Briefly Noted

Features
Surviving a Loss: Smart Steps for Coping With Widowhood
If you have recently lost your spouse, you are confronting many changes. Because financial planning at this stage involves both a person's emotional state and financial state, many widows are pushed to make unwise decisions, or to make changes before they are ready. Smart steps for widows to take when the time is right.

The First Cut
Stocks With Possible "Hidden" Earnings
A starting point for investors. This issue's focus is on firms with possible "hidden" earnings, indicated by a record of positive free cash flow that is currently greater than earnings and that are trading with low price-to-free-cash-flow ratios.

Hot Links
Reverse Mortgages
Older homeowners looking for ways to raise current income may consider tapping into their home equity by using a reverse mortgage.

The Best of the AAII Journal
Risky Business: How to Pick Winning Property & Casualty Insurer Stocks
Many great fortunes have been built by smart insurance operators. A good example is Berkshire Hathaway, which has interests in several insurers and reinsurers covering a variety of property and casualty risks. At its heart, the P&C insurance business is one of shared risk--and proper pricing of that risk. How to spot opportunities in the risk business.

Stock Screens
Attracting Winning Stocks: The MAGNET Stock Selection Process
Jordan Kimmel takes a three-pronged approach to stock selection, combining value, growth, and momentum investing approaches into a singular investing model that he terms The MAGNET Stock Selection Process. A look at the MAGNET philosophy and approach.

Stock Screens
Adapting the Kimmel Approach: AAII's Simple & Complex MAGNET Screens
How can you implement the MAGNET approach in a stock screening program? A look at two AAII stock screens based on Kimmel's MAGNET stock selection process.

Offbeat Offerings
Using Social Media for Investment Issues
An investor reference for products that are not your typical offering. This issue's focus is on using on-line social media resources for investment issues.

AAII Model Portfolios
After the Storm, Stability Returns to the Model Mutual Fund Portfolio
The Model Mutual Fund Portfolio and the general market are up a bit year to date, and after 2008, anything positive is good. While the fund portfolio is behind the overall market year to date, it has outperformed the Vanguard Total Market benchmark over the last five years.