www.youtube.com/watch?v=Qc-J4XSBO4c

This question comes up more times than I can count. Can I roll my 401k into a Roth IRA?

And the simple answer is, not directly, but indirectly you can. And what do I mean by that?

Unless you have a Roth 401k, in which case you could roll it directly into a Roth IRA, but hardly anyone has a Roth 401k since they’re so new and there’s really not the same tax benefits to a company as a traditional 401k, which is why I don’t think you’re going to see them offered very much. But that’s a whole other topic for a whole other day.

A 401k has to be rolled first to a traditional IRA, because the IRS says you have to go from like product to like product, and what they’re talking about when they say “like” is the taxation on that product. And then you take it from the traditional IRA and you then place it into a Roth IRA.

Now know when you do that, that’s when you’re going to have this taxable event that comes up. And yes, there are ways to spread out your taxes. And yes, there are rules about being able to put money into a Roth IRA, so before you do it, make sure you talke to a qualified professional to see if it can be done in your situation, because every situation is different.

That’s the reason why the tax code is as big as it is. It’s because there’s so many stinking rules out there, and you’re left trying to go on the Internet and find the right ones. Hey, the Internet’s going to get you so far, but at some point you’re going to have to talk to someone and explain to them your situation, and they can tell you definitively what your options are. But just know that it’s got to be that indirect way. You go first to a traditional IRA and then from the traditional IRA into a Roth IRA.

That’s how you get your money from a 401k into a Roth IRA.

I’m Pete Mitchell, and I look forward to sharing more on the markets with you later.

www.youtube.com/watch?v=uu5PlI9CVZE

This is actually a fun question for me, because people ask me, what exactly does the NASDAQ stand for? Well, if we were back in 1971 when the NASDAQ was created, I would say it stood for the National Association of Securities Dealers Automated Quotations, the NASDAQ.

Back when it was first created, this is back when computers filled an entire room, if you even had a computer. Back then, they needed a more efficient way to be able to quote stock prices. Before that it was just, what was it on the floor of the New York Stock Exchange? So that’s what the NASDAQ was originally created for.

Today, the NASDAQ is seen as a leader in growth companies, it’s a stock market in and of itself here in the United States, and companies generally tend to go to the NASDAQ when they’re technology-based because that’s kind of what has been the mystique around the NASDAQ over all these years. And so where once it was just a quoting system, a way to get quotes really quickly, automated, now it has become a whole new thing, a whole new stock exchange, if you will, where companies come to be placed on the exchange.

That way other people can come to that stock exchange and be able to buy those stocks and so on and so forth. That’s why it’s known as one of the truly automated computer-based stock exchanges because that’s how it started, and that’s how it’s always been.