Owner: A Slacker's Quest For His First Million URL:http://www.slackerwealth.com Join Date: Mon, 07 Jan 2008 15:47:10 -0600 Rating:0 Site Description: A slacker's attempts to have a liquid, inflation adjusted net worth of one million dollars with as little work as possible. It will include broker reviews, investing newsletter reviews, reviews of other investing sites, and general thoughts on variou Site statistics:Click here
Ethical Investing Blog Carnival, March Edition 2008-03-03 07:01:00 Welcome to the March
3, 2008 edition of the Ethical Investing
Blog Carnival
.Bloggers were invited to submit articles on ethical investing, which includes such topics as environmentally friendly, people friendly, animal friendly investments; what makes an investment "ethical," can it be profitable?, what commonly called "ethical" investments are anything but that?, is investing in the so called "vice" industry necessary unethical?, and the like.There were 24 submissions for this edition. Here are the best four:Hung Nguyen presents Adding Values to Your Investment: FTSE 4Good Index posted at Meaningful Issues in Today's World, saying, "Would you like to add not only value, but values to your investment? This blog looks at Vanguard's socially responsible investing option. The Vanguard FTSE So Read more:Edition
, Blog Carnival
Don't Waste Money Through Thoughtlessness: A Rant 2008-02-29 23:04:00 The other day I passed by an HSBC bank that had a funny little ad in the window. It said "take advantage of our low $1.50 ATM fee." I'm not old, and even I remember when a $1.50 ATM fee was thought to be expensive. Nowadays most bank ATM fees are around $3. (If interested in articles about bank abuses, check out John Crenshaw's site.)I try to use my bank's ATM, which is still free. (Banks haven't been audacious enough to charge their own customers yet, at least for withdrawals. Charges for checking one's balance are not uncommon, however.) Occasionally, I'm forced to use other banks' ATMs. When waiting in line, I sometimes look at the discarded withdrawal receipts people leave on the counter and floor.It seems people like to withdraw $10 or $20, and they pay up to $3 to do so. That's 30% Read more:Money
Simply Investing Blog Carnival Feb 25, 2008 2008-02-25 04:08:00 Welcome to the February 25, 2008 edition of Simply Investing
Blog Carnival
. There were many great submissions, and I had trouble picking the best three. So, I decided to have 11.Editor's Top 11: Raymond presents Qualifying For An Economic Stimulus Tax Rebate Check posted at Money Blue Book.Brent Mashburn presents How to Estimate Earnings Growth with Excel posted at luminouslogic.com.The Investor presents The secret to investing when stock markets are falling posted at Monevator.com, saying, "Controversial I know given the host blog this time, but the article respectfully makes a case for NOT focussing on your net worth if you want to be a successful investor even when markets are falling. Then the big numbers – the million - take care of themselves."Ana presents Automatic Investment Read more:Blog Carnival
Are Municipal Bonds Safe? 2008-02-23 11:48:00 Some financial publications and newsletters, including Money, and Morningstar have recently started recommending MunicipalBonds
, touting their safety and noting that depending on one's tax bracket, their yields are higher than those of federal bonds. The yield, after tax savings, is indeed better than what you can get on federal debt. The safety, however, I'm not so sure about.Municipalities issue debt to pay for various things, like road repairs, public transportation, education, etc. They pay the debt mostly out of the tax dollars they receive from property taxes, sales taxes, and use taxes. All bond issuers are given ratings, and this includes municipalities. To sell their municipal bonds, townships, school districts, etc, need top ratings, like AAA or AA.Many municipal bonds are sold
Random Stocks List for 2/22/08 2008-02-22 22:37:00 Here's this week's random stock list with closing prices as of Friday 2/22/08. More about the experiment here.1. VEOLIA ENVIRONN ADS (VE) $88.282. Tanzanian Royalty Exploration Corp. (TRE) $6.04993. Hitachi Ltd. (HIT) $72.404. PharmAthene, Inc. (PIP) $3.205. AEGON N.V. (AEF) $24.876. Lacrosse Footwear Inc. (BOOT) $16.907. Wet Seal Inc. (WTSLA) $2.878. Ralcorp Holdings Inc. (RAH) $56.049. Ford Motor Co. (F) $6.2510. Boston Beer Co. Inc. (SAM) $36.12
Read more:Random
, Stocks
What's So Good About Kraft? 2008-02-19 07:28:00 In what should be old news by now, Warren Buffett bought a sizable position in Kraft
(KFT) recently. Besides this stamp of approval, which is all most people need, really, what else has Kraft got going for it?Headquartered in Illinois, Kraft makes and sells various food products around the world, from snacks to beverages to frozen dinners to diet foods to desserts. It is the largest packaged food company in North America, and second largest in the world. Pretty much any packaged supermarket category you can think of, Kraft has a product for it. You probably ate something it made today. If not, you will soon. Six of Kraft's brands generate over $1 billion in sales each year. You may have heard of them: Jacobs, Kraft, Nabisco, Oscar Mayer, Maxwell House, and Philadelphia. It's hard to avoid
Random Stock List 2/15/08 2008-02-16 07:04:00 Here's this week's random stock list with closing prices as of Friday 2/15/08. More about the experiment here.Tyler Technologies, Inc. (TYL) $13.79Whole Foods Market, Inc. (WFMI) $39.12Dover Corp. (DOV) $42.04Nucor Corp. (NUE) $62.01Total System Services, Inc. (TSS) $22.11Merrill Lynch & Co., Inc. (MER) $51.64BioScrip Inc. (BIOS) $6.67FormFactor Inc. (FORM) $19.32XTO Energy, Inc. (XTO) $55.29Nordson Corp. (NDSN) $48.48
Read more:Random
, Stock
Funds of Funds -- The Good & Bad 2008-02-14 14:03:00 Funds of funds are mutual funds that, instead of owning individual stocks, own other mutual funds. A couple of examples include Janus' Smart Portfolio Growth (JSPGX) and Vanguard Star (VGSTX). If you're thinking of buying a fund of funds, there are some things to consider.The potential benefits of owning a fund of funds include1. Diversification -- by buying one fund, you can automatically be exposed to bonds, various domestic stocks, and foreign stocks.2. Access to funds that are closed to new investors -- often the most popular mutual funds aren't open to new investors. But if a fund of funds already owns the closed mutual fund, you can buy it through the fund of funds.3. Lower initial and subsequent investments -- initial minimum investments of most mutual funds are usually $500 or grea Read more:Funds
What Happens to Altria & Honeywell Now? 2008-02-13 12:23:00 As you may know, Altria (MO) and Honeywell (HON) are being dropped from the Dow Jones Industrial Average on February 19, 2008. They will be replaced with Chevron (CVX) and Bank of America (BAC).Getting deleted from the DJIA may seem like a bad thing for the stocks, but Mark Hulbert over at MarketWatch.com says this isn't necessarily the case. He examined changes to the DJIA in 1999, when four companies were replaced in the index, and in 2004 when three were replaced.Hulbert found that the four companies deleted in 1999, Goodyear Tire & Rubber Company (GT), Sears Roebuck, Union Carbide, and Chevron (Chevron is now being added back) have since gained 27% on average. That's not a very good return over nine years (Good Year, for example, is still below what it was in 1999 although it's sub
Simply Investing Blog Carnival 2008-02-11 07:15:00 Welcome to the February 11, 2008 edition of Simply Investing
Blog Carnival
. There were many more great submissions this time around, and it was hard to choose the best ones.Editor's Top Three:Sagar presents 10 Reasons to Be Critical of the Federal Reserve posted at Currency Trading.net.Dorian Wales presents The Personal Financier: Be the Turtle - Why Timing the Market is Impossible posted at Personal Financier.Deb presents What Does The Yahoo/Microsoft Debate Mean For The Rest Of Us? posted at Marketvise, breaking down the pros and cons of Microsoft's recent bid for Yahoo.Runners Up: Leon Gettler presents The market talks to the Fed posted at Sox First, saying, "The market has told Ben Bernanke and the Federal Reserve that they are clueless. The Fed's one-two punch, cutting rates by half a Read more:Blog Carnival
Investing With Borrowed Money 2008-02-09 19:27:00 We all know what interest is. I like to look at it this way: Interest is a fee borrowers pay lenders to have access to a sum of money right away. Interest is a fee lenders charge borrowers to part with their money for a period of time. Interest is money rent.People borrow money all the time for non-investing purposes. This includes using credit cards to buy clothing or other consumer goods and then paying the minimum balance (seems kind of dumb to me) and taking out an auto loan to buy a car. In these two examples (there are many more) not only is the borrowing for non-investing, it contributes to one losing money. Not paying off your credit card balance in full makes the clothing, or whatever consumer good, you buy much more expensive, since you're paying interest.Should you wish to sell Read more:Investing
, Money
This Week's Random Stock List 2008-02-09 11:41:00 Here's this week's random stock list with closing prices as of Friday 2/8/08. More about the experiment here.1. Modine Manufacturing Co. (MOD) $13.682. Auxilium Pharmaceuticals, Inc. (AUXL) $33.333. The Pantry, Inc. (PTRY) $27.424. PetSmart, Inc. (PETM) $23.735. Coca-Cola Enterprises, Inc. (CCE) $23.286. Mid-America Apartment Communities, Inc. REIT (MAA) $46.447. Omega Protein Corp. (OME) $7.718. Omniture, Inc. (OMTR) $25.989. Cooper Tire & Rubber Co. (CTB) $17.2510. Cumulus Media Inc. (CMLS) $6.07
Read more:Random
, Stock
Paying for College & Also Paying for Barrons, etc? You're Probably Paying Twice 2008-02-06 12:33:00 Most colleges subscribe to various databases. If you're paying for college (grad school, etc), whether for yourself or someone else, fees for these databases are included in your tuition.Two databases in particular, Lexis Nexis and Proquest, give you access to many financial/investing publications. These include, but are by no means limited to, Barron's, Business Week, The Economist, Forbes, Kiplinger's, Money, and The Wall Street Journal.If you subscribe to any of these separately, and you're paying for college, you're paying twice. If you're paying for college and don't read any of these, maybe you should, since you're paying for them anyway.It's true that the database versions don't have pictures and if you want to read them without a computer you have to print them out. The databases a Read more:College
, Probably
, Twice
Ethical Investing Blog Carnival 2008-02-03 22:31:00 This is the first of what (I hope) will be many blog carnivals on the subject of ethical investing. To me it seems there is a paucity of blog writing on this important issue. The blog carnival's purpose is to encourage more bloggers to write on the subject, and to assemble these posts in one convenient place for readers.Below are three excellent submissions that were accepted, out of a much greater number (many submissions were off topic).Hung Nguyen presents Socially Responsible Investment: Can it beat traditional mutual funds? posted at Meaningful Issues in Today's World, looks "at socially responsible investing (SRI). The idea is that by investing in socially responsible companies that you can improve your return. I quickly review the book The SRI Advantage and then look into the proble Read more:Investing
, Carnival
, Blog Carnival
This Week's Random Stock List and a Response to Comment 2008-02-02 11:50:00 Here's this week's random stock list with closing prices as of Friday 2/1/08. More about the experiment here.Dean Foods (DF) $28.42MoneyGram International, Inc. (MGI) $6.32Esterline Technologies Corp. (ESL) $47.22Fuel Systems Solutions, Inc. (FSYS) $13.03Daktronics, Inc. (DAKT) $20.78Stantec Inc. (SXC) $33.24Vestin Realty Mortgage II, Inc. REIT (VRTB) $9.7CSK Auto Corp. (CAO) $8.98Commerce Group, Inc. (CGI) $36.25Epicept Corp. (EPCT) $1.45Curiousjoe left a comment, making the point that given that there are more small caps than other stocks in the pool from which I'm randomly selecting stocks, my picks will have a small cap bias. If I modify, or do an additional experiment where picks are market cap weighed, I'll have a large cap bias.No matter what I do, Curiousjoe suggests, since my pick Read more:Random
, Stock
, Response
, Comment
Simply Investing Blog Carnival 2008-01-28 09:50:00 Welcome to the January 28, 2008 edition of the Simply Investing
Blog Carnival
. Of 23 submissions, here are 13 that have been accepted. Enjoy.Tyler McKinna presents It’s Time To Buy POT! posted at Dividend Money, saying, "Potash Corp. (POT) is a well run and highly profitable fertilizer company that has seen its share price beaten down unjustly given recent market conditions. Investors looking to profit from the huge worldwide demand for fertilizer now have an opportunity to do so at a very attractive price." The Investor presents Being fearfully greedy: Why I buy in bear markets posted at Monevator.com, saying, "Rather than whimpering in a bear market, if you're well-positioned you should be whooping with joy that you’ve got an unlooked for chance to buy the same shares you were buying Read more:Blog Carnival
Why (Financial) Stocks Should Head Lower 2008-01-27 12:20:00 It looks like there will be trouble in the Credit Default Swap market.Credit Default Swaps are used to transfer credit exposure of fixed income instruments, such as mortgages and bonds, between parties, to spread risk. It works in the following way. One party buys protection on a debt instrument from another party, the seller, who guarantees the credit worthiness of the debt instrument. If the instrument, let's say a corporate bond, defaults in its interest payments, for example if the company that issued the bond goes out of business, the seller of the credit default swap is supposed to reimburse the buyer. Basically, Credit Default Swaps are insurance on fixed income securities that holders buy to limit their risk. We can call Credit Default Swap sellers insurers.The combined value of a Read more:Stocks
, Financial
, Lower
Random Stock Experiment List 2 2008-01-27 00:20:00 Last week I started my random stock picking experiment, to see how random stock picking compares in performance to that of professionals, my hypothesis being that it will do better than the majority.Here are this week's 10 random stocks with their closing prices on 1/25/08.Microsoft Corp. (MSFT) $32.94Endurance Specialty Holdings Ltd. (ENH) $38.61AZZ Inc. (AZZ) $33.25Alaska Communications Systems Group Inc. (ALSK) $12.73AMIS Holdings Inc. (AMIS) $7.71OPNET Technologies, Inc. (OPNT) $8.6Royal Gold, Inc. (RGLD) $30.23Aircastle Ltd. (AYR) $22.5Valassis Communications, Inc. (VCI) $Hercules Technology Growth Capital, Inc. (HTGC) $10.72I mentioned last week that I would use Stock
alicious to track the stocks. I've decided against this, however, as half the time the widget wasn't loading. A few da Read more:Random
, Experiment
Get Higher Yields By Purchasing Loans 2008-01-23 03:03:00 With the fresh .75% interest rate cut by the Fed and new cuts presumably to follow, yields on savings and money market accounts, and certificates of deposit will go from low to pretty much nothing. Treasury notes and bonds aren't paying much either, though bonds may make up for it by rising in value.If you're thinking about putting more money in dividend paying stocks or corporate bonds to make up the difference, you may want to consider diversifying a bit by purchasing loans from regular people like yourself. A few so called peer-to-peer lending sites have sprung up recently. These include LendingClub, Zopa.com, and Prosper.com. There is also something similar called Loanio, which is not yet live. Currently, LendingClub "lenders" are earning an average of 12.15%, Zopa "investors" are earn Read more:Higher
, Purchasing
, Loans
What's Up with Bernanke? 2008-01-22 10:43:00 I don't have the academic credentials of the Fed chairman, but it seems pretty odd that every time the market is set to drop a significant amount, the Fed lowers rates either on the Funds rate or the discount window. Stocks were tanking in August 2007, so the Fed cut the discount window rate by .5%. In mid September 2007, with the market tanking again, the Fed cut rates by .5%.Yesterday markets around the world swooned. The DJIA, Nasdaq, and S&P futures indicated a big drop here. So what happens before the market opens? Bernanke
cuts rates by .75%.The cut can't be any more blatantly tied to the stock market. But is the Fed supposed to be worried about the stock market, or the general economy? Granted, the stock market influences the economy and the economy influences the stock market,
If You Must Time the Market, Buy Only When Fear Takes Hold 2008-01-20 18:39:00 Repeated so many times it's become a cliche, I'm sure you heard this one of Warren Buffet's famous aphorisms: be fearful when others are greedy and greedy only when others are fearful.It makes a lot of sense. That's how you buy stocks, and anything really, on the cheap.So why don't people do it? Why do the majority of retail investors lose money on the stock market?Small individual investors are fearful when times are bad, or are about to be bad--during a recession or when it seems there will be one. At such uncertain times, when you don't know how long your job will last, when there are no other job prospects in sight, and when the cost of your daily living goes steadily up all the while what stock holdings you've been able to amass plummet, it's hard not to be fearful. Putting money away Read more:Market
Random Stock Picking Experiment 2008-01-19 22:55:00 At some point in the (near) future, I will review various investing newsletters and investing gurus. For some time I've had a theory that most newsletters and gurus that have decent performance records owe them not to their investing acumen but to the number of their picks. Over time stocks as a group tend to go up. You pick enough stocks, and your performance shouldn't be bad. That is my hypothesis.In the late 1990s, there used to be something called Monkeydex. It was an index of stocks picked by a monkey, and its performance beat that of many professionals. Sadly, it appears that the index is no more. I've decided to create my own version. Its results will be one measure against which gurus and newsletters will be compared.Every weekend, I will randomly pick 10 stocks, and their performa Read more:Random
, Stock
, Experiment
, Picking
International & Domestic Inverse/Bear Market ETFs 2008-01-18 08:26:00 If you think the markets will continue their decline, you might want to consider inverse ETFs. Some of these have become somewhat popular, so maybe you heard of them. But you probably haven't heard of all of them.Inverse
ETFs use various derivatives to behave in the opposite way of their underlying indexes. For instance, the inverse Dow 30 ETF (DOG) does the opposite of what the Dow Jones Industrial Average (DJIA) does. For example, if the DJIA falls 1.5%, DOG will rise by about 1.5%. The correlation is not perfect, but it's close.An advantage of using inverse ETFs is that you can hold a short position while going long. In other words, it's like holding a regular stock, but you profit as if you have sold short. As there is no need for a margin account to do this, you are mitigating or elim Read more:Market
, International
, Domestic
Blog Carnivals I've participated in Jan 1 through 15 2008-01-16 20:53:00 As a courtesy, I'm linking back to the carnivals where my submissions have been accepted.Investment Basics CarnivalCarnival of Twenty Something FinancesCarnival of Money, Growth and HappinessInvestment Quest: Festival of StocksCheck out the carnivals for loads of interesting articles.
Read more:Carnivals
, Blog Carnivals
Review: TradeKing 2008-01-15 22:07:00 TradeKing Regular Individual AccountThe Good:1. $4.95 a trade for limit, stop, and market orders; $4.95 a trade plus $0.69 per option contract. Trades execute quickly.2. Great tools for options traders, including a Profit/Loss Calculator, which calculates your profit from rising option values, an Options Calculator, which calculates volatility and risk, subject to your criteria, a Probability Calculator, which determines the probability of target stock prices in the future, and an Options Screener.Moreover, TradeKing makes things faster and easier by letting you do multiple transactions on the same page. For example, let's say you want to write a covered call. At most brokers you will have to go to a couple of different places on the site, to buy the stock and to sell the call. At TradeKin
When Newsletters Contradict Themselves 2008-03-10 23:21:00 This is my first post in quite some time. I've been super busy with grad school stuff, and will be until next week.Putting aside the question of why I'm reading investment articles in what little spare time I have, I couldn't resist writing this up:In an article on Motley Fool, David Gardner, one of the founders of the sites writes, "My intent here is not to suggest you buy Google today or hop aboard the Activision train or go load up on (God forbid) Time Warner" (my italics for emphasis).At the bottom, where the usual disclosure stuff is, it says that Time Warner is a Motley Fool Stock Advisor recommendation.So, here's the Motley Fool co-founder telling you not to buy Time Warner while the disclosure statement says that Motley Fool recommends you to buy Time Warner. What's up with that?
Read more:Newsletters
Bear Stearns, etc 2008-03-17 07:41:00 Perhaps it's obvious, but I think it should be pointed out anyway. If you work for a company that is publicly traded, don't invest too much in its stock. If the company goes bust, not only do you lose your job, but your investments as well. A lot of Bear Stearns
employees, supposedly smart people, just lost their 401ks.One investment bank down, maybe a couple more to go.I had a couple of limit orders from a while back that I canceled. I'm trying not to buy anything until people stop talking about a bottom being in sight. There's still too much hope, I think.I'm also not selling anything. Let the dividends reinvest. I've got plenty of time to wait for them to go back up.Stocks I'd like to own (more of) in the future: NS or NSH, KFT, GE, PFE, PG, RAI, MO.Stocks look cheaper now, but I'm wond
Shareholder Activism: Ethically Investing in "Evil" Companies 2008-03-19 15:59:00 Ethical investors (e.g., those who support human rights, animal rights, environmental issues, and so on) almost by definition avoid stocks of companies that are engaged in unethical activities (e.g., animal testing, environmental degradation, human rights violations, etc). That is, ethical investors usually invest only in companies that meet their criteria for ethical behavior. For instance, ethical investors might avoid oil stocks in favor of clean energy stocks.I'd like to talk about a more counterintuitive approach to ethical investing.First, however, I'd like to draw a distinction between investing to make money and investing to make the world a better place. While these goals aren't mutually exclusive, they are different. Ethically investing to make money usually means finding compani Read more:Activism
, Investing
, Companies
Foreign Dividend Paying Stocks in Your IRA 2008-03-28 23:56:00 The great benefit of IRA accounts is that your taxes on dividends and capital gains are deferred (or nonexistent in the case of Roth IRAs). The recent spin-off of Philip Morris International (PM) by Altria (MO), however, brings to mind a potential disadvantage of IRAs.Foreign
stocks that pay dividends, depending on their country of origin, often have their dividends taxed in the foreign country. Suppose the company pays a dividend of $1 per share, you own 100 shares, and the foreign country has a 15% tax on dividends. When you receive the dividend in your account, you'll get $85 rather than $100. This is because of the foreign tax.If you own foreign shares in a regular account, these foreign taxes are deductible or can be used to take the foreign tax credit. However, if you hold the shares Read more:Dividend
, Stocks
Ethical Investing Carnival - April 7, 2008 2008-04-07 20:02:00 Welcome to the April
7, 2008 edition of the Ethical InvestingCarnival
. As last time, there were some great submissions. Glen presents Some Ethical Ramblings, which relates his "personal reflections of recent trades and investments, and a structure for analysing future trades and investments within an ethical framework"; Sustainability Reporting, about "The benefits of adopting sustainability reporting in today's climate"; and Tobacco, Super Funds and Ethical Investing examining "Australian's reactions to, and Australian super fund's dealing with, the tobacco industry in investing," posted at Measuring the Incalculable; Valuing the Intangible! Sagar presents 10 Surprising Economic Implications of a Barack Obama Presidency posted at Currency Trading.net. Larry Russell presents Objective
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