Clarification of Inflation according to Forbes
I think you're missing Simon Moore's point. His point is that, due to low inflation, the returns on almost all asset classes should be less than they have been historically, so we shouldn't rebalance our portfolio or withdraw from the market and hold cash based on the assumption that stocks (or any other asset) seem to be underperforming relative to historical trends.  His last paragraph is written in case someone might misunderstand him, he is not advocating to hold cash, just that investors should not expect as good returns as has happened historically, since those happened in higher inflation environments. To explain: If the inflation rate historically has been 5% and now it's 2%, and the risk-free-market return should be about 2%, then historically the return on a risk-free asset would be 7% (2%+5%), and now it should be expected to be 4% (2%+2%). So, if you have had a portfolio over some time you might be concerned that the rate of return is worsening, but Simon's point is that before you sell off your stocks / switch investment brokers, you should try to figure out if inflation is the cause of the performance loss. On the subject  of cash: cash always loses value over time from inflation, since inflation is a measure of the increase in prices over time-- it's a part of the definition of what inflation is.  That said, cash holdings lose value more slowly when inflation is lower, so they are relatively less worse than before. The future value of cash doesn't go up in low inflation (you'd need deflation for that), it just decreases at a lower rate, that is, it becomes less expensive to hold- but there still is a price. As an addendum, unless a completely new economic paradigm is adopted by world leaders, we will always see cash holdings decrease in value over time, since modern economics holds that deflation is one of the worst things that can happen to an economy. Inflation can be a misleading indicator. Partly because it is not measured as a function of the change in prices of everything in the economy, just the basket of goods deemed essential. The other problem is that several things operate on it, the supply of money,  the total quantity of goods being exchanged, and the supply of credit. Because the supply of goods divides - as more stuff is available prices drop - it's not possible to know purely from the price level, if prices are rising because there's an actual shortage (say a crop failure), or simply monetary expansion. At this point it also helps to know that the total money supply of the USA (as measured by total quantity of money in bank deposits) doubles every 10 years, and has done that consistently since the 1970's.  USA Total Bank Deposits So I would say Simon Moore manages to be right for the wrong reasons. Despite low inflation, cash holdings are being proportionally devalued as the money supply increases. Most of the increase, is going into the stock market. However, since shares aren't included in the measures of inflation, then it doesn't influence the inflation rate. Still, if you look at the quantity of shares your money will buy now, as opposed to 5 years ago, it's clear that the value of your money has dropped substantially.  The joker in the pack is the influence of the credit supply on the price level.
First, what's the reason? Why do you have that much in cash at all - are you concerned about market volatility, are you planning to buy a house, do you have tens of millions of dollars and this is your slush fund?  Are you a house flipper and this is part of business for you? If you need the money for short term use - ie, you're buying a house in cash next month - then as long as you're in a sound bank (one of the big national ones, for example) it seems reasonable.  You can never predict a crash like 2008, but it seems unlikely that Chase or Citibank will go under in the next few weeks. If you like to have a cash position, then split the money among multiple banks.  Buy a CD at one major bank with some of the amount.  My in-laws have a trust which is partially invested in CDs, and they use multiple banks for this purpose to keep their accounts fully insured.  Each separate bank you're covered up to 250k, so if you have $150k at Chase and $150k at a local bank, you're covered.  (You're also covered in a much larger amount - up to 1MM potentially - if you are married, as you can have a separate account each for $250k and a joint account up to $500k.) Otherwise, why do you have that much in cash?  You should invest it in something that will return more than inflation, at a minimum... Edit post-clarifications: $350k is around my level of 'Maybe, maybe not'.  You're risking $100k on a pretty low risk (assuming this isn't a small local bank, and even those are pretty low still).  In order to remove that risk you have to do something active - ie, take 100k somewhere else, open a new bank account, etc. - which isn't exactly the hardest thing in the world, but it does take effort.  Is it worth the 0.001% chance (entirely made up) you lose the 100k?  That's $10, if you agree with that risk chance.  Up to you. It wouldn't be particularly hard, though, to open an account with an online bank, deposit $100k in there in a 6 month CD, then pay the IRS from your other account and when the 6 month CD expires take the cash back into your active account.  Assuming you're not planning on buying a house in the next six months this should be fine, I'd think (and even then you'd still have $150k for the downpayment up front, which is enough to buy a $750k house w/o PMI). Additionally, as several commenters note: if you can reasonably do so, and your money won't be making significant interest, you might choose to pay your taxes now rather than later.  This removes the risk entirely; the likely small interest you earn over 3 months may be similar to the amount you'd spend (mostly of your time, plus possibly actual expenses) moving it to another bank.  If you're making 2% or 3% this may not be true, but if you're in a 0.25% account like my accounts are, $100k * 0.25% * 0.25 is $62.50, after all. "Is there any particular area of business that you have interest?    What free resources do you currently use (general web browsing)?  Here are some magazines out there that I find interesting:  * **Fast Company** - $12.99 / Year / 10 Issues - Magazine focused on tech, innovation, leadership and design.  I don't subscribe, but I regularly purchase Fast Company, Entrepreneur,and Inc. when I am traveling.  They make for a perfect airplane read and I typically find great takeaways or clip articles from it.  * **Entrepreneur** - $11.97 / Year / 12 Issues - Obviously by the title this is catered to the entrepreneurial mindset.  It provides informational and inspirational stories from entrepreneurs and for entrepreneurs.  I enjoy reading this and probably read 3 or 4 issues per year.  I'm not a regular reader, but at times I have felt like content may run lean at times.    * **Inc** - $12.99 / Year / 10 Issues - Inc. feels like a blend of Fast Company and Entrepreneur.  The articles are aimed at the business owner for starting and running operations.  * **Businessweek** - $5 / Year / 12 Issues - I regularly read Businessweek, but primarily on their website.  I have picked up issues occasionally which are great, but their web provides a fair amount of access.  They seem to have a nice blend of news and unique stories about specific companies, products, and investment.  Recently they had interesting articles with fair depth on the CEO of Burger King, and the history of Sriracha.  * **Forbes** - $24.99 / Year / 26 Issues - I love the volume of content that Forbes provides and they seem to have a nice mix on a variety of subjects.  I use Forbes as my frontpage of the internet for business in conjunction with several others.  I actually feel like Forbes and Businessweek provide a perfect blend of business news with shocking little redundancy.  * **Harvard Business Review** - Wasn't able to quickly see a price.  I reference HBR a fair amount in regards to business discussions and think they provide excellent research material and information.  The writing style and layout isn't quite as captivating as some of the other magazines such as Fast Company, but the quality is excellent,  * **WSJ** - Obviously putting out a high volume of content, but you definitely pay for it.  I know a fair number of people who read it, but I actually have never known anyone to subscribe to it if that makes sense.  All the readers I know either receive a subscription through their work or university.  I think that shows the content is valuable and quality, but it might not justify the cost you have to pay for it as an individual reader.  I use a variety of websites to get business news, general education, and help me overall to understand the business world.  Specifically from the ones listed above I check Businessweek and Forbes daily for morning or lunch reading.  Forbes in particular does a solid job due to all of their external content contributors.  Seems like an interesting way to provide content if you can curate it correctly.    If you're more interested in the finance/investment world then I think Yahoo Finance and CNN Money are great.  Focusing specifically on investments then I really enjoy the content I get from Motley Fool and Seeking Alpha.  Some articles get pretty deep in regards to finance and investing, but overall I think they give great insight.  I read BusinessInsider, but I'll be honest I feel dirty.  Sometimes I find an interesting piece that leads me elsewhere to research more.  The content is primarily distributed in a ""Buzzfeed"" style format which has some questionable headlines and less professional content (""7 Crazy Facts That Sound Fake But Are Actually True"").  In Summary, I think you could learn a good amount on a variety of topics while staying plugged into news and developments in the business world for free.  I'm sure a few other people will chime in with other great sources that I didn't capture and some that I didn't even know existed.  I would start by reading a few of these sites I listed regularly and continue posting in this sub to help us keep the conversation going!" I gift my daughter stock worth $1000. No tax issue. She sells it for $2000, and has a taxable gain of $1000 that shows up on her return.  Yes, you need to find out the date of the gift, as that is the date you value the fund for cost basis. The $3500 isn't a concern, as the gift seems to have been given well before that. It's a long term capital gain when you sell it.  And, in a delightfully annoying aspect of our code, the dividends get added to basis each year, as you were paying tax on the dividend whether or not you actually received it. Depending on the level of dividends, your basis may very well be as high as the $6500 current value.  (pls ask if anything here needs clarification) "Gold may have some ""intrinsic value"" but it cannot be accurately determined by investors by any known valuation techniques. In fact, if you were to apply the dividend discount model of John Burr Williams - a variation of which is the basis of Discounted Cash Flow (DCF) analysis and the basis of most valuation techniques - gold would have zero intrinsic value because it produces no cash flow. Legendary focus investor Warren Buffett argues that investing in gold is pure speculation because of the reason mentioned above. As others have mentioned, gold prices are affected by supply and demand, but the bigger influence on the price of gold is how the economy is. Gold is seen as a store of value because, according to some, it does not ""lose value"" unlike paper currency during inflation. In inflationary times, demand increases so gold prices do go up, which is why gold behaves similar to a commodity but has far less uses.  It is difficult to argue whether or not gold gains or loses value because we can't determine the intrinsic value of gold, and anyone who attempts to justify any given price is pulling blinders over your eyes. It is indisputable that, over history, gold represents wealth and that in the past century and the last decade, gold prices rise in inflationary conditions as people dump dollars for gold, and it has fallen when the purchasing power of currency increases. Many investors have talked about a ""gold bubble"" by arguing that gold prices are inflated because of inflation and the Fed's money policy and that once interest rates rise, the money supply will contract and gold will fall, but again, nobody can say with any reasonable accuracy what the fair value of gold at any given point is.  This article on seeking alpha: http://seekingalpha.com/article/112794-the-intrinsic-value-of-gold gives a quick overview, but it is also vague because gold can't be accurately priced.  I wouldn't say that gold has zero intrinsic value because gold is not a business so traditional models are inappropriate, but I would say that gold *certainly * doesn't have a value of $1,500 and it's propped so high only because of investor expectation.  In conclusion, I do not believe you can accurately state whether gold is undervalued or overvalued - you must make judgments based on what you think about the future of the market and of monetary policy, but there are too many variables to be accurate consistently." The only reason inflation has yet to show in the CPI is because the dollar is the global reserve currency and is the best house in a bad neighborhood, but that just means the rest of the world is becoming poorer at the same time as the U.S. - QE was 4 trillion. That's a debasement of the currency even if, for the reason I've already stated, it's not reflected in CPI. "No, virtually ever item in the CPI is adjusted using hedonics, which by definition can only be used to lower inflation, not adjust it up.  Hedonics is not necessarily bad, but it doesn't actually reflect inflation, it reflects standard of living vs. purchasing power, which is not useful for a purely monetary measure.  It also does not correctly reflect that despite the fact that a 1970's 20"" TV cannot from an economic standpoint be directly compared to a 2012 20"" TV, if the price is the same (adjusted for inflation), inflation represents how the value of the dollar has accrued vs the value of a 20"" TV, which is what the definition of inflation is.  So, no, I don't think you're correct on this. This is also kind of glossing over the fact that the CPI essentially makes the bold argument that energy and transportation prices never affect inflation." According to the link you provided, these inflation numbers are the year-over-year inflation amounts for a given month.  For example the February number of 7% means from February 2015 to February 2016 the annual inflation rate was 7%.  It's difficult to nail down the impact of inflation at a micro level from month to month.  You need to understand what's in the basket of goods.  As an example, the price of a widget won't move from $1 to $1.04 in one month because of a 4% inflation rate. But considering the incremental price changes of a large number of consumer items over a long time period you can get to an inflation rate.  The price of an apple might not have changed but maybe the price of aspirin did. I'm no expert, but this is my understanding.  Not necessarily. For example, the Canadian dollar has jumped up recently because people are expecting a rate hike at the central bank this week some time. That is, the Canadian dollar is being traded for more because people expect that the currency will be harder to get later. This deflation (or decelerated inflation) is being priced in before it even happens.  For inflation to propagate through an entire domestic supply chain of a good or service takes time. Raises aren't tied to inflation, nor the price of a Big Mac or price of a movie ticket or toaster that has been sitting on the shelf for a month.  The price of the good in foreign currency will however hit the export as soon as it crosses the border.