Why is the market falling when 314 stocks out of the 500 stocks listed in the S & P 500 index have reported earnings, and 71% of those 314 companies have beaten earnings estimates.  The jobs report today was a number Wall Street did not want to see, however, focus on 71% of the 314 S & P 500  stocks which have beaten earnings estimates.  With as many companies beating expectations, you can see companies are doing ok and certainly better than a year ago.  Buy stocks LOW and sell stocks HIGH, right now stocks are LOW for no valid reason, so start BUYING.

I am sure most of you are a little worried with the recent drop in the market, but this decline is good.  When the Dow Jones Industrial Average was at 10,700 a few weeks ago, did you ever think ” I wish I had money to buy into the market since it’s going up quickly”.  Now the markets have fallen, you can buy those same stocks or funds much cheaper than where they were a few weeks ago.

Many of your financial professionals will tell you to hold on and the market will come back, WRONG!  You should be looking at what stocks have fallen the most over the past few trading sessions, and get out of stocks in your account that are not falling, Proctor & Gamble (PG) as an example.  PG has not fallen much the past few trading sessions, take that cash and buy Siemens (SI), for example, which has gone from $97 per share a couple weeks ago, and now is $84 per share.  You want to take advantage of market declines, and listening to your financial person say hang in there the market will come back, is a lazy way of them saying I don’t know what stocks we should buy, therefore, we should just hold our breath and wait for the market to recover.  If that is your financial professionals advice, CALL ME.

I am not suggesting you start liquidating your stocks.  You may want to add to stocks you already own, but nonetheless, you need to be analyzing your portfolio to see if you can make any adjustments versus simply holding on until a recovery in the stock market happens.

If you would like me to review your portfolio, have me give you a second opinion on your investments or hire me to be your Financial Advisor/Portfolio Manager, please call me at 877-944-2677 or email me at JimWigen@GetWealthyStayWealthy.com.  Continue to check my website for updates on stocks I am buying and selling for my clients.

What is your financial persons advice really worth?

Q & A with my readers

Question: Dear Mr. Wigen,  what do you hope to gain from writing on your blog website?  Seth, from Seattle, WA

Answer: Dear Seth, by writing on my blog site, I am hoping people start demanding of their financial advisor some accountability.  Do you really want to take your life savings and hand it over to a financial advisor who you know nothing about and have no idea what their advice is really worth?  Probably not!!  When looking to buy a mutual fund, you can go back and look at the funds performance over a period of time, assuming the portfolio manager has been running the fund over that same time period, to get an idea of whether or not you want to invest in that fund.

With financial advisors, you don’t know how to evaluate their advice.  How many financial advisors were telling you to buy into the market in September of 2007, the peak of the market, only to watch your investments tumble down over 40% in the next year?  To me, there are financial   salespeople, and financial advisors.  Financial salespeople get paid once they put your money into the market, whereas, financial advisors are paid a percentage of your overall account value, so they have no vested interest in watching your account go down in value, as their advisory fees would decline as well.  But even with that arrangement, what is a financial professionals advice really worth?

By writing on my blog website, I am hoping people will read my posts over a period of time and see what I have said about the markets and judge for themselves what my advice is worth.  I started my blog site on February 2, 2009, a year ago along with the WHI Growth & Income fund, so my readers could see the types of stocks I am buying and my overall thoughts on the markets and the economy.  In January, 2007, I was telling clients that the dark clouds were moving in and I am putting much of their account in a money market, which at the time was paying a yield of 5%.  At the time, many clients were worried I was being to conservative, then in December, 2007, the market started crashing and many of my clients were happy we had large portions of their money out of the stock market and sitting in a money market account, earning 5%.

If my blog site was up in 2007, I can assure you many of you would have read my entries cautioning you about the markets and the economy, and you would have realized late in 2007, my advice to move out of the market and into cash was dead accurate.  Investors today are to quick to give up on a strategy, which is why they must feel comfortable with the guidance from their financial person, whether a financial salesperson or financial advisor.

I know how to manage money, I have been a financial advisor since 1996, a portfolio manager since 2000, and have been through two markets which hit all time highs, and two markets which fell close to Depression lows.  This blog will allow my readers to go through the archives on my site and see what I have been advising since February 2, 2007, and recognize they can trust my opinions regarding the stock market more than their current financial salesperson or financial advisor.  Remember, not many people in the investment industry get paid to tell you to take money out of the stock market, I do.  I am paid a percentage of my clients accounts, and have no reason to watch any of my clients lose money.

The big financial firms hire advisors to go out and bring in money, not sit and manage their clients money, which is why the industry uses mutual funds and managed accounts.  I should know, I was involved in running the training program at Merrill Lynch and Prudential Securities (then Wachovia Securities) in the Dallas / Ft. Worth area, before starting my own Investment Advisory firm in 2005.

Financial professionals are great at telling you to hang in there and that the market will come back in down markets, but why do you never find a financial person telling you to get out of the market when the market is at all-time highs?  Because when it comes down to it, there are far more financial salespeople out there than financial advisors, and that is how the big international investment firms like it!

Do you like it?  If not, I would be happy to help you create a customized portfolio based on what annual return you need from the stock market, getting you and your spouse into and through retirement.  I would be happy to run a FREE financial plan for any of my readers, simply email me and ask me to send you a financial planning questionnaire.

If you would like me to review your portfolio, have me give you a second opinion on your investments or hire me to be your Financial Advisor/Portfolio Manager, please email me at JimWigen@GetWealthyStayWealthy.com.  Continue to check my website for updates on stocks I am buying and selling for my clients.

It’s not to late to sign up for my “Investing For Beginners” class at Collin County Community College.  There are two classes left, February 3rd & February 10th, 6-9pm.

Class topics include:  understanding 401ks, how to invest 401k rollovers or a lump sum, determine mutual fund fees, no-load mutual funds vs financial advisors, and earning income and protecting your investments using option strategies

This week is all about getting organized and finding your financial baselines. One of the best ways to get your arms around your household’s financial health is to check your credit report. You may be tempted to hop on freecreditreport.com (I know, the catchy lyrics are ringing in my ears, too), but the best place to go for free, comprehensive credit information is annualcreditreport.com.

Through this site, you can obtain data about your credit history from the three major credit reporting firms: Experian, TransUnion, and Equifax. You won’t be able to see your actual credit score–the agencies still charge for this–but you will be able to make sure that your credit report doesn’t include any mistakes that could harm your ability to obtain credit at a decent rate in the future. Checking these reports is also a good way to ensure that identity thieves haven’t obtained credit in your name. You can obtain free basic reports from the three credit reporters once a year.

I recently obtained my credit reports using annualcreditreport.com, and found the site to be quite easy to use, so long as I was able to ignore the steady barrage of upsells for paid credit services. After inputting some basic information about myself, including my address, birth date, and Social Security number, I was transferred to the first of the three agencies’ sites, where I then answered a few additional security questions.

TransUnion, Experian, and Equifax display credit information in varying ways, but all three show you the names and some basic payment history related to your credit accounts, both now and in the past. The sites also show you whether you’ve been late with your payments or have had some other type of problem with a creditor.

Eyeball all three credit agencies’ reports to ensure that your credit report syncs up with reality, and print each of these reports for further perusal. If you see any information that appears to be incorrect, go to the Federal Trade Commission’s Web site for guidance on filing a formal dispute.

On January 4th, 2010, I made the following prediction:  I am looking for a decline in the S&P 500 index from the 1,131 level today to around 1,100.  I don’t see a substantial decline in the index, but the market overall seems to be slowing down.  I do not see great holiday revenues coming from many retailers, and believe we will hear Q4 corporate profits, from various sectors,  are mediocre at best.

Today, January 29th, the S & P 500 Index is at 1085.18, and I am now recommending you start putting cash to work by buying stocks.  The markets are down over 4% since January 4th, 2010, therefore, I am not predicting the markets to fall very far from this level, if at all, in the next few months.  After reviewing recent earnings reports from some of the largest companies in the world, it is clear business demand is increasing, yet at a slow pace.

Several companies have showed strong profits from a year ago, however, that in itself is not a good measurement of how our economy is right now.  Cautious outlooks for 2010 from several companies tells me our economy is doing better than it was in 09′, but we still need to realize in 09′ the government provided plenty of stimulus money, and 2010 may not benefit from those handouts.  Federal Funds rate should remain low for the next 3-6 months, providing cheap money to banks.  We have to wait to see how much lending the banks are willing to do, provided the increase in security measures the Treasury Department has imposed on those banks.

In summary, the market is down 4% in the past few weeks, now is a good time to start buying stocks using the dollar cost averaging strategy.

The Commerce Department said GDP grew at an annual rate of 5.7 percent during the fourth quarter, easily topping economists’ forecast of 4.5 percent.

Concerns have been mounting that potential new regulations coming out of Washington could upend a fragile economic recovery. President Barack Obama’s calls last week to restrict trading by big financial institutions helped spark the sell-off. He has provided scant details about the bank overhaul plan to help alleviate any concerns.

The president is planning to announce further details about a plan to provide small businesses with tax credits that boost hiring. A high unemployment rate — it remains at 10 percent — is one of the biggest obstacles the country faces as it tries to recover from the worst recession since the Great Depression.

The strong fourth-quarter provides the strongest sign yet the economy is recovering. The report showed consumer spending increased and there was a sharp jump in business spending on equipment and software.

The Chicago PMI jumped to 61.5 in January from 58.7 in December, beating expectations. Economists had projected the Midwest manufacturing gauge would slip to 57.2.

And consumer confidence hit a two-year high in January: Reuters and the University of Michigan said their gauge of confidence jumped to 74.4 at the end of January from 72.5 in December. That was better than the 73 economists had expected and the highest since January 2008, a month into the recession.

Steven P. Jobs, Apple’s chief executive, played up the iPad’s ability to stream live baseball games and hit movies during his demonstration on Wednesday. But people who are willing to pay more to get that content over AT&T’s 3G data network may pay another price: glacial downloads and spotty service on an already overburdened system.

America’s advanced cellphone network is already beginning to be bogged down by smartphones that double as computers, navigation devices and e-book readers. Cellphones are increasingly being used as TVs, which hog even more bandwidth. They can also transmit video, allowing for videoconferencing on cellphones.

And a new generation of netbooks, tablet PCs and other mobile devices that connect to cellphone networks will only add to the strain. “Carrier networks aren’t set to handle five million tablets sucking down 5 gigabytes of data each month,” Philip Cusick, an analyst at Macquarie Securities, said.

Wireless carriers have drastically underestimated the network demand by consumers, which has been driven largely by the iPhone and its applications, he said. “It’s only going to get worse as streaming video gets more prevalent.”

An hour of browsing the Web on a mobile phone consumes roughly 40 megabytes of data. Streaming tunes on an Internet radio station like Pandora draws down 60 megabytes each hour. Watching a grainy YouTube video for the same period of time causes the data consumption to nearly triple. And watching a live concert or a sports event will consume close to 300 megabytes an hour.

“Video is something the industry needs to get a handle on,” Mr. Cusick said.

AT&T, the sole carrier of the iPhone in the United States, has become the butt of jokes and the cause of vexation for its customers in major cities because of dropped calls, patchy service, and other network hiccups.

The other carriers may share the problem as they sell more data-sucking devices; sales of smartphones are expected to increase 30 percent this year, according to Morgan Stanley analysts.

In a recent briefing with analysts, Ralph de la Vega, AT&T’s chief executive for mobility, said that users of smartphones, primarily the iPhone, were straining the network by watching video and surfing the Web. The company reported an unprecedented increase in wireless data use of nearly 7,000 percent since late 2006.

Jake Vance, for example, catches every Red Sox game he can — mostly on his iPhone.

You’ll find lots of new deductions, credits and expanded eligibility rules when you prepare your 2009 tax return.

There’s no denying that 2009 was a challenging year for millions of Americans. But filling out your 2009 tax return could bring some welcome relief in the form of a big refund. There are a slew of new and expanded tax breaks for home buyers and car buyers, college students and their parents, homeowners who installed energy-efficient improvements, and the unemployed. Together, these tax savings are expected to boost average tax refunds above last year’s level of about $2,800, says IRS spokeswoman Nancy Mathis. The sooner you file, the sooner you’ll get your money back.

Here are highlights of what’s new for 2009 tax returns.

Education Credit

More parents and students can use a federal education credit to offset part of the cost of college under the new American Opportunity Credit. The maximum $2,500 credit is available to eligible taxpayers who paid at least $4,000 in qualified college tuition, fees and required course materials, including books, in 2009. The full credit is available to individuals with incomes up to $80,000, phasing out above that level and disappearing completely at $90,000. (For married couples filing jointly, the full credit is available to those with incomes up to $160,000 and disappears above $180,000.) Those income limits are higher than under the existing Hope and Lifetime Learning credits.

If you claim the credit and owe no tax, you may receive a refund of 40% of the credit, up to a maximum of $1,000 for each eligible student. Other education credits are not refundable. The American Opportunity Credit can be applied only to expenses paid during the first four years of college. Graduate students are not eligible for this new credit, but they still qualify for the Lifetime Learning credit, of up to $2,000 per household, or a tuition-and-fees deduction of up to $4,000. (A credit, which reduces your tax bill dollar for dollar, is more valuable than a deduction, which merely reduces the amount of income that is taxed.)

Parents of some college freshmen and sophomores should bypass the new American Opportunity Credit and opt instead for the supercharged Hope Credit available to students in Midwestern seven states affected by 2008’s flooding disaster (Arkansas, Illinois, Indiana, Iowa, Missouri, Nebraska, and Wisconsin). The top credit on 2009 returns for qualified students is $3,600.

Home-Energy Credits

If you weatherized your home or bought alternative-energy equipment in 2009, you may qualify for either of two expanded home-energy credits, regardless of your income.

You may claim a credit worth 30% of the cost of eligible home improvements on your principal residence, up to a maximum $1,500. The cost of certain high-efficiency heating and air-conditioning systems, water heaters and stoves used for home heating qualify for the credit, along with labor costs for installing them. The cost of energy-efficient windows, doors, skylights and insulation also count, but installation costs do not. You would have to spend at least $5,000 to qualify for the full $1,500 credit.

A second tax credit is designed to spur investment in alternative-energy equipment, such as solar electric systems, solar water heaters, geothermal heat pumps and wind turbines, in new and existing homes. The credit is worth 30% of the cost, including installation, with no cap on the amount of the credit.