Cap Rates

What is a cap rate? A cap rate (or capitalization rate) is the net operating income divided by the price of a property. If you have a $100,000 property and its net operating income is $10,000 the cap rate for this property is 10%. What does this mean to you? How have cap rates affected the current...

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Averaging Down: Playing Chicken With Mr. Market

In case you doubt my membership in InvestorGeeks, I love movie trivia! What's the highlight scene in James Dean’s 1950s cult movie, Rebel Without a Cause? You are right if your answer is the game called chicken, where Dean and his rival each drove a car towards a cliff. There are many variations of...

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Singles Win Games in Baseball and Stocks

Sticking with the baseball theme, this article is going to look at the fascination with people wanting to find that 'home run' stock. It's stupid. Quit doing it. It's unnecessary and a really bad strategy. I don't know how many times I've tried to explain to people that getting rich isn't a strike...

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Intro to Real Estate Investing

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...

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Trading Stocks is Like Trading Baseball Cards

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...

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Thoughts on the Price of Oil and Gas

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...

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Video Stock Review: AERT

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? Ugly from uglychart.com and I talked about...

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Diversification Myths

This article originally appeared on thinkingaboutmoney.com on June 20th, 2006. 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...

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Twist on Orman's Parent Trap

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...

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Inflation Hits Credit Card Rewards Programs

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): [](/images/wachovia_credit_offer_lg.jpg) Are we supposed to be fooled by this? I'll let things sink in a bit before I do any...

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