With the Enron trial featuring prominently in the news, we’re all reminded of the corporate governance issues that have recently faced the economy. It’s refreshing to see a company take a new approach to how it runs its business. In this case Progressive has changed how it distributes dividends. This new system has the potential to greatly thrill and, in turn, greatly disappoint shareholders. But either way, it’s great for the company.
After the recent release of Phil Town’s book, Rule #1 (review), many people seem to be asking about “the arrows.” What are these mysterious arrows anyway? And can you make money just by using them?
Arrows are simply a visual way to show a chart reader that a key statistic has generated a buy or a sell signal. Buy signals are usually green arrows pointing up and sell signals are usually red arrows pointing down.
One of the things that really drew me into the blogosphere was the community that develops within networks of blogs. You become friends, share ideas, and help spread the word on great posts that are timely and informative. I spent a good deal of time over the weekend sniffing out other blogs in personal finance and investing that would be worth a visit, and so if you have some time, I would encourage you go see what else our fellow bloggers are writing about. You may just find it to be enlightening!
Jason just posted in our forums about a new site called SocialPicks (announcement) which allows users to rate and review stocks online in a Digg-like social fashion. This could be a really interesting experiment in social investing. Will it lead to finding more undiscovered stocks or will it be abused and go to prove that (more…)
What is it about investing that motivates so many thousands of investors? It is said that the two emotions of every trader is fear and greed. Maybe. But do boys want to grow up to be the Sheriff of Nottingham, stealing from the poor to line their on coffers? What every boy desires is an adventure and to be a hero. This is no clearer than to look at boys as they play, watching them defend their pillow castles, build their appliance box spaceships, and battle with stick swords.
In this emasculated world of dull grey desks, neon office lights, and flickering computer screens, where do boys go to feel alive? No boy says, “I want to be an office drone when I grow up!” The man’s heart desires to be put to the test so he can prove he has what it takes. So the city boy must grow up to find his place in a concrete jungle, and in what better place can a man prove himself than in the lurid and dangerous world of the market.
For the past couple weeks, Jim Cramer’s been talking up the stock of the Canadian mining company Crystallex International Corporation (AMEX:KRY) on his radio and TV shows. The thesis on this company is based around Las Cristinas, a gold mine in Venezuela owned but not yet mined by the company. But that situation should change soon as all but one of the Venezuelan government agencies required have granted permission for Crystallex to tap the mine.
The last of these permits is expected soon. An active gold mine would bring many jobs to the country, which is starving for employment.
Why should we care about Las Cristinas and Crystallex? Because the current evaluation does not price in the full potential of the mine, one of the largest untapped gold mines in the world. Gold demand and gold prices are rising steeply and if the Las Cristinas mine comes online for Crystallex, they stand to make a lot of money. Cramer’s estimation is that the stock’s price should be somewhere between $12-$15 assuming the mine works out.
As of Monday, April 10th, 2006, Phil Town will no longer be responding to direct emails from his Gmail account. Each Monday, Phil will answer a randomly selected homework or question submitted to his site RuleOneInvestor.com. I’ve much appreciated Phil’s help these last few months and wish him well in his endeavors.
John Rhodes over at WebWord.com recently wrote an article on How Web 2.0 Killed Microsoft. The article points out a lot of the hurdles and challenges facing Microsoft as they try to keep up with the movement from desktop-based applications to online services. It’s a long article; here are some highlights:
The disruption afoot in the world of operating systems isn’t tied to the software resident on your own computer. Instead, the disruption is network enabled software, particularly software, data storage, and end user environments that reside squarely on the internet, but probably more specifically on the web. To be quite blunt about this, Google doesn’t give a damn if a web browser of any virtually flavor is running any particular operating system. The network is the computer, after all.
Web 2.0 developers are mostly yawning about Vista because they don’t need it. Like me, I’ll bet you haven’t seen much buzz on Vista coming from developers and designers. In the past, developers needed to care about the operating system, but no more. They obey few corporate masters because they feel liberated. They leash of Windows has been cast off.
As users adopt more and more Web 2.0 tools, they will get more comfortable with them. In turn, they will start to expect and even need these applications in their organizations. The enterprise will start to focus on web applications more and the operating system even less. To put this another way, Google and many other companies playing the Web 2.0 world, will slowly kill Microsoft. The mightly enterprise will move to align with user demands over time. It’ll be a glacial move, but it will happen as Web 2.0 continuosly demonstrates victory, and liberation.
Read on for my response.
Becoming wealthy is a full-time job. Successful entrepreneurs have worked for years to build a deep knowledge base in areas as diverse as sales, marketing, accounting, stock investing, real estate investing, leadership, team building and personal finance. For someone who is still laying his foundation, finding a mentor can help him avoid potholes he otherwise would not have seen, and is an invaluable asset as both a friend and a counselor.
A mentor is someone who has already done what you have set out to do. Whether that means becoming a successful stock investor, or real estate mogul, your mentor is an expert and is willing to share his experiences. Just as professional baseball players have pitching coaches and managers have leadership coaches, so should budding entrepreneurs have a mentor that can help steer them down the right path.
I am the proud owner of 25 shares of Microsoft Corporation stock (MSFT: Google Finance, Yahoo! Finance). These shares were purchased on 3/23/2006 at a price of $27 per share.
After selling my SIRI stock last week, I was itching for somewhere to put that money. MSFT had been on my radar for a while and was an obvious target for me. It seems I wasn’t the only one considering investing in MSFT though, because the stock had a rally from the low $27s last Monday to just over $28 this Tuesday.
While I was pondering, a few things happened:
I thought I had missed the boat. But then this Tuesday Microsoft announced a delay of their own3. The consumer version of Windows Vista, the next installment in the Windows Operating System, will be released in January 2007 rather than the previously-planned “second half of 2006”. The “corporate version” is still planned to be released this November though.
News of the delayed release erased the previous week’s rally, taking the stock back down to the low $27s Wednesday. Is this my second chance to jump aboard the MSFT train? Is this a buying opportunity for MSFT?
