Here are 5 tips to help you manage your investments and lower your taxes

1. If you are inclined to buy and sell stocks for profit, I recommend doing so in your retirement account.  This is the best option for short term trading activity because the gains will grow tax deferred.
2. For your traditional investment account you want to decrease the amount of turnover.  If you realize gains on investments that you hold for under a year you will have to pay short term capital taxes on those gains, usually in the neighborhood of thirty five percent if you are in the highest tax band.  The best advice is to hold on to your winning stocks for over one year, then you can claim long term capital gains and only pay a rate of fifteen percent.
3. The IRS allows us to offset your capital gains with losses and in addition you can write off up to 3k in over losses.
4. Your IRA account should be utilized if you are looking to play in the corporate, t-bond or REIT game.  The advantage here is that you will be taxed the same on interest income as you are on earned income.
5. Drop the high fees – Management fees can eat away at your profits.  In your non-ira accounts you should invest in index funds instead of mutual funds.  Index funds make very few changes and therefore you will not be taxed to death like you would be with all the changes occurring in a managed mutual fund. 

These five simple tips will help alleviate the tax pain and put more money in your pocket instead of the governments.

Based in San Jose, CA, Xilinx is a global leader in the semiconductor industry. It pioneered the fabless manufacturing model – which involves outsourcing silicon wafer production – and ranks among the world’s leading patent holders.
Today, Xilinx is the world’s No. 1 provider of programmable logic devices (PLDs). These are chips that can be programmed after being shipped. Customers then don’t have to worry about constantly replacing computer chips as new needs arise or technologies develop. Instead, they can just reprogram existing ones.
According to market analyst iSuppli Corp., Xilinx now controls more than half of the world market for programmable logic devices. These are the innovation platform of choice for Xilinx customers: the more than 20,000 companies that design tens of thousands of electronic products.
PLDs are more expensive and consume more energy than ordinary chips. That means Xilinx must often educate customers with a cost/benefit analysis.
Yet it still isn’t a particularly tough sell. Most of its customers are technologically savvy telecom gear makers. Customers like how they can:
• Deliver innovative new products to market in a matter of weeks
• Drastically reduce research and development costs
• Change or upgrade product features and functions as needed to meet new market demands and adapt to changing industry standards
Things Are Only Just Beginning to Heat Up for Xilinx
Smart phones, video sharing and the prevalence of 3-D video are driving demand for more bandwidth.
Historically, chipmakers developed custom integrated circuits for every application. But the pileup of multiple applications in handheld devices is making the flexibility of PLDs enormously appealing.
Cost alone will force device makers to switch to more advanced technologies. And Xilinx is ready for them.
The chipmaker recently rolled out its 7 series that consumes 50% less power than its last version. It also employs a unified architecture that makes it easier to scale technology up or down and reduces R&D costs.
I don’t want to put you to sleep with a lot of technical talk. So let me sum it up by saying that every 4
company is interested in operating more efficiently and less expensively. That’s what Xilinx enables them to do.
In this economic downturn, companies are aggressively seeking ways to cut costs. That, in turn, is boosting Xilinx’s bottom line.
Last quarter, profit at Xilinx soared 43%. Operating margins top 32%. And management is earning a healthy 30% return on equity.
In fact, the biggest problem at Xilinx is meeting demand. After the downturn in late 2008, foundries cut back their capacity and the rebound has taken them by surprise. Many now can’t keep up. So Xilinx is using multiple foundries and double ordering to keep pace.
Then again, scrambling to meet demand is the kind of problem most businesses would like to have right now.

When you decide on the sort of investment that is right for you, you must consider the goals and the risk tolerance. In case you have reached the conclusion that the tolerance you have is of low risk, then make sure that the style or strategy you adopt for your investment is either conservative or at most, moderate. Deciding that your risk tolerance is that of a higher risk, then it is better to approach the aggressive style, if not at least the moderate one.

However, the risk tolerance doesn’t represent for many a factor to determine their investment style. In this situation it is better to consider your investment goals. But if you want to set your financial targets at saving for the retirement years, and you are still a young person, then there is no need to be in a hurry.

The right option here is the conservative or moderate style of investment. But if you are, let’s say willing to save money for purchasing you a house in the near future, then you should turn into an aggressive investor.

* The conservative investment style – will go for a gradually developing profit over a longer period of time. In this strategy, you should be concerned with the recovering of the initial deposit. For example, if you have invested $10,000, make sure that the same amount is gained back at least. This style of investing includes common bonds and stocks, money market accounts on short term, and savings account with interest earning.

* The moderate investment style – will take a higher tolerance regarding the risk involved. Through a moderate style, a part of the investment goes for the conservative style, while the rest can be kept aside for higher risk investments. An eloquent example will show that for someone who has $10,000 put for moderate investing, the $5,000 or $7,000 sum will be reserved for conservative style of investing, the rest of $5,000 or $3,000 will be kept for higher risk investing.

* The aggressive investing style – will go for putting the money in the game and take an immediate high profit with the sum or lose all the money. The aggressive investors do not only invest in this style, but they can also go for the conservative manner, although their big concern is to put huge amounts of money in higher risk ventures, hoping for larger returns.

Bottom line: make sure that you know what your risk tolerance and financial goals are before putting any of the above mentioned investment styles into action.

Making an investment is not considered an easy action, as many of you might think. This operation requires planning with the purpose of achieving the goals that one has set up for.

If you consider investing in any type of business, you should see for the key elements involved in the act of investing: capital, time span, and the type of business venture you set your mind on. All of these elements are interrelated, but the ‘time span’ detail can lead to a better judgment and a better decision regarding the other alternatives that should be approached.

In relation to the ‘time span’ element, one can classify investments into short term and long term operation. They come both with their pros and cons, but it is the best to approach both of them and see how you can maintain a cyclic profitable activity.

With the short term investment you are certain to earn quick profits and they can be also high if invested wisely. But for the peak of your earnings, you should constantly keep an analytic eye on the market conditions, keeping track of the fluctuations.

Many investors have started this way to multiply their capital and to further go for an important long term investment. The short terms investments include those related to buying gold, stocks, binds, as well as taking loans.

But there are also a large number of drawbacks connected to the short term investments. For high returns, there are the higher risks attached to them. These investments require a good timing most of the times and you can end up on several occasions losing the money. It is the ever fluctuating market and its uncertain conditions that affect the short term investments, so you should prove caution as well.

The long term investments, on the other hand, are not that risky and are considered more favorable for those investors who like to maintain a low profile. These sorts of investments, as the name suggests, take longer time into maturing. The earning is less, but it will keep coming for many years, once the investment is done wisely.

Those who want to secure goals for long term, such as retirement plans or saving for their children’s future, this time span element is the recommended one. The real estate business is another type of investment for longer term.

The downside of this investment is that it presents also some risks, not to mention that it is not appropriate for immediate large gains. Another thing would be that one can not have the guarantee that with the long term, the returns will increase. They can be subject to losses as they rely as well on market moods. One last disadvantage is that there is no control over the capital, counting also the fact that you can be penalized in case you want to withdraw the funds earlier than planned.

It is very important that the money you plan to invest should be set aside along with other costs involved in the process, such as costs for financial advisor, inflation, broker and tax consultant.

* Higher risk investments (“maximum exposure to upside returns”). When you have already the money for investing, you must use a part for those investments that involve higher risks as in this way you can get high returns.

Without risks there won’t be such a thing as high returns, you should know this already. The researches that you conduct should point you the minimal risks investments, although there won’t be any 100% guarantee of the success. You could get the assistance of an advisor for more winning chances.

* Safe investments (“limit exposure to downside returns”). This will ensure you of having a great percentage of the investment. Due to so many changes in economy, the safety conditions have also changed, making people to lose money there where they have thought it is safe. You can again benefit from the advice and experience of a consultant or broker.

* Diversify investments. Various types of investments exist out there and due to this thing you can always make yourself a diversified portfolio of investments. This will make you look more stable once you have the following diverse investments included in your portfolio:

- Asset classes like bonds, stocks, treasuries, gold, etc. that can be mixed.
- The time preference – the assets should be valued at various moments in tome, so that when a crash comes, not all the assets to be influenced by it.
- The existence of more than one manager – it is good to rely on a single manager, but you have to consider that he or she is after all human, and errors many times relate to humans. Therefore you will be better off having more than one manager, thus you will reduce the risks of having errors done.

* Keep an open eye to the existing risks. All the investments are risky, but knowing them from the start will make the investors able to plan for loss absorption. At the same time, the portfolio will be diversified, evening out the low and high risk investments obtaining maximum potential return.

* Do not fall for hunting the ‘hot’ tips. This is a rule that all the investors should know about. In this field everyone wants to win, so there won’t be any tip that one is receiving to be considered hot. If it was hot, it wouldn’t be a tip, so be aware of this sort of investment. As trustable as the source is, make sure that you thoroughly check before launching in the investment.

To invest wisely means not only knowing what to do, but also knowing how to avoid making mistakes. The following two mistakes are commonly referred to when dealing with investments in the behavioral perspective:

* Status Quo bias – refers to the tendency of many investors to over assess the existing situation instead of resorting to alternatives. This is reflected by the stubbornness of some investors when it comes to selling what they own and re-invest in better stocks. The reason is that they feel safer when leaving the things as they are. But there are many other consequences that come with this common mistake.

It is this attachment that has grown towards the thing that they already have, this leading for later losses or losing better opportunities to make money. If you count among these investors, then you should ask yourself what you would have done when seeing the investment with other investor’s eyes: would you still put your money in it?

If the answer is a big ‘no’, then you should consider re-investing. It makes no sense to leave your money to go up with only 5% when they could be better expected to go up to 25% or even more!

* The endowment effect – refers to the tendency people have to add more value to the things they possess. As one experiment has shown, we are more prone to give more value for the things that we are attached to. For instance a book that we like and is ours, we can value it more than any other similar object found in the public bookstores. The same thing happens even if we are temporarily attached to a certain object.

It is exactly what happens in the case of an investment that one has: he can hang on to it, just because it’s his, he owns it. This is moreover valid in the event that the investor has done some researches and has already his theory related to the investing onto which he will strongly hold. But it is safer to take a look at each of the investments as if they aren’t yet yours. You sill see that in this way it is useless to hold onto them so tightly.

The real estate market is a good example of endowment effect. You can have a new facility added to the house that you think it increases the house value with 20% when in fact it can be seen on the market with an increased value of merely 5%.

This can become quite a big issue when you set your mind on selling the specific house. You could wait for more years to have the house sold, which would probably lead to a more deterioration and as such more money to invest in for its renovation. Many people are holding onto a higher value than the one that can be truly attached to the price of the house when needing to sell it.

Stock market might seem to many a hard thing to comprehend, but when it comes to dealing with financial trading, at least some basics should be known in this matter. Stock market is in fact composed of many types ranging from penny stocks to buying individual shares, all of them being approached with the right strategy related to the risks involved – high or low risks.

Stock market has attracted many investors, you can bet that at least some of them are those who own a pension fund and are willing to invest a part of this fund into stock market. In the pension report that is sent to the pensioners, it is described the way a part of this fund is going to be put in shares and stocks.

The following list will show you how to invest in stock market:

* Investing in stock and shares – inside your local newspaper you can find the financial pages that display the companies’ list and the share price they have each day. You can choose one of these companies, then go online and buy the shares (not before seeing the price per share, of course). As you can see there isn’t anything simpler, right?

Well, the hard part here is to do the right selection of the company, as you will need for your invested money to increase in an expected period of time. The trick here is to use the expected investment period because you are given the chance to: trade for short time, buy and then sell fast enough and get a rather good profit.

You can reach to buy shares through unit trust or ISA (for UK residents), but in this case you must make sure that the plan strategy is in accordance with your investment requirements. For instance, if you look to make a low risk investment, then make sure that the investment vehicle uses a low risk strategy.

If you are led by the belief that it is safe to invest for long term, then you should look at the index trackers before actual investing. With the index tracker you are presented with a ‘pile’ of shares that go with the index they are tracking. For instance, you can find trackers that track the FTSE 100 Share Index, 100 meaning the number of UK companies. With an index tracker for this case you will be given a portfolio of shares belonging to these 100 companies.

If you are willing to go this way, you can select the index that you want from all the existing ones, locate the most appropriate index tracker investing fund, purchase the investment waiting for it to grow.

Another way of investing is to establish stock market investment on monthly basis. Thus you will benefit from buying your shares low when the market is low and buy high when the market is higher. It is considered a strategic investment because you can even out the troughs and the peaks of the stock market.

Investing has always been a matter of knowing where the money goes. When choosing to invest in something there is also a degree of risk involved, for some things there are higher risks, while for others smaller risks. The level of risk is directly proportional with the amount of money invested. It is not hard to invest, as long as you are up to it, but this operation should be done with extreme knowledge and deep education in to it.

Before investing you should know that the degree of risk involved is categorized as; low risk, moderate risk and high risk. The following tips will help you see better into these levels of risks allowing you to be better prepared before any of such initiatives:

* For the low risk investments – with this sort of investing you are always certain to save money on the long or short run. These investments are not that often brought into the investors’ attention, due to their low rate of risk. Investing in something that is known to be of low risk won’t be highly rewarding, but at least this thing is less transparent than other types of investments.

Some types of bonds, money market funds and certificate of deposits are some of the investments regarded as low risk ones. Most investors who want for the money to be secure and safe, can opt for this kind of investing. Although the returns are not that large, the low risk investments operate as stable and secure investing for those who are willing to avoid high risks and as such not allowing themselves to lose money. The yields in this case can go from 1% to 5% per year.

* For the moderate risk investment – with this sort of investing you can invest for longer term. In this situation you can find several types of stocks, mutual funds, and bonds that pay quite big over a longer period of time. This initiative is seen much riskier than saving money in the bank, but at the same time, your money can grow unexpectedly more than you have ever predicted.

Once you are willing to invest in the business that are seen as moderately risky, you should know that it will take from 10 to 40 years for the savings to grow impressively. There are the compound interest and time used in this initiative such as saving 1K/year at an interest rate of 10% which in a period of 30 years it can bring a return of 200K, more or less. The yields in this situation are of 5% to 12%.

* For the high risk investment – this one can return huge rewards in case you are lucky enough. There is however a downside that you must consider: it can happen as well for the investing to return only a small part of the investment or nothing at all. So, the conclusion here is either you become rich or you lose money. In this category you can meet the international stocks, penny stocks, some kinds of Forex trades and so on. The yields here can go from 10% to 25%++.