Last nights Dashboard Diagnostics session reviewed the holdings of a
club in Pennsylvania. One of their holdings was the ETF, GLD.
Though it's called an ETF, which sounds harmless, this is actually
what is known as a "Grantor Trust". Unless you would really like to
understand what that is and the accounting and tax reporting
requirements that come along with it, I would like to warn you
against holding this type of investment in your club. Our service
does not provide you with the ability to easily account for it or to
produce the correct tax forms to report it's income.

For starters, you would probably not receive it's 1099 before March
15. Once you get it, you'll need to make monthly calculations for
expenses that are reported on it. You'll have to go into your records
and make manual adjustments to change the basis in your holdings
correctly.

Each of these adjustments would actually be a sale of the commodity
(in this case Gold) which would incur a capital gain or loss.
Unfortunately, it would be a capital gain or loss that is taxed
differently than one from the sale of a stock. The IRS considers Gold
a "collectible". It is in a special 28% capital gains bracket. We
do not track that category in bivio so, at a minimum, you would have
to manually adjust all the tax forms which we produce in order to
correct them.

This is another one of those cases where the costs associated with
accounting for and preparing taxes for certain types of investments
can easily exceed the amount of gain you might achieve with a small
holding. Please make sure to ask us before purchasing an investment
that might come with special requirements. Some of them are listed on
the "Before You Invest" link on the bivio library page,

www.bivio.com/hn/library-faq.html

If you don't see them listed there, we're glad to look into them for
you and let you know what you might be up against.

--
Laurie Frederiksen
Invest with your friends!
www.bivio.com

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