Briefly Noted

Features
Withdrawal Strategies to Make Your Nest Egg Last Longer
Individuals who are withdrawing assets in their golden years face a relatively complex issue: Which accounts should they withdraw from first, taxable or tax-deferred? A look at alternative withdrawal strategies, and how they affect a portfolio's longevity.

Mutual Funds
Developing a Withdrawal Strategy for Your Fund Portfolio
Mutual funds hold one advantage for retirees living off of their retirement savings - their structure makes the withdrawal process easier. However, mutual funds do not eliminate all the challenges or automatically answer all portfolio questions. How to develop a withdrawal strategy for a typical mutual fund portfolio.

Hot Links
Web Sites for Closed-End Funds
Information on closed-end funds is far more limited than their more popular relatives, mutual funds and exchange-traded funds. Nonetheless, there are several Web sites that offer comprehensive information specifically related to closed-end funds that are available to the public for free.

Stock Strategies
Earnings Drive Businesses, But Expectations Drive Stock Prices
Investors commonly confuse a good business with a good investment. Many good businesses have high expectations embedded in their stock prices. As an investor, you face the task of recognizing whether current expectations are overly optimistic or overly pessimistic. Changes in expectations - not earnings growth - move stock prices.

Stock Screens
Valuation Evaluation Using Price-Earnings Relatives
The price-earnings ratio is one of the most popular measures of company value. But P/Es are not across-the-board comparable. The relative price-earnings ratio approach looks back at the relationship of the price-earnings ratio of a stock either to the price-earnings ratio of the overall market or to that of the company’s industry. How to screen for stocks using P/E relatives.

Stock Strategies
The Yield Curve: A Route to Better Investment Decisions
Looking for an easy-to-use tool to help you identify major changes in the economy that could change a company’s fortunes? Fortunately for individual investors, such a tool does indeed exist: the U.S. Treasury yield curve.

Departments
Briefly Noted
Current news items of interest to individual investors.

Departments
Letters to the Editor
Member questions and comments on recent AAII Journal articles.

First Cut
The First Cut: Recent Stock Splits
A starting point for investors. This issue's focus is on the top 30 stocks that have had significant stock splits in the second half of this year, indicating strong price performance.

Departments
AAII Journal 2006 Index of Articles
An index of all articles appearing in the AAII Journal during 2006.