Investorial

The 26th edition of the Carnival of Investing is now up. Investorial’s review of Web 2.0 application StockPicker is one of the featured articles. Head on over and read up on some of the best investment articles deserving of the mention from the past week!

I also submitted a contrarian rant about what the term “ten best days of the year” may mean to different people, and also my first podcast interview with a proven fund manager, Jim Chuong. I’ve made the podcast entry sticky to stay as the first entry on the homepage for the next couple of days. Unfortunately, they were not accepted into the carnival, but feel free to read them as well!

Quick post this morning as I’m working on a project that will be a treat for Investorial readers in the upcoming week! The blogging trio at InvestorGeeks are opening up their site and looking for more geeks to join them. Chris, Jason and Frank are not only Investorial readers, but I also feel that they themselves write some of the best investing articles that I have seen on PF blogs.

I remember a long time ago when a small site started with a vision to build an investing community and has since blossomed into the popular Motley Fools. Nowadays, Motley Fools seems more like an infomercial with frequent noise about promoting their investment newsletters. But I feel InvestorGeeks has that potential to be the next Motley Fool, sans the noise.

Chris is following through with the InvestorGeeks mission of creating a community of investors who share what they learn with one another. If you love learning about investing and love to write, then consider becoming an InvestorGeek! These openings are available to bloggers, non-bloggers, pros and amateurs alike. There are no restrictions.

Many mutual fund companies and financial advisors often preach the virtues of long-term investing by citing the “10 best days” scenario. They will show you that if you attempt to time the market, you may potentially miss out on the 10 best days of the stock market and affect your returns. But what are the 10 best days? Does it depend on your perspective?

Perhaps the financial companies have it all backwards. They always show the 10 highest gaining days as the 10 “best” days. I understand why their marketing department spin using positive returns; as most investors rather think in terms of pluses instead of minuses. However, if you are preaching to an audience interested in long-term investing — young investors. Shouldn’t the 10 best days be the days with (more…)

I’ve always maintained that I am not into day-trading. Nor am I turned on by technical analysis, candles, charts. That doesn’t mean the craft or principles do not have merit; only that I prefer to invest my money in a manner that I can understand! I evoke the following Warren Buffett quotes only as a way to poke fun at myself!

“I realized technical analysis didn’t work when I turned the charts upside down and didn’t get a different answer”

“If past history was all there was to the game, the richest people would be librarians.”

Still, I found it interesting to read Trader Mike as he gave us a glimpse of of the tools he used and how he worked. It would not be right for me to dismiss trading if I had not bothered to learn more about it. Having said that, no more opinions on this post. I simply thought that any fundamentalist readers passing by may find it interesting to learn about what lurked on “the other side”

I’m stunned by what I’ve just read; all I can say is WOW!

Recently, the blogosophere has been on all cyclinders talking about buying vs. renting, and many calculator spreadsheets have also popped up. But my vote has to go to Julie Ali who is guest-blogging at Jim’s Blueprint for Financial Prosperity. Her writing is absolutely terrific in its depiction of the emotional issues of buying vs. renting.

[...] There is a rental cycle that is the diagrammatic opposite to the house buying cycle. When people are madly engaged in a love affair with the purchasing of their first, second or final upscale home, they turn their nose down at even the mere plebeian thought of dating a rental house. Even the sensible arrangement of renting for a few years in order to acquire a down payment for said house is refused. “Why should we make the landlord richer?” they sniff as they run to their local banking casino of choice and throw down their chips to lose a fortune on the turn of the mortgage interest wheel. [...]

Julie hit it right on the nail with that assessment. When you hear (more…)

My family and I originally hail from the south-east asian country of Singapore. So it’s not a stretch to say that I’m still partial to news from the region. I recently discovered an interesting blog that is all about investing and personal finance from the south-east asian perspective!

But talk about the ridiculous prices! If I were still living in Singapore, would this be what I have to look forward to? I cannot imagine paying $3000 per square foot for real estate. You’d have to pay $3 million for a house that is of a mere 1000 square footage!

On a side note, It’s a pity that the Business Times article mentioned has so many login features that you can’t see what the article was talking about. Some quotes from the Business Times article would have made the blog post better!

No amount of dis-pleasure or protest will stop the goliath from rumbling over the average joes and there’s no David in sight to free us from its shackles. But if you are an Ameritrade Canada account holder with old habits, chances are you will be surprised for a second. You probably forgot that today is your first trading day where you have to start using TD Waterhouse’s platform instead.

I’m anxious to hear from users what their experience logging into their new account was like. Especially users who have never had the TD Waterhouse experience! Are you not used to having those wonderful Ameritrade tools. Are you happy about that $9.99 trade commission? (though it’s temporary). Maybe somebody will start a tdsucks.com or tdwaterhousesucks.com webpage like this person did for CIBC!

As a PF blogger, I also read many PF blogs out there to stay current with news. I also find many interesting blogs and information through this exploration. This afternoon, I’ve been going through my archived RSS feeds to find some of the interesting entries and submitting to PFDigg!

What is PFDigg?
PFDigg is to personal finance news what Digg is to tech news. I believe it will be a good idea to submit stories to PFDigg and hope that a community can be built. PFDigg is just starting out, so only time will tell if it takes off.

Why Bother?
PFDigg may prove to be another alternative to PFBloggers using carnivals and PFBlogs aggregator. There is a different aspect of social networking / interaction with the voting system used to promote news to the front page of the site. A lot of networking can also be done with using PFDigg,. I saw a “friends” feature where you can find people who are discovering great pfDiggs and follow their suggestions via RSS feeds.