Asian stocks slip as investors mull China growth report-By Kelvin Chan

Asian stocks were mixed Friday as investors assessed a report on Chinese quarterly economic growth and awaited the outcome of a G20 finance meeting

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FILE - This July 16, 2013, file photo, shows a Wall Street street sign outside the New York Stock Exchange. U.S. stocks are edging lower early Thursday, April 14, 2016. Tech stocks are falling after dour projections from Seagate Technology, and bank stocks are slipping. Strong first-quarter results from Delta are giving airlines a boost. (AP Photo/Mark Lennihan, File)

HONG KONG (AP) -- Asian stocks were mixed Friday as investors assessed a report on Chinese quarterly economic growth. Market players were also watching for cues on currencies and other policies from a meeting in Washington, D.C., of financial ministers and central bank governors of the Group of 20 leading industrial nations.

KEEPING SCORE: The benchmark Nikkei 225 index in Japan shed 0.4 percent to 16,848.03, while South Korea's Kospi dipped 0.1 percent to 2,014.71. Hong Kong's Hang Seng slipped 0.1 percent to 21,318.74 and the Shanghai Composite Index in mainland China eased 0.4 percent to 3,079.07. Australia's S&P/ASX 200 climbed 0.7 percent to 5,224.10. Taiwan rose and Southeast Asian benchmarks were mixed.

CHINA GROWTH: Official data showed that China's economy slowed further in the latest quarter, with growth easing to 6.7, which was the lowest in seven years. There were few surprises for investors in the figures, which were largely in line with economists' forecasts and suggest that the world's largest economy is on track to meet the official full-year growth target.
MARKET INSIGHT: "In the absence of any significant surprises from China, today seems likely to be a day of consolidation for the ASX 200. Other markets are pausing with some signs of profit taking," said Ric Spooner, chief analyst at CMC Markets in Sydney.

WALL STREET: Major U.S. benchmarks finished with little change. The Dow Jones industrial average added 0.1 percent to 17,926.43. The Standard & Poor's 500 index ticked up 0.36 points to 2,082.78. The Nasdaq composite lost 1.53 points to 4,945.89.

ENERGY: Benchmark U.S. crude rose 14 cents to $41.64 a barrel in electronic trading on the New York Mercantile Exchange. The contract fell 26 cents to settle at $41.50 a barrel on Thursday. Brent crude, the international standard, added 13 cents to $43.99 a barrel in London.

CURRENCIES: The dollar rose to 109.48 yen from 109.37 yen in the previous day's trading and the euro was flat at $1.1266.

Culled from AP in yahoo

Warren Buffett’s 7 best pieces of investing advice-By Mandi Woodruff

Spoiler alert: Buffett really hates cash.

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Warren Buffett’s conglomerate could rally an additional 32%, according to Whitney Tilson of Kase Capital Management.

When Warren Buffett offers investing advice, everyone listens. The world’s greatest investor has never been shy about the strategies that have helped him amass a $72 billion net worth and grow his company, Berkshire Hathaway, into a juggernaut valued at over $212 billion.
But one thing he doesn’t do is encourage the average individual investor to try to mimic his success. The best advice he can give those investors, Buffett has said, is to do exactly the opposite. As Yahoo Finance gears up to livestream the company’s annual shareholder meeting April 30, we’ve parsed through some of Buffett’s more popular insights on investing to come up with a few that apply to the average worker looking simply to invest for long-term, steady growth.

1. The worst investment you can make over time: cash.
We always keep enough cash around so I feel very comfortable and don't worry about sleeping at night. But it's not because I like cash as an investment. Cash is a bad investment over time. But you always want to have enough so that nobody else can determine your future essentially.
2. Invest in a broad-based index fund that tracks the S&P 500.
If you are a professional and have confidence, then I would advocate lots of concentration. For everyone else, if it’s not your game, participate in total diversification. The economy will do fine over time. Make sure you don’t buy at the wrong price or the wrong time. That’s what most people should do, buy a cheap index fund, and slowly dollar cost average into it. If you try to be just a little bit smart, spending an hour a week investing, you’re liable to be really dumb.
Recommended reading: “Common Sense on Mutual Funds: New Imperatives for the Intelligent Investor” by Vanguard founder Jack Bogle. Any investor in funds should read [Bogle’s books]. They have all you need to know.
3. Invest in yourself.
“The best investment you can make is in your own abilities. Anything you can do to develop your own abilities or business is likely to be more productive.”
4. If you’re determined to pick stocks, don’t buy into a business you don’t understand.
[Individual investors] ought to think about what he or she understands. Let's just say they were going to put their whole family's net worth in a single business. Would that be a business they would consider? Or would they say, "Gee, I don't know enough about that business to go into it?" If so, they should go on to something else.... There are all kinds of businesses that [longtime partner and vice chairman of Berkshire Hathaway Charlie Munger] and I don't understand, but that doesn't cause us to stay up at night. It just means we go on to the next one, and that's what the individual investor should do.
5. Focus on the competition as well.

[Buying stock in a company is] buying a piece of a business. If they were going to buy into a local service station or convenience store, what would they think about? They would think about the competition, the competitive position both of the industry and the specific location, the person they have running it and all that.

6. Invest for the long haul.

“If you aren’t willing to own a stock for 10 years, don’t even think about owning it for ten minutes”

7. The hardest part about investing: trusting yourself.

You need to divorce your mind from the crowd. The herd mentality causes all these IQ's to become paralyzed. I don't think investors are now acting more intelligently, despite the intelligence. Smart doesn't always equal rational. To be a successful investor you must divorce yourself from the fears and greed of the people around you, although it is almost impossible. 

Culled from yahoo finance

Where You Live Could Determine How Long You Live-By Harriet Torry

A new study led by Raj Chetty suggests geographic location plays an outsized role in life expectancy for lower earners

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A blanket of fog covers the San Francisco skyline in a view from the Berkeley hills Sunday, Feb. 28, 2016, in San Francisco.(AP Photo/Marcio Jose Sanchez)

Higher income has already been linked to greater longevity and better health. A new study by a prominent researcher of mobility suggests geographic location plays an outsized role in life expectancy for lower earners.

That means if you’re poor, you’re likely to live for longer in a city like San Francisco or New York than in a city like Detroit or Cincinnati.
Across the U.S., the gap between expected longevity of rich and poor is widening, according to the study led by Stanford Universityeconomist Raj Chetty.
The findings are stark: Life expectancy differed by 15 years for men and 10 years for women between the top 1% and bottom 1% of income distribution. The study examined 1.4 billion records of income-tax files for people aged 40 to 76 years from 1999 through 2014, data that include age, gender and geographic location.
For a 40-year-old man in the bottom income percentile in the U.S., average life expectancy is on par with peers in Pakistan and Sudan. By contrast, a 40-year old man in the top 1% of American income distribution has higher life expectancy than men anywhere on the planet.
“Conditional on reaching 40 years of age, individuals in the top 1% of income have 10 to 15 more years to enjoy their richly funded lives and to spend time with their children and grandchildren, and they are pulling away from everyone else,” said Angus Deaton, a Nobel-winning economist at Princeton University who is an expert in inequality and poverty.
Mr. Deaton wrote an editorial accompanying the study by Mr. Chetty and others, but he wasn’t a co-author on the study. Mr. Deaton and fellow Princeton professor Anne Case‘s research last year found that suicide, alcohol abuse, drug overdoses and chronic liver diseases drove a rise in the death rate of middle-aged whites between 1999 and 2013.
The Chetty-led paper also found that longevity inequality got worse, not better, in recent years. The study found that between 2001 and 2014, individuals in the top 5% of income distribution saw their life expectancy increase by around three years, whereas individuals in the bottom 5% experienced no gains.
The study also found that location matters for low earners. Low-income individuals tend to live more healthily and for longer in cities with college-educated populations, high incomes, more immigrants, and high levels of government expenditures, such as New York and San Francisco.
Being rich anywhere broadly correlates with enjoying good health anywhere, but location is a key factor in health for people in lower income groups. For people in the bottom income quartile, places with the highest life expectancies were mostly in California, whereas the lowest life expectancies were clustered in the industrial Midwest. The authors noted those places tend to have higher rates of smoking and obesity, and lower rates of exercise.
Michael Stepner, one of the study’s co-authors, said economic decline and shrinking populations in the Rust Belt aren’t necessarily to blame. Far more important appear to be initiatives at the local level, potentially because cities with high costs of living and highly educated populations are often the first to enact public-health policies such as smoking bans, restrictions on trans fats or taxes on sugary drinks.
The study found measures of health-insurance coverage and health spending were of lesser importance than social and economic factors in determining health for low-income individuals. Nor did having health insurance seem to be a factor in increasing life expectancy for poorer groups.
“The key driver of differences in inequality across areas of life expectancy is probably not access to health care,” Mr. Chetty said.
Where the Rich Live the Longest

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Journal of the American Medical Association

Culled from wallstreet

Millennials face debt - and denial - By Bobbi Rebell

NEW YORK, April 7 (Reuters) - Debt may be a drag for millennials, but apparently not as much as cooking their own dinner.
A survey from Citizens Bank found that fewer than half (47 percent) of millennials, those in the 18-35 age group, who are college graduates, would be willing to limit their online food delivery in return for reducing their student loans.
Other priorities? Concerts, sporting events and lattes, as well as travel and vacations.
The prospect of limiting any of these luxuries got the “no thanks” from the majority of millennials who were asked if they would cut back to lower their student loans. The same holds true for cutting Internet service.
Despite being so unwilling to give up life’s little pleasures, more than half (57 percent) said they regret taking out as many student loans as they did, and about a third said they would not have even gone to college if they knew how much it was going to cost them.
That is a big conflict, says Brendan Coughlin, president of consumer lending at Citizens Bank.
“They are very committed to living their life the way they want to live their life, and as frustrated as they are by student loans, they are not willing to make those lifestyle tradeoffs,” he said.
Part of the problem may be one of denial and math. The same survey found that nearly half of millennials (45 percent) with student loans do not even know how much of their annual salary they spend on them. It is 18 percent on average, for the record.
On the upside, the vast majority do at least know what they owe - over $40,000 for most. But more than a third (37 percent) are clueless on the interest rate they pay.
Some suggestions for getting that number down:
KNOW WHAT YOU OWE
The National Student Loan Data System tracks federal loans (www.nslds.ed.gov or 1-800-4-FED-AID). For private student loans, borrowers should check out their annual credit reports

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REFINANCE
Three-quarters of millennial graduates told Citizens Bank that refinancing is not part of their plan to pay off their student loans. Millennials who have graduated and have jobs often qualify for better rates than they did when they had no income at the start of school.
In addition to Citizens Bank, SoFi, CommonBond, Wells Fargo, Earnest and other institutions offer refinancing programs. There is also an opportunity for students to move from variable-rate loans to fixed-rate ones as a hedge against rising interest rates.
At Citizens, a regular undergraduate loan ranges from 5.25 percent to 11.75 percent. Refinancing loans start as low as 4.74 percent. Variable rates range from 2.44 percent to 9.44 percent. On average, a customer will save 1.5 percent APR when refinancing, or $147 a month, according to Citizens.
GET HELP AT WORK
A number of companies, including Fidelity and PwC, are offering help to pay down student debt. This is becoming a more mainstream perk and is worth looking into with your current employer, and keeping in mind if you are looking for a job.
While only about 3 percent of employers are offering this perk, according to the Society for Human Resource Management, it is gaining steam as companies work to attract and retain millennial workers.
SEEK FORGIVENESS
Some professions, such as public service jobs, offer student loan forgiveness. They include public defenders, law enforcement officers, doctors, nurses and some teachers.

For example, teachers who work in low-income school districts and teach certain needed subjects may qualify for even full cancellation of some types of loans.

Volunteering can also pay off. Many organizations like the Peace Corps and AmeriCorps offer eligibility for student loan payments through Public Service Loan Forgiveness (PSLF) or other options.

(Editing by Beth Pinsker and Dan Grebler)

Source: Reuters