If you have any monies in Venezuela I would think very very hard about it taking those monies out. Venezuela is taking another step closer to becoming a dictatorship. As I commented earlier it looked like Venezuela was moving in this direction.

President Hugo Chavez was granted free rein Wednesday to accelerate changes in broad areas of society by presidential decree — a move critics said propels Venezuela toward dictatorship.

The following is a paid review. See the notes at the bottom for more information.

Looking for a place to store your hard earned (or not so hard earned) money? Savings-Accounts.com is site that shows the interest rates available at the most popular US banks.

According to the list, HSBC is the best bet with a 6% rate on “new money”. But hurry, you only have until April 30th to get the “promotional rate”. Bank of America and E*Trade are also decent with 5.1% and 5.05% repspectively. Your corner banks like Wachovia and Wells Fargo are offering just 0.25% and 0.50% respectively. The worst offer on the list is Key Bank, with a pitiful 0.15%.

People who read my blog entries know that I am a fan of Behavioral Finance. I am mentioning this because I want to use the last sentence as a disclaimer.

Here is my grand sweeping statement:

Apple, nice knowing you good bye, Sun interesting language too bad it wont stay, Oracle go sail away.

Yesterday I watched The Daily Show with John Stewart where Bill Gates was a guest. Bill Gates normally is a geeky kind of guy and as many have said has poor presentation skills. What I saw yesterday made me think that the tide has turned. I think Microsoft is here to stay and people will overwhelmingly remember Bill Gates and Microsoft as good person. I think Microsoft will be a legacy that we accept and not regret.

Here are the notes I wrote about some stocks on my watch list this morning.

KRY
- Wait for consolidation. $2.80-$3.50.

AMGN
- Fill the gap $71.50-$74. 200dma support at $69.50?

AMD
- What’s the next news catalyst? Value analysts’ upgrade? At what price level? Check Morningstar.

ERTS
- Upgrade wave may be in effect. MA gap from $50-$53. What’s the news catalyst for this? Check game sites.

I was going to write an individual post reviewing in depth each of the six books listed below. But since I’m a bad citizen and have given in to the fact that I will never find enough time to do so, I’m going to give a quick review for each of them here. So in the order I’ve read them…

Included are reviews of:

• The Real Estate Coach by Bradley J. Sugars.
• Become the CEO of You, Inc. by Susan Bulkeley Butler
• Built to Last by Jim Collins and Jerry I. Porras
• Finding the Hot Spots by David Riedel
• Jim Cramer’s Mad Money - Watch TV, Get Rich by James J. Cramer with Cliff Mason
• The Only Three Questions That Count by Ken Fisher

I am watching the markets and thinking is this the pullback? Two days don’t make a trend, but I was looking at the DJI and noticed something interesting. For the past month approx 12,670 has been a sort of resistance point. The market has taken 7 runs to 12,670 and only once did it get over to 12,674 before sliding back.
Looking at the charts for the past bull run it usually takes about a month to move past resistance points. The market has moved sideways for better part of …

I am studying financial engineering and there has been one topic that has been bothering me; Probability.

Here is a question I found at the quant forum.
If a family has two children and there is a boy in the family, what is the probability that there is a girl?

What’s the answer? 2/3.
Or how about coin flipping?
What’s the probability of getting 5 heads in a row before getting 2 tails in a row? fairness is assumed.

What’s the answer? 3/34.
I don’t agree with the answers. Ok, let me reiterate this clearly I don’t …

I’ve been trying to stay on top of the spam problem with the forums, but the spammers are fighting harder and harder every day. I delete 25 spam posts and 50 more spring up right away. The last 500 or so posts have come from spammers.
And I understand why there haven’t been many legit posts lately; it’s hard to swim through all that crap.
The forums are unusable in their current state and all the porn and stuff looks really bad for the site. So I’ve taken the forums down …

I receive the Swiss Stocks magazine and something in Stocks caught my attention. An author said that the funds are going to be the problem spot once the market retraces. I did not quite understand his thinking so I kept reading.
The essence of the problem is that funds are buying stocks and driving prices up. Funds keep very little liquidity. This is good for the market going up. Where things get bad is when the market goes down. If a investor decides to pull out of the fund then the …

I was listening to Bernake, and then Mr Sanders started the typical leftist propaganda. The Democrats are idiots who are going to self-destruct in about four years. My political leanings are center right liberal libertarian.

The tax cuts that Bush made have raised the hackles of Democrats. Democrats want to nullify the tax cuts. Yet I will argue that Bush was right to make the tax cuts.

I bet you are ready to pounce on me and say, “Only the rich benefit from the tax cuts and they pay so little.” Well, let me tell you a story about morality and being pragmatic.