Investorial

Will Smith’s latest movie “The Pursuit Of Happyness” opened in theaters December 15th, 2006. This isn’t a movie review, but as all my other writings on this blog, it’s my editorial from a financial and a personal perspective.

The movie’s title really spoke to me at a time when I’m trying to decide how happy I currently am, and what is it that I want to pursue; what direction I want to take. The movie is based on a true story. But though most people feel that this story is about the American Dream, my empathy is with the sense of responsibility that the main character, Chris Gardner, had for his situation. Want to know why I feel this? (more…)

google-finance-screenshot.thumbnail.jpg"/>I previously wrote about a data problem I noticed with Google Finance’s display of a stock’s timeframe. Turns out it was a designed feature! I’ve since leveraged Google Finance as a starting point to look at my watch list. However, I remain skeptical of Google’s ability to integrate data.

Today, I was looking at a Google Finance stock quote. Even though I have previously blogged negatively about Tim Horton’s IPO, there is no question in my mind that Tim Horton’s is still the strongest franchise name that Canada can offer. I have Tim Hortons (THI) in my watch-list for a possible entry point in the future. Take a look at the bigger screenshot after the jump to see the errors Google Finance displayed for me. (more…)

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< ?php } else { ?>< ?php } ?>One of my favourite movies of all time is “The Good, The Bad and The Ugly“. It’s no coincidence that I wished for Investorial to share the same focus. After all, the Sergio Leone classic is considered the greatest Western ever. If Investorial could accomplish even 1% of that legacy, it’d be an truly fulfilling accomplishment! I wanted to celebrate our 1 year anniversary by dissecting investing from the movie’s perspective. Won’t you join me? (more…)

Investorial is my un-imaginative amalgamation of “investments” and “editorials”. You may or may not enjoy my ramblings about “the good, the bad, the ugly” in the investement / financial media. I have also been trying to carve out new dimensions in my financial writing. I’m currently a blogger with two financial blogging networks - InvestorGeeks and AOL Blogging Stocks. I thought I’d share with you a few of my posts elsewhere. I won’t claim they are “good”, but I don’t think they are “bad” and hopefully they’re not “ugly”!

InvestorGeeks
I approached Chris, Jason and Frank on 06/06/06 to join the devil’s pact! It’s a thriving community of investing geeks (or the next motley fool?) and its my home for discussing investing techniques and principles. Here’s a sample! (more…)

I must thank Stephen Colbert (whose show I watch nightly) for coining the term “truthiness”. Wikipedia (besides having entries about elephants) also has an extensive section on the origin of “truthiness”. The expression is a reference to the quality by which a person claims to know something intuitively, instinctively, or “from the gut” without regard to evidence, logic, intellectual examination, or actual facts. The most famous proponent of this trait is the American president George W. Bush. Though Ann Coulter is closing in from second place in my opinion. (Don’t worry, there are far too many examples to support this assertion!) (more…)

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…)