bigmoney

Sarah Palin's Stock Portfolio

This portfolio doesn't seem very diversified. And BP has way underperformed even XLE, the S&P500 energy sector. This portfolio might be for fun, or hedging, in addition to their main mutual fund holdings.

I'm Speechless: Palin on the Bailout

this was a fun posting, esp. the chart above.

Palin was either unprepared for the question, or else is just another fuzzy thinker who parrots the standard republican knee jerk response of "lower taxes, more jobs, etc" that is originally derived from Reagan's voodoo economics ~ "deficits don't matter".

It's hard to imagine any traditional "limited government" Republican attempting to facilitate a $700 billion bailout, layered on top of an existing (and chronic) $500 billion deficit. On the other hand, mountains of debt and deficits is the current zeitgeist.

Avoid Broken Buck Syndrome with Treasuries Money Market Funds

I was thinking there was a difference between a "money market mutual fund", and a "money market account", the former offered by brokers and investment banks and are not FDIC, while the latter offered by savings banks are FDIC. One problem is that the different institutions and their products appear to have merged together, so we get ambiguous names like "money market fund"

Airlines Hedging Oil at $147.90/BL?

who would have guessed? At the time, there were articles predicting $300 oil.

iPod Touch: Is It an iPod or iPhone?

I was in the market for an ultra-portable, and decided on an Asus eee PC. Granted, its not quite the same solution as an iPod Touch, because its two pounds. But its very tote-able to a coffee shop, has 6 hours of battery, a solid state drive, and blue tooth, for those with a smartphone / data plane. My version is Linux, so I have a train-load of free software I can use, and am not confined to "Apple Store". Right now, mine is on my desktop, running an SSH & VNC server, so I can operate it entirely from my desktop, and get data in & out with a 19" LCD and full sized keyboard.

VMWare Facing Pressure from All Sides

appears Sun (ticket JAVA) also wants a piece of this action with its Virtualbox v2

Gold May Not Be Just Another Commodity Anymore

its been disconcerting to see all major asset classes decline (with respect to fiat currency) in unison.

The Perils of Long-Term Investing

Many investors are holding S&P 500, or some other market cap index fund. I am not sure how often they re-balance, but I think its annually. I doubt there is very many true buy & holder's. Even so, most investors lack the training, time, energy, and access to information to dump the losers in a timely manner, so the buy & hold (via mutual fund) is the best they can do.

Three Approaches to Index Weighting

I deployed into equities, using equi-weight, equi-sector for convenience. I much prefer doing that, than getting into mutual funds / ETFs that are top-heavy financials. This likely would have been a much better formula for getting through the 2000 tech bubble. Going into a bubble, its very difficult to determine if "this time is different", so the equi helps me sleep better at night.

Unfortunately the deflating credit bubble seems to be taking down all stocks across the board, so its hard to pick "winners". The only refuge seems to be federal reserve notes, backed by faith & trust and a very low interest rate.

Is the AIG Deal Death Blow to the ETF Industry?

I didn't have time to read this entire posting, but when I studying Investing 101 a few years ago, I was concerned about top heavy financials in the market cap weighted mutual fund / ETF products. Equi-sector fund investing is easy to do now with ETFs, but that works best for large caps. As far as I know, there's no equivalent of SPDRs in mid & small cap. Even better would be additional sector products to be available that are globally diversified, or at least western europe, Japan, etc.

Stock Screen: Price Momentum + Fundamentals = Profits

what stock screen tool is this?

Stock Screen: Price Momentum + Fundamentals = Profits

I like this approach. What stock screening tool is this?

Inflation or Deflation?

inflation is an excellent tax because most people don't recognize it as a tax, and so its much more politically acceptable. Housing bubble = good. Everyone getting richer trading houses with each other. High oil prices = evil conspiracy by Big Oil.