Answering Reader's Questions

In no particular order:

Someone posted a question about trying to do a tax selling trade by buying stocks that are likely candidates for tax selling and then sell them in January. You can click here to read the story. The idea is interesting but Jeff Hirsch questions whether it can work this year in the article. The theory seems to suggest a blind devotion to these types of stocks which I would not advocate. The thing is you are making a bet. If you bet on a company you have researched and think you understand, good. If you are following a statistical probability based on the calendar you are taking more risk. The thing I might be more interested in along these lines might the S+P 500, or any other widely followed index, always doing better at a certain time of the year. I'd be more comfortable with that type of bet, but really this is not my type of trade.

A reader posted that in addition MCN and FFA (covered call CEFs I have written about several times), there is also Nuveen Equity Premium Income Fund (JPZ). Kaushik Gala has written some about JPZ. I also found Eaton Vance Enhanced Equity Fund (EOI) in Barron's today. ETFconnect really didn't have any info on JPZ, which is funny because Nuveen is who runs ETFconnect. Maybe I am the only one amused by that. EOI is brand new so there really isn't any info about that one either. JPZ, EOI trade at a premium to NAV while FFA and MCN trade at a slight discount. I'm not a big worrier about premium vs. discount but it does allow you to perhaps gage sentiment. Claymore securities has two things I like, they are smaller than Nuveen and Eaton Vance and they seem very committed to offering innovative products. I plan to write more about their offerings in the next few weeks.

John posted a question about SPX vs SPXEW. He has a software package that I am unfamiliar with and he didn't understand what those symbols were that I referenced. SPX is the ticker on most platforms for the S+P 500 index. SPXEW is the ticker for the S+P 500 index equally weighted. SPX is capweighted, meaning the bigger the stock the more influence it has on the index. With SPXEW every component has the same 0.2% weight. SPXEW was the symbol on the big charts site. I have no idea if that symbol is widely used like SPX (I see that Michael posted an answer to John's question. John, I hope that helps. Thanks Michael).

Someone referring to himself as an old guy left an anonymous post about various fees and products inherent to the financial services industry. It was a well thought out expression of his opinions, some of which I agree with and some of which I don't. I do encourage people to post their opinions here. Opinions and insight are crucial to the evolution of the blogosphere.

Happy New Year!