Investorial

If you are a regular Investorial reader, you may already have notice the new layout design. I spent the whole day creating this design on my PC and finally felt it was ready to be ported to the site.

I was acutely aware that visitors using Internet Explorer 6 were having difficulties with the stylesheet I was using in the last design (shown in picture). I hope this version will remedy those issues. I really do like this design better. A little house cleaning was needed to throw away some unnecessary components. I will still be working on a few little tweaks over the next few days on the site. Please bear with any site issues while I finish the live re-design. (more…)

Billionaire Mark Cuban is no stranger to sharing his personal views about the stock market and its players. While he is busily waiting in anticipation for a Dallas Maverick NBA World Championship, he is still working on other ventures in the background.

One such venture is ShareSleuth.com, a new journalism venture by business reporter Christopher Carey that will start to go live July 2006. Mark Cuban’s involvement in the venture was revealed in the internal announcement of Carey leaving the St. Louis Post-Dispatch to work on Sharesleuth. (more…)

google-spreadsheet.thumbnail.jpg"/>Much thanks to JLP from AllFinancialMatters, for sending me an invite to try out Google Spreadsheets. I was interested to evaluate the web tool because many financial bloggers like to use, design and share spreadsheets. Google spreadsheets could be a great way to share such information! I looked around, tried a few features and even uploaded one of my own spreadsheets. After playing around for about 30 minutes, I decided to send Google a feedback. I thought I would share what I wrote: (more…)

This post will definitely be one of those memorable moments in Investorial’s history. Aside from being my first podcast, it is also my first interview with a fund manager, Jim Chuong! Jim will be the first to humbly tell you that being compared to the Oracle of Omaha is a bit much. But there certainly exist similarities. Jim founded the Chuong Investment Management (formerly The Toronto Investment Club). Chuong Investment Management (CIM) is an investment partnership that followed closely Warren Buffett’s own partnership structure when he first started. As well, Jim has managed CIM to an annual return of 22.9% since 1998 (without buying tech stocks) by following the tenets of value investing.

We had lunch at a local Tim Hortons before Jim went for his regular workout. I tried cleaning up the audio, but I want to apologize for the background noise and the occasional baby’s cry. Jim was a really nice guy who spoke very intelligently and candidly on every subject that came up during our 43 minutes. We chatted about a wide variety of subjects from MERs, to value investing, to comic books, tennis, saving for yourself and many other subjects. I learnt a lot from this experience and I know you will too! Download it, put it in your iPod and listen on your way to work. You’ll be glad you did!

Jim Chuong Podcast Interview (10 MB, 43 minutes)

I definitely believe that Jim is one of the good people you will find in (more…)

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…)