Real estate investors have become a cliché during the past 3-4 years. It seems like everyone you talk to is a real estate investor or knows someone who is. What makes real estate investing so popular? In the past few years you could do no wrong with real estate. With profits in the five and six figure ranges, one profitable real estate deal would exceed most people’s yearly pay.
Hi. Enough with the greetings, I’m not here to make friends, I’m here to make you think! Everything you have been told about the Stock Market is bullshit and I’m here to prove it to you. There are a lot of topics I want to cover and instead of just saying “Mutual Funds Suck”, “Diversification is stupid”, “Buy and Hold should be called Buy and Hope”, “Notice how every ‘lesson’ about the Market begins with ‘If you had…”, “A stock has to go up to make money”, etc I’m going to just pick a topic today and I’ll get to those others sooner than later.
Today’s topic is: You don’t own anything but a piece of paper with ink on it.
In a previous blog entry, about a month and a half ago, I commented on how oil will not reach 100 USD per barrel. I posed the argument that to reach a doubling of the oil price would require the price to reach 160USD, which would have devasted the economies of the world. Now oil is dropping and some have commented that the price of oil will jump back up next year. I am skeptical that oil will jump up again, and I will share with you why I think oil or gas will have hard time edging back up again.
Here goes… my first attempt at a video stock review.
I take a look at Advanced Environmental Recycling Technology (NASDAQ:AERTA), which has had a recent sell-off due to a factory delay. Is this a buying opportunity or should we be jumping ship too?
Suze Orman’s latest Yahoo article titled The Parent Trap addresses the issues Boomers are facing with grown kids moving back in, as well as aging parents. I see another problem here, my own personal parent trap. Let me esplain…
My parents were crazy youngsters when hey had me, divorced when I was two, and then those crazy fools married again when I was in my late teens. Each had more children, and one parent even gained a whole other family. I have been on my own ever since.
One of the things I’ve learned in the past month is that diversification - the “holy grail” of investing, is not what it is cracked up to be. In fact, I’ve come to realize that one of my immediate investing goals should be to reduce the amount of diversification in my portfolio.
I realize that this statement will have many of you yelling and screaming, or immediately unsubscribing under the assumption I am a fool. But hear me out.
It seems that even your credit card’s rewards points are not safe from the terror of inflation. This is a real credit card offer I got the other day (click for larger image):
Are we supposed to be fooled by this? I’ll let things sink in a bit before I do any speculating as to why this might be a good deal (for us or the bank).
Thought I’d share a few articles I found over the past week or two, that I think are worth a read.
We have two articles from BusinessWeek. The first one profiling great companies with which to launch one’s career. Lucky me I work for one of them 
.
Content is still King, but it seems that the movers in the content industry have two things in common. They’re leveraging, building, or buying distribution channels. (I.E. Fox and myspace). Keep an eye out for Yahoo to make a move towards Facebook, and there’s stirrings of Viacom heading after facebook. The second thing is doing the opposite of what Time Warner is doing. Here for yahoo/facebook. Here for YouTube/Viacom/content.
Yesterday’s WSJ (subscription required) reported that Yahoo’s CEO, Terry Semel, hinted of a slowdown in search ad revenue growth. Significant news - search ad revenue growth has always been on the incline. His statement preceded a 12% drop in the stock price for YHOO (rival GOOG took a hit as well, dipping the price blow the $400 mark). Another big setback for the industry’s #2 player. Last month Yahoo! delayed it’s release a long awaited software upgrade that has caused it’s stock to take it’s biggest plunge in history – 22%.Analysts have been wondering if the search industry is a bubble waiting to pop.
Danny Sullivan, considered the search industry’s top expert, doesn’t think so.
Regarding the state of the search economy, Sullivan so eloquently, puts it:
“In fact, as I told a reporter yesterday, I think search will be just fine given its history. Search was booming during the ad downturn of 1999-2001. It was booming because of its highly measurable, highly converting nature. Born from a downturn, I expect it will continue to ride out any future ones, if not benefit from them.”
The big news this week has been the failure of the hedge fund Amaranth. Reports are stating that, in just a few days, the fund’s value fell about 50% from a high of $9.5 Billion. The fund is down “just” 35% on the year, thanks to a nice 25% gain last month. Most of the funds early gains and eventual losses were from heavy bets on natural gas derivatives.
At this level, many expect the fund to break up. The quick liquidation of the Amaranth’s assets (and everyone else who is worried by it) is playing havoc on the markets. Here is some interesting coverage I’ve come across:
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