right now since interest rates are so low--if interest rates go up the value of the treasury bonds will drop precipitously), Investment Grade Bonds and Below Investment Grade (BIG) Bonds (also called High Yield or Junk Bonds).
There is also Gold, Natural Resources and other inflation hedges.
The key is to be comfortable with the overall risk you have in your portfolio. The worst thing you can do is be invested with more risk than you are comfortable with and then sell it all off when there is a large downturn in the market--down that road is "Buy high and sell low" rather than "Buy low and sell high". Find an allocation that you are comfortable with and then stick with it, rebalancing to that allocation regularly.
As I said in post #10, dollar cost averaging on the way in will force you to buy low. Rebalancing regularly to your comfortable allocation percentages will force you to buy low AND sell high.
Posted by: Bill H on January 8, 2009 05:13 PMTruth Teller at #10 - see Bill H's comment at #25 about true diversification. You should have stocks, bonds, real estate (at least in the form of equity in your home) and cash in an FDIC-insured account. If you think putting all of your retirement into one fund constitutes diversification, I have a bridge I'd like to sell you. But I agree with you that it would be wise not to have all of your financial investments with any single investment manager.
John Bailo at #24 - yes, my 401K has shrunk substantially this year but it hasn't disappeared. The S&P 500 was at 1447 on January 2, 2008 and closed at 909 today, a decline of 37%. Let's assume Ms. Roth had a total of $1 million in retirement savings at the beginning of January 2008. If she'd invested it in an S&P index fund, her account would be worth approximately $630,000. Instead she thought she could beat the system by investing with Madoff and has nothing. So I may not be happy about the state of the financial markets but that doesn't mean that Ms. Roth is not, at the very least, extremely foolish. At worst, it was maybe greed and hubris that made her think she could beat the odds and get a better return than everyone else.
Posted by: Mrs. Shark on January 8, 2009 10:28 PMAs for people being hoodwinked by Madoff, I think human beings are prone to making "mistakes of trust" in experts. Ex: Long-Term Capital Management, the All Protein Diet, etc. One's own intelligence is not a guarnatee of avoiding being hoodwinked... in fact, its probably the opposite. Newton and the Bronte sisters lost a fortune in the South Sea Bubble. A number of smart individuals lost money in the dot.com bubble.
As for 2008, its all a matter of perspective... if you view your investments as purchases and the gradual accumulation of income paying assets (shares/bonds/etc), then its a good year for bargain hunting... if you view it as a time to sell, then yes its been terrible.
Posted by: Greg A on January 8, 2009 10:54 PM5--dead on--even before the internet, govt & libraries teemed with free investing info--a simple matter of getting off your fanny & doing your homework & not being too greedy--or at least knowing the risk-reward mantra.
much of this was self-inflicted; they probably checked out their mechanic, remodeling contractors or painters more than Madoff & his background;caveat emptor;
The US Government.
Those gains - that many annually cashed out a significant portion of - were taxable in 99% of the cases, meaning the US Government got their cut. Of the $50 billion, the US Government most likely got at least $7.5 billion of it, in the form of taxes.
I wonder if the Government will give back the taxes to those who invested, since they were ill-gotten gains (like proceeds from sale of stolen property)?
Posted by: Shanghai Dan on January 9, 2009 06:48 AMYou can buy just about anything and stick it in an IRA. Gold, some bond funds and energy/commodity funds have done pretty well for us the past few years. We've got about 5% in each, a bit more total in bonds. Makes up for some of the stock losses.
Posted by: Palouse on January 9, 2009 01:26 PMRemember when Enron went down and the employees had all their life savings in the company and we said, "oh poor little investors, they didn't know better." Well, neither do some of the big investors.
In this way, the best funds would preserve cash and move out of stocks when the market starts to slide.
The point of giving up money to these "managers" is that they would do that for you -- but Government regulation prevents them from making those moves.
Secondly, taxpayers can only deduce a small portion of their stock losses. That is ridiculous. We should be able to deduct 100 percent of stock and capital losses from income, in the same way we have to report 100 percent of gains.
Let's all play by the same rules that Wall Street does...