Copyright David Becker, Getty Images
Copyright Joe Raedle, Getty Images
We've seen some pricey divorces in the U.S. in the past few years, but nothing like the fight that currently going on in South Korea between Samsung heiress and Hotel Shilla CEO Lee Boo-Jin and her estranged husband, Lim Woo-Jae. According to The Hankyoreh, Lim filed suit in Seoul family court for alimony and division of assets. He's thought to be requesting roughly $1 billion, which would be the largest demand for division of assets in South Korean history. Courts in South Korea generally split mutually held assets by attempting to determine how much each partner contributed to the creation of those assets during the marriage. Lim and Lee were married in 1999.
Millennials Aren't Investing in the Stock Market
Many believe young people should invest heavily in stocks because they can take on more risk with a longer time horizon. But a recent survey by Bankrate.com found that only 33 percent of millennials say they own stock. That compares to 51 percent of generation xers and nearly half of baby boomers. The top reason, cited by 46 percent of millennials, is that they simply can't afford it. But older millennials, those between the ages of 26 and 35, are more likely to invest, with 44 percent of them saying they're in the stock market. That compares with only 18 percent of people ages 18-25. "Since they're in their 20s they think they don't have to hurry to invest," says Charlie Harriman, a financial advisor with Cloud Financial in Huntsville, Ala. "Older generations are a little more educated. They were a part of the financial crisis so they've seen and experienced the down side of what the markets can do."
What is Gold?
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Gold's recent price resurgence, after years of falling from its 2011 highs, has some gold aficionados claiming their faith in the metal as an investment was never wrong, just early. More rational market observers still think of the commodity as nothing but speculative fodder and pet rocks. Cullen Roche, on his blog Pragmatic Capitalism, stakes out a middle ground. Gold is not an investment, but it is, by implicit agreement among all parties, a storage unit of value. Its wild price swings make it a bad form of money, yet it has some real use in industry (jewelry and electronics). For its use in a portfolio, it's somewhere in the range of a collectible, like art, and a commodity that is used to create value, according to Roche. For portfolio construction, it's not entirely useless, nor reliable.
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