If you're online, or checked your smartphone lately, you know Monday was all about the bulls. A huge stock market rally, fueled, we're told, by another government move to help banks.
Now, you may ask yourself, where do I fit in with all this? Should I be buying bank stocks now? And why should I get excited about assets called "toxic." You don't have to be Warren Buffet to know that "toxic" and "investment" are usually exclusive terms. Yet, here they are, used together in a sentence, and investors are suddenly buying like it's 1999.
That's where the Money Bus comes in. Its full name is actually the "Your Money Bus," touring the nation to help little guys like you and me manage our money, and make sense of what we're hearing from Washington. Each time the bus (big and green, of course) pulls into town, it meets up with local financial planners who set up tables and wait for people with questions.
Mondday, we found the bus parked outside the MLK Library in downtown San Jose. Traffic to the tables was slow, but financial planner Jovita Honor of Prialta Advisors took time to chat about Washington, and how she's been soothing her clients' nerves. "It will free up the banks to make more loans," she said of the Treasury plan. Necessary, she says, to spur buying. After all the bad news lately, she says her clients have been waiting for a spark of good news to get back in. "This might be it," she says.
When more people with coffee and questions started to show up, we let her go, climbing aboard the bus to get an up-high view of the financial planning going on a ground level. Say what you will about financial planners, but offering free advice these days? Priceless.
And if you're up in San Francisco, the "Your Money Bus" tour continues there on tuesday, 525 Market Street, from 10am to 3pm. Happy cruising.
