Technically speaking, the Ides of March is nothing more than a date on the Roman calendar. March 15th, to be exact. But it has sinister implications because it just so happens that the Roman emperor, Julius Caesar, was stabbed to death on March 15th 44 BC by the very senators who were supposed to serve him. It was in his play, Julius Caesar, that William Shakespeare wrote “beware the Ides of March.”

The Death of Caesar

So, what does any of this have to do with investing and the stock market?

I’m glad you asked.

Minyanville has an article that asks if March 2010 is going to be October 1987 all over again. For those of you who weren’t investing in 1987, let me share why this is a watershed moment in recent stock market history:

Monday, October 19, 1987 is known as “Black Monday” because it was the largest single-day crash in the post-Depression era.

So, according to the Minyanville article, hedge fund managers see a crash coming….

Jon Markman of Markman Capital Insight has been talking to a lot of fund managers, and they see a lot of similarities in the way the market (S&P 500) is behaving these days and how it behaved in the run up to the ‘87 crash.

“Now these managers think the next set of steps would be a sharp decline on Thursday or Friday, a series of 0.5% to 1% single-day declines next week, followed by a plunge, let’s say, next Friday and a crash around March 15,” Markman writes.

They have a scary looking chart to go along with this speculation.

But the managers that Markman has spoken with see many fundamental and economic similarities between then and now, so it’s more than just an eerie chart they say.

Here’s a list of those similarities:

• legislation that could cause investors to dramatically lower their estimates of stock values

• a lack of liquidity

• a sense of overvaluation after a steady recent advance

• revelations of a massive budget deficit

• expectations of a sharp fall in the value of the dollar and an expectation of higher interest rates

They also interviewed Mike O’Rourke, chief market strategist at BTIG, and he sees things differently.

“He doesn’t see any indications that this stock market is ready to take such an awesome tumble.

“I see the market as in a recovery rally,” the strategist tells us. “Liquidity has slowed down and dried up, but that’s because we had a nice rally and now we’re consolidating and building a base.”

Who’s to say who is right? Even Markman admits “There isn’t enough data.”

Time will tell who’s view is the correct one, but it’s never a bad idea to nudge your stop losses up a little to act as a safety net.

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Famed investor and best-selling author Jim Rogers was interviewed by Yahoo!’s Tech Ticker back in October 2009, and he’s still bullish on commodities, but not so much on gold.

Here’s the 30-second takeaway from the video:

• Individual investors should focus on commodity ETFs, unless they have a deep understanding and interest in commodities futures trading.

• Forget gold, and invest in other material instead like lead, zinc, copper and silver.

• Agriculture is the next big crisis, with the Food and Agriculture Organization warning countries that the world is one disaster away from a major food shortage in much of the world.

“I think I’ll make money in other commodities that are more useful.”

Rogers owns gold, but he not very bullish on it. I think his argument against gold is a good one. He basically thinks that it has some intrinsic value, but only from a subjective point of view. It simply isn’t as practical a metal as lead, zinc or silver. And because gold “is mystical to many people”, it’s garnered the lions share of attention, but that also means there’s less upside potential than there is in more over looked, less attractive metals.

“most agricultural products are still depressed on a historic basis.”

Speaking of useful commodities, Rogers is quite bullish on agricultural commodities. Rogers sees a vast lack of supply, and calls it a looming catastrophe. He thinks that the world is in for a period ahead when some parts of the globe won’t be able to get food at any price.

“The story is not over, not for a while. I don’t see any reason it’s going to be over for a few years because no one is bringing new supply on stream.”

Is Jim Rogers right?

Who knows? But he was right when he called a global commodities rally in 1999. And he presents sensible arguments to support his views on various commodities, which is more than I can say for many of the gold pushers that have been crawling out of the woodwork in the past 3-5 years.

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Q. How much does it cost to own a mutual fund?

A. More than you think.

Most investors know about a fund’s expense ratio, and use that attribute for comparing various funds before buying. But there are a host of hidden costs that are much more difficult to uncover for many mutual funds.

That’s what this article from the Wall Street Journal is about.

These hidden costs are related to the buying and selling of the individual securities held by the mutual fund, and they can make a fund 2-3 times more costly than the expense ratio alone would imply. That can be a pretty significant amount on a fund with an expense ration in the 1-2%.

While the expense ratio is an important consideration when pricing a fund, it simple doesn’t capture all the costs. The reason is that every mutual fund and its associated expenses is different. Then there’s the complex nature of the costs not covered by the expense ratio, specifically: brokerage commissions, bid-ask spreads, opportunity costs and market-impact costs.

And since the SEC has yet to mandate any unified form of measurement, the individual is left to try and scrutinize the often inscrutable. Even most experts arrive at drastically different estimates of the true cost of mutual funds.

So how do you find the true cost of mutual funds?

While it is difficult to get at the information required to determine the exact cost of a mutual fund, it turns out that the fund’s Annual Holdings Turnover ratio is a pretty good clue. While it is an imperfect measure, it is a standard measure. So, every fund must report this data the same way.

A fund’s annual turnover ratio is the percentage of assets that were replaced over the past year. So if the fund’s manager sold half its stocks and replaced them with an equal value in new stocks would have turnover of 50%. This is an imperfect measure though because in some cases, a fund can take in a lot of new money and not have to sell any assets to buy new ones. In such a case, the fund would incur additional buying costs that would not be accounted for in the expense

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Enterprise Products Partners L.P. (EPD) provides services to producers and consumers of natural gas, natural gas liquids, crude oil, and petrochemicals. It’s clients are in the continental United States, Canada, and Gulf of Mexico. EPD also develops pipeline and other energy infrastructure, and it’s got a high yield and has been diversifying through acquisitions, which makes it worth looking into if you’re looking for income and growth.

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Enterprise Products Partners L.P. (EPD) Dividend History.

Here’s a look at EPD’s dividend history over the past five years:

Even though the price has risen about 15.5% over the past 6 months, it still sports an attractive 6.90% yield and has a lot of upside potential if energy demand soars again like it did in the early part of 2008. After the fall in energy prices, Enterprise Products Partners saw its share price slashed with other oil and gas stocks even though it has a fairly limited exposure to commodity price changes of the underlying energy source. It is mostly an energy product transporter and facilitator, which means its costs are relatively fixed as compared with those of energy explorers.

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Annaly Capital Management, Inc. (NLY)

Annaly Capital Management is a mortgage REIT (real estate investment trust), and as such the company is not subject to federal corporate income tax, provided it distributes at least 90% of its taxable income to its stockholders in the form of dividends. NOTE: The income generated by a REIT may be taxable at your income tax rate, and not at the capital gains rate. So check with your tax advisor if this is a point of concern.

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What makes NLY attractive.

One of the things that makes Annaly Capital attractive is its low debt level compared to other REITs and owners of Mortgage Backed Securities (MBS). For example, Commercial banks are typically leveraged 30:1; thrifts – 25:1; hedge funds – 20-30:1; and Annaly – 8-12:1, or less than half that of a typical thrift.

Another thing is that the MBS that Annaly Capital invests in are backed by agencies of the U.S. government like Ginnie Mae, Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. While these agencies are essentially bankrupt, the government is not likely to let them fail so they have a de-facto credit rating of AAA.

NLY dividend history.

NLY has increased its dividend from about $2.20 per share in 2008 to $2.4 in 2009, while the yield has declined from 16.6% to 13.4% as the price has risen. At the time of this post, NLY was yielding 16.80%, or $3 per share annually.

How safe is NLY dividend?

At first glance, there’s a lot of scary stuff to be seen in the summary of Annaly. After all, it was imploding Mortgage Backed Securities that began the current recession and market crash of 2008-2009. And Annaly is using leverage to purchase these securities, leverage which magnifies gains AND losses alike.

But upon further inspection, the credit risk for Annaly seems low because the MBS that it invests in are backed by the U.S. government and, as mentioned above, their leverage rate is lower than the industry average.

What can affect its performance (and dividend) is a major swing in interest rates. This is largely because of its use of leverage, or borrowing, to magnify its returns. But if management can keep ahead of rate trends it can limit the squeeze that variable interest rate MBS put on Annaly’s profits.

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Stock market analyst Robert Prechter is seeing what he calls “the Biggest Bubble in History”, and that’s not a good thing for investors.

According to The Wall Street Journal, Prechter told the Society of Technical Analysts in London that we are in the midst of a “grand, super-cycle top” and that all the signs are pointing toward a big market correction.

He’s got some street cred, given that he called the recent rally back in February of 2009. In fact, he said it would be “sharp and scary” for anyone shorting the market at that time.

According to Prechter, the most recent recovery gave all the text book signs and now he seeing text book signs again, but they foretell a big correction on the horizon. He points to the near record low levels of cash at mutual funds. He sees those levels approaching levels seen near major tops in 1973, 2000 and 2007.

As for the “Biggest Bubble in History”, he says that’s debt. Specifically, Corporate debt, municipal debt, mortgages and consumer loans which he speculates will get hammered by the deflationary period that began with 2005’s turnaround in home prices.

Time will tell if he’s right, but it may be time to put your stops in place and watch this video to see Prechter in his own words.

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When the calendar passed from December to January, we bid a not so fond adieu to 2009 as well as the rollover income limitation associated with transitioning a traditional IRA to a Roth IRA. This is a good thing if  converting to a Roth IRA makes sense for you.

The Roth IRA is one of the best retirement and estate planning tools available, and with the recent change in restrictions and tax payment scheduling, 2010 is the year of the Roth. Quite simply, if the Roth makes sense for you then 2010 is likely the year to make it happen.

Here are 8 ways not to screw it up.

1. Just Do it.

As many experts look at the mounting federal deficits and growing number of states in danger of bankrupting themselves, they see no choice but for taxes to skyrocket. Maybe, and maybe not. I’m not going to get on a political riff on the subject of reckless spending and taxes. I just want you to be aware that the chances are slim that tax rates will stay at their current rates, which are historically low.

So, the question for long term investors is not whether to fund a Roth, but how to fund a Roth IRA. Regarding a rollover from a traditional IRA, your choices are essentially:

1. Convert your IRA all at once.
2. Convert your IRA in stages, or segments.

Either way, if you don’t at least start to convert now, and you wait to do it later it may cost you dearly in terms of taxes. If you’ve decided that a Roth isn’t for you, then… why are you reading this article? Besides, since January 2010, all income limitations have been removed.

2. Understand the tax consequences.

Deciding to wait and do a conversion after taxes rise is a costly mistake, but so is jumping into a conversion without understanding the full tax implications.

For example, if you’re in a 15% income tax bracket today and you rollover a $250,000 IRA you will not pay 15% in taxes. You will end up paying quite a bit more because that $250,000 distribution can be counted as income, according to Barry Picker (who recently served as the technical editor of “100+ Roth IRA Examples and Flowcharts,” by Robert Keebler) and that will most likely bump you into a higher income tax bracket.

3. Know the direction of your tax bracket.

If you are the sole breadwinner today, but your spouse is likely to re-enter the workforce in a year or two, then you’re better off converted at today’s lower tax rate. On the other hand, if your spouse is considering staying at home with the baby that’s due in a few months, you’re better off waiting until she leaves the workforce and your combined income drops. Likewise if you file solo, but you’re thinking of tacking a pay cut to switch careers. Time your conversion when your tax rate is likely to be on the low side.

4. Don’t pay taxes with money from your transaction.

Paying the taxes with money you have withheld from the rollover transaction is a bad idea for a number of reasons, including:

Every penny you take out of the transaction is less that goes to work for you in the Roth.

The amount withheld goes to the IRS as an advance payment, and also reduces the total conversion amount. Hence, the amount withheld is considered a distribution and not part of the conversion and can impart further tax liabilities. For example, if you have a $100,000 IRA that you convert to a Roth IRA and withhold $20,000 (20%) for taxes, then the $20,000 is treated as a distribution and may be taxable in itself.

If you need to reverse the conversion (called a re-characterization – more on that below), then you can only reverse the amount actually converted. In the example above, you could reverse the $80,000 conversion, but you’d be out that $20,000 permanently – and you would still owe taxes on the $20,000.

The amount withheld for taxes is also subject to the 10% early distribution penalty, unless you are 59 1/2 when the conversion occurred.

5. Be a good judge of re-characterization.

If not converting is a mistake, not paying attention to your Roth after you’ve converted is a huge mistake. Here’s why – and incidentally, here’s one of the greatest aspects of the Roth IRA conversion. It’s called “re-characterization” and here’s how it works.

Re-characterization allows you to undo a conversion if the market value falls below your conversion amount. It’s the mulligan of the Roth world. Here’s an example:

You have $100,000 in your traditional IRA when you convert it to a Roth IRA. After a while, the your Roth is worth only $50,000. If you left your Roth alone, you’d owe taxes on the full amount at the time of conversion – $100,000. But, if you re-characterize your Roth (i.e. undo the conversion, you get your $100,000 back in a traditional IRA and you would owe taxes on the $50,000 re-characterization amount.

Of course, you have to do it before the next tax filing deadline after your initial conversion and if there are fees involved, you might want to makes sure you’ve lost enough value to make it worth your trouble.

6. Divide and conquer.

Besides the income limitations being dropped, you also get an extension on when you have to pay the taxes if you convert in 2010. For this one year only, you can spread your payment of the taxes you owe on the amount converted over the 2011 and 2012 tax periods; meaning you don’t have to actually pay them until 2012 and 2013!

7. Catch the early bird special.

If you convert early in 2010 and the market resumes its bull run, as some analysts think may happen, then you would have more time to catch those tax-free gains, while splitting the payment of the taxes owed over two year’s.

8. Hedge your bets.

You can split your conversions up into multiple conversions, by asset class for example. That way if your stocks perform well, but your bonds tank, you can re-characterize your bond conversion back into a traditional IRA and lessen the tax hit. In fact, many experts recommend slicing your IRA up into as many Roth IRA accounts as possible to gain maximum control over your taxes. This is probably only beneficial for very large accounts however.

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ING is offering commission-free trades through its ShareBuilder service for the entire year, when you open an IRA with this promo code.

Here are the details:

• All IRA plans are no-fee plans; no fees for a low balance, no fee for inactive accounts, no annual fee for being a member.

• Open your IRA account before April 15th, 2010 and set up an Automatic Investment Plan (AIP) and all automatic investment trades are commission free for 2010.

• Select over 7,000 stocks and ETFs.

• Schedule (AIP) investments on a weekly or monthly basis.

• Invest any dollar amount on Tuesdays exclusively online.

Some caveats to the offer:

• Real time trade commissions still apply to all sales.

• You can only make commission free trades on Tuesdays, and online. If you aren’t comfortable using the web site then this isn’t for you, but ING’s web sites are very easy to use.

These limitations aren’t ridiculous when you consider that you probably should keep trading to a minimum in an IRA plan anyway, and you should also make contributions in it regularly so the Automatic Investment Plan is ideal for dollar cost averaging into your IRA over the long term. Why not save a few extra dollars on each contribution?

Open an IRA today at www.sharebuilder.com/2010ira.

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Target date funds have been in the news quite a lot over the past few years, though the nature of the news seems to have gone from great to bad over that time. Consider that when target date funds were first introduced they were heralded as the pinnacle in the evolution of investment vehicles. They were the ultimate in “set it and forget” investing!

These funds were so universally praised by the investment community and politicians alike that when congress passed the Pension Protection Act (PPA) allowing companies to automatically enroll employees in 401(k) accounts, it was target date funds that were chosen most often as the default fund, or “qualified default investment alternative” (QDIA) in the lingo of the PPA.

Then the crash of 2008-2009 happened.

2010 Target date funds performed horribly in that crash. This gave target date funds a lot of bad publicity. After all, the idea of a 2010 target date fund was that it would be invested in less risky assets as 2010 got closer, right?

Maybe.

See, the problem isn’t really that these funds lost as much as the average stock fund, or even that they were tilted too heavily in the direction of stocks. There are really two problems at the root of all this:

1. The crash of 2008 was not a garden variety stock market crash.
2. People’s perspectives on retirement savings is skewed.

Problem One: The crash of 2008.

The crash of 2008 was a once in a lifetime kind of phenomenon, one in which almost every investment asset lost value. The problem for target date funds regarding this kind of crash is: where should the majority of assets held in a 2010 target date fund be allocated?

In a garden variety stock market crash, or correction of say 10-15% or even 20% loss in stocks, a hefty bond allocation is usually enough to provide proper ballast to limit the total losses for the fund. But in 2008, just about the only safe place was cash, or gold and in any normal investment environment a majority of holdings in cash or gold would be a money loser.

Problem Two: Investor perspective.

This problem affected target date funds because investors simply did not expect a 2010 fund to lose 35% -40% of its value so close to the target date. But I think this is really the result of an underlying mistake in expectation on the part of the investor.

Too many investors have it in their mind that they will be taking all their money out of the stock market when they retire.

Maybe it’s the way these funds are marketed, but I know a lot of investors think that the clock stops when they retire and that what they have in their investment account is what they have for the rest of their lives. This is simply not true. The average retiree today can expect to live another 15-20 years. The fact is that they will still need to be invested in stocks in order for their savings to last as long as they do.

Solutions.

I think just about the only solution one can have for the first problem (the unusual market crash) is to have a sizeable sum of cash saved up for immediate access if you have just retired or are about to retire when such a crash hits. Something along the 9-12 month of expenses range, maybe more if you tend to panic about finances. This ought to allow the investor to weather the crash and not have to deplete his investment account while it is suffering heavy losses.

The solution to the problem of investor perception is also covered by the huge sum of cash savings fix to the first problem, but there is also a long term mental shift that needs to happen. Investors and retirees need to consider post-retirement investing. Far too many people think about investing or saving for retirement as the end game, when in reality it’s just an inflection point where the nature of investing changes but the need continues; the only true end point is the end of life, after which you get into estate planning.

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This week’s investing term is all about investment decisions motivated by tax implications. It’s called tax selling and as the name suggests, it’s when an investor sells an asset at a loss, in order to pay less taxes when he sells an asset at a profit. The way this works is that the U.S. tax code allows individuals to use an investment loss to offset capital gains taxes on profit making asset sales.

The process is also commonly called “harvesting capital losses”, because it often involves the purposeful selling of a losing investment for the explicit reason to gain a tax advantage.

Tax selling is perfectly legal, but there are a few restrictions:

• Any assets sold for a loss must have been owned by the investor for at least 30 days prior to being sold.

• The investor cannot purchase assets of a same type within 30 days of the assets being sold.

So, you can’t buy shares in a small cap fund, sell them 29 days later at a loss to harvest the capital gain tax offset, and then buy shares in the small cap fund 15 days after you sold them. Violation of either of these restrictions is called a wash sale, and that is illegal. This 30 day limitation is often referred to as the 30-day wash sale rule.

Tax selling usually occurs in December, but keep an eye on the market as some are speculating there will be an increase in tax selling as the Bush tax cuts expire at the end of this year, and tax rates rise again.

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