Tuesday’s Wall Street rally makes elite 90/3 club
Baseball has its 30-30 club: 30 home runs and 30 stolen bases in a season. Stocks have their 90/3 club: 90 percent of shares rising and a 3 percent rally in a single trading session. Tuesday’s massive rally was only the fifth time in 28 years that the Standard & Poor’s 500 index hit both of those benchmarks.
Inspired by the IRS?
The Internal Revenue Service is looking for 35 Americans with clean criminal records and a desire to spend nearly two months a year pondering the tax code — for no pay.
Three-year terms for the Taxpayer Advocacy Panel start this December, and believe it or not, it’s a hot ticket. For 41 spots last year, 400 people applied.
Members, many of them retirees, recommend tax policy changes, from the very technical to the mundane. In 2006, they proposed that the IRS print “Timely Response Required” on envelopes containing time- sensitive notices.
The idea, though, was rejected as too expensive. Applications are online at .
Not all that’s gold glitters
As stocks have fallen in the past seven months, gold, the symbol of safety, has shined. An ounce of gold is worth about $924, compared with $642 in August.
But some question the metal’s value as a long-term holding. Gold has risen faster than inflation over the long run, but by far less than stocks or bonds, says William Stone, chief investment strategist of PNC Financial Services. The “real” return of these investments captures the growth in value after accounting for inflation.
Firms take up introspection
Once a year, public companies must provide a forthright description of their business, warts and all, to shareholders. By now, almost every public company on a December-ending fiscal year will have filed a Form 10-K with the Securities and Exchange Commission. You don’t need an accounting degree to make sense of most of the 15 items in a 10-K.
If you’re new to a company, start with item 1, an overview of the business and its various units. You can jump to item 7 for a management discussion and analysis of the business. In item 3, the company must give a blunt assessment of the risks it faces. And in item 13, it describes potential conflicts of interest among managers and directors. Form 10-Ks are available for free at .
The Associated Press
