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The Markets
If there’s an upside to a down market,
it’s that stock prices might get low enough to encourage
strong companies to swoop in and make takeover offers. That’s
exactly what happened last Friday when Microsoft made a surprisingly
aggressive bid for troubled Yahoo!
The news helped send the
Dow Jones Industrial Average up 92 points for that day
and up a dramatic 4.4 percent for
the week.
Economic news was mixed last week with
the nonfarm payroll numbers coming in below expectations
while the Institute
of Supply Management said its index of manufacturing activity
rose more than expected in January, according to The Wall
Street Journal. And just to make us all feel good, oil
company Exxon Mobil announced last week that they set a record
for
the highest annual profit ever recorded in U.S. corporate
history. They earned $40.6 billion in net income in 2007.
To put that in perspective, if Exxon Mobil distributed
all their profit, each of the 109.9 million households in
the
U.S. could receive $369. Imagine how many tanks of gas
that would fill!
| Returns through 2/1/08 |
1-Week |
Y-T-D |
1-Year |
3-Year |
5-Year |
10-Year |
| Dow Jones Industrials |
4.4 |
-3.9 |
0.7 |
6.5 |
9.5 |
4.6 |
| Nasdaq Composite |
3.8 |
-9.0 |
-2.5 |
5.3 |
12.8 |
3.9 |
| Standard & Poor's 500 |
4.9 |
-5.0 |
-3.7 |
5.5 |
10.2 |
3.4 |
Source: Yahoo! Finance, Barrons
Past performance is no guarantee of future results. Indices
are unmanaged and cannot be invested into directly. Three-,
5-, and 10-year returns are annualized. Assumes dividends
are not reinvested.
ACCORDING TO A RECENT INVESTMENT COMPANY
INSTITUTE (ICI) REPORT, The Role of IRAs in U.S. Households
Saving for Retirement,” by mid-2007, Americans had
$4.6 trillion stashed in individual retirement accounts
(IRAs). According to the report, that total represents more
than one-quarter of U.S. total retirement market assets,
compared with just 14 percent two decades ago. The report
also notes that IRAs have risen in importance on households’ balance
sheets. In June 2007, IRA assets accounted for 10 percent
of all household financial assets, up from 3 percent two
decades ago. Among the 40 percent of U.S. households reporting
they have IRAs, about three-quarters also participate in
employer-sponsored retirement plans. The report also found:
- Traditional IRAs are the most common type
of IRA owned, followed by Roth IRAs and employer-sponsored
IRAs.
Specifically, 37.7 million households have traditional
IRAs, 9.2 million
have company-sponsored IRAs like SIMPLE IRAs, and
17.3 million have Roth IRAs.
- IRA growth has been fueled by assets
rolled over from employer-sponsored retirement plans.
Almost six out of 10
traditional IRA-owning households indicate their IRAs
contain rollovers from an employer-sponsored retirement
plan.
- IRA-owning households tend to preserve
their IRA assets as long as possible. Less than one
in five households
with
traditional IRAs took withdrawals in tax-year 2006.
The most frequently cited reason for withdrawals was the
legal
requirement to begin taking minimum distributions
at age 70 1/2.
And there’s more good news: Most
households owning traditional IRAs today have a strategy
for managing
income
and assets in retirement. For example, eight out of ten
traditional IRA-owning households indicate they have a plan,
and among those with a plan, seven out of ten indicate their
strategy is to preserve their IRA assets for as long as
possible into retirement by not taking withdrawals prior
to age 70 1/2.
IRA contribution limits are $4,000 for
2007 (the deadline is April 15, 2008 for tax year 2007)
and $5,000
for 2008.
However, if you are over age 50 you can sock away an extra
$1,000, a benefit the ICI report found only 5 percent
of new IRA investors and 11 percent of those contributing
to
an existing IRA take advantage of.
American consumers are experiencing the
biggest jump in food prices in 17 years. However, pasta,
at an average price of $1.20 per pound, remains among the
most economical and versatile foods available, according
to the National Pasta Association (NPA). According to the
NPA, the price per pound of pasta has increased only $0.07
since 2003, a fraction of the increases of other foods.
Visit www.ilovepasta.org for hundreds of pasta meal recipes,
as well nutritional information. Who would have thought
there was a national association for pasta?
Can you unscramble these pasta names?
1. tfuecitenc
2. llegaileatt
3. lnugniei
4. ihatgtspe
5. arffalle
6. llifsiu
7. ercectioeht
8. eenpn
9. lrenai hga
10. lchiogneic
Click here for the answer.
Best Regards,
P.S. Please feel free to forward
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