Shares of BP recovered over the past week. At least, BP shares recovered from 52-week oil spill low (as well as a new 14-year low) that was touched on Friday, June 25, when fears spiked that Hurricane Alex would shut down BP’s oil spill containment effort.

By far the largest block of survey votes pinned an acceptable “buy” BP value at $25, with 28% of survey respondents saying that if BP hit that mark, it would signal the time to place a long bet.

Many potential BP buyers, has even lower expectations for the stock. Approximately 17% of survey respondents said they would buy BP at $20. Another 19% of survey takers indicated that BP shares would have to dip below $20 before they became interested in the stock.

Lurking beneath all of the reluctance to step up and take a bet on BP is the view demonstrated by 17% of survey takers: hurricane fears might be overblown, these votes said, but when it comes to BP, hurricanes or no hurricanes, the stock is ultimately headed for bankruptcy.

Investment analyst Harry Browne in the 1980s constructed an investment portfolio of which he called the permanent portfolio. He believed it would be a safe and profitable portfolio in any economic climate. Using a variation of efficient market indexing, Browne stated that a portfolio equally split between growth stocks, precious metals, government bonds and Treasury-bills would be an ideal investment mixture for investors seeking safety and growth.

He argues that your permanent portfolio should protect you against all economic futures while also providing steady performance. It should also be easy to implement.

To use the Permanent Portfolio, you simply divide your capital into four equal chunks, one for each asset class. Once each year, you rebalance the portfolio. If any part of the portfolio has dropped to less than 15% or grown to over 35% of the total, then you reset all four segments to 25%.

Altira has excellent cash flow, and is the ultimate recession proof stock. During a recession, I am looking for a company that is going to maintain if not grow its earnings and provide a nice dividend. Altria does that. At its current price it has an over 8% yield, putting a good amount of cash into your pocket ever quarter. Continue reading The best stock to invest in during recession

eRA Commons is an online interface where grant applicants, grantees and federal staff at NIH and grantor agencies can access and share administrative information relating to research grants.

eRA Commons users, based on their role, can conduct a variety of business in Commons, including: Continue reading What is the eRA Commons and its roles

Equity or equity finance is the term commonly used to describe the ordinary share capital of a business.

Ordinary shares in the equity capital of a business entitle the holders to all distributed profits after the holders of debentures and preference shares have been paid.
Continue reading Equity Finance: A definition

Nearly a million people have lost their unemployment benefits because the Senate failed for the third time Thursday to extend the deadline to file for this safety net.

Hoping to overcome deficit concerns, the Senate trimmed down the bill yet again on Wednesday night so that it would only increase the deficit by $33.3 billion over 10 years, instead of $55.1 billion. The main changes were to scale back additional Medicaid funding for the states and to reallocate some stimulus and Defense Department spending.

This is really disturbing news for some. We’ll do a follow-up article reagarding this topic.

By definition a high-yield bonds is a high paying bond with a lower credit rating than investment-grade corporate bonds. It also has a lower credit rating than Treasury bonds and municipal bonds. The upside of this is that because of the higher risk of default, these bonds pay a higher yield than investment grade bonds.

Based on the two main credit rating agencies, high-yield bonds carry a rating of ‘BBB’ or lower from S&P, and ‘Baa’ or lower from Moody’s. Bonds with ratings above these levels are considered investment grade. Credit ratings can be as low as ‘D’ (currently in default), and most bonds with ‘C’ ratings or lower carry a high risk of default; to compensate for this risk, yields will typically be very high.

A Revocable Living Trust, also simply called a Living Trust, is a legal document that is created by an individual, called a Trustmaker, to hold and own the Trustmaker’s assets, which are in turn invested and spent for the benefit of the Trustmaker.

This covers three phases of a Trustmaker’s life:
1. While the Trustmaker is alive and and in good health
2. If the Trustmaker becomes mentally incapacitated thus making him unable to decide for himself/herself.
3. After the Trustmaker dies.

Phase One of a Revocable Living Trust: The Trustmaker is Alive and Well

If the Trustmaker is good health and sound mind, the trust agreement will have specific rules allowing the Trustmaker to manage, invest, and spend the trust assets as he see fit. Thus, the Trustmaker will go about business as usual with regard to assets. The Trustmaker will also be able to use his or her own Social Security Number as the taxpayer identification number for the trust and file income taxes on IRS form 1040 instead of form 1041.

The next part of the article will cover phase two of a Revocable Living Trust.

The permanent portfolio fund is a type of investment that is made to offer a solid performance whatever of what is going on in the market. Here are the basics of permanent portfolio funds and what they have to offer you as an investor.

Permanent Portfolio Fund

The idea for permanent portfolio funds that you have a mutual fund that could withstand any market conditions. This was accomplished by investing in many different types of securities. Putting emphasis on investing in things that you could find outside of the stock market.

A permanent portfolio school of thought was to invest in an equal proportion of stocks, bonds, cash, and gold. Therefore, the original investment mix was 25% of each type of investment. In today’s conditions the current composition of the fund is 25% precious metals, 10% Swiss franc bonds, 15% real estate and natural resource stocks, 15% aggressive growth stocks, and 35% in government securities such as T-bills. In this way investors funds regardless of what happened in the economy feel more secure. Although with this fund you have to expect a slow and steady growth curve. This type of fund has been proven to gain value steadily over time.

Our friend Gerald Andreesen has finally started his blog, Mortgage and Honey. Check it out. He promises to spice up the stuff Glenn over at The Mortgage Facts makes boring. Real estate. Yeah right. Okay. Good luck with that! Check him out.