More Finance Calculators

These folks emailed us and they have some decent finance calculators on their site: Ultimate Calculators I found the loan application one particularly interesting… haven’t seen that one before. Cheers!

“Payback Time” Analysis for GOOG

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 (more…)

Paul Krugman

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 (more…)

The Snowball. Warren Buffet and the Business of Life.

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. (more…)

Stock Shock. SIRI Documentary Coming out June 10th

The folks behind the new documentary Stock Shock: The Short Selling of the American Dream asked me to share the trailer with our readers. This would be an interesting movie for any of you who at some point owned shares in Sirius (SIRI) or XM (XMSR) Satalite Radio.

(trailer and more after the fold)

Free Fantasy Stock Market Game

This is a paid review… I haven’t been doing many paid reviews lately, but have a couple extra minutes and could use the $15 (or so?) for InvestorGeeks and this site looks pretty cool anway. Wall Street Survivor is a free fantasy stock market game. You’ve probably seen many of these around. CNBC does a (more…)

I Write Often at the Google Finance Discussion Boards

Here’s my latest post about AMD. Here’s an excerpt from a Frobes article: “Intel’s latest desktop processors have faster clocks speeds and use smaller transistors–45 nanometers as opposed to 65 nanometers–that allow them to do more work with less power, _all else being equal_. “We think that Intel is consolidating its performance lead in desktops,” (more…)

Book Review: Vitaliy Katsenelson’s Active Value Investing

Active Value Investing by Vitaliy KatsenelsonQuestion: are we in a bull market or bear market? What if there was a third option? In Active Value Investing, Vitaliy Katsenelson makes a case that the current market is actual a "range-bound market" and then gives you the tools to take full advantage of the fact.

What is a Range Bound Market?
Range-bound markets are characterized by their roller-coaster-like volatility and the fact that despite this volatility, money invested in the beginning of the cycle will have close to 0% gains by the end of the cycle. In fact, range-bound markets are more common than bear markets. Katsenelson says:

"…if you look at the U.S. stock market during the entire twentieth century, most of the prolonged (greater than five years) markets were actually bull or range-bound markets. Prolonged bear (declining) markets happened in the past only when high market valuation was coupled with significant economic deterioration, similar to what was going on in Japan from the late 1980s through 2003 or so."

This chart from the book shows the past 107 years bull, bear, and range-bound markets as labeled by Kevin A. Turtle.

Hear Me at WallSt.net

Kristin Friedersdorf, from WallSt.net, has posted her interview with me. Goto her Financial Blog Watch page over there to hear me talk about the history of InvestorGeeks and my lessons learned in trying to start a blog network. I had a great (if brief) time on the phone with Kristin. Her other podcasts are worth (more…)