Money and Financial Business

While I was the first one to indulge in all the freedoms college life presented, I was fortunate enough to recognize early on the importance of saving and investing and the power of compound returns. I want to help college students, and amateur investors in general, learn the basics of investing and avoid the common pitfalls. I will share some of my own experiences along the way (some good, others not so good), in hopes that you too can be successful in sustaining and growing your wealth through sound investing techniques. Thanks for checking out my introductory post, and definently don't hesistate to post any questions or comments. Stay tuned for more...

1.Buy low and sell high.

2. Diversify. Don't put all of your eggs in one basket. Invest in multiple stocks instead of just one to reduce the risk of losing everything.

3. Use dollar cost averaging. Invest the same amount of money weekly or monthly no matter the stock price. Dollar cost averaging is an investing technique intended to reduce exposure to risk associated with making a single large purchase. The idea is simple: spend a fixed dollar amount at regular intervals on a particular investment or portfolio/part of a portfolio, regardless of the share price. In this way, more shares are purchased when prices are low and fewer shares are bought when prices are high. This in turns lessens long-term risk (e.g., investing a large amount in a single investment at the wrong time). Since in general the market goes up, this is widely considered a safe investing strategy over the long term, although other factors can of course come into play.

4. Take advantage of time and compound interest.

4. Only invest in stocks of companies that you love. Wait until the stock is down 50% or more to buy.

5. Invest in the Vanguard 500 Index (VFINX).

6. Always buy "no load" mutual funds and never buy mutual funds from a bank. Stock brokers don't necessarily try to scam you, but they have to put the interest of the bank above you. Study investing and do it yourself.

7. Invest knowing you will make money and not hoping you will.

How many years will it take to double your investment?

Divide 72 by the annual return you expect

Say you invest $1000 in a mutual fund, and you expect an 10% annual return over the next several years.

Divide 72 by 10%

which is 7.2

It will take you 7.2 years to double that $1000.

I’ve seen this a few different places and always got a chuckle out of it, so I thought I would post it as well. Besides, it’s not all that often you can get sound (although obvious) financial advice from Saturday Night Live.

Consumer debt is becoming a pretty big problem here in the U.S. and it seems to only be getting worse. So the next time you want instant gratification while out shopping, and are planning to put that purchase on plastic… remember the video.

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Startribune reports that the Minnesota Housing Finance Agency has offered an $11M loan to the Family Housing Fund and the Greater Metropolitan Housing Corporation to purchase, renovate and resell foreclosed homes that have fallen into disrepair.  They are hoping to targt approximately 70 homes with this financing.

I applaud this as a great step towards improving a situation that is still worsening… large numbers of home in Minneapolis are vacant/foreclosed homes… but more help is needed, and fast.

According to the article, in just the first 3 months of this year Minneapolis had 678 foreclosed homes sell at sheriff’s auction.  70 homes is barely 10% of that figure… while a very good start, it will take a larger effort to make a significant difference in this market.

1. Gambling. You will never come out ahead.

2. Alcohol. Only offers short-term enjoyment.

3. Lending money to friends.

4. Shopping on QVC or the Home Shopping Channel.

5. Using credit.

Okay, it's been forever and a day since my last post. So my apologies to the few folks out there who were actually reading this blog :-) But let's just say that I've been kind of busy. At the end of March, I found out that I got into grad school. Yipee! But that acceptance letter precipitated a series of crazy events, including the need to sell my condo and find cheaper housing closer to school.

So at the beginning of April, I put my condo on the market. Exactly 18 days later, I received a lowball offer from an independently wealthy buyer. And after several rounds of negotiations, she agreed to pay 97.5% of my original asking price, which I'm told is quite phenomenal in this market. In the mean time, I had been driving my realtor in the burbs crazy, looking at everything from condos to townhouses to single family homes within a fairly huge price range. But 5 days after my place went under contract, I made an offer on a condo in the 'burbs. And after 2 rounds of negotiations, the seller accepted my offer. I'm told that I got a great deal on the condo because it was a For Sale By Owner that had been fully renovated and therefore priced well under market. So, all in all all, I feel blessed that everything turned out so well. But there was a lot of drama leading up the actual sale and purchase. Dishonest neighbors and realtors who lied about square footage, sneaky landlords who own the unit next door, feuding realtors who live on opposite ends of the hallway, and meddling doormen with loose lips. More details to come.

Indusry bad boy, Professor Harry Kat revises one of his most downloaded papers ever, adding new research on various hedge fund replication techniques.

I have written that the Nasdaq would go after electronic options exchange ISE (ISE). Today Deutsche Boerse beat the Nasdaq to the prize and made a $2.8 billion bid for the ISE. I continue to believe that you can own just about any public exchange. NYSE Euronext (NYX) just completed their merger and I wouldn't expect them to do a deal anytime soon. ICE & the CME are currently bidding for the CBOT (BOT). If you have some extra dough laying around (roughly $2.4 million) I would look into buying a seat on the CBOE in anticipation of an IPO or a bid from the Nasdaq (NDAQ). In the meantime I continue to remain long ICE and NMX.

ISE: Bid for 31*2008E=$67.50
NDAQ: 31*(1.73E)=$53.63 vs. Current Price $32.56
ICE: 31*(5.10E)=$158 vs. Current Price $127
NMX: 31*(3.76)=$113.77 vs. Current Price $129.71

ICICI, India's biggest private bank reported earnings increase of 4% to $202.2 million for the fourth quarter. It also reported that it will issue further shares in both Indian and US markets to raise almost $5 billion in new capital to fund growth. The company expects most of the funds to be used for further lending. To put this share offering in perspective the total market cap of ICICI bank

Net: +$645.31
Trades: 59
Shares Traded: 30600

Stocks Traded Today (net profit/loss):
International Securities Exchange Hldgs (ISE): +$229.34
MEMC Electronic Materials, Inc. (WFR): +$187.82
MasterCard Incorporated (MA): +$116.24
Payless ShoeSource, Inc. (PSS): +$98.57
ConocoPhillips (COP): +$87.93
International Business Machines Corp. (IBM): +$78.60
Corn Products International, Inc. (CPO): +$54.13
3M Company (MMM): +$38.60
Target Corporation (TGT): +$9.95
Tyson Foods, Inc. (TSN): -$1.46
ONEOK, Inc. (OKE): -$26.86
Brookfield Asset Management Inc. (BAM): -$31.35
Tesoro Corporation (TSO): -$196.22

I've got a really bad habit.....

With some consistency returning in my trading, I'm finding that I seem to always want to trade against the clock.

And this has happened the last three trading days or so.

I'd constantly find myself saying "Well, it's 11AM and I'm usually up by $X around this time, but today I'm not" or "It's just after lunch....I'd usually be up by $X and I'd usually call it a day, but right now, I'm not anywhere near $X".

The result of this thinking is that I'd force myself into trades and not wait for good setups before entering trades. In my mind, I'm thinking that the day is slowly winding down and as the clock ticks away, there will be fewer and fewer opportunities.

I then start over-trading and I begin to take unnecessary losers....but this just spurs me on..."Well now it's 2PM and I'm usually up by $X, but now I've just lost $Y and now I need to make it back...".

And so the vicious cycle continues.

The last three trading days I had these thoughts running through my mind and I had to stop to try to get my bearings straight again. The reason I traded against the clock these last few trading days is because I can't seem to bag a good winner or catch a great run on the stocks I've been trading.

It's because of this, I start looking at my P&L and I start thinking that I need to get a move on and that I need to capture more profits.

Today I found that in the morning I couldn't seem to book a good winner. As a result, by about 11:30AM, I was at about break-even in terms of profits and I started trading against the clock.

I had to stop myself after I found that I started trading some lousy setups and I kept going from loser to loser.

Thank goodness there was a downside move made by the markets in the afternoon as the bulk of my profits came from that downward momentum which helped me make a day out of it.

Perhaps I should do what MissTrade, DinosaurTrader and One Bad-Ass Trader do and simply hide my P&L for the whole day so that I don't start trading against the clock.

I tried to do that this afternoon, but I felt like I just didn't know where I stood for the day (well duh! That's the purpose of hiding your P&L!) and I didn't really feel comfortable for whatever reason.

But at the end of the day, I was pleasantly surprised when I checked my P&L so perhaps tomorrow I'll continue to do the same thing.

As mentioned, today was another day in which I couldn't bag a good winner. Just nothing seemed to follow-through on their moves this morning and I ended up taking profits on half my position and a loser on the other half of the position.

No good trades and no bad ones.

Tomorrow a new month begins and I really do think I need to step it up a little more.

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The first forex trading platform I ever used was Global Forex Trading's DealBook FX software, which I liked for its many charting options and indicators and fast trading performance. But I always felt a little limited by the fact that it wasn't a web-based application, which meant I always had to access it from the same computer unless I went through the install process on every PC I planned to

I can't believe it is already May! OK. It isn't May yet, but it will be in a few hours. Unfortunately, I am not feeling that well today and will spare you some of the hardcore analytics. Suffice it to say that April was a good month for debt reduction. Also some key expense categories came in lower than last month!













As you can see my cash assets went up a significant amount. The gain is due to the $540 I received from Geico when my car was backed into. As such I adjusted the value of my car to more accurately reflect the mileage and the damage inflicted upon it. Now the gap between what I owe on the car and what I can get for it in a private party sale (www.kbb.org, valued at "fair" private party sale) amounts to around $2,700. I think I will continue throwing any additional money that I come across towards the credit card debt since it is more important I make a dent in that before the interest rates go back up. The car loan is fixed so not as much to worry about.

Other than that car value issue, all my other accounts are trending in the right direction - overall debt is down.

Monthly spending-wise, I spent $108 less on dining out this month than I did the previous month. Unfortunately, some other expense categories went up due to my roommate's bachelor party in mid April.

Choose from the top ten life insurance companies to get maximum security and best coverage.

Strange as it sounds, my current trading system has me looking forward to days with extreme price swings, or whipsaws, which I used to anticipate with dread. The key to this change in perspective was shifting my strategy from primarily trend-based trading to a system that looks for profits in ranging behavior as well. The result is that a whipsaw no longer looks like one of the nastiest patterns

Big Company gives me an American Express card.
I've joined the Membership Rewards program. I spend $7,000 - $10,000 per month on travel and related expenses. I'm hoping I can pick some of that up in terms of travel benefits.

I am required to use my corporate card for travel so no alternatives there.

Does it make sense to use the $75 regular program or the $125 unlimited program? Any recommendations? I think the $75 regular program moves miles to any pre-existing program while the more expensive one is similar to the BofA programs where you can buy tickets directly with miles. I've gone with the cheaper program. Any thoughts or recommendations. Am concerned that they won't transfer to United.

Please advise.

Thanks.

Makingourway

Reviewed our networth update. Still looks good - better than I thought - close to $100k gain by end of month (4/30). This summer will eat a good amount of that if markets are static or negative. I'll post the monthly tomorrow.

Yesterday was the first day where most of my advanced transactions were available for September. I accelerated entry of a few and finished out the month.

June through August will be a challenging period as I'll be the only one working, we'll be in a new house and my wife will be travelling on holiday. Bad combination for the cash conscious. Especially after the few months my wife took off 2006. We just came back and now it's going back out!

I've put in an expected monthly outflow for two mortgages. The current house is easy - I'm already paying that. The new house is more challenging as the closing hasn't occurred yet - so I'm estimating.

I estimate my tax benefit for the mortage interest to be about 1/3 of the mortgage payment - 10% (buffer). I expect the tax benefit for the property tax to be about 1/3. I reduced the estimated mortgage payment by the resulting benefit numbers to understand the net monthly outgoing cash flow, but this ONLY WORKS, if I talk with my accountant and reduce withholding accordingly.

I will attempt to do that tomorrow. Better to make the adjustment as soon as possiblee.

The bottom line:

If I get the tax breaks I expect:
$1,600 per month saved while making two mortgage payments
$4,400 per month saved when making only one mortgage payment (after original house sold)

The challenge:

My cash reserve will take a huge hit and be converted to illiquid home equity.
It will further be depleted by $25,000 to cover expense gaps while I'm the sole provider.

The reserve:

I'll still have about $46k in backup accounts and about $89k in non-retirement equity, but will try as hard as possible to touch very little of it, as the expenditures will not be converted to equity.

New expenses:

New expenses will be interesting. We'll have to gate off an access area to the swimming pool, open it for the season and maintain it weekly.

Not sure what other expenses will hit us, but some decorations always do, like window treatements. Lots of windows in this house...makes me worry.

I have a few potential avenues for additional tax, such as old business expenses reimbursement, flex spending accounts, etc.... I also have an old insurance claim being resolved. These can add to our situation. Am wondering what effect they have.

I could completely skimp on meals while travelling to save the per diem, big quality of life hit, but might do it. Maybe, I'll lose weight? It would suck to work as hard as I do (12 hours plus) to save $38 - $58 per day, but it does add up.

The good news is that:

a. We can cover both our mortgages
b. We have a chance to still save money
c. Once we sell the old house, we'll save a decent amount per month

Regards,
makingourway

Researchers at Robeco and Erasmus University try to explain why high beta stocks actually perform worse than low beta stocks and how to exploit this anomaly.

Personal financers universally agree that budgeting is critical to cutting down unnecessary expenses.  A few years ago, I saw the wisdom in this and proceeded to create “the ultimate” financial spreadsheet.  The spreadsheet did it all — tracked my net worth, verified each line item on every credit card statement and bank statement, categorized my expenses, [...]

It almost feels like coming back to your hometown after being away for at least 10 years.  So much has changed in the blogging world, and it hasn’t even been a year! In someways, it feels awkward, but at the same time, exciting. I’ve got so much to catch up on.

(more…)

So BodyMonkey.com was officially launched on 4-20-2007, and two days later I got my first order. Since then it's got 3 orders through the web and 2 orders through the phone thanks to the Yahoo Shopping Network.

If you visit the website and click through the sections, it's easy to tell the site is not "there" yet as you can tell from the lack of images on the products. The products are also not properly SEO'd (Search Engine Optimized) which is a large concern for an online business of this type.

So in an effort to properly restructure the site the first time around, I have to do everything over again. It's relatively simple work, but VERY time consuming and monotonous.

For each product I must:

1. Delete the old product entry.
2. Create a new product ID.
3. Re-enter the price, description, additional options, images, sub-images and SKU.
4. Re-index the product in the proper section.

This sounds pretty simple, but there's always steps along the way that take up more time. Usually I will change the product description on the spot or add images I took with my own camera which usually involves some sort of photo editing and size cropping. I also re-name the products with SEO friendly words.

I want to just work on this all day, but I also do other stuff, so I must dedicate at least an hour or two per day to get this done in reasonable time. There are ways to streamline this process but it still involves lots of very boring work, and there's no way around that!

To keep myself accountable for the work I must do in the next few months, I created a schedule for this month's work:

I've also placed this schedule in the top-right calendar section of NevBlog so I am constantly reminded of it. Well, cheers to hours of boring work!

Here’s the current make up of my 401K retirement plan. I’ve actually increased my contribution to 20% from 18% of my gross pay. In January I lowered my 401k contribution all the way down to 6% just to take advantage of the maximum company match, but I noticed the net take home pay didn’t increase much. A lot of my pay just went straight to taxes so I decided to crank it all the way up to 20%. It’s a bit painful, but it’s nice to see the $$$ growing in the retirement account…

A little known secret among Colorado ski resorts is that they offer the best prices for season ski passes in the spring right after the old ski season is over. Often for someone who is coming for even as short a time as spring break the following season these passes can be economical. For instance, right now you can buy a season pass to Winter Park at passwagon.com for $349. Lift ticket prices at the window are $79 during peak season so if you plan on skiing 5 days or more at Winter Park this year the season passes are your best deal. Passwagon also sells passes to Copper Mountain and Steamboat as well as combination season passes.

Vail, Beaver Creek, Breckenridge, Keystone, and Heavenly are also offering the best season pass prices of the year right now, but you have to buy them in Colorado because it is called a Colorado Pass. Otherwise you need to wait until fall to purchase a season pass to these resorts.

Aspen and Snowmass do not appear to have their season passes on sale yet.

If you are going to one of the resorts that offers these discounted season passes, don't delay because many of these "best prices" will be gone by June.

• CHINA - MySpace China - “Splittists” to Rupert Murdoch: Thanks for the Addy!
  “The terms of use and privacy agreements seem more or less identical to the English ones, except the Chinese terms of use have added lines about following the State Secrets Law, impugning the “honor and interests” of the PRC and avoiding “cults and feudal
• CHINA - “You Will Have To Die For Killing The Puppy!”
  “After the news story broke on April 26, many netizens were infuriated. By the hundreds, they showed up at the forums to call for respect for life, to establish laws to protect animals, to condemn the “murderers” …”
• CHINA - Hollywood to boycott China?
  “One learns, after a few years in the media industry in China, to ignore the chest-thumping threats of media moguls to withhold something from China. This is for good reason: the threats are usually empty.”
• CHINA - How Things Really Work Around Here: Law and Order in Suzhou
  ““He” in this instance was a local Mafia tough who found a young Chinese lady’s comment offensive in the bar in which they were hanging with their friends. The young lady happened to comment that a particular photo was quite ugly. The Tough took the
• CHINA - Wait, so you can actually buy software? That’s stupid.
  244: Number of genuine copies of Microsoft Vista sold in China in the first two weeks after its launch.

So about a month ago, I left my previous job. They had asked if I could change my last day to the 1st of April because they may want to have me help them or something. So being a "nice guy" I said, sure! Skipping the boring details, they deposited the total month's salary into my bank account rather than just paying me for the days I worked. Payroll error. So I get a letter telling me I owe the

In addition to my other million Bank of America accounts, I've opened up another savings account which I've dubbed the House Account so I can start saving for my new house being built circa November.

I originally wanted to have $8,000 in that account to prepare for buying furniture, TV's, sound system, drapes, blinds, beds etc., but friends who already own houses told me that $5,000 should suffice quite nicely for a house this size.

I've started making contributions to this new House Account by putting 10% of my income in it. I might bump that up at some point if needed. As I mentioned before I'd like to pay for the whole house through one online business, but the initial expenses need to come from somewhere else, and this account is the place.

All my house expenses will begin coming up sometime around October 2007, so I have approximately 6 months to save up the House Account to an acceptable level. Hopefully I can push it far past $5,000 so I can keep some reserve cash laying around for miscellaneous house-related expenses.

Bank of Montreal has lost a lot of money with commodities derivatives trading. They've apparently tried to aggressively compensate for ordinary banking results. I'll let others judge BMO itself. My take here is to see if there are any personal finance lessons we can learn from this. Here are a few thoughts:

• Investing in individual stocks is a high risk business. BMO was portrayed as the ultimate blue chip stock. Even "safe" newsletters like Investment Reporter are always recommending BMO for increasing dividends. Using ETFs or even mutual funds protect you from the woes that can affect single stocks.
• Stick with simple approaches ... derivatives, short-selling and other more speculative tricks can easily backfire.
• Stick to your plan. BMO tried to make quick money instead of sticking to their regular conservative ways that made them a great company in the first place.
• Diversify (don't put all your eggs in the same basket!). What was BMO thinking making such huge bets on natural gas?

I personally own companies like CN that are considered conservative. But who knows what will happen to the stock if the economy goes down and they're hit by a big strike at the same time? I'm slowly moving to a pure ETF portfolio but I still hesitate to get rid of stocks that have definitely been good for my portfolio (RBC is another example of a good stock that I own).

This month has been a particularly crazy one for CashDuck, hence the long silence. But I am doing pretty well with it all, though it does mean I don't sleep quite as much as I'd like. Or blog, or clean the house, or feed the cat. (Sorry, cat.) Recent thoughts:

Taxes - Ouch. I paid about $4,600 between federal, state, and local (plus I paid some 2007 estimated taxes for local). H&R Block decided that I should pay a penalty for underpayment of estimated taxes - however yesterday I got a letter from the IRS (which did cause some consternation when I saw it) in which they stated that I didn't actually need to pay the penalty and they were going to send it back to me. Awesome! Albeit in 30 to 60 days. Still essentially free money. I signed up for the federal estimated tax payment website, and am waiting for my packet on that, and attempted to sign up for the state program but it is rather confusing so I need to sit down and try to figure that out. Local taxes, I just fill out a little coupon and mail that in with a check, there doesn't seem to be an online method. If the state and federal systems weren't so massive that I'm afraid that a paper check would get lost, I'd do it there too as it's simple, but unfortunately doesn't leave much of a record.

Housing - I am really getting the itch to get a bigger place. Our current apartment runs $695 per month plus electric/gas which is another ~$115, so it's pretty easy for me to swing. This is a two bedroom apartment and currently Boyfriend has the small bedroom (it's pretty small) as his office, and I have the remaining space in the large bedroom that isn't actually taken up by the bed. I would really like to have my own room though (especially since then I could take a larger home office deduction if I had a whole room instead of a 5x8 area) and I really need more storage space for all the duck stuff. Second, I would really like a backyard that is fenced in and that dogs haven't been pooping in so I can take my guinea pigs outside. I used to do that all the time when we first moved here but then our second year here several dogs moved into the neighboring apartments and their owners allow them to crap right off the pathway, so I can't let my guinea pigs eat that grass for fear of getting an infection. So some space outside that I can absolutely know dogs haven't crapped on would be great. Third, we need more storage space - we had a great big closet that fit everything, but then (although this is both good and bad) our landlord put a washer and dryer in it. Plus, I am storing most of the unpacked CashDuck duck stuff on a giant shelving unit which is oh-so-lovely right in our living room. So I am really thinking about moving, but have to weigh more room and nicer space against paying at least $400 more per month for what I want. I found a nice place that's a block away, but despite the fact that I walked by this morning and the rent sign is still up, the landlord said it had been rented already. So I've emailed about another place that's a little farther from where I live now, but closer to where I work, but is available in May (and our lease here is not up till August). It won't be a tragedy if we have to stay here a little longer, and then maybe our current landlord will have something that I want available, since we really like our landlord. But I am just getting a little frustrated with how crowded our house is - the rooms are all pretty small or full of furniture.

Savings - I have successfully put Plan Not Living On My Actual Salary into effect. I will get paid $338 on Monday, split 80/20 between the bills bank account and the fun stuff bank account. I already sent off the rent check from my ING checking account (hopefully it will get there on time as I forgot to do it till yesterday so it won't go out till Monday) and transferred some extra money into my bills account. I also didn't get around to making my normal $500 Roth deposit in March so I will put in $1000 in a couple of days for March and April, and my 403(b) will get the $2500 from my salary, plus my regular nonnegotiable contributions, so I am pretty excited about this massive influx. I will also probably put some more money into the Fidelity SEP IRA that I set up - I put $4600 in during early March sometime, of which only $1000 was for this tax year, so I should really put some more in. Part of the logic of not living on my salary is that pretty much one way or another there is not any way for me to get out of paying self-employment tax on my CashDuck earnings, and how much I can save of that is limited to 25% of profit, so I might as well sock away as much as I can with my 403(b) and then put away whatever I can in the SEP afterwards. Also because I can continue sending in money for 2007 to the SEP until Apri 2008, but I can't do so for the 403(b). If I continue not living on my salary for the rest of the year, I'll nearly max out the 403(b) and 457.

MBA - I've been thinking about what kind of advanced ed I should get (as I have intended to get something or other all along) and I'm really leaning towards getting an MBA. The university where I work has a really great part time MBA program which you can get done in as little as two or as many as five years, and is very flexible, and all the classes are at night. The thing that worries me though is whether I will really have the time to do it with both working full time and doing CashDuck. I finally broke down and got someone to help me with CashDuck, but I would really need more help or more time to be able to do this. So the options there are, hire someone else to help me, or go to 32 hours or less per week at my full time job. Option 1, I don't know how helpful that would be because there is so much that would be really hard to spin off, and would require a lot more sophisticated of a structure in order to keep all of the gears running together. The person who helps me now is doing tasks that can be done anytime and don't really intersect with other operations, so it doesn't matter that I don't keep tabs on her. I have a few other things that could be spun off that are similar, but she doesn't have unlimited time or unlimited space for duck prizes at her apartment. :) Option 2 might be the way to go but I think I will wait until I have been there long enough that I am too valuable for them to say "no" to me going 80% (since it would then be 80% of me or 0% of me.)

In the back of my mind there is also option 3 which is to get a different, less demanding or less than full time job, because where I work now seems pretty dysfunctional and unless things improve I might leave too. I do like the work but the management stinks. Everybody keeps asking me why I haven't quit my job to work CashDuck, but the short answer is that I would become very neurotic working at home and having nothing else to think about. Plus I need the psychological security of having that income (even if I'm not living off it) and I wouldn't feel safe quitting my job without having large, large sums of money stashed away. Third, I'm young enough that having that kind of gap in my resume might be disastrous later on. ("You were in research and quit to run a website and now you want to do research again?") So I don't feel it's wise. I mentioned this to Boyfriend the other day and he told me that he would think I was nuts if I quit my job to run CashDuck, for pretty much the reasons I outlined above, but mostly the neuroticism.

A parting thought.. Anybody else notice that ING put in a total deposits amount at the bottom, that shows how much money you have among all of your accounts? I find this to be dangerous as I am practically a compulsive saver now, and I am going to be very unhappy to see that number go down when I have to pay CashDuck estimated taxes soon (since I park CashDuck tax money and general savings money at ING), but I do like seeing that nice big number (though more than half of it is CashDuck's money anyway.)

I will try to keep to a once weekly blog update as I feel very squeezed for time right now - if you saw my house (and desk) you would understand.

I've created a new user-powered personal finance news site at www.PFigg.com (by the way, it's pronounced "Fig" - the 'P' is silent).  It's an experiment in social networking, applied to personal finance.  I admit, I'm addicted to the user-powered news websites like Digg and Reddit, so I thought, "Why not do the same for personal finance?"

See, even though there are tons of personal finance blogs out there, and a couple of good personal finance blog aggregators (www.pfblogs.org and www.pfblogs.com), I get kind of tired of reading through tons of blog posts to find a useful nugget of information.  If I find one good post for every ten that I read, I'm doing well.  The blog aggregators are decent, but I still have to scroll through page after page of blog post summaries to get one good, applicable, useful personal finance-related post.  The rest of the posts seem to be about the author's opinions and unrelated topics.

The whole personal finance blogger community is about networking, sharing the best and most useful personal finance information.   PFigg is meant to take this sharing of information to the next level.  Rather than the occasional Traveling Carnival of Personal Finance, or reading through a dozen blogs, you can find everything that's new, great, and useful in personal finance at PFigg.com. 

The easiest way to become a PFigg celebrity, or to see your blog articles show up on PFigg, is to add the PFigg bookmarklet to your browser.  Here's how:

Internet Explorer: Rightclick the link below, choose "Add to Favorites".
Firefox: Drag the link below to your Bookmarks Toolbar.  Done.
Opera: Rightclick the link below, and choose "Add Bookmark".

PFigg.com Personal Finance News bookmarklet

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In "Weekend Reading" I'll collect what I thought were the best posts and articles for the week from various bloggers.

The reason I do this is because I find it difficult to integrate links to other great blogs in my posts, so this is a way for me to give back.

I only focus on posts and links that relate to trader improvement or trading in general.

With that, here's this weekend's edition:

• Here's an excellent post by Woodshedder at his Trade While Working blog in which he tells us to be mindful in Avoiding Recency Bias

• Brett Steenbarger at his TraderFeed blog did a great job in collecting other traders' views on handling the pressures of trading and he did it in two parts - here is Handling The Performance Pressures Of Trading: Perspectives From Reader Comments and here is More Views From Readers

• Recently I've had to do this - it's The Most Important Question To Ask When You're In A Slump at TraderFeed

• A brief, but important thing to remember - it's The One Candlestick Pattern That Screws Everyone by Craig at the TAZ Trader Blog

• TheStockBandit continues with their free newsletter - this week it's Letting The Charts Decide The Next Move

• TraderGav continues to post quotes from the trading greats - here is a Quote From Tony Saliba

• Here are a couple of suggestions by Brett Steenbarger - here are his Favorite Techniques For Overcoming Performance Anxiety In Trading

• I recently came across The Trading Digest blog and here is some excellent advice for new traders in The Trading World Is Flat...

• Are you a part-time trader? Here, The Market Speculator responded to some questions people have been asking and has collected some of his past posts that describes his way of doing things in Answering Questions About Part-Time Trading

I woke up at 3am today to work on my final in my Social Environment in Business class. I got an A on the final and an A in the class.

This was the last class to get my Associates Degree in Business Administration.

Time for fast food and a nap.

[audio ]
there has been a hot dicussion about how valid the propsoal made by our government to explore the oil fields in the north. Some say it will have a very back impact on our economy specillay foriegn companies will be involoved, other disagree. Well listen to our episode this week to find out more about the issue.

Resources:
1- ٌRelated article from Alqabas newspaper
2- Related Articles fomr Alwatan newspaper
3- Kuwait oil reserves only half official estimate-PIW - Reuters

Marc Faber interview on Bloomberg News. Dr. Faber talk about commodities and global markets. (a bit old but still relevant)





Dr. Marc Faber discusses the current world fiscal situation.

If someone asks you to name something that connects France, Brazil, UK, India and Bosnia, it may not be an easy question to answer. But there is help from an unlikely place... a steel mill. O.K, it is not one of those old time steel mills, it is called Arcelor-Mittal (NYSE: MT). Indian born entrepreneur Lakshmi Mittal started his career in steel business in India more than three decades ago. On

Just in......

Due to the current market conditions in our industry, Millennium Funding Group has elected to discontinue origination of residential mortgage loans. Effective immediately , we will no longer accept new mortgage loan applications, or issue approvals on new loans. However, in order to accomodate our borrowers, and our mortgage broker partners, we will continue to fund loans on which we have sent closing documents out through May 11, 2007.

To best serve your customers, we request that you place loans currently in the pipeline on which we have not sent closing documents to other lenders.

We regret having to take this action at this time and are hopeful we can partner with you again sometime in the near future.

If you have any question please call 360-433-6260.
Thank you for your understanding.

I just got the last farm share in town! My particular city has three farms that participate in CSA (Community Supported Agriculture) programs, and I just love it so much.

The idea: you pay a fee in the spring (usually late March--I'm lucky to have gotten in this late) to help pay for upfront costs like seeds and labor, and every week in the summer, you pick up a box of freshly-picked produce.

The share at the farm I'm going with is $350 for the season, from June 4th until October 15th. That means that a box of produce--locally grown, fresh, organic fruits, vegetables, flowers, and herbs--will end up costing us $17.50 per week. Considering I can spend that amount at one STAND at a farmer's market each week, it sounds like a really good thing to try.

I'm really excited. I wish it started today.

Net: +$398.47
Trades: 76
Shares Traded: 33400

Stocks Traded Today (net profit/loss):
MasterCard Incorporated (MA): +$229.13
Noble Corporation (NE): +$192.48
DeVry Inc. (DV): +$148.97
Weatherford International Ltd. (WFT): +$140.16
National-Oilwell Varco Inc. (NOV): +$91.31
Parker-Hannifin Corporation (PH): +$64.79
Service Corporation International (SCI): +$49.05
Curtiss-Wright Corp. (CW): +$28.62
Jefferies Group, Inc. (JEF): +$23.26
ONEOK, Inc. (OKE): +$3.84
Transocean Inc. (RIG): -$3.63
Cornell Companies, Inc. (CRN): -$8.94
Waste Management, Inc. (WMI): -$21.70
Boston Properties, Inc. (BXP): -$29.40
Countrywide Financial Corporation (CFC): -$57.17
Eaton Corporation (ETN): -$71.52
Emerson Electric Co. (EMR): -$71.97
GlobalSantaFe Corporation (GSF): -$86.72
3M Company (MMM): -$96.37
Cummins Inc. (CMI): -$125.71

Today there were just too many trades, too many stocks traded, too many "not-so-great" setups taken, and just too much of going nowhere fast.

This morning I found that I was having difficulties making some good trades out there....it was another day in which I felt out of sync with the S&P Futures.

I'd get into a long position and just when the stock was about to run, the Futures would make a hard move to the downside and would stop the stock in it's tracks....I'd dump half my position and hold the rest for quite a while, but most of the time, the stock just couldn't continue to the upside.

Likewise, I had similar experiences with a couple of my shorts this morning...I'd get into a short position, it starts running maybe 10-cents or so, but then the Futures would make a hard move up and the stock would follow.

By the end of the morning session, I hadn't gone anywhere in terms of profits.

The only semi-decent move was on Mastercard (MA)....

I was watching it as it pushed to intraday highs and when it broke the $110 level, I went long 200 shares.

It was only a semi-decent trade because I could have had a lot more....I got 100 shares out for a $1.05 winner and the other 100 shares out for a $1.27 winner and I only got out because MA pulled back by almost a dollar which scared me out of my position (and I couldn't see any news on MA).

Well after I got out, MA would continue going up another $3 before it stopped....

But aside from that MA trade, there was nothing really spectacular done today....all afternoon it just felt like I was standing still and even though I put on a lot of trades, I just wasn't going anywhere fast.

I think today I did something that I feared I would do when I first subscribed to Trade-Ideas and that was to try to trade all the alerts that came in.

Earlier in the week I was fairly cautious and waited for the right opportunity to trade the alerts....but today it just seemed like I was taking every alert that I got as a signal to trade, which is obviously not the way things should be done.

It was also another day in which I couldn't get any of my "bigger" 1000 share positions to really run...in fact, like the previous few days, they all turned out to be losers. Maybe there is something I'm not quite seeing when it comes to trading a little bigger.

Eventually I'd like to start going in with 2000 and 3000 shares on some of the alerts I get.

Today I also started getting more comfortable with some of those high-fliers. As mentioned I did trade MA today and I've also been dabbling with IBM, CMI and BXP the last few days and I'm starting to get more of a better feel for these $100+ stocks.

Lastly, I'd like to thank some of the folks leaving comments out there giving recommendations as to where I can possibly go from here. I'd like to continue to tweak the way I trade and once I'm satisfied and more consistent with what I'm doing, I'll definitely consider the other alternatives out there.

But for now, I've got to continue to learn how to trade first before I can strike it out on my own (there's no sense in blowing myself up and having nowhere to turn...).

But keep those suggestions coming - I'm sure the other readers out there could benefit from your recommendations....for me, I've got to build up my bank account and I've got to start building up that risk capital....

Have a good weekend folks! This week has really tired me out so I need the rest!

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US Treasury Undersecretary says hedge fund registration makes the government look like it's giving investors the "all clear".

Foreclosures are climbing.  Homes sales are slumping.  Consumer confidence crumbles. Media is printing nothing but bleak news…then again, how often is news happy news?

Lo and behold: Dow hits record high!
(more…)

I was tagged by Millionaire Artist to give a list of five things that I’m obsessed with.  I will omit the “paying off the credit cards” obsession, as that one is probably pretty obvious. 

1)  Acting — I love the challenge of creating a character, as well as the opportunity to act in conjunction with characters other actors have created.  I am constantly looking for ways to get better at it, as well as looking for other people who know more about it than I do in hopes that some of their wisdom will, through osmosis, get into my head.

2)  Music — Whether it is listening to it, analyzing it, performing it, or some combination of the three, I remain pretty happy that I got my degree in music.  I should have perhaps opted to go to a different school that the clown college that I went to, but that’s a different story.

3)  Football — I was going to put sports, but I realized that the only sport that I really, really am concerned with is football.  Sorry baseball.  I still like you, but you kind of lost me when you went on strike in the mid-nineties for more money even though many of you were already making a butt-load. 

4)  Games — Whether it is a card game, a casino game, or a board game, you can bet that I probably have some strategy already in mind of how to play and win at it.

5)  Books, and the Knowledge Therein – This mostly exemplifies itself in my life by the number of books I have and the number of books I want to read.  It’s kind of cyclical, though.  I go through spurts of loving to read and spurts of not really looking forward to it.  It’s funny.

We had our second meeting with our Realtor last night. He showed us local comps (sold and listed). According to him, the market is a bit slow right now but not as bad as parts of the country (we have lots of military here and the area is pretty well built-out). Houses are selling near their listing prices and sitting around 1-3 months from what we saw.

The bottom line is he suggested listing for 8k above what I had (very conservatively) estimated. My guess is it will sell for about 3k above my initial estimate. I think we could go a bit higher if we didn't mind the house sitting on the market, but some very similar comps paint a good picture of where we should price it. This will give us a decent profit which we plan to use to pay off our remaining consumer debts (one car loan at 2.9%, one student loan at 4%). We will still have plenty left over for a 20% down payment when we reach our new location, assuming I'm not unemployed for too long.

Speaking of unemployment, my brother-in-law still hasn't had any luck on the job front. He has had several interviews and some offers for a lot less money or commission based compensation. At least he has some options, but they're waiting for something a bit better for now.

Overseas travel can be exciting and nerve-wracking, a dichotomy that can cloud your mind as you prepare for your trip. As you try to pull everything together for that vacation, business trip, or overseas school experience, you might forget small details that canl make your trip much less expensive in the long run. Some of these tips concern health and safety issues, as losses in that area can cost you a bundle. Other issues concern questions about whether to carry credit or debit cards, cash, or traveler's checks on your trip.

Although most colleges grill their students on how to behave on overseas trips, they often exclude information about how to handle money and, when asked, they leave those choices up to the students. In many cases, those students and some adults who travel abroad are caught in situations that can cost them financially. For instance, many overseas travelers do not know to contact their credit card companies or banks about travel plans, nor do they comprehend currency issues that exist at their destinations. Always check the currency exchange rates for your destination country before you travel.

Financial problems are exacerbated if you don't speak the country's language and if you don't understand how to access or use its currency. Most of the following tips will help you to avoid or at least mitigate these issues before you ever leave home, but others will help you maneuver through your trip with ease once you arrive at your destination.

This post is more of a reminder to myself than to anyone else that I need more free samples! I want to be able to go on a short vacation and have available samples of soap, shampoo, toothpaste, deodorant, lip balm, and self tanner (why not).

I was just looking at a few blogs to see if I could round up websites that offer free samples that don't require too much of my personal information. I already look at Walmart's free sample page a few times per week, but that's just not enough. I found startsampling on Mymoneyblog, which looks promising.

Where do you go for free samples and free stuff?

I've added Freecyclefinder to the list.
Walmart's free sample page
startsampling

• CHINA - CCTV: One of those Cs must stand for ‘catty’
  “Huang Shengyi has a horse face, and big nose. When she smiles, she is fatally attractive.”
• CHINA - Liu Qi on civic responsibility
  “Security guards wear service caps and stand in the shade, but they allow strangers to come and go: they exist in name only. Hatred, but never criticism.”
• SOUTH KOREA - Gross video of still-writhing octopus tentacles for dinner
  AsiaPundit notes that ‘live’ octopus tastes just likel cooked octopus… only fresher! Yum.
• CHINA - MySpace China launches, Wendi officially on board
  “Rupert Murdoch’s wife Deng Wendi has a seat on the board; this is her first official position at News Corp., although people have been speculating about her influence on the company since she married Murdoch.”
• JAPAN - Likely hoax story on poodles in sheep’s clothing
  “Thousands of Japanese have been swindled in a scam in which they were sold Australian and British sheep and told they were poodles.”

An unfortunately large number of people take money out of their retirement accounts when they change jobs. A study in 2004 indicated that 45% of departing employees took a cash distribution from their 401(k) accounts, and 27% cash out completely. This...

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