April 29th, 2016. That is the current deadline for individuals to make Social Security claims under pre-existing rules before certain often-used strategies become redundant. Filing and suspending under current rules by the April 29th deadline allows a worker to trigger benefits for a spouse or dependent child while their own benefit continues to grow by 8% per year up to the age of 70. A person also has the right to request a lump sum payout of suspended benefits any time up

Despite a sluggish start to 2016 by the country’s markets, QVP recorded an excellent return in February to put on the front foot heading into spring. While the S&P 500 was down -0.41 percent for the month (and the Russell 1000 Value Index was also down -0.37 percent), QVP had a positive return of 1.83 percent for February. While the year is still young, that means for 2016 so far (after a sluggish January) that the S&P 500 is down -5.47 percent while QVP is only down -3.75 pe

Remember last month when we said that the markets trade on “technicals”? Technicals are nothing more than patterns that form from the price movement of stocks, which has nothing to do with the company's fundamentals, like profits. If we look at a five-year chart of the S&P 500 (below), it still looks like we are in a downward trend. However, there is also a clear “support” level (around 1850 in the S&P 500) that goes back to 2014 that the S&P is having trouble falling through