<p>I see prices moving on bloomberg. S&P futures down .35 percent.</p>
<p>I think all three are open but my screen is not registering it. I don’t know why. IB is a mystery sometimes.</p>
<p>Ok…</p>
<p>Ok… EMM1, page 27. There are two values of the annuity… One is the base and one is the value returns are determined ?</p>
<p>Lets just go to the bottom line. You tell me if I am wrong because I am guessing.</p>
<p>A person buys the annuity for 200,000. Then the person pays lets say 100,000 in fees over the next 10 years. (That would be 4 percent a year in fees approximately if the annuity increased 5 percent a year. The 100000 is an approximation. It is not an exact figure). </p>
<p>You have 300,000 in this deal.
So after 10 years you can start getting benefits. You make 7 percent a year. The benefits are based on what? Your initial cost. The 400,000?
The 7 percent return is a gross return before fees?</p>
<p>I’m hoping for a lot more downside at this point especially over the next week.</p>
<p>“I’m hoping for a lot more downside at this point especially over the next week.”</p>
<p>Just hoping, or hoping and expecting? Do you think there will be plenty of downside this week? I was thinking about buying some funds, but don’t want to do it right before another plummet.</p>
<p>I’m just hoping. I’m going to be out of the country for July with a time difference of 16 hours making it pretty difficult to keep track of investments.</p>
<p>Although I’m hoping for a market drop, I expect that the market will be positive next week after last week’s drop but hey I’m a dumb a** so my opinion is as worthless as anybody else’s.</p>
<p>^^Well I guess we’ll see where it goes, but if it drops like crazy, you’ll be a genius.</p>
<p>No - I’m just hoping it drops a lot so I can buy more spy at a lower price. I don’t really have a negative bias at this point.</p>
<p>dstark:</p>
<p>Sorry, I was away again. If you look at Appendix G, it is pretty clear that the the face value will have gone to approximately 400000. But I did see something disturbing in Appendix G–the quoted annuity payout rate is quite low. Frankly, this is one question that I did not ask, but will investigate for sure.</p>
<p>Does anyone think there could be a few good shorts out there? </p>
<p>With interest rates going up and the regulators completely ignoring all financial crimes except insider trading at hedge funds (their on year 6 with Stevie; really glad my taxpayer dollars are going there; he’s a real economic threat…) it seems like now is a great time for a company like lehman or Enron. Also, pwc was recently allowed to audit hlf, aka they’re basically auditing themselves. </p>
<p>Dodd frank hasn’t even been written fully and SoX is rarely if ever used because execs can basically now claim stupidity is not a crime. I think only one criminal sox case has been brought since inception. </p>
<p>It just seems like this so called “crackdown” is nothing more than a way to make prosecutors get political points. Haven’t seen much change.</p>
<p>Edit: I meant that with IR rising well start to see companies really are cash cows and which are nothing more than leveraged speculative bets.</p>
<p>EMM1, G1 is exactly what I was looking for…I dont know what that rider multipliers is.
I dont know how the death benefit comes into play.
I dont see that 7 percent return hitting income. </p>
<p>Elsewhere in the prospectus it talks about income and income is based on age and performance I guess.</p>
<p>Dont you have to pay fees every year rhat are not picked up in G1?</p>
<p>I think that the information on the death benefit that you are looking for is in Appendix F.</p>
<p>While I haven’t done the precise calculations, the growth in the value of my account over time appears to be 7% net of fees.</p>
<p>Ok…thanks.</p>
<p>The current situation with the Fed is bothering me quite a bit, compounded by the stalemate in Washington and the economic hurdles over the next two years. On of the big-cap tech stocks reported last week and the report had problems. They’re a bellweather as they report a month before most other stocks and I’m worried that this is something that we’ll see in other tech stocks when earnings season gets underway. The stuff that I’m reading about Intel is that they won’t see the big bumps in revenue until Q4 and that the current Q is not likely to be that good. Will Wall St ignore so-so earnings with Q4 estimates as being more important? I hope so.</p>
<p>The Fed has given their statement and I’ve been thinking that they are dead wrong on the economy and employment recovering strongly by the end of the year. I don’t see it and I didn’t see it before their meeting and their comments at the meeting might actually derail the recovery. I think that this is a rational view but my observation of the Fed is that they usually don’t do very much during the summer. They just watch the numbers, make a few comments about waiting until the fall to see how things are doing and don’t provide a lot of overall direction. If they do that this summer, then it could be a pretty long summer.</p>
<p>My ultimate indicator on the employment situation is whether or not my daughter finds a job this summer.</p>
<p>I had a look at the company that she is interviewing at. It’s been rated the best company to work for in Boston for the last two years. It looks like a great place to work at and I think that she’d be happy and fortunate to work there. I don’t have my hopes up because I went through the job search thing with our son a few years ago and it was a lot weaker than I imagined.</p>
<p>In my mind, the market stuff bothers me less than my daughter’s happiness and productivity. I think that she’d be much happier in the working world for a while compared to finishing up a four-year degree but that’s our backup plan.</p>
<p>"The Fed has given their statement and I’ve been thinking that they are dead wrong on the economy and employment recovering strongly by the end of the year. I don’t see it and I didn’t see it before their meeting and their comments at the meeting might actually derail the recovery. "</p>
<p>I agree. There was actually some discussion this morning on Bloomberg that the Fed may have to backtrack on their statements - but they don’t like to appear to be wrong.</p>
<p>I just checked my latest statement, done the calculations, and have confirmed that (at least according to the statement) the face value of the annuity has grown at a 7% annual rate net of fees. However, because the mutual fund I chose is (at least after fees) still underwater the death benefit has not grown from the initial face value.</p>
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<p>Thanks for that. I thought that I was somewhat alone in my thinking (outside of Bullard anyways). It’s nice to know that others have similar thinking. I agree on the Fed not wanting to look like they are wrong. I think that they completely bungled the message in this last meeting and that they are going to have to do a decent full-court press if they want to turn things around. What I’m seeing is that the entire global economy is affected; not just the US.</p>
<p>I have the feeling that Bernanke’s pending departure in 2014 may have been weighing on the message too - not that it should have.</p>