Stock Market Information | Money Watch Finance

Stock Market Information | Money Watch Finance

From CBS MARKETWATCH: Georgia Commerce Club Grows to 1,000 Members in 10 Months

Georgia Commerce Club Grows to 1,000 Members in 10 Months

Thursday September 30, 2010 – 12:22 PM EDT

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Grayson, GEORGIA – The Georgia Commerce Club has garnered over 1,000 registered online members since its inception about ten months ago. It offers complete community involvement and integration by combining social media and business networking.

The Georgia Commerce Club, an interactive/commerce club, has rapidly grown to over 1,000 online members in just ten short months. Its dynamic design and content has enabled Georgia residents to network and grow their business simultaneously.

Damon Ladd-Thomas, an Investment Advisor Representative with NEXT Financial Group, Inc., member FINRA/SIPC, and his wife Tatyana labored to create a free chamber/commerce club in Georgia that supports small businesses by letting registered users interact and form mutually beneficial partnerships. Their efforts have bore fruit as the Georgia Commerce Club has amassed over 1,000 online members, 1500 Facebook fans and 1,600 Twitter followers @GACommerceClub. The highly active website, for all things commerce, has almost 40 weekly events on the community calendar for users to attend and interact with one another.

The “new kid” on the block, at its current pace, is outperforming other more established chamber and business groups in Georgia. “It’s hard to believe this all began with nothing, zero support from any government establishment, zero dollars for advertising, marketing and even salaries. All we started with was our vision combined with the good-will businesses and volunteers wanting to build a better community,” said Damon. “We founded this website on the free “Peachseed” membership and it is our gift to the business community. I urge all business owners to take advantage of it.”

According to www.georgiacommerceclub.org, free membership boasts a multitude of benefits such as a profile, unlimited commercial listings, a group page, community calendar, live chat, business locator and a job/resume board among other things.

Damon Ladd-Thomas Wealth Management is a financial services firm focused on retirement for businesses and their owners. Damon, a 17-year veteran in the industry, specializes in business savings, tax strategy, succession, liquidation, and risk management. He is also a founder of the Florida Commerce Club, and Mike’s Ad Shop, a marketing advocacy group for small businesses.

For more information about the Georgia Commerce Club, call Damon (404) 477-401K, damon@damonladd-thomas.com ; or Taty (404) 585-TATY, taty@georgiacommerceclub.org or visit www.georgiacommerceclub.org. Securities offered through NEXT Financial Group, Inc. Member FINRA/SIPC. Damon Ladd-Thomas Wealth Management is not an affiliate of NEXT Financial Group, Inc.

Company Contact Information
NEXT Financial Group
Kim Kham
2500 Wilcrest, Houston, TX
77042
877-876-6398

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Empire Avenue (Beta)

Holy Cow! another awesome new Beta project we have to share.

(This may be “Part One” and watch for a second installment about Empire Avenues due to the awesome compexity of their product.)

This is Social Media Monopoly meets WALL-STREET!

I have to admit, because of my profession, I am slightly biased about a site that blends a virtual and fictitious,

stock-trading system with a fast action social media site.

Instructions:

First you sign in and self-assign a “stock-like” symbol (and vanity URL) to your profile for social dollar trading tha called “EAVES”. The traded commodity is you, your profile, and all of the members based on influence and popularity. Your “IPO” is the standard $10 of “EAVES” to start and I am not certain how many shares are issued. Your dashboard tells you what percentage of your shares are outstanding and there is no lack of information of what transpires throughout the entire community.

Next the sites guides you in a very clear and simple step-by-step process shown on the right of your home-page at all times. There is even a video on how to use the site.

Without details, you earn cash to trade when you do various connection activities and raise your level of coolness and connect-ability. Then you buy other members’ profiles that are listed by symbol based on your perception of their influence. As transactions occur and you build your portfolio, prices fluctuate and your entire portfolio moves across the top of the site as your “Ticker-Tape” keeps your eyes on the real time movement of the value of all of your holdings.

There are social groups that are Geo-Segregated and quite a few Topically cataloged so you can venture out to find friendly potential buyers of…. YOU.

This site is for the more advanced social media user and may be frustrating for those looking for a more simple or less complicated time-waster.

Good

1. Vanity URL, which we always love. ex http://empireavenue.com/DAMON

2. FaceBook and Twitter integration and friend finders.

3. The most organized beginner’s check list and sequential profile building of any social media site we have navigated. All instructions are simple, in plain English, and available in a video format.

Bad

1. Navigation is complex and the features are not for the novice.

2. The interaction can suck you in and you would want to open this up at your desk, on a work day .

3. Some of the features are limited for newer users and users without a higher EAVES value.

4. If you are not thick skinned or your emotional maturity is limited, when someone sells you or your values decrease, you may need therapy or medication.

P.S. On a side note I am available for non-licensed therapy sessions for $65 an hour as needed.

BTW, my value is up almost 1.5% in my first day, look:

http://empireavenue.com/damon

Website Coming Soon.

Ed Slott’s Roth Conversion Marketing Craze, Flawed?

OP-ED

You cannot deny the Ed Slott Marketing Company as a force, I am just not sure you should hire a marketing company to manage or protect your assets.

This “must-convert” theory breaks all of the scientific or mathematical rules for making a “theory”. There are more than three UNPREDICTABLE suppositions that make the Ed Slott theory undeniably flawed, but three flaws are three too many when managing your money. Nonetheless, here are three.

1. Taxes are going up.

True, we can agree that short term taxes may very well be higher. The real truth is they are “30 year cyclical” and sooner or later the higher entitlement political bozos will be voted out and our taxes will cycle back down in better times. If you retire when taxes come back down, Ed Slott is wrong.

2. The use of “dead assets” to pay the taxes today on the conversion.

A better use of dead assets, other than giving them to the government, is to manage them out of “dead asset” status into a vibrant asset. In my opinion there is no such thing as dead asset.

3. Ignoring the rule of compounding interest over time.

If someone pays a 38% tax on an asset, it can be likened to losing that much in poor market performance. If $100,000 in investable assets is now $62,000 in one day you would want a new financial advisor. (Remember the client’s money is being used to pay taxes even if it is from their checking account and not in this particular asset.) Also, as we all know, it would take a 62% growth of that new Roth asset to be made whole again. The Traditional Tax Deferred advisor is now 62% (market performance) ahead of the Ed Slott “Preferred Advisors”. Give me that lead when managing assets and I am confident with a little compounding over time I could keep that lead. My clients’ taxes in retirement would have to be more than 62% on their RMD’s for Ed’s theory to win. I am not sure that would be likely.

I have been managing money since the early 90’s and even then we were told to manage money based on an inevitable tax increases in the future.

Since then taxes have actually gone down and I have never had a client jump into a higher tax bracket in their retirement years. For the Ed Slott die-hard believers, I sure hope they get a client whose taxable income and bracket are higher in retirement.

Tatyana Ladd-Thomas

Here are some great articles that you can read before paying for Ed Slott’s Programs or the worse, the TAXMAN!

“Even Ed Slott is wrong about Roth IRA Conversions”

“Roth IRA Conversions: Do They Make Sense?”

By Roccy DeFrancesco JD, President, The Wealth Preservation Institute

Independent Advisors work hard and there is no bad marketing solution to get them in front of potential clients. This post is not intended to offend any Ed Slott Advisors and should be read as an opinion and not as a judgement. Be careful of advisors that pay $5000 to be listed and brainwashed by a non-licensed expert like Ed Slott, Dave Ramsay, or Clark Howard. We like a lot of what they say, but would never take their advise over proper experts. We may ask them about their marketing expertise because they all make quite a bit of dough selling their books, tapes, CD’s, speaking engagements, and yes… endorsements.