Welcome to the end of the week and another edition of Happy Hour! Just sit back, relax, and enjoy your end of the week roundup of all things interesting in the land of money.
Honest Jobs
Congratulations nurses! A recent Gallup poll had participants rate the honest and ethical standards in different professions. Nurses were viewed as the most honest and ethic people.
What’s surprising is college teachers and clergy falling to seventh and eighth. Even more surprising, car salespeople beat out Members of Congress for dead last.
Index Extravaganza
If indexers are annoyed by the lack of choices they have, things are looking up. The Nasdaq announced the possible creation of 24,000 new indexes, with 4,000 being introduces this week. As if the ETF and index fund space wasn’t crowded enough. The idea is to get as specific as possible with the indexes. Basically breaking things down to the most minute detail.
Then there’s the financial gain from all this. Eventually ETFs will be created to follow most of these indexes. The more popular indexes will see several ETFs competing for trades. This means more choices for investors. Too many really.
The Nasdaq and NYSE have seen a decline in volume over the last few years. Thanks, in part, to the popularity of ETFs. They essentially create at least one ETF, for each index they introduce. Which will need to be traded on an exchange. And the Nasdaq will profit from those transactions. If you can’t grow your business, just create new opportunities out of thin air.
Last Call
- Why A High-Dividend Strategy Is Dangerous – Dividend stocks have been all the rage these past few years. Yet investors continue to pile into this arguably overpriced asset.
- Forget Fairness, Let’s Talk About Stupidity – a great piece on how corporate america is slowly starving itself of customers and the stupidity of their ways.
- Tim Cook’s Freshman Year: The Apple CEO Speaks – Everything you did (and didn’t) want to know about the Apple CEO, with some insight about the company. One quote stood out -“Eighty percent of our revenues are from products that didn’t exist 60 days ago.” Is that good or bad?
- Leave the CPI and COLAs Out of the Budget Talks – Rumors from the fiscal cliff talks point to a possible change in how tax brackets are adjusted for inflation each year. With the same happening for Social Security benefits. It’s a tax hike/benefits decrease over time.
