STOCK MARKET WATCH -- Monday, 19 October 2015

[Tansy_Gold]

[font size=3]STOCK MARKET WATCH, Monday, 19 October 2015[font color=black][/font]

SMW for 16 October 2015

AT THE CLOSING BELL ON 16 October 2015
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Dow Jones 17,215.97 +74.22 (0.43%)
S&P 500 2,033.11 +9.25 (0.46%)
Nasdaq 4,886.69 +16.59 (0.34%)


[font color=red]10 Year 2.03% +0.02 (1.00%)
30 Year 2.88% +0.03 (1.05%) [font color=black]


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[font size=2]Market Conditions During Trading Hours[/font]
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(click on link for latest updates)
Market Updates
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[font size=2]Euro, Yen, Loonie, Silver and Gold[center]

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[font color=black][font size=2]Handy Links - Market Data and News:[/font][/font]
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Economic Calendar
Marketwatch Data
Bloomberg Economic News
Yahoo Finance
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Daily Job Cuts
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[font color=black][font size=2]Handy Links - Economic Blogs:[/font][/font]
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The Big Picture
Financial Sense
Calculated Risk
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Brad DeLong
Bonddad
Atrios
goldmansachs666
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[font color=black][font size=2]Handy Links - Essential Reading:[/font][/font]
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Matt Taibi: Secret and Lies of the Bailout


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[font color=black][font size=2]Handy Links - Government Issues:[/font][/font]
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LegitGov
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Earmark Database
USA spending.gov
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[font color=black][font size=2]Handy Links - Videos:[/font][/font]
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Charlie Rose talks with Roubini
Charlie Rose talks with Krugman
William Black: This Economic Disaster
Bill Moyers with Kevin Drum and David Corn
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[font color=red]Partial List of Financial Sector Officials Convicted since 1/20/09 [/font][font color=red]
2/2/12 David Higgs and Salmaan Siddiqui, Credit Suisse, plead guilty to conspiracy involving valuation of MBS
3/6/12 Allen Stanford, former Caribbean billionaire and general schmuck, convicted on 13 of 14 counts in $2.2B Ponzi scheme, faces 20+ years in prison
6/4/12 Matthew Kluger, lawyer, sentenced to 12 years in prison, along with co-conspirator stock trader Garrett Bauer (9 years) and co-conspirator Kenneth Robinson (not yet sentenced) for 17 year insider trading scheme.
6/14/12 Allen Stanford sentenced to 110 years without parole.
6/15/12 Rajat Gupta, former Goldman Sachs director, found guilty of insider trading. Could face a decade in prison when sentenced later this year.
6/22/12 Timothy S. Durham, 49, former CEO of Fair Financial Company, convicted of one count conspiracy to commit wire and securities fraud, 10 counts of wire fraud, and one count of securities fraud.
6/22/12 James F. Cochran, 56, former chairman of the board of Fair, convicted of one count of conspiracy to commit wire and securities fraud, one count of securities fraud, and six counts of wire fraud.
6/22/12 Rick D. Snow, 48, former CFO of Fair, convicted of one count of conspiracy to commit wire and securities fraud, one count of securities fraud, and three counts of wire fraud.
7/13/12 Russell Wassendorf Sr., CEO of collapsed brokerage firm Peregrine Financial Group Inc. arrested and charged with lying to regulators after admitting to authorities he embezzled "millions of dollars" and forged bank statements for "nearly twenty years."
8/22/12 Doug Whitman, Whitman Capital LLC hedge fund founder, convicted of insider trading following a trial in which he spent more than two days on the stand telling jurors he was innocent
10/26/12 UPDATE: Former Goldman Sachs director Rajat Gupta sentenced to two years in federal prison. He will, of course, appeal. . .
11/20/12 Hedge fund manager Matthew Martoma charged with insider trading at SAC Capital Advisors, and prosecutors are looking at Martoma's boss, Steven Cohen, for possible involvement.
02/14/13 Gilbert Lopez, former chief accounting officer of Stanford Financial Group, and former controller Mark Kuhrt sentenced to 20 yrs in prison for their roles in Allen Sanford's $7.2 billion Ponzi scheme.
03/29/13 Michael Sternberg, portfolio mgr at SAC Capital, arrested in NYC, charged with conspiracy and securities fraud. Pled not guilty and freed on $3m bail.
04/04/13 Matthew Marshall Taylor,fmr Goldman Sachs trader arrested, charged by CFTC w/defrauding his employer on $8BN futures bet "by intentionally concealing the true huge size, as well as the risk and potential profits or losses associated."
04/04/13 Matthew Taylor admits guilt, makes plea bargain. Sentencing set for 26 June; faces up to 20 years in prison but will likely only see 3-4 years. Says, "I am truly sorry."
04/11/13 Ex-KPMG LLP partner Scott London charged by federal prosecutors w/passing inside tips to a friend in exchange for cash, jewelry, and concert tickets; expected to plead guilty in May.
08/01/13 Fabrice Tourré convicted on six counts of security fraud, including "aiding and abetting" his former employer, Goldman Sachs
08/14/13 Javier Martin-Artajo and Julien Grout charged with wire fraud, falsifying records, and conspiracy in connection with JP Morgan's "London Whale" trade.
08/19/13 Phillip A. Falcone, manager of hedge fund Harbinger Capital Partners, agrees to admit to "wrongdoing" in market manipulation. Will banned from securities industry for 5 years and pay $18MM in disgorgement and fines.
09/16/13 Javier Martin-Artajo and Julien Grout officially indicted on charges associated with "London Whale" trade.
02/06/14 Matthew Martoma convicted of insider trading while at hedge fund SAC (Stephen A. Cohen) Capital Advisors. Expected sentence 7-10 years.
03/24/14 Annette Bongiorno, Bernard Madoff's secretary; Daniel Bonventre, director of operations for investments; JoAnn Crupi, an account manager; and Jerome O'Hara and George Perez, both computer programmers convicted of conspiracy to defraud clients, securities fraud, and falsifying the books and records.
05/19/14 Credit Suisse, which has an investment bank branch in NYC, agrees to plead guilty and pay appx. $2.6 billion penalties for helping wealthy Americans hide wealth and avoid taxes.
09/08/14 Matthew Martoma, convicted SAC trader, sentenced to 9 years in prison plus forfeiture of $9.3 million, including home and bank accounts
08/03/15 Former City (London) trader Tom Hayes found guilty of rigging global Libor interest rates. Each fo eight counts carries up to 10 yr. sentence.
08/21/15 Charles Antonucci Sr, former pres. Park Ave. Bank sentenced to 2.5 years in prison for bribery, fraud, embezzlement, and attempt to steal $11MM in TARP bailout funds, as well as $37.5MM fraud on OK insurance company. To pay $54MM in restitution and give up additional $11MM.
09/21/15 Volkswagen CEO Martin Winterkorn apologizes for VW cheating on air quality standards with emission testing avoidance device. Stock drops 20%, fines may total $18B.
09/22/15 Stewart Parnell, CEO Peanut Corp. of America, sentenced to 28 years in prison for selling salmonella-tainted peanut butter that killed nine.





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[font size=3][font color=red]This thread contains opinions and observations. Individuals may post their experiences, inferences and opinions on this thread. However, it should not be construed as advice. It is unethical (and probably illegal) for financial recommendations to be given here.[/font][/font][/font color=red][font color=black]

[Demeter]

1. Only one thing to say about that 'toon

for the Nobel Peace Prize Loser

[Demeter]

2. An historian explains the real reason Republicans can’t find a Speaker of the House

http://www.rawstory.com/2015/10/a-historian-explains-the-real-reason-republicans-cant-find-a-speaker-of-the-house/

Republicans cannot find a Speaker of the House for one reason: they are reaping what they have sown. The base of the party has been promised for over forty years that the social issues Republicans candidates have supported will become federal policy if they are elected—and yet here we stand with abortion legal, immigration run amok, and gay marriage recognized by the Supreme Court. And then there is the oath for smaller government and lower taxes. The voters who bought into all of the Republican promises are simply fed up. They feel like there has been a massive bait and switch campaign sponsored by their own party’s leaders for almost half a century now. Thus, we have the current crisis in the House and the persistent threat of government shutdown.

We did not get here by fluke or accident. Some brilliant political theorists back in 1970 predicted that the “Social Issue” was going to replace the issue of prosperity with order in national politics. Richard Scammon and Ben Wattenberg wrote a book, The Real Majority, that became the Bible for Richard Nixon and his domestic advisor Chuck Colson. Like the authors, Nixon and Colson foresaw the massive transformation that was taking place in national politics in reaction to the excesses of the New Deal, the Great Society, and the social chaos churned up by the Vietnam War and the Civil Rights movement. The “real majority” coalesced around the backlash against a federal government that seemed hell-bent on being the definer, provider, and protector of economic, political, and social rights. These rights proliferated and became more and more controversial and the source of voter alienation: civil rights (including affirmative action); economic rights (not just broad-based programs like Social Security and Medicare but welfare and federal food and housing programs for the poor and underprivileged); and social rights (student rights and, most critically, women’s rights). This was the Nixon counterrevolution, which became known later as the Reagan revolution. Individual liberty was at stake. The voters who responded to this tidal change in national politics were a hodge-podge of disaffected Democrats: Southerners who bolted the Democratic Party after the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and its progeny, Catholics who vehemently disagreed with Roe v. Wade, and labor and union members who thought the student objectors to the Vietnam War were reprobates and unpatriotic. The “hardhats” beat some of these protestors mercilessly, some perhaps their own children, in the streets of New York City in the week following the Kent State shootings.

If there is one day when this counterrevolution took shape it has to be January 22, 1973. On that day, Henry Kissinger flew to Paris to end the Vietnam War for the United States; Justice Harry Blackmun delivered the Supreme Court’s opinion on abortion in Roe v. Wade; and Lyndon Johnson died in Texas from a heart attack at the age of sixty-four. It was a remarkable day by any measure, filled with meaning and significance. Two days earlier, Richard Nixon had delivered his second inaugural address. In it, he promised to transform the federal government: to make it smaller and to transfer power back to the state and local governments. He said it was time to “turn away from the condescending policies of paternalism—of ‘Washington knows best.’” The nation would return, he said, to self-reliance. “Let us measure what we will do for others by what they will do for themselves,” he declared. President Nixon twisted JFK’s call for government service (“Ask not what your country can do for you, but what you can do for your country”) by saying: “Let each of us ask—not just ‘What will the government do for me?’ but ‘What can I do for myself?’” This was the start of the “me generation,” a turning back on the concerted war on poverty of LBJ and the beginning of what became our culture wars. Nixon and Colson can be heard on a very late night phone call the evening before the second inaugural chirping about the historic significance of Nixon’s address. Colson reported that he had just spoken with Richard Scammon, who was studying the changing demographics of the electorate as a consultant for the Nixon Administration. “The numbers are on our side,” Colson said to Nixon, who took the call in the Lincoln Sitting Room in the White House residence. “On the other side (meaning the Democratic Party), you have a coalition of labor, black and poor, but the labor you’ve broken away,” Colson continued. “So you’ve got the blacks and the poor….” “And the intellectuals,” Nixon interrupted. “Right,” Colson agreed, “and the intellectuals—the New Left. And as Scammon says, the lavender shirt mob, what he calls the New Left—the homos and queers—and he said that’s the bunch that now makes up the Democratic Party.”1

The Supreme Court inadvertently super-charged these culture wars with its decision in Roe v. Wade. Thinking they were settling the reproductive rights issue for generations to come, the abortion ruling sparked the rise of the Religious Right in national politics and accelerated the social divide that Nixon and Colson sponsored. Eventually, all Supreme Court candidates had to pass the abortion litmus test. And because abortion is a “no compromise” issue, the idea of government shutdown and deadlock entered our political bloodstream. “No compromise” became the political weapon of choice. Nixon referred to the voters he wanted to attract as “the great silent majority.” There is little coincidence that Donald Trump this summer called for the return of the silent majority. And there is also no surprise that the debate over Planned Parenthood has devolved into another threat of government shutdown. Now it has become the crisis of leadership in the House of Representatives. The voters who are angry today point to disillusionment with the Republican Party and its leaders who have yet to deliver on most of the core promises that date back to Nixon’s time in office. The government is not smaller, it is dramatically bigger. Social rights continue to flourish. Nothing has been accomplished; all has been traded away. Enough is enough.

This turmoil is not new, but it is extremely dangerous. In 1998, the New York Times wrote that the Religious Right had run out of patience as their social agenda had been pushed to the back burner year after year or was bargained away in legislative deals: “In one election after another, they said, conservative foot soldiers had dutifully worked the phone banks, walked the precincts and turned out the masses of voters for Republican candidates who had promised action on issues like abortion, pornography, and homosexuality. And the Republicans, they complained, had consistently failed to deliver.”2

Is there any wonder that those on the Right want action, not words? Pity the leader who inherits this mess. This one has been long brewing.

_____

1 Tape 36-18 (January 20, 1973, Nixon and Colson phone call), Nixon Library.

2“Religious Right, Frustrated, Trying New Tactic on G.O.P.,” New York Times, March 23, 1998.



By James Robenalt

James Robenalt is a presidential historian and the author of “January 1973: Watergate, Roe v. Wade, Vietnam, and the Month That Changed America Forever.”

[Demeter]

3. And then, on the other side of the political spectrum, we have the revolution to come

from the liberal, progressive, socialist-leaning amongst the Democrats, who have seen their rights, freedoms, and protections withering away.

One would have thought (and hoped) that the "Silent Majority" social fascist class had all died off by now, or at least seen the error of their ways. After all, Nixon is dead, as is probably half his band of Merry Men...however, they spawned a second and third generation with even fewer ties to reality than the sires, and those are the GOP first string today. While banksters and the economy they highjacked are working to drag us all under, the social conformists are still trying to rearrange the seatings on the Titanic, while the Socialists are trying to steer the ship of state to safe water.

Where will it end? I'm not confident it ever will end. After all, this battle started a long time ago with writing slavery and racism into the Constitution, and all the while socialists are trying to expand the electorate, the fascists are trying to eliminate as many people as possible from the process of governance.

[Punx]

10. Fools and their Votes, are soon parted.

[Demeter]

4. The Problem With Oil Prices Is That They Are Not Low Enough

AND NOW, FOR SOMETHING COMPLETELY DIFFERENT....

http://www.forbes.com/sites/arthurberman/2015/10/18/the-problem-with-oil-prices-is-that-they-are-not-low-enough/

...Current oil prices are simply not low enough to stop over-production. Unless external investment capital is curtailed and producers learn to live within cash flow, a production surplus and low oil prices will persist for years. HE SAYS THAT LIKE IT'S A BAD THING...

Energy Is The Economy

GDP (gross domestic product) correlates empirically with oil prices (Figure 1). GDP increases when oil prices are low or falling; GDP is flat when oil prices are high or rising (GDP and oil prices in the figure are in August 2015 dollars).



Figure 1. U.S. GDP and WTI oil price. GDP and WTI are in August 2015 dollars. Note: I use WTI prices because Brent pricing did not exist before the 1970s.
Source: U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, The World Bank, EIA and Labyrinth Consulting Services, Inc.

This is because global economic output is highly sensitive to the cost and availability of energy resources (it is also sensitive to debt). Liquid fuels–gasoline, diesel and jet fuel–power most worldwide transport of materials, and electricity from coal and natural gas powers most manufacturing. When energy prices are high, profit margins are lower and economic output and growth slows, and vice versa. Because oil prices were high in the 4 years before September 2014 and the subsequent oil-price collapse, GDP was flat and economic growth was slow. That, along with high government, corporate and household debt loads, is the main reason why the post-2008 recession has been so persistent and difficult to correct through monetary policy.

Why Oil Prices Were High 2010-2014 and Why They Are Low Today

Brent oil prices exceeded $90 per barrel (August 2015 dollars) for 46 months from November 2010 until September 2014 (Figure 2). This was the longest period of high oil prices in history. Prolonged high prices made tight oil, ultra-deep water oil and oil-sand development feasible. Over-investment and subsequent over-production of expensive oil contributed to the global liquids surplus that caused oil prices to collapse beginning in September 2014.



Figure 2. Brent price in 2015 dollars and world liquids production deficit or surplus.
Source: EIA, U.S., U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics and Labyrinth Consulting Services, Inc.

Oil prices were high during during the 4 years before prices collapsed because world liquids production deficits dominated the oil markets. This was due mostly to ongoing politically-driven supply interruptions in Libya, Iran, and Sudan beginning in 2011. The easing of tensions particularly in Libya after 2013 along with increasing volumes of tight and other expensive oil led to a production surplus by early 2014 (Figure 3). Before January 2014, supply was less than consumption but afterward, supply was greater than consumption.



Figure 3. World liquids supply and consumption, and Brent crude oil price.
Source: EIA and Labyrinth Consulting Services, Inc.

The global production surplus has persisted for 21 months and supply is still 1.2 million barrels per day more than consumption. This is the main cause of low oil prices that began in mid-2014....


MORE AT LINK--A BASIC GUIDE TO UNDERSTANDING A BASIC FACT OF GLOBAL ECONOMY

[Demeter]

5. How Much Money Does the 1% Have Hidden in Tax Havens?

By Gabriel Zucman, assistant professor of economics at the University of California, Berkeley. Excerpted from his new book, The Hidden Wealth of Nations: The Scourge of Tax Havens.

http://www.alternet.org/books/how-much-money-does-1-have-hidden-tax-havens

Tax havens are at the heart of financial, budgetary, and democratic crises. Let’s take a look: In the course of the last five years alone in Ireland and Cyprus—two offshore centers with hypertrophic financial systems—banks have gone almost bankrupt, plunging thousands of people into poverty. In the United States, Congress has revealed that one of the largest companies on the planet, Apple, avoided tens of billions in taxes by manipulating the location of its profits.

In France, the budget minister had to resign because he had cheated on his taxes for twenty years through hidden accounts. In Spain, the former treasurer of the party in power went to jail after having revealed a hidden system of financing through accounts in Switzerland. Accepting the status quo seems irresponsible. Each country has the right to choose its forms of taxation.But when Luxembourg offers tailored tax deals to multi-national companies, when the British Virgin Islands enables money launderers to create anonymous companies for a penny, when Switzerland keeps the wealth of corrupt elites out of sight in its coffers, they all steal the revenue of foreign nations. And they all win—fees, domestic activity, sometimes great influence on the international stage—while the rest of us lose. In the end, the taxes that are evaded have to be compensated for by higher taxes on the law-abiding, often middle-class households in the United States, Europe, and developing countries.

Nothing in the logic of free exchange justifies this theft. For some, the battle against tax havens has been viewed as lost from the start. From London to Delaware, from Hong Kong to Zurich, offshore banking centers are essential cogs in the financial machine of capitalism, used by the rich and powerful throughout the world. We can’t do anything about them, we’re told: some countries will always impose less tax and fewer rules than their neighbors. Money will always find a safe haven: strike here, it will go over there. Capitalism without tax havens is a utopia, and a progressive taxation of income and fortunes is destined to fail, unless we choose the path of protectionism. For others, the battle has almost been won. Thanks to the determination of governments and to multiple scandals and revelations, tax havens will soon die out. From the harsh words of large countries seeking new solutions ever since the financial crisis, they have all promised to abandon banking secrecy, and multinationals will finally be forced to open their books and pay what they owe. This is the triumph of virtue.What is missing in this debate is data.

Tax evasion by the wealthiest individuals and large corporations can be stopped, but only if we have statistics to measure it, to implement proportional penalties against the countries that facilitate it, and to monitor progress. It is with this goal in mind that I wrote this book, an economic study of tax havens. I gathered the available sources on the international investments of countries, the balances of payments, the on- and off-balance sheet positions of banks, the wealth and income of nations, the accounts of multinational companies, and the archives of Swiss banks. Some of these statistics had never been used before, and this is the first time that all this information has been collected, confronted, and analyzed with a single objective: to expose the true activities of tax havens and their costs to foreign nations. Let’s say it from the outset: These statistics have many imperfections, and the results of my study are thus in no way definitive. Our system for measuring world financial activity has many weaknesses. But this is no reason not to use it. In spite of any limitations, the available data shed an irrefutable light on the activity of tax havens; and there is no foreseeable progress in ending tax evasion without a quantitative picture of the extent of this fraud...

MORE

[Demeter]

6. Michael Hudson ON MARX: The Paradox of Financialized Industrialization

http://michael-hudson.com/2015/10/the-paradox-of-financialized-industrialization/

... someone asked me whether Marx was right or wrong. I didn’t know how to answer this question at the time, because the answer is so complex. But at least today I can focus on his view of crises.

More than any other economist of his century, Marx tied together the three major kinds of crisis that were occurring. His Theories of Surplus Value explained the two main forms of crises his classical predecessors had pointed to, and which the bourgeois revolutions of 1848 were fought over. These crises were the result of survivals from Europe’s feudal epoch of landed aristocracy and banking fortunes.

Financially, Marx pointed to the tendency of debts to grow exponentially, independently of the economy’s ability to pay, and indeed faster than the economy itself. The rise in debt and accrual of interest was autonomous from the industrial capital and wage labor dynamics on which Volume I of Capital focused. Debts are self-expanding by purely mathematical rules – the “magic of compound interest.”

We can see in America and Europe how interest charges, stock buybacks, debt leveraging and other financial maneuverings eat into profits, deterring investment in plant and equipment by diverting revenue to economically empty financial operations. Marx called finance capital “imaginary” or “fictitious” to the extent that it does not stem from within the industrial economy, and because – in the end – its demands for payment cannot be met. Calling this financial accrual a “void form of capital.”[1] It was fictitious because it consisted of bonds, mortgages, bank loans and other rentier claims on the means of production and the flow of wages, profit and tangible capital investment.

The second factor leading to economic crisis was more long-term: Ricardian land rent. Landlords and monopolists levied an “ownership tax” on the economy by extracting rent as a result of privileges that (like interest) were independent of the mode of production. Land rent would rise as economies became larger and more prosperous. More and more of the economic surplus (profits and surplus value) would be diverted to owners of land, natural resources and monopolies. These forms of economic rent were the result of privileges that had no intrinsic value or cost of production. Ultimately, they would push up wage levels and leave no room for profit. Marx described this as Ricardo’s Armageddon.

These two contributing forces to crisis, Marx pointed out, were legacies of Europe’s feudal origins: landlords conquering the land and appropriating natural resources and infrastructure; and banks, which remained largely usurious and predatory, making war loans to governments and exploiting consumers in petty usury. Rent and interest were in large part the products of wars. As such, they were external to the means of production and its direct cost (that is, the value of products).

Most of all, of course, Marx pointed to the form of exploitation of wage labor by its employers. That did indeed stem from the capitalist production process.


MORE

[DemReadingDU]

7. Is Wall Street Eating Your 401(k) Nest Egg?

10/19/15 Is Wall Street Eating Your 401(k) Nest Egg?

Americans collectively are losing billions of dollars a year out of their retirement accounts because they're paying excessive fees, according to researchers studying thousands of employer-sponsored retirement plans across the country.

The rearchers say part of the trouble is that many employers that offer 401(k) plans to their workers are outgunned by financial firms that sell them bad plans loaded with hefty fees. That's especially true, they say, for small and mid-size employers that don't have much financial expertise in-house.

At a manufacturing firm in Minnesota, Justin Johnson, a new employee, is enrolling in the 401(k) plan. He's got two kids, and his wife is going back to school. So money is tight, but he wants to save for the future.

He's on the phone with a financial adviser that the small company, named MITGI, uses to walk people through the process. The adviser didn't want to do a recorded interview, but he let us join in on the speakerphone call when we visited the company to report our story. "So what are the fees like in this plan?" Johnson asks the adviser. It's an important question because high fees can badly damage your ability to make money over time.

The fees in this retirement plan make it "extremely competitive," says the financial adviser, who is with EFS Advisors in Cambridge, Minn. That sounds good. But it doesn't appear to be true. Federal disclosure documents show the fees are more than three times higher than other plans available to employees at companies like this one, according to Ian Ayres, a law professor at Yale Law School.

"He misrepresented the truth," says Ayres, who studies 401(k) plans. We asked Ayres if making such a claim is even legal. "No," he says, "to misrepresent the truth in that way is almost certainly not legal."

more text
also audio at link, appx 6.5 minutes
http://www.npr.org/2015/10/19/445322138/is-wall-street-eating-your-401-k-nest-egg

[DemReadingDU]

9. NPR Series: Your Money And Your Life

click link for additional articles and audios
http://www.npr.org/series/448706447/your-money-and-your-life

[DemReadingDU]

8. PBS Frontline - Retirement Gamble

Re-posting from last year
http://www.democraticunderground.com/?com=view_post&forum=1116&pid=51562


Look at the mutual fund, what stocks and bonds does it contain? There are hundreds of various investments in one fund. Does one really know what they all are?

How much does each fund charge in fees? One may not be aware that, over time, those fees could erode possible gains.

And that mutual fund may be involved in kickbacks!
Yeh! Those kickbacks are another layer of costs added in your fund. You think the financial company eats those charges. Ha!

Watch PBS Frontline
4/23/13 The Retirement Gamble, appx 54 minutes
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/retirement-gamble/

or browse thru the transcript
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/business-economy-financial-crisis/retirement-gamble/transcript-43/