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The San Diego Union-Tribune


    PERSONAL FINANCE

    • MARKET DIGEST
      A Growling Bear
      Change for the week

    • COMMON SENSE
      Good news may be on horizon for beleaguered ARPS market
      The auction-rate preferred-security crisis may yet have a happy ending. This is welcome news for every fixed-income investor and anyone who depends on healthy credit markets. It's especially good news for the holders of $330 billion in ARPS who were among the victims of the credit crisis that gripped financial markets this year. When the credit markets seized, big brokerage firms and investment banks stopped providing liquidity, the auctions failed, and the securities were essentially frozen in accounts. Many people lost access to their life savings.

    • Rising oil prices, inflation stoking economic gloom
      Investors who remember the stock market's steep and prolonged decline earlier this decade may be wondering if the recovery from Wall Street's current morass will also take several years to accomplish.

    • To cool house in summer, keep conservation in mind
      This summer, the average household's electricity usage will jump. Many people can thank their air conditioners for this. In an attempt to keep their houses cool, they blast the AC, which, in turn, runs up their electricity usage.

    • 'Neglected' stocks might merit a look
      Pay close attention to stocks that attract so little interest that they don't trade – not even a single share – on at least one day of the year. There are more of these neglected stocks than you might think: about one-third of the publicly traded stocks on major exchanges in the United States, according to a new study.

    • Plan ahead to avoid costly overdraft fees
      If you are known to bounce a check from time to time, you need a system in place to keep you from paying hefty fees. If your bank offers overdraft protection, should you use it? Perhaps, but be aware of what protection you're signing up for. “Bounce coverage” for many people can be a waste of money.

    • Credit cleanup
      People used to obsess over frequent-flier miles. Now, with lending standards getting tighter, they're applying similar energy to improving their credit scores. Jeffrey Sheldon, a computer-systems administrator from Purcellville, Va., has an enviable credit score of about 740. But he's planning to refinance his adjustable-rate mortgage and knows that lenders will be taking a particularly close look at his credit record.

    • ASK ENCORE FOCUS ON RETIREMENT
      Strategies to protect principal in IRA CDs
      I have a question about holding CDs in an individual retirement account. Brokered CDs are convenient when using them for the fixed-income strategy of a retirement portfolio. But the disadvantage is that brokered CDs are “marked to the market,” which puts their principal at risk if one has to liquidate them before they mature. To avoid this problem, one could open many rollover IRAs at various banks and buy traditional CDs. But this solution is difficult because of the amount of paperwork trying to keep track of all your CDs throughout the country.

    • Tips to pad everyday savings include trimming phone costs
      If you're caught in a paycheck-to-paycheck cycle that consistently leaves your checking account balance low, examine your everyday expenses and look for ways you could slash unnecessary spending. Once you start freeing money, use it to boost your emergency fund by banking it in a high-yield savings account.

    • CHUCK JAFFE
      Tried-and-true strategies still apply in new world order
      CHICAGO – Mohamed El-Erian's message at the Morningstar Investor Conference here last week could be boiled down to one simple, dangerous statement: “This time it's different.”

      But if the global market conditions are as different as the co-chief executive and chief investment strategist at bond-fund giant PIMCO contends, then the real concern for investors is why the proposed tactics to deal with “this time” feel so much like the same old thing.

    • High commodities prices bring gains for some investors
      NEW YORK – The rising commodities prices that have created so many headaches for consumers and businesses in recent months managed to reward some mutual fund investors in the second quarter, giving them the only healthy gains in a generally dismal market.

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