I'm a 74-year-old widow with an $87,000 certificate of deposit coming due next week. I visited two brokers. Each wants me to buy a variable annuity, and both sounded very good. I've enclosed my notes and the pamphlets and prospectuses in this envelope. What do you think? If you don't care for them, please recommend five or six stocks paying at least 5 percent that a gal like me could comfortably live with. I can afford moderate risks.
ServiceNow (NOW-$29) is an IT management firm with less than $240 million in revenues deriving from a proprietary platform that automates work flow and integrates related business processes. Well, yipsee doodle dandy and ain't that sweet!
As long as there's money to be made by the scolds who despise President Barack Obama, there will be a litany of spurious proposals on the Internet that America's stupids want to believe. There is no proposal to confiscate IRAs and 401(k) accounts.
Yep, you're missing something, and it's your brain, which is probably in the back of your pickup.
I am thinking of buying 2,000 shares of Bank of America at $12.45 a share. In the past 10 years, I have been in and out of this issue and have made good money each time. I believe that the stock can move to the $17 to $18 level this year, which could give me a good gain.
Now that American Airlines is going to merge with US Airways Group Inc., do you think the resulting company will be a good investment?
Like most of us, I am looking for higher yields on my certificates of deposit. I have a $7,000 CD, which paid 4.5 percent, that recently came due, and a neighbor, whose husband works in France for an American drug company, told me that they recently bought 300 shares of a French utility called GDF Suez, because it yields 9.2 percent.
I know the Securities and Exchange Commission tells us not to use past results to judge future performance, but we must select five mutual funds for our 2-year-old granddaughter, whose parents are the most financially naive couple — my wife says stupid — in the Midwest.
I needed a professional whom I couldn't intimidate (this is important) and who would ask questions about my investment choices, keep me on my financial tiptoes and could make sure that my personal feelings or emotions did not compromise my investment decisions.
Your answer last month to CC in Vancouver, Wash., about taking $9,000 from his annuity for income confuses me. His adviser said that if he took more than 6 percent of his initial $112,000 investment, or $6,720, his annuity value would be reduced by the difference between the $9,000 he would take and the $6,720 he was allowed to take, or $2,820.
