Rich Chambers, CFP®
Julie Schatz, CFP®

Jennifer Cray, CFP®

Investor's Capital
Management
, LLC
866-966-9291

Office Location:
Menlo Park, CA

Financial Planning and Investment Management for:
Menlo Park, Palo Alto, San Mateo, Belmont, Redwood City, San Carlos, Woodside, Mountain View, Los Altos, Los Altos Hills, Sunnyvale, Santa Clara, San Jose, Cupertino, Foster City, Burlingame, Fremont, Newark, Milpitas, Santa Cruz, Campbell, Los Gatos, Saratoga, Monte Sereno, Aptos, Morgan Hill, Gilroy

Investor's Capital Management, LLC



Our Favorite Links

Links provided by ICM to other sites are for information only. There is no business relationship between ICM and any of the links provided and ICM makes no representations or warranties with respect to the information contained or services provided in any linked sites and takes no responsibility for supplementing, updating, or correcting any such information.

Calculators

LeaseSource
Try the "Lease Workshop" for details on leasing an automobile.

Online Calculators do the Math for You
Try this collection of calculators suggested by Jonathan Clements of the Wall Street Journal;
  See how your retirement-spending strategy would have held up historically: http://www.early-retirement.org/ 
  Test your retirement-spending strategy: http://www3.troweprice.com/ric/RIC/
  Get a handle on your Social Security benefits:
http://www.ssa.gov/OACT/ANYPIA/
     Try the Quick Calculator.
  Get a longevity estimate: http://www.livingto100.com/
  Mortgage and pre-payment and credit card calculators: http://www.bankrate.com/brm/default.asp

Financial Planning

NAPFA - National Association of Personal Financial Advisors
NAPFA
is the largest professional association of comprehensive, Fee-Only financial planners in the United States. Our 900 members and affiliates, in United states, provide consumers and institutions with comprehensive and objective financial advice on a "Fee-Only" basis, keeping only the best interests of the client in mind-- with neither the advisor nor any related party receiving compensation contingent on the purchase or sale of a financial product. The website provides a search engine for NAPFA members in your area.

CFP Board of Standards
The CFP Board of Standards provides certification and licensing to individuals who meet exacting educational and experience criteria. In addition, the continued use of the Certified Financial Planner designation requires ongoing education. The website provides a search engine for CFP practitioners in your area.

Financial Planning Association
The Financial Planning Association is the membership organization for the financial planning community. Members include individuals and companies who have contributed to building the financial planning profession and all those who champion the financial planning process. The website provides a search engine for CFP practitioners in your area.

Garrett Planning Network
A nationwide network of financial planners who offer "Fee-Only Financial Planning and Advice for Everyday Life." All the members of this network offer consulting on an hourly or project basis. The site features an easy-to-use "Find a Planner" section. Click on "Consumers Enter Here" then click on "Find a Planner" to locate Garrett Planning Network members in your local area..

Investment Information

American Association for Individual Investors
The AAII is an excellent resource for a variety of in-depth information. The monthly publication, AAII Journal, is the best investment publication that we read and it accepts no advertising so the reporting is unbiased. AAII has local chapters all over the country that organize informative and educational meetings. We believe so strongly in the AAII that we can provide a trial membership upon request! 

Investment Research and Commentary

Briefing.com
Briefing.com is a unique site designed for active investors seeking live analysis on the market. Briefing.com focuses readers on the important news events of today, with insight into what they mean for the market or individual securities. Briefing.com is produced by analysts with years of market experience. Briefing.com is so good that it is on our daily information checklist but it is a paid subscription site.

The Wall Street Journal Online
Another excellent but paid subscription site that's on our daily information checklist is the Wall Street Journal. Take advantage of their 30-day free trial. We find reading the Journal online is much quicker than the print version because you can access the important articles more quickly and the advertisements are more easily ignored.

The Economist
A well written source of domestic and international economic news.

Morningstar
Morningstar is the best resource for mutual fund information. The Morningstar page has so much analytical information about a fund that it takes a large booklet to explain it all. You can order Morningstar pages at the website for $3 each. Just enter the fund's ticker symbol and then look for "Get a 1-page, print-perfect Morningstar analysis of this fund".

CBS MarketWatch
Our favorite site for general market news and specific company news. Just type in the ticker symbol and a list of recent news articles appears.

Silicon Investor
Silicon Investor is mostly a high-tech stock chat site - we ignore that part. However, they do have timely news and investment topics highlighted as well as their view of the best of the chat postings. It's a good site to get an up-to-the-minute feel of the high-tech market.

Financial Times
It's a good idea to periodically see what the foreign markets are up to.

S&P Personal Wealth

Much of the site is free but if you want the comprehensive S&P Stock Report on a particular security, you can get them here but it's a paid subscription. We view the S&P Stock Report as required analysis before making a stock purchase.

Zacks
Enter the ticker and then on the pull-down menu, select "Estimates" to view the recent earnings estimates for a company. Especially useful is the "Indicated P/E..." listed with the "Consensus".

TheStreet.com
Great spot for breaking news and incisive stock commentary. The free portion of the site is well worth a periodic visit and you may decide to pay for more timely and in-depth information.

The Motley Fool
Lots of discussion and chat room action. The site contains lots of information for beginners and more experienced investors too.

CNNfn
A good site for general information including breaking news, general consumer, and small business items.

Insurance

BestInsuranceRates.com
Best Insurance Rates provides insurance rates online from quality insurance companies, such as health and life insurance rates.

Investment Tools

MSN MoneyCentral Investor
We can't say enough about this great free site! A fantastic portfolio manager, an incredible screening engine, and thought provoking articles. Our favorite site authors are Jim Jubak, Jon Markman, and Mary Rowland. You can spend lots of useful time at this site just understanding all that it has to offer. Don't miss it.

Big Charts
MoneyCentral has decent charting but this is the best available. Try the Interactive Charting button and play around with the settings. We like to use the SMA1 (3-Line) with the Logarithmic chart style. Historical quotes are available.
1Simple Moving Average

YahooFinance

Great site with tons of information and tools - too much content to be discussed here, try it out.

GainsKeeper
Very useful for viewing the details of a merger or spin-off. Often these complex transactions are a nightmare to account for in your portfolio system. By entering the ticker symbol of a stock that was merged into another stock, GainsKeeper produces a report of the resulting activity. However, they do not show cash-in-lieu sales of partial shares. A thirty-day free trial is available and a minimal annual charge is assessed after the trial.

Quicken.com
A great free site with lots of news and useful tools. Quicken can be purchased from the site and it is still the best, inexpensive, offline portfolio tool that provides a lot of time-saving utility for the individual investor. However, MSN MoneyCentral Investor is the best online portfolio tool.

Online Brokers

All these brokers provide download of transactions to Quicken. That alone can save you hours of tedious data entry for tax reporting and performance analysis. Schwab's download is the most reliable. We've used all three of these brokers with very little trouble.

Charles Schwab & Co.
A multi-service broker at a discount price. While Schwab does not provide the cheapest trading (try FreeTrade.com for that), Schwab does provide an amazing array of services for a reasonable price. Schwab is first class all the way around and has local branches you can visit if needed. Try Velocity for an efficient trading system with real-time streaming quotes (streaming quotes are only available for larger portfolios).

TD Ameritrade
Less features than Schwab but somewhat lower costs.

Taxes

Fairmark
This site is well presented and organized and has tons of practical information on many tax topics.

Top Ten Things that Cause AMT Liability
A great overview of Alternative Minimum Tax concepts.

Books

Here's a list of our favorite books on investing and financial planning:

1. Common Sense on Mutual Funds : New Imperatives for the Intelligent Investor
John Bogle (previous Chairman of Vanguard Funds) - Somewhat dense but the best investment guide I've seen to mutual fund investing (keep in mind he's biased towards index funds).

3. Simple Asset Allocation Strategies
Roger Gibson - Short, (71 pages), but has all the basics of asset allocation, how & why.

4. Charles Schwab's Guide to Financial Independence : Simple Solutions for Busy People
Charles Schwab - You can get this one on audio tape. Schwab is a real proponent of individual stock investing.

More Advanced:

1. The Intelligent Asset Allocator
William Bernstein - Excellent and includes detailed discussions of indexing/passive investing.

2. The Four Pillars of Investing
William Bernstein - Another excellent book by Bernstein.

3. Against the Gods - The Remarkable Story of Risk
Peter Bernstein - Discussion of risk analysis throughout the ages.

Also take a look at this reading list from William Bernstein, one of our favorite authors:
http://www.efficientfrontier.com/reading.htm

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