Dave Kelly | Tech, Writing, and Musings

Small investors are enthusiastic about their new adventure of getting to the market and making a profit. Many get into financial crises along the way as they enter into blind investing. Here are some tips that every small investor should know. Focus on the Long Term Small investors should keep their eyes on long-term results. Unlike many markets, stock investment is a reflection of the future rather than the industry's current situation. Focusing on the short term is ugly and devastating. Sometimes stock may go down to 30% or 40%. An example is what happened last year when the Dow and NASDAQ lost 35 and 24 percent. The Market Drive The past year has been a unique one for the stock market. Investors found themselves in powerful cross currents. Low-interest rates have always been a barrier for investors to get returns for their money. A careful calculation of how much an investor receives from a bank deposit tells it all. The Free Money The current government stimulus money has cau

Roth conversion is the transfer of a traditional IRA into a Roth IRA. Thanks to the recent changes initiated by the SECURE Act, individuals can now pass down their IRA to noun-spouse heirs after their death. It was a dream a few years back. In the past, individuals could stretch out an inherited IRA over the beneficiary's lifetime. This aspect enabled the individual to draw down on the balance while at the same time minimizing any tax hit. However, ever since the stretch became invalid, a non-spouse IRA beneficiary has ten years to drown down their balance, which results in more tax and larger RMD. Roth conversion acts as a solution to this problem through shifting traditional IRA into Roth accounts. These Roth accounts have no (RMDs) required minimal deductions during the lifetime of the account owner. Additionally, they are also immune to federal taxation on any withdrawals carried out. Rules for Roth Conversion There are a few rules that an individual must understand before co

A recent report from the Government Accountability Office (GAO) found that  almost $1.4 billion in COVID-19 stimulus checks  were sent to deceased individuals. The fraud amounted to over one million erroneous payments. The data required to avert this loss of tax-payer money was readily available in government systems, but the data wasn’t accessible to the agency that needed it.  On its face, this sounds like a data-sharing problem. But even if the Social Security Administration (SSA) death index had been shared with the Department of Treasury (the agency that issued the stimulus checks), it wouldn’t have been enough. Why? Because there are 89 million records in the death index, and there are 143 million tax-payers in the United States. Detecting fraudulent applications amidst this volume of data cannot be done by employees alone. It requires data integration and software that looks for anomalies and alerts the employees before the checks go out.   There are many recent examples of this

  The key to a compelling incident response  tabletop exercise  involves modeling likely scenarios and demonstrating probable outcomes resulting from decisions made by the participants. Whether it be a cyberattack, a natural disaster, civil unrest, or all of the above simultaneously, government leaders need a platform with which to test their emergency response plans, challenge their business continuity assumptions, and assess their staff’s operational knowledge under pressure.  By exercising at regular intervals, government agencies can see in real-time where they can gain efficiencies and what gaps exist that need to be filled. Publishing the exercise results and sharing them across disciplines can be the catalyst for fixing broken processes and policies. Modern  business intelligence  (BI) tools and  predictive analytics  capabilities can significantly speed the time to value of these tabletop exercises by automating the decision tree and providing an instant feedback loop.  Because

The Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) established its  National Incident Management System (NIMS)  in 2004. A response to one of President George W. Bush’s Homeland Security Presidential Directives, NIMS sets guidelines for public and private sector collaboration in preventing, mitigating, and responding to domestic incidents.  Because NIMS “applies to all incidents, regardless of cause, size, location, or complexity,” modeling and simulation are vital to strengthening incident management tools. To manage incidents—a process that involves careful analysis and strategy—FEMA utilizes NIMS and the National Response Framework (NRF) to serve as the backbone of its methodologies.  Since 2004, a lot of work has gone into creating realistic scenarios that train government employees and private sector participants to act during an actual emergency. However, simulation scenarios are still largely executed manually with participants working at actual tabletops with notebooks and pap