Investment and Finance

Financial statements provide a starting point for understanding a company. Ratio analysis is another tool to monitor a company's condition. It involves the methods of calculating and interpreting financial ratios to assess the company's performance and status. Each industry has its own different acceptable levels for its ratios. It is hard to interpret ratios properly without using industry averages.

Financial statement ratios are generally separated into 4 categories: Liquidity, profitability, efficiency and market ratios. The liquidity ratios measure the cash available to cover current and long term expenses. The current ratio measures the ability to meet short term debt and consists of current assets divided by current liabilities. The quick (acid test) ratio is similar to the current ratio, but it excludes inventory.

The capital loss carryover from your previous year's married filing joint return may only be claimed on the married filing separate return of the spouse who originally incurred the loss.
You cannot use 50% of the loss if it originated from your spouse's sale of a asset.

401(k) plans are designed to encourage long term retirement savings by employees. In some plans the employer may contribute a matching percentage to the employee's contribution amount.
401(k) plans must meet a variety of IRS rules.

Yes, and the difference gets bigger and grows faster with time. The rule of 72 is a method that quickly calculates how long money takes to double. You take 72 and divide it by the rate of return and the answer is the number of years it takes money to double in value. Thus 72 divided by 8 is 9 years, whereas 72 divided by 10 is 7.2 years. The money earning 8% will double again in 9 years for a total of 18 years to quadruple, whereas the money earning 10% will quadruple in 14.4 years, a much shorter time frame. Of course, you need to assess the extra risk which might be associated with the higher return.

Fund managers buy and sell stocks throughout the year. When the managers sell stocks with a large gain, that share of the capital gain must be allocated to you and everyone else in the fund, even though the balance of the portfolio includes unrealized losses and the fund is down in value.

You probably bought the fund before its capital gain distribution. When you buy a fund before its capital gain distribution, you can end up owing money on your own money. Always buy after the distribution. Please contact a CPA in your community to avoid making these costly mistakes again.

These are mutual funds which try to minimize the capital gain distributions to its shareholders. Capital gains are realized when securites in the fund are sold by the fund manager at a profit.

No. Capital gain distributions will have no effect on IRA accounts or other tax deferred accounts.