With mortgage rates dropping like a brick, it’s becoming a no-brainer for us to refinance our home loan. Even though we just got a 30-year loan 2 years ago at 5.875%, we can get 30-year loans now for around 4.5% or lower. You might be in a similar situation.
Rule of Thumb
The rule of thumb I hear thrown around a lot is that if you can drop 1% off your mortgage rate, you should refinance. To get a more precise idea if refinancing is good for you, you should really take …

I still own a few shares of GOOG. It’s felt overpriced recently, but I’m holding onto a minimal amount at all times and trying to add more over time. So I’m hoping the price drops a bunch so I can pick up more cheaply.
Do a search here for GOOG for my previous thoughts (years old), but I basically think that the world will continue to be drowned in data. Google’s goal to organize the world’s information and their expertise at scaling Internet apps puts them in a great position to …

Great overview and background on Gold as a Commodity over at Crossing Wallstreet.

The summary for current investors is…
My view is that the Federal Reserve will raise interest rates earlier than expected. I don’t know exactly when that will be but it will put gold on a dangerous path. For now, my advice is to stay away from gold, either long or short.
… but you should read the whole thing for a lot of interesting tidbits on the history of gold and how to track and trade it. Here’s another quote …

From DealBreaker.com (via CrossingWallStreet):
Goldman Sachs just revealed in an SEC filing that its traders made money on every single trading day last quarter, a record for the firm. Net revenue for trading was $25 million or higher in all of the first quarter’s 63 trading days with 35 of those days bringing in more $100 million, according to the filing.
That’s pretty amazing. They didn’t have ANY down days? How is this possible? Is the new Goldman Sachs playing it safe? I thought they were doing high risk trades? Were they …

Trying to figure out what to think about this: (from BusinessWeek)
The Nasdaq said after markets closed that it will cancel all trades of stocks that moved more than 60 percent from their price at, or immediately prior to, 2:40 p.m., when the slide started. The cancellation applies to trades executed between 2:40 p.m. and 3 p.m.
Were there true “errors” leading to these trades (e.g. running trades that weren’t placed, or trades triggered because a stocks price was listed incorrectly)? Or were there just a bunch of people with stop losses …

Image by Getty Images via Daylife

I’ve been reading Paul Krugman’s blog at NYTimes.com daily. Paul won a Nobel Prize for economics, so obviously a smart guy. He’s very thoughtful and always bases his opinions on research and current economic thought.
I basically defer to this guy on all economic issues like finance reform, the Greek Economy, the Euro, and the economics of Health Care Reform.
Make sure you also check out his larger “columns” which are featured elsewhere on the site. There is usually a list of current/popular ones in …

Via blog.xplana.com:

Personally, I think this is a little conservative… though kids and professors on campuses would probably know more about how motivated professors are to switch to digital textbooks. What I do know is that no one likes spending $100 for a textbook and my professors were always empathetic to this.
Obvious investment plays are Apple and Google stock. Both are probably fairly priced now. None of these companies mentioned in the article are public, but there may be more like them. Another plan would be to find a publisher who …

There is a great QA with Herb Greenberg over at TheKirkReport. A few snips from the article:

…
Kirk: For good or for ill, how do you see financial journalism evolving with the use of blogs and other social media?
Herb Greenberg: The good: Leveling the playing field with an enormous amount of information. Bad: Zero accountability. Beyond traditional journalists, anybody can say anything under any name - real or assumed - and in the end those same people can disappear.
…
Kirk: In all of the research you’ve done, what are …

Christian no longer crossposts here, but he’s still an investor geek, blogging great stuff over at his blog at devspace.com.
Here are a few articles I found interesting:
Why “You Should Have Known Better” Does Not Cut It!
Why The Republicans are Wrong To Block the SEC!
Why We Are Not Buying Apple IPads
WRT to the Euro: CNBC Talking Heads are IDIOTS!

I am currently reading The Snowball: Warren Buffett and the Business of Life in bits and pieces. It’s very entertaining.
This is not the type of book I would normally purchase or maybe even pick up at the library. I’m as interested in Warren Buffet as anybody, but this thing is pretty thick and daunting. Lucky for me, publishers send me books to review all the time. (And there just hoping for a link like the one above and maybe an Amazon review. I should give them that more often.) So …