Investing Blog

The mantra of “poor college student” continues to expand to more and more businesses. What’s that mean for you? Freebies! Read more…

Round Up AMZN, MSFT

I have been fascinated with this subject since first reading one of Gregory Mankiw’s economic books several years ago. In this particular book (it was a text book, and the name escapes me) Mankiw discussed very briefly how small economic changes affect drug and alcohol use. Read more…

Round Up

After the pop in interest rates, I’ve grown used to having multiple savings accounts. Every so often I scope out the best interest rates then, shortly after, find myself deep in opening a new account. I’ve finally gotten tired of interest rate shopping, so now I’m just opening a number of accounts all at the same bank. Read more…

Round Up

I love mathematical modeling, and I love mathematics that helps explain certain events. The wisdom of crowds theory is a great mathematic model, and even though it it very simple, it is incredibly accurate. Read more…

Round Up

If there was anything Ross Perot ever got right in his campaign for president in the 1990s, it’s that the United States is certainly a car economy. That is, we spend more on our cars and produce (at the time) more cars than anyone else. Most families have one car per person, or even more. How could you benefit by becoming a one family? Read more…

Round Up

With midterm elections on the minds of every politician, there are more than a few hot topics floating through Washington. One of them is how the US government can salvage social security, and keep paying out benefits even as the payouts exceed income. Read more…

Round Up

Bloomberg news just issued a report stating that the popular Apple iPhone would be coming to the Verizon network in January 2011. Analysts expect the phone could be wildly popular at Verizon, the world’s largest carrier, and sell as many as 12 million units per year. Read more…

Round Up

A few things have changed thanks to new financial reform legislation passed by Congress. Here are the top 5 changes. Read more…

Round Up

On the day of the release of the iPhone 4, huge problems are already being unfolded. Read more…

Round Up

Though we can’t clog the hole, and the leak doesn’t seem to be slowing down, I’ve been researching ways in which we could at least clean off the surface of the Gulf of Mexico inexpensively. One answer, one that seems to be ignored, is the use of hay to remove surface oil. BP stock may be destroyed, but the ocean doesn’t have to be. Read more…

Round Up

I’ve had a number of people recently ask me why gas prices go up quickly and come down slowly. While we’d all like to say its just simple profits, the more logical answer is that it isn’t just greed. Nope, it’s actually a factor of the supply chain and the franchise setup of gas station chains. Read more…

Round Up

Recently, President Obama signed into law another extension of unemployment benefits, pushing the number of weeks of benefits the unemployed receive to 99 weeks, nearly a full year. (204 weeks) I expect that this trend will only continue, not for economic reasons, but political reasons. Read more…

Round Up

Everywhere I looked today I just couldn’t avoid the topic of marijuana. From my morning news, to my RSS news feeds and political websites, there was pot, everywhere. Ahead of the all important holiday to stoners (420), I thought it appropriate to discuss the economics of pot. Read more…

Round Up

Dave Ramsey, a popular personal finance radio talk show host, has a method for reducing debt: the debt snowball. This simple strategy to get out of debt will aid in reducing your debt and making it manageable, but the system is more psychological than it is mathematical. Read more…

Round Up

With all eyes on Haiti after an earthquake of unbelievable magnitude, the world has learned so much about such a small country. After hearing day in and day out about the disaster that has taken such a toll, I thought it would be interesting to look at the Haitian economy, a country I had never before investigated. Read more…

Round Up

Sony, the company that pioneered the VCR and later propelled DVD into the forefront of home entertainment, has seen lackluster results for its BluRay high definition discs and players. Though Sony hit everything out of the ballpark with its newest disc format, timing proved to be poor. Read more…

Round Up

A poll completed online by Monster.com has found that 50% of Americans have less than one month of savings. This scary statistic further induces the unemployment problem as thousands of Americans no longer qualify for unemployment, and have just a few weeks of savings before they’re tapped dry. Read more…

Round Up

Every financial catastrophe is practically defined by executive suicide. The corporate elite either dump Wall Street’s finest jobs attached to a golden parachute or find themselves in a situation where death is the only escape from a life behind bars. In this suicidal economic climate, both fiscally and in practice, suicide is too easy of a guilty plea. Read more…

Round Up

The FDICs call for a bad bank to wipe away all bad assets from bank balance sheets may sound great at first but creating a bad bank doesn’t end the problem. Instead it transfers the loss from private companies to the balance sheet of the government. Read more…

Round Up FDIC, GLD, SLV

When recession hits people start saving and now we’re starting to see some good in an improving trade deficit.

The trade imbalance worked out to just $40.4 Billion in November led by lower oil costs and also lessened spending by US consumers. The good news is that though we’re running a $40 Billion a month deficit, exports aren’t shrinking nearly as fast as imports which for the long term is very positive news. Read more…

Round Up

The BLS.gov website is an excellent resource for finding all the government data you’ll never find on the mainstream media. While their latest release of information regarding part time employment was posted on the homepage, there has yet to be any mention of it across the board in any media outlet. After deciphering the data I’ve discovered that part time work is growing but for all the wrong reasons. Read more…

Round Up

It seems to be a common theme in this fiscal year that the regulations set in place to stop fraud, bad lending practices and stomp out the fires below the cooked books have entirely failed. This past year has been one of excess for Wall Street, the Politicians and the CEOs and hierarchy of the many now taxpayer owned businesses.

Investors should demand more from their investment managers. Case in point was Madoff who seemingly made off with likely billions of dollars while destroying investments by paying off earlier investors with money that came from later investments. The classic ponzi scheme was ran perfectly for years, but it could not prevail through a number of withdrawal requests stemming from people needing cold hard cash in a less than booming business cycle. Read more…

Hedge Funds, Investing, Round Up

It isn’t very often that we get to look into the FEDs numbers. A recent report by the St Louis Federal Reserve shows us the adjusted monetary base, or M1 statistics. M1 statistics include all physical forms of cash (cold hard cash like you’d have in your wallet) plus the amount of money in bank reserves at the FED.

This report shows us the huge amount of inflation that has been created by the FEDs recent entry into the market to stabilize the economy, and the costs of half the $700 Billion bailout which were added to the reserves at the FED. In just the past three months the adjusted monetary base has skyrocketed from around $850 Billion to $1.5 Trillion. Read more…

Investing, Round Up

Black Friday the day after Thanksgiving and the largest retailing days of the year saw a 3% improvement in the amount of money that was spent this year compared to last. This would ordinarily be seen as a positive but 3% is the slowest growth recorded on Black Friday since 2005.

All things considered a 3% decline is virtually nothing for a one day statistic. This could have been made up by the fact that prices were lower, consumers bought more items with a smaller price tag, or that the total number of stores as a whole has dropped since 2005. Colder or warmer weather could also affect the number of people that went out on Black Friday to chase the deep discounts. Read more…

Investing, Round Up

Wall Street was happy that the Federal Government hopped on board to help out Citigroup. The Dow was pushed upward a few hundred points but the end result for taxpayers is far less outstanding.

The deal was struck so that the US Government through the TARP program, the Treasury and eventually the Federal Reserve would back up the $306 Billion worth of mortgages and other assets that Citi holds. The TARP program gave Citigroup $20 Billion in exchange for $20 Billion in preferred stock, good deal there. Read more…

Mutual Funds, Round Up C