Ganesh Kumar

Is Motorola A Long Term Value?

It is a definite value from a static view point. BUt how do you value it based on a going concern basis.
RAZR is loosing its shine. Apple is invading cell phone market. I was expecting MOT to make some headway in the set top box business and in networking business. But now there are talks of Nokia and Siemens combing their networking business. We already know the Lucent merger. So MOT is going to be left alone. I am not convinced yet they can sustain their competitive advantage.

Mean Reversion: When There Is Blood In the Streets, It's Time To Buy

I do not have problem buying when blood is in streets. That is easy. THe biggest problem I have is when market keeps going up. Assume this. It is easy to get in when Dow is below 10,000. Now after 6 months Dow has moved 1000 points and is now at 10,500. You think it has already come up 1000 points and it will revert to mean. Now it climbs another 1000 to 11,500. Now you say to yourself ha it is up 2000 so it has to revert now. It again climbs another 10000 and is now at 12,500. Now what you do? Do you wait to revert to mean and loose possibly another 1000 point rally or do you get in now only to see it reverting to mean :-). I have this issue across all asset classes. REIT's have gone up significantly, Small Cap has gone up, Commodities have gone up. What do you do in such situations?

'False' Diversification May Prove Costly In 2007

In all asset diversification articles I have only seen "Inflation Hedges". I think all asset allocation models concentrate too much to shield against inflation. Real Estate, Commodities, Equities , TIPS all guard against inflation.
Other than treasury securities is there any other asset class that will guard against "Deflation"?
I think long term US treasury securities are over valued(Untill 10 year yield crosses 5.25%). Is there any other asset class we could consider as a hedge against deflation?

Test Driving Zecco.com: Free Trading, But At A Price

Here are a few things I thought that could be improved in ZECCO.
1. First when you create an account with ZECCO, they send a confirmation email which has the password spelled out. I think this may be big security issue. They can send the id but not the password in email.
2. Overall I am not sure how many users will understand the two layers in ZECCO. First you have an user account with ZECCO then you get in to a trading account. The two layered security is good but if they could separate out the "general hanging around place" where there are user blogs etc with the serious investing place that would be great.
3. The trading site has a big geeky look. It was ok with me as I am an experienced online user (geek myself) but the User Interfaces are not that intuitively designed. I do not want to go into much details but the general feedback is the trading site is geeky and common user may find it difficult to use.
4. Contrary to other users feedback, I found there is no email communications from ZECCO to me other than the initial account approved email. I was at least expecting a trade confirmation but there is none. It is also not clear how I set my email preferences whether to receive trade confirmations. Again not a show stopper but things that could be improved.
Hope you enjoyed the review.

Test Driving Zecco.com: Free Trading, But At A Price

Here is my experience with ZECCO. I DO NOT WORK FOR ZECCO. I am just another investor waiting for something like this so that I can use ETF's and good stocks on dollar cost averaging to increase my returns.
I want to write this because I was searching for some review on ZECCO for about two months and then took a dive to see what happens. Again I a long term investor and not a trader. I may make a maximum of 2 or 3 buys per month. My purpose of opening ZECCO is dollar cost averaging not trading.
My overall experience with ZECCO is great. The surprising thing is I need not have to call or email any one with questions or anything. Everything went on so smoothly. That is a refreshing experience.
Here is the time line of what happened
DAY 1 ---> Created a Zecco user id and applied for ZECCO account online. The site creates a neat PDF file. Printed the same, signed and sent it to zecco. Also, I faxed the last sheet and copy of my drivers license to the fax number they provided. This was a Wednesday.
DAY + 4 ---> I received an email stating my account has been approved and I could set up ACH relationship
This was at Sunday night.
Day +5 --> MOnday morning I went in and added my bank account in the ACH relationship (yet to be verified)
Day+6 -->I got the two small deposits from Zecco in my bank account. I entered the small amounts and the account was verified instantly. I initiated the ACH transfer from my bank account. This is Tuesday.
Day +9 ---> To my surprise the amount was available in 3 days for trading. Compare that to 5 days or more others take!!. I placed my first order (this was a limit order and it was executed without any problem.
Now I am sitting here on Saturday, just staring at my trade confirmation in disbelief which states Commision as ZERO.
SO THIS IS FOR REAL.

Update after opening the account and doing one trade:
I had to send some additional papers to prove that I am a resident Alien. I had to call them once but was able to connect within about 10 minutes. Their timing is PACIFIC which is strange given they are located in ONTARIO CA. I got little nervous because they are not within US but so far so good.

First-Ever International Real Estate ETF Launched

Any idea how the distributions for this fund will be. Looks like a good fund for diversification but I am wondering whether to invest in this fund via regular account or tax deferred account