Most regular investors don’t get a chance to hear directly from their investment managers – at NEXT Financial Group, we believe communication is critical to a great relationship. Here is your chance to listen to what an institutional-quality money manager has to say and to ask your questions directly.

It only makes sense - yet many retirees live without one. You won’t be able to withdraw an unlimited amount of money in retirement. So a retirement budget is a necessity. Some retirees forego one, only to regret it later.

China, China, China—China this, China that. The news sure seems to be full of talk about China. Do you think so? I understand China holds dangerous amounts of American debt, our trade deficit with China is growing and Chinese children are outperforming American children in school. But with all this fear-mongering, it’s important to take a look and see just how different the average Chinese person is from an American—and there are obviously many ways to look at this. An interesting article was sent to me, written by a Chinese-American, that looked at how the average Chinese person looks at money—the following is a summary of this article.

Memories of 2008 are still fresh: The credit crisis; the collapse of Lehman Brothers and Washington Mutual; the federal takeover of Fannie and Freddie; the market downturn. There’s little doubt Wall Street would like to erase it all from its conscience, and maybe it has. Part of the anger of the Occupy Wall Street movement comes from the perception that nothing has changed. While the Dodd-Frank Act (designed to make the financial system more accountable and transparent) is now taking effect, the Volcker Rule (intended to stop banks from trading for their own accounts) may be watered down or put off. Beyond that, the U.S. economic recovery from the Great Recession has sputtered and made people question the recent bullish sentiment. Stocks have rebounded strongly since 2009, but there are still many factors to worry about; this may lead to a little contrarian thinking.

This year, assorted economists and journalists have contended that the U.S. is on the edge of a new recession. Yet recent indicators hint that the economy is doing a bit better than some analysts think.

Is a rally ahead? You may have heard that stocks tend to do well in the fourth quarter. History affirms that perception: while past performance is no guarantee of future results, the last quarter of the year has historically been the best quarter of the year for U.S. equities. As data from Bespoke Investment Group notes...

Is it all negative, or are there opportunities to consider because of the crisis? Many economists think a Greek default is inevitable. As we enter 4Q 2011, Greece has a debt-to-GDP ratio of about 160% (and that percentage is rising). While Greece accounts for less than 3% of Eurozone GDP, ripples from a Greek default could strain the European banking sector and global financial markets.1,7

TWO NEW IDEAS, ONE INVOLVING A TWIST - The government still has some options to stimulate the economy. What can Washington do now to help consumers, housing and stocks? Options remain. The Obama administration and the Federal Reserve are reportedly considering two interesting tactics: one first employed 50 years ago, and another that could bloom into a multi-faceted effort to aid homeowners under pressure.

August 2011 is on pace to become the roughest and most volatile month for the stock market in almost three years. Where exactly will this correction bottom out? How long will buyers stay on the sidelines? Two crucial questions await answers – but before turning to those questions, consider the developments that really hurt equities in the middle of August.

You’ve done a great job creating your retirement nest egg… but now that you need to begin pulling money out, how much can you take without fear of running out of money? Until recently, most advisors had a good answer for you. That is until the economic turmoil of the last decade. Now that answer has become a lot more complicated. Many advisors used to say it was safe to pull out 4% of your portfolio a year without fear of running out of money. But here’s what happened in the last decade.

When you look at the icons of the investment industry, the ones that make money year after year, you find they all follow these 6 simple things to one degree or another. We say these are simple, because they are… just as it’s simple to lose weight by eating less and exercising more… But as we all know, it’s easier said than done.

Will the markets feel stress as the deadline to raise the debt limit approaches? August 2 looms. That is the absolute deadline for raising the federal debt ceiling, according to Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner. The U.S. actually “hit” the $14.3 trillion ceiling on May 16 but took “extraordinary measures”, in Geithner’s words, to avoid default. (Those measures included suspension of Treasury payments to the Civil Service Retirement and Disability Fund and the Federal Employees' Retirement System Thrift Savings Plan.) While Congress will surely vote to raise the debt cap by August 2, our politicians are mostly transmitting contention.1,2