Archive for August, 2006
It was Thomas Jefferson who said: “Every generation needs a Revolution.” He was, of course, talking about the fact that every few years there comes a time where the old administration must be replaced by a newer one in order for our nation and liberty to survive. Every four years this nation has an opportunity for a revolution of sorts.
Soon in 2008, whether you love them or hate them, the old administration will be gone. What does this mean for the investor? It is impossible to predict all the possibilities that will flood in when a new President, and therefore a new vision, takes the oath on those gleaming white steps. Wal-Mart however is hedging its bets.
Howard Lindzon “smells a rat” at TheMoneyBlogs.com:
I called Brice (owner of TheMoneyBlgs), who picked up his own phone and asked him some questions. I immediately smelled a rat. Trading Markets will take my content and brand it in moneyblog design and keep all the advertising dollars from the aggregated data.
I love blogging and don’t mind doing it for free, but this is just plain sneaky.
If you run an investing, personal finance, business, or “money” blog, you’ve probably gotten an email from Brice Wightman of TheMoneyBlogs.com. InvestorGeeks got one, and we initially signed up since we’re proud of the relationship we have with a similar service pfblogs.org. But once we found that TheMoneyBlogs would not include a link back to our site the original article, we immediately removed ourselves from their network.
So how can you make these aggregators work for you? Find out how some people are trying to make TheMoneyBlogs work them. More importantly, I’ll go through some questions you can ask yourself to determine up front if a blog aggregator is really offering a win-win situation.
After launching in February as the first person-to-person lending site in the US, Prosper.com has seen a good deal of activity. Now that it’s been 6 months since they opened their doors, I used Google Blogsearch to see what people’s experiences were out there in the blogosphere.
Almost all of us hear some variation of this from our credit card or car loan company: your interest rate is a variable rate of 14.99% based on Prime plus 6.74%. That means your current rate is 14.99% but may change at any time, so if the prime interest rate goes up or down 0.5% so will your card. Let’s look at the Prime rate closer, and I’ll share some tips to enhance your credit search.
I’d like to invite you to look at a recent, not atypical, four day chart of a stock. In this particular case, it’s SiRF Technology Holdings (SIRF).
As you can see, the stock gapped down from the $25-$26 it had been trading at to the $19-$20 range. You see this kind of thing all the time when “bad” news comes out.
The question I’d like to raise today is: who set the price?
Most people invest in bonds because they want to have stable fixed income. Because the performance of bonds are very stable, they also serve to reduce the volatility of the overall portfolio. Depending on the weighting from 0% to 100%, you can reduce your stock volatility correspondingly. With regular re-balancing between your stocks and bonds, you should be able to “sell high and buy low” in your stock portfolio, and use your bonds as a stable source of income.
Everything sounds good so far, but the most attractive feature of fixed income is also its greatest drawback — the income is FIXED. It does NOT increase as time goes on, and inflation keeps reducing your principle and interests into nothingness. Since inflation is almost always there, you’ve got a real problem especially when you’re investing long term in long term bonds.
One of the reasons I get into stock investing is that I like to live vicariously through my investments? Say what? Yes, I live vicariously through my stock holdings because I imagine that I’m the owner of the company — hard at work building it. I become an intimate stakeholder of the business by owning its stock; as opposed to investing via mutual funds. But how many investors out there feel that their miniscule ownership can actually affect changes like Warren Buffett or Carl Icahn?
I recently have been looking at the Bid/Ask Spread to help me determine the right time to add to my positions. Here are some tips I’ve picked up that you might find useful when looking at your stock’s spread.
Mr. Market is an Idiot. On June 21st, I posted an article “Thinking About Garmin” in which I proposed that Garmin is uniquely positioned as the leader in a technology that is “crossing the chasm” from early adopter to mainstream. I was expecting a stellar earning report this week, which is exactly what Garmin delivered. Only to see the stock go down.
So I took another look at my analysis.
Digg, the extremely popular article voting site, is now part of InvestorGeeks! We’ve recently installed a new feature that will allow you to digg your favorite IG articles right from our site. New articles that we feel are digg-worthy will have the familiar digg box in the upper left corner.
If you’re not currenly a member, simply click the link and you will taken to the registration page where you can setup your account. If you’re already a member, simply log in and record your vote!
What is digg?
Digg allows netizens to vote on content they think is the most interesting. By “digg-ing” an article, you’re giving a vote that gets tallied up with all the other votes on the site. The fastest growing and most highly voted articles will get coveted space on the section page for the world to see.
We’ve been dugg once so far, and it has sents thousands of valuable visitors to the site. By adding digg to every article, we’re hoping you’ll help us gain more exposure for your favorite articles.
Digg has recently added more sections to their site, including a Business & Finance section. Have a look at it, and take a look at some of the other great content on the web as voted by your fellow surfers.
InvestorGeeks on digg:
Chris Welch is “guppywon”
Jason Coleman is “ideadude”
Frank Sanders is “fwsanders”
Sunday, Aug. 6, 2006
by Chris
