Investorial

I miss Herb Greenberg’s articles. If you didn’t know, he’s on summer vacation at the moment. I wanted to dissect the good, the bad and the ugly about the investment media out there in part because of heroes like him doing his part fighting for, and educating the un-informed masses.

I bookmarked 2 recent Greenberg articles and just re-read them tonight. Thought I’d share with you some of my thoughts about the good media out there! (Unless you think I’m always being critical, and cynical) The first must-read is an educational piece about how to not get blindsided by earnings reports. These quarterly dances can really get the best of investors who are not watching out for the following:

1. What goes in, doesn’t come out
2. Melting margins
3. Signing up customers at any cost
4. Quarter-end announcements

For more details on these suspicious events that can skew earnings reports. Be sure to check out Herb’s post. The ending sentence “When it comes to earnings, it’s quality, not quantity, that counts.” are truly words to live by for investors.

My next selection could also be my favourite Greenberg article for this year so far. (more…)

I’ve often voiced my displeasure for the way Canadian brokerage firms mistreat their customers with high fees, poor tools and poor services. You can find the many dissatisfied customer comments on my previous post regarding the TD Waterhouse / Ameritrade merger.

But those same brokerage firms insist that they are improving their services. For example, here’s TD Waterhouse telling you what they’re doing for their customers in their own words! (more…)

If you often read news articles or blogs about investments or personal finance topics, you’ll notice they love to offer to consumers tips, advices, and how-to’s. They’re meant to be informative pieces. But have you ever wondered what the industry players may write and read amongst themselves?

Take for example, this article on Advisor.ca talking up the merits of life-cycle funds and how they may benefit the various distribution channels. That’s right, not investors but distribution channels! You shouldn’t be surprised that the mutual fund industry is all about sales. How else could you explain the number of funds existing and created each year? It’s like all the varieties of mp3 players that keep popping up. Just create a new variety and market it! And marketing is the key to winning this game! Therefore, fund companies have to market to distribution channels via such articles.

Let’s dissect some of the more memorable articles quotes in a tongue-in-cheek manner (a la Jon Stewart), shall we? (more…)

Did you notice anything new or different about Investorial’s homepage today? I’m test driving Yahoo’s new stock chart badges. Yahoo generated buzz last month that they would be allowing webmasters and bloggers to incorporate such a feature on their sites. Amist all the hoopla today regarding the overhaul of Yahoo!’s homepage and the Yahoo Finance site, you should also know that the anticipated stock chart service is now live!

First thoughts? The design and colors look really nice, and it’s very easy to customize the badge to fit your needs. Although I still feel there needs to be more customizable options and choices. You can built as many of these badges as you like. If you frequently post with stock ticker symbols, you might consider embedding one of these badges permanently to your articles.. This way, new readers can keep track of what’s happening with the stock tickers easily.

Currently, only symbols from the NYSE, NASDAQ, and AMEX exchanges as well as indices from Standard & Poor’s can be included. I tested and could not add the Dow Jones to the chart. Yahoo will look to add new exchanges in the future to allow users to include foreign stocks.

You can check out Yahoo’s new stock chart service here! (You must have a Yahoo login to use this feature, but I believe most people do! )

Update: I’ve taken the stock chart badge out. It was simply taking up too much screen real-estate for the little purpose that I have in displaying it. I will however review and revisit the design and placement of the stock badges for individual articles!

Timmins may not be a city you have heard of. If this northern ontario town sounds familiar, you just might be a Shania Twain fan. Not only is the city with the heart of gold Shania’s hometown, it’s also a commonality between Frank Mahovlich (NHL hockey player, Canadian senator), Stompin’ Tom Connors (musician, songwriter), Steve Sullivan (NHL hockey player) and myself. I proudly called Timmins my hometown ever since my family immigrated to Canada when I was age 11. On my recent trip, I was suprised by a few changes I’ve noticed and took some pictures to share with you!

Timmins was recently listed #1 in the April 2006 issue of MoneySense magazine as the most affordable place to live in Canada. To reach this conclusion, MoneySense compared housing prices with local incomes. A year’s income for a Timmins resident would not only theoretically pay for a house, but leave them with a bit left over for paint and wallpaper! (more…)

Reading blogs have been a great way for me to see different perspectivies. But there are some perspectives that I’d have rather not witnessed. It’s like those television shows that you watch; and then realizing that it has robbed you of precious time that you will never get back.

I don’t think I’ve ever pointed out someone so succintly in the personal finance / investment blogs universe yet, but after reading the numerous rantings of Sheldon Liber on Blogging Stocks, banging my head against a brick wall would be a preferrable torture.

I bit my tongue when he posted “10 reasons I think Google is going down“. I looked past his uncouth attempts at a witty title such as (more…)

google.com/finance/images/logo_finance.gif"/>We all know Google for the information blackhole that it wants to be. Google sucks up all indexable knowledge from webpages, books, videos, your desktop and whatever media / database that it can get its hands on. However, Google is also the company who while claiming to “do no evil”, willingly censors information in order to break into the China markets. You can see what I mean by searching for “tiananmen” in Google Images here and its China counterpart here.

I’m not here to argue whether Google is a saint or a devil in disguise, or whether its merely doing no evil according to local contexts. But it begs the question of what Google Finance (a relatively new Google service) does with its data? Beyond the much raved about gimmicky interface, the bottom line for researching using Google is the integrity of its data. Here’s a case (with screenshots) proving that Google Finance is showing the wrong incomplete data, or is it consciously participating in censoring activity? (more…)

You have to give credit where credit’s due! Marketwatch has been steadily impressing me with their adoption of the upcoming trends for publishing information on the web. They want their readers to digg their articles, or make them del.ici.ious. They’ve launched Marketwatch blogs with three of their most popular contributors, Herb Greenberg, Frank Barnako and Bambi Francisco at the forefront. But what’s new for Marketwatch?

If you’ve clicked the small image at the top of this article, you will see the Marketwatch’s new design launched since July 5th, 2006. Editor-in-chief David Callaway explains the site-wide changes in detail for Marketwatch readers. My personal opinion is that this long overdue change is for the better. (more…)