The following is a paid review…

Finance Markets is a blog written by some folks across the pond. Despite an understandable bias towards European news and posting prices in British pounds, the blog is applicable to investors everywhere.

The Finance Markets blog is updated a lot. There are about 3-6 posts every day, most of which come from one Elaine Frei. The posts cover a familiar range of finance topics from “Economy” to “Investments” to “Property“. There are also some “personal finance topics” like “Insurance“, “Loans“, and “Banking“.

The writing is generally good and much more professional than your typical blog. In fact, I might say that the posts are a bit too professional. There is a bit of a lack of character to the entries. The lack of a way for users to comment on a post don’t help this.

Still I’d say the site is worth a look. Browse around for topics that interest you and you might learn a thing or too. This blog would be especially useful if you are interested in getting a European view of the market. There are daily recaps of the action in the US markets, with citations from some sources that might not be on your reading list.

On days like these, it’s good to be 100% cash. I am holding some mutual funds in my IRA, but that was only down a little under 1% today (The only real loser was an S&P ETF I have 25% of my holdings in). However, my personal trading account was sidelined through this mess today.

Was there some kind of technical glitch?
I wish I could say that I’m a prophet or something, but really I’m in cash for more mundane reasons. I need to stay liquid to handle some wedding costs …

My original version of this blog entry has been deleted because I did find some errors in my spreadsheet. I saw them when I was explaining what I thought I had found while doing my calculations. The new calculations are not as I thought they were, but still some interesting things can be extracted from it.
I was reading a blog entry where one couple in Seattle had a hard time trying to find a place where they could take out a mortgage for 15 years. One woman in another blog …

There is a rumour going around that GM might be buying (2) Chrysler. The rumour was based on something things that Zetsche (CEO DaimlerChrysler) said:
Speculation about the future of Chrysler started earlier this week when DaimlerChrysler CEO Dieter Zetsche revealed the future of the money-losing Chrysler division was being studied, and that the company was open to all options. That could include a spin off, analysts say.

Analysts are saying that GM buying Chrysler is unlikely and more likely the hoopla is about a large SUV that both companies are looking into developing.
Here …

Well not yet, but that is the plan. And I wonder if investors realize the potential. My guess is that Advanced Micro Devices (really their recently bought ATI division) is poised to make a bunch of money putting graphics processors into mobile phones, and this fact is not fully priced into the stock.

I wonder if investors are able to see past the PC market, when they think about AMD. It seems that all of the focus is on their competition with Intel. Meanwhile, the graphics card market is still ripe for growth. People, I think, finally realize that ATI and Nvidia supply chips for gaming consoles, and that part of the business is priced in. But what about the cell phone market? And the cell phone market is much bigger than the gaming console market. It may even be much bigger than the PC market, and with faster turnarounds.

I am going to review the two books; Profit From Uranium and Profit from China. I want to structure my review in three parts, initial, reading it, and digested the information.

Initial: When I first received the books I looked at them and thought, huh that’s it! Fifty pages and about a third are “don’t do this or that.” Let me say that I was a bit disappointed and had some very low expectations. But I guess one should never judge a book by its cover, or page count.

I saw an article at MarketWatch that talked about 3G and how it has not lived up to expectations. Well, I could have told you that in 2002. I know that I said that in 2002 because in 2002 I gave a presentation at the Ann Arbor Computing Society entitled “The State of Wireless.”   
In my presentation I stated the following conclusions:

3G is dead and we will talk more about 4G before 3G ever gains any traction.
Wireless networks will become incompatible with each other.
Hot Spot is …

I wrote an earlier comment about Microsoft and the Daily Show and how Bill Gates seems to have changed. David commented and I read his story about what he believes will happen regarding Vista.

Many people think it is about Google and Apple. I completely disagree! Google will be Google, but this is as good as it is going to get for Google, likewise for Apple, and for many other software companies. Though I do think Microsoft will surge in this market, which of course may seem counter-intuitive.

People are always interested in the next 10 bagger. I think the next 10 bagger will not be a You-Tube, MySpace or Google type company. The next 10 bagger is going to be a company that has a hardware and software play. For example, look at the Wii. It is taking the market by storm because it is new, refreshing and a hardware / software play. When I saw the Wii for the first time I thought, yupe this thing is going sky high!

When I saw the Apple iPhone I did not see a Wii. When I see Google I see rehashed ideas. For example I love news.google.com, but that idea is getting old. When I see Microsoft I see a utility company, but a company that will be here for decades to come.

I was watching TV and saw a new market niche, “rent a demonstrator.” Wow times have changed. As the article said it used to be people would demonstrate out of passion. Though with a busy society, and a society that is consumer based, well we are all too busy…
They showed this on TV and a student who was for hire said, “hey I am a poor student, need the money and I will even protest for the left’s.” But you gotta give credit where credit is due in terms of market …

Last week (1,2) I talked about how the DJI should be breaking through the 12,700 barrier. We did not break through it, and I starting to become concerned. Some technical analysts will draw pretty pictures with lines in multiple directions, but we are hitting a resistance point. I like technical analysis, but use it in conjunction with mathematics and probability.
Here is what I would do, take some money off the table, not all. How much you want to take off the table depends on how nervous you might be. Last …